Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  “Shit,” Ian swore again. And then he kissed her.

  He put his hands on either side of her face, not roughly, but not quite gently, either, as he covered her mouth with his. Perfectly. Tenderly.

  “I can take care of myself,” he said, looking into her eyes before he kissed her again, and then one final time. It was over too fast, before she even got a chance to kiss him back. And now he was backing away. “Go,” he said again.

  And great. Now she was crying, a tear slipping down her cheek that she impatiently brushed away. “Ian, God help me, if you get yourself killed—”

  “Hello. Who’s this?”

  Phoebe closed her eyes, because she knew even without turning around, just from the look on Ian’s face, that Georg Vanderzee, AKA the Dutchman, had returned. She also knew that he’d heard her calling Ian by name. She could see the reality and implications of that in Ian’s eyes—since she’d just spoken to him in a very familiar way, there was no way they could pretend she was just some woman who worked here, and besides, who in their right mind, in broad daylight, would mistake her for a stripper, anyway?

  So she did the only thing she could think to do that would get Ian out of there in advance of the coming kill squad—the only thing she could think to do that would also maintain his current connection to the Dutchman.

  She turned toward Vanderzee, wiping her face, and said, “I’m Phoebe. I’m Ian’s wife.” She reached over and took Ian’s hand, even though the look in his eyes was not a happy one. “And I’m not supposed to be here, so he’s very mad at me, but he lost his stupid cell phone so I couldn’t call him and warn him that Davio Dellarosa, a man who hates him very much, knows that he’s here. Davio has sent a team of gunmen to kill him. Ian told me that you’re an old friend, a good friend, and I’m hoping that’s true, and that you’ll please, please help us. We need to get out of here. Now.”

  * * *

  Phoebe couldn’t have timed it better if her words had been a dialogue cue in an action movie.

  She said now, and the next thing Ian heard was the sound of squealing tires from a car skidding to a stop in Henrietta’s parking lot.

  He went back into the private room and over to the window, which was covered with a sheet of stick-on plastic that made it translucent. He peeled back a corner and revealed—yes. A dark midsized sedan with all four doors open was sitting right by the club’s back exit. And four men—all wearing ski masks and long coats despite the heat of the afternoon—were already pushing their way inside.

  Vanderzee was right beside him, looking at them, too. “Merde, what are you into?” he asked.

  “Oh, this and that,” Ian said. And look. Here was how the club had passed its safety inspection—there was a metal fire escape right outside. He opened the window, kicked out the screen. “Phoebe. Come on. Move.”

  She took the hand he held out for her, and together they clattered down the metal stairs, with Vanderzee right behind them, cursing a blue streak in a mix of French, Dutch, German, and English.

  “My car’s over here,” the man said, and he led the way, at a sprint, across the lot.

  Ian knew Vanderzee wasn’t helping them out of friendship or the kindness of his generous heart. He was helping them because if he didn’t, they were going to be gunned down, right there, in broad daylight. And because it was broad daylight, and because people in this neighborhood were out and about, someone, or maybe some surveillance camera, would catch sight of his car speeding away from the scene, and suddenly Vanderzee would be up to his balls in a murder investigation. And since he was currently involved in a kidnapping and murder of his own, he couldn’t risk that.

  Phoebe’s cheap plastic sandals were slowing her down, so Ian put his arm around her waist and half-carried her with him as he chased after the Dutchman, past the car that Davio’s hired guns had left by the door. If it hadn’t been a necessity to stay close to Vanderzee, Ian would’ve jumped in and driven away in it, because the last thing he needed was a car chase through Miami. Stealing the killers’ car was one surefire way to prevent that.

  Instead, he dragged Phoebe toward Vanderzee’s embassy-staid town car.

  “Let me drive, let me drive, let me drive,” Ian said, but the man ignored him, climbing in behind the wheel and ducking down, because—shit—a shooter had opened fire.

  Everything went into slow-mo.

