Jeannette had thought she was scared before. But her previous fear had nothing on the current terror. With the appearance of the man on the sidewalk, the world didn’t just slow; it stopped. Her feet refused to move. Her mind refused to work. And her eyes refused to pull away from the wicked-looking, silver weapon. Her whole being seemed to be trained on the gun. Then a thought burst through.
This is not how I’m going to die.
It was like a balloon popping. The world jolted, then started up again. From behind her the thump of feet on concrete slowed, then halted, and heavy breaths filled the air. Jeannette hazarded a quick look over her shoulder. The new arrival was young—younger than both the gunman, Warren and herself, she thought—and unlike his counterpart, appeared to be unarmed. Not that it mattered much. One gun was enough of a threat all on its own.
“We good?” the second man asked between breaths.
“Good enough,” replied the older man. “Stay behind them in case they try to bolt again. Fists first, brains second. Got it?”
“Got it,” his accomplice agreed.
The gunman shifted his attention to Warren and Jeannette. “And you two are going to do exactly as I tell you to. Understood?”
Jeannette felt Warren’s hand tense, and he adjusted his stance a little—just enough to angle himself between her and the stranger. A human shield. If she’d had any doubt about his intentions, it disappeared with his next statement.
“Let her go,” he said, “And I give you my word that I’ll do whatever you want.”
The other man lifted up both of his thick, gray eyebrows—so high that they practically reached his hairline. “I don’t think you’re exactly in a position to give out orders.”
“It wasn’t an order. It was a promise. She has nothing to do with this.”
“What I’m more interested in is what you have to do with it.”
“Let her go, and I’ll tell you.”
The gray-haired man sighed. “Look. The only reason either of you is still alive is because I want to know who told you what was going on. If I have a rat, I want to know about it. But if she’s truly uninvolved...”
At the trailed-off, unspoken threat, Warren dropped her hand and moved so that his whole body was in front of her. But the armed man appeared relatively unperturbed by the new position. If anything, his response bordered on bored.
“Ah,” he said. “This is going to be one of those situations, then? That’s fine. I’ll just shoot her first and save myself the rest of the hassle.”
Jeannette could sense that Warren was about to do something insane. Maybe jump at the thug in a wild attempt to save her. And she had a feeling that the only way to stop him was to do something equally crazy. Her brain churned. A slippery, half-formed idea floated to the surface. It was better than nothing, so she seized it.
“I’ll take you to him!” she gasped.
Warren snapped a look her way. “What?”
She ignored him in favor of addressing the gunman, belatedly recalling that she’d heard the younger man call him by name. “It’s Jimmy, right?”
The man’s craggy brow knit into an irritated zigzag. “Yes. Which means you have me at a slight disadvantage. So...you are?”
Jeannette started to lie, then realized her name tag would betray her the second he spied it, and she opted for the truth. “I’m Jeannie. And I know who told him.” She tipped her head toward Warren, but she didn’t look his way—she already knew he was teeming with consternation. “I know who sent him.”
Jimmy’s expression didn’t change, but his tone was condescending and disbelieving at the same time. “Well, Jeannie. You say you know who told him?”
“Don’t do this,” Warren interjected, his voice midway between a growl and a plea.
She ignored him a second time, but her heart raced hard as she met the gunman’s eyes and replied with an outright lie. “I don’t just say it. I mean it.”
“Where?”
“What?”
“Who told him what? And who sent him where?”
Jeannette drew in a breath. But she no sooner thought that she’d made a mistake than she realized there was only one place Warren Wright would’ve been at this time of night, in those clothes, just a few minutes away from her coffee shop.
She lifted her chin and answered in a firm voice. “To the construction site.”
Jimmy’s lips pursed, and he clicked his teeth thoughtfully. “How do you see this going, Jeannie? Do you think I’m going to take your word for it, give you the lead, then let my guard down? And you think that when that happens, you’ll get a sudden chance to overtake me?”
Jeannette swallowed, but she said nothing. Her plan hadn’t had much substance, but that was definitely the gist of it.
