Cutting Loose Read online

  “Hacker!”

  Her eyes came open, and for a moment, she was disorientated.

  “Get your butt in here.”

  That was not Henry Stiner. That was Dylan Hart, and he wanted her butt in the lair. She was not in Cabo San Lucas, standing on a beach. She was at Steele Street.

  She blinked behind her sunglasses and carefully lifted her feet off the windowsill and put them solidly on the floor.

  “Have you been smoking in my office?” he yelled again.

  “No, sir.” She took a breath. Champagne, all-nighter, too many cigarettes, not much food, less sleep, about—she glanced at her desk clock. Oh, she’d nodded off for about fifteen minutes, just enough to really screw her up.

  And the boss was yelling at her.

  She took a breath, and then another, and gave herself a small shake to make sure she was awake, before she rose to her feet. She couldn’t possibly be in trouble. She’d just saved everybody’s ass by getting the Bazo up and running.

  Yawning, she crossed the main office and headed into Dylan’s private office. She was still yawning when she passed through the door. This was torture. Dylan only had one chair in his office, and it was his.

  “Hey, Gill-ian,” she said through her yawn, noticing her friend standing next to Dylan.

  So this was going to be a meeting, she thought. Well, they were going to have to move it to the main office, because no way was she going to stand there, swaying on her feet, teetering on her heels, and hanging by a thread while Dylan went on about whatever. She started to tell him, but he spoke first.

  “Hacker.” He gestured to his left, and Cherie’s gaze followed—and froze, her pulse taking a sudden leap, her attention riveted by an exquisitely delicate piece of electronic gear hanging by a black lanyard against a backdrop of starched white cotton.

  “A Marsh Annex DREAGAR 454 Subliminal Neuron Intel Interface.” She breathed the words, transfixed by its multifaceted shell and microscopically applied metallic fluoride coating. The small polyhedron caught the light with every breath its owner took, glinting purple and blue and yellow.

  “Exactly.”

  Dylan sounded so far away.

  “Cherie,” Gillian said off to her left. “If you’ll lift your gaze about eighteen inches, I’d like to introduce you to my brother Gabriel.”

  That’s right. Gillian’s brother was visiting this morning, the pencil-pushing geekazoid from Washington, D.C. She lifted her gaze the proscribed eighteen inches—and her pulse took another, much more erratic leap.

  Gabriel, an auburn-haired Archangel with his very own DREAGAR 454, who dressed like the Men in Black. He looked like Red Dog, except bigger, with more angles than curves, higher cheekbones, a narrower gaze, and the hint of a dimple. His hair stood a little on end, as if he’d dragged his hands through it a few times on the flight to Denver. His tie was loose, one of his shirt buttons undone, and he was cute, very cute, startlingly so for a geek.

  “Cherie,” she said, holding her hand out. “Hacker.”

  “Gabriel,” he replied, taking her hand. “Shore.”

  “That’s a DREAGAR 454 flash drive.” She shook his hand.

  “Yes.”

  “From the Marsh Annex.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was there in April, a couple of months ago,” she said.

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “Rhonda Blake showed me around, at General Grant’s request.” His grip on her was very solid, and warm, and they were still shaking hands.

  “Oh, you’re the…uh…the, uh—”

  “The CEO of Hacker International. We’re going to be supplying your 2Z8s for the DREAGAR.”

  “The, uh, girl with the shoes.”

  Cherie smiled, surprised and delighted by the designation. “Yes.”

  “Rhonda really liked your shoes.” He was still shaking her hand.

  “My Michel-Leon’s.”

  “She said they were orange.”

  “Persimmon.”

  “High heels with shoestrings.”

  “Silver braided rope.”

  “And clunky heels.”

  “Patent leather stacks.”

  “And, uh, holes in the sides.”

  “Teardrop cut-outs.”

  “Yeah,” he said, a shy smile curving his mouth. “That’s what she said.”

