Exception to the Rule (20 page)

“Addled?” she said, and moved away to give him her best sardonic brow and finding he’d gotten some color back into his face during these past few moments. “Is your next line by any chance something about this being a mistake?”

He pulled her back and kissed her forehead, nuzzling her hair. “Only,” he said, and his lips moved against her skin, “because I don’t have any self-control whatsoever. You sure you didn’t give me too many—”

She snorted gently, but this time didn’t try to move away. “They haven’t hit your system yet.”

“The stun gun, then,” Rio said. “It’s fuddled me.”

“You think?” But Kimmer’s words came more lightly. She even thought that the slight tremble she felt in him might not be from pain or weakness at all.

“Just give a guy a break,” he said rather desperately.

“Well, then, it must be the stun gun.” She stepped back, kissed him lightly on the mouth—those same, gently receiving lips—and said, “That doesn’t leave me any excuse, though.”

“You don’t need one.” He gave her a wry look, stepped back, tottered a little and then regained his balance and adjusted his jeans slightly. “You’re the tough one, remember? No one’s going to question you.”

Kimmer gave a short laugh. “Right.”
No one but me…
But it didn’t matter. They’d had their moment, and there was no going back. When Rio offered his uninjured hand, she took it, and when he gave it the slightest of squeezes, she squeezed back before dropping the contact, stepping aside and stooping to collect the gear she’d grabbed from the tent. “Can you get the sleeping bag?”

“It’ll just be my superhero cape.” He eased himself closer to the ground to get it, and Kimmer quickly grabbed it up and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he said. “Long way down for some reason.”

She gave him cheerful smile. “The bigger they are—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He arranged it over his shoulders just like a cape and said, “Go. I’ll totter along. Just—”

She turned back to find he’d grown serious. “What?”

“Just…” Rio shook his head, failing with his hunt for words. “We’ve got some hard hours ahead of us. Don’t forget what just happened. It wasn’t the damn stun gun, it was
you.
No matter what—”

“Don’t say that,” Kimmer snapped at him. Even when she realized how sharp she’d been, she still shook her head. “Just don’t.” Not when Carolyne’s fate still looked so precarious. She wanted no part of herself to hold foolish hopes that he’d still reach for her if Carolyne ended up injured. That he’d still kiss her if Carolyne ended up dead. If she was going to get through this—all the new feelings, this sudden possibility to bypass the rules of her life—she needed the hard confidence she’d ridden so heavily since she’d first escaped her childhood to remake her life.

Even if she had to fake it.

G
lorious idiot
. An entire weapons system hanging in the balance, Carolyne’s life at risk, his own self barely functional, and he’d somehow managed to find the time to—

Knees, knees!

Rio caught himself at the doorway, took a deep breath to chase away his gray vision, and regathered his thoughts. Idiot, yes…but not a single moment begrudged. Not when they had one or two to spare, no matter the atmosphere of urgency. Needing to do something immediately and being able to do it immediately…two different things. Rio’s days as a case officer should have prepared him for such reality.

As if anything could, with family involved.

Rio dropped the sleeping bag on the recliner and did a limping circuit of the nurse’s station—jamming his
toothbrush in his back pocket, sweeping Carolyne’s things up into her suitcase and leaving it on the bed for later, and donning his vest. Nothing in this battered body would work quite right for days, but he hoped to fake his way through any impending action. As long as his back held out. His back, where permanently damaged muscle needed constant work to stay strong, and under which he no longer had either a kidney or a spleen—would take longer, and would probably need another round of muscle relaxants before it quit threatening to spasm.

Then again, Rio had plenty of practice in standing just so.

He studiously ignored the trussed bubba who’d been his own personal instrument of torture. Rio was quite sure the man had recovered from the stun zap, even though he wisely pretended he hadn’t. He, too, would be part of the cleanup phase of this little adventure.

By adding some hustle, Rio made it out to the office just as Kimmer finished cranking the well-used little station wagon around in a tight series of turns. She bounded out to meet him, tight curves highlighted by belted jeans and the tucked flannel shirt; she’d left her vest in the car. Her Ruger rode on her thigh in a military holster, and he was willing to bet she had half a dozen weapons secured in her clothing. Somewhere. Lara Croft in miniature.

“You look better,” she said, giving him a quick assessment as she opened the passenger door for him.

“I think your drugs have kicked in.” He hadn’t realized it until that moment, but the pain had receded, leaving mostly the heat of the damaged flesh. “I could wish for a hot tub….”

She flashed him a wry smile. “Who wouldn’t?”

He refrained from suggesting they share one at the first opportunity. He’d knocked her off balance back at the nurse’s station, and for everyone’s sake, she needed to be right at the top of her game. It sobered him then to realize how much he was depending on her, and how much trust he’d put in her in spite of hard lessons learned. But he had a feeling…and he trusted that, too.

She hesitated, arm extended to close the car door. “I wanted to let you know,” she said, and a faint flush rose to cover the smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose, “I’m sorry I didn’t interrupt the BGs sooner. Before you egged Boots into putting such a beating on you. But Slick was always right by Carolyne, and I didn’t have the angle to take a shot—”

Of course not. “You’re too short to get an angle through that window,” he realized out loud.

