Slow Heat (9 page)

“No worries.” Ben waved a hand in the air and sounded as if he meant it. He leaned against a workbench and crossed his arms over his chest. “I have no intention of screwing up my probation. My lawyer says everything could be expunged from my record in the next month. Then I won’t be a felon anymore. This is the job all men dream of and I am not going to do anything to mess it up.”

“Don’t blame you.” Greg handed one of the beers to Micah and snapped the cap off the other. “Here’s what happened.”

Greg King was a giant of a man, at least several inches taller than Micah, who stood six foot one. King was muscular as hell, and for a man close to fifty years old, he never moved stiffly or took his time sitting or standing, like Micah’s dad and uncle had started doing.

“It was over a year ago and we were having a hell of a time with an insane woman and a drug she was using to control people.”

“Slave juice,” Ben offered.

Greg shivered intentionally as he nodded. “Nastiest shit I’ve ever run up against.”

Micah forced himself to quit thinking about his father and uncle. They were fine. There were never two tougher old men, and no matter how the heat might have come down, they would all get through it. He also shoved thoughts of Maggie from his head. That hot little number could get him in to more trouble than she realized if Micah didn’t stay focused.

“Slave juice?” he asked. This was a new one for him.

“Yup.” Greg led the way back to the cement room and paused next to the door in the middle of the room. “It was a drug that robbed you of your ability to control your own actions.” He paused, took a drink of his beer. “Depending on how much was injected, you might have thoughts in your head, but you were helpless when it came to following orders. If someone told you to pick up this gun, point it to your head, and pull the trigger, you’d do it.”

“Crap,” Micah hissed.

“It took over a year to take down the bitch who invented the shit,” Greg growled.

“He was telling me the story last week and mentioned that Marc’s wife rescued everyone from an underground prison and shot four guards single-handed, with all of them on the other side of the door.”

Ben Mercy was a good kid. He had done time for grand theft auto but didn’t fit the profile. Apparently he’d been wrongly convicted, but—not having much money—he’d done time before getting out and finally finding a lawyer willing to help him wipe his record clean. King had hired Mercy, seeing something in him, despite the kid not being able to do everything the rest of them could do. Until the felony was off his record, Mercy couldn’t get his P.I. license and be an official bounty hunter.

Ben pointed to the door in the middle of the room when they returned to the basement. “Greg surprised me with this. What I get for questioning his story, I guess.”

Micah shifted his attention back to the door. That’s when he noticed four mannequins stacked against the far wall.

“Never hurts to take on a little exercise,” King said, walking across the room. His giant size made the room appear a lot smaller than it was. “Figured I would set up a mock reenactment. Jones, this will be good for you, too.” He grinned at Micah and winked. “Will show me just how finely tuned your skills are.”

“Oh yeah?” Micah asked. Only when you got paranoid was there anything to be paranoid about. “What are we doing?”

Greg pointed to the ceiling, then lifted the first mannequin. “I’ve got these life-sized dolls rigged to come at the door. I took the liberty of drawing a bull’s-eye on each one of them. It will be sort of like target practice. You can each take a turn trying to take all four of them out before they can make it through the door.” He grinned at Micah. “Want to play?”

Micah shrugged. There was no harm in having a bit of fun. And it wouldn’t prove a thing if King saw firsthand how well Micah could shoot. “Sure, I’m in.”

“When it happened for real, four men were coming down a flight of stairs toward a closed door. Haley wouldn’t let me set this up in the family room, though, so instead”—he straightened each mannequin then hooked them to wiring in the ceiling—“the dolls are going to fly toward the door at a fairly good speed. You will open the door and fire, and you must take out all four dolls before you have the door all the way open. In other words, if the mannequins make it through the door, you lose.” Then running his hand up the wiring holding one of the mannequins in place, he added drily, “Not to mention, they’ll all get tangled up in the door frame.”

“Woo hoo!” Ben whooped, rocking up on his heels. “Let the games begin. Mind if I go first?” he asked, and picked up the gun he’d been holding before following King to his garage. He shot a side glance at Micah. “I’ll have more confidence if I don’t already know the exercise has been mastered.”

