Beyond the Rules (17 page)

And then she’d talked to Rio. Rio who’d gone up to see his beloved ailing grandmother and the family he missed. Who’d offered to drive back in a day, when his back had forced him to take two days on the trip up into Michigan. And who’d done all those things because of what he’d so recently said to her: it’s not about the other person. It’s about you and who you are.

Or maybe who she wanted to be.

In her heart she’d known just as Rio had so quickly realized—once the big goonboy thought she was out of the picture, he’d move on to Hank. Possibly Hank’s family. His children. Hank…Hank probably deserved whatever he got. But the kids? Two little girls, he’d said, though he hadn’t had any photos in his wallet. They wouldn’t deserve it if the situation slopped over on to them.

And dammit, in order to live with herself, she had to make sure that didn’t happen. Hank wasn’t likely to come out ahead no matter what, but she had to make sure the situation didn’t affect the girls.

She at least had to try.

That meant not heading out to Pittsburgh to deal with the goonboss as she so badly wanted, but heading for Hank’s place. Doing what she had to, and then trying to wrap things up in the city—preferably with a nice neat bow—to make this mess right with Owen.

Not that Hank had told her where he lived. But she wouldn’t have to prowl the Internet hunting for phone listings, because she’d taken it off his license while he was here.

Gee, if I’d known I was headed your way, I’d have saved your underwear instead of trashing it.

Or maybe not.

But first she had to get back on the road. And that meant getting past Owen without, somehow, severing her ties to the agency.

If it was even possible.

Fifteen minutes passed before Owen walked by. Kimmer made a clicking noise with her tongue. Quiet. Subdued. As was she.

Owen gave her a hard look. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on, and I should. But we’ve obviously got to get you out of sight while I figure it out. Let’s go.” As an afterthought he held out his hands to accept part of her load—from the way he held them he obviously expected the bundle, but Kimmer slid the heavy weapons cache off her shoulder and held it out, resisting her arm’s impulse to tremble under the awkward, extended weight. Surprised or not, Owen took the bag.

He led the way out of the barn, a back way known only to longtime employees and otherwise blocked by a door that looked sealed shut. They exited at the back corner and Kimmer struggled to keep up with him, annoyed by her fatigue and his impatience. He quickly triggered the security protocols at the viniculture building, adding the code that would allow them both to pass without creating a lockdown. They made their way to his office in silence. Once there, Owen settled the gym bag to the floor with every indication he had discerned the contents, and sat behind his desk. “Now,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”

Kimmer kept it short. “Hank was in a lot deeper than we thought. Still is. And he sold me out to try to save his ass. Hell, I think he probably set me
up
to save his ass. I believe you’re familiar with the weasel factor in my family.”

Owen took it in with narrowed eyes, then gestured at her. “That’s the big picture. I need the details.”

So she told him about finding Pigeon Man on her lawn. She told him Pigeon Man’s name. She told him the locals needed a heads-up about Pigeon Man’s location. She told him about the house. She told him about leaving Trooper McMillan in midgape on her front lawn. And she carefully placed OldCat’s bundle on Owen’s desk. “This is Rio’s cat. He didn’t survive the fire. I don’t think I’ll be in a position to take care of him.”

Owen looked at the bundle in surprise, and then quite gently removed it, placing it on the worktable behind him. “We cremate the winery cats and spread their ashes over the vineyard,” he said. “I can arrange for that, if it suits you.”

Kimmer felt relieved of a tension she hadn’t known she’d carried along with her fatigue and anger and grief. “Please,” she said. “Rio always said the cat deserved respect after the life he’d survived.”

“Then consider it done. And you?”

“Not quite ready for cremation,” Kimmer said dryly. “Though we should talk about the fact that McMillan and his friends will be looking for me.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, but the thinning of his lips revealed more about his true response. “That’s a given. They’ll call—any moment, I expect. Suppose you answer my question anyway.”

Kimmer took him seriously enough to close her eyes and assess herself. “A shower. Something to eat. A good night’s rest. I’m bruised but not broken. And I want to look at those mug shots. We still haven’t identified Hammy Hands…he might be the final piece of the puzzle leading us to the goonboss.”

Owen’s eyes narrowed. He knew her well enough to expect that she’d want to follow up any leads they found. “You should know I’m inclined to give you to the locals.”

Kimmer gaped at him. She knew she gaped at him, and she couldn’t stop herself.

