Packing Heat

by Penny McCall

  Mike didn’t say anything, and she knew he was thinking it over, just as she knew he wouldn’t trust her gut feeling. She had no experience to back it up.

  “Look, Treacher is out of the picture now.”

  “He wasn’t the bigger threat,” Harmony said.

  “Maybe not, but it’s a complication you didn’t need. Give it a couple more days before you go after the kidnappers again, get back on your feet a little more.”

  “It’s not like you’ve left me a choice,” Harmony said, letting him hear her frustration. “I ought to sue you for gender discrimination.”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, deadpan, “shame you’re on vacation.” There was a lot of rusty laughter after that.

  Harmony disconnected and handed the phone to Dan, since Cindy had taken her youngest daughter off to nap.

  “Man trouble?” he asked her.

  “You could say that.” Men trouble, anyway. Mike was probably still laughing, Conn was leaning against his forge, arms crossed, grinning. Cole wasn’t smiling but even from there she could feel his smugness.

  She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, and when she opened them again, she was able to see the snow-capped mountains, the incredible blue of the sky, and smell the fresh air.

  “Don’t get no better than this,” Dan said.

  Harmony smiled and nodded, thinking if it didn’t get any better than having the closest thing to family held for ransom with an FBI-hating felon all that stood between him and death because she’d failed, utterly, the first time she’d had to really prove herself, then she might as well blow her brains out now, before Irina got the satisfaction of doing it.

  “SHE’S CALLING MIKE,” LARKIN SAID, AS IF COLE DIDN’T know that already. “He won’t help her go off on her own and get into trouble.”

  Cole knew that, too. He had a threat hanging over his head to prove it. Not that it stopped him from worrying. “There’s no telling what she’ll do,” he said. “She’s kind of pissed off.”

  She shot them a look, and he revised the kind of to extremely , and added Mike to the names on her shit list.

  “She won’t do anything stupid,” Larkin maintained.

  “You mean like break a federal prisoner out of jail? Or take on a pack of Russian kidnappers? Not to mention the havoc she’s wreaked on her fellow FBI agents.” Of course, taking out a couple of feds wasn’t a bad thing to his way of thinking.

  “Yeah, she’s gonna take hell for that.” Larkin grinned over at him. “But not as much hell as they’re going to take for letting a tenderfoot get the better of them.”

  “It’s the way she looks,” Cole said. “All that blond hair and those wide blue eyes. She smiles at you, and you figure she’s helpless and harmless and then wham! she puts two guys into a ditch, or pulls a gun on you, or drives her boat over another one and turns it into kindling, which leaves the passengers with a mile-long swim.”

  “She pulled a gun on you?”

  “She shot it, too. I’m just glad she wasn’t actually trying to hit me.”

  Larkin chuckled, shaking his head.

  “She warned me first,” Cole said, trying not to smile over the memory. He’d had her by the throat, literally, but she’d kept her head, and still managed to come out on top. He ought to remember that more often.

  “I blame Barbie,” Larkin said. “Everything was fine when all Barbie wanted was a pink car and a dream house. Then she got a job and pretty soon it’s Fighter Pilot Barbie and Corporate Raider Barbie, and little girls are getting the notion they can do anything. Not that they can’t do anything, but it makes it damn hard on a guy, you know? How are you supposed to make an impression? Hell, look at Ken.”

  “No balls at all,” Cole deadpanned.

  “In more ways than one. Which makes Ken obsolete.”

  “I get your point, but I’m not sure you can blame Harmony on Barbie. It’d be more appropriate to name a hurricane after her. Or at least a tropical storm.”

  “You must bring out the worst in her.”

  There were some good moments, too. There were some amazing moments, and some that absolutely blew his mind. But Cole kept that to himself.

  Harmony returned the phone she’d borrowed, and then she swung around and looked their way.

  “It feel like the wind just picked up speed to you?” Larkin asked mildly. “Whatever Mike said to her, Hurricane Harmony isn’t happy about it.”

