Avenging Angel (20 page)

The skin beneath his eyes was bluish and smudged looking. A thin line of sweat trickled down his hairline and darkened the already darker hair of his sideburn.

“We have to stop,” she insisted, looking ahead at the city skyline as if a sanctuary would appear. The only beacon in the Seattle night was the Space Needle.

“If I stop now, we’re both dead,” he said. “The only chance you’ve got is to go with Charlie, and the only chance I’ve got is to not have to consider you. I need to get rid of you, Johanna, or I won’t last the night.”

Put like that, she had no choice.

“You can’t just leave me in a bar somewhere without telling me when I’ll see you again, or how I can get in touch with you.” She knew she was sounding like a desperate woman about to be dumped which was exactly what she was—but there was nothing she could do about it.

Dylan knew he could leave her without a word. He knew he should do just that. “I’ll call you when things cool off.” It wasn’t much, but it was all he had to give her.

It wasn’t enough.

“Liar.” The word came at him softly from across the car.

He turned his head and saw her eyes close, saw the tear that slipped from beneath her lashes.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. He swore to himself, and his hands tightened another degree. He’d thought he could go out with a good deed. He’d thought he could simply save her life and lessen all the regrets of the last years.

The more fool he.

Dylan went around the block twice, cruising from First Avenue to Pike Street and back again, looking for reasons to be jumpier than he already was. He found plenty, from the burned-out street lamp on the corner, which created an extra layer of shadow at the bar entrance, to the group of three casually dressed men loitering on the sidewalk, to the squad car pulled over to the curb.

The scene looked like the perfect setup, or a typical night in Seattle. He parked in the empty space behind the squad car when it opened up. The police weren’t likely to shoot a woman, and they were likely to shoot anybody else who tried. It was the best he could do.

“When we get inside, I’m going to stay by the door,” he told Johanna. “You go to the ladies’ room. When you come out, if Charlie isn’t right there, go sit at the bar and stay put. He’ll find you.” He lifted himself up off the seat and pulled a roll of bills out of his front pocket. “Here’s three hundred dollars. Buy yourself a drink.”

“Don’t offend me. Please.”

The coldness of her voice shook him at his core. What she was thinking wasn’t so far off the mark. He did want to give her something in return for what she’d given him, but not money, and not for sex.

“Three hundred dollars wouldn’t buy me a second look from you and we both know it, counselor,” he said. “This is for taking care of me, because this is the only way I can take care of you after I walk out of that bar—and it’s still damn little. If there’s a problem, it will get you a cab ride and a room in the best hotel in Seattle. Do you want a gun?”

“Yes,” Johanna said, fighting anger and tears, and trying not to shake so badly that he’d see.

“Do you know how to use it?”

“I shot a rifle once at a skeet range.”

“It was a shotgun you were using, not a rifle,” he chided gently, and she felt her last semblance of composure slip.

“Well, there you have it, then. I don’t know a damn thing about guns, except I’m assuming it will have a trigger and that’s the part I pull when I’m ready.”

“You don’t pull a trigger, you squeeze it. And if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll probably be dead.”

“Excuse me,” she said, her voice tight. “But if I’d known there was going to be a firearms examination at the end of the kidnapping, by God, I would have studied for it!”

Dylan pulled two handguns out of the duffel bag and loaded them, swearing softly and vehemently. Things weren’t going well. Things weren’t going well at all.

When he was finished loading, he handed one of the guns to her and stuck the other one in the waistband of his jeans, under his shirt. “Put it in one of the coat pockets. If you get nervous, either put the coat on and stick your hand in the pocket, or drape the coat over your arm and keep your hand in the pocket. Just make sure you have a hold on the gun and that it’s pointing in the right direction before you squeeze the trigger.”

She took the weapon without comment and did as he’d told her, slipping it into the coat pocket.

This was the moment to say good-bye, Dylan thought. There wouldn’t be time once they got inside the bar. But he didn’t know what to tell her and what to leave out. Everything had been going downhill so fast for him the last few weeks, even the last months, ever since Charlie had left. When Austin had put the hit on Johanna Lane, Dylan had felt the bottom fall out of his life. He had suggested a different way of dealing with her, but Austin had been adamant, and he had wondered aloud if his best man wasn’t up to the job. There were others looking for a chance to move up.

Dylan had assured him he had no qualms. He’d told Austin he was the only one qualified not to screw up. He’d warned Austin against bringing in uninvolved outside help. In short, he’d all but begged Austin to let him have the opportunity to kill Johanna Lane. The memory still left an odd taste in his mouth. The scene had been surreal. After it was over, he’d had nothing left except the dead agents still hanging like a brace of albatrosses around his neck, and Johnny the Shark taunting him all the way to Lincoln, talking about his knife and the fun they could have with a piece like Ms. Lane.

It’s a wonder the bastard had survived all the way to Nebraska.

Dylan glanced over at Johanna, but she wasn’t looking at him. The angle of her chin told him she wouldn’t either, but there wasn’t a mark on her, and he took some pride in that.

He let out a heavy breath and looked back to the squad car parked in front of them. If he wanted to say good-bye, he was on his own, and he truly didn’t have the strength for it. After he left the bar, he had to get well out of town, heading south, he’d decided. He would give Austin a call and wait for him in Portland. By this time tomorrow it would all be over, one way or the other—and that didn’t leave him with a lot to offer her in the way of a good-bye or anything else.

“Okay. Let’s go,” he said, following the gut reaction that told him to skip the tears and just get the job finished.

They got out of the car and walked the half a block to the bar. Every step he took made him feel worse. She kept making these little sounds that were tearing at him. Soft sounds from her throat, as if she were struggling not to break down, and her arm was trembling within his grasp.

