Slow Heat (41 page)

The moment the trigger was pulled.

A fierce shiver attacked him as he walked through an exceptionally dark patch of shade. Micah looked at the trees across the street. Every time he pulled that trigger he’d murdered someone. There was no way he could count the endless numbers of lives he’d taken. It was something King had read to him in one of those cop’s personal notes. It returned to him now. Micah and his dad and uncle had become judge, jury, and hangman each time they agreed to an assassination.

He blew out a breath, overwhelmed by his thoughts. Somehow he would move forward. And hopefully not behind bars. Even as he tried coping with the numbers of deaths tallied resulting from the pull of his finger, Maggie came to mind. Was there any way he could get her to forgive him for who he’d been? Was there even enough time left in both of their lives for him to show her he was a new man?

And he was. He felt it in his bones, in his brain, and in the incredible pressure in his heart.

Something caught Micah’s eye across the street. The trees went on forever adjacent to Old Shumba Creek, although it looked more like a mowed forest to Micah. Closer to where he had parked his bike there was playground equipment and a Frisbee golf course. But at this end it was just trees and grass. And there was someone standing next to a tree about halfway into the park from the street.

They weren’t looking in his direction. Micah recognized the stance, the fold of the arms, and the way the person continued to look over his shoulder at something on the other side of the tree. The person was holding a gun in both hands. It was held up close to his face. He leaned with his back to the tree but glanced repeatedly away from Micah, and at something beyond his tree.

Micah trotted across the road and to the nearest tree. His back was to the road, but this time he didn’t need to shield himself from the world. He wasn’t a criminal, an assassin hired to kill someone. This time he was an innocent bystander who just happened to know how a person looked when they were getting ready to shoot someone.

There were several nearby trees close enough to hopefully keep Micah from being spotted. He ran the distance from the tree, where he stood farther away from the street and closer to the man. Micah stopped at a tree large enough to shield his body and inched around it until the man was in view again.

The guy was too far away to accurately judge his age. By the way he turned his neck repeatedly, remained relaxed with his back against the tree trunk, and kept his gun pointed up with both hands holding it, Micah guessed him to be thirty or younger. Age mattered. He’d learned that from King. A younger person was more agile, more daring, and more prone to spontaneous and often stupid acts. Older people weren’t as agile so they wouldn’t put themselves in positions where they had to run long distances, climb fences, or perform acts of idiocy as King called them. But they would think things through better than a young person would and wait in a hiding place longer. They had more patience. King had made it clear, though: Age didn’t matter when it came to how well a person aimed. Micah would have to agree. He’d mastered his aim by the age of eighteen.

Another person stood by a tree not too far from where Micah had spotted the first person. Micah glanced at the ground around him. Thanks to the city’s expenditures maintaining its park, the ground wasn’t covered with lots of twigs that might make noise if he stepped on them. He made it to the next tree without either person spotting him.

That’s when he spotted the third person, a man. Two of the three people were wearing black vests … bulletproof vests. All three of them were still too far away to distinguish faces, but by the build of the second and third people they were a man and a woman. Neither of them was looking over their shoulders, or pressed to the tree the way the first person was. The man and woman were searching, looking around them cautiously. They were looking for the man with the gun.

It was clear why they couldn’t see him and Micah could. They were positioned all wrong. Then the woman held a black box up to her mouth. She looked in the direction of the large man for a moment, then slipped the black box, a walkie-talkie, against her pants. Micah watched her run to another nearby tree.

The man with the gun spotted her, too.

Micah understood what he was witnessing. The man and woman were Greg and Haley King. The third man had to be who they were hunting.

The man moved so he didn’t have his back to the tree any longer. He aimed his gun straight at Haley. Micah placed his hand on his own gun. Everything he owned was packed on the side of his bike. But his own gun, the one he had often chosen for kills in the past, was hidden under his shirt. Micah had owned many weapons, had used all different types of handguns or rifles, but this small gun, best used for closer contact when he needed to draw fast, had always been one of his favorites. It slid into his hand without thought.