But Owen had obviously been thinking about the matter even before this latest development. “As far as I can tell, you’ve got a good case for self-defense with everything you’ve done—even Harrison has acknowledged you saved his officer. You’ve discharged another weapon within a residential area…that’s about it. Even then our legal firm will probably get those charges dismissed. But this situation has gone beyond a rueful shrug and an apology, Kimmer, especially if Ingleswood breaks her story—and she just might, after this evening. Harrison and the staties have to believe that we’ll play by the rules. I believe you understand the necessity of rules.”

She shot him a glare of pure ire. That wasn’t a fair blow, and he knew it. Not even when she actually understood his position.

Except it was the position she’d most feared. The one that put her in a no-win situation. She rubbed her hand over an itchy cheek; it came away smudged with soot and she scowled at it in lieu of scowling at Owen. “Do that, and I’ll be tied up for ages.”

He nodded. “Possibly.”

She shook her head, sharp and defiant. “I need to get to Hank’s place. We all know that whatever he thought would save his ass, it wasn’t good enough. I probably don’t have much more than a day or two before they send someone to take care of him, now that Hammy Hands is dead and Pigeon Man is in custody.”

“I don’t think that’s best right now. I’ll send someone else—”

His phone rang. The extra line, the number that Owen put on his business cards for anyone outside Hunter and that had its own separate phone. The Bat Phone. He reached for it and said, “Get out.”

She hesitated only an instant, but when he confirmed his words with a jerk of his chin at the door, she saw the weary duplicity in his eyes and understood. She left her gym bag and stepped out into the hall—just far enough so he couldn’t see her. And indeed, when he answered the phone, the murmured conversation quickly got to the point. Owen didn’t try to hide his concern as he informed his caller that he had no idea where exactly, Kimmer might be located. Okay, points to him for splitting hairs into microscopic sections.

She didn’t mistake it for the notion that she’d won her argument. Owen simply wasn’t ready to turn her over in the middle of the discussion.

And indeed, when she heard him hang up and came back around the corner to linger in the doorway, he shook his head. “I’ve only put them off. They have every reason to believe you’ll be in touch with me. The only reason they believed me now is because they’ve stationed a trooper at the winery entrance and they know you haven’t gone past them. This was more of a heads-up notice than a demand. Next time it’ll be a demand.”

Not to mention that come daylight, they’d probably find her car.

Kimmer dove right back into her argument. “Look, I know how to blend in down there. It’s why you sent me down there last fall in the first place. And in case you hadn’t noticed,
this
is exactly the reason I asked you not to. I didn’t want those miserable people who call themselves my brothers to screw up my life again. And, oh!” She mimed slapping her forehead in dramatic discovery. “Look! One of them
has
.”

That shook him. He slowly sat back in the spiffy comfort of his office chair, and he didn’t look comfortable at all. He rubbed a hand over his face, eyes closed in thought. Eyes still closed, he said, “Tell me you understand the position this situation has created for the agency.”

She wanted to say
give me a break
. She wasn’t stupid. Though he probably thought that under the circumstances, she was likely blind. So she took a deep breath of her own and she recited, “I understand the position this has created for the agency. Hell, Owen, I went back there today, didn’t I? I let them grill me, didn’t I? Just because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I was willing to step in and help their deputy?”

“Yes,” he said. “You did that.”

Kimmer crossed her arms over her chest, a deliberately defiant gesture. “If I hadn’t, I would have been home when Pigeon Man pulled up in front of my house. I would have stopped him.”

“Maybe,” Owen agreed. “Maybe not.”

“Another Hunter operative could go to Hank’s,” Kimmer said. “But he’d lose time getting Hank’s family to trust him.”

Owen made a gentle snort of a noise. “And you think he’ll trust you?”

“I think he knows me. I think he’ll work with me. I can report back once I get a better understanding of the situation, but right now someone needs to keep that family alive, even Hank. And I need to quit having this stupid argument when you know I’m right. I need to spend my time in the shower and stuffing my face and looking at mug shots.”

Owen nodded, but then added with reluctance, “You know I can’t give you a different car. You’ll have to take your own. Assuming you didn’t shoot it full of holes, too.”

“My car is fine.” Well, once she dug out her spare keys and
put certain wires back where they belonged. “Except for the highly recognizable problem.”

He shook his head. “If you do this, it has to look like you’ve done it on your own.” He added a dry twist to his tone as he said, “I’m sure I’ll have my hands full keeping this story off the air.” As Kimmer winced, he added more matter-of-factly, “You’ll need to be out of here before daylight—and to go unseen in between.”

