The address Loughlin had given me turned out to be a small storefront coffee shop. I told Joe it was where I was meeting the guy who had Billy’s present, hoping he wouldn’t notice I’d failed to mention it earlier. He seemed to take it in his stride. Still, he was alert, gun in hand as we approached the building.
The door was locked, but it only took a second for a man wearing a cap with the store logo on it to open it for us, stepping back after he did. Joe went in ahead of me. His instincts were good, but not quite fast enough—he only had his gun halfway lifted when the wires hit his face, instantly locking his muscles.
Loughlin came at him, knife extended.
“Stop. If you kill him, I swear to God I won’t cooperate, no matter what.”
I must have sounded sincere, because Loughlin pulled up short. He stared at my face for a few seconds, flipped the knife over, and clubbed Joe on the back of his head, hard.
The Taser stopped sending its jolts of electricity. Joe stopped twitching and fell to the ground, unconscious.
“If you want to keep him alive, pull him to the back room.” Loughlin sounded like he didn’t care one way or the other. “But you better hope there’s something to tie him and gag him with back there, or he’s dead. Remember, you still have a lot of other lives to consider.”
I glared at him. I couldn’t believe I had found him attractive the first time I met him. His ugly soul seemed to shine through his eyes now. “Yeah, and you have Bratva and your life to consider. Don’t push me too far.”
“Do it. Now.”
I picked up Joe’s feet and started dragging. Between his wool coat and the freshly waxed floors, it wasn’t as hard as it could have been, even though he was kind of a big guy. Or maybe all my workouts had paid off in stronger muscles.
The shelves didn’t have any handy rope, but they did have aprons. I cut the ties off several of them with some blunt-tipped scissors I found, wound them together, and used them to bind Joe’s hands and feet. I made sure I did an excellent job of it, because Loughlin was watching me closely and I didn’t want to give him any reason to reconsider leaving Joe alive. Finally, I cut a thick strip from one of the aprons and worked it into Joe’s mouth, knotting it snugly in the back. He wouldn’t be going anywhere when he woke up.
“Enough. We’re leaving.” He’d exchanged his knife for a small handgun while I was working on Joe. Guess he still didn’t trust me.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I tried to hit “ignore” without being noticed, not wanting to tip Loughlin off to its presence, but apparently he had excellent hearing.
“Answer it. Put it on speaker phone. Let’s see if you’ve done anything stupid.”
It was Billy. My heart thumping, I swiped the screen. “You’re on speaker.”
“Hi, cuz. In a bit of pickle, are you? Where are you, the back room?” His voice was purposefully light, but I could hear the underlying tension.
Loughlin lunged for me, realizing at the same time I did that Billy must be close. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut, you little bitch!”
“Yeah. He has a gun,” I yelled over him, fast. Loughlin slapped the phone out of my hand and pulled me in front of him.
“Duck, Ciel. Now,” Billy said from behind the door. His voice was followed instantly by the door crashing open. I tried to bend over, but Loughlin had one arm around my neck and his gun to my head. So I stomped on his foot, and elbowed his gut with as much force as I could muster.
The crack of a gunshot was the last thing I heard before everything went black.
* * *
A sharp sting on my cheek woke me. Who the hell was slapping me?
“Ciel. Cuz. Are you okay?” Billy’s face hovered over mine, paler than I’d seen it since the day of the pregnancy test in Houston.
I pushed myself up. “I’m fine.” Loughlin lay on the floor beside me, his head bent at an odd angle.
Billy nodded once, and then was beside Joe, checking his pulse, pulling off his gag, cutting the binding at his wrists and ankles. Joe didn’t show any signs of coming around. After a second, Billy came back to me and pulled me to my feet. “Come on. We have to go.”
“Wait—are you okay? I heard a shot.”
“So did I. Scared the shit out of me. Fortunately, you threw his aim off. I couldn’t risk shooting him—thought I might hit you by mistake, the way you were twisting in the breeze—so I had to resort to the old tried-and-true neck twist. Luckily, I’m a fast son of a bitch when I’m scared shitless.” He paused briefly to give me a hard kiss. It tasted like relief. “We’re going to have to work on that passing out thing of yours, though.”
“Hey, his elbow was clamped around my neck! He cut off my air.”
“I’m just glad he didn’t cut it off permanently. Now, come on.” He pulled me toward the door he’d just kicked down.
I tugged him to a stop. “We can’t leave Joe here—he could be seriously hurt. Loughlin hit him really hard.”
“You can call for an ambulance from the car. Right now we have to go. Mark needs backup.”
Shit. “The drone. Can you stop it?”
“If we can bring it down before somebody sends the signal to the blasting cap.”
We were there in under three minutes, according to the phone I kept holding after I called 911, but it felt so much longer. On the way over, Billy told me nobody except Mark and his agents knew anything about the drone. There was no point in panicking the family when we couldn’t risk evacuating the house for fear it would cause whoever was controlling the drone for Loughlin to set it off before everyone was out.
“You and I are going to walk in like everything is normal. Then you’re going to stay downstairs with everyone while I slip up to the roof.”
“Mark’s on the roof?”
