Beyond the Rules (20 page)

Yes, there was a little gleam of triumph hiding in her eye, all right. Kimmer said, “You told them.
You
ratted him out.”

Susan didn’t even bother to nod. “I didn’t want things getting messy around here. And I thought about what Leo had said when he drove over to drink himself into a stupor during the Superbowl with Hank. He kept talking about Hank’s
little sister, about that girl who’d run out on the family, how she’d made him a hero to even the score.” She slanted a look at Kimmer, a devious expression. “Some kind of superspy, he called you.”

“Aw, shucks,” Kimmer said, flat of tone. The woman thought she could change her tune and start throwing around compliments? Call on the notion of sisterhood?
Not gonna happen
. “So you didn’t really believe it, but you thought you’d send Hank my way to get the action out of your backyard. And then you aimed the goonboys at Hank.”

“I figured they’d catch up to him before he reached you,” Susan said, dropping her gaze.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t be stupid, Susan. I’m not.” Kimmer drummed her fingers against her knee. “Hank thought of trying to shift their attention to me,” she guessed. “That wasn’t your game plan. You wanted Hank feeling the heat. And Hank thought of selling me out for some nonexistent recording.”

Susan glanced at her, long enough to openly assess her chances of lying, of denying any knowledge of that aspect of things. She’d no doubt be horrified if she knew how easily Kimmer could read even that much. Finally she nodded, a tiny jerk of a thing.

“So here we are,” Kimmer said. “Your life’s a shambles and so is mine. I don’t have a lot to lose at this point, in case you didn’t get the implication there. In case you haven’t figured out that you made a huge mistake when you brought me into this.”
When you put my boss on the spot with the locals. When you destroyed my home. When you showed Rio just how different we really are
. “And in spite of the fact that you’re a heartless, conniving bitch, I suspect you don’t want to see anything happen to your kids.”

Susan flinched with the first sign of vulnerability she’d shown. Her voice was barely audible. “No.”

“Then talk to me about what will happen here next. Where’s Hank, exactly? Where are the kids? How old are they? What are they like, how do they react to scary crap? And Susan,” Kimmer lowered her voice into meaningful territory, leaning close again, “have you ever let Hank smack them around?”

Susan’s snort was unfeigned. “He’d never dare. He wouldn’t touch me again if he so much as raised a hand to them. Or should I say, I’d never touch him.”

Hank the sex slave. A new and disturbing thought. Kimmer shook it out of her head. She tilted her head in warning as Susan shifted her weight with the intent to rise, and the woman sullenly settled to the floor. No longer scared, apparently…no longer intimidated beyond her own capacity for craftiness. Kimmer had to give her that much. Whatever Hank had thought he was getting into, he’d met his match.

The thought was strangely satisfying.

“You’re fine right there,” she told Susan. “Now. Tell me about the kids.”

On the road again…
Kimmer hummed the Willie Nelson tune soundlessly, just under her breath. Hank was behind the wheel of a stolen car, bringing it in from the city and expected sometime this afternoon. Tomorrow the others would converge on this place, the full crew of deliveries and mechanics, working their magic on stolen cars. Within days those cars would be in someone else’s hands, repainted and scrubbed clean of their original identification, some of them broken down for parts with the leftovers hauled off as part of Hank’s salvage business.

Susan had described it all openly, her words and tone carrying derision for these criminals she’d decided to use and not nearly enough concern for the girls being held in the Quonset. The girls were fine, Susan assured her. She’d seen them, she’d taken food over. The BGs liked Susan; they knew Hank’s bumbling wasn’t her fault. They wouldn’t hurt her kids.

Kimmer thought, with little kindness in her mental tone, that Susan didn’t have a clue.

Whatever else the goonboss was up to, stolen cars was the least of it. He was ruthless, slick and entrenched. He probably had his fingers in every piece of criminal pie the city had to offer.

Kimmer thought she’d see about taking said goonboss down when this was all over. But for now she again crouched outside the giant blight of a hut, waiting for the lone man to come outside and admire the spring flowers or scowl meaningfully across the landscape or even take another stroll around the perimeter. Then she’d deal with him, free the kids, and wait around for Hank. She’d escort the family to a safe house until Hank was suddenly the least of the goonboss’s worries. Of course, she still had to contact Owen and arrange for the safe house, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment.