“I can do that,” Kimmer said. “I’ll take one of the overnighter rooms. Grab me some food from the reception and those Pittsburgh mug shots, and I’ll still have time for four to five hours of sleep.”

“There’s food in the overnighter,” Owen said, giving her the look that said she should know that.

“I know that,” Kimmer said. “I just want some of that skanky cheese you’re serving up tonight.”

Kimmer got her cheese. She got her shower, her mug shots, a replacement SIG, a can of soup marketed as gourmet and her cheese. No coffee, no tea, not even Raspberry Reaction—but an uncola washed the cheese down just as well as the wine she didn’t dare have without a full night’s sleep ahead and miles to drive the next day.

Rio couldn’t have come. He couldn’t have driven back here in one shot and then turned around to drive several hours west and south. And she’d told him not to come. She’d hung up on him, for Pete’s sake.

She could do this alone. Chimera in action. It wasn’t any different because of the circumstances.

Right. The dead cat, the destroyed home, the absent boyfriend, the boss who might end up sacrificing you to the cause…

No different at all.

“H
ere,” Kimmer had said, presenting the mug shot to Owen shortly before her departure. He’d found the time to change into casual flannel and jeans, and she suspected he’d grabbed his own nap. Kimmer still wore her torn, smoky jeans, but she’d grabbed a dark jersey top from the limited offerings in the overnighter closet, and a dark taupe lightweight jacket—too big—to go over that. She had her bag o’ goodies, and a supply of cash courtesy of Owen. And though on her first time through she hadn’t identified anyone in the mug book, there was one picture that caught her attention. After a few hours of sleep and a second look, she’d realized it was Hammy Hands with a totally different nose—unbroken, and set over a thick, trimmed beard and mustache. Different nose, obscured jawline…but it was him, all right. “Call me if it leads to anything,” she’d told Owen, and then she’d left, easing back through the vineyards to pick up her
car and take a roundabout back-roads route toward Erie, Pennsylvania.

At Erie she grabbed breakfast, eating more than she really wanted against possible scarcity in the days to come. She double-checked that the phone charger was actually functioning; she had only the one battery. The one battery, the bag of hastily gathered weapons…otherwise not so much as a change of underwear, no intel…nothing but Hank’s address.

Talk about going in unprepared.

She wished Owen would call with the news that Hammy Hands had been the last piece to the goonboy puzzle, and that they knew who the goonboss was. That they could turn it all over to the authorities and let them gather evidence about this goonboss who’d covered his tracks so well—and who’d been so ruthless in the process. If she’d been only Kimmer Reed instead of the trained operative Chimera, she’d have been killed with his first attempt on Hank—or in his first follow-up attack. Kimmer would have gone to Lafayette Park and never returned, and no one would have understood why or how.

How many others had the goonboss destroyed?
You need to be stopped. Now
.

Starting with the chop shop at Hank’s farm. Starting with the goonboys who would come after Hank in the wake of Kimmer’s escape and Pigeon Man’s capture, and then…

Then they’d see. If she turned up enough evidence to send the Pittsburgh police after the goonboss, all the better. She could go back home and rebuild her life. See if she still had a job. A home. A lover.

A sudden blitz of doubt washed over her—doubt akin to terror. What was she doing on the road, haring off to rescue the weasel brother who’d gotten her into this mess with his
conniving betrayal? Even if he hadn’t planned it from the start, he knew well enough what he’d done when he’d put the goonboys on her trail, muttering about nonexistent recordings.
What the hell am I doing?
Racing back toward Munroville, and in the process endangering everything that meant anything in her life? Endangering her life itself, as well?

She almost pulled over to the shoulder, her hands shaking on the wheel and her jaw aching from where she’d clenched hard without even realizing. Almost.

And then she realized what her subconscious already knew—that she’d reached the county line. That the next exit would take her to Munroville, and a few winding roads before that she’d find Hank’s small farm. That as much as anything, she was simply frightened of where she was.

She pushed her foot down on the accelerator.

A flashing light bar appeared in Kimmer’s rearview mirror just inside the county line and just before her exit. She checked her speed…too fast. Dammit. A deep breath brought perspective. She’d take the ticket, she’d apologize to the nice officer and she’d drive on. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t a big deal. A fifteen-minute delay.

