a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure) (8 page)

His hand closed tightly on my shoulder. "We need to leave, Everly." His voice was brittle, his touch insistent as he wedged his left hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet. His right hand stayed loose, next to his body.
 

Pierce’s tension slammed through my pain. "Trouble?" I asked.

"Feels wrong."

"Nothing could be more wrong than my grandmother’s grave. I need to be here with her. She’s safe now. We’re safe. No one can hurt—"

Pierce squeezed my shoulder—hard enough to get my attention. "You’re the only living link. Ripe for potential kidnapping."
 

"Kidnapping?" The word echoed in my mind.

Pierce wrapped his arm around my shoulders, dragging me toward the Boxster at a jog.
 

My neck prickled.
 

Rain splashed against my face, blurring my vision.
 

He pushed me forward, tossed me the car keys. "Start the car."
 

My mind was sluggish, grieving. "You want me to drive?"
 

"No," he snapped, pulling a gun from an ankle holster and palming it a single fluid motion.
 

I ducked into the passenger side of the Boxster, slid the key into the ignition, and revved the engine. The tiny convertible didn’t offer much protection from prying eyes, and every hair on my body stood at attention. I bent to slip the cookbook into my handbag and a bullet whizzed over my head, splintering the front window.

Bloody, bloody hell.
 

Pierce returned fire, the sound sending a rush of adrenaline through my veins, and filling my ears with bone-shattering vibrations. He paused for a few seconds in front of Grandma’s house, then made a run for the Boxster, jumped into the driver’s seat, and shoved me onto the floor.
 

He took off at warp speed. What the car lacked in protection, it would have made up for in power, except that we were on a dirt road full of ruts.

"You okay?" Pierce yelled between returning fire and dodging holes in the road.

"Fine," I yelled back, frantically searching under the seat for another weapon. Pierce usually surrounded himself with an arsenal, so I wasn't surprised when, within seconds, my fingers bumped into hard plastic. I grabbed the weapon, blanked out the images flashing on my internal video, and hoisted myself onto the seat.

"Get the hell down. This is not fine." His protective instinct was running hot.

I hunkered down, peeked over the top of the seat, and fired a round at the vehicle chasing us.
 

"It's fine. Really it is." Not that I enjoyed being a target, but it sure as all hell beat cowering on the floor. Besides,
fine
was an excellent word choice. It covered everything from being ecstatically happy to the murky dregs of gloom, doom, despair and possible gunshot wounds.
 

 
The ride began to smooth out, telling me that we'd be in a populated area soon. Our pursuers must have recognized the change in terrain, because they'd slowed, dropping out of firing range.
 

I sucked in a much-needed breath, and then Pierce handed me his weapon, blasting me with images of previous targets. I pushed them through my internal screening process so fast they became an indistinguishable blur—the only way to survive eavesdropping on Pierce’s spy life and still keep my sanity intact.

I quickly tucked my weapon under the seat as well, but I'd already processed those images, faded them into the black hole where I stored violence.
 

"You okay?" He mouthed the words, knowing neither of us would be able to hear a thing until the ringing in our ears stopped.

His ironic smile had loosed some of the grief knotting my chest. "I'm fine."

I fastened my seatbelt, and closed my eyes until the whisk of tires on pavement told me we were nearing the protective chaos of civilization.

Pierce stepped on the gas, then eyed me with a sideways glance. "What the hell was that about?"
 

"I don't like being a target, and I don't want to talk about it." The dregs of my adrenaline rush were apparently making me cranky.

I’d shot someone in self-defense not too long ago, wounded her, and had been spending time at the firing range ever since. Annie, Mitch, and Adam saw to it. But guns still put my muscles into spasm. Thank Pele my reflexes had taken over.
 

"You can keep the Kimber." Pierce was referring to the weapon I'd been using. "Empty the chamber and stow it in your handbag."

The car smelled damp and heavy with the scent of sweat and fear. The sweat probably belonged to Pierce. The fear was all mine. My wet clothes were cold, itchy against my skin. I wanted to pull them off and stand under a hot shower until I cried out the grief of losing my grandmother before I'd met her.

I sucked in another deep breath, fighting the aftermath of my adrenaline rush, and then I took care of the weapon, tucking it away where I could easily reach it. And then I leaned against the headrest, and a sob escaped from the back of my throat. It hurt. Living after you've lost someone hurt.

Pierce shoved a bottle of water in my hands. "Can’t let you fall apart yet."

I gulped half the liquid, swallowing my grief along with the tepid water. "Who tried to kill me?" My words left the bleeding edge of fear behind.

"Not a professional. Or he was going for a scare, not a kill."

"Not going for a kill?" I pointed a trembling finger at the hole in the window. "That’s where my head was."
 

He grinned, all Irish. "Good thing you bent over."
 

I pulled the Kimber from my handbag, clicked the cartridge back into place, and wedged the weapon into the space between the seat and the car door. It would take too long to get it out of my handbag. Not that I would shoot Pierce. Really, I wouldn’t.

The rain had stopped as abruptly as it started, leaving too much silence clinging to the splashes of pink, orange and gold that decorated the early evening sky. Pierce clicked on the headlights, and my eyes drifted closed, shutting out the grief.

"They weren’t trying to kill you, Everly." His voice sounded magical, the brogue sweet against my ears. "They want you, not a dead body. But it doesn’t matter. You’re not available."

His reassurance washed over me, comforting, and I slept.

