Chasing Shadows (3 page)

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, hugged her to him.  "Of course he's happy with you, KC.  You're the best thing that ever happened to him."

A glimmer of a plan began to form.  KC forced a few tears, made sure Neil saw them before swiping them away.  "If you say so.  I'd better go get him or he'll be late for dinner at your place.  You know how your dad feels about anyone being late."

At the mention of Bruno Gianotti Neil stood up, hands jammed deep into his pockets, poufing the down parka up around his ears like a turtle skedaddling into its shell.  "Yeah, you're right.  We'd better get going."

She stood beside him, looking down at the town arrayed below them.  The setting sun and surrounding mountains cast the town of Coalton, population 281, into an impenetrable shadow.  She hooked her arm through Neil's and pivoted to give him a quick kiss on the cheek.  "Thanks, Neil.  You're a sweetie." 

The blush that fired his face and neck reminded her that she needed to be careful.  This wasn't just a job; there were also innocent lives and hearts at risk.

A weight fell on KC's shoulders and it wasn't just from the leather and chains she wore.  She peered out at the cold, unfeeling town below her, a town that had harbored a killer, and she narrowed her eyes.  Gianotti and Coalton weren't going to get Jay Westin or, if she could help it, Neil—not like they had taken so many other lives.

Not while she was on the job.

CHAPTER 2

Home for the holidays. 

Chase grimaced as he pulled his Maxim binoculars from the Harley's saddlebags and focused on a grey-sided ranch house that sat below the abandoned strip mine he and Lucky had chosen for their rendezvous.  He hurled a silent curse at the quirk of fate that had brought him full circle, back home to Pennsylvania in time for Christmas.  

No, not fate.  He couldn't even blame Rose Prospero, who, despite her promise, had saddled him with a partner, a rookie at that.  

No, this mess was his own damn fault.  

He'd been working Deacon for weeks, finally convinced him Bruno Gianotti could supply all the arms and demolitions he needed for his whacked out militia group.  Only Chase never expected Deacon to set up the final exchange here in Coalton—or Bruno to schedule it for Christmas Day.

"No cops around, unless we meet at Denny's."  Bruno had laughed when Chase told him that he'd secured Deacon's trust and The Crusade's lucrative contract for more munitions than it would take to overthrow a third world nation.   Then Bruno had slapped Chase on the back.  "Good job, kid.  Glad everything's finally working out for you."

Oh, yeah.  Things were working out just dandy.  

Chase didn't mind playing his role as disgraced former Marine, not as long as it got him the information he needed to get those weapons off the streets and Bruno behind bars.  

For a short while, it had even been fun returning to the hell-raiser he'd been once upon a time.  Riding fast bikes, flirting with fast women, closing down bars and knocking heads together if anyone tried to cheat Bruno during a deal. But after six months of living with the constant tension between his shoulder blades, waiting for the bullet he'd never hear, Chase was ready for this job to be finished. 

Plus, it was damned hard to keep up the act when your kid brother looked at you like you were pond scum.   Like Jay had the one time he'd visited Chase while he was in Leavenworth.  Chase had still been in general population then, but had quickly gotten himself transferred to solitary after jumping a fellow inmate.  Solitary.  He'd thought it would be safer, easier time.  How wrong he'd been.  Forty-eight days locked up with nothing but memories.  Then emerging only to live a life of lies.

Chase inhaled deeply.  The wood smoke from the houses below conjured a vision of a Christmas long past: Dad and Jay roasting chestnuts, forgetting them as they got caught up in a John Wayne marathon on the classic movie channel, almost burning the house down.

An electric blue '91 Mustang rumbled up to the curb in front of his childhood home.  Chase straightened, instantly on alert, then relaxed.  Definitely a kid's car.  No threat there.  

The Mustang reminded him of the Chevy Malibu he and Bruno's youngest brother, Nicky, had resurrected from the scrap heap back when they were kids, convinced of their own immortality, too drunk with life to know any better.

"I can't believe you lived here," his partner, Ed "Lucky" Cavanaugh, said as they watched from the hillside across the road from Chase's old house.  Lucky shuddered.  "All this fresh air and space, it's suffocating." 