  Cole could tell Larkin was grinning again, although he didn’t confirm it visually. He was afraid to take his eyes off Harmony as she crossed the open space inside the RV circle, real purpose in her step.

  She stopped within shouting distance. Not that she was shouting. More like she was grinding the words out through clenched teeth. “You. Win.”

  “So do you. You’re safe, at least long enough for your ribs to heal up some.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  “See what I mean, Ken?”

  They both whipped around. Connor Larkin put up his hands and backed off a step or two.

  “And what about Richard?”

  “Richard can take care of himself,” Larkin interjected.

  Harmony swung around again. “Still not talking to you.”

  “But I’m standing right here, and I am sort of involved.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You’re mad at me,” Cole said, “not him.”

  “What? You two friends now? Because Cole doesn’t even like you,” she said to Larkin.

  “I’m not all that fond of him, either.”

  Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “You really want to stay out of this, Conn.”

  “Okay.” Larkin went back to work, pumping up a bellows with his foot so the fire glowed red. He picked up a pair of tongs with a bit of steel clamped between the blackened ends and plunged it into the firebox. After a few seconds he pulled it out and hammered on it, red-hot slag showering everything in proximity. It wasn’t a task that allowed for anything but absolute concentration. Cole still had the impression Larkin was keeping an eye on them, even when he walked twenty yards away, forcing Harmony to follow him.

  “I know you’re upset,” he began.

  “Upset? You lined everything up the way you wanted it, my boss, that simpleton over there.” She pointed to Larkin, who stiffened, proof that he was eavesdropping. “Even the kidnappers,” she continued. “And then you took the car keys, both my cell phones, and my laptop.”

  “What did you expect me to do?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I tried that. You weren’t being reasonable.”

  “Of course not. My friend, the only family I have, is in trouble.”

  “I get that.”

  “Do you? What if it were your parents?”

  Cole jerked, imagining, just for a second how he’d feel if one or both of his parents were in Richard Swendahl’s shoes. Panic, terror, and the kind of urgency that couldn’t be put into words, and that was just the beginning because next came blind rage and the urgency took on a violent edge. He’d want to make someone pay. Hell, he’d want to kill the kidnappers with his bare hands . . .

  But it wasn’t his parents, he thought, unclenching his fists. If it were, if he’d been feeling half of what Harmony was, he hoped there’d be someone rational around to keep him from getting himself killed. He couldn’t help anyone if he couldn’t think straight.

  And he didn’t dare say that to Harmony, any of it.

  “I thought you trusted me,” she said.

  “I do trust you. Damn it, Harm, I . . .”

  She waited for him to finish his thought, let the silence hum for a few seconds, before she got that closed look on her face again. The one, he now realized, that masked hurt. “Nothing else to say?”

  Cole had a lot to say to her, but most of it he hadn’t actually said to himself yet, and it was the kind of information that needed a hell of a lot of forethought, which, since he was hoping he’d get over it, he didn’t see the n
eed for.

  Harmony stared at him for a moment without comment, then she walked away. Nothing she could have said would have tortured him as much as watching her turn her back on him and leave without saying a word.

  chapter 23

  AROUND FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON, A HALF-DOZEN charcoal barbecue grills were fired up in the big open space within the circle of RVs. Three picnic tables sat behind the guys manning the grills, and in an amazingly short time, they were covered in plastic cloths and loaded with food. No turkey legs or Scotch eggs, but there were bowls of pasta salad and fresh fruit and everything else imaginable. Stacks of hamburgers and hot dogs followed, and everyone came out and loaded plates, sitting wherever they could find a seat.

  It was a strikingly similar scene to the one at Juan’s. People weren’t as different as they thought they were.

  Connor Larkin came over and parked himself beside Harmony on the steps of Sal and Larry’s RV. Cole was MIA.

  “Not eating?” Conn asked her.

  “Not hungry.”

  “Still mad at me, huh?”

