Kansas Nights [Kansas Heat 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (42 page)

“Yes, sir?”

“Nobody is to interfere with whatever Miss Coben is up to. Surround the building and make sure the men are in position, but nobody is to breach that library.” Tagger snatched his jacket off the back of the chair and checked for his wallet on the way to the door. “At least not until I get there.”

* * * *

Collin listened to the ringing of the phone on the other end of the line as he watched Jack lever himself up on the pile of crates he’d made a stack of. They’d shifted and wobbled unsteadily as he’d climbed up and now threatened to give way at any moment. Jack hovered there, trying to peer into Benny George’s window without a sign of his normal grace and dexterity. Not that there was anything normal about this particular situation.

The damn woman had escaped. A
librarian
had managed to outwit Jack and him. That burned almost about as much as the knowledge that Kathy could be in serious trouble. Collin had a sick feeling she’d intentionally headed toward danger, proving the woman had no sense.

“Hello?” A male voice broke onto the line, answering the Myers’s phone before the second ring had even finished. That didn’t bode well.

Collin had already called every one of Kathy’s friends to ensure that she hadn’t escaped just to be peevish. Each and every one answered their phone after several, long rings and with groggy, confused tones. That assured him he’d woken each one up from a sound sleep. Not George Myers, though. He sounded wide awake.

“
Bon soir, monsieur. Je suis Noé
.” Collin not only spoke French fluently, he spoke it with an accent good enough to fool most. “
Puis-je parler à Mme Myers?”

“What?”

“
Votre femme folle, Marion Myers. Elle suce le coq, oui ?
”

“Speak fucking English,” George Myers snapped.

“
Pardon moi?
”

“Never mind. She’s not here. Now leave me alone.”

With that, the line went dead. A second later the driver’s side door flew open, and the cab tilted as Jack hefted himself up into his seat. He shook his head at Collin as he slammed his door closed. “I can’t see anything through that damn window, but I can hear snoring. So I guess she wasn’t planning on meeting this fruit ball.”

“Marion’s missing.” Collin made that declaration in a calm, even tone despite the volatile whirl of emotions flooding through him. The urge to do violence to something, anything, nearly overwhelmed him.

As fun as it would be to give in to the fear and anger pumping like hot oil through his veins, it wouldn’t solve anything. Right then all that mattered was finding Kathy. Things could go to hell afterward.

Beside him, Jack looked to be fighting the same battle. White knuckles gripped the steering wheel while his tone came out hoarse and sounding strained. “Call her friend, Rosy. She was there when Kathy confronted Marion. She had to have heard something useful.”

“Okay.” Collin nodded, agreeing with that reasoning and guessing at Jack’s next move. “You gonna head toward Eddie’s?”

“Unless you got a better suggestion.”

Collin didn’t and busied himself with pulling up Rosy’s number back up on his phone. Before he could hit the call button, his screen flashed as the small housing started to vibrate. An unknown number blinked up at him, causing his heart to lodge in his throat as his mind flooded with all the possibilities. Not a single one of them was good. Hesitant, almost afraid of what lurked at the other end, Collin answered.

“Hello?”

“Collin? Is that you? You sound like a fucking girl and a little one, at that.” Amos’s loud, burly voice barked through the phone with enough force to have Collin scowling. The last thing he needed right then was to have Amos making a complicated situation worse.

“I don’t have—”

“Time,” Amos finished for him. “I’m aware. You lost my girl, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m beginning to see why the Feds let you go. They keep better track of things than you.”

“The Feds?” Collin stopped fighting it. Amos clearly knew something, or thought he did. Given everything Amos had said so far, Collin had a sick feeling he knew, too. “They’re tracking Kathy?”

“I don’t know about that, but I do know that in few moments here somebody’s going to be putting in a call to the sheriff’s office to complain about shadowy figures around the library. I just wanted to make sure you and your buddy didn’t end up caught in that bit of nastiness.”

Collin wasn’t listening anymore. He snapped his phone closed and cued Jack to turn the truck around and head into town with simple two-word declaration. “The library.”

