Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

by Unknown

  He was tired. Maybe that was it. Tiredness often felt a lot like sadness and longing and … Ian pushed it all away. Boxed it up. Proceeded with this step of this part of this, his current plan.

  And the words to that famous old poem by Lord Tennyson popped into his head, paraphrased and altered. His not to wonder why … His but to do, or die …

  He had to laugh. If Phoebe knew he was thinking that, while he was doing this, she would think it was pretty funny, too.

  Ian found himself looking at her glasses again. They were so uniquely Phoebe—it was almost as if she’d left a vital part of herself behind. It was almost as if she were watching him.

  God, he wished she was watching him, wished she was touching him, stroking, kissing, and then, yes, opening herself to him, welcoming him, clinging to him.…

  He could imagine her eyes behind those lenses, lit up with humor, her lips quirking upward, too. He could imagine her sighing and breathing his name as she moved with him.…

  He came in a hot rush that left him breathing hard, weak-kneed, and a little light-headed. Shit.

  He took off the condom and tossed it onto the far edge of the back of the tub—exactly as he would’ve done, if he’d used the damn thing with Phoebe. He washed himself, and finally turned off the water.

  He pulled back the shower curtain, dried off, cleaned up—got everything organized that needed to go into the wastebasket. He wrapped his towel around his hips, then took Phoebe’s glasses down from the windowsill and wiped them clean for her.

  He opened the bathroom door to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a white bathrobe, her towel wrapped like a turban around her long hair.

  She stood up, came toward him. “Thanks,” she said as she took her glasses, put them on. “It was probably best that the evil monkey decor was out of focus or I might’ve had to huddle in the corner in a fetal position. Can you imagine trying to sleep in here?”

  Evil monkeys? Ian looked around a room that was decorated in rich shades of green and gold. He saw too many palm trees, and then monkeys. Whoa. He had to laugh. There were a lot of them. “I think they’re probably mischievous and not necessarily evil.”

  “One man’s mischief is another man’s evil,” Phoebe told him solemnly. “I’m going to put the clothes that need washing into the laundry, then I’ll help you bandage that.”

  “It’s not bad,” he said, craning his neck to attempt to see the back of his shoulder. It was still oozing, but just a little.

  “Only because you moved the way you did, when you did,” she came back. “If it had hit you straight on …”

  Ian kissed her, because—cameras. It was, without a doubt what he would have done if she’d looked at him like that, with those eyes and that impossibly kissable mouth, had they really been married.

  He meant to make it light. Patronizing. There, there, dear. Instead, he found himself lingering over her lips, kissing her again and again, longer, deeper, sweeter. He made himself stop and step back from her. “Don’t go there,” he said, although he wasn’t quite sure exactly who he was talking to—Phoebe, or himself.

  “Where I really want to go,” she told him, “is home.”

  It was the perfect thing for her to say with Vanderzee or his minions listening in. She had the exact right amount of emotion trembling in her voice. It would fit their story, perfectly, when they declined their host’s kind offer to let them spend the night so that they’d be extra safe from the men who’d tried to kill Ian. Sorry, man, but my wife really wants to go home.…

  It was more than enough.

  But then Phoebe stepped toward Ian, put her arms around his neck and her mouth up to his ear. She spoke in a stage whisper, but without the shower running, it was loud enough to be picked up by the listening mics—she knew that as well as he did: “So I can screw you sideways, without worrying about all these cameras and microphones.”

  And thus she’d also explained the underwear-into-the-shower detail.

  Of course, at the same time, she’d managed to blow his mind—she was that convincing. As no doubt was his own disbelieving laughter, and the way he shook his head as he watched her go into the bathroom to gather up the clothing that needed to be washed.

  It was right then, in that instant, that Ian knew the truth.

  He was already screwed.

  Completely and utterly and upside down and sideways.

  He didn’t just want her words to be reality rather than cover. He didn’t just wish that she’d meant what she’d just said.

  He needed for it to be so.

