Authors: Penny McCall
Cole blew out a breath, then said to Harmony, “Remember the day you came for me? In the SUV?”
Harmony nodded slightly. She might not be a warrior, but she had the quickest mind he’d ever known, and she had no trouble connecting her predicament with Cole’s handcuff chain around her throat. She’d been threatening to shoot him then, and he’d asked her what she’d do with two hundred pounds of deadweight slumping against her windpipe. Harmony wasn’t two hundred pounds, but she’d have surprise on her side.
Irina was no slouch in the mental department, though, her eyes narrowing on Cole’s face as she realized they were going to pull something.
It all happened at once then. Irina’s muscles bunched to make the kill, but Harmony sagged against her, dropping all her weight against Irina’s arm and dragging her off balance. At the same time, Cole ran three steps, vaulting over the small table, snagging Harmony’s holster with one hand and tearing her gun out of it with the other. He had it pointed at the side of Irina’s head before she could muscle Harmony back into a coup de grâce position.
Irina contemplated her situation for a split-second, then let Harmony go, raising both hands in surrender. Harmony slumped to the floor, but Cole kept his eyes on Irina’s, kept the gun pointed at her, watching as she backed away, toward Leo. She kicked him in the side, then again until he grunted and started to stir. She never looked away from Cole, and her eyes were dark and glittering with rage.
A voice in his head screamed at him to shoot her. In eight years of living with the worst of the worst, no one had ever looked at him like that. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He held Irina’s gaze as Leo dragged himself to all fours, shook himself like a big, clumsy bear, then climbed the rest of the way to his feet and shuffled out of the room, Irina backing out behind him. Cole crossed to the door and watched them get into a nondescript car and drive off.
He knew it wasn’t over.
All he could hope was that he and Harmony had a lot of backup or some really big guns when they found Richard. Or that they didn’t find him at all. Because if they actually had to take on Irina and Leo a second time, one on one, he didn’t think they’d walk away.
“I’ll keep an eye on who’s behind us,” Cole said. “Except . . . do you think they put a tracking device on the GT? I watched them leave, but they could have put one on before they busted into the room.”
“They didn’t think it would be necessary,” she said, her words punctuated by shallow, wheezing breaths. “They didn’t intend to leave without you, and they thought I’d be dead. As long as the police don’t stop us, we’re good.”
“You don’t sound good.”
“I’m in better shape than I should be under the circumstances.”
“You can choose to dwell on what went wrong, or you can look at what just happened as critical training. You need to learn to fight dirty when your life is on the line. Next time—”
“There won’t be a next time. Mike is right. Everybody is right. I have no business being an agent. They told me it was because I couldn’t separate my emotions from the job.”
“They had a point,” Cole said.
She snorted out a breath. It hurt like hell, but she got her point across. “They were trying to spare my feelings. They should have told me all the self-defense and fighting classes in the world weren’t going to keep me alive because I’m a pantywaist.”
“A pantywaist?”
“A weakling, a puffball, all brains and no brawn.”
“A puffball having a pity party. Where’s the optimism?”
“You were right about that. There’s no percentage in thinking positive. When reality hits you between the eyes”—and in the ribs, and the kidneys—“it’s just that much worse.”
Cole didn’t have anything to say to that. After a while, he glanced over at her, his face looking concerned in the reflected glow from the dashboard lights. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he suggested.
It was a wonderful idea, the thought of putting her seat back and letting it all go. She needed to make sense of what had happened so she could figure out what direction to take, but her thoughts kept running in circles. She tried to reach into the small space behind her seat, and only wound up gasping in pain because she’d let herself sink into the humiliation of getting soundly defeated, and she’d forgotten about her ribs.
Cole reached back and got the duffel for her, setting it carefully in her lap.
“Thanks,” she said, trying for a minute to remember why she’d wanted it in the first place before it came to her. She pulled out her cell and dialed Mike.
When he answered, she wasn’t quite sure what to say. Cole came to her rescue again, taking the phone and filling Mike in on what had just happened.
Once he’d finished there was silence for a few seconds, then he said, “They found us because they knew we were headed to LA.” Another stretch of silence, then Cole said a couple of uh-huhs and disconnected.
“Get some sleep,” he said to her. “When you wake up, we’ll be somewhere the kidnappers can’t find us.”
