Present Tense (A Parker & Coe, Love and Bullets Thriller Book 2) (14 page)

"Put it down!" I shouted, pointing my Glock at the back of her bleached blonde head. "Put it down or I swear to God you'll be sucking a bullet."

This had probably come from one of my old movies, but I didn't care. I was prepared to blow a hole through this sadistic bitch.

Brandon and Scaffe froze at the sound of my voice, but Scaffe's partner spun around, an automatic weapon in hand. Parker—who stood beside me now—squeezed off a shot, nailed him in the leg, and the guy yelped and went down, writhing in pain on the floor.

"Put. It. Down," I said to Brandon.

She looked at Scaffe. "Aren't you going to do something about this?"

He released Ethan and took a step back. "What do you suggest?"

"I don't know!" she screeched. "Just do whatever it is you do! I'm paying you good money!"

"Diamonds. You're paying me in diamonds. And we don't quite have them yet, do we?" He looked at his partner writhing on the floor. "And what I
do
, Ms. Brandon, is cut my losses when I don't have a play."

He turned and faced us directly now, showing us his hands were empty.
 

"I'm impressed," he said. "I figured you two were lightweights. I really thought we'd seen the last of you at the bowling alley."

"We have a knack for surprising people," Parker said. "Now get those hands a little higher and spread them farther apart."

Scaffe did what he was told, but took another step back. "Just remember, I could've killed you but I let you go. What do you say you give me the same courtesy and let me head on out of here?"

"One ex-fed to another?" Parker asked.

Scaffe smiled and continued to back away. "Semper fi, right? We soldiers have to stick toget—"

He came to an abrupt stop when the barrel of a gun touched his temple. "Semper fi is the marines, dip shit, and you ain't no marine. I should shoot you for the disrespect alone."

It was Elmo. He looked at the man on the floor, then up at Parker. "I thought I told you to wait for me before you started shooting?"

"My finger slipped."

"Likely story. You always were impatient. And if I didn't know you, I'd think you were a little bit trigger—"

Scaffe suddenly swung an arm back, a blade flashing in his hand. I had no idea where it had come from—his sleeve?—but he buried it in the side of Elmo's neck, then pushed him away and started running.

I screamed as Elmo grunted and grabbed at the knife. He yanked it free and fell to the floor, blood spouting. Parker fired several shots at Scaffe then lunged, sweeping past Olivia Brandon as he dove for his fallen friend.

"No, no, no!" he shouted, and clamped a hand over Elmo's wound. He turned to me. "Get an ambulance out here!"

I nodded and fumbled for my phone, but before I could get it out of my pocket, Olivia Brandon shrieked and sprang forward, tackling me to the floor, her eyes filled with the kind of hot white rage usually reserved for crank heads.

She pinned me down with weight and adrenaline, screaming, "You can't have him! You can't have him! You can't have him! You can't have him!" then raised the drill and squeezed the trigger.

I don't know what kind of drugs this Hollywood crazy was taking, but she needed an antidote, fast.

I struggled to break free, but she was stronger than she looked. The drill bit started spinning, the motor whining again, Ethan's blood dripping in my face as she lowered the bit toward my left eye.

I yelped and bucked beneath her, trying again to shake her loose, but damn if she didn't have me pinned down good. I whipped my head from side to side as the drill bit closed in, the rage in her eyes morphing into glee, and—

—suddenly, thankfully, I heard the sound of metal hitting bone—a chair swinging straight into Olivia Brandon's skull, knocking her sideways. The power drill flew from her hand and landed with a thump on the floor as I scrambled to my feet, expecting to find Parker there—

—but it was Ethan.
Ethan
. Standing there on his mangled and bloody feet, the chair he'd been sitting on held loosely in one hand.

Then he said, "Sorry, Pooks," and collapsed to his knees.
 

I wasn't sure what he was sorry for, he had just saved my life, but I couldn't think about that now, I had a phone call to make.