  Cherie couldn’t stop shaking his hand, and she couldn’t stop smiling, and yet everything was shifting inside her, like psychic tectonic plates. She could see big chunks of her life sliding about, making room, and he was smiling, too, and still shaking her hand, and he was so incredibly damn cute, and he was Red Dog’s little brother.

  From where he stood next to the two of them, Dylan checked his watch, wanting to record for posterity the moment he’d first seen the opening moves of the genius-level computer geeks’ mating ritual.

  It was an awkward thing, with a lot of handshaking involved, and it explained why there weren’t more genius-level computer geeks to go around. With an opener like the one he was observing, he couldn’t imagine that they got to the reproductive stage of the game all that often.

  He glanced at Gillian, who cocked an eyebrow in his direction. Yeah, she was thinking the same thing.

  “Well,” he said, “with the introductions out of the way, may we continue here.”

  Two people turned their heads to look at him, but curiously, they did not let go of each other’s hands.

  “Hacker, I need you to take Dr. Shore to Commerce City and give him complete access to whatever it is you’ve got in the garage as it pertains to the DREAGAR 454.”

  He didn’t get any response, and for a moment he wondered if she’d been mesmerized by Dr. Shore, or if she’d fallen back asleep behind her sunglasses.

  “You mean my DREAGAR 454 hard drive?” she finally said.

  Yes, he supposed that was what he meant, unless she had a DREAGAR 454 ice-cream machine, or a DREAGAR 454 boom box she was keeping up in Commerce City.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Uh…yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll be…uh, happy to do that.”

  Good. He liked his people happy, even if they didn’t have any more sense than to stay out all night. He shifted his attention to Gillian’s brother.

  “Dr. Shore, while you are in Denver, you are under my command. I want that clear before this goes any further.” If he’d been assigned to SDF, however temporarily, then he belonged to Dylan for the duration.

  “Yes, sir,” Gabriel said—and he was still holding on to Cherie’s hand.

  Dylan liked the kid. He liked him a lot—just not as much as Hacker, who either didn’t mind or hadn’t noticed that she and Red Dog’s little brother were doing some kind of hand meld.

  This, Dylan decided, could easily turn out to be a very long day. He had the whole thing with Zach, and the CIA, and Albuquerque going, and no clue, really, what it was all about—a condition he wasn’t going to allow to continue past the next few minutes. And now this whole Kendryk and the DREAGAR 454 situation had landed in his lap.

  “Gillian, make sure he has his gun before he leaves.”

  Red Dog nodded. “Would you like me to go with them?”

  “No,” he said. “I need you here when the team calls. You helped plan the mission. They’re going to want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hacker, how long is it going to take you to set up a secure link and download the files off Dr. Shore’s flash drive back to me?” he asked.

  “Download?”

  “Yes.” Isn’t that what she did all day long? Download stuff?

  “An hour, maybe…uh, two, or longer, boss,” she said. “I’ll have a better idea once I get there. Maybe Dr. Shore should stay here with you, and I’ll just run up to Commerce City with the DREAGAR flash drive myself.”

  An hour, or two, or longer? That seemed a little vague for someone who had just jerked the Bazo into shape in record time. But she really was the expert in the room—along with
Dr. Shore, of course, who gave her a curious look, very curious considering that he was still holding her hand.

  “The DREAGAR 454 Subliminal Neuron Intel Interfacer doesn’t go anywhere without me,” the young doctor said.

  Yes. This was definitely going to be a long day.

  “I agree,” he said. “Dr. Shore keeps his flash drive, and maybe he can speed up the downloading process. Then as soon as you’re back, Dr. Shore and I will go over the information.” And figure out what in the hell to do with it.

  “Yes, sir,” Cherie said.

  And where in the hell was Hawkins when he most needed his second in command?

  Disneyland.

  Unfuckingbelievable.

  There wasn’t going to be enough coffee to get him through this day.

  “Uh, Dylan.” Cherie spoke up again. “I got dropped off by limo this morning. We’re going to need a car.”

  Oh, God.

  “And I suppose you’ll want—”

  “Roxanne.”