Too many years of training kicked in. Micah didn’t have to plot out his next move. He didn’t need mounds of information from his father and uncle. The monster in him roared to life. That man would not kill Haley!

Micah aimed and fired, adjusting his target at the last minute. This bullet wouldn’t go through the heart.

He didn’t have a silencer this time. Micah wasn’t used to the loud bang sounding off in his face. It wasn’t the first time he’d fired a gun like this, but nonetheless it startled him, especially when he heard another shot that sounded almost as loud.

The guy had fired his gun and Micah watched in horror for a second. He knew he hadn’t missed. But had he fired too late? The man he had aimed at slumped to the ground. At the same time a large branch high in the tree above Haley came crashing to the ground.

Haley screamed and pulled her gun, looking around her frantically. King raced over to her, his agility amazing for a man so tall and muscular. Their guy lay on the ground, howling in pain. King didn’t look at his fugitive. He wrapped his arms around his wife and looked over her head directly at Micah.

God damn it! Reality came crashing in around Micah so hard and fast it almost suffocated him. What the fuck had he just done? This wasn’t how he had wanted to talk to King. All the man’s suspicions were probably just confirmed.

He looked down at his gun that he still held in his hands. His father, his uncle, even Greg King had all been right. Micah was a monster. He had been brought up and trained to do one thing, and one thing only—kill.

But he hadn’t killed. Not this time. The guy would have shot Haley. It could be her cries of pain sounding through all the trees right now. Micah had saved her from that gunshot wound, which might have been fatal. Maybe she wouldn’t have been howling in pain. She might have been silent and lifeless. King was holding her in his arms, standing, instead of slumped over her lifeless corpse.

There was no guarantee anyone else would see it that way. King probably saw, or he would hear soon, how tough a shot Micah had just pulled off. Micah had only seen half of the man’s body when he’d fired. The man was turning toward the other side of the tree when Micah took his shot. Micah had aimed at the lower side of the man’s torso. He’d intentionally shot to keep the man alive.

His head still spun with the inevitable repercussions of his instinctive action. Damn it. He wouldn’t go to prison.

Micah hurried to the edge of Old Shumba Creek. His first thought was to toss his gun down there and run. But the gun would be found. It would be too simple to match his gun to the bullet that was in the man screaming in pain across the street. Micah had never left his gun near a kill before. All of Micah’s weapons stayed with him. When he did a kill, though, Micah took the time to survey his surroundings and always had a foolproof escape route devised before he fired his gun.

So what would his foolproof escape route be here? If he were stuck being this monster, even if he had fired to save Haley’s life, then he needed to use his training to get out of this predicament.

Micah hurried to the edge of the old creek. No, climbing back down would be a bad move. He’d be easily spotted from where he stood. Micah could see quite a distance going in both directions. That left one option. Micah picked up his pace and continued walking toward his bike, which would also mean passing the black Avalanches.

King had spotted him. But would he call Micah in or console his wife and stay with his fugitive until an ambulance showed up? More than likely either he or Haley had already called in a man down. Micah wasn’t sure how far away the nearest first-response vehicles were, but he wouldn’t take any chances. Micah picked up his pace and stared at his bike. He had to get out of there before authorities showed up.

Someone took off from the trucks and raced through the trees across the street. It was Ben Mercy. He ran at full speed, not looking in Micah’s direction. A car drove up from behind and Micah leaped to the side of the road. His heart damn near lodged in his throat. A mother with children drove past him in a minivan not once looking at him. No one was paying any attention to him. Maybe he was in the clear. His bike was just up ahead.

“Jones!”

Micah was almost to his bike.

“Jones! Wait!”

King was yelling for him. He wasn’t yelling Mulligan, but Jones. After all his accurate accusations, had King and his wife decided to let it drop when Micah left their house? They had fired him because they believed he was Mulligan. Micah had never confirmed it, but King’s evidence was damning. Had the Kings decided without his confession that maybe they were wrong?