  The world was already in high-def, and had been ever since Phoebe’d introduced herself to the Dutchman as Ian’s wife. The color of the sky was an unnatural shade of blue, and the sunlight skipped and danced off the few cars sitting there in the lot. He could see the white cargo van in a neighboring lot, parked in the shifting shade of a palm tree, the barely visible shape of Yashi behind the wheel. He could see power lines overhead and potholes in the asphalt and Phoebe’s face in between the two as she heard the gunshots—her wide eyes, her nostrils flaring as she tried to move faster, that beautiful mouth he’d just kissed …

  What the hell was wrong with him? He shouldn’t have kissed her again. What was he thinking?

  Ian yanked open the back door and pushed Phoebe inside as a bullet plowed into the shiny black finish of the Dutchman’s car.

  He spun to look back at the club. And yes, the first of the gunmen had emerged through the window that Vanderzee, the freaking amateur, had carelessly left open. The man had come onto the fire escape, where he’d spotted them. But he was armed only with a handgun. At this distance, with that weapon, even a sharpshooter’s aim would’ve been erratic. Still, Phoebe was shouting something, and her head was still up, so Ian dove into the car, pushing her down beneath him onto the floor, shouting, “Go, go, go!” as the Dutchman did just that, peeling out and heading away from the club, toward the exit at the back of the parking lot.

  Phoebe was shouting something else, something urgent that included Ian’s name, and he tried to lift at least some of his weight off of her. But Vanderzee took a hard left and then a hard right as he maneuvered his way around the few parked cars, and as the movement tossed them, Ian struggled to regain his balance.

  If he were driving, he would’ve taken a different approach, heading instead for the front exit. Even though doing so would’ve brought them temporarily under fire, he would’ve rammed the shooters’ vehicle with this boat of a car, ensuring that they wouldn’t be followed.

  Now, as he poked his head up to peer out the back window, he saw the gunmen running down the fire escape to their car, so they could do just that. One, two, three of them …

  The fourth man wasn’t moving, and Ian registered the fact that he was standing there—at an elevated level, aiming what must’ve been a rifle—a split second before a hole was punched into the back windshield. He was already reacting and ducking—just barely. He felt the bullet whiz past his head even as he heard the sharp retort of the gunshot, even as the bullet crunched, simultaneously, into the door’s padded armrest, as beneath him Phoebe shouted her alarm.

  “They’re following,” Ian grimly announced to the Dutchman, who responded with more of that multilingual cursing as the car pulled out onto the back road. “Don’t let them follow us!”

  That last was aimed at Yashi—hopefully the fed had turned his roving microphones in the town car’s direction. Ian needed interference, and he needed it now, even if it meant sacrificing one of the vans. Because this mission would not happen, and Ian wouldn’t win Aaron’s immunity, if one of these hired goons got a clear look at the town car’s plates, and camped outside of the K-stani consulate, day and night, looking for the bounty he’d receive by delivering Ian’s dead body to Davio Dellarosa.

  And that was far from the worst-case scenario.

  The worst case, if the kill squad was allowed to follow, involved imminent death, not just for Ian, but for Phoebe, too.

  Another bullet hit the car, somewhere on the side, in the back—which was good, because it meant they weren’t yet following. Either that, or they’d left their sniper behind on the fire escape.

/>   “Try to get some buildings—something with some height—between the shooter and us,” Ian ordered Vanderzee as he pushed himself up and found himself nose to nose with Phoebe.

  “You think I don’t know that? There’s nothing here but rows of shitty little houses. There’s nowhere to turn!”

  Perfect.

  Ian pulled himself up on the seat to risk another look out the back.

  “Oh my God, Ian,” Phoebe said, and started to sit up.

  “Stay down.” He reached out with his left hand—and realized that his fingers were dripping with blood. He wouldn’t have thought the world could get any sharper and brighter, but just like that, it did. “Are you hit?” he asked her, seeing that yes, there was blood on her sweatshirt, garish and red against the crisp white. He felt himself going into full mental overdrive as he tried to figure out the fastest way to get her to the closest hospital. To hell with this mission, to hell with the Dutchman, to hell with everything but making sure that this woman didn’t die …

  But she was speaking over him. “Ian, you were shot! You!”

