Cold Pursuit (Cold Justice) (Volume 2) (29 page)

He raised his pistol and inched inside. Although the area was dark as charcoal, there was a feeling of open space he hadn’t expected. He closed the door silently behind him and risked using his flashlight. Massive beams stretched across a room that was full of lumber and kayaks and life jackets and outdoor furniture. The place was immaculate and smelled like freshly cut wood.

Behind the stairs was a washer and the furnace. Stowing his appreciation, he steeled himself for the task ahead. Time to end this before the boy reduced their efforts to nothing but the wishful thinking of mad men.

The fuse box was on the wall. He pulled night vision goggles out of one of his pockets and slipped them over his head. Then he flipped the breaker.

***

Jed lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling. Vivi lay beside him, eyes closed, breath slowing and becoming more regular.

What the hell had he just done?
Twice
?

Getting involved with a witness was absolutely a no-no. Sure, it had been blow-his-head-off spectacular, but it was still a massive error in judgment. Taking it this far was a sackable offense. Didn’t matter that she’d initiated it. The fact that she’d initiated it had shocked the bejesus out of him because he knew she didn’t treat sex lightly, no matter what she said.

And he was too busy to get involved with a woman like Vivi who was a single mom for God’s sake—it wasn’t just her happiness he was screwing around with, it was her son’s too, and no way did he want to see either of them hurt. He hunted serial killers for a living. It was not the sort of nine-to-five job women wanted in the men they dated. It was not the sort of realities mothers wanted in their homes.

And what the fuck?—now he was thinking about a
relationship
?

They were stuck in the middle of nowhere hiding out from terrorists, and he was mentally picturing flowers on the table and a woman greeting him at the door after a long day at work?

Idiot.

Juxtaposed against his stark, stale, barren life, the idea held a weird sort of mental appeal. To have something like his parents had. To find the sort of relationship that lasted beyond a few weeks of dinners and dates and mediocre sex. What he and Mia might have had if her life hadn’t been cut so brutally short. Something built on a solid foundation of trust and support and slowly, over time, growing into that bone-deep love that seemed so prevalent in movies, but so rare in real life. He hadn’t thought he’d ever feel this way again, but it was happening, and he had to figure out a way to make it stop before they all got hurt.

Bobby’s unsmiling face came into his head and he groaned.

No one lived forever…

He did not need another complication, even though he was attracted to every aspect of Vivi, from her brains, to her body, to her love and devotion to her son. Why anyone wouldn’t love the boy was beyond him. Michael was a great kid. His father was an asshole. How the guy let someone as incredible as her slip through his fingers was beyond Jed. If he ever put a wedding ring on a woman, he’d move Heaven and Earth to keep her happy and keep her his.

But that wasn’t what the future held for him.

He loved his job—assuming he still had a job when this was all over—he made a difference and got killers off the street. And she lived in
Fargo
. Christ. He gritted his teeth.

He should be thinking about terrorists. He should be downstairs photographing and emailing those images. As soon as Frazer knew she and Michael were alive, they’d be sent into protective custody. The fact he didn’t want that was already affecting the case.

Suddenly the bathroom light went out. Shit. The fuse must have blown again.

He eased away from Vivi’s seductive heat, already missing it and knowing he couldn’t afford to make this particular mistake again. Forget being worried
she
might get emotionally attached. He was neck-deep in fucking emotional attachment. He was supposed to be making the world safe for them and others, not chilling out, having sex with a beautiful woman. He groped around on the floor and found his jeans, pulled them on. He needed to fix the breaker and start sending the images to Frazer so they could see if any of the people Michael had drawn were involved in the attack.

He pulled on his shirt, then heard a noise and froze.
That
was the basement door.

Had Michael woken up and gone exploring?

Instinct told him it wasn’t Michael, and his pulse ramped up. Shit on a stick.

Silently, he grabbed his SIG off the bedside table. Palmed his cell and texted his brother to get over here fast, that someone was in the house. If he was wrong, he’d deal with the ribbing. Better than ending up dead.