C’mon, c’mon…What was the guy doing in there, watching
Oprah?
Kimmer’s jacket wasn’t warm enough for lurking in shadows. Her toes were numb with inaction and her body slowly chilling, and she wanted this done before Hank showed on the scene.

She used a few more moments entertaining herself with the image of Hank and Susan, dumped in a safe house and left to deal with one another, Susan’s scheming revealed. Not
the kids, of course. Once they were cleared of injury, the kids would be sheltered until provisions were made for their care. Two girls, seven and four and described as quiet, obedient girls. Kimmer wondered if they’d had all the life stomped out of them or if they were just savvy.

Oh, enough waiting is enough
. Kimmer had children to save. A big BG to bring down. And mostly, a life to salvage. Maybe it was too late, maybe not, but she wouldn’t have the chance to find out until she finished up here. She eased up to the corner of the building, over junk Hank had somehow forgotten to salvage and through several seasons of brushy growth—sumac saplings, old mullen stalks and fresh green growth plattered at the ground along with the inevitable poison ivy. A peek through the Virginia Creeper clinging to the corner showed her the door. It was open to the sunshine; more sunshine finally sliced off the corner of the building to warm Kimmer while she watched for signs of movement within and saw nothing.

The rescue thing had to be done before things got busy here again, even if Susan had said Kimmer would have the rest of the day. She hadn’t been lying. Kimmer’s knack told her that much. But Kimmer still didn’t trust her.

She crept away from the building and made her swift way to the goat pen, where she coaxed the wary goat over with a handful of the alfalfa hay under shelter on the other side of the fence. While she was there she kicked aside the spilled bale of alfalfa and yanked the baling twine free, stuffing two of the lengths in her back pocket and twisting the third around the animal’s head to create a makeshift halter, unbuckling the bell collar while she was at it. Another handful of the alfalfa, fed in carefully metered portions, and she got the goat through the pen gate and out near the door of the hut.

It wouldn’t stay there long—only as long as the alfalfa lasted. Time to get Lazy Boy outside. She tucked herself back in at the side of the building, where she sliced off a slender, freshly leafed box elder branch. Before the goat could get too interested in this potential food, she reached back to tickle the metal side of the building, a random pattern of movement. After a few moments with no response, she pulled it back with her other hand and let it whap the building—and then she stilled, listening.

For a moment, the only sound other than her own breathing and the faint breeze in the trees that encroached upon the back of the building was the goat’s happy chomping. Its tail flicked sporadically, happily, as the goat snuffled over the ground in gustatory pleasure—and then it stopped. No flicking, no chewing, head in the air.

Now
this
is a stalking goat.

Lazy Boy sauntered out of the building to stop some distance away from the goat, his hands on his hips and a rough upholstery pattern imprinted on one side of his face.
Sleeping, were we?
Kimmer eyed his rumpled coveralls for signs of a gun. If he had one, it was well hidden—and he had no reason to keep it hidden at all.

Which didn’t mean, as Kimmer withdrew the gun and set herself in a solid two-handed stance, that she wasn’t going to watch for any signs of a fumble toward a gun. And she didn’t want to startle him; she wanted him turning to look, but without alarm. She shifted her foot against an old mullen stalk, making it rattle, and when he glanced behind himself it was a thoughtless, automatic reaction—until he saw her. He stiffened, still twisted around his planted feet.

“Tsk,” Kimmer said. “Sleeping on the job. See what happens?”

But his baffled expression said he was still clueless, although he teetered slightly in his altered balance, not daring to move.

Kimmer nodded at the gun. “Glock,” she said, and lifted her chin slightly to indicate herself. “Kick-ass babe. Get with it, goonboy. This is a rescue.”

“Those girls!” he blurted. His wide-eyed expression sounded the
Oh shit!
he didn’t quite say out loud.

“Bingo. You get the Mr. Badwrench award. Now turn around before you fall over, and back up in this direction. You’ve probably seen it done on
Cops
. Just pretend you’re a star.” Once he complied, she removed a hand from the gun and fished the twine from her pocket. It cut cruelly into his wrists when she looped them together, and he whined a protest.

“Aren’t you the tough guy? Jeez, they really weren’t expecting any trouble here, were they? You the only one here?” She patted him down, hoping for a phone and not finding one. He must have one…he’d set it down somewhere, no doubt. Careless and inconvenient of him.