  Roxanne, Superman’s ride, a 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T in Sublime Green. Cherie loved the beast. She swore it brought out the highlights in her strawberry blond hair. Hawkins thought Roxanne was trying, so help her God, to bring out Cherie’s inner NASCAR, so he’d taught her how to drive, but Dylan had ridden with her once, and once had been enough. He wondered how high Gabriel Shore’s Thrill-O-Meter went, because he could guarantee Cherie was going to redline it.

  “Roxanne,” he agreed. “She’s down on the third floor. Gillian”—he turned back to Red Dog—“get them what they need and see them out.”

  He watched the three of them get on the elevator, and then turned back to his desk. He needed to call the general and find out how Grant wanted them to proceed on this. Gabriel Shore’s three-point plan, brilliant as it was, was a year-long project, minimum. The bounty on Gillian was an immediate threat. Two million dollars took his shadow warrior and put her directly in the spotlight, the last place any of them wanted to be.

  “Dylan,” Skeeter called out to him from the main office. “This just came in. Listen. I’ll run it back for you.” She turned up the volume on her console, and a dispatcher’s voice came over the speakers.

  “All cars prepare to copy information on a BOLO out of Albuquerque. A 1968 Shelby Cobra Fastback Mustang, red with white racing stripes: Be advised this car has twice been seen leaving a crime scene this morning, a fatal shooting on Somerset Street and a knife killing at the Sunset Motel on Santa Ana Drive. Proceed with caution.”

  Fuck.

  “Call him—”

  “And tell him to get his butt off the interstate,” Skeeter finished his sentence, her fingers already flying over her board.

  “And call—”

  “Alex Maier. Tell him what’s happened. He’s either got to let us in on this, or—”

  “Run interference with the New Mexico cops.”

  Their eyes met across the length of the two offices.

  “Are you sure about him, Dylan?” she asked. “Two bodies in a couple of hours. I don’t know. If we’re going to go out on a limb…” She let the question hang in the air.

  “I’m sure.” He hadn’t seen Zach in over eight years, hadn’t spoken to him, but he knew who he was dealing with, and not because they’d worked the chop shop together. Those years were far behind them. People changed.

  But Rydell had been damned impressed with Alejandro Campos, with the operation he’d run down in El Salvador, with the way he’d dealt with the situation. Dylan had heard the same from others over the years, and he’d always been damned impressed with C. Smith Rydell. They were all on the same team, no matter how many years had passed between them.

  If he was wrong, if Zach had cut himself loose and crossed the line, then he’d be dealt with like anyone else who went rogue. And if Dylan was tagged for the job, he wouldn’t hesitate.

  “Make the calls, Skeeter. Let’s do everything we can to get him back to Denver.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Saturday, 8:00 A.M.—north of Albuquerque, New Mexico

  Heat wave—Lily felt it building into the day, the wind blowing against her cheeks hot even at a hundred and twenty miles per hour.

  Not Charlotte’s top speed, Zach had said. The Shelby’s top speed was over a hundred and thirty.

  Zach, not Alejandro Campos. No last name had been forthcoming with the silent admission. So here she was, all but flying down two lanes of asphalt heading north, white stripes blurring, mirage beginning to rise on the horizon, sitting next to a stranger who oddly felt like so much more—and yet she felt so alone.

  She tightened her arms around herself, taking little comfort in the Shelby’s three-point seat belt system and the roll bar welded inside the car’s frame. It wasn’t a concourse car. The Cobra GT500KR was meant to be driven. It had been engineered, and designed, and built to be driven like a bat out of hell, and that’s exactly what he was doing. But the fear of dying in a flaming ball of crashed Mustang metal wasn’t what was eating at her. One thing Zach knew how to do was drive. Considering the sheer amount of pure American muscle under his control, he was amazingly smooth in all his actions. He’d coaxed the Cobra pony up through her gears, and done it in seconds. He didn’t jam and jerk. He slid the shifter. He didn’t stomp the pedals. He pressed them.

  “Are you doing okay?” he asked, surprising her. At a hundred and twenty miles per hour, regardless of his skills, she thought it might be better if he kept his attention on the highway.

