Carter: The Sinner Saints #1 (3 page)

“The same Harvey Price whose car exploded on the freeway this afternoon?”

“I was on the phone with him when it happened.”

Some of the hardness seeped out of Carter’s expression. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Ally said, and got back to rummaging. “I can’t help him now, but for his sake, I can keep looking. I can try to make it so the poor man didn’t die for nothing.”

“Did he say anything about what kind of information he was going to hand over?”

“No,” Ally said, shaking her head. “Just that it was huge. He said that once the story broke, Fuller would be going to jail for a very long time.”

To her surprise, Carter pulled a few files his way and started flipping through them.

“What are you doing?” Ally stared at him with wide eyes. “I told you, you and your whole team are in danger. You need to round them all up, and get out of here fast before Fuller tries to pin anything on you.”

Carter didn’t look up, but cocked a single brow. “And I told you, I’m no good at doing what I’m told.”

Ally threw her hands up. What the hell? He was an adult. He could make his own decisions. And if they ended up being idiotic, that was none of her business. After all, it wasn’t like she was capable of physically pushing him out of the room.

“Your funeral,” she muttered under her breath.

“Did Harvey say anything strange before the bomb went off?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard her…or didn’t care. “Anything that could have been a clue?”

Ally thought back. There were the usual warnings not to trust anyone, the pleading that no one could know, that his life was in danger even talking to her. And…

“There was one weird thing,” she said. “When I asked him if the information was in a safe place, he said it was, that he’d hidden it well.”

“That doesn’t sound too strange.”

“It was the way he said it.” Ally shook her head as she tried to recall Harvey’s exact words. “He said, ‘People see only what’s in front of them. They don’t look low enough.’
Low enough
. Not
deep
. That’s an awkward phrase.”

“Yeah, that’s weird,” Carter agreed.

“Maybe, I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. Harvey would never put the evidence on a shelf for just anyone to find.” Ally stepped back and bent at the waist to look under the desk. “Maybe he hid it somewhere down—”

The second her fingers hit the ground there was a loud crack, then the ringing of a thousand pieces of shattered glass falling to the floor. Instinctually, Ally lifted her head to see what the hell was going on. And immediately, she wished she hadn’t.

The large window that ran along the length of Harvey’s interior wall was gone. The long vertical blinds that had covered them swung violently to and fro, far enough that Ally was able to catch a glimpse of a few people scrambling in the hallway. All of them dressed in black. All of them armed.

She was out of time.

“Shi—” She didn’t even have time to get the full curse out before a long, solid mass slammed into her back, knocking her down onto the carpet.

Carter. He’d tackled her and now he was holding her down.

Well, not holding her down so much as just lying on top of her. The man happened to be so big that the effect was the same.

“What are you doing?” she asked, struggling to draw breath under his heavy frame.

“Trying to keep you alive,” he said.

Ally tried to swallow down the lump that was suddenly blocking her throat. She’d come into this party with her eyes wide open tonight, aware of the risks. But it turned out that there was a hell of a difference between agreeing with something intellectually and dodging actual bullets.

Ally twisted around as best she could underneath Carter’s massive frame. “So if they’re trying to kill me, why aren’t they shooting anymore?”

Carter rolled to the side. He kept his arm wrapped around her and dragged her deeper into the shelter of the hollow beneath the solid oak desk.

“From the sound of your story, they need to make this look like a case of one of my guys getting a little trigger happy.” He sat up as best he could in the confined space and reached inside. This time he didn’t retrieve a business card, but a matte black handgun. Ally leaned back at the sight of the deadly weapon, pressing against the side of the desk.

“That means two or three bullets at most, all tightly grouped,” he continued explaining. “The last thing they want is to spray the room with bullets. Fire fights are notoriously hard to explain away.”

It sounded like he was speaking from experience. “So what do we do?”

“We give them exactly what they’re trying to avoid.” Before she could ask exactly what that entailed, he tapped something in his right ear—a nearly invisible piece of plastic that she’d somehow missed before—and brought his wrist near his mouth. “Rhys. Jake. We have a situation on the second floor. Shots fired. Suspect Fuller’s security detail. I need cover.”

He rattled off the words quickly, efficiently. This obviously wasn’t this guy’s first rodeo.

“Your guys from downstairs?” she asked, when he lowered his arm.

Carter nodded.

“You sure you want to get them involved in this?” Ally asked.

He shot her a wicked smile.

“They’d be pissed if I left them out.” He put a hand on the bend of her knee. “Don’t worry, this is the sort of thing we’re trained for.”

She guessed that was supposed to reassure her. The truth was, Ally didn’t think she could handle any more blood on her hands. Not his. Not his friends’. Not even the guys’ out in the hall.

Apparently, Fuller’s men didn’t suffer from her guilty conscience. A second later, Ally jolted at the chime of more glass fragments falling to the floor, followed by the sound of the blinds rustling. They were going for the inside door handle. They were coming in.

Which meant she and Carter had to find a way out. All other thoughts fled Ally’s head.

She sucked in a lungful of air and held it, somehow afraid that her breath would be the sound that gave them away.

Carter gripped his gun with both hands. He leaned forward on his haunches. He waited until they heard the unmistakable creak of the door opening. Then he sprung up from under the desk. Ally covered her ears as three deafening bangs in a row echoed off the walls. Then, just as fast, Carter was back down by her side.