He gave a sullen shrug that meant he didn’t want to admit he was alone. It satisfied Kimmer. She pushed him into the building and over to one of the tool carts, where she pointed to the floor. Once he’d sat on the hard concrete—and he’d be feeling it soon enough, to judge by that skinny ass—she made sure the wheels were locked, secured him to it and gagged him, and then precariously balanced a tray of massive wrenches on the cart directly above his head. “Do I have to explain this to you?”

He shook his head, a stiff and fractional movement.

“Good. Now the children and I are going for a walk. Once I’ve got them to safety, you and I will have a chat.”

And then it’s look out, goonboss
.

T
he children. But not until she’d done a quick sweep of the building, confirming what she’d seen from the window. Nothing much different. The paint tents, the work bays…there was a shelf area right next to the window that she hadn’t been able to see, piled with parts from donor cars. No lurking goonboys.

In the office she found her earlier perception of its small size borne out, but now the foreshortened appearance made sense. Now she knew that behind it, there was another small room, the kind of small room that a goonboy crew would want to keep on hand for those private moments of intimidation and pleasure. They’d been clever in constructing it, which merely made it discreet instead of blindingly obvious. Kimmer made a quick survey of the office. These goonboys were organized, all right. Registration paperwork, a book listing those recently deceased for use as faux owners with the bribery-bought paperwork, a list of neighborhoods to avoid be
cause of recent heavy “harvesting.” All out in the open. No phone; they probably stuck to cells. She couldn’t help but give the computer—currently turned off—a wistful glance. If she could walk out of here with that thing, she was willing to bet she’d have everything she needed not only to find the goonboss, but to put him away for good.

But she wasn’t here for the computer. Not this time. And she was willing to bet once she had the girls and their undeserving parents away from here, that computer would become scrap in a heartbeat. If only she had someone local she could trust…some cavalry to call.

Then again, if only she had her phone.

No good pining over it. She’d call Owen from the house once she had the girls. She left the desk and the file cabinet and quickly discovered that the heavily shadowed back corner was more than just a corner. It was a slice of space just large enough for a medium-size person to slide in and face the door of the sort-of-hidden room. Kimmer tried the doorknob…locked. Dammit. And not enough room to kick the thing open. Not a sound from within. Either they’d been moved or they’d learned to keep quiet.

She glanced out at her prisoner to make sure he hadn’t found some way to circumvent her silly booby trap, and returned to the desk drawers. Those, too, were locked. And while Kimmer was no slouch at lock picking, she hadn’t had the time to rescue her pick set from her smoldering house. Sudden impatience flamed through her. She strode out to the work area, found herself a tire pry bar, and returned to attack the desk most literally.

The second drawer yielded the keys.

Her hands shook as she unlocked the door. She could only pretend not to notice.
Let them be all right
.

The door opened to a sight she’d pretty much expected—
and at the same time, not. She’d expected the cot bed along the wall, and even the toilet off in the corner. She’d expected the food wrappers and the general odor of the unwashed, even the inoffensive odor of unwashed child and the faint smell of stale urine. Judging by the silence, she’d expected the girls to be huddled on the bed, fearfully waiting to see what this new arrival meant for them.

She hadn’t expected the youngest, hardly larger than a toddler, curly hair largely escaped from childishly plaited braids and knobby knees drawn up beneath her chin, to have all the body language of fierceness in hiding. The older girl—brown, dirty hair too short for braids, her jumper torn—looked both frightened and exasperated. Whatever the younger had in mind, the older hadn’t gone for it.

Kimmer said, “I know your father. I’m your aunt. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

The younger girl looked at her with narrowed eyes and blurted, “You’re That Bitch Kimmer!”

Kimmer snorted in amusement. “No kidding,” she said. “And whatever you’re holding in that grimy little hand of yours, I want it.”

“It’s a hair thingy.”

“It’s not.” Kimmer held out her hand. A closer look at the little girl revealed similarities Kimmer hadn’t seen at first on those diminutive features.
That’s me. Five years old, and that’s me.
And perhaps not quite so obedient as Susan thought. “Give it up.”

“Karlene,” the older girl said, and her bossy tone had tears mixed in. “She knows!”

Karlene gave her sister a supremely disgusted look and held out her hand, slowly uncurling her fingers to reveal a sharp wiry twist of metal that could only have come from
somewhere on the bed. Kimmer didn’t bother to smother her grin as she took it. “Good thinking,” she said. “But we’ll use a different strategy.” If Hank couldn’t see Kimmer in this child, he must be in deep denial.

“What stragedy?” Karlene demanded.