Kathy dozed off. Tucked into the dark silence of the library’s storage room with her empty gun pointed at the back door, she’d waited for Marion. Seconds blurred into minutes, which piled up until Kathy could have sworn that hours had passed. Boredom made it hard for her to focus, and it wasn’t long before the world went hazy around her.

Then like a crack of thunder through a pitch-black sky, adrenaline snapped through her, causing Kathy to bolt upright as she tried to figure out what had startled her. Straining to hear or see anything, she remained convinced that something was wrong despite everything appearing all right.

That’s when it came again, a whining creak of an old hinge being forced to bend. Kathy’s eyes darted up, tracking the sound to the old window over the back door. Her breath caught as she watched a pair of hands lift over the edge of the sill. It was two minutes to midnight, the witching hour. While Kathy didn’t tend to be a superstitious person, watching those thick fingers flex had her offering up a prayer to her maker for the simple reason that those hands belonged to a man.

Unless, of course, Marion had taken a butt load of fast-acting steroids that not only made her hands beefy but hairy as well. It was too dark for her to see who came crawling over the sill and too late for Kathy to run. All she knew for certain was that, in those seconds, she had made a very big mistake.

That didn’t change the fact that she had nowhere to go. Maybe if she just stayed absolutely still and silent, he wouldn’t even notice her. Then what? She could run away? That would make this all pointless. Given the amount of trouble she’d be in once she got home, Kathy figured something should make it worth her while.

Whipping up a plan on the fly, Kathy leveled her gun at the intruder and waited for him to get through the window. She didn’t make her move until his feet touched down on the floor. That’s when she pulled the handle back on Rosy’s old revolver and prayed that her bluff worked. It looked like it did at first when the man froze, but then he started to turn as if to confront her.

“Don’t move. I don’t want to have to shoot you,” Kathy stated, making sure she sounded up to that task if it became necessary.

“Kit Kat?” Benny’s bewildered voice had Kathy stiffening. “Is that you?”

“Uh, no.” Kathy didn’t know why she lied or bothered to deepen her voice. It certainly didn’t fool Benny, who relaxed enough to sound amused.

“It is, too, and you’re not going to shoot me.”

“I might,” Kathy retorted, feeling a little indignant at his attitude. “And I told you to stay still.”

“Make me. Shoot me.” Benny taunted her as he reached for the lock on the back door.

“Damnit, Benny!” Kathy shoved out from under the desk, scrambling to get to her feet before he escaped. “Don’t you open that door.
Fuck!
”

Benny shoved the metal door wide open, letting the light from the alleyway illuminate his oversized smirk. “Like I said, shoot me. Otherwise, I will talk to you later, in a less incriminating—”

“I got you on camera.” If she’d had a bullet, Kathy would have used it. That’s how mad Benny made her with his dismissive attitude. Since she didn’t, she had to find another way to hurt him. “And I’ll turn it into the cops if you don’t start answering my questions.”

“You want me to answer questions? Then why don’t you answer one of mine.” Benny turned on her with that sharp demand, his good mood evaporating as quickly as he started to advance on her. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What are you?” Kathy shot back, not about to give in to Benny’s attempt at intimidation.

He glared down at her with a flare in his nostrils, emphasizing his displeasure. Kathy supposed should be scared, but couldn’t work up the even the slightest bit of unease. Nothing would make Kathy believe he’d hurt her. So she glared back, remaining stubbornly silent.

“It’s not what you think.” Benny finally caved.

“I think that Eddie spent a lot of time looking at old maps, and now you’re sneaking in to do the same. What did he bury, Benny? A few million?” Kathy pressed forward with each question, keeping her tone hard and accusing despite the sour look that passed over Benny’s face.

“Don’t be stupid, Kat. It doesn’t become you,” Benny spat, caving and falling backward. “If Eddie buried the damn money, he wouldn’t have to go
looking
for it. Would he?”

“I guess not,” Kathy conceded, a little miffed that she hadn’t considered the obvious. Not about to be dismissed based on one mistake, she hit back hard. “I guess that means he stumbled into whoever held that money runner hostage in his bomb shelter, huh, Benny? Got to wonder who that was.”

