Cutting Loose Page 10

  Sir Arthur Kendryk and Spencer Bayonne had both entered the country three days ago in New York, and whatever connection had existed between Kendryk and Gillian on the Uzbekistan deal, the English lord wanted more. He wanted her back.

  The bounty he’d offered was two million dollars. The only condition was that she be brought to Kendryk alive.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Saturday, 6:45 A.M.—Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Given enough time, and it really didn’t take all that much, Zach would put his negotiating skills up there with the very finest. He was good. He knew it. He understood that negotiating, by its very nature, required discourse.

  He and Jason Schroder had shared a little discourse in room 276. As far as Zach could tell, he’d been “discoursed” once in the ribs and once on the damn shoulder that had already been “discoursed” on Somerset Street. And then they’d run out of time, or at least Jason Schroder had run out of time—Zach had made sure of it. But if Schroder kept his wits about him, he would definitely live to fuck up again.

  Zach came around the corner of the Sunset Motel, holding his upper right arm with his left hand, damn glad Charlotte wasn’t any farther away than the side of the building.

  Coffee, that’s what he needed; hot would be a nice bonus, sleep would be good, preferably with Lily Robbins stretched out next to him, and a couple of stitches probably wouldn’t hurt.

  But he had the bracelet, and the polymer strand was still securely woven into the macramé.

  Mark up another win for the good guys.

  Now all he needed was to get the hell out of Albuquerque. He couldn’t say it hadn’t been an interesting visit. A little short, but considering how things had been going, he was okay with short.

  Sliding in behind Charlotte’s steering wheel, he tossed Lily the handcuff key.

  She caught it in midair, and despite his aches and pains, and the goddamn blood running down his arm, he almost grinned—almost, but not quite. The girl was quick, damn quick, and he was impressed, but he was also hurting like hell. He fished the Shelby’s key out of his pocket, and giving it his best guess, hit the eject button on the eight-track.

  Score.

  The Bazo rolled out of the tape deck like R2-D2, tilted itself up, and came on, lighting up with a stream of pixels and data washing down its screen.

  “SB303,” he said, and the baby-faced blonde appeared.

  “Ensign,” she said, surprising the hell out of him.

  Good God. The girl had dug deep to get “Ensign.” Maybe Dylan needed to put a leash on her, or double-check the security access on his systems.

  He pushed down on Charlotte’s clutch and a sudden, painful twinge in his thigh reminded him of the last time he’d gotten shot, and yes, now that he thought about it, he might have had a little “discourse” in room 276 on that part of his anatomy as well. Geezus.

  “I need the shortest route to Interstate 25, heading north,” he said, turning the Harlot’s key and just ignoring the girl’s “Ensign.”

  Four hundred and twenty-eight cubic inches of displacement, impeccably timed, roared to life, then settled into the growling purr of impeccably tuned headers. Dylan had lied about the fifteen-second quarter miles. Someone was taking damn good care of Charlotte. She was running like a dream, and only Quinn could have done her headers. The chop-shop boy’s signature touch reverberated in every decibel, and there was definitely something about having a 428 pulling 450 horses under him that made Zach feel better, safer, like he was going to get through the day.

  Yeah, get through the day. Geezus. What were they teaching Vegas wiseguys now? Some kind of Way of the Warrior hand-to-hand combat technique? He’d come close to getting his ass kicked in room 276.

  Killing the guy would have been easy.

  Merely overpowering him had taken effort and, honest to God, breaking a chair on the guy’s head. Admittedly, the Sunset was not buying quality furniture. The chair move had barely slowed Schroder down.

  Fuck. A grappling match was not what he’d planned for his motel moment this morning. It had been brief and ugly, and convincing Schroder to give up the bracelet had taken even a bit more “discourse” and those negotiation skills he prized so highly.

  “Roger,” SB303 said, and the tracking map on the computer screen changed, instantly showing him where he needed to go.