She reached over, ignoring the stab of pain, to grab his wrist. “I was supposed to call them tonight.”
“Fuck them,” Cole slashed out.
“Richard—”
“They already know why you’re not calling. And they won’t hurt Richard. They screwed up by coming after us.”
“They took a risk, a pretty good one actually.” She let go of his wrist and relaxed back into her seat, squirming a little until she found the most comfortable position—not pain-free but the best she could hope for under the circumstances. “In their place I’d have done the same thing.”
“And you’d have gotten the same answer.”
“Why?”
Cole slowed to take a turn, then looked over at her.
“Why did you turn them down?” Harmony pressed. She should have let it go, but she needed an answer.
“Once they were done with me, I’d be deadweight. Literally.”
He’d accused Irina of that much to her face, and it made perfect sense. Harmony still didn’t believe he was telling her the whole truth. But maybe it was just wishful thinking.
“Get some sleep,” Cole said, not a suggestion this time so much as a conversation ender. “And don’t worry about the kidnappers. We have something they want, they have something we want. It’s time we stopped letting them run the show.”
Harmony wanted to argue, but her brain had given up what little clarity it had, and it was just too much effort to worry about anything or anyone. She didn’t complain when Cole reached over and buckled her seat belt. She let the darkness steal over her and put her out of her misery.
“You missed your appointment,” he said.
“We were kind of busy. I imagine you’ve already heard about it.”
“Yes,” the head kidnapper said. “You have made a very foolish choice, Mr. Hackett.”
“Did you really expect me to take you up on your offer?”
“Yes.”
“I know you’re Russian,” Cole said, “I never thought you were stupid.”
“That will earn your friend more punishment.”
“He’s not my friend,” Cole said.
“He is a friend of Agent Swift’s, yes? I think you are reluctant to upset her.”
“Why?” Cole shot back. “Because I turned you down? I’m pretty sure she’s not planning to kill me when this is all over. Can you say the same?”
“Now who is stupid? The FBI cannot be trusted.”
“I’ve been through all this with the two Cossacks you sent after me. I’m not changing my mind.” But he wondered just how much of his history they knew. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. Unless you’re low on your quota of small talk for the day.”
“Yes, let us get down to facts, shall we? One would think you are coming after Swendahl.”
“One would be right,” Cole said. He didn’t have a devious bent, as Harmony had pointed out more than once, so he was going to handle this his way. “We’re on our way to California.”
“We are not in California.”
“Cut the bullshit, Ivan. You’re somewhere in Los Angeles.”
“My name is not Ivan.” There was a beat of silence, then, “What makes you think we are in Los Angeles?”
“Because I’m not stupid, and neither is Agent Swift.”
“You will never find us.”
“We’ll see about that,” Cole said. “We’re taking a few days to rest and recuperate, and if your comrades show up, you can call the whole thing off.”
“And Agent Swendahl will be dead.”
“I don’t care if he takes another breath. Agent Swift does, but she won’t blame me if you guys murder him. You either play this my way, or I’ll tell her he’s already dead and you can go to hell for all I care. But wherever you go, you won’t be taking any extra rubles with you unless I make it happen.”
There was another brief silence. “There is only seven million dollars in the account. We will not release the agent for this amount.”
“There’ll be enough,” Cole assured him, as Harmony would have done. “And you won’t get the password to transfer the funds unless we make the trade face-to-face. And Swendahl had better be up to walking or the deal is off.”
“If what you say is true, he will be improved.”
“Good. And if I see either one of your flunkies again, it’s over. I’ll be gone and so will the money.” Cole hung up and, as an afterthought, said, “Harm?” concerned that she’d heard his threats, including his disinterest in Richard Swendahl’s welfare.
She didn’t stir. Cole reached over and shook her gently. No response. There was a moment of blind terror where he couldn’t decide what to do, including steer the car, apparently. The GT wandered onto the potholed shoulder, jumping and bouncing. Harmony shifted and groaned, and by the time Cole brought the car back onto the road, she was back asleep again, and he was wondering where the panic had come from.