She flipped her blinker on and pulled over to the shoulder, then sat quietly in the car with her window down and her license ready while the state trooper approached her with rather more care than necessary. Wary tension tightened Kimmer’s back. Either this was no regular traffic stop, or her knack had been skewed by her arrival in this area.

But Kimmer didn’t think her knack was skewed. Not when the officer’s gun hand hovered a little closer to his holster than it had any reason. She hadn’t been going that fast.

Play the game
, she told herself, and smiled at the man. An average man in his late thirties, a little thick around the middle but still plenty fit, a man with enough years under his trooper utility belt to know how to do the job right. “Hi,” she said, and handed over her license with carefully slow movement. “I’m sorry. I should have put it on cruise control.”

He took her license without comment, comparing the picture to her own ruefully smiling face. He didn’t return it to her; he tucked it in his front shirt pocket.

And he didn’t even have his ticket book with him.

Uh-oh.

“Would you step out of the car, please?”

“I’m sorry?” Kimmer said, pumping up her confused and harmless act. “Why—?”

And he should have said, “Just get out of the car, ma’am,” but instead his nerves overrode his years of experience and he said, “I’ve got an outstanding warrant for your arrest. You’ll have to come with me.”

I don’t think so.
Even if he’d had some kind of bench warrant, the situation was still well within the bounds of a normal traffic stop experience. This was more than that. The trooper was on edge, believed he had a lot riding on the success of this arrest, knew he was dealing with someone who was more than she seemed.

The goonboss, it seemed, had connections.

Of course he has connections. He’d be in jail by now if he didn’t
.

And the trooper’s gun hand moved slightly, and Kimmer, still offering him puzzled compliance—the slow movements of a woman who didn’t understand what was going on as she unlatched her seat belt and opened the door. He’d done well to move just behind her door; she couldn’t see him except in
the side view mirror and she sure couldn’t slam the door into him as she opened it.

Didn’t stop her from slipping on the brass knuckles from her jacket pocket or groping for her war club.
Gotta be careful
. The statie could be directly connected to the goonboss, or just a regular guy doing his job as best he could.

Up till now
.

Kimmer turned in the seat, kicked the door open, rolling out in a pivot to end up at his feet.
On
his feet. She slammed the brass knuckles into his shin, hitting the sensitive nerves there. His leg buckled. She pivoted around to sweep behind the other leg and he fell right on his ass, still scrabbling for his gun with one hand, the other heading for his pepper spray.

Sorry
. She would have said it out loud had she the breath for it, but she lunged for the gun, tapping his wrist with the war club and wincing as he cried out. She yanked the gun and tossed it carefully away, far too aware that it didn’t have a safety. He had the pepper spray out by then and she lunged to land on his hand with her knee, wrenching the spray away as well and knowing she had only an instant more of this advantage. He was bigger, he was stronger, and if she didn’t get control now she was going to lose this one.

Reluctantly, precisely, she knocked the side of his head with the war club. Not enough to put him out, only enough to daze him.

How many cars had passed them by? How many had noticed the scuffle?

She didn’t even bother to get to her feet. She scrambled around behind him, slid her hands under his arms, and yanked. He slid roughly across the gravel of the shoulder. “Sorry, sorry,” she muttered, gathering herself for another tug,
and another, then rolling him over behind the Miata to snag his handcuffs and
damn
—

She hadn’t hit him quite hard enough.

She’d held back, not really wanting to hurt him at all and only making it harder for both of them. She had only one wrist cuffed when he rolled around to swing out at her, connecting without any real strength but enough impact to knock her out of her crouch and back to the gravel.

She struck out with her foot, a double-tap into his ribs. He doubled over with a grunt of pain and it bought her the time to throw herself on him and try, in desperation, the thing that had worked with Brown Suit on their first encounter. She reversed her grip on the war club and jammed it into his ribs, making sure he felt it before he could even consider how lightweight she was on top of him. “Freeze, dammit!”

He froze.

“Good,” she panted, hesitating just long enough to make sure he’d truly stopped fighting. “Now listen up. Have you got it figured out that I’m not your average traffic stop? Has it occurred to you that I could have blown you away with your own gun and instead I threw it away?”

The cop said nothing. Panting. Thinking. Probably hurting. Probably planning his next move, just as she would do in his place.

“The warrant’s a fix,” Kimmer told him. “Not that I expect you to believe me. It comes courtesy of someone I’m chasing down in Pittsburgh.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the cop finally grunted. “You’re only making it harder on yourself. You won’t get away—”

“With this? Yes, actually, I will. I’m pretty good at getting away, and I’m pretty good at bringing in whoever I’m after.
So here’s the deal. Bring your other hand behind your back and I’ll cuff you and then I’ll go away.”