“Yeah. The rest of the team are watching from street level, in case of a low approach. If there is a drone, we’ll shoot it out of the sky.”
I sucked in a breath. “But won’t that set it off?”
“Not if we can disrupt the signal to the blasting cap. C-4 is actually quite stable—it takes a special detonator to make it blow. If there was time to get some jamming equipment here, we could block the signal, and wouldn’t have to worry about it at all. What we have to do now is get it to the ground and hope we can remove the blasting cap before the operator gives the cell phone it’s probably connected to a call.”
“And if you can’t do it in time?”
His grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Then there’ll be a hell of a bang. And not the fun kind.”
Candy was in front of her car, gun in hand, scanning the sky. Seeing me, she must have wondered where Joe was, but saved her questions. The other agents were doing the same, each of them covering a different direction. We didn’t pause to talk.
Inside, everyone was still in the living room, laughing while Molly taught Laura the “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” version of her favorite carol. If tradition held, my brothers would start in next with “We Three Kings of Orient Are … trying to smoke a rubber cigar…”
This might be the last Christmas we ever spend here together. A lump lodged in my throat at the thought.
I’d never be able go in there and keep my shit together. Since we hadn’t been spotted, I followed Billy up the stairs instead. He gave me a look over his shoulder. I set my face and followed. When we were far enough up the stairs not to be heard, I said, “You don’t want them to see me and ask questions right now. Trust me on that.”
He studied my face, briefly. What he saw must have convinced him, because he didn’t argue. “Fine. You can help watch for the drone. The more eyes, the better.” He pulled a pistol out of his coat pocket, a nine millimeter, and put it in my hand. “It’ll be a big enough target. Shoot the propellers.”
I took it, hiding my reluctance. I don’t like guns, but I knew my aim was decent. “What about you?” I said.
He winked and showed me his dimples. “Don’t worry. I always carry a spare.”
My room, now with Thomas and Laura’s suitcases in it, was at the back of the house. Billy and I used to sneak up to the roof through my window to spy on James when we were kids. Of course, all James was doing was staring at the stars. It was his astronomy period.
The trellis didn’t seem quite as sturdy as it had when we were kids, or else I was more aware of the danger now that I was an adult and no longer immortal in my own eyes. The roof was pitched, but maneuverable. Still, it was prudent to keep your center of gravity low. Mark knelt, hips on heels, my grandfather’s shotgun in hand as he scanned the skies. The relief on his face when he saw me was gratifying. I tried to ignore the flash of guilt I felt at seeing it.
“Does that thing work?” I said. As far as I knew, no one had fired it since Granddad had died.
“Billy said it did the last time he and James took it to the range. No reason it shouldn’t. So, did you get him?”
Billy nodded, his eyes expressing grim satisfaction. “He’s no longer a problem. Any sign of the drone?”
“Nope. No idea which way it’s coming. Glad you’re here—I’m starting to get a crick in my neck from all the twisting. Take a section of sky and watch it. Tell me if you see it.”
Billy pointed me one direction; he took another. Between the three of us, we had the sky covered. While we were waiting, I asked Billy where he’d gone after he got my present from the car.
“Got a text from a number I didn’t recognize telling me I’d find something interesting waiting for me out back, but it would only be there if I came alone. I think it must have been Loughlin making sure I wasn’t with you when he called you.”
After a minute or so more of strained staring, up and down and side to side within my third of the sky, I said, “Maybe he was bluffing. Or maybe he called it off when he saw I came—shit! There!”
I pointed the nose of my gun above the trees and houses on the next block over. It was as big as I remembered, but somehow it gave off a more sinister vibe. In Dr. Phil’s backyard, operated by a boyishly exuberant Misha, it had seemed like a giant plaything. Now it looked like a freaking flying robot spider. I shuddered, fighting the urge to take a dive off the roof. I hate spiders.
“Down, Howdy. Now!”
I dropped my hips to my heels, still pointing the pistol. Mark and Billy eased their way closer to me, both with guns trained on the creepy-looking thing. It whined like a giant mosquito, getting louder the closer it got. It would be over us in a matter of seconds if we missed—
Two loud cracks sounded. I joined in as soon as I heard them, straining to keep my hands steady. Shots came so fast I couldn’t keep count. Within seconds half of robo-spider’s arms, with their whirling helicopter blades, were gone. It fell out of the air, hitting the pond in front of the lovingly constructed grotto in my parents’ backyard. The two agents who were back there got the hell out, fast.
“Is that it?” I said, lowering my gun to my side. “Are we safe? Do we need to get the blasting cap out?” I edged closer to the top of the trellis. “I can do it. I can get down there faster than—”
Billy and Mark appeared on either side of me, each taking hold of one of my arms, holding me back. “Geez, guys, it’s not like I was going to jump. I’m going to use the trell—”
The explosion shook the house beneath us. A cloud of dust and debris rose high into the air, sending bits and pieces of Dad’s grotto—and his poor koi—raining down on us.
Well, crap. But at least the drone hadn’t been close enough to collapse the house, thank God.
I sat back on my haunches. “Sushi, anyone?”