She nodded. “By the time he moved off from her, you and Boots had gotten into it. And then I
should
have…I should have—” She shook her head, a helpless expression on her face. “I’m not used to caring. I just didn’t—”

“Boots,” he said, hearing it again. A silly grin hit his face. “Do you always name them?”

“Of course.” She gave him a blink, taken aback. “It’s half the fun, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. All my assets came with their own code names, which were…well, boring.”

“Try it,” she advised. “You like words. You should be able to come up with some good ones.”

Absurdly, it pleased him that she thought so. She grinned, a glimpse of the inner Kimmer gleaming out, and then she closed the door.

They took the dirt road at a snail’s pace, sparing Rio—and the old car—the bumps and washboarding. Kimmer rummaged around behind her seat, snaking her arm back to produce an apple. “If you’re up to chewing,” she said. “Doesn’t look to me like they messed with your face too much.”

“I’m pretty good with a fetal curl.” Rio took the apple, but as he lifted it to his mouth for a big healthy bite, he got a glimpse of movement through the trees—a pickup truck, a big double-cab Ford.

Kimmer muttered something short and vicious under her breath, removing her foot from the accelerator so the Taurus coasted to a stop.

Rio set the apple aside.

Neither said anything.

The truck came to a stop only a yard or so away, angling to block the road from edge to edge. Kimmer scowled at it as Rio observed, “Don’t come much bigger than that.”

“Not your average goonboy vehicle,” she said. “I have a feeling this is an old friend who didn’t learn his lesson the first time around.”

All four truck doors opened; four men descended from the truck.

“He brought his pals,” Rio observed. The midday hour suddenly seemed late, edging toward the early dark with exaggerated speed.
We already used our moments
.

“The bubbaboys.” Kimmer rolled her eyes. Leo had suggested the camp to the BGs, and now he’d come here to find her. “This should only take a few minutes.”

She said it as though she expected to handle the situation by herself, but as she exited the car, Rio mustered
up the dregs of his energy and slid out the passenger side, standing with slow care. Walking around the back of the wagon loosened him up again, and he stood slightly behind Kimmer as one of the men stepped forward. They looked familiar, and Rio suddenly recognized them as three of the troublemakers from the picnic, while the ringleader, Leo, was the same man who’d been interested in Kimmer.

A whole little reunion. Jonesy, Bob, Matt and Leo. Only Shaun was missing—possibly wise enough to stay out of it.

Kimmer faced them with a relaxed, balanced posture that should have tipped them off—
Be smart. Run away—“
I thought we had this conversation, Leo.”

“I don’t remember finishing it.” Leo wore a garage cap pulled down over his forehead, and jabbed his hands defiantly into the pockets of his fleece-lined denim coat.

“I don’t suppose you would. But I’ve got the stun gun with me, if you care to have another try.” She looked at the other men. “I’ve also still got the .38, and you can see my friendly Ruger is right at hand. There are a couple of other options—maybe you want to reassess the effectiveness of my little war club? I made it myself, you know.” But she didn’t move one way or the other; she gave them a moment to let their hands creep toward this pocket and that, telltale signs of their own weapons.

“Yeah, you’re all decked out. Loaded for bear. Too bad we’re not bears.” Leo glanced back at his buddies as they laughed in appreciation of his wit, pleased with himself.

Kimmer gestured impatience. “Thing is, I’m in a hurry. So if you’ve got something to say, say it and
move the truck. Otherwise, how about you just move the truck?”

“You were in a hurry to leave here the first time, too.” Leo’s nostril’s flared slightly and his lips compressed; the humor was gone.

Leave here? When? Hadn’t the accent been an act? Rio snatched a look at Kimmer, but she was stone cold. All the warmth he’d felt not so long ago, gone into hiding.

His reaction hadn’t gone unnoticed. Leo snorted a short, harsh laugh. “Has she been whipping on you, too?”

Rio stiffened. It hadn’t been more than a sideswipe at Rio himself—no, it was a crack at Kimmer. Suddenly Rio had no patience for the moment—not with Carolyne waiting, not with the phone call for backup yet to make. He drew himself up, took a step forward, forgot about his bruises and his back and the sporadically wobbly nature of his knees.

Kimmer sent a cool glance his way, indigo eyes deep and impenetrable. And Leo, his voice filled with extraordinary spite, said, “I’ll bet she never mentioned she grew up the next town over, good-for-nothing little high-school dropout, her daddy a drunk and her mother a wishy-washy little thing who died just to get away. I bet she never mentioned she was promised to me.”

Rio wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Kimmer grew even colder. Even more remote. He held his breath, fighting the impulse to end this ugly confrontation in the beautiful fall woods with golden light all around them, leaves settling to the ground, squirrels rustling around to hide and bury walnuts and acorns.

