Cutting Loose (11 page)

“Your car has a name,” she said deadpan, one of her eyebrows lifting upward.

“Charlotte the Harlot.”

And that almost got a smile out of her—almost.

She glanced out the passenger-side window. “I don't really have a choice here, do I?”

“No.” Not really.

“And you'll let me go? Once we get to Denver?”

“Once I know you're safe,” he clarified. “SB303 works for the Department of Defense. There's a good possibility that I'll be turning you over to her, while I continue on with the bracelet alone. There are ways to neutralize its importance, once it's in the right hands. When it's no longer important, then you're no longer important.” It was the best he could offer her.

“I—I killed a man this morning.” She sounded suddenly weary, and he realized he liked her better angry.

“
We
killed a man this morning,” he said, clarifying the facts for her again. “Self-defense, and yes, we won the gunfight. Thank you.” He spun Charlotte's wheel, downshifting for the turn onto the interstate's northbound ramp.

There was more traffic heading north than he would have expected so early on a Saturday morning, but it was bound to thin out once they got out of Albuquerque, and that's all he wanted right now—out of Albuquerque.

“Where did you learn to shoot?” he asked. There hadn't been any luck involved. There was no luck in shooting, not even at four yards, not with the split-second precision with which she'd done it.

“My dad's a sheriff's deputy in Chouteau County, and I was the Montana Girls' State Champion in pistols for five years running.”

A shooting champion? He'd be damned. He'd known her father was a deputy. The information had been in the file Alex had gone over with him. But nothing in the file had mentioned her being a state champion shooter.

Hell, a pistol champion, sheriff deputy's daughter riding shotgun in the passenger seat was probably exactly what Charlotte had always wanted, probably what she'd always needed.

Maybe it's what he'd been needing, too.

He'd sure as hell been needing something, but unless his luck had changed dramatically in the last three weeks, a gorgeous, dark-haired, blue-eyed sheriff deputy's daughter probably wasn't what he was going to get.

Well, hell, and wasn't that always the way of it.

“So what have we got here this morning?” he asked, hoping for that damn concession, something that said she didn't think he was an out-and-out scum-of-the-earth kind of guy. “A kidnapping and hostage delivery to representatives of the United States Department of Defense? Or a road trip?”

“Road trip,” she said after a slight hesitation.

Good, he thought, great. He could work with that. Now all they had to do was keep the cops off their ass.

“SB303, can you give me radar detection?”

“Coming up. Check your screen on the lower left side. The megaphone icon will blink and you'll get an audio cue when you're in range of getting clocked.”

Very cool.

“I think I'm falling in love with you.” The girl was great.

“She's married,” a man's voice came over the PC. There was no visual of the guy, but Zach didn't need a visual. The voice was enough, even after more than eight years, and the proprietary tone said it all. Dylan was married to Little Miss Jailbait with the tattoo and the bustier.

Geezus.
There had to be one helluva story behind that amazing piece of news. Dylan and a tattooed street girl? Married?

“You got lucky,” he said, smiling in spite of all his damn aches and pains.

“See you in six” was all Dylan said.

Yeah, six.

Charlotte slid through the traffic, and when they hit the edge of town, Zach opened her up and let her run.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Saturday, 7:00
A.M
.—Albuquerque, New Mexico

This was a sad sight.

A bleached-blond, punk-ass, steroid-abusing jerk-off cuffed to a chair.

Spencer stood in the doorway of room 276 of the Sunrise Motel and shook his head. Someone had gotten to Jason Schroder first. Someone was moving very quickly through this day, and Spencer wasn't buying for a second that it was the Albuquerque schoolteacher.

No, this sad sight was the work of the shooter.

There had definitely been a fight. Shards of glass littered the carpet, and the other chair in the room had been broken. Drawers had been pulled out of the dresser, and the lamp was on the floor, busted into pieces. There was a hole in the wall—he looked again—make that two holes, and the paper copy of a cheap-ass reprint of three ears of corn was in shreds on the floor, its metal frame twisted like a pretzel.

Jason Schroder certainly looked like hell, and Spencer couldn't imagine that the other guy didn't, too.

He took out his phone, took a picture of Schroder, and sent it to Mallory. Not even his girl could have done a better job of tying him up, and she was the flex-cuff queen.

Reaching under his suit jacket, he pulled the Recon Tanto out of its sheath. A pair of wire cutters would have been better for Schroder, but Spencer wasn't all that concerned about what was better for an idiot who had let himself be bound and gagged, and cuffed to a motel room chair.

However the fight had gone down, Schroder had lost, and Kendryk didn't pay losers.

Not very carefully, Spencer slid the seven-inch blade up under one of the flex cuffs holding the gag in Schroder's mouth. He drew blood, but that was the price to be paid, and Schroder was bleeding anyway. After he cut the cuff, Spencer used the tip of the blade to remove the gag from the man's mouth, then stepped back while the guy hacked, and coughed, and generally got his bearings back.

Spencer didn't bother to remove the other restraints, the ones holding Schroder's ankles to the legs of the chair and holding his hands to the back of the chair. It was too convenient to leave them in place.