Chase ignored Lucky's grousing.  The ATF agent was a city boy, a demolitions expert with an affinity for anything explosive, things that blew up loud and bright.  Growing up in a small town like Coalton would have been a fate worse than death for Lucky.

"Bad luck the meet's here in your hometown."  Lucky zipped his leather jacket against the stiff breeze racing along the ridge top.

"Luck had nothing to do with it.  Bruno Gianotti lives here.  My best friend growing up was his youngest brother."

"He live around here, too?"

Chase shook his head, swallowed hard against the pang of regret.  Nicky and Chase were inseparable until Nicky left for college at Temple.  "He's dead."

"Oh.  Sorry."

They looked out over the neighborhood festooned with bright Christmas lights.  The Twelve Days of Christmas display in front of the Wallace's double-wide was unchanged since Chase's youth—except one of the pipers was missing.  Next door, Mr. Roldophski had decked out every surface a man on an extension ladder could reach with technicolor lights that chased each other around the yard in an endless game of tag.  

The people of Coalton might be collecting welfare, supplemented by the occasional cash job from Bruno Gianotti, but they spared neither expense nor electricity when it came to holiday cheer. Only Chase's house was barren of decor, a lone dim light visible on its front porch.  

A dark-colored cat crossed the road in front of the house below.  "I got a bad feeling about this one," Lucky said.

"So you keep saying.  I'd be frightened if you had a good feeling about something."

Lucky stroked the rabbit's foot hanging from his jacket zipper.  "I'm not joking."

Chase lowered the binoculars for a moment to stare at his partner.  Lucky was new to life undercover.  He did most of his work from the comfort of an ATF lab, analyzing and reconstructing bombs under much more controlled conditions, had only gotten pulled into this op because Deacon had been looking for a demo man to design bombs for The Crusade.  Chase had passed word to Rose Prospero who had hijacked Lucky from his fancy lab in DC and here they were.

Coalton, Pennsylvania.  A town so small Mapquest couldn't find it.  A town forgotten by everyone once the mines shut down ten years ago.  But once a coal town, always a coal town.  Every building in Coalton still cowered beneath a soot-colored haze.  

The itching between Chase's shoulder blades intensified.  Were Lucky's  opening night jitters contagious?  Or was it something more?  

Nothing Chase could do about it now.  "We have to find out what The Crusade is planning to do with those weapons."  He paused.  "And stop them."

Both men were silent.  Chase had sacrificed half a year of his life setting up Bruno and his largest customer, the paranoia-driven militia known as The Crusade. Any other man might have been excited by the idea of such a long operation ending, of the prospect of returning to his "real" life.

Too bad Chase didn't have a life to go back to.  Every time he thought about a future after the exchange tomorrow all he saw was an impenetrable blackness.  

Like maybe there wasn't gonna be any days after tomorrow for him.  Like maybe he'd been living on borrowed time ever since Afghanistan.

Chase had the distinct feeling time was running out.   Deacon was about to get his hands on some scary stuff.  Not just automatic weapons and assault rifles, but also ordinance, C-4 and the mother-lode, fourteen hand held SAMs.  

Something big was coming soon. And Chase was no closer to finding out exactly what than the day he began this charade six months ago.

It had taken Chase two months to get close to Deacon, The Crusade's leader.  Now all he had to do was help Lucky deliver the weapons to The Crusade, learn their plans, pass the word to Rose Prospero, nail Bruno, and get him and Lucky out alive again.

It was that last little detail Chase wasn't so certain about.  Lucky had every right to have a bad feeling about this.  There was a good chance neither of them would be around to see next Christmas.

Movement from the Mustang below distracted him from his morbid thoughts.  Raising the Maxims, he watched a slim woman in jeans and a black leather jacket adorned with metal rings and chains slide out of the driver's seat.  Her short, spiky hair was dark purple.  She leaned against the car, crossing her arms on the roof, her face turned to the house.  Her cropped jacket lifted to reveal a belt made of a chain.  Dangling from it at the small of her back was a pair of shiny, steel handcuffs, the wrist loops dancing across her ass in a mesmerizing arc Chase could not help but appreciate.

"Where in hell did she come from?" 

Lucky's low-pitched wolf-whistle was his only answer.