“And if
I
knew where the money was I wouldn’t be
breaking
in here to
find
it either!” Benny spat back, exaggerating his tone and expression to assure Kathy that she’d offended him. It didn’t sway her, though.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not guilty. It just means that you’ve been betrayed. There is certainly a lot of that going on these days, isn’t there?” Heaving with the heat of her own indignation, Kathy fully expected Benny to match her accusation with another denial. It disoriented her when, instead, he threw his head back and laughed.

“So you finally fucked some good information out of those boys. What you get?”

“
Excuse you
!” Benny sudden shift in mood along with his accusation riled Kathy’s temper to the boiling point, causing her to lash out at her old friend. “And I’m not some brainless bimbo who needs to spread her legs to figure things out. I got a brain. I can put the pieces together.”

“Then by all means, let’s have it.” Benny gestured for her to begin, but Kathy stuck her chin up at him, refusing to obey.

“I’m not doing your thinking for you, Benny. Why don’t you step up.”

“Tit for tat, then,” Benny suggested. “You start.”

“Fine,” Kathy agreed, planning on telling him something she bet Benny already knew. “A federal safe house just over the border in Missouri was raided back in early June. A bunch of agents died and a money runner named Marco Soto disappeared.”

“Will stopped by a day or two after those bastards got shot up at the Shade Tree.” Benny offered his own useless bit of information in the same showing of good faith. “He wanted to know all sorts of things. How to create a fake identity, how to hide money, how to live off the grid, just all sorts of things that said he’d done something pretty damn stupid.”

“Marco didn’t show up dead until the twentieth, meaning somebody held him hostage.” Kathy took her turn, but hesitated for a moment before upping the ante. “His autopsy proves he was tortured.”

“What a shock.” Benny snorted, clearly unconcerned and unimpressed. “And they used Eddie’s bunker as dungeon of terror…too bad about Eddie.”

Tired of the game and of Benny’s antics, Kathy tried again to get to the truth. “Did Eddie set Will up…or was it Marion?”

Benny’s smile faded at the mention of that name. Kathy knew from the way he tensed that she’d hit a nerve. Fortunately, this time, Benny didn’t bother to try and bluster his way through with another denial.

“Yeah.” Benny drew out that answer, as if savoring the release of a great weight. “It’s Marion. She’s the one who supplied Will with his pills, the one who set him up with all her friends. Hell, the woman doped some of those ladies and then blackmailed them with evidence of their indiscretion.”

“I thought you were blackmailing—”

“I had the idea,” Benny cut her off. “I even made some moves, but then Eddie showed up and told me the same thing I’m about to tell you. Stay the hell out of this mess.”

Kathy was really getting tired of people telling her that. She was just as sick of men refusing to tell her what she needed to know. As if those two insults weren’t enough, Benny added to it by turning, clearly planning on walking away.

“I’d thought you’d be Marion,” Kathy stated simply. She had more to say, but Benny reacted to that bit of news with such exaggeration that Kathy didn’t get a chance to finish her confession.

“
What?
”

Benny almost shrieked, snapping and jumping as if she’d whipped him. Before Kathy could defend herself, he rushed her. He shoved her deep into the shadows, latching onto her arms and lifting Kathy right off her feet. He dangled her high enough for the hot wash of his breath to scald her cheeks.

“Please,” Benny begged. “
Please
, tell me that woman isn’t on her way here.”

“Uh…” Kathy flinched as Benny’s hands tightened on her. The man was clearly having some kind of paranoid breakdown. While she didn’t want to contribute to his spiral, the way he kept squeezing her arms forced her to say something.

“Well, I kind of flaunted the fact that her brother had been researching something.” Kathy stumbled over her words, almost afraid to continue by the way Benny’s eyes bulged bigger and bigger. “I thought it was her who’d been trying to find what Eddie buried.”

“Crap!” Benny released her with that curse, letting Kathy drop back to her feet as he reached for the phone. “You better fucking hope it’s her and not that psycho she runs with.”