  He was the one who was bleeding, thank you sweet Jesus. Phoebe was trying to sit up again, reaching toward his T-shirt sleeve. It was soaked with blood that was dripping down his arm.

  He pushed her back down. “I’m okay,” he told her, although there was too much adrenaline in his system to know that for a fact. Still, he wasn’t gushing blood—this was not bad for a bullet wound. Plus, he’d been using his arm to support himself, so he knew it wasn’t broken. “Stay down!”

  He again used his injured arm to brace himself so that he could poke his head up above the seat—up and back—to get a quick look out the back window. And sure enough, the kill squad’s sedan was behind them, shooters leaning out the windows, waiting to fire until they got closer. And closer …

  “They’re behind us,” Ian reported. “Shit, they’re close enough to get your plate number!”

  “No, they’re not,” the Dutchman said. “I’m not a fool—it’s smeared with mud. I made sure of it before I came here.”

  Well, that was a break, at least. Now all they had to do was keep Davio’s men from shooting out their tires and killing them. “Do you have a weapon?” Ian asked.

  Phoebe thought he was talking to her. “It’s in the lockup, remember?”

  “Vanderzee,” Ian said. “Are you armed?”

  The other man didn’t answer right away.

  “Are you carrying?” Ian asked again.

  The Dutchman swore again, this time in Farsi. But he handed Ian his weapon, a compact SIG Sauer that wouldn’t ruin the lines of his jacket.

  And thus trust was established. “Thanks, bro,” Ian said. Or it would be, if they survived this goatfuck.

  If this were a Hollywood buddy movie, this was where Ian would deftly shoot out the pursuing car’s front tires and save the day, after which he’d hand the SIG back, butt first, to Vanderzee. And then they’d both smile, and the audience would nod because it would be clear that the two main characters were on the path to true friendship.

  Except Vanderzee was an asshole sociopath that Ian would never, ever, ever call friend.

  He lay back on the seat as he checked the weapon, making sure there was a round chambered and ready to go. As soon as he raised his head to aim that weapon, he’d shout for Vanderzee to hit the brakes to put him into range. But the shooters would then be in range, too, and there were going to be two, maybe three men firing back at Vanderzee’s car.

  “Are there two of them now?” Vanderzee asked. “White van—behind the sedan?”

  What? Ian peeked up again, and—glory, hallelujah—there was Yashi, in the white van, behind the bad guys, gunning the powerful engine that Ian had paid extra for, and—bang! He slammed the van, full force, into the back of the sedan.

  “Who the fuck is that?” Vanderzee asked, even as he raced the town car faster down the seemingly endless narrow residential street.

  As they both watched, Yashi did it again, this time hitting the sedan at a slight angle, from the back and to the side, pushing it, hard, toward a line of parked cars.

  “That’s my guardian angel,” Ian told Vanderzee, using the same words that Berto had with Shelly just a few nights ago. And just like that, the entire plan for this rescue mission became clear to him, in a flash—the way his best plans always did. Just bang, and it was all right there, like a delivery via Dropbox into his brain. In that instant, he knew what he had to do to rescue those kids, and exactly how to pull it off.

  He was not only going to use Davio’s unbridled hatred of him and his family, but he would also use Davio’s son Berto, who was proving to be Ian’s newest bestest friend, thanks no doubt to Francine. It was risky, sure, but he knew instinctively that it would work.

  “His name is Berto Dellarosa—the guy in the van,” Ian told Vanderzee, as the shooters’ sedan sideswiped the row of cars parked on the street. “He’s the guy who called Phoebe to warn her about this hit. He didn’t think he would get here in time to pull me out, but I guess he did. I’ll tell you all about it—about the deal I’ve got going with him, a deal that double-crosses his father. There’s a potential to make a lot of cash—just, please, get us out of here first.”

  The kill squad’s sedan was going so fast that when it sideswiped the cars its front wheel got snagged. It went into a spin that caused an oncoming truck—the only other traffic on this road—to jam on its brakes and skid to a shrieking stop in someone’s dusty yard.

  Yashi, meanwhile, was driving like a demolition derby pro. He’d braked, but now he accelerated again, hitting the sedan one final time to send it rocketing into a telephone pole, where the front hood crumpled and the airbags exploded.