Chase kept watching, unable to pull his eyes away from the sight.  He was getting that tingle along his spine again.  Somehow it wasn't as irritating as usual, more like the slow dance of a woman's fingers instead of the skin-prickling itch he usually felt.  Heat surged below his belt as the woman swiveled her hips in time to unheard music.  The binoculars threatened to slip from his sweaty grasp.

What could you expect when the closest he'd gotten to a woman in months had been pay-for-view porn and his own right hand?  

Or rather, the closest he'd allowed a woman to get to him.  No way he was going to pay for sex, and the women who had offered were all connected to either Bruno or the Crusade. Trampling through a nest of vipers would be safer than trusting one of them.

A last, stray remnant of the setting sun glinted from the handcuffs dangling over the best ass he'd seen in a long, long time.  Aw man, this just wasn't fair, he was on the job here, couldn't be distracted by the images steamrolling through his mind.

Images like laying her spread-eagled against the hood of the Mustang, her body shivering, quivering beneath his hands as he slowly undressed her, the warmth of her soft, silky skin against his calloused fingers, the ripple of her laughter.

He sucked in his breath and forced himself to hand the binocs to Lucky.  No way he was going to let himself be distracted by some punk rocker wannabe chick with crazy purple hair and an ass so tight that he could feel how firm it would feel, filling his hands...

He turned his face into the wind, letting the frigid air beat against his eyes until they teared and his vision blurred.  All the better not to see her sashaying around the car, those handcuffs swaying in a tantalizing arc. 

Focus, Westin
.  He had Lucky to look after—and even more importantly, Jay.  

The cold air helped to quench the blaze growing within.  How long had it been since he'd held a woman in his arms without worrying that she would get him killed?

He risked another glance at the girl below.  Looking couldn't hurt.  Oh, but what he wouldn't give to be the one trapped by those cuffs, his hands pressed against her painted-on jeans.

"What do you think?" Lucky asked.  "Some rock 'n roll groupie took the wrong exit off the highway?"  

"Sure as hell isn't from around here."

"Who's the kid?"

Chase tore his gaze away from the girl's ass to see a tall boy with sandy-colored hair, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, emerge from the house.  The kid glanced up, and it was like looking in a mirror at a Chase nine years younger.  A Chase not toughened by the Corps or the stress his choice of lifestyle and career had brought.  A Chase without scars or nightmares.

"My brother.  Jay."  

Jay crossed the snow-covered yard, his footsteps leaving purple, bruised shadows that matched the girl's hair.  She strolled around the front of the car, slipped her hands into her back pockets and waited.  Jay's face lit up at the sight of her.  Chase wanted to kick himself for his previous fantasies.   

"Kid's got good taste," Lucky remarked as Jay gave the girl a quick embrace. 

 She looked up at Jay, laid a hand on his arm in a concerned fashion, and Chase felt a spasm of envy.  No woman had ever looked at him quite that way.  Even before his court martial and short stint in Leavenworth.  

Jay nodded at whatever the girl said, and she handed him the car keys.  He held her door open for her. 

"Polite, too," Lucky continued.  With a throaty growl, the Mustang's gears grinding, its rear fish-tailing in the slush, the car drove away.  "Is he gonna be a problem?" 

"No," Chase said, returning the Maxims to his saddlebag.  "I'll handle it.  You get back to Deacon, tell him the deal's on for tomorrow."  

Lucky stood still for a moment.  Chase beat him to the punch before he could express more misgivings.  

"Relax, everything's going to be over and done with by the day after Christmas."

Lucky shook his head forlornly.  "Boxing Day, the English call it.  Let's hope it's not us going home in a box."

CHAPTER 3

As Jay left his house and approached KC, he felt excited, worse than a kid waiting for Santa Claus.  A little scared, too.  

Having KC with him helped a lot.  She really cared about what happened to him, about his dreams and making them come true.  Thanks to KC, after tomorrow he'd leave this one horse town and never look back.  

No regrets, except maybe one.  He wanted to see Chase one more time.  

Part of him did, at least.  The other part wanted to punch his big brother in the face.  Knock him down and tell Chase what he really thought of him—dishonoring the memory of their parents with his stupid scheme to rip off the Marines and sell their guns.