Micah didn’t comment. Ben was pretty good with a gun, and he was coming around as a bounty hunter. The kid just didn’t have the same experience under his belt that Micah did. No one did.

King laughed. “No problem. No one likes being shown up.” He grinned easily at Micah. The man was one hell of a shot. King had been a cop for quite a few years before retiring and opening his private practice. “I’ll get it set up,” he said, and continued hooking the mannequins to heavy wires fixed to the ceiling. “This took most of last night and this morning getting this ready to go,” he explained, looking at Micah. “Marc, my son, and I messed with this setup for hours before we got it right. Or thought we had it right. London, his wife, came out here once we had all the mannequins moving smoothly and informed us we had the door opening the wrong way.”

As he spoke, he finished hooking the wires, which were threaded through holes drilled in the dolls’ backs to pulleys on the ceiling. Ben stood on the opposite side of the door with both hands on his gun, pointing it at the floor. He watched the door like a hawk, though, as if the dolls might come to life and fly through it before King finished getting them ready.

It was amazing how full of life the kid was. Ben had been convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, had done time for it, and stood in front of Micah grinning, his face lit up as if he’d just been given a brand-new weapon to play with. Ben wasn’t bitter. He didn’t act betrayed. If anything, it seemed he’d somehow made it through a tragedy unscathed. Most people would be mad at the world for being so terribly wronged.

Ben almost danced from one foot to the other, waiting to take his turn. Micah turned his attention to the setup, which was pretty elaborate. “Are all four of them going toward the door at the same time? Or will they hit the door one at a time?” he asked, and tried to envision it happening for real.

“Nope. See, we had to re-create it just the way it happened, especially once London was on to us and learned we were re-creating something she went through.”

“She wasn’t going to let you pull off the scene and have it any easier than it was for her.”

“You’ve got it.” King adjusted the wiring on the back of one of the dolls then lowered his hands and looked at Micah. “As soon as London got wind of the fact that we were so incredibly impressed about what she’d done that we wanted to see if we could do it ourselves, she went over the setup with a fine-tooth comb.”

King backed away and surveyed his work. He looked toward the door leading into the family room at the sound of people approaching. Micah heard the low baritone of a man speaking as several people came down the stairs. Instinctively he turned so his back was to the cement wall as he faced the open door.

A large man, taller than Micah, suddenly filled the doorway. Micah homed in on a hairline scar that started at the man’s jaw and continued down the side of his neck. It wasn’t overly visible but the ceiling light was bright enough for it to be noticed. The man had wavy brown hair that tapered around his collar. He wore a short-sleeved buttondown blue shirt that matched the color of his eyes. When Micah made eye contact, the man appeared to be studying him as well.

“Marc,” Greg said, again smiling. Greg was more relaxed than usual as he sauntered around the door, ignoring Ben, and moved to stand next to the man, who still filled the doorway. “You’re just in time.”

Micah guessed this was Marc King, the oldest son who was once part of KFA. Micah had spent a lot of time listening to the Kings talk about their sons. He’d also researched Marc and Jake King, Greg and Haley’s two sons, when he’d checked out the Kings and KFA before seeking them out for a job. Marc King’s reputation as a bounty hunter was as solid as his father’s.

Marc entered the cement room, and checked out the setup he and his father had put together. “You must be Micah Jones,” he said solemnly, then held out his hand. “I’m Marc.”

“Good to know you.” Micah shook hands, acknowledging the strong grip and large hand when they shook.

“Are you going to try to pull off the stunt my wife managed when we were in Arizona?”

“Sure.” Micah looked away from the man, who was somewhere around Micah’s age, and looked at the mannequins that were all in place behind the door.

“Well, you’re going to have to do it with the lights off.” The young woman who had been sitting at the table in the kitchen with Haley walked through the door and moved to stand behind Marc. “It was pitch black when I shot at the men on the other side of the door. We were in an underground garage and couldn’t find light switches on the wall.”

“We?” Ben asked.

“Natasha and I,” she explained.

“London, this is the new bounty hunter Dad hired,” Marc said. “Micah, this is my wife, London.”

