Fugitive Heart (17 page)

He spoke in a loud, deliberately aggressive voice. “Listen, you guys don’t need her. I found what you want. It’s inside. So how about we let her go on and finish her stroll.”

Phil said, “She can stick around until we’re done. I’ll leave Les to watch her.”

Les growled. “Who the hell gets to decide that one?”

“She’s not going anywhere.” Bert’s smile stretched wider, showing those too-white teeth, this time aimed at Nick. “You forget, I saw Ms. Jensen’s face on Facebook.”

Oh, shit.

Nick had to keep his cool. He returned Bert’s smile with warmth added. “Can’t blame me for trying. She has no idea what’s going on, and I accidentally dragged her into this idiocy.”

“Idiocy, yeah,” Bert agreed.

The linebacker behind him shifted his weight, crossed his arms. Good. Still no gun at Ames’s back.

“Wait a fucking moment here. You called her Ms. Jensen. Like Elliot Jensen?” Phil started toward the SUV like he was going after Ames.

Nick tensed. Bert grabbed Ames’s arm and pulled her back so she stood next to the big bald Ducky—or Duffy—who didn’t so much as glance at her. The bald guy was still eyeball-to-eyeball with Les.

Bert rested his hand on her shoulder in a cozy, possessive manner that made Nick’s head spin. “She’s helping me with my inquiries. Mine. I don’t know what my father told you, but I’m in charge here. Why don’t you give him a call, Phil?”

Phil retreated and ran his free hand over his dark, greasy head. “Too early there. We can wait.”

“No. We can’t.” Bert lost the smile. “I’m sick of him poking his nose into business I said I’d take care of.”

“Thing is, we work for him. Understand?” Phil shifted from foot to foot, his black running shoes crunching on the gravel.

Les sniffed and spat, then continued to stare at Bert’s bald enforcer.

Nick couldn’t stand the growing tension. “You guys are working for the same result. You want to get the stuff back to the original owner. I can give you at least some of it.” He raised his eyebrows and looked at Ames, hoping Bert would understand the point of his vague talk.
She doesn’t know anything.

Bert pulled his hand from his jacket pocket, and Nick could see Phil’s shoulders relax a little.

Les was still on high alert, staring at Bert’s guy as if he was the only dangerous thing in the landscape.

“Okay. Let’s get moving and find out what you have.” Bert rubbed his hands together as if anticipating some kind of treat. “Les, you and Duffy stay out here with Miss Jensen.”

Duffy, not Ducky, unfolded his arms.

One goon from each side, Nick thought. That should keep her safe. Especially since grouchy Les seemed to be more interested in Duffy than in harassing Ames.

He walked over to her and studied her face. “You okay?” he asked. He wanted to touch her, make her smile, kiss her. But just approaching her was already asking for trouble.

The dark circles under her eyes pissed him off. These damned Espositos didn’t belong in her little town—and he’d led them straight to her house.

“Rossi, what the fuck you doing?” Phil called.

Asking for trouble
was the answer. He trudged back toward Phil and Les. Bert walked next to him, too close. “Your friend Jensen turned out to be a real smooth character,” Bert said quietly.

“I know.”

“Had me fooled and made me look really bad. I don’t like that. Not with my father on my ass all the time. I don’t want to give Pop any excuse and Jensen just handed him a great reason to give me a load of shit.”

“Yeah. Elliot’s turned out to be a pain in the ass for me too.”

“Where exactly is the stuff we came for?” Phil gestured to the house with his gun, and Ames gave a small cry of alarm. She must not have noticed the gun before. Nick turned back. He wished he could yell at her,
This is why you should have stayed hidden
.

“We’re fine. No problem,” Nick called to her instead. Then he walked into the house and away from her, one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

He didn’t trust Les. He didn’t know Duffy well, and he’d never forgive himself if anything happened to Ames.

“She better be safe,” he said as they banged though the front door into the cold, dark house.