The back of his neck turned red. “Fuck you,” he spat.

“Can’t. Busy right now. Take a breath, get your temper back and give me your other hand. I’ve still got the brass knuckles, and I’ve got the little club you’re still trying to figure out. Next time I hit you, I’ll have to do it harder. And I really don’t want to leave you by the side of the road with a brain bleed.”

His shoulder radio crackled something fuzzy and obscured by his body pressing it into the ground; he stiffened slightly. Hoping. Kimmer made a disgusted noise and jerked the cord loose. “They’ll find you eventually, but I’m not going to make it all that easy,” she said. “Now give me your damn hand.” She prodded him with the end of the club. Hard.

Very slowly, he moved his hand into her reach. She grabbed it, cuffed it and then pushed herself away from him, letting him warily work himself into an awkward sitting position to regard her with subdued resentment. He tried to regain his professional composure. “If the warrant’s a fix, we can straighten this out,” he said. “If you walk away from me, there’s no turning back.” He eyed her, hunting for a strategy to talk himself out of the situation. “Even a bounty hunter can’t get away with assaulting an officer.”

“Think of me as freelance rather than a bounty hunter,” she said. “And you’re perfectly right. Too bad I don’t have any choice. I’ve got someone’s life to save. His whole family, in fact. Even if he is a weasel-creep.” She climbed to her feet, keeping an eye on him as she tested the patrol car’s front passenger door and found it open. She considered smashing up the communications panel in the center of the dash and decided against it. She was in enough trouble already, and he
wouldn’t be able to do anything with it with his hands cuffed behind his back. By then his gaze had turned wary along with the puzzled undertones. He couldn’t figure her out.

She couldn’t blame him. She couldn’t figure herself out, either.

She returned to his spot behind the Miata, crouching down out of reach. “Here’s the deal,” she said. “I’m going to walk you over to your car and tuck you inside. Sooner or later, someone will find you. Sooner, if any of these drivers turn out to be Good Samaritans.” There was no telling who’d seen what, who had a cell phone and who didn’t. She had to get out of here. Now. “And here’s a freebie clue for you: someone in the system is dirty. If you already know that, then you’re dirty, too, and I take back my sorries for what happened here today. If it’s coming as a big surprise, then it’s time to keep your eyes open. Someone in Pittsburgh is calling shots they shouldn’t be calling.”

“Don’t do this,” he said, displaying a mixture of dawning awareness and concern that told Kimmer clearly enough he wasn’t involved.

“Gotta,” she said. “It’s a lose-lose situation, no doubt about it. But still…gotta.” Too much of her life was already on the line to get squeamish now. “Now come on. Into the car.”

Another flash of resistance crossed his face, and Kimmer growled, “Do it!” at just the right moment to cut it short. Didn’t hurt to heft the war club.

And so he let her help him to his feet, and he cursed silently but quite obviously when she buckled him safely into place and then wound duct tape—damned straight the Miata had duct tape stashed in the back—around the seat belt latch just in case he turned into Houdini. He couldn’t reach the radio, he couldn’t reach the car horn even with his head, and
she finished up by scooting the seat forward so his legs were trapped against the dash.

And then she calmly pulled the Miata out into traffic and took the next exit off I-79.

Gotta ditch the car
. Cops across two states were looking for it now. Maybe Hank would have a junker; maybe she could lift something from a neighbor.

Hell, maybe she could find something in the little chop shop Hank had invited to his home.

But for now Kimmer pulled off the road onto a gravel service lane for the power line, hoping she wasn’t so close that her cell phone—fully charged!—wouldn’t function. She called Owen’s Bat Phone, knowing that if he wasn’t in the office, it would reach his cell with a customized ring. He’d never not answered that phone.

Nor did he let it trip to voice mail this time, either. But when he answered it, his voice held a false tone, and the single word was clipped. “Hunter.”

“Not alone?” she asked. Dammit.

“Not right now,” he told her.

“Friends of mine?”

“So to speak.”

“Then I’ll make this quick.” She had no fear of traces or eavesdropping, not with the souped-up phone Hunter had provided, but she also had no desire to make things harder for Owen. “The goonboss has an in with the cops—the staties, anyway. Got stopped and there’s some kind of warrant out for me. You’ll note I’m not in custody.”