  “Thank you.” He put Charlotte in gear. He could get used to having his own personal intelligence jockey onboard.

  Next to him, Lily was huddled over her hand, getting the key in the cuffs’ lock.

  “Did you get it?” she asked. “The bracelet?”

  He didn’t answer. He never answered questions. It was just good SOP, good Standard Operating Procedure. Ask questions. Don’t answer questions.

  “You did,” she said. “I can tell.”

  No, she couldn’t. He never gave anything away. He heard the click of release, and the cuffs clattered to floor of the car, the one cuff still connected to the seat post.

  “So you should let me go now. You have the bracelet, not me. Anybody who wants it will have to come after you.”

  She was almost half right, but not quite.

  “Nobody knows I have it. Everybody out there looking still thinks you have it. Sorry, babe, but you’re still number one on the hit parade.” Literally on the hit parade. “And you need to decide what you want.”

  He knew what he wanted, and despite what it looked like so far, he hadn’t hauled his ass into New Mexico for a kidnapping.

  “I want to get out of this goddamn car,” she said without a moment’s hesitation, her voice very clear, her conviction ringing true, right along with a distinct edge of anger.

  “Getting out of the car is not an option at this time.” His voice was also very clear. He shifted up through second and into third, holding Charlotte in as they cruised out of the Sunset Motel’s parking lot and back onto Santa Ana Drive. “What I had in mind was some kind of cooperative arrangement.”

  “Arrangement?”

  Yeah, he’d be a little skeptical, too. He usually was, just as a matter of course. But in this instance, a little cooperation could go a long way. She’d be safer, he’d be safer, and those parts of his brain that had been devoted to keeping her under his control could be put to better use—like keeping on top of the mission and staying one step ahead of whoever else was out there. Vegas wiseguys didn’t dream up a position for themselves in international espionage. If Thomas Banning had sent them, it wouldn’t take the mob boss long to figure out something had gone wrong. There would be a reaction, and the higher up the ladder this thing went, the swifter and harder the reaction would be.

  Given the importance of the data on the bracelet, Zach figured there was a good chance Banning was taking orders, too. The trick was finding out who was giving them.

  “SB303,” he said, calling her back.

  “Ensign,” she replied.

  He took the next left, simultaneously downshifting and spinning Charlotte’s wheel.

  “Can you pass all the information you’ve given me back to Scorpion Fire?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Every scrap, including every mile you’ve tracked me in Charlotte, and tell him I’ve got the item we were after.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He powered back up into fourth gear.

  Alex knew who Kesselring’s “other interested parties” would be; he could start tracking this disaster from the other end, find out who they were up against, find out who was connected to Banning—and the quicker he got started, the better.

  Until then, an arrangement with Ms. Robbins would definitely be to both their advantages. Plus—and, yes, this was very unprofessional of him—he just needed something. He wasn’t sure what, but he’d thought about her every day for three goddamn weeks, and he needed something, a concession of some sort.

  “So you did get the bracelet?”

  That wasn’t it, not even close to a concession, and even though he’d jus
t secured the fate of the free world for another day, maybe a day and half, her question sounded more like an accusation than an honest inquiry, let alone a moment’s praise for his skills.

  “Did you kill Jason Schroder?” she continued in the same accusatory vein. “Is that how you got the bracelet?”

  He was glad he never answered questions. It saved a lot of wear and tear on his moral ambiguity.

  But he was going to make an exception.

  “No. I didn’t kill him.” And then he changed the subject. “We’re six hours out of Denver, and I can’t guarantee your safety until we get there.” If it hadn’t been for the tracking device coming out of Steele Street, he might have chosen to take her someplace else.

  In fact, he would have chosen someplace else. But they were hooked in to SDF now, which played into Alex’s hand, which made it a great plan, despite the narrow abyss in his mind that he had carefully set apart with a demilitarized zone on each side. It was a place he didn’t go, and the farther away from the streets of Denver he stayed, the less chance he had of accidentally stumbling into it.