London was the beautiful woman he’d seen upstairs. Her black eyes matched the color of her hair. Her hair was thick, fell down her back, and was pulled back with a long red scarf. It was the same color as the short, sleeveless dress she wore. Her skin was tan and she was thin with noticeable, large breasts.

Micah guessed her hair was coarser than Maggie’s. Although tanner, there was a slightly wary look in her gaze that he’d caught when she’d first entered the room. It was a dark, watchful, and cautious look that faded when she slipped her arm around Marc’s back. He pulled her against him and massaged her arm, which seemed to put her at ease. That look vanished as if it had never been there.

Maggie didn’t have that same guarded look; at least she hadn’t the two times Micah had been with her. If anything, Micah would say Maggie appeared more content with the world around her than London did. There were visible ghosts in this woman’s eyes. Maggie didn’t have those ghosts. Although she probably would after the case concerning the books at Club Paradise was over. It dawned on him that he was viewing Maggie as innocent, if not a somewhat sheltered woman, which was the exact opposite impression he got from London.

“I have to try and shoot all four of these mannequins when the door opens in the dark?” Ben asked, sounding dubious.

London had a pretty smile. “There was light on the other side of the door. But we were standing in complete darkness. We’d turned off the flashlight and, like I said, we weren’t able to find a light switch.”

“London fired all the shots that killed the guards to the underground prison,” Marc offered, sounding proud. “Natasha fired but her shots went into the wall.”

“Natasha would kick your ass for saying that,” London said.

Marc shrugged. “Let her try. It’s the truth.” He was smiling down at his wife and now let his gaze travel over the makeshift re-creation of the deadly moment. “You two are going to have to fire and hit each mannequin in a kill zone. Dad, the lights have got to go. We’ll stand here behind the mannequins and use flashlights the moment the door opens. That should work.” He looked down at his wife. “Don’t you think?”

She nodded slowly. “Do you have a couple of high-beam flashlights?”

Marc rolled his eyes at her. “Of course,” he said, then let her go long enough to saunter around the contraption in the middle of the room to shelves where various items were housed. He picked up two heavy-duty flashlights.

“That works,” Greg said, and moved to the other side of the mannequins. “Where is Haley?”

“She told me to tell you that you could play down here for another thirty minutes, then you two are running errands.” London grinned a broad, toothy smile as she passed on the message to Greg.

“Want to carry my response back to her?” he asked wryly.

“Text her,” Marc said, and moved his wife away from the setup. “My wife isn’t going to run back and forth for the two of you just so you can try and bully each other.”

London laughed, a melodic sound, and ran her hand up her husband’s chest. “They’d keep me going all afternoon.”

“No, they won’t.”

“Okay, Ben,” Greg said, willing to change the subject. “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” He posed and stood close and to the side of the door. “Where were you standing?” he asked London, suddenly straightening and looking doubtful again.

“We’d driven Marc’s Mustang down into the underground garage and parked it, then shut off the headlights and used a flashlight as we walked to the door.” She left her husband’s side and walked over to Ben. “I’d say we were to the side of the door, and about this far away.”

Ben moved to stand where London was. Marc stepped forward, reaching for his wife and pulling her back into his arms. She didn’t fight him but leaned back against his chest as he wrapped both arms around her. Micah found it amusing that the man wished to protect his wife from the pending gunfire, yet she’d been the one who had fired the gun and killed four men. London looked as if she could protect herself.

“Everyone put these on.” King passed out earmuffs. They weren’t exactly what would be used at a shooting range, but they would do the trick.

Marc handed one of the flashlights to his wife. They moved to the other side of the door, and to the side so they wouldn’t be in the line of fire. Greg walked around the staged event and placed his hand on the light switch by the door. “Once I turn off the light, London, you flip the switch to make the mannequins move. It’s that box on the floor right next to you.”

Micah slipped the earmuffs over his head and covered his ears just as the lights went out and the mannequins started moving. They actually moved faster than Micah imagined they would. The door opened toward Ben, blocking his view of the mannequins. They hadn’t said, but the men who had once been behind that door had probably been armed. Ben started shooting seconds before the flashlight turned on and flooded a small area with light.