It could be Jed’s father, although the old man knew better than to turn up in the dark without warning him first. He was the one who’d taught Jed to shoot first, ask questions later. The FBI had spent weeks beating that out of him.

Adrenaline surged through Jed’s bloodstream, and he slid quietly across the floor, grateful for the solid craftsmanship of the cabin so that the floorboards didn’t creak beneath his shifting weight. He edged onto the landing and peered over the railing to the ground below. The fire burned low in the grate, casting a weak, orange flicker over the room.

He listened hard, but there wasn’t even the hum of the refrigerator. After a few long silent seconds, he detected the whisper of feet over carpet, and the shifting of a shadow in the darkness beneath him—a shadow too large to be an eight-year-old boy.

Was there only one of them?

There was no time to worry about it. Michael was down there, alone, vulnerable. All it would take was one bullet. One bullet. He should have been guarding the kid rather than fucking the mother. Goddamn it.

Fury fueled him. He didn’t bother with the stairs, he vaulted the rails and landed hard on top of the dense darkness. He aimed for the head with his feet and was pretty sure he connected from the grunt of pain he was rewarded with before the shadow fell to the floor, skull smashing into the kitchen island. Something spun across the floor. The sonofabitch’s pistol.

Good. He kicked at the almost indistinguishable figure a split second before the guy launched himself at him. His SIG went flying out of his hand. Dammit. Jed found himself forced back by a series of fast blows to the face and body. He got his brain in the game and remembered his training a moment before a knife flashed toward his gut.

He jumped back just in time. He grabbed a cushion off the sofa and used it to go after the guy’s knife hand. He forced him up against the bottom of the stairs, knocking aside a table and lamp, slamming the guy’s wrist against the wall as he jammed one elbow into the man’s throat and at the same time drove his knee into the guy’s balls. It was a street-fighting move, but his honor was not the object here. Survival was.

The assailant dropped the knife and Jed kicked it away.

The man was hurting, probably from the blow to the head, which was pouring so much blood Jed could see it in the firelight.

Jed was a third dan black belt in Taekwondo, but he had a horrible feeling this guy was better. Without that head injury affecting the guy’s vision and reflexes, Jed would probably already be dead. Then Michael. Then Vivi.

The realization renewed the focus of Jed’s attack. This wasn’t over yet. Jed went after the guy’s weak spots, kidneys, knees, throat, eyes.

The guy tried to dance out of reach. He was breathing heavily, a flat, unemotional light reflected in his eyes from the glow of the wood stove. His expression was implacable. A man used to killing. There would be no mercy shown just because his target was a small boy.

“You’re under arrest, asshole.”

The man startled him with a laugh as he wrenched out of his hold.

“I don’t think so.” An accent but a faint one. So Americanized Jed couldn’t place it. The guy attacked again, driving him back, trying to move toward where the pistols had skittered beneath the furniture. Jed did not intend to let him get near his gun or his knife.

The man grabbed Jed’s arm and twisted, sending him flying over the man’s shoulder to smash into another side table that shattered beneath him. Jed didn’t stay down; he rolled and grabbed a broken lamp and slammed it into the guy’s temple. The would-be killer swayed as if dazed. A movement on the stairs caught Jed’s eye.

Vivi.

Shit. She was carrying the weapon he’d given her earlier.

The guy lunged toward her. Jed didn’t hesitate. As much as he didn’t want to get shot, he wasn’t sure she would actually fire at another human being, and if the bad guy got his hands on her or the gun, it was all over except the grave digging.

The rug slipped under Jed’s feet, and he stumbled.

The reverberation of gunfire shattered the silence. The attacker flinched, but didn’t stop moving toward her. Vivi fired again, but the shot pinged off the stone fireplace and exited via one of the windows that overlooked the lake. Then she fired one last time. The guy grunted and veered out the front door, running away.

He went after the guy, but she grabbed his arm. Jed hesitated for a nanosecond. Vivi’s eyes were massive in the near-darkness, then her hands started to shake, and he removed the gun from her fingers.

“Michael,” she whispered, and bolted toward her son’s bedroom.

