Smokescreen (9 page)

He took it in disbelief, fingers running over the leather. “Is this
real?
”

“It’s real enough. It’s a mousegun. It’s got eight rounds and there’s one already in the chamber. There’s no safety—that’s why the holster.” She tapped the trigger through the holster. “Pull the trigger, and you’re going to get a bang. And if you need it, don’t screw around. Jam it right up close before they even know you have it and empty the damn thing. Don’t expect someone the size of the guy we put down at the last house to take an instant dive—depending how the shots are placed, he’ll still be able to do plenty of damage to you if you stick around and let him.”

He held it back out to her. “Maybe you should just—”

“Take it. You’re going to be out here alone. Once I get inside, I’ll have the house guardian on my side.” She looked at the house, at the van…back at Jethro. “We’ve got to move. You ready?”

“For this? Never.” He shook his head, barely able to believe what he was about to do. “I guess I’ll just fake it.”

“Exactly,” she said with satisfaction, and quite abruptly disappeared. Abruptly and literally. Sam in the bushes…Sam gone. He thought he felt the touch of her hand on his; he definitely heard her murmur that he should give her a moment to reach the house before he started his noise.

Holy freakin’ fakin’ it.

S
am only hoped Jeth could bring himself to join her world long enough to provide the distraction she’d need.

Of course, she also hoped that they hadn’t delayed too long, that Scalpucci was so cocky he hadn’t brought the manpower he’d need once Sam got into the middle of things….

She had no illusions about her ability to tackle these men. She was scrappy in a fight and she knew all the street moves she’d ever need, but she was small and even regular workouts didn’t provide her with the upper body strength to match the steroid-enhanced creatures with whom Scalpucci surrounded himself.

On the other hand, she wasn’t above cheating. Hell, she didn’t think twice about cheating. And the men in that house would find it almost impossible to hit a moving, invisible target. If she took out the lights, they might not even realize she was anything more—or less—than a quick opponent in the dark.

But before that, she wanted the women out of there—both the refugees and the house guardian. And even then…if she got them out cleanly, then she could avoid the whole confrontational thing altogether.

Sam found the back door, a closed and locked half-
glass door that she could have picked had she brought her tools but would instead sacrifice to the cause as soon as Jeth made his noise. The backyard spread out behind her, fully landscaped and crammed with the foliage of a mature neighborhood in a city full of green space. Plenty of places for the women to take cover on the way out. Sheers covered the half-glass door, giving her only a fuzzy view of the interior. Lights blazed in the kitchen directly beyond this door, but no one occupied it. Beyond that stood a small dining room—the same room she’d seen from the window beside the house.

There the women had been gathered, though Sam could only see glimpses—the flash of movement, a faint shriek of protest.

Bad men. You deserve whatever happens here tonight.

It made her want to glide up to them unseen and exact the kind of revenge that would put her in jail if anyone ever identified her. To use her skills in exactly the way that would horrify Jeth, so genuine and naive in his black-and-white world where bad things didn’t happen if you tried hard enough to stop them simply because that’s the way it
should
be.

A chameleon she might be, but stupid…not quite. Criminal…not quite.

Sometimes Jeth’s way was right. She could lie to everyone else, but to herself she had to tell the truth.

So the revenge…another day, maybe. Or a different kind of revenge. For now she’d get these women out as fast as she could, and if it meant scrapping, it meant scrapping. But no side trips. No distractions. Just a pure break-out and run.

Come on, Jeth.
Sam waited poised by the back door,
her elbow cocked and ready to take out the bottom corner pane of glass.
Fake it if you have to, but fake it
now.

And finally, a car alarm split through the subliminal thump of music…oddly, not quite close enough to be the van. Sam took the moment anyway, tapping the glass with her elbow just hard enough to crack it, then sliding her hand back up in her jacket sleeve to pick at the shards with her already tender hands. Just enough to reach in and—

Another car alarm went off. And he must have been getting the hang of it, for almost immediately a third alarm joined in—and then another. Sam grinned to herself as she flipped the deadbolt and slid the chain lock out of place and then released the doorknob lock. No one came rushing at her—as near as she could tell, at least two men had gone to the front door, and though Scalpucci still stood in the dining room with Gretchen in a cruel hold, he’d also turned toward the front of the house.

Sam slid inside, clothed in her
unseen
guise, reassessing the situation with every step. They were all big, like the man at the last house. Too big for her to handle in numbers, though if Scalpucci had been there alone…

But he wasn’t. And she didn’t have the leeway to try for cleverness; best strategy would be to go in fast, come out fast.
Run away.
After that she could call the police, holding out a faint hope that Scalpucci would in some way pay for his actions.

The house guardian sat at the end of the dining room table. With no finesse and nothing to lose, Sam waited until Scalpucci shouted something at the front of the house and then reached in to pluck at the woman’s sleeve from behind, hissing a warning. The woman startled and then froze, and Sam had to speak up against the
fifth whooping car alarm when she said, “Help’s here. Grab them up and go out the back—it’s open.”