“Yeah...thought so,” added the older man after another moment of silence. “So let me set you straight on a few things, and then I’ll tell you what’s actually going to happen. First, you should know I’ve been in this business for forty years. That’s probably four times as long as most people could even expect to live, doing what I do. That’s also four decades that I’ve had to fine-tune my ability to not do stupid things. Things like letting my guard down. Or begging pretty waitresses to tell me things while they try to bargain for their friends’ lives. But you know what I will do? I’ll—”
He stopped abruptly as something silver flew at him, smacking him hard enough in the temple that he cried out and stumbled back. He didn’t drop the gun, but he did lift the hand that held it up to his head. And Jeannette barely had time to register the finer details of what had just happened—like the fact that the metallic flash was a heavy-looking set of keys, or that Warren was the source—before a fast-paced struggle ensued.
Warren turned around and lunged at the man behind them. He drew back his fist and sent it straight into the younger guy’s chin. The blow was as solid as it was unexpected, and the unarmed thug immediately hit the ground. Warren spun again, this time back to face Jimmy, who was still standing there with a dazed expression. As Jeannette watched—slightly stunned herself—Warren sprang forward, fist readied once more. But the gunman had recovered enough to realize that his chin was about to meet with a punch, and he sidestepped just in time. He also started to lift his weapon.
The motion—and what it would mean if Jimmy was able to finish his maneuver—hit Jeannette like a smack, propelling her to act. Drawing on memories of her long-gone days of high school track and field, she bent her knees and pushed off. She was smaller than the gunman and not as fast as she remembered being, but the circumstances were on her side. Jimmy’s attention was on Warren. He was probably still off-balance, too. But Jeannette didn’t actually care about the why behind it anyway; all that mattered was that her leap worked. Her shoulder slammed into the man’s stomach. His gun-wielding hand flung wildly to the side. For the briefest moment, Jeannette worried that the weapon might accidentally discharge. But the concern was unfounded. Jimmy fell backward, his rear end smacking hard against the concrete as he landed.
Jeannette flung a look in Warren’s direction. He met her eyes. And with silent, mutual understanding, they turned and fled.
As they wove through the streets—which were deserted in the non-business hours—Warren’s teeth felt like they were permanently gritted together. The presence of the gun shouldn’t have thrown him off so badly, but that didn’t change the fact that it had. Staring down its barrel for even a moment had smashed him over the head with his own mortality. Worse than that, though, it had really driven home the fact that he’d put Jeannie in direct danger. And this time, he couldn’t stuff aside the guilt at having dragged her into this. Whatever “this” was.
He clamped his teeth together even harder. His jaw ached from holding it that way. His fist hurt, too, from delivering the punch. Warren couldn’t remember the last time he’d hit someone. Fifth grade, maybe? The time that Marty Johnson-Biggs went on a bit of a playground rampage, knocking three kids off the slide before coming at Warren himself. The blow had been instinctual. A drawback and a slam that had immediately incapacitated the bigger boy.
Sure as hell don’t remember it hurting this much, he thought with a grimace as his aching knuckles brushed unpleasantly against a mailbox.
They pushed on, but darting through the streets of the commercial neighborhood was harder than it might’ve looked. Before long, the exertion started to show. Warren’s lungs burned, and he could hear Jeannie’s increasingly labored breathing, as well. He suspected that it didn’t help that they had no specific destination in mind—a free-for-all run did nothing for longer-term safety. After another minute of directionless escape, he pulled Jeannie into a deep doorway. While he put his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath, she sagged against the brick wall. Her eyes closed, and her chest heaved with her heavy inhales and exhales. Guilt rushed through Warren again, overriding his own exhaustion. He opened his mouth to say again that he was sorry, but she shook her head before he could speak.
“I know...that look,” she said between her gulps for air. “Apologize...later. Right now...we need...a plan.”
Warren had to acknowledge that she was 100 percent right. Stowing the need to ask for forgiveness, he sucked another of his own hard breaths, then tipped his head around the doorframe to steal a look around. The unfamiliar street was empty, the row of shops dark. No sign of trouble loomed in the vicinity. But there were also no immediately visible routes to guaranteed safety.
“Is it clear?” Jeannie asked after a second.
“It’s clear,” Warren replied as he turned to face her again. “I’m just not sure where we are. Or how the hell we’re going to get out of here.”
“Let me have a look.”
She stepped forward, and a vision of her leaning out at the exact moment the two thugs turned a corner filled Warren’s head. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.
“Not necessary,” he said.
“I know the neighborhood,” she pointed out. “I’ve been working in the area for three years. I might see something that you don’t.”