“Jones!” King yelled louder. “Quit walking away from me!”

Micah stopped and turned around. The giant of a man moved at a fast-paced walk toward Micah.

“You didn’t kill him,” King said in a voice so soft it was completely opposite his harsh warning to quit walking just a moment before.

Greg King stopped when he was an arm’s length from Micah. He stared him straight in the face. “Thank you for saving my wife’s life,” he said, and sounded sincere.

Micah shrugged. He had to be more uncomfortable receiving the gratitude than King had been giving it.

“I had the shot,” he said nonchalantly, as if that would explain his reason for being there at the same time the Kings were chasing down a fugitive. Micah added for good measure, having every desire in the world to delay the inevitable conversation that would follow, “And KFA doesn’t bring them in dead. They bring them in alive so they can be tried and convicted in a courtroom where so much of the taxpayers’ money is spent on a daily basis.” Micah repeated what King had told him shortly after he’d started working there.

“Yup,” Greg said nodding, then started walking, this time much slower than either of them had been before.

Micah fell into stride alongside him. When King didn’t say anything right off, Micah understood the man was giving him the chance to come clean as to why he was at Old Shumba Creek. There were several ways he could play this, but only one that mattered to him. Micah had to come clean. His days of lying and killing were over.

“I didn’t kill him on purpose.”

“I know,” King said immediately. He didn’t quit walking when they came up alongside the rear of the first black Avalanche. “He’ll be hospitalized but he might live.”

“He had a gun pointed at Haley,” Micah pointed out. “From where I was I saw him with his back against the tree. Then I saw both of you. When Haley ran to the next tree, he turned and aimed. I acted on instinct.”

“You saved her life.”

Micah didn’t comment. He hadn’t planned on gloating over the shot and wouldn’t start doing so now. They reached Micah’s bike and both men stopped. King faced him, his expression grave.

“Why are you here?”

“I want my job back.” Micah looked at the older man.

King’s face was weathered, and wrinkles were at the edges of both of his eyes. He stared Micah in the eye with his bright blue eyes that weren’t laced with anger and damnation as they’d been the last time Micah had talked to him.

“Why would that be a good idea?”

It wasn’t the response Micah had expected. He’d thought King might say no. Micah had a rebuttal prepared for that. King could have thrown in his accusations that Micah was a Mulligan and an assassin, who would inevitably bring trouble to their business. Micah would deny it. But King didn’t tell him no and he didn’t bring up his damning proof.

“Because I want to be a bounty hunter.” Micah straightened and stared him in the eye. “I think I would be a really good one if you give me the chance to learn.”

“You want to be a bounty hunter?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing else?”

“No,” Micah told him, and meant it. There was no turning back. “If you turn me down I’ll search for another way to be in this line of work. I’m good at it, and…” He faltered for the first time. Although he looked away, Micah was acutely aware of King looking at him. Micah knew the answer. He looked at Greg King. “It’s rewarding doing the right thing,” he said. He had to clear his throat when his voice cracked.

“Yes, it is, son,” King said quietly. “You’ve got a lot to learn. Any training you’ve had before won’t apply to this line of work.”

“Then I’d like to learn from the best.”

King grunted but didn’t smile. “Think you can be the best at everything you do?”

Micah stared at the man. King hadn’t decided to disregard the evidence he’d found simply because Micah hadn’t confirmed it. The sun suddenly seemed to be burning his back through his shirt. A layer of sweat broke out over his flesh. He stared at King and understood. King had never doubted who Micah was. He’d gathered the information to prove to Micah that he knew.

“I think learning from you would help me in many ways.”

“How is that?”

Micah looked away from him. He circled his bike and gripped his handlebar. Suddenly it wasn’t hard to say what he’d always known had to be said. “You’ve always worked to uphold the law. Your family is solid in your community. I’m sure you have enemies, but you know who they are. And I’m willing to bet that you have never intentionally wronged anyone.”