  And the devil was, indeed, in that particular detail.

  * * *

  Yashi had hidden the damaged van back behind a shopping center in an upscale part of town. The stores and restaurants out here were all those of national chains, and the place had a flavorless, Stepford Wives vibe to it that Martell found unsettling.

  They could’ve been in Ohio.

  No, strike that. The rats by the Dumpster were Florida rats—big and ugly and defiant—and out for a stroll, just before dusk.

  Deb slowly rolled van two past both Dumpsters and rats. “Where are you? I’m back behind the steak house, but …”

  “Keep coming.” Yashi’s voice was being broadcast over their sound system. “I’m way in the back.”

  Martell saw the other van at the same moment that Deb did. It was closer to what looked like a long-abandoned construction site than the steak house’s Dumpster.

  “Wow,” Deb said.

  Martell worded it differently: “Holy shit.”

  While they’d been stuck in traffic, they’d heard Davio Dellarosa’s hitmen arrive at Henrietta’s. They’d listened as Dunn and Phoebe survived the attack by escaping in the Dutchman’s car. They’d sat, stone still, seething with frustration and impatience, impotent to help in any way as they’d witnessed, via audio, Yashi’s efforts to keep the gunmen from following. They’d heard the sound of metal on metal as he pushed the shooters’ car off the road, even as he narrated in his usual deadpan: “Hit ’em. Hit ’em again. They’re out of commission. I’m out of here.”

  He’d gone on to report that the van he was driving was, in his words, “limping,” and that he was going to go to ground, i.e., hide somewhere safe. He’d told Deb to give him a ring when they were moving again.

  But they’d gotten back in touch to pass along info when Francine reported the news that Dunn and Phoebe had arrived safely at the Dutchman’s rental house. And because Vanderzee had outfitted the place with high-tech surveillance, and because the FBI had already tapped into that plethora of cameras and microphones, Francie and da boise back at the safe house were monitoring them successfully.

  So far, so good, Francine had reported. Apparently Mr. and Mrs. Dunn—an obvious cover—were getting along swimmingly well with the alleged kidnapper. So, high-fives all around for putting that part of Dunn’s plan in motion.

  Assuming, of course, that Dunn finally had a plan and wasn’t still just freestyling it. That Martell would believe only when Dunn told him the details.

  After the news sharing, Deb and Martell had gone back to residing in their pathetic level of traffic hell. Martell had tried to lighten Deb’s dark mood with a little flirtation, but when she’d shut him down for the sixth or seventh time, he’d given up.

  But things had finally started moving, at which point Deb called Yashi back and … here they now were.

  Rolling up on a van that looked like it’d been in a head-on with an 18-wheeler.

  “Airbags should’ve gone off,” Martell mused. “With little bursts of confetti and horns and signs saying Congratulations, you’ve totaled your vehicle. He must’ve disabled them.”

  Deb nodded. “It would’ve been a bummer to paralyze a car carrying four gunmen, and then not be able to drive away.”

  Yashi stuck his head out of the cargo area of the near-demolished van. “Hey.”

  “Seriously?” Martell asked Deb. “We pull up to see this … th
is … deathtrap, and he says Hey?”

  She backed up alongside of the other van and parked. “We need to move quickly. We have to transfer any equipment or parts that we can. Everything else gets sanitized.” She jumped out, walked past Yashi, and got to work.

  And okay. If they were sleeping together—and Martell was 99.999 percent certain that they were sleeping together—they deserved to win some kind of co-worker Emmy or Oscar for successfully hiding that fact.

  In fact, Martell was the one who had to ask, “Dude. Are you really okay?”

  “Seat belts,” Yashi told him. “They work. Plus I was driving, so I knew when to hold on. Help me with this, will you?”

  Martell climbed up into the back of what had been van one and helped move the main computer screen. While Yashi was waiting for them to break free of that traffic, he’d apparently used the time to unfasten all of the bolts that held the surveillance equipment in place.