Low voices penetrated the sleep-fog that had taken over my mind, jerking me awake. The Boxster was parked. A guardhouse sat off to my right, manned by a guy in light colored camouflage. Military? I swiveled around, trying to figure out where Pierce had taken us.
 

Without turning his attention from the guard, he shoved his hand in my direction. A hand that held
my
driver’s license. I snatched it from his grasp, and tucked it back in my handbag, checking to be sure the cookbook was still there. It was. So was the Kimber. I must have been really out of it for Pierce to invade my handbag, steal my license, and rescue the gun from where I'd stuffed it, all without waking me.

 
I opened my mouth, questions ready to tumble out, but Pierce held up his hand. A clear indication I was supposed to sit still and be quiet.
 

Like that was gonna happen. I leaned forward to get a look at uniform guy. My damp clothes stuck to me, and the itching was quickly reaching unbearable status.
 

Pierce signed a fistful of papers, handed them back to the guard, and then drove away, sliding a glance in my direction. "Hickam."
 

My mind wrapped around the word. I’d noticed signs along the freeway and put it together with the Air Force Base located on Oahu. "You’re military?" I asked. It was worth a try. Neither Annie nor Pierce ever mentioned exactly who they worked for, and the omission had created a hell of a hot button for my curiosity.
 

"I’m a lot of things." He flashed that naughty grin at me.
 

There was something eerie about the air base—the long empty road in front of us, too many look-alike creamy beige buildings—except for the hangars. They looked exactly like what they were. It wasn’t in my plans to ever be on a military base. Never had any reason whatsoever to expose my fingers to anything the military was into, and now didn’t seem like a good time to change that plan.

Pierce pulled to a stop in front of a building that had a bunch of dents in the walls. "What’s with the carved up building?"

"Bullet holes."
 

"Recent?"
 

"Nope. World War II."
 

"You’d think they’d have fixed them by now."
 

He shook his head. More than once. "A reminder. They’re intentional," he explained, turning off the engine.
 

"And we’re here, why?"

"Vehicle."
 

I deciphered that to mean he was going to exchange the speed of the Boxster for the stability of whatever the military drove. "You’re gonna bargain a Boxster with a bullet hole through the windshield for a Jeep?"
 

"A truck. Air Force doesn’t use Jeeps."
 

I rubbed my fingers over my forehead to ease the nagging sensation that was minutes away from becoming a migraine. "We could have gotten one of those at Hertz. Why here?"
 

He sent me a hard-eyed glare. "Stay." He jabbed a finger toward the console. "Do not move."
 

"Got it," I said, looking for something to get into.
 

Pierce wrapped his hand around my chin, turned my face toward him, and brushed his lips over mine, teasing, testing. The man had a way with a kiss, and when his tongue found mine, I forgot all about being on a military base.

My mistake.
 

He handcuffed me to the steering wheel.
 

Eight

I yanked on the handcuff
. "You’re
not
gonna leave me like this."
 

He flashed me a grin. "Be right back."
 

"Damn it, Pierce. Where would I go?" I gestured around the area with my free hand.

"You, Niele, could end up anywhere." He headed for one of the cream-colored buildings.

"It’s ‘Eleu Niele," I yelled after him. "I’m more than just nosey, you know."
 

Wait. How did he know my Hawaiian name? My driver’s license. The letter from Grandma to my mom had been in my wallet. And he had the nerve to call me nosey.

I struggled to snag my handbag off the backseat so I could dig out my lock picks. No way was I going to sit here shackled to the steering wheel—too embarrassing.

A white truck pulled in next to the Boxster, skidding to a stop. The driver hopped out and disappeared into the same building that had swallowed Pierce.

My nemesis jogged out a few minutes later, and in one slick move unlocked the cuffs, grabbed my handbag, and tossed it in the truck.

"Let’s move," he said, holding the car door open while I climbed out.

I hiked myself into the truck. Actually, it was more like a tumble, and not a graceful one at that. It took me forever to get the seatbelt fastened, because a couple fighter planes came screaming in for a landing, and they demanded my complete attention.

"Amazing," I whispered.
 

"Yeah, they are. Almost makes me wish I’d gone in for fighter training." A wisp of sadness clung to Pierce’s words.

It wasn't something I’d heard before, and my curiosity clicked into question mode, but I smothered it. Now wasn’t the time to probe.

I’d barely fastened my seatbelt before we'd passed the guardhouse and were heading for the H1 expressway.
 

Pierce hit the gas.
 

"You in a hurry?" I asked.

"The military and I aren’t friendly." There it was again. Sadness.

"Friendly enough to give you a truck."
 

"Not exactly." It was a clipped, end-of-discussion statement. I’d definitely be pursuing this when we weren’t running from bad guys.
 

When we got back to
the Ma Kai, I stripped, tossed my dress in the trash, and took a long, hot shower. I sobbed through my grief under the pounding spray, and some of the tightness had eased from my muscles by the time my skin turned wrinkly.
 

Hunger gnawed at my stomach, but exhaustion won, and I shrugged into the thick Ma Kai bathrobe, flopped on the bed, and dropped into a deep sleep.
 

It didn’t last long.
 

A hand clamped over my mouth, and my eyes popped open. Too dark to see. I grabbed the hand, tried to pry it off me, scraping and clawing at the skin with my fingernails. My heart skipped, then began to settle into a normal rhythm as the images trailed through my fingers and flashed on my internal monitor. Annie.