  “You’re a jerk,” she said without any actual heat.

  “That’s actually a step up from what my last girlfriend called me when we parted.”

  “I don’t have the kind of firsthand experience it takes to formulate a really demoralizing insult,” Harmony said. “I know a couple of good generic ones: scum-sucking bastard, dickless wonder—”

  Conn looked shocked.

  “What?”

  “I’ve never heard you swear before.”

  “Get used to it. I could come up with even better insults, but—”

  “You lack firsthand experience.”

  She gave him a dirty look. “So, we done here?”

  “Not until you get your head out of your ass. Hackett was concerned about you because that Russian woman almost killed you.”

  “Yeah,” Harmony said on a heavy exhale. “I’m not exactly a testimonial for FBI training.”

  “You need to take all that rage you’re aiming at Hackett and store it up for the next time you run into that bitch.”

  “There might not be a next time.”

  “There’ll be a next time.”

  “Then I’m bringing a gun.”

  “That works, too.”

  They sat there awhile in silence, watching kids race around, thwarting the efforts of various adults to corral them into eating their dinner.

  “This is like a commune,” Harmony observed

  “In the best sense of the word. They work together like a big family. There’s conflict sometimes. Joe the roasted turkey leg guy was caught with a wench who wasn’t his wife, and there was a wicked campaign to dethrone the current Queen Elizabeth. She was getting a bit snooty, if you ask me . . . What?”

  Despite his scowl, she kept smiling. It felt good. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were getting personally involved.”

  “Good thing you know me better,” Conn said.

  “Hard to believe there’s criminal activity here.”

  “Yeah.”

  Harmony let it go. Conn’s case was off limits and she’d crossed a line even alluding to it. “I don’t see any kids over the age of sixteen.”

  Conn shrugged. “It’s like living in a small town. The kids get restless and go off to college or the big city to chase their own dreams. Doesn’t mean this is a bad place to raise ’em. Annie and Nelson raised their daughter this way. She was homeschooled, went to the University of Michigan and now she’s some big-shot accountant.”

  Annie Bliss came over, a loaded plate in each hand. She gave one to Conn, the other to Harmony.

  Harmony surveyed the mounds of food, her stomach pitching and rolling at the idea of putting anything into it.

  “You make sure she eats some of that,” Annie said to Conn.

  “Nope. She calls me names when I force her to do things for her own good.”

  “Then don’t force her, dummy. Reason with her.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong guy,” Conn said. He got up and headed off, taking his plate with him.

  Harmony watched him go, thinking if he had any notion of finding Cole and sending him over, he was going to have to give it up. Cole was making himself scarce for a reason. And she didn’t miss him. Really she didn’t.

  Annie Bliss sat down in Conn’s place, nudging Harmony companionably with her shoulder. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “More like hell is living up to its reputation.”

  FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HE’D LEFT JAIL, COLE WASN’T hungry. The food smelled amazing, took him back to the times when his dad had tied on his “Grillin’ Man-iac” apron and turned ground beef into hockey pucks while his mom put the rest of the meal on the table, including the chicken or meatloaf because she “wasn’t a hamburger person.” Mom lied to Dad because she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Dad knew she was lying, but he never said as much because she loved him enough to lie to him.

  Harmony didn’t get that. Not that they were in love with each other, and sure, there was more at stake than a couple of singed hamburger patties, but she still ought to get that he’d done what he’d done because he cared about her.

  Cole took a swig of his sixth . . . seventh . . . his current beer, and followed it with a shot of the breath-stealing moon-shine Annie’s husband had been handing out earlier. He hunched his shoulders because night had fallen sometime while he’d been feeling sorry for himself, and while it wasn’t chilly enough to overpower the nice buzz he had going on, being alone in the dark made him think of Lewisburg. So he concentrated on what everyone else was doing and stopped thinking about himself. It didn’t change anything anyway.