She stared at him with wide eyes. She tried to talk but her brain hadn’t recovered enough from the shock to form words. “D-did you k-k—”

“Kill them?” Carter shook his head once. “Just gave them some incentive to stay outside.”

“We need to find a way out of here.” Ally’s chest suddenly felt tight. She was certain her throat was closing up. She tried to breathe but her lungs seized, only allowing her tiny, quick gulps of air.

She was pretty sure Carter said something but she didn’t catch it. She was too busy hyperventilating and scanning the room for any possible escape route. It was useless. There was just the one door and the bank of shattered windows that led to the hallway. Even if they managed to get past Fuller’s thugs, there would only be more downstairs waiting for them. No matter what they did, they were doomed.

Carter wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck, and tilted her head back, forcing her eyes to meet his.

“I know you’re scared, but I need you to calm down and focus. Everything is going to be fine,” he said. His voice seemed unusually calm given their dire circumstances. “I have a plan. But we have to wait for backup. Okay?”

“But—”

He pulled her face an inch closer. His eye contact intensified, and Ally managed to pull in a long, deep breath.

“Okay?” he repeated.

“O-okay.”

Carter looked into her eyes for a second longer before nodding and letting her go. “It won’t be long.”

A second later, she heard the far away sound of a door crashing against a wall. There was some shouting and then a few rounds of gunfire. Ally flinched with every shot.

“That’s our cue,” Carter said, jumping out from under the shelter of the desk. He stayed low as he moved across the room toward the window.

Ally pivoted to follow him, but as she turned her head a glint of reflected light caught her eye. It was coming right from where Carter had been, at the very bottom of the desk near the leg. She had to lay flat on the ground to get a better look at it.

There was something wedged in the gap by the desk leg.

Nobody looks low enough.

“Harvey, you crafty bastard,” Ally said.

She scraped at the object with her thumb. It didn’t budge. Whatever it was, it was wedged in there good.

“Come on,” Carter shouted from across the office.

Ally was aware that the chaos was still swirling around her—the occasional pop of gunfire, the yelling, the urgent need to escape. But she was pretty sure she’d found what she’d come for. The reason a man had died, and Ally would be damned if she was going to leave this office without it.

She clawed at the metal sliver. Slowly, it started to come loose.

“Now!” Carter called out behind her.

“One sec,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

Ally pinched the hidden device between two fingers, tight enough to crack a nail clear down to the bed, and yanked as hard as she could. She got a little extra help as Carter’s hand wrapped around her ankle and he dragged her out from under Harvey’s desk.

The object popped free, and Ally wrapped her fingers around it tight.

“We’re all out of seconds,” Carter said, lifting her to her feet.

“Fortunately, I don’t need any more.” She opened her fingers and looked down at her hand. A small silver flash drive lay in the center of her palm.

“Is that what you came for?” he asked.

A smile spread across Ally’s face. “I think so.”

“Good. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

Carter pivoted and picked up Harvey’s desk chair. He went over to the window that already had a single round bullet hole in the center, and hit it hard. A spider web of cracks spread out across the glass. He leaned back and smacked it again. The window splintered, raining glass down to the sidewalk below.

Ally poked her head out the window. Her knees went weak at just how far away the sidewalk was.

“That’s your plan?” She pulled her head back in and stared at him like he was a madman. “Break our legs on the fall? It has to be thirty feet to the street.”

“We’re on the second floor,” he said. “It’s more like twelve. And I’m not planning on jumping.”

“Then what are you planning?”

He gave a pointed look at the light post. “Sliding.”

Ally sucked in a deep breath as she stared at the black square metal post that stood about five feet away from the remains of the window. It wasn’t her first choice, but she had to admit it was a hell of a lot better than jumping or going out the way she came in.

One minute of suck and you’re out of this mess
. Oh, but what a sucky minute it was going to be. Still, there was nothing to do but be done with it.

Ally gathered her long skirt and tucked the hem into her neckline, exposing her thighs. She had a feeling she was going to need as much grip on that post as she could get.

Carter held her hand as she stepped onto the window ledge. His hands circled her waist, steadying her as she leaned out to grasp the pole. Ally drew in a steadying breath as she wrapped one hand, then the other, around the pole. Her body was committed now, but her brain still needed a little push.

She got it a half second later when she heard another couple of shots pinging off the hallway walls behind her. She held tight and propelled her legs forward, wrapping them around the awkwardly shaped pole. She didn’t slide as much as she inched her way down, clinging for dear life with every move. She muttered a grateful prayer the moment her feet hit solid earth.

Two seconds later, Carter was by her side. Obviously, he didn’t have the same trouble with heights. She was beginning to think that he didn’t have trouble with anything.

***

“Do you have a car?” Carter didn’t wait for his mystery woman to answer before linking his arm with hers and steering her toward the parking lot.

There usually weren’t too many people out on the streets of downtown Sacramento this far past five o’clock, but Carter still spied a couple of stragglers staring at them as they hurried down the sidewalk and away from the pile of broken glass. It didn’t matter that they’d had a small audience for their descent from the second story. Carter had a feeling that someone had already called the police. Which meant he had only minutes to get this woman to safety.

“Yeah,” she said, as they rounded the corner of the office building and stepped into the parking lot. She pointed him in the direction of a battered white Toyota Camry. She went over to the driver’s side door and pulled the key out of her running shoe.

“You shouldn’t go home tonight,” he said.