He shook his head. “I think throwing yourself at an armed man once in a night is enough.”
He meant the remark to come across lightly, but the look on her face told him she hadn’t taken it that way.
“What was your plan back there?” she replied, her tone set right between accusatory and expectant.
“I was—” He snapped his mouth shut, because she was right. His own haphazard solution to escaping had been pretty damn close to the one that she’d enacted. Only his idea had probably been even worse, because it involved a crazier amount of self-sacrifice and a lot of shouting for Jeannie to run for her life. Which—based on the current displeased set of her otherwise pretty mouth—Warren was sure she wouldn’t have appreciated.
“Well?” she prodded.
“That’s different,” he muttered.
Her chin lifted, and now a spark of near irritation came into her gaze. “Why? Because you’re a man?”
He shook his head. “No. Not because I’m a man. Because this whole situation is my damn fault. I sure as hell don’t want you to get hurt—or worse—because I was stupid enough to try and hide out in More Coffee instead of working a little harder to get to the cops.”
Her expression softened. “Well. That’s good. Because I wouldn’t want to think that you were going to pass off ridiculous machismo as chivalry.”
In spite of everything, his mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“Then consider this a chance to redeem yourself.”
“Redeem myself by letting you take another risk?” he replied wryly.
“No...” she said. “You can redeem yourself by letting me have my way.”
“That isn’t exactly how I imagine my apology starting out.”
“Have you got a better idea? We’re probably already running out of time.”
He ran a frustrated hand over his chin. No way did he want her getting caught by Jimmy and his younger buddy. The problem was, she was right again. No other viable solution presented itself, and time most definitely wasn’t on their side.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “Take the stupid look. But if one of those guys chooses this same moment to turn up out there, you can one hundred percent count on me to be excessively, bordering-on-machismo chivalrous.”
Her hand came out to squeeze his wrist. Somehow, her thumb managed to land right over top of a vein, and Warren felt his pulse bump against her touch. Her eyes dropped to the point of contact. He followed her gaze, and an unusual and unexpected—and ill-timed—surge of desire hit him. When Jeannie’s eyes came up again, a jolt of connection made him suck in a breath. It hit him quite forcefully that his two-year, from-afar admiration of her might actually have become something more if he was a different kind of man.
What if you weren’t so determined to stay closed off? said a wistful voice in his head. Would it be so bad to let someone in? Of course, a more reasonable voice offered an answer right away. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad at one point, but now sure as hell isn’t the time for what-ifs.
As soon as Warren had the thought, the spell seemed to break. Jeannie gave her head a small shake, then dropped her hand and moved wordlessly toward the doorframe. Her shift in position forced his attention back to where it belonged.
As Jeannie inched forward, he held his breath and worked to keep his teeth from grinding together again. Her glance took maybe five seconds, but he was still unreasonably glad when she ducked into the hidden space once more. He was even more pleased when he saw the hint of hope in her eyes.
“I think I found a temporary solution,” she said right away. “Look with me.”
She grabbed his elbow and pulled him to the opening.
“There!” she said. “See that?”
She pointed up the street, and Warren frowned. Her finger seemed to be aimed at what looked like an ice cream truck. It was a full block up, and parked on the other side of the street.
He slid his gaze back and forth, sure she had to be talking about something else. Except there was nothing in sight. Not where she was pointing, anyway. The white, cube-shaped truck sat alone, right in front of a small playground.
Had she seriously pegged that particular vehicle as a hiding place? Warren didn’t get a chance to ask. Somewhere in the distance, something crashed. The noise was clearly out of place in the quiet night.
“Do you think that’s them?” Jeannie whispered.
“I’m not willing to take the chance that it isn’t,” Warren replied grimly. “C’mon.”
He grabbed her hand, and Jeannie didn’t protest the contact or his quick tug. Together, they stepped back onto the street and hurried up the block at a pace just shy of a jog. Neither spoke. Their movements were nearly silent, and they stayed as close as they could to the buildings on their side of the road. Even so, it felt as though their attackers were gaining ground. There was another bang of some kind—maybe the slam of a trash bin lid—and then came the dull thud of footfalls.
Almost there.
Warren lengthened his stride. Jeannie kept up. But when they reached the end of the road, a new problem arose. They paused and exchanged a glance of understanding. The second they left the sidewalk, they’d be fully exposed. It would only be for a few seconds, but still. Warren had no problem admitting that the idea made every one of his nerves stand on end. The last thing they needed to do was to become easy targets.