  Working together, the three of them quickly got everything moved into the other van—including a few chunks of the engine, the license plates, and even a little piece of the windshield that had held the tag info.

  Through it all, Deb and Yashi exchanged maybe five sentences, total. Including, “Jules call?” “No, he call you?” “Nope.”

  That might’ve been their code for “You really scared me back there.” “Yeah, it was intense. I can’t wait to have hot screaming beast-sex with you.” “Me too, baby, me too.”

  But probably not.

  It was finally time to wipe that sucker down. Martell tried to help, but he was getting in the way, so he eventually just stood back and watched. It was obvious that Yashi and Deb had done this type of extensive fingerprint removal before. No point in slowing down their dance.

  But he was curious. “Why not just burn it?” he asked.

  “Bad for the environment,” Yashi said as they climbed back into surviving van number two—which they probably should now call van one. Or maybe just van.

  “Plus, fires don’t always do what you want them to,” Deb pointed out, as she started the engine, and began the journey back past the Dumpsters. Her annoyance was heavy in her voice. “A lot like assignments. And people.”

  “And the weather,” Martell added. “And life in general. You know, I have a nephew. Ten years old. In chemo for cancer. It’s not going well.”

  Deb looked at him, and her heart was in her eyes. “I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  And now he felt like a dick. “I didn’t say that to make you feel less-than. Like, my bad shit’s worse than yours, so whatever it is that you’re feeling isn’t valid or important. It’s just that we’re all just kind of here, spinning madly in this chaos. And I see you trying really hard to be puppetmaster, but there are just too many variables that you cannot control. I mean, Ian Dunn? Come on.”

  “Work the serenity prayer,” Yashi said from the back. “Getting mad never helps.”

  “He never gets mad,” Deb told Martell. “Makes me batshit crazy.”

  “That’s not true,” Yashi said. “I get mad. I just don’t let it interfere.”

  “You want me to drive?” Martell asked Deb. “Because you definitely don’t want to get pulled over for driving while batshit crazy.”

  She laughed at that. But then she surprised him. “Yeah,” she said as she pulled to the side of the parking lot. “Why don’t you drive? It’s been a long few months and … I’d appreciate it.”

  At first, Phoebe let Ian talk.

  But then her silence started to feel weird and unnatural, so when he told a very convincing story of how they’d met, involving a dog, a storm, and a downed power line, she spoke up to add some colorful details.

  “It was a Boston terrrier!”

  “The hail was the biggest I’ve ever seen!”

  “But then a rainbow appeared—right over Ian’s head—like a sign from above!”

  Somewhere in the telling, he’d pulled her down so she was sitting on his lap, which was much too comfortable.

  And then, because she didn’t want to look too stiff and unnatural sitting there, Phoebe started playing with Ian’s hair, which was deliciously soft and thick. And the way he sighed and leaned into her touch was really quite perfect, too.

  Ian went from how they’d met to where they’d married—Vegas.

  “Oh, don’t tell the story about the soft-boiled egg.” She widened her eyes at him, actually starting to enjoy herself a little, because he was very, very good at this game.

  He smiled back at her. “I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “I promise to leave out all of the unfortunate and embarrassing room-service incidents.”

  “The whipped cream fiasco, though, was pretty funny,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows at him.

  Ian laughed at that. “It was,” he agreed, following the primary rule of improv. Agree with everything.

  “We ordered berries and cream,” Phoebe explained to Vanderzee, “and the room service waiter came up and wanted to do the whole thing with setting up the table in the room, but we were … in something of a hurry, so Ian just signed for it all, right at the door, and took the tray. It wasn’t until much later, when we left for dinner, that we saw this neatly covered bowl of strawberries outside of our door. And we realized that neither of us noticed that there hadn’t been any berries on our tray—we were a little, um, involved with the whipped cream. The poor man must’ve come back and knocked and knocked—”

  “I didn’t hear anyone knock,” Ian contributed as he smiled up at her.