  The last thing Ian saw was Yashi doing a hard youie and driving—fast—back the way he’d come, as the Dutchman finally found a cross street and turned.

  Hold on. It was what Vanderzee should have said before he took the sudden sharp right. Instead he just blasted into it and Ian tumbled on top of Phoebe again.

  “Slow down, slow down, slow down,” Ian told the Dutchman, even though he was nose to nose with Phoebe again, and was looking directly into her eyes. “And weave, man. Let’s not stay on this same street for long.”

  Ian could see Phoebe’s questions—Berto Dellarosa? In a white van?

  “We’re safe,” he told her, nodding and mouthing Yashi. “Berto must’ve found a way around the traffic. He knocked Davio’s kill squad into a telephone pole, at the very least popped their airbags, which neutralizes their car.” He pushed himself off Phoebe and up onto the seat as he raised his voice slightly to address Vanderzee. “That was fucking great driving, man. Don’t stop, though—we need to keep going, but we also don’t want to get pulled over for going too fast. I don’t know about you, but I could really use not having to explain the bullet holes to the police.” Ian made himself laugh, as if that was a good joke.

  From the front, Vanderzee laughed, too. “That was … Shit, Dunn. You’re one crazy bastard.”

  “Yes, I am,” Ian agreed, as he helped Phoebe up so that she was sitting beside him on the seat.

  “How about the bullet hole in your arm,” she said tartly. “Can we maybe take care of that before we have to explain it to the police?”

  “I’m fine.” He shot her a warning glance. Let him spin this fiction. She’d done quite enough already, thanks.

  She ignored him. “He’s bleeding all over your nice car,” she leaned forward to tell Vanderzee. “Are you okay? Were you hit, too?”

  It was actually a nice touch—the realistic reaction of his “wife” to his getting grazed. And Ian had only been grazed, he saw as he pushed back his sleeve. There was a strip of skin missing from his arm, true, but it was a relatively small strip. In a perfect world, he’d go to the ER for stitches. In his current world, he’d patch it himself and end up with a souvenir scar.

  Assuming he was going to live long enough for the wound to heal.

  “I�
��m unhurt,” Vanderzee told Phoebe.

  “Thank God,” she said. “And thank you. You saved our lives. I don’t know how we can ever, ever repay you.”

  Ian poked her leg. That second ever was a little heavy on the drama.

  “Your husband saved my life once,” the Dutchman told Phoebe. “I think this makes us even.” He glanced up into the rearview mirror to meet Ian’s eyes. “I can’t believe you got married.”

  “At times, I honestly can’t believe it either,” Ian said dryly. “It happened so fast. Here. Thanks. I’m glad I didn’t need it.” He used the opportunity to lean forward and return the SIG. As much as he hated to let it go, it was better to do that sooner than to wait until the man asked for it back. “Safety’s back on.”

  “Thank you, my friend.”

  And weren’t they all just the perfect picture of geniality? But now that not getting killed was off his to-do list, Ian’s mostpressing need was to get Phoebe back to the FBI safe house.

  “Seriously, man, I made a mess of your car,” Ian said. “Why don’t we stick this puppy in one of the long-term parking garages at the airport. Back it in, so the damage to the rear windshield doesn’t show. As soon as I can get to a phone, I got people who’ll come out, replace the glass, patch the hole, clean it up good as new—no questions asked.”

  “You want us to walk through the airport looking like this?” Phoebe asked.

  Was she trying to make this harder for him? Or was she just getting into playing the part? Well, Ian could do that, too. If she really was his wife, he’d be pretty freaking bullshit angry about her being in a place where bullets had been flying. “I need to get you someplace safe,” he said, not bothering to hide the tightness in his voice. “So no, we won’t walk through the airport. We’ll stay in the garage. Find a car that we can borrow. Get you out of there.”

  Phoebe looked back at him, blinking rapidly, which appeared to be her version of SOS or maybe WTF. “But you were going to talk to, um, your friend Vanderzee? Mr. Vanderzee? About the you-know-what. Deal. With Berto?”