Kimmer smiled at her. “The one where we walk out of here together.”

The two exchanged glances, and in this, the oldest—Sandy, Susan had called her—made the final decision, pulling gently on a lock of hair as she nodded. “We’ll go see Mommy and Daddy?”

“Not right away.” Lying would get her nowhere. “We’ll go somewhere safe, so your parents can deal with the bad guys.” Sort of. More or less. Especially when “someplace safe” meant the Miata. Until she could make contact with Owen, Kimmer had no one to trust. She felt a wistful fondness for Trooper McMillan, who at least would have seen the little girls to a safety that Kimmer knew would actually be safe.

The girls hesitated at this news, for which she didn’t blame them. She said, as gently as someone who didn’t get children and had never truly had her own childhood could manage, “It’ll make things easier for your mommy. She’s worried about you now, and she wants me to make sure you’re safe.”

That got them. Kimmer held out her hand again, this time in a welcoming gesture, waiting for a smaller hand to fill it. “Let’s go.”

And just as Sandy reached for her, the ground vibrated slightly beneath Kimmer’s feet. The girls both stiffened, exchanging frightened looks. Young Karlene threw herself into her sister’s arms with no sign of her previous defiance. Far too close to suit Kimmer, a semi used its engine brake, gear
ing down in a noise that reverberated through air and ground alike. Sandy said, “The mean people are here!”

“How many?” Kimmer said sharply, and modulated her tone with effort. “Are there usually lots of them, or just a few?”

Karlene said, “Lots and lots. Someone always looks at us. They say mean things and tell us to be good.”

It’s too early!
Susan hadn’t been lying, Kimmer was certain of it. Something had changed, and the crew had returned early with their latest harvest.

Doesn’t matter
. These would be mechanics, no tougher than Lazy Boy. They’d be hired hands, with maybe a few real goonboys spread among them. But she couldn’t deal with them from in here; she couldn’t fight her way out and be certain the girls would stay safe in her wake. She needed them to stay in here—as safe a place as any with action going down—so she could step back and identify the problem goons, pick them off and then take out the others on the way in. By the time the girls came out, the way would be clear.

“Change of plan,” she said, dropping her hand. Sandy’s face crumpled. Karlene glared at Kimmer through hot, angry tears. “You’re leaving us!”

“For now,” Kimmer said, her attention divided as she strained to hear the very first sounds of arrival—and knew she had to be away from here before then. “I’ll be back.”

“Baloney!”

Startled, Kimmer looked back at Karlene and suddenly realized how very lame her reassurance must have sounded. “Listen,” she said. “Do you think those mean people want me to come back?”

No, they didn’t. Sandy shook her head through her tears, and Karlene finally followed suit.

“When your daddy talks about me, does he say I
ever
did what he wanted?”

Both girls stilled, their attention fixed on her in unwilling hope.

“No, he damn well doesn’t.” She gave an inward
oops
at her language but didn’t let it slow her. “I did what I wanted. And right now I want to get you away from here.”

“Why?” Karlene asked, her tone that of habitual suspicion.

I don’t have time for this….

Kimmer relied upon an answer as old as the question. “Because.” And then she stuck her head out the office, just in time to see a spiffy, gleaming dark blue Escalade pulling up the curving secondary drive. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to lock and close this door behind me, and then I’ll show the mean people what
mean
is all about, and I’ll be back to get you. Believe it?”

“No,” said Karlene, her little face set in stubborn. But Sandy poked her and she relented. “Maybe. Prove it.”

Kimmer grinned at her. “That’s fair,” she said. “Listen. Don’t tell anyone I’m coming back.”

“That’s lying,” Sandy said, most solemnly.

“If they ask directly, it is,” Kimmer agreed. “Just don’t
offer
it to them.”

Karlene pressed her lips tightly together and put her hand over Sandy’s mouth. Kimmer refrained from rolling her eyes. They were just little girls.

She’d cross her mental fingers. It’d be best if the goonboys didn’t realize she’d been in this vile little room at all, best if they absorbed themselves in the bustle of arrival, and didn’t check on the girls until later. Lazy Boy was going to tip them off to her invasion—but he knew only that she’d come to the office, not what she’d done here. Not that she’d found the key and had known to look in the room.

She headed for the door, hoping for escape before Karlene remembered to ask for her little weapon back. She ducked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her and locking it, heading for the desk….