I pulled my cell from my pocket and dialed 911, rushing over to Parker and Elmo as I waited for the line to connect.

EPILOGUE

Days of Future Past

If you're worried about Elmo, don't be.

He lost a lot of blood, but it turned out there was a hospital nearby and the ambulance got there in record time. I'd had to go out to the main gate to wave them inside, but thanks to Parker's magic grip, Elmo held on long enough for the paramedics to get there and stabilize him.

They stabilized Ethan, too, although his life wasn't threatened, only his ability to walk again. The crazy bitch from hell had drilled four holes in his left foot and two in his right.

When the paramedics saw her and Scaffe's partner, who had finally passed out from the pain, they ordered up more ambulances to cart everyone away—including the three thugs we'd neutralized outside.

Scaffe himself was nowhere to be found, and his SUV was gone, but we later spotted blood on the floor near the entrance to the sound stage and knew that one of Parker's bullets must have hit home.
 

As they carried Ethan into the first ambulance and put him on a gurney next to Elmo, he mumbled something I didn't understand. I climbed in next to him and asked him to repeat it.
 

The words came out in a croak. "…I told him."

"Him?" I asked. "You mean Scaffe?"

He nodded, weakly. "…I told him where the diamonds are…"

Then he proceeded to tell
me
and when the cops came—and boy did they come, at least a dozen of them—I told them where they were likely to find the Cat Eater in the not too distant future.

Then more cops came, and the FBI, and we spent the next several hours being split apart and interrogated and intimidated and threatened with prosecution until all the stories had been told.

Contrary to our promise to Wilky, we let them listen to the streaming broadcast and Wilky was immediately taken into custody. Later that day, Scaffe himself was picked up at a strip mall in Sugar Land, where he was caught trying to break into a post office box at EZ Shipping and Mail.

He was dripping blood from a wound in his shoulder.

After the cops reluctantly let us go, we spent the rest of the day at the hospital, holding vigil for Elmo. He had helped us when he didn't have to, and we felt responsible for what had happened to him.

I took a break and went to see how Ethan was doing—knowing that despite everything, I owed him my life. But I was turned away, told that he was still being attended to. The doctor assured me that while his wounds were severe, there wouldn't be any lasting damage and he would walk again.

And he walked all right. Right out the door that very same night, as soon as he was patched up. I don't know how he had managed it in that condition—and with a cop outside his room, no less—but Ethan was a resourceful guy. Maybe he had charmed a nurse into distracting the guard—I don't know. But that seemed the most likely scenario.

I didn't expect to ever see him again.

When we were certain Elmo was out of the woods, we finally went home, very late that night, and headed straight the kitchen, searching for some much needed fuel.

"This hasn't quite been the weekend I was expecting," I said as I foraged through the fridge.

Parker grunted in agreement. "Let's hope they're few and far between."

I found some string cheese and a couple beers and handed him a bottle. "I have a feeling that as long as we're together that may be wishful thinking."

He looked at me. "What do you mean?"

"We seem to invite trouble. Or it sure knows how to find us."

His brows went up. "Hey, don't blame me for any of this, you're the one who likes to live dangerously. And you know how I feel about that."

"Don't start," I said, taking a bite of cheese.

Parker set his beer on the counter and pulled me close, pressing a kiss against my forehead.
 

He came away frowning.

"What's wrong?"

"You still have some dirt on your face."

We laughed, and I said, "I feel like I'm
covered
in dirt. Why don't you skip the beer and go start a shower? I'll be up in a minute and you can help me wash it off."

"I like the sound of that."

He started toward the stairs, then stopped and turned. "Oh, by the way, I talked to one of my cop friends before we left the hospital, and guess what?"

"What?"

"You know that P.O. box they caught Scaffe trying to break into?"

"Yeah."

"Your ex-boyfriend lied. It was empty."

We laughed again—I wasn't sure why—then Parker turned and went up the stairs to start a shower.

I put the beers back in the fridge, finished off the cheese, and started to follow, when something on the counter near the fruit bowl caught my eye.