  Dinner was over, the grills and picnic tables were gone, and a huge bonfire had been lit. Cole stayed where he’d been the entire evening, in clear view of the action but not in danger of getting dragged into it. At Annie Bliss’s urging, Harm had moved from the steps of Sal and Larry’s RV to a seat around the bonfire, where she could watch the Renaissance kooks putting on their crazy.

  Jugglers juggled, guys dressed like Hamlet did sword tricks, and comedians in rags told jokes that grew bawdier as the peewees were trundled off to bed. Other performers took the place of the comedians, trying out new material for the little stages peppered throughout the fairs. There were Irish dancers, Scottish dancers, and belly dancers. The reenacters really liked dancing. Some of them even joined in, carried away by booze and joie de vivre.

  For a little while Harmony kept her seat at the edge of the firelight, but before long she was in the middle of everything, smiling, then laughing, so damn beautiful she was almost too bright to look at. And yet he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  The kooks took to her like she was their long-lost queen, urging her to try her hand at juggling, clapping and laughing when she bobbled three potatoes and one of them fell into the bonfire and exploded. She was outfitted in a wench dress that did amazing things for her cleavage, and someone put a flower wreath in her hair, making her look like the Beach Boys had her in mind when they sang about California girls.

  Cole took a step forward and nearly fell on his face, staring blearily down at his feet and wondering why they weren’t cooperating as he blundered into the outermost group of RVERS. Harmony looked over her shoulder, fairly sparkling with happiness, and he was lost, even after her smile faded and she turned away. He still wasn’t getting with the medieval spirit, but he forgot his feet, forgot he was mad at her, so focused on getting that smile back he shoved his way through the crowd to get to her.

  She met him halfway, apologizing to people he couldn’t see because he was focused so completely on her.

  “You’re drunk,” she said when she got to him.

  “Not smiling,” he slurred out, adding, “either one of you,” because although he blinked and rubbed his eyes, there seemed to be two of her, and both of them were shaking their head and walking forward until he lost sight of them. But he felt a shoulder brace him und
er his armpit and pull him away from the fire.

  That was all right with Cole. He couldn’t tell if she was smiling, but she was touching him, which was even better, and they were alone, which was really good. And she was undressing him. He reached for the snap of his jeans but she batted his hands away, made short work of the snap and the zipper, then gave him a shove backward. He fell over, his addled brain struggling to figure out why he stopped short of the floor. Bed, he realized, belatedly noticing he’d landed on something soft.

  Bed was good. Bed was just what he wanted, but not alone. He reached for Harmony but she backed away, bending to remove his shoes and strip his jeans the rest of the way off. That worked, too. The only thing better than being in bed with Harmony was being in bed naked with Harmony. When she didn’t join him, he struggled upright, weaving for a second while he got used to the way the place was spinning, and then he reached for her again.

  “Why is it that men think they’re Casanova when they’re drunk?” she said, smacking his hands away and shoving him onto his back again. She retrieved some aspirin from the bathroom and brought them out, along with a glass of water. “Take these.”

  “Don’ wanna,” he mumbled. “Want you. Love you. Come to bed.” He held out a hand, but his eyes were already closed, and he couldn’t stop himself from spiraling down into the peaceful darkness.

  HARMONY SAT ON THE END OF THE BED THE NEXT morning, her back braced against the wall, and shoved Cole with her foot for the fourth time. He still didn’t move. She’d been up for hours, and she was tired of waiting for him to wake up. She shoved him again. All she got for her effort was a half snore, so she went into the tiny bathroom, wet her hands, and came back to the bed, sprinkling water on him.

  “Wha’?” he mumbled, running a hand over his face and opening his eyes to stare at his damp palm in confusion.

  “Time to get up,” Harmony sang out as loudly as she could, grinning when he winced and pulled a pillow over his head.

  She tugged the pillow away and poked him in the ribs a couple of times, easily avoiding his attempts to stop her, especially when he gave up and cradled his head like his skull was going to explode.