  But hell, he was skirting the edge now. Joya Molara Gualterio, Jewel, his ex-partner, ex-girlfriend, ex-lover, ex-everything, would love that. She’d been a big proponent of him going into the abyss and sorting through the pile of crap at the bottom of it, right up until the day she’d left him.

  Hell, it was just his life. He didn’t know why it had to be such a big goddamn deal.

  “Working together would be a good idea,” he continued, glancing over at Lily. “Team building. You’re a teacher. You know the drill.”

  “You’ve got the bracelet,” she said. “Why do you need me?”

  “I don’t need you. You need me. Don’t doubt it, Lily, not for a second.” That was the God’s truth, and she had to know it. “So what do you say? You and me on the same side, backing each other up on the drive? Or do I put the cuffs back on you, and we do this the hard way?”

  “To Denver?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and doing everything over there on her side of the car except relaxing. She looked ready to bolt, but at least she’d given up the hand-on-the-door-handle idea.

  “Yes.”

  “Why Denver?” she asked. “Because the girl is there? SB303?”

  “Yes.” Precisely. Because the girl was there, and everything she represented—SDF, Steele Street, Dylan. It was all there, in Denver.

  “She called you Zach.”

  Yes, SB303 had called him Zach.

  “That’s your name, isn’t it. Your real name, not Alejandro Campos.”

  Yes, but he kept it to himself. Nothing she could know about him would do her any good.

  “Did the pilot work for you?” she continued. “Have I ended up in the middle of…of one of your drug deals?”

  He slanted her a glance. That was her nightmare, he realized, being involved in one of the most sordid businesses on the planet, having those kinds of people be aware of her, be after her.

  Well, he couldn’t blame her for that. Those kinds of people were after him on a regular basis, and yeah, it was a sharply dangerous position to be in, very nightmare worthy.

  “There’s no cocaine involved in this situation. I promise.” At least he could give her that.

  “What is the bracelet, then? Why is it so damned important? What…what’s happening here?”

  She was full of impossible questions. He didn’t blame her, but neither would he answer her.

  “Nothing I can’t handle, if I have your cooperation.” It was pure party line, and he couldn’t remember, really, the last time he’d sounded so damn pompous.

  Just as well. His pompous moments were best forgotten.

  “Bullshit,” she said, very clearly, even with her arms wrapped around her and looking scared as a rabbit.

  Great, they were in agreement. He hadn’t thought his lousy answer would win him many friends, let alone her cooperation.

  “The more you know, the more of a target you become.” And that was another God’s truth. “No matter how far you’re willing to go into that arena, I have my limit, and you’ve already reached it.”

  “The less I know, the more likely I am to end up dead,” she countered, and he couldn’t argue with her, not and be honest. Information and intelligence were two staples in his survival kit.

  But there was only so much information he could give her, and it all came down to “not much.”

  “I’m here working as an agent for the government.”

  “Whose government?” she shot back. “El Salvador’s?”

  Touché.

  “Your government.” Our government. My government. He’d spent most of his adult life working for his government and was damn proud of the fact.

  The sound she made was one of pure disbelief.

  He didn’t blame her, but neither was he going to explain himself any further. In six hours, she’d be out of it, and despite what she thought, once this was over, the less she knew, the better off she’d be.

  As long as she went back to the ranch in Montana and kept her pistol loaded.

  Fuck. Devlin had done her no favor by giving her the bracelet. But Devlin had done exactly what Zach would have done under similar circumstances—deep-sixed the information with a civilian, rather than chance it falling into the wrong hands.

  “Do what I tell you, and we’ll get to Denver without anybody ending up dead.” It was up to Alex to decide how much he thought Lily Robbins needed to know.

  When he didn’t get a reply, he silently admitted that ultimatums might not be his best tactic with her. Okay, so it was time for Plan LMNOP.

