Chapter Twenty-Four

Saturday, April 12, 12:15 p.m.

Dozer glanced at Carmen, wondering why she wasn’t contributing to the conversation.

She was asleep, her head canted toward the window.

“Is she supposed to do that?” he asked DS. “Just drop off?”

“I’ve seen a lot of people hurt in one way or another over the years do the same. Once they run out of energy, they’re out.”

“Scary as fuck,” Dozer muttered.

“Get used to it,” DS said, his tone sharp. “Or do you want to switch jobs?”

“No.” He sucked in a breath and tried for a calmer tone. “No, I’ll take care of her.”

“Are you sure she wants you to?” DS asked, his voice quiet for the first time in…ever. “She’s acting funny when you’re around, and not in a fun way.”

“She’s sick. How is she supposed to act? Like everything is peachy keen?”

“Boy,” DS said, his voice sharp again. “I’m not liking your attitude.”

Dozer squeezed the steering wheel. “I’m trying to help. I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t do anything to further jeopardize her health. My number-one goal is to get her back on her feet and working as soon as she’s able. She’s got a thousand reasons to be unhappy. My being an asshole is only one of them.”

“Okay, okay. I see your point. Just…” DS paused. “Try not to antagonize her.”

The vehicle in front of him braked suddenly, and Dozer had to stomp on his own brakes to stop from running into the back of the black minivan.

What the hell?

The quick stop was hard enough to be grateful for seatbelts, but John still thrust an arm out to keep Carmen’s body from being thrown around too much.

She jerked awake with a gasp.

The back door of the van lifted, revealing a man with a large handgun pointed at them.

Shit.

“Gun,” DS shouted as Dozer put the SUV in reverse and stomped on the gas. Going backward, they sped away.

The gunman fired three times, one after the other, the recoil forcing his hands up and spoiling his aim every time.

“He’s firing a Magnum Research BFR,” DS said absently.

“A what?” Carmen asked. She sounded a little fuzzy, but Dozer couldn’t take his eyes off the guy in the van to check on her. With vehicles coming toward them from behind and the van backing toward them from the front, they were running out of exits.

“A Big Frame Revolver,” DS answered. “It could punch a hole the size of my fist through a person, but I’m not sure we need to worry too much. He can barely keep it up.”

Carmen snickered sleepily. “That’s what she said.”

What kind of idiot fired a weapon at an actual target that poorly? If you were going to shoot someone on purpose, wouldn’t you at least practice with your weapon a few times so you looked halfway competent?

Dozer stopped their SUV, then jumped the median in the middle of the road and put a heavy foot on the gas pedal.

In the rearview mirror, he could see the van following.

“How many in the van?” Dozer asked, pushing the SUV to go faster.

“A driver and a shooter,” DS said. “The shooter is one of the two fake agents who tried to grab our girl here. I bet the other one is driving.”

Dozer had to take a corner too fast, and Carmen was thrust into the door. She groaned.

“Carmen?” He glanced at her.

She was holding onto the seatbelt with one hand and had the other over her wound. “Ow.”

“You okay?” he asked.

She huffed. “Not really. I’m on some pretty good painkillers, but I wasn’t expecting gunfire or a car chase.”

“She’s right,” DS said. “We’ve got to end this before we crash or get shot.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Dozer said. “I’m not armed. Are you, DS?”

“Nope. Find a cop?”

“There’s got to be a speed trap somewhere close, right?”

A second or two later, the sound of sirens became audible.

Dozer grinned. They were going to make it.

One of the SUV tires exploded.

The vehicle swerved wildly, but he managed to get it under control by slowing down. Unfortunately, that allowed the minivan to catch up to them.

It pulled up on their left side. The front passenger window was rolled down, and that BFR was pointed at them…him again.

Shit. The cops weren’t going to reach them soon enough.

“Hang on,” he said to Carmen.

He jerked the steering wheel to the left, ramming the SUV into the minivan and spoiling the asshole’s shot. Instead of hitting Dozer or the SUV, the weapon shot through the minivan’s roof.

Dozer stepped on the brakes and let the other vehicle continue on.

The shot must have scared the shit out of the driver, because they swerved in out-of-control arcs, then hit something on the side of the road.

A fire hydrant.

The van knocked it into the air, sending a geyser of water twenty or thirty feet up and itself on a diagonal roll. A body flew from the vehicle, landing hard some distance away.

The van finally came to rest, steam rising from the engine, looking like a partially crushed soda can.

No one said anything as the sirens got closer.

Finally, DS cleared his throat. “Well, I guess a fire hydrant will do.”

