Packing Heat

by Penny McCall

  And then Cole looked closer, peering through the early-morning gloom, and realized the people he saw weren’t all that old. And the man in the robe—check that, tights and tunic?—was heading straight for the GT.

  He halted at the driver’s-side window, stooping down to peer inside, his eyes skimming past Cole and resting for a long minute on Harmony, huddled in the passenger seat. His gaze shifted back to Cole, but he didn’t say anything, just pointed at the RV he’d exited a moment before, held up an index finger, and then walked away.

  Cole waited until he’d made it back to the RV and then pulled down the road, easing the car in between two of the big vehicles where it would be hidden from the road. Before he could decide whether he’d reached safety or the Twilight Zone, the man in the tights opened Harmony’s door, gathered her in his arms with a gentleness belied by his size, and carried her around the RV. By the time Cole got out of the GT, they’d disappeared inside.

  He didn’t remember getting to the door, but when he found it locked, he tried to go straight through it. Who would’ve guessed RV doors were so sturdy. All he could do was pound on it like a maniac until it opened up. And then it was filled with the big guy in the tights.

  “She’s fine,” he said, coming out and shutting the door behind him without ever giving Cole an opportunity to slip by.

  The tights left little doubt about his level of muscular fitness. Cole figured at best it would be an even fight—if the other guy hadn’t been a good six inches taller and looked like his idea of working out was bench-pressing wenches. Or small automobiles.

  “Connor Larkin,” he said.

  Cole took the hand he offered, but his eyes were on the RV’s door.

  “Mike sent you, so I think we both have to agree there’s no danger here.”

  “Except whatever you’re investigating,” Cole pointed out.

  “Not sure what you’re talking about,” Larkin said. There was a smile on his face and a warning glint in his eyes. “A friend of mine is looking Harmony over. Annie’s not a doctor, but she does a lot of the minor health care for this bunch.”

  “Bunch?”

  “Renaissance reenactors. We travel from fair to fair, mostly selling handmade goods. We’re resting up here for a month or so now that the summer and fall fairs in the northern states are over, and before the winter ones start in the South.”

  Cole nodded, not missing the “we” and wondering what kind of trouble a bunch of harmless kooks could get into that required an FBI investigation. But he respected the other man’s undercover status and kept the questions to himself. “Let me guess, you’re the blacksmith.”

  “Armorer.”

  The RV door opened and Larkin turned around, Cole joining him by the steps. A woman Cole assumed was Annie stepped out and closed the door softly behind her. She was older, with a quiet confidence that said she gladly owned every single wrinkle on her face, and a calmness of manner that put Cole instantly at ease.

  “She’s pretty banged up,” Annie said to Larkin. “I’d guess she has a mild concussion and at least one injured rib. Bruised would be my assessment, but it might be cracked. Her pulse, breathing, everything is steady, so I don’t think there are any internal injuries. It looks like someone beat the stuffing out of her,” she finished, her gaze shifting to Cole for the first time, anger icing the blue of her eyes and catching Cole off guard.

  Not as much as having Larkin slam him up against the side of the RV and hold him there with one hand, his feet a good twelve inches off the ground.

  Cole tried to defend himself, but having the breath knocked out of him, along with a shot of pain he hadn’t expected, left him speechless. Unlike Larkin.

  “Where were you when she was getting the shit kicked out of her? Or were you doing the kicking?”

  Annie put a hand on Larkin’s arm and said his name, and the rage leached out of him, enough so he put Cole down.

  “The boy is hurt, too,” she said quietly. “May I?” She lifted his T-shirt, sucking in a breath at the bruises blooming along his left side, from below the waistband of his jeans up to his armpit.

  “I guess Leo got in a couple of good shots,” Cole said, pulling his shirt down.

  “You guess?”

  “Honestly, I was just . . .”

  “You were trying to get to her,” Annie said softly.

  Cole pulled his eyes off the RV again.

  Annie patted his arm. “I’ll go inside and check on her.”

  Larkin waited until she was gone. “I told them I was running from my past,” he said once the RV door shut behind Annie again. “She probably thinks you’re part of that past. They respect privacy,” he added with a measure of regret that puzzled Cole.

  But he had bigger problems than an FBI agent who seemed to be having mixed feelings about his current assignment. “They wanted her dead,” he said to Larkin.

  “They?”

  Cole gave him the high points of the last few days, ending with the offer Irina had made in that Tulsa motel room, and the fight that had followed. “They tried to kill her,” he finished. “I couldn’t get to her right away, and she couldn’t get to her gun.”

  “Jesus.” Larkin paced off a little distance, running a hand through dark, shoulder-length hair. If he’d had armor and a sword he would’ve looked like the Black Knight, which was probably why he wore his hair like that. “What was she thinking, going out on her own like this?”

  “That she had to rescue this Richard guy.”

  Larkin huffed out a breath, still working on temper control.

  “What’s he to her?” Cole asked, not really sure he wanted a straight answer. Harmony claimed there was nothing going on between her and Richard Swendahl, but she had to have strong feelings for the guy to put her life on the line for him.

  Larkin studied him for a minute, then said, “How much do you know about Harmony?”