The refuge guardians weren’t chosen for their looks or their sweet dispositions. This woman may or may not have suspected there’d been no visible movement behind her, but she knew how to prioritize her reactions. She kicked one woman under the table—Jeth’s sister?—and snapped her fingers at the other. The frightened women only stared stupidly at her as the guardian gestured over her shoulder to the freedom of the open back door.

But the first woman…Jeth’s sister had his hair and his nose and though she also had a hell of a bruise on her face and an arm in a restrictive sling, she still had some of his determination. She quite matter-of-factly pushed her chair back and walked out of the room, and the car alarms covered every step of her movement. Sam stepped aside undetected to let her pass and then returned to her spot by the door. Scalpucci and another man bellowed a few terse words at each other across the house and through the front door. Suspicious, oh yes. But Sam had her eye on the light switches, and thank goodness for that. For while the second woman still stared at the rising house guardian in catatonic fright, Scalpucci turned to look at both women with instant fury.

Sam hit the switch, plunging the kitchen into darkness and bursting out from cover without her
unseen
guise—a guise that was of no use when she needed to interact with people. She darted into the lighted dining room and grabbed the guardian, a woman older and of a size with Sam, to propel her back into the kitchen. “Run, dammit!” She hunted and found the dining room light switch, slapping it off even as she dragged the frightened, frozen refugee from her place at the table.

Finally, the woman ran, shrieking all the way out as if the noise alone propelled her; it created an excruciating dissonance with the car alarms and finally faded.

That left Sam and Scalpucci and his thoroughly—and freshly—battered wife. Even in the darkness, Scalpucci pinned his gaze on Sam. “It won’t work,” he said, nearly shouting to overcome the car alarms. “I have what I want—and I’m going to do what I want.”

Sam hovered at the edge of action, ready to grab any opportunity to free Gretchen. All but one of the alarms abruptly stopped; soon enough Scalpucci’s two men would return. “Let me guess,” she said flatly. “You want to wreck the underground so badly that there’s no chance it’ll rebuild.”

“Something like that.” He aimed a cocky sneer of a grin her way. “I think I’ve got a pretty good start, don’t you?”

“Actually, I think you’ve already failed.” Sam gathered herself in the darkness, aiming to go
unseen
and launch for Gretchen at the same time—no finesse, just a snatch and run. Scalpucci would know she was on the move, but he’d convince himself he’d lost her in the darkness and then she’d be waiting to take him down with a simple foot stuck in his path. More
Three Stooges
material than superhero stuff…but just as effective.

Except…

Light flooded the room, making her blink. Scalpucci gave her a smug, superior look. “Dumb bitch. Did you think I couldn’t find the other light switch?”

The other light switch. Of course there would be one. “No,” Sam said, “I didn’t. I figured you for a real dim bulb.”

“
I’m
the one in control!” he snarled at her, and it involved spittle.

Sam kept herself from flinching at the sudden verbal violence, knowing it was just what he wanted. “Not anymore. I left one of your men trussed up over on the south side, and the cops have probably found him by now. They’ve been called here as well. So what I
think
is that you should cut your losses and quietly leave.”

His face—heavy features heading fast toward jowly, a handsome mouth constantly distorted with emotion—turned ugly with anger, bringing up a heavy red flush. He spat something uncomplimentary, punctuating it with a shove to Gretchen, the only woman within reach. Sam bit her lip, cursed the light switch, and weighed her chances of breaking his killer grip on his wife so they could both bolt to freedom.

One of the men returned from the front of the house, stopping short in surprise at the doorway opposite Sam. “What the hell?”

Dammit. Two of them now.

“Never mind that,” Scalpucci said, suddenly calm now that his employee had returned. “And never mind finding the others. We’ve spent too much time here. Grab her and let’s go. Be sure to leave one of your special gifts behind.”

“Already set,” the man said, eyeing Sam; his .38 revolver looked small in his hand. “We can trigger it any time.”

Scalpucci looked straight at Sam and said, “This is your doing. All of you dumb bitches and your oh-so-clever underground. And now everyone in the city will know what happens to those who defy me.” He gave his wife a hard shake, his hand clamped so tightly on her slender arm that his fingers met. She, too, found Sam’s gaze, a hopeless expression; she mouthed
I’m sorry.

“Seems like a good time to scream,” Sam told her, and meant it. A cry for help in the night—Jeth should hear it if no one else. And she frantically hunted other options, knowing she couldn’t take both these men, that Jeth had her gun and she couldn’t go
unseen
under this spotlight.

“You keep your mouth shut,” Scalpucci said, giving Gretchen another good shake as the other man headed for Sam, one hammy hand extended to gesture her into his clutches.

“Holy freakin’
jerk.
” Sam scowled at Scalpucci from the other side of the dining room table. Options. Who needed options? She’d just make a few of her own. She whirled to the light switch, flicked it off—and ducked, going
unseen
just that fast. Just barely