“Where's the bracelet?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” Schroder said. “You cut me, you asshole. Who the fuck are you?”

Of course, Spencer thought.

“Spencer Bayonne,” he said. “We were supposed to meet this morning for breakfast. You were going to brief me on Lily Robbins.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Sure, man.” Schroder lifted his head and nodded. “Bayonne. That's right.”

“So where's the bracelet, Jason?”

“I—I don't know,” the younger guy said. “We never found it. We thought we'd get it this morning, make things easier for you, but…but there was a guy with her, at her house, and he took us by surprise, and…and Paul's dead.”

Spencer considered himself a student of human nature, a graduate student working on his third doctoral degree, and Schroder was lying. He knew, because given the same set of circumstances, he would have lied, too.

Dead partner, cops raining down like shit on Shinola, the woman gone, and no bracelet—it all looked so bad, Schroder probably figured he didn't have anything left to lose.

He was almost right.

“Who was the guy at her house? Was it the same guy who did this to you?”

“I don't know, man. The guy who jumped me could have been the same guy as at the house. Yeah, it was probably him, but it was dark this morning, and it was crazy with Paul getting his fucking head blown off, with that guy killing him like that, and…and he's gonna pay for that, the sonuvabitch. He's gonna pay. Banning isn't going to let that slide. No way, man.”

Spencer was a betting man, and he was betting Thomas Banning and Jason Schroder were the least of the shooter's concerns, especially if he had the bracelet. Schroder had already proven to be less than a worthy adversary. Banning was big in Las Vegas, but if Schroder couldn't give him a name, Banning didn't have the resources to come up with one out of thin air.

Kendryk did.

“What did this man look like? What color was his hair? Is he tall, short? What? Is he fat, skinny? Help me out here, Jason, and maybe I can help you.”

“You should cut me loose, man. That would help.”

“Give me some answers I can use, and I'll see about cutting you loose.”

“Shit.”
Schroder's chin dropped to his chest.
“Shit.”

Not an answer, not helpful, but resignation was definitely a step in the right direction.

“Did you see him, Jason? Or did you just faint and roll over when he busted in here?”

“Fuck you.” Schroder jerked on his cuffs. “Fuck you, man. I almost broke his fucking head, and he was bleeding when he left here, man. Wherever he is, he's bleeding.”

And you're handcuffed to a goddamn chair.

“So what does he look like?”

“Dark hair. Not fat. He was fast. He moved really fast. So did the girl.”

“The girl was in here with him?”

“No. Just him.”

“So when were they moving fast?” Spencer asked, curious.

“When they ran out of the house. I was shooting at them like crazy, but I don't think I got 'em.”

Spencer had known some very sharp operators to come out of Las Vegas. Jason Schroder was not one of them. Possibly Paul Stark had been the senior member of this less than dynamic duo.

“You must have seen something else. What was it, Jason? What else did you see? Think about it. Help me out here.”

The guy shook his head again, muttering something under his breath.

“What?” Spencer asked. “What was that you said?”

“I said he was an asshole.” Schroder's chin came up, his resignation turning to belligerence. “I could see that, an asshole with a big fucking scar down the side of his face.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Even Schroder seemed surprised by his statement.

“Yeah. He had a scar,” the guy continued. “I saw it at that bitch's house, too, when I came out of the stairwell. The light was shining on them, where they were standing in the bathroom, and then I blasted them, but I missed, and then they were running. But Paul, man. Paul was dead. There was nothing left of his head. So I kept blasting, and blasting, and blasting, chasing that asshole out of the house. I chased them all the way, until they got in their car, and then I ran back into the house to…uh, get the bracelet, but I couldn't find it.”

His words had “lie” written all over them, so much so, even Schroder didn't seem to be buying it.

“Yeah. It's the same guy who jumped me. That asshole at the house this morning. Same asshole with a scarred face. Guaranteed. We were just doing the job, man. We'd been to her house before, looking, thinking we could find it early for you,” he continued, and Spencer let him rattle on. Maybe something would come out of it. “But there wasn't any macramé anywhere, not in the whole damn house, and I looked, man, I looked hard.”

Spencer wondered if perhaps Banning had given out a few directives of his own, above and beyond what Kendryk's office had requested. Las Vegas mob bosses certainly knew what to do with a top-secret piece of international espionage. Unfortunately for Banning, Arthur Kendryk knew what to do with people who didn't follow orders.

“When you chased them out of the house this morning, what kind of car did they get into?”

“The
Bullitt
car, man.” The poor slob's face actually brightened. “A Shelby, a '68, red, with white racing stripes. Man, you should have heard that baby. She had a set of pipes on her.”

A solid fact complete with description was exactly the kind of thing Spencer was looking for, and his opinion of Jason Schroder went up a couple of notches, just not enough to save the guy.

“That's great, Jason. Really great.” He was looking for a dark-haired man with a scarred face who drove a red 1968 Shelby Cobra Mustang with white stripes. There couldn't be too many of those running around. “Now I just have one more question, and I'm going to keep asking it until I get the right answer. Okay?”