  “Nothing,” Cole said, surprised and a little embarrassed. He’d never thought to ask about her background, just labeled her FBI and spent the rest of the time thinking the world revolved around him and his troubles.

  “Harmony was born and raised in California,” Larkin began.

  “I know that much.”

  “What you don’t know is that she’s a trust-fund baby. A trust-fund orphan more like. Her parents were kidnapped and killed when she was eight years old. She never really knew them.”

  “Shit,” Cole said, his turn to take a few steps away while he tried to wrap his mind around it. “But . . . she’s so optimistic and happy.”

  “Yeah, something, isn’t it? Maybe it helped that she was so young when they died. I know she misses them, or the idea of them, especially having a mother. But maybe they’re like a fantasy to her, you know? The best kind of parents, in a way, because you can make them into whatever you want them to be.”

  Larkin sounded like someone who’d lived the other side of that coin. “Richard Swendahl isn’t just a friend,” he continued. “Harmony was raised by a guardian, and there was a succession of nannies when she was younger, but none of them were close to her. Richard and her father roomed together in college; Richard worked her parents’ kidnapping, and when she decided to apply for a spot at the FBI, Richard helped her get in. Away from the Bureau, she refers to him as her uncle, and I know she considers him the only family she has.”

  Cole couldn’t imagine anyone not being charmed by her. But then, for a woman who had such difficulty separating her feelings from her duties, she also set boundaries that kept others at an emotional arm’s length. Maybe because she’d grown up in an environment where she kept putting herself out there, and no one had cared back. Or almost no one.

  No wonder she was desperate enough to risk everything, including her own life. “She couldn’t do anything about her parents, but she can do something about Richard.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You don’t like him,” Cole observed. “Why not?”

  “It’s not jealousy, if that’s
what you’re thinking. I can’t say I didn’t take one look at her and have the obvious reaction, but once I got to know her, well, she’s like my little sister. And I’m not the only one who feels like that. She’s like a mascot at the Bureau, like a soft little clumsy puppy. Everyone who knows her loves her, and they’d all put their lives on the line to help her.”

  That hadn’t been Cole’s experience. Sure there’d been lust, but it hadn’t been until he’d gotten to know her, until he could see beyond the FBI badge, that he started feeling . . . He took a deep breath and admitted something impossible, something he’d never expected to have to deal with. He was falling in love, with someone he’d nicknamed Harm. He’d gone into this knowing there was a good possibility he’d lose his life, but never his heart.

  He should walk away, he told himself. If he stayed with Harmony until her mission played out, he was going to end up in some kind of confined space, and between a coffin and a jail cell, he’d prefer the latter. There was money in his account, and Harmony was safe. There wouldn’t be a better time to cut himself loose. And yet he couldn’t.

  In light of his emotional concerns, he thought it best not to ask himself why.

  Annie poked her head out. “She’s asking for Cole,” she said.

  Larkin stopped him on the way by. “Go in and put her mind to rest, then we’re going to talk.”

  “About?”

  “How to handle this case. I can’t go with you, but I can give you some pointers.”

  “Thanks, but I already called the kidnappers. Told them we’re taking time to recover and then we’re coming to them. We’ll make a face-to-face exchange, Swendahl for the password to the bank account.”

  “They’ll kill you both.”

  Cole met Connor Larkin’s eyes. “They can try.”

  chapter 21

  HARMONY OPENED HER EYES THE NEXT MORNING— at least she thought they were open, and she assumed it was morning. Hard to tell with it being pitch-black. She was lying on something soft, and there was a pillow beneath her head, covered in silk. She didn’t hear anything, but there was a cloying flowery scent hanging on the stale air, and when she reached out, her hand contacted something hard and smooth not more than six inches from her right side, and her head, and her big toe when she arched her foot. Coffin, her exhausted mind shrieked. Not a sound came out of her mouth, though, it was impossible to say anything with all her breath exploding out of her.

  There were tiny flashes of light sparking in her vision, her ears were straining to hear any sound, and her lungs labored to draw in air. She flailed out with her arms, heading for full-blown panic when a voice said, “Harm,” and then she felt like a fool because it wasn’t the voice of god, it was Cole, and when she calmed enough to start breathing again, her vision cleared and she could see him sitting on the edge of the bed, a blacker silhouette against the rest of the darkness.

  She rolled to her side, hissing in a breath through her teeth because it hurt like hell.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Stiff, groggy, sore.” She shifted a little and winced. “Humiliated,” she added, feeling an echo of the desperation she’d felt when she understood she’d lost the fight, that Irina’s arms were around her neck and she was about to die. “That was some stunt you pulled.”

  He turned on a light somewhere behind her, and she blinked, as much from confusion as anything else. “Where are we?”

  “You don’t remember anything after the stunt?”

  “Bits and pieces. I remember being in the car, and I remember you talking to someone.”

  “Your friend Mike, at the FBI.”

  She leaned back a little, surprised. “You called the FBI?”

  “You called him, but you weren’t in any shape to talk.”

  “So you did.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of options,” Cole said. “We needed a safe place to go. We’re just outside Colorado Springs right now, at an RV park full of Renaissance fair people.”