Oops. She hadn’t exactly been subtle in her search for the key. With that in mind she put the key where she’d found it and broke open the remaining desk drawers. Let them think she’d searched in a frenzy and not found what she wanted. Let them think anything, as long as it bought her time to sort things out.

She left the office, sliding along the wall and back toward the single exit door at the other end of the building from the big sliding entry doors, the gravel drive and the accumulating pack of vehicles. They wouldn’t be able to see Lazy Boy till they got inside the building; she’d made sure of that. Now she could only hope that the back door would open easily and quietly, and she’d walk right out from under their noses. Already she’d realized that the goonboys would probably be sent out to the woods to water the trees since the toilet was out of commission; perhaps Hank even had an old rickety outhouse around here that had been pressed into service.

An excellent time to pick them off. She thought she could get several before they realized what was going on at all.

She slipped by the gray metal shelves with their incongruously mundane supplies—garbage bags, toilet paper, paper towels, a few tightly rolled sleeping bags. Boy Scout goonboys, always prepared. Finally she crouched by the metal door, glancing over her shoulder as her hand fell on the knob, testing it and finding it loose. No one had come in the front yet, which surprised her but suited her. She stayed down anyway, just a matter of caution, drawing the Glock. She cracked the door open.

It all happened at once—the gunfire, the sharp jerk of pain in her arm yanking her hand from the doorknob, the sullen impact on the metal door frame just behind her.
Whatwhohow?
Kimmer threw herself back and then instantly forward—
get him now, get him fast
—and emptied the gun into the too-soon-triumphant figure moving away from the outside of the building beyond the door.
Blamblamblamblam,
wasting ammo but riding a shocked adrenaline high that peeled her lips back against her teeth and sent her straight to ferocity. And she would have kept right on going had she not glanced down and seen the blood spatter, the drip of bright red off her elbow.

Even city boys could follow the trail she’d leave. But there’d been those shelves….

She rolled back against the half-open door, leaving one foot to hold it open while she dropped the useless Glock and snatched a careless handful of garbage bags from the gray shelves. The goonboys saw her, of course, a wave of men rushing through the front doors as though they’d been lurking just beyond, and Kimmer jammed the bags into her less-than-useful left hand and went for her SIG, managing a single covering shot that sent the mechanics diving for cover but didn’t deter the hardcore goonboys at all.

A tremendous crash of metal and heavy tools startled them all, as well as the muffled cry of pain. The hardcore goonboys were close and slowing to draw bead on her and Kimmer was up against the door. Helpless.

Not gonna make it.
She should have taken her chances with the blood trail. She should have known Susan would be wrong—except Lazy Boy had thought just the same. But they’d known she was here. How the hell…? They’d set a trap for her, waiting for her front and back. She should have realized.

Nowhere to run
. Not this instant, and not if she got through that door. The law was corrupt, and her presence here had been blown in too many ways to count. No safe harbor…no backup.

And they’d kill her if they got their hands on her. They’d play with her first to see if they could extract the truth about Hank’s elusive recording, then they’d dump her body in the woods.

Kimmer pressed up against the door in an instant of preternatural self-awareness. The wild thump of her heart, the tingle of her face going pale, the warm blood streaming inside her jacket…the weakness in her knees that was shock, and which would take them right out from under her if she didn’t make some kind of move. Face the goonboys and run.

She’d always been on her own. But she quite abruptly couldn’t have felt more alone.

A tremendous crash jarred the air; Kimmer found herself too vague to make out the nature of it. Even to guess. But the goonboys startled to a stop, jerking back to look out the front doors and to shout words Kimmer could no longer puzzle out.
Not good, that roaring in my ears…not good—

But not enough to keep her from taking advantage of the moment—of slipping right out the door. She glanced at the dead goonboy’s semiautomatic but didn’t bend to scoop it up, not trusting herself to get upright again. Time to run. If you could call this running. She forced herself into a moderate but steady pace, already gasping. Not toward escape, but directly away from the Miata, from Hank’s house, from the road…headed into the wooded acreage backing Hank’s property. She stopped when she figured she had enough of a lead to catch her breath. Kimmer pulled a trash bag from her gunky hand, thrusting her fingers through the bottom and using
teeth and her free hand to tie a cuff from the bottom corners, then slicing two wide ribbons of plastic from a second bag to tie directly over both entrance and exit wound.
Deep breathing
. Get her body through the shocky moments and hope for a second wind, hope she hadn’t lost so much blood she couldn’t find her legs again at all.