Something moved inside the van. A person climbed out through the driver’s window, looked around, then limped toward the nearest building and disappeared from sight.

Injured, the driver wasn’t going to get very far.

He turned to Carmen. “You okay?”

She gave him the most exhausted smile he’d ever seen on anyone. “Are we done drag racing?”

“God, I hope so.”

Someone tapped on his window, and Dozer lowered the glass and said to the cop, “This is going to take a few minutes to explain, officer.”

It took about three hours before the police and paramedics allowed them to leave in a second rented SUV. Carmen passed out before they’d gone ten yards, and Dozer wasn’t going to be far behind her when they finally stopped moving. DS was the only one who still had any energy.

Dozer dropped the older man off at the departure level of the airport, then drove Carmen and himself to a hotel not far away. He woke her, got her out of the SUV, and wrapped an arm around her so she could walk slowly inside.

Their room had two queen beds in it. He helped her take off her shoes and tucked her into bed, then went outside to grab their luggage. Such as it was.

Sunday, April 13, 8:00 a.m.

The next morning, Dozer slowly slid away from Carmen and went into the bathroom to shower. Time to get this day started and his lady a hearty breakfast.

He was drying off when something went thump against the bathroom door.

Carmen?

He yanked the door open to find her standing a few feet away, the side-table clock in her hands. At his feet, a young man sprawled on the floor, one hand to his head, the other reaching toward a handgun laying a few feet away.

“What the fuck?” He stepped on the back of the idiot on the floor, pushing him down and knocking the wind out of him, and grabbed the gun. “Did you let him in here?”

Her expression, which had been neutral, became one of shock and irritation. “Yes, of course I let him in, right after he so politely announced he was with housekeeping,” she said with more sarcasm than he’d heard in a while. “I also invited him to join us for breakfast after he shot both of us.” She snorted. “He must have had a room key, because I woke up to see him examining the bathroom door. He looked at me, then turned toward the bathroom, obviously deciding you were the bigger threat. So.” She shrugged. “I hit him over the head with the clock.”

“He could have shot you,” Dozer said, staggered that she would take such a risk.

“He would have shot you,” she retorted. “You’re welcome.”

The guy on the floor moaned and tried to get up again.

Dozer put his foot on the guy’s back and stepped on him again.

“Who should I call?” she asked. “The police, Homeland, or the FBI?”

“Call Rawley and Ketner. They’re going to love this. Since that guy got away yesterday, giving them a live terrorist they can question will make their day.”

Carmen shook her head and made the call.

Dozer grabbed the idiot by one arm, pulled him to his feet, then sat him in the room’s lone chair in front of the desk.

The kid, who had some blood on his neck from the blow Carmen had dealt him, looked at him with hate. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Carmen walked over.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“Fuck you, lady.”

“You had to get our room number and a key to get in here from someone,” Dozer said.

The kid lifted his chin. “I’ll never tell.”

Dozer sighed. “I’ve heard a lot of people say that, but none of them ever keeps it a secret long. Not when we can take you to some black-ops site and interrogate you with, shall we say…questionable tactics.”

“You’ll never break me,” the idiot said.

“Everyone has their limits,” Dozer said. “It’s just a matter of finding them.”

Carmen sat on her bed, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at their would-be assassin. Dozer handed her the gun long enough to get dressed, then he took it back while she went into the bathroom to get her own clothes on.

By the time Rawley and Ketner arrived, Dozer was starving for breakfast, and he’d bet Carmen was, too.

She let the agents in.

They crossed the room to stare at the idiot.

“What did he do?” Rawley asked.

“Got a room key from somewhere and walked in like it was his,” Carmen said. “When he decided killing John was more urgent than killing me, I brained him with the clock.”

Rawley blinked. “Is that where the blood is from? A head wound?”

“It’s superficial,” she assured him. “It’s hardly bleeding at all now.”

Rawley’s smile came back. “You with the FAFO, kid?” he asked.

The idiot sneered at them. “I’m dedicated to Free America From Oppression.”

Ketner’s face was carved of ice, but beneath it, a volcano was building to explode.

“Cool.” Rawley’s smile was cold. “That means I can arrest you without charges and hold you indefinitely in the deepest, darkest hole I can find.” He smacked his hands together, glanced at Ketner, and rubbed them with way too much glee.

“That’s not legal. You can’t do that,” the kid said.

Dozer ignored him and spoke to Rawley. “That’s only if he’s lucky. Everyone else connected to these fuckers has been assassinated by the FAFO.” He turned to look at the kid. “As soon as you’re no longer useful, they put a bullet between your eyes.”