But Kimmer didn’t need his help. She even relaxed slightly, though Leo was a fool if he took it for a good
sign. “Yeah, yeah. I grew up here in a cruel, squalid little family and then I left. It wasn’t
my
promise. Get over it.”

Leo couldn’t. “And does your friend here know what you were like back then, Kimmer Reed? How you looked? How eager your family was to trade you off?”

Silence fell over them; the bubbaboys, as Kimmer had so aptly named them, shifted uneasily, impatiently. Leo might have forgotten about Kimmer’s whirlwind fighting style, but they evidently had not; they wanted revenge, not chatter. And while Rio clenched the fist that would still clench, he knew…

This was Kimmer’s moment. Hers to face and hers to handle.

Astonishingly, after that long silence, she laughed. “That’s pretty sad, Leo.” She glanced at Rio. “I wore bad boys’ hand-me-downs and ugly things that didn’t fit. I was pathetic. I had scary hair—really scary hair. I had a birthmark on my face.” She shrugged, and she met his eyes with a gaze that lingered just long enough to send a message he hadn’t expected.
It’s all right. It’s truly all right
. “With all of that, you’d think he’d be glad I left.”

Rio couldn’t help but grin. Not a big one, but one that included her. And she took it, and suddenly he didn’t feel like they were two people standing there, but a team.

Leo frowned; he’d lost his emotional advantage and didn’t understand it. “All of that, and you still thought you were too good for us. It’s time you learned you weren’t. You aren’t.”

“I didn’t
deserve
you,” she corrected him. “Any of you. But you taught me a lot of things, and I find those lessons very useful these days.”

Rio’s grin faded; he winced inside to think of what lessons a young girl could possibly learn from her family to prepare her for her role in high-stakes undercover operations. She should have been learning about support and sticking together and unconditional love.

Kimmer glanced back at him, and this time it was something of a warning. She’d seen a change in these men that he hadn’t. He scrutinized them, found only the same impatience he’d noted before—and then realized it. Leo had faltered slightly; he watched Kimmer with a slight frown instead of impending domination. And the bubbaboys had seen it, too. They were about to demote Leo and take over the action. Time to throw a few punches, to regain face and walk away on top. Foolishness. And a total waste of precious time.

But it was still Kimmer’s show. She stood hipshot, one hand resting where her belt cinched around the tight curve of her hip. Only the dip of motion away from the .38, though Rio didn’t think she’d go for it. These were fools, not criminals. Kimmer cocked her head slightly at Leo. “For instance, it was hiding from you and brother Buddy that started me off on my night-ops skills. And all those close encounters—you never got more than a hand on me, did you? No one touches me now. Not unless I say so. Those sorry goonboys at Angelina’s learned that one well enough, didn’t they?”

Leo startled; so did Bob just behind him. The others were so busy mentally assuming command and initiative that they didn’t pay attention to Kimmer’s actual words, and Rio softly moved forward another step. Leo gave Kimmer a careful, assessing look. “That shooting at the B&B—that was you? What the hell are you into?”

“Who the hell cares?” snapped Jonesy, and shoved past Leo to grab Kimmer by one arm, his expression full of premature triumph. “Now, what was so hard about this?” He turned to Kimmer with something of a leer and said, “
Now
you’ll learn a little respe—”

Kimmer shifted, a twist of quick, precise movement. Jonesy hit the ground with a hollow thump, driving the air from his lungs. When Kimmer straightened she had her foot at his throat and his arm yanked high at a bad angle, the wrist and elbow torqued to the breaking point. Rio didn’t wait for his buddies to react—he flung Leo up against the truck, planting his foot in a high kick to nail Bob right below his breastbone. Bob doubled over to gag up his lunch while Rio staggered back against the Taurus and wrapped his hand around the door handle for a crutch, his back flickering in and out of spasm.

Matt backed off, hands raised in instant surrender. “Dammit, Leo, I knew we should have just drawn on them to start!”

Rio nodded at Kimmer, who maintained her grip on Jonesy’s arm and yet had the .38 aimed steadily at Matt’s oblivious head. “You’re lucky you didn’t, I’d say.”

Matt paled and backed up a step.

Kimmer smiled her tight little dangerous smile. “You know, I’m in a hurry. I’m trying to save the world here, and you’re messing with me.” She turned her attention back to Leo, who’d regained his balance but still stood back against the truck. “A dozen years ago doesn’t matter now.
Now
matters. And I’m not part of your now. Unless—” she gave him a considering look “—unless you want to help.”

Leo’s inadequate jaw went slack, but only until he found a few startled words. “What the hell—?”

Kimmer grinned. She had him right where she wanted him. She had herself right where she wanted to be—free from her worst fears, free from the ever present worry that her past would come back to slap her in the face. And so it had, but she wasn’t that person anymore. That past had no hold on who she was now. She’d faced it, and here she still was. And there was Rio beside her, backing her, showing her new ways to be. So she grinned at Leo and said, “Yeah, you. I need some backup here—I don’t think my people will get here in time. I need someone I can count on. It’s a terrorist thing, more or less. We’ve got our differences, but I remember you as being a patriot, Leo.”