Shit
. He was torn. He needed to catch this guy and shut this organization down. But there was also the overwhelming need to make sure Michael was OK.

Jed locked the front door, grabbed his weapon from the floor just in case there were more bad guys, and followed Vivi to Michael’s bedroom. In the dim light he could just make out the boy fast asleep, covers thrown off, chest rising and falling gently as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Vivi swallowed noisily and then turned to him, gripping a handful of his shirt. She buried her face against his chest and whispered, “I just shot a man and my baby slept right through it.”

Jed hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head. “You saved our lives.”

He should be out there chasing this guy, but her hoarse breath told of her internal struggle and he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. Another mistake to add to the list.

“I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this, Jed.”

He said nothing, just squeezed her tighter.

***

Elan stumbled in the snow. His vision swam, blood pouring from a scalp wound where his head had split open when the man had landed on him from above.
Amateur
. He staggered into a snowdrift, his shoulder burning where the bullet had smashed into him. It hadn’t exited, and he needed to get the metal shards out and not just because they hurt like hell.

The snow felt good on his hot flesh. No one followed him yet, which was a miracle, but if he didn’t leave now he’d be trapped.

Off your knees!

He staggered to the police SUV, opened the door, and yanked the body of the dead cop out of the seat into the snow, throwing himself into the driver’s seat. Forcing himself to use his injured arm, he shoved the car in drive and locked the steering wheel hard right to turn the SUV around along the narrow lane. He fought back the blackness that tried to swamp his mind.

Everything had gone wrong.

A laugh hurt his chest. To think he’d never contemplated failure, certainly hadn’t planned on getting shot. Dying, maybe, but not this pathetic wounded escape.

Tires slipped, and he eased up on the accelerator. His vision faded in and out. Damn. He slapped himself in the face, spotted a water bottle on the passenger seat beside him. He opened the lid after jamming it between his thighs, tipped his head over the passenger seat, and poured the water over his face despite the fact it was freezing. The temperature shocked him enough to get his brain focused back on the road and not in the ditch.

He went left at the intersection and drove for a mile or so before he pulled up a roadmap of the area on the onboard computer. He stopped and got his bearings, trying to ignore the blood trickling down his face. He studied the landscape, struggling to remember the direction he’d walked to get to the cabin. Finally he figured it out and carried on driving. Another mile and there was a turn to the left that he recognized from earlier that day. Five hundred yards along, he pulled into a small parking area hidden from the road, finding his truck exactly where he’d left it.

He stopped the cop car beside it. Shoved against the door, barely strong enough to push it open. He searched for his keys in one of his vest pockets, pulled them out, and turned on the ignition of his truck and let the engine warm for a minute. He dragged the first aid kit from the middle console and taped some gauze to his scalp, wiped the blood off his face and pulled a ball cap tight over the dressing. He sucked in a breath at the pain, but after a few moments the increased pressure stemmed the flow of blood.

He slapped another gauze pad against the entry wound on his shoulder. It had stopped bleeding except for the occasional, ugly dribble.

He forced himself out of his car and back into the bitter midnight cold. He found the GPS locator on the SUV and ripped it off. Then he used bolt cutters—which hurt like hell—to remove the onboard computer before he tossed it in the snow. It wouldn’t last five minutes at these temperatures. Back in the truck, he dug into his gym bag and pulled out a thick, black hoodie, put it on, zipping it up to the neck. Hopefully, to the casual eye, he appeared uninjured. He swallowed some extra-strength painkillers with a swig of water to wash them down. His shoulder was numb now. His cell rang and he checked it. A text.

“It’s a GO. Forget boy. Get back to city. ASAP.”

Elan swore, reversed, and drove away. If only they’d sent him
that
message an hour ago. Dammit. His hands shook. He’d been so close to killing the child. So close. A curious burst of relief surged through him. Thank God.

The endgame was in play. He needed to find out exactly what the situation was. Figure out how long he had to get into position. He needed to remove this bullet and sew himself up. A lot to do in just a few hours, but he had to be careful. Everything had to be perfect. It could not go wrong. He’d rest when he was dead.