“Or in your chest,” Rawley said.

“That’s if they don’t blow you up,” Carmen added.

Rawley pulled out a pair of handcuffs and put them on their young assassin. He looked at Dozer and Carmen. “The FAFO knows you’re here.”

Dozer ran a hand down his face. “Yeah, I wonder how that happened. I thought we plugged the leak.”

Neither man looked happy.

Ketner’s face grew ruddy. “We’ll find it.”

Rawley glanced at the FBI agent, concern lowering his eyebrows, but he nodded in agreement.

Dozer met Carmen’s gaze. “We’re going to have to move.”

“Where?” she asked. “I’m supposed to be taking it easy.”

Dozer glanced at the kid. “We’ll figure something out.”

Rawley hauled the little shit out of the room. Ketner followed them without saying a word. Dozer would have to talk to Rawley about it. Ketner looked like he was one small step from losing his shit.

Dozer closed and locked the door. “Why does it feel like those fuckers are everywhere?”

“Probably because they keep showing up where they shouldn’t be.” Carmen stood and walked to her side of the bed. She sat, turned, and slid under the covers. “That’s enough excitement for me. I’m exhausted.”

“We have to leave,” he reminded her. Something about her wasn’t right.

“No. Two people who look enough like us to fool everyone watching us need to leave, since you announced our departure with the idiot in the room. Once they think we’re gone, this will be the safest place to hide.”

The thump echoed through his brain, and the sight of her standing over the idiot, the clock in her hands, sent a spear of alarm through him. If he’d opened the door, the kid would have shot him, and his chance for a real life with the woman he loved would have been over.

Finished.

Dead.

Not only had she handled it, she’d done it with nothing more than what she could get her hands on while recovering from a bullet wound and measles.

“Seeing you standing there with the clock in your hands is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Her eyes popped open. “Seriously?”

He smiled. “When an intelligent, beautiful woman smacks down an asshole? Oh yeah.”

“You’ve lost your mind.”

“Yeah. For you.”

Her eyes opened again. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

Words weren’t the only way to get a message across. He approached the bed and knelt on one knee right in front of her.

She reared back and barked, “No.”

“No?” he asked.

She looked at him with round eyes and a slack jaw for a full second before wiping the mortified surprise off her face.

“I haven’t asked any questions,” he said, then paused. “Yet.”

She tried to look angry, pressing her lips together, but it didn’t quite work. “Don’t you dare. You…you…” She seemed to run out of air.

“Idiot? Moron? Douche?”

She glared at him for real this time. “You are not a douche.”

He laughed; he couldn’t help it. “It’s okay for me to be an idiot or a moron, though?”

She kept her laser-hot gaze on his face and finally said, “Sometimes you are an idiot or a moron.”

“Sometimes? Too much of the time.” He’d hurt her with his asinine behavior. More than once. “I’m a goddamned Neanderthal where you’re concerned. The second you’re in any danger”—he snapped his fingers—“I lose my ability to make rational decisions. All I want to do is wrap you up in Bubble Wrap and put you somewhere safe.”

“You can’t—”

“I know,” he said softly. “It’s finally sunk in. You can take care of yourself. Hell, you took care of this last guy while injured and sick.” He pulled the box out of his pocket, opened it, and showed it to her.

A brilliant diamond perched on a white gold band.

“I have loved you since the day we first met. I was a fool to let you walk away from me, but I’ve grown up. A bit. I’m not that same fool anymore.”

She stared at the ring with bright, wet eyes.

“I know you’re mad at me. That’s okay. I can take it. What I need to know is if you trust me. If you don’t…I’ll put this ring back in my pocket and work harder to earn your trust again.”

Her gaze left the ring and focused on his face. She still didn’t say anything. Her silence sliced thin little slivers off of him.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked softly.

Tears spilled over and down her cheeks. “You mean it, don’t you?” she whispered. Hope added a depth to her voice that had been missing for so long he’d almost forgotten what it sounded like.

“Yes.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You didn’t get mad at me for hitting that guy. You were irritated he got in, but…” She smiled, and it was like the first glimpse of sun after a month of nothing but rain. “You…trusted me.”

“Yes.”

With a shaking hand, she reached out and plucked the ring out of the box. The stone seemed bigger now that she held it with her smaller fingers. She slipped it onto her ring finger. It was a little loose.

She looked up at him and said the only word he wanted to hear. “Yes.”

The next moment, he had her in his arms, her lips on his, her scent in his nose, her taste on his tongue.

He never wanted to stop kissing her.

Now he didn’t have to.