You mean easier targets? asked his subconscious.
“Shut up,” he muttered.
Jeannie gave him a startled look. “What?”
He shook his head. “Not you. Just—never mind. Now or never, right?”
“Right.” Her eyes sought the ice cream truck. “Should we do a countdown or just go for it?”
He answered the question with a yank on her hand, and they were off again.
If he’d had time, Warren would’ve cringed at the way their shoes tapped against the ground. The smack was nearly an echo, and he more than half expected to hear a yell from Jimmy and his little pal. Thankfully, though, no alert was sounded. They made it to the ice cream truck, and suddenly it was Jeannie who was doing the tugging.
She led him to the rear of the vehicle, where she dropped his hand and pulled out a small set of keys—which were attached by a stretchy cord to a loop on her apron—then selected one. Warren’s surprise compounded when she stuck the key into the lock on the back door.
He frowned as she turned the key. “What are you—”
The door swung open, cutting him off.
Jeannette cast a quick glance out toward the street, then climbed into the truck and poked her head out at him. “Don’t just stand there. Come on.”
Gritting his teeth yet again, Warren followed her lead, pulling himself up to join her. He caught a quick glimpse of their strange new surroundings. A tiny bench, an enormous freezer and shelves of dry goods took up most of the space, leaving just enough room for the two of them to stand and still have some breathing room. The area was shut off from the front of the truck by a folding panel. That was all he could inventory before Jeannie slid past him, grabbed the door handle and shut them in. The closure left them with only the smallest bit of a light—a glow that filtered in from a streetlamp outside through the border of the otherwise sealed sales window.
Jeannie clicked the interior lock, then moved to the bench, where she sat down and whispered, “We should be safe here for a while, right?”
Warren flicked a look toward the door and answered in an equally low voice. “I don’t think their first conclusion will be that we’d wind up inside an ice cream truck.”
“Good,” she replied.
She let out a long exhale, and he waited for her to say something else. Several moments passed, though, and she said nothing. Warren stared at her expectantly, but all she did was close her eyes and slow her breathing. Even in the dim light, he could see that her lips were pressed together in a painful way, and her hands were squeezed tightly on the fabric of her skirt.
Warren knew what she was feeling. He felt it, too. Apprehension. A thickening dread that was made all the more cloying by the fact that the air smelled faintly sweet and faintly stale at the same time. The already limited amount of room seemed more and more miniscule.
Warren would’ve liked to be moving. He would’ve paced if the space had allowed it, but all he could do was shift from foot to foot while he listened for the probable approach of Jimmy and his shovel-wielding sidekick. The seconds ticked into a minute. Then into two.
Finally, Warren couldn’t stand it any longer, and he spoke up.
“So...you want to explain anything about this?” he asked.
“Really?” She opened her eyes and fixed them on him in the dark. “You think you’re the one that deserves an explanation in the current moment?”
Her tone held no acrimony, but her words made him wince anyway. He did owe her an explanation. A big one.
And that apology he put off a few minutes ago, too, he reminded himself.
“I don’t even know what actually happened,” he told her. “I left my phone at work, and when I went back to get it, those two guys were digging up my damn site.”
“Digging it up?” she replied. “But...why?”
Warren hesitated as Jimmy’s words sprang to mind. Now dig, before you wind up in one of these holes, just like she did. There was little room for interpretation of what the threat meant. It made his palms dampen with sweat. Especially when his thoughts went to the necklace that he still had in his pocket. His throat itched at the older memories attached to the jewelry. How he’d opened the clasp and slid it around a slim, tanned neck. The rush of happiness that followed as the receiver squealed in delight. The unexpected dip in mood and the heated argument. And of course, the flash of red and blue lights and the knock on his door all those days later.
“Warren?” Jeannie prodded, concern etched into her voice.
Shaking off the recollections, he let out a little cough and decided to go for vagueness until he was unequivocally sure. “They were looking for something, I think. Not a hundred percent on what. Nothing good. But I do know that they aren’t too happy about being caught in the act.”
She sighed. “You know...you were never this much trouble when I was pouring your coffee.”
Warren started to chuckle. But the laugh cut off as the ice cream truck’s door handle rattled.