  Laughter lines, sparkling eyes, beaming smile—if this man ever really looked at her like this, she herself would probably never hear another door knock again. Phoebe leaned down to kiss him, but then had to clear her throat before she could tell the Dutchman, “He finally must’ve just given up and left that bowl at the door.”

  It didn’t take much to imagine being locked in a hotel room with Ian Dunn and a bowl of whipped cream—full hours spent licking it from various outrageously attractive body parts.

  Ian, too, had to clear his throat.

  “So you were married in Las Vegas,” the Dutchman said, clearly wanting more details, and when Ian looked at Phoebe, she knew he was a little lost.

  This was not a man who’d spent much time—okay, any time—dreaming of his wedding day.

  Phoebe, however, could picture the perfect scenario for a ruggedly handsome con artist and the woman who’d captured his heart.

  “The wedding itself was a total surprise. Ian planned everything,” she told the Dutchman, who smiled back at her as he sipped his wine. He’d opened a very nice Merlot from a boutique winery in Napa, and had poured a glass for Phoebe, too. Ian was having club soda, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, and yet somehow still was. There was something slightly off in his reaction to her having a glass of wine, too, so she only took pretend sips. “He made all the reservations—hotel, restaurants, the most romantic wedding chapel. I mean, you tend to think Vegas weddings are tacky. Like, an Elvis impersonator officiates. Ah now pronounce you husband and wife. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  She realized with a flash of both hot and cold, even as she did her best Elvis and everyone laughed, that neither she nor Ian were wearing wedding rings, and her left hand suddenly felt suspiciously naked. Her lack of a ring was one of those details that the devil was in, as Ian had mentioned in the shower. Had he thought of that? He probably hadn’t. And maybe the Dutchman wouldn’t either, but maybe he would. Of course, some men just didn’t wear a wedding ring. But why wouldn’t a woman wear a ring—especially one who was as clearly in love with her husband as Phoebe was pretending to be?

  She heard herself talking, still telling this story as her mind raced. “Or you dress up like, like … Sonny and Cher, or Spock and Uhura …” She was just babbling now as she glanced at Ian. “But, seriously, it was lovely. And of course, because I was not expecting it at all, when he said, Hey, we’re going to Vegas, pack light, but bring something nic
e, I brought a bathing suit, a pair of shorts, and some sexy lingerie.”

  “Which was very nice,” Ian said, right on cue, as if they’d rehearsed it.

  “But not for what he had in mind,” Phoebe finished the story. “He ended up buying me the most beautiful dress. And oh, my God! The ring? It’s gorgeous—a huge diamond in a beautifully simple setting. It’s in our safe deposit box. That’s where we keep it when we’re working undercover like this.”

  She heard herself say the words, and yes, it was an answer to the question Why aren’t you wearing a ring? But it was not the only answer. It couldn’t be. Still, she couldn’t think of another reason, other than I’m painting my house, but even then, she would’ve put her ring back on after she’d washed her hands.

  Still, maybe her words would go right past the Dutchman. Maybe he didn’t hear. Maybe …

  “You work with Ian?” the man asked, pouncing directly upon it. He looked from Phoebe to Ian and back. “That’s … not really that much of a surprise, as I think of it.”

  Ian’s smile had tightened. “Oh, it was for me,” he said. “I was very, very surprised.”

  “It really is the perfect match,” Phoebe said, even though she knew she’d already said too much. But maybe she could fix this—make the fact that they worked together somehow more believable. “There are things a woman can do that a man can’t. That’s just a fact. Places I can access, because I’m not perceived to be a threat.” Inspiration struck. “Plus, Ian always says when I’m around, I bring him luck. I’m his good luck charm. Can’t beat that, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ian said, gazing up at her, now with murder in his eyes. “I am so lucky.” He took her wineglass from her hand—yes, there was definitely something wrong with her drinking wine—and he set it on the table beside them, before hoisting her to her feet. “Why don’t you go check with the housekeeper and see if our laundry is dry?”