When he didn’t have an answer twenty miles later, he decided to go with “knee-jerk reaction,” with a little bit of selfishness thrown in. Harmony was high-handed, bossy, and worst of all, perky, but somewhere along the road she’d grown on him, Cole admitted. He’d hate to see her suffer some major injury or worse, not to mention she was the only person standing between him and jail—if they succeeded in getting Swendahl free. And he’d begun to believe they could pull it off. Of course, that could be because he was flying high on the fact that he’d not only kicked Leo’s ass, he’d also pulled off a Hollywood stunt that ended up with him holding a gun to Irina’s head and rescuing the damsel in distress. He intended to rub Harmony’s face in it the first chance he got—once she stopped feeling sorry for herself. And it would be kind of hard to lord it over her if she was really hurt. So thank god she wasn’t.
He halted at the driver’s-side window, stooping down to peer inside, his eyes skimming past Cole and resting for a long minute on Harmony, huddled in the passenger seat. His gaze shifted back to Cole, but he didn’t say anything, just pointed at the RV he’d exited a moment before, held up an index finger, and then walked away.
Cole waited until he’d made it back to the RV and then pulled down the road, easing the car in between two of the big vehicles where it would be hidden from the road. Before he could decide whether he’d reached safety or the Twilight Zone, the man in the tights opened Harmony’s door, gathered her in his arms with a gentleness belied by his size, and carried her around the RV. By the time Cole got out of the GT, they’d disappeared inside.
He didn’t remember getting to the door, but when he found it locked, he tried to go straight through it. Who would’ve guessed RV doors were so sturdy. All he could do was pound on it like a maniac until it opened up. And then it was filled with the big guy in the tights.
“She’s fine,” he said, coming out and shutting the door behind him without ever giving Cole an opportunity to slip by.
The tights left little doubt about his level of muscular fitness. Cole figured at best it would be an even fight—if the other guy hadn’t been a good six inches taller and looked like his idea of working out was bench-pressing wenches. Or small automobiles.
“Connor Larkin,” he said.
Cole took the hand he offered, but his eyes were on the RV’s door.
“Mike sent you, so I think we both have to agree there’s no danger here.”
“Except whatever you’re investigating,” Cole pointed out.
“Not sure what you’re talking about,” Larkin said. There was a smile on his face and a warning glint in his eyes. “A friend of mine is looking Harmony over. Annie’s not a doctor, but she does a lot of the minor health care for this bunch.”
“Bunch?”
“Renaissance reenactors. We travel from fair to fair, mostly selling handmade goods. We’re resting up here for a month or so now that the summer and fall fairs in the northern states are over, and before the winter ones start in the South.”
Cole nodded, not missing the “we” and wondering what kind of trouble a bunch of harmless kooks could get into that required an FBI investigation. But he respected the other man’s undercover status and kept the questions to himself. “Let me guess, you’re the blacksmith.”
“Armorer.”
The RV door opened and Larkin turned around, Cole joining him by the steps. A woman Cole assumed was Annie stepped out and closed the door softly behind her. She was older, with a quiet confidence that said she gladly owned every single wrinkle on her face, and a calmness of manner that put Cole instantly at ease.
“She’s pretty banged up,” Annie said to Larkin. “I’d guess she has a mild concussion and at least one injured rib. Bruised would be my assessment, but it might be cracked. Her pulse, breathing, everything is steady, so I don’t think there are any internal injuries. It looks like someone beat the stuffing out of her,” she finished, her gaze shifting to Cole for the first time, anger icing the blue of her eyes and catching Cole off guard.
Not as much as having Larkin slam him up against the side of the RV and hold him there with one hand, his feet a good twelve inches off the ground.
Cole tried to defend himself, but having the breath knocked out of him, along with a shot of pain he hadn’t expected, left him speechless. Unlike Larkin.
“Where were you when she was getting the shit kicked out of her? Or were you doing the kicking?”
Annie put a hand on Larkin’s arm and said his name, and the rage leached out of him, enough so he put Cole down.
“The boy is hurt, too,” she said quietly. “May I?” She lifted his T-shirt, sucking in a breath at the bruises blooming along his left side, from below the waistband of his jeans up to his armpit.
“I guess Leo got in a couple of good shots,” Cole said, pulling his shirt down.
“You guess?”
“Honestly, I was just . . .”
“You were trying to get to her,” Annie said softly.
Cole pulled his eyes off the RV again.
Annie patted his arm. “I’ll go inside and check on her.”
Larkin waited until she was gone. “I told them I was running from my past,” he said once the RV door shut behind Annie again. “She probably thinks you’re part of that past. They respect privacy,” he added with a measure of regret that puzzled Cole.