“You’re going to have to do better than this, Miss Lane.” He tightened his grip on her, trying to give her the strength he didn’t have. “Charlie is fifty-two, five feet ten inches, one hundred and eighty-five pounds, most of it in a beer belly he’s been building out of Red Hook Ale since he moved to Seattle. Short brown hair, kind of curly; blue eyes, round face. He looks like somebody’s uncle. He doesn’t wear glasses, but he always wears his monogrammed slicker. It says ‘Holter Fishing Excursions, Charlie Holter, Captain.’ That will be your big clue.”

He got a tremulous laugh out of her, and he felt his mood brighten a notch above grim. They would get through this.

He pulled her close to his side when they reached the door and allowed himself to slip his arm around her waist. He hoped to catch her gaze and give her a meaningful look, whatever the hell that was, but she denied him again.

The bar was full to capacity, with standing room only and most of that taken. Cigarette smoke hung like a haze over the booths and tables. The bar itself was old teak and tarnished brass and the theme was definitely nautical. He checked the room, letting his gaze trail over the crowd, looking for trouble and finding none. He did see Charlie. The older man gave him the slightest of nods and shifted his own gaze to the bartender.

The deal was done.

“The bathrooms are at the end of the bar,” he said. She nodded and started to pull away from him.

If she’d looked at him just once, he might have let her go. She didn’t, though, and his control snapped.

“Dammit, Johanna.” He pulled her back into his arms, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“I love you. You have to know that.”

Then he kissed her, once, short and sweet, taking his last taste.

Johanna couldn’t see him through her tears when he let her go. She didn’t want to see him. The whole situation was too awful. He was leaving her, leaving her so he could go die, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

A gust of fresh air blew against her face as the door closed behind him, telling her he was gone. She lowered her face into her hand and let the tears fall.
I love you too, Dylan Jones
, she thought.
I love you too
.

And she couldn’t let the man she loved face Austin alone.

Her head came up. She wiped at the tears and looked across the jostling crowd to the bathrooms at the other end of the bar. She didn’t know Charlie Holter, and she wasn’t sure she trusted him, but he was the only chance Dylan had. If he was really Dylan’s friend.

Keeping the coat close to her body, she shoved and sidestepped her way through the laughing, drinking people. When she reached the ladies’ room, she stepped inside, took a breath, and came back out.

Come on, Charlie. Come on. We haven’t got all night
.

She moved back through the room, searching the faces around her, concentrating on the men at the bar. The instant she laid eyes on him, she knew she’d found who she was looking for.

His head came around as she approached him. “Hello, Mr. Holter,” she said.

He gave her d big smile. “Hi! It’s good to see you.” He lightly clapped her on the back in a gesture of friendship that Johanna didn’t find reassuring. 

“Our friend is in trouble,” she said. “He needs help.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Charlie said.

“Then let’s go.” She stepped out from under his hand and started for the door, but his hand came back down on her shoulder.

“I think we should wait,” he said.

She turned and looked at him with all the authority she could muster. “If we wait, he’ll be gone.”

“That was the plan,” Charlie countered smoothly.

“He needs help now, not tomorrow.”

“Dylan can take care or himself.”

“Not this time. He’s hurt,” she told him. “He’s lost a lot of blood in the last couple of days. He’s not very strong.”

Charlie seemed to think for a minute, his blue eyes assessing her and what she’d said. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “You win.”

Johanna broke for the door, praying they weren’t too late, but when she stepped outside, the first thing she saw was a station wagon backing into the parking space where the gray sedan had been.

Dylan was gone.

* * *

Dylan watched Johanna and Charlie exit the bar, and he watched the anguish come over her face when she realized he was gone. He wasn’t sure why he’d waited, but looking at her made him think it hadn’t been his best idea. He’d never wanted to cause her pain.

He had moved the sedan to the cross street closest to the bar where the shadows were deepest. The car was idling; he’d leave once he was sure she and Charlie had connected.

Well, he was sure, but still he didn’t leave. He wanted to follow them, and only knowing he’d be increasing her danger, not lessening it, kept him from tailing her.

She and Charlie turned the corner onto the cross street where he was parked and started down the hill toward the market. Dylan would have left then—except for the man who came out of the bar next. Rodrigo, Austin’s newest and brightest rising star, his dark hair slicked back off his face, his black suit double-breasted and formfitted.

Dylan’s mouth went too dry for him to swear. At the same moment something coldly metallic pressed against the side of his neck.

“Austin is pretty disappointed in you, Dane,” a man said from the backseat, “and we’ve got a score to settle for what you pulled coming out of that elevator in Boulder. I want you to head north on I-5.”

“Hello, Jay,” Dylan said, working to keep the fear out of his voice. Charlie had Johanna, and Charlie was working for Austin. It was unbelievable, but the truth was pushing into his neck. Charlie Holter had gone bad. There was nothing left to trust in the world.

“Don’t think you’ve got any help coming either,” Jay said. “I got your friend.”

Dylan didn’t know who he was talking about. He could still see Johanna walking down the hill with Charlie at her side, being followed by Rodrigo. Austin was out there somewhere, too, but Austin was no friend.

“Where are we going, Jay?” he asked, shifting the car out of park with one hand while he reached for the gun under his shirt with the other.

“I thought we’d head toward Canada, get out of the city and into some country. Maybe we’ll take a ferry ride—”

Five inches of upholstery buffered the sound of the shot. Jay slumped into the seat. Dylan threw the car back into park and disconnected the ignition wires in one fluid movement.