“Sure, sure,” Bert said, uninterested.

Nick led them to the kitchen table, where he’d stacked the cash in neat piles. “How much money did you say was missing?” he asked Bert. His old friend cut a quick glance at Phil and didn’t answer.

Phil leaned down and started pawing through the cash. “Where’s the flash drive? The notebook?”

“You let Ms. Jensen go, and I’ll tell you where it is.”

“You’ll tell
me
,” Bert gently corrected.

“I’ll tell you both.”

“You might not think you have a dog in this fight, Nick, but you’re wrong.”

Nick understood his point, and Bert was right. He was in danger if Les and Phil got custody of him. He raised both hands as if Bert had pulled a gun. “Okay. I appreciate the fact that you’re less…less likely to take extreme measures. But you and your dad have been squabbling for years, and I’ve seen what happens to people who pick sides. I’m not doing that. I’ll help you both. But you have to let her go and—”

And that moment, a shot rang out.

Ames should have listened to Nick and stayed hidden like a rabbit tracked by dogs. He’d watched her as they’d talked, and she knew he was worried about her. He had enough to worry about. She did too, now.

But she’d seen the guys in the SUV and hated the way they’d stalked toward Nick.

When the other car had come around the corner, she thought perhaps, if she warned them, they would take that into consideration. She couldn’t hide when there was trouble. After a long, painful moment of consideration, she didn’t take the gun. She didn’t like weapons and didn’t want to look as if she was an aggressor. A helpful neighbor, that’s all.

She’d gone up to the car window and waited until the driver, a big hulk of a man with a nose that looked crooked and flat, lowered the window. The man next to the driver gave her a pleasant, warm smile.

The hulk looked more dangerous, so she’d talked to him. “Hi, I’m so glad you’re here. I’m a little afraid. Some really scary guys”—
who look kind of like you
—“are up ahead on this road.”

“Hello, Ms. Jensen,” the smaller one had called to her.

That had been a bad moment, but he’d only gotten out of the car, shaken her hand, introduced himself as Bert and politely asked her if she had a gun before asking Duffy to do a quick search. “Just to make sure,” he’d said almost apologetically.

She didn’t trust that cold-eyed Bert, but he’d actually seemed grateful as she dropped the neighbor thing and told him that she and Nick had found what he was looking for. “We’ll go find out,” he said. “All of us.”

It had seemed like things were going all right until she was left behind with the skinny one called Les and big, bald Duffy.

Once everyone else had gone into the house, those two had walked right up to each other—and unfortunately, she stood between them.

“I kind of have to use the bathroom,” she told them. No lie. “Do you think we could just go inside for a minute or two?”

They ignored her. The ugly look on Les’s face was chilling. What could happen to a man to make him wear an expression like that? At least he was staring at Duffy and not her.

“How’s the bitch?” Les asked.

“Jesus, you really are a pig.”

“I guess you’re still living in the dark, aren’t you, asshole? You’ll find out.”

Duffy sucked in an audible breath.

For a moment, Ames thought they were talking about her. Then she realized these two had history—one that involved a woman. Les’s ex, maybe? Or maybe Duffy’s sister? His mother? A dog?

Usually, she’d be sort of interested in the tension. Speculation about a situation might keep the Back Porch and Arnesdale buzzing for months, and though Ames tried not to care, she could get sucked into the drama as easily as anyone else.

At the moment, and after another glance at Les, she decided she was glad these two left her out of the conversation.

She tried to slide out from between the two glaring men. “I think I’ll just go to—”

Les seized her arm. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Duffy grabbed her other arm, almost as hard. He sneered at Les. “You know that’s your problem, asshole. You never treat women with respect.”

Les’s grip tightened. He pulled her hard so she had to move toward him, but Duffy didn’t move an inch.

“Um, you guys? You’re hurting me?”