  “There’s another way to look at all this,” he said. “You’ve got ten thousand in cash, and I’ve got a car. With even a little imagination, we’ve got a first-class road trip here. Six hours, that’s all I ask.” He threw another quick glance in her direction, hoping for a better reaction, but she was looking at him like he was crazy.

  “Albuquerque to Denver in six hours isn’t a road trip,” she said. “It’s a suicide mission. I’ve driven it dozens of times, and it’s nine hours, bare minimum.”

  Nine hours?

  Only if you did it in reverse.

  “In your truck, sure,” he conceded. Hell, in her truck it could take two days to get to Denver. “But we’re driving Charlotte.”

  “Your car has a name,” she said deadpan, one of her eyebrows lifting upward.

  “Charlotte the Harlot.”

  And that almost got a smile out of her—almost.

  She glanced out the passenger-side window. “I don’t really have a choice here, do I?”

  “No.” Not really.

  “And you’ll let me go? Once we get to Denver?”

  “Once I know you’re safe,” he clarified. “SB303 works for the Department of Defense. There’s a good possibility that I’ll be turning you over to her, while I continue on with the bracelet alone. There are ways to neutralize its importance, once it’s in the right hands. When it’s no longer important, then you’re no longer important.” It was the best he could offer her.

  “I—I killed a man this morning.” She sounded suddenly weary, and he realized he liked her better angry.

  “We killed a man this morning,” he said, clarifying the facts for her again. “Self-defense, and yes, we won the gunfight. Thank you.” He spun Charlotte’s wheel, downshifting for the turn onto the interstate’s northbound ramp.

  There was more traffic heading north than he would have expected so early on a Saturday morning, but it was bound to thin out once they got out of Albuquerque, and that’s all he wanted right now—out of Albuquerque.

  “Where did you learn to shoot?” he asked. There hadn’t been any luck involved. There was no luck in shooting, not even at four yards, not with the split-second precision with which she’d done it.

  “My dad’s a sheriff’s deputy in Chouteau County, and I was the Montana Girls’ State Champion in pistols for five years running.”
>
  A shooting champion? He’d be damned. He’d known her father was a deputy. The information had been in the file Alex had gone over with him. But nothing in the file had mentioned her being a state champion shooter.

  Hell, a pistol champion, sheriff deputy’s daughter riding shotgun in the passenger seat was probably exactly what Charlotte had always wanted, probably what she’d always needed.

  Maybe it’s what he’d been needing, too.

  He’d sure as hell been needing something, but unless his luck had changed dramatically in the last three weeks, a gorgeous, dark-haired, blue-eyed sheriff deputy’s daughter probably wasn’t what he was going to get.

  Well, hell, and wasn’t that always the way of it.

  “So what have we got here this morning?” he asked, hoping for that damn concession, something that said she didn’t think he was an out-and-out scum-of-the-earth kind of guy. “A kidnapping and hostage delivery to representatives of the United States Department of Defense? Or a road trip?”

  “Road trip,” she said after a slight hesitation.

  Good, he thought, great. He could work with that. Now all they had to do was keep the cops off their ass.

  “SB303, can you give me radar detection?”

  “Coming up. Check your screen on the lower left side. The megaphone icon will blink and you’ll get an audio cue when you’re in range of getting clocked.”

  Very cool.

  “I think I’m falling in love with you.” The girl was great.

  “She’s married,” a man’s voice came over the PC. There was no visual of the guy, but Zach didn’t need a visual. The voice was enough, even after more than eight years, and the proprietary tone said it all. Dylan was married to Little Miss Jailbait with the tattoo and the bustier.

  Geezus. There had to be one helluva story behind that amazing piece of news. Dylan and a tattooed street girl? Married?

  “You got lucky,” he said, smiling in spite of all his damn aches and pains.

  “See you in six” was all Dylan said.

  Yeah, six.

  Charlotte slid through the traffic, and when they hit the edge of town, Zach opened her up and let her run.