A small, note-sized envelope.

It hadn't been there when we left.

My name was written on it in a nearly illegible scrawl that I remembered as if I'd seen it only yesterday.

Speak of the devil.

Stifling my surprise, I picked up the envelope and saw the faint trace of a bloody fingerprint on the flap. I had no idea how Ethan was functioning in his condition, but it must have taken a lot for him to come here and break into our apartment. I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or alarmed.
 

I ran my finger under the flap, pulled the envelope open and found a folded sheet of paper that I expected to be another
Sorry, Pooks.

But I couldn't have been more wrong.

What it said, in Ethan's familiar scrawl, was:

I wasn't lying, Kelsey. I meant every word. I know I don't deserve you, but maybe one day you'll change your mind.

And sitting in the fold of the paper, sparkling up at me in the overhead light…

…was a single two carat diamond.

THANKS FOR READING

PRESENT TENSE

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the
Parker & Coe, Love and Bullets
series.
 

Parker & Coe will be back again soon, in
Cruel Bounty.
In the meantime, if you haven't hand a chance to read their first adventure,
Identity Unknown
,
click here to purchase a copy
.

A short excerpt follows.

Identity Unknown

Parker & Coe

No. 1

Excerpt

ONE

The last thing I expected was to get shot at on a city bus.

I like to think of myself as an unassuming girl, one who asks little of the world and is quite content to earn her keep. I do my job, go to school, often smile when I feel like screaming, and generally don't raise too much of a fuss when things aren't going my way.

But dodging bullets was never part of the bargain. Dodging bullets is supposed to be for cops or soldiers or spies or super heroes, not for 24-year-old, fun-loving grad students from Hunter City, Texas.

Of course, dodging bullets was only the start of it all.

I also met Parker that night.

And things quickly went downhill after that.

TWO

It was a Tuesday and Tuesday meant Zumba.
 

Unfortunately, my boss was late with the revisions on the Sandler appeal, and since I was the lowly office temp, I was the one who had to stick around until the copies had been corrected and prepped for court. Which took all night.

So Zumba was definitely out. But that was fine by me, because I'd loaned my Civic to my BFF Emily, and was stuck using public transpo for the next few days. Getting to the campus gym would have required two transfers and a four block walk, and to be honest, I hadn't been too thrilled about going in the first place.

I'd met Emily in that class just two and a half months earlier, and knew immediately that we'd been separated at birth. We were both natural blondes, had both been through recent break-ups, both loved gorging on smoked gouda and Triscuits, and both held the opinion that snarky jocks driving overpriced sports cars were to be avoided at all cost.

So when Emily's father died and she needed to get to Houston, I didn't hesitate to loan her my car. She was like a sister to me now. The sister I'd never had.

I'd only been in the Great State of Texas for about six months, and had been temping at the Law Offices of Mercer, Klein, Anderson and Bremen for less than two, filling in for a part-time file clerk who had left to have a baby.
 

So, naturally, all the drudge work came straight to me.

I didn't mind staying late, but with Emily gone, I had no one to call to break the bad news to and that made me feel a little inadequate. Not that I needed some testosterone driven grad student to complete me, but after my breakup with Josh—(or his breakup with me, to be precise)—I was feeling lonely and unappreciated.

I carried that loneliness with me at the end of the night as I gathered up my things, locked the office and headed two blocks north to the nearest bus stop. It was just after eleven p.m. and all I'd had to eat were stale cookies from the break room vending machine, so I was anxious to get home, get some food in me, and settle into bed for a good night's sleep.

The bus arrived on schedule, rolling up to the curb with a loud roar and a hiss, then the doors flapped open and I climbed aboard, not surprised to see it was nearly as empty as my bed at home. The only occupants were the driver—who was blocking out the world with a pair of earbuds (was that even legal?)—and a couple of teenagers planted on the rear seat. Their tongues were so far down each other's throat that a stopped-up nose would surely lead to severe oxygen deprivation.