They paid no attention to her. A shriek formed in her throat, but she swallowed it when she realized they might hear her in the house. That wasn’t going to help matters. She tried to tug her arm out of Duffy’s grip.

Les scared her more, but at least he was closer to her size. Putting her body into the motion, she gave a sharp yank away from Les, then yelped as pain radiated through her shoulder.

Les stumbled forward, bouncing into her, and then both of them collided with Duffy.

The two hoods let go of her so fast she stumbled and fell. Then the men were on each other, yelling, punching and kicking.

Duffy pulled out his gun. Les grabbed his wrist. Ames rolled and scrambled away from them on her hands and knees. The gravel bit into her skin, but she didn’t want to stand and make herself a bigger target.

Duffy’s gun popped with a sharp report that made her jump. She felt rather than heard herself scream. A few seconds later, shouts came from the house. Nick appeared on the porch. But the shouts seemed to echo back from the road. A lot of voices.

She looked up the road and there were Jake, Gopher, Dennis Phillips, all running around the curve, some on the road, some cutting over the field toward her, toward the house. Marty, in her uniform, trotted along with the rest.

“Watch out, they have guns!” Ames shouted to Jake and the others, but then noticed several of the people rounding the curve in the road had guns or rifles too.

Nick leaped off the porch and sprinted toward her.

Les lay on his back, clutching his leg and screaming. Duffy got to his feet unsteadily. He still held the gun.

Gopher aimed a shotgun. “Drop it, scumbag.” Before Duffy could move, Gopher’s gun boomed.

“Sonofabitch!” Duffy screamed. The pistol flew out of his hand as he stumbled backward and fell.

Ames’s head spun and her stomach lurched.
Nobody is supposed to die.
But Duffy was still cursing loud enough to be heard over Les’s whimpering.

“It’s only eight-shot,” Gopher called. “I been dove hunting.”

Before Ames could react to any of this, decide whether she should run or stay put or get the hell out of Gopher’s way before he filled her with buckshot, Nick plowed into her. His arms went around her, and he literally swept her off her feet and into a crushing hug.

“You okay?”

“Yes. No. You’re killing me,” she wheezed. “Let go.”

He put her back on her feet and loosened his hold but still held her tight, and she liked that—a lot—despite the ache in her shoulder from being used in a tug-of-war between the two fighting idiots.

“What happened in the house?” she asked.

“Bert got what he came for. He and Phil were fighting over who’d take possession of it when the yelling and shooting started. Bert’s a smart guy. He didn’t stick around to have a shootout with local law enforcement. He took off out back.”

“Good. Maybe Bobby Brown will catch him then.”

Nick looked confused. “The rapper?”

“No, the deputy. I saw him running along with Jake toward the back of the house.”

Before Ames could add any more, another pair of arms seized her. Marty, smelling of fry grease and cinnamon buns, hugged her from behind. “Are you all right? Oh my God, Ames, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me what was going on. We tell each other everything!”

Trust Marty to immediately move from friendly caring to a why’d-you-leave-me-out-of-the-loop? complaint.

Marty ended the sandwich hug and stood back. “Jake told us everything, and we believed him ’cause that scary guy—not this guy.” She spared a glance at Nick. “Another, different one—had just left the diner. So Gopher and me and some of the other early risers who were already there for breakfast all came to check on you.”

“With guns. In the dark. You could’ve all been shot.”

“Well, Bobby sure couldn’t handle it alone. He’s just one man, and these are professional criminals, Jake says. Jeez, Ames, don’t be ungrateful.”

“I’m not. Thank you.” She reached out to take Marty’s hand, and suddenly Nick was letting her go and jogging toward the house.

“Wait! Where are you going?”

“Around back to check on the deputy and Jake. They might need my help.”

Gopher and Dennis had the two goons facedown in the gravel and were trussing their hands behind their back with rope. Ames fleetingly wondered how they’d managed to come so prepared, but then she trotted past them and caught up with Nick at the corner of the house.