Schroder's expression instantly turned suspicious, then wary, then went beyond wariness. Rightly so. He had every reason to be afraid.

“I'm not answering any more questions until you get me out of this goddamn chair.”

“Where is the bracelet, Jason?”

The younger guy put his head down and gave it a shake, the muscles in his face and across his shoulders tightening.

He knew he was going to get hit.

“Where is the bracelet, Jason?”

“I told you I don't know. We never found it. The bitch Robbins has it. She's probably wearing it. Yeah, that's it.”

Possibly. But Spencer thought Jason had something more concrete to offer than a “probably.” To test his theory, he raised his hand in a tight fist, locked his wrist, and using the leverage of his whole arm and his shoulder, backhanded the guy nearly into next week and laid open the cut he'd already made with his knife.

Blood poured down the side of Schroder's face.

“Where is the bracelet, Jason?”

It took two more question-and-answer periods before the guy broke.

“I had it, man,” he sobbed. “I found it myself. She had a suitcase packed in her bedroom, and I figured she'd be taking her jewelry, and I was right, man. I was right. It was there, in one of those little bags. I took it and ran, man. I took it and ran.” His shoulders shook during a brief pause in his rambling, and when he spoke again, his voice was weaker. “I had it made, man. I was gonna be rich.”

A curious idea, Spencer thought.

“Do you know why the bracelet is important?” he asked.

“No. No.” Schroder shook his head, spluttering the word through blood, saliva, and broken teeth. “But Banning wouldn't have sent me and Paul if it wasn't worth a lot of money. He loved Paul, man. Paul was like a brother to him, and that asshole is going to pay…he's going to pay.”

“And where is the bracelet now, Jason? Do you still have it?”

The guy shook his head. “No. No. The asshole took it.”

“Took it from you?”

“Yeah, I had it, but he was, uh, was going to shoot my dick off, jammed his gun right down on me, man. He meant it, too. I swear he did. I never seen anybody more serious in my life as that asshole.”

“So you gave him the bracelet?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. You would have, too, man, if he'd had that .45 jammed up against your dick.”

Spencer didn't let anything get jammed up against his dick unless it purred, and he'd lay odds his kitten was a helluva lot more dangerous than the shooter.

“Thanks, Jason. That's what I needed to know.” He moved around to the back of the chair, the Recon Tanto still in his hand.

His killing strike was clean and swift and silent, a Wingate maneuver, with the knife blade sliding up under Schroder's skull and severing his brain stem. The guy immediately went limp. Spencer withdrew the blade and wiped it clean on Jason's shirt.

On his way out the door, he speed-dialed Mallory on his cell phone.

“Hey, Kitten. Two things. One, scramble a nine-one-one call into the police, let them know there's a dead body in room two seven six of the Sunset Motel, and tell them you saw a 1968 red Shelby Cobra Mustang leaving the scene.”

The Albuquerque police could track down the car faster than he could.

“And two, make sure we're monitoring the local police band and the state troopers. Rig your system to cue on the car, and—”

“That's going to be three things, baby,” her voice came over the phone, soft, and silky, and sultry. No one had a voice like Mallory Rush.

“Three.” He grinned. “Call the car in to Weymouth and have somebody there track down all the red 1968 Fastback Shelby Cobra Mustangs with white racing stripes they can find registered in the States. I want names, addresses, and photos.”

“That's a pretty tall order, Spence.”

“Not as tall as you might think. I bet there were less than a thousand of them made. Didn't one of Kendryk's tech guys break into the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Department's computer system last year and get away with a couple hundred driver's licenses?”

“Yes. Rick Connelly is very skilled.”

“Then get him on it. Have him start in New Mexico and work out to the bordering states. Everyone in Weymouth knows this job is at the top of Kendryk's priority list.”

“Second to the top,” Mallory countered.

Spencer stopped for a second and almost let out a sigh. She meant the damn girl. Kendryk was not thinking clearly when it came to Gillian Pentycote. He needed to walk away. Sure, she was a strange bird, and as word of the two-million-dollar bounty got around, it was going to whet a lot of appetites. But Spencer's money was on the girl this time. No matter how much money Lord Weymouth promised, Spencer didn't think it was possible for anyone to take her alive.

Kendryk needed to walk away, or all he was going to get was one dead girl.

Spencer remembered when Kendryk had captured her. It had been on a hit in Amsterdam. Gillian Pentycote had been after the same man as Kendryk's assassination team. She'd been wounded when she'd been brought to the estate in Weymouth, and over the course of the next month, as she'd healed, Sir Arthur had fallen in love. It had been a disturbing thing to witness, the stone-cold Lord Weymouth forming an attachment to the only woman Spencer had ever met who was as cold and ruthless as Kendryk was himself. Over the next year, the two of them had cooperated on a number of deals, including the sale of a ton of Afghan opium between a man in Uzbekistan and a buyer in Marseilles. Spencer had brokered the transaction. Then the woman had disappeared, and the longer she'd been gone, the more desperate Kendryk had become to find her.

He wanted her back—back in his control, back in his life, and back in his bed, and for two million dollars, Lord Weymouth thought he could get her.