  “Fine,” she lied. “Just a little hot.” Charlotte didn’t have air-conditioning. What she had was horses and torque, pure power. Lily felt it in every square inch of her body, the roar in her ears, the rumble shimmying through the chassis and up into her veins.

  “There’s a bottle of water in my gun bag,” he said. “You’re welcome to it, and as soon as we can stop, we’ll get a few supplies.”

  He was right. Water could only help. She had a little edge of panic working on her, and she really, really needed not to go there. She needed to take back some control, and she couldn’t do it if she started crying.

  So no tears, she told herself.

  Take hold.

  Buck up.

  Drink water.

  She unhooked her seat belt and leaned into the backseat. She found the bottle without any problem. It was shoved in an outside pocket.

  “Lemon-flavored Perrier?” He had to be kidding. Lemon-flavored Perrier was his idea of a bottle of water?

  “Yeah. We’ll just have to make do, until we can stop.”

  “No Gatorade?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not a big sports-drink aficionado.”

  She wouldn’t admit it for the world, but she was a real connoisseur of sugared electrolytes. She knew them all by brand name and flavor. But sure, she could make do with his ritzy water.

  His gun bag was unzipped, and while she was stretched out into the backseat, she went ahead and took a quick look inside. It didn’t take more than that for her to find her pistol, for all the good it did her.

  “Are you going to give me my magazine back?” She’d watched him drop it into his pocket when he’d disarmed her. It was an eight-shot magazine, and she’d had her pistol loaded eight plus one. But she’d used the cartridge in the chamber.

  And that’s what was eating at her, that’s what was making her skin hot, not the wind, not being thirsty or dehydrated, but killing the guy with the ponytail. His partner had a name now, Schroder, and somehow that made the dead man all that much more real, made what had happened all so much worse. She kept seeing him, the impact of her bullet into center mass, the explosion of Zach’s bullet into his face.

  “No,” he said. “Not until we get everything sorted out in Denver.”

  “Sorted out?” she asked, easing herself back into the passenger seat, hating that her voice sounded so damn tremulous.

  After buckling up, she clutched the water bottle to her chest and gave the lid a twist.

  “Wh
at do you mean? What sorting out?” She really wanted to know, because she felt very shaky about all the things she didn’t have sorted out this morning, which was everything.

  “You’ll be safe in Denver, but I’m not sure how long you’ll be there. It could be we’ll have to move you someplace else.”

  That sounded ominous, and with her fingers still on the lid, she started to tremble above and beyond what the Shelby was making her do.

  “What do you mean? Move me where, and why? Why can’t I just go home?” Oh, God, was she whining? Whining was panic’s kissing cousin.

  “You’ve got a house full of cops right now, and that’s not going to change for a while, and as it stands, we don’t have a whole lot we can tell them.”

  “I meant home.” Her real home, not the house where she’d been living alone for the last year, since she and Tom had split the sheets. “To the Cross, to my dad’s ranch.”

  “Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “After you’ve been debriefed, that might work. It’s a better idea than Albuquerque. I’ll suggest it.”

  Suggest it? To who the hell whom?

  “Someone else is in charge here that I don’t know about?” If so, she wanted a name. Now. Who in the world was going to make the decision, if it wasn’t him? Not the girl in the computer. They’d just met. Was it Scorpion Fire? And what the hell kind of name was that? Or was it the “see you in six” guy? Or were those two the same person? Hell, she’d be more than happy to make the decision, if she could manage to escape without getting herself killed—and if he wouldn’t track her down.

  The thought sent another chill through her body. She had a feeling he was very good at tracking people down.

  “My boss,” he said.

  “Your government boss.” She didn’t really believe him about working for the government. Government guys didn’t drive 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustangs. They didn’t race around with guns breaking into houses in the nick of time. They didn’t kidnap women and handcuff them to cars, and they didn’t set themselves up as cocaine kingpins in El Salvador.

  That last thought gave her pause, because, actually, she could think of one kind of government employee who would set himself up as a cocaine kingpin and have information sent to someone called Scorpion Fire.