But he had bigger problems than an FBI agent who seemed to be having mixed feelings about his current assignment. “They wanted her dead,” he said to Larkin.
“They?”
Cole gave him the high points of the last few days, ending with the offer Irina had made in that Tulsa motel room, and the fight that had followed. “They tried to kill her,” he finished. “I couldn’t get to her right away, and she couldn’t get to her gun.”
“Jesus.” Larkin paced off a little distance, running a hand through dark, shoulder-length hair. If he’d had armor and a sword he would’ve looked like the Black Knight, which was probably why he wore his hair like that. “What was she thinking, going out on her own like this?”
“That she had to rescue this Richard guy.”
Larkin huffed out a breath, still working on temper control.
“What’s he to her?” Cole asked, not really sure he wanted a straight answer. Harmony claimed there was nothing going on between her and Richard Swendahl, but she had to have strong feelings for the guy to put her life on the line for him.
Larkin studied him for a minute, then said, “How much do you know about Harmony?”
“Nothing,” Cole said, surprised and a little embarrassed. He’d never thought to ask about her background, just labeled her FBI and spent the rest of the time thinking the world revolved around him and his troubles.
“Harmony was born and raised in California,” Larkin began.
“I know that much.”
“What you don’t know is that she’s a trust-fund baby. A trust-fund orphan more like. Her parents were kidnapped and killed when she was eight years old. She never really knew them.”
“Shit,” Cole said, his turn to take a few steps away while he tried to wrap his mind around it. “But . . . she’s so optimistic and happy.”
“Yeah, something, isn’t it? Maybe it helped that she was so young when they died. I know she misses them, or the idea of them, especially having a mother. But maybe they’re like a fantasy to her, you know? The best kind of parents, in a way, because you can make them into whatever you want them to be.”
Larkin sounded like someone who’d lived the other side of that coin. “Richard Swendahl isn’t just a friend,” he continued. “Harmony was raised by a guardian, and there was a succession of nannies when she was younger, but none of them were close to her. Richard and her father roomed together in college; Richard worked her parents’ kidnapping, and when she decided to apply for a spot at the FBI, Richard helped her get in. Away from the Bureau, she refers to him as her uncle, and I know she considers him the only family she has.”
Cole couldn’t imagine anyone not being charmed by her. But then, for a woman who had such difficulty separating her feelings from her duties, she also set boundaries that kept others at an emotional arm’s length. Maybe because she’d grown up in an environment where she kept putting herself out there, and no one had cared back. Or almost no one.
No wonder she was desperate enough to risk everything, including her own life. “She couldn’t do anything about her parents, but she can do something about Richard.”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t like him,” Cole observed. “Why not?”
“It’s not jealousy, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can’t say I didn’t take one look at her and have the obvious reaction, but once I got to know her, well, she’s like my little sister. And I’m not the only one who feels like that. She’s like a mascot at the Bureau, like a soft little clumsy puppy. Everyone who knows her loves her, and they’d all put their lives on the line to help her.”
That hadn’t been Cole’s experience. Sure there’d been lust, but it hadn’t been until he’d gotten to know her, until he could see beyond the FBI badge, that he started feeling . . . He took a deep breath and admitted something impossible, something he’d never expected to have to deal with. He was falling in love, with someone he’d nicknamed Harm. He’d gone into this knowing there was a good possibility he’d lose his life, but never his heart.
He should walk away, he told himself. If he stayed with Harmony until her mission played out, he was going to end up in some kind of confined space, and between a coffin and a jail cell, he’d prefer the latter. There was money in his account, and Harmony was safe. There wouldn’t be a better time to cut himself loose. And yet he couldn’t.
In light of his emotional concerns, he thought it best not to ask himself why.
Annie poked her head out. “She’s asking for Cole,” she said.
Larkin stopped him on the way by. “Go in and put her mind to rest, then we’re going to talk.”
“About?”
“How to handle this case. I can’t go with you, but I can give you some pointers.”
“Thanks, but I already called the kidnappers. Told them we’re taking time to recover and then we’re coming to them. We’ll make a face-to-face exchange, Swendahl for the password to the bank account.”
“They’ll kill you both.”
Cole met Connor Larkin’s eyes. “They can try.”