  “You’re joking,” she said with a slight laugh that still wasn’t shallow enough, but then everything hurt. Even the blood running through her veins caused a faint throb of pain. “Why would Mike dump us with Renaissance kooks?”

  “Some guy name of Connor Larkin.”

  “Conn’s here?” Harmony forgot reality and tried to jump out of bed. She made it up to one elbow before she collapsed again.

  “You can see him later.”

  “You read my mind,” she said. “Where exactly are we?”

  “We’re in Sal and Larry’s RV. They’ve gone to Vancouver to visit their new granddaughter.”

  Harmony took in the faux-wood paneling surrounding what passed for a double bed, dressed in silk ruffles. She lifted her head far enough to see past Cole down the length of the RV, a straight shot to a set of curtains that must close off the living space from the cab at the other end. “Sal has a heavy hand with the perfume,” she said, “but I’m grateful.” It might not be the Four Seasons, but she was alive and safe.

  Because of Cole.

  After all her big talk, she’d nearly been killed the first time she’d really been tested. If not for Cole . . . She closed her eyes, too tired to hide from the truth any longer. She had feelings for Cole, feelings that went beyond trust and respect, wandering right into love. She wanted to believe Cole had chosen her over the Russians because he had feelings for her, too. But that would be foolish.

  Cole was looking out for his own interests, and who could blame him? He’d spent a week with her, and while he couldn’t possibly trust her, he must be reasonably confident she wouldn’t shoot him in the head the moment she didn’t need him anymore. He couldn’t say the same about Irina. He could have taken off once he’d put Leo out of commission, but Cole wasn’t that kind of man. He wasn’t in love with her, but he wouldn’t leave her to die, either. “Did I thank you?”

  “Not necessary,” Cole said.

  She shifted onto her back, staring at the ceiling over her head. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “So you’re just going to leave Richard to the kidnappers? Look, you ran into a woman who’s been doing this a while. You’re new at it. And it’s not like you to sit around feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m not. How can I rescue Richard when I can’t even defend myself?”

  “That’s a question you have to answer for yourself.”

  He stood up. “How about some breakfast?”

  It was so typically Cole to be thinking of his stomach that she couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t sure how to salvage the mission, but she began to feel a little glimmer of hope again.

  AFTER COLE LEFT, HARMONY DRAGGED HERSELF INTO the tiny shower in the tiny bathroom that turned out to be where the light had come from. The hot water loosened up her stiffening muscles enough that she felt better. Not well enough to bother with a bra; her ribs were still too sore for that, and wrangling herself into that particular undergarment just seemed like too much trouble. She borrowed a shirt from Sal’s closet, loose and oversized, hanging almost to her knees. She was just stepping into her own jeans when there was a knock on the door, the person on the other side not waiting for her to answer but stepping inside, a covered tray in her hands.

  Harmony was more interested in the woman behind the tray. She appeared to be in her fifties, and the wrinkles on her face were clearly from smiling, since that’s what she was doing.

  “Annie Bliss,” she said, setting the tray on a small table and turning back to Harmony, her eyes sparkling.

  “From last night,” Harmony said, recognition kicking in.

  “That’s right. I’m glad you remember. It means you weren’t as out of it as you appeared to be.”

  Harmony waited, expecting the obvious questions. Who wouldn’t wonder about a woman who’d shown up in the middle of the night looking like a punching bag?

  “I brought you some breakfast,” Annie said, still smiling that serene smile, apparently not the least bit curious.
>
  “I’m not really hungry,” Harmony said, and then Annie uncovered the tray to reveal a bowl and a glass. The bowl contained some kind of hot cereal. The aroma of brown sugar and melted butter wafted to her, making her mouth water and her stomach growl.

  Annie handed her a spoon and nudged her into a chair. Harmony took a bite, the slightly nutty flavor of the cereal mixing with the sweet sugar and the salty creaminess of the butter, all of it warm and comforting from the moment it passed her lips all the way down to her stomach.

  “That is really amazing,” she said, spooning up another mouthful. “It’s not oatmeal. What is it?”

  “It’s a special blend made by a friend of mine. It’s actually after noon, but I wasn’t sure how your stomach would be, so I thought this would be best.”

  “You were right. Thank your friend for me.”

  “You’ll meet her later. You can thank her yourself.”

  “I, uh, don’t know how long I’m going to be here, Mrs. Bliss.”

  “Annie.”

  “Annie,” Harmony repeated dutifully.

  “Your young man said the two of you would be here a couple days at least.”

  “Oh.” Harmony ate two more bites without tasting them because she was concentrating on sounding casual when she said, “He’s not actually my young man.”

  “No? He was quite frantic last night,” Annie said calmly, as if she hadn’t just implied a life-altering possibility.

  And as soon as that thought surfaced, Harmony rejected it. Cole was worried about staying out of jail. He needed her for that.

  “Well,” Annie said as if she’d read Harmony’s mind and wanted to reassure her, “sometimes it’s best not to overthink these things. Just accept today for what it is, try to make the most of it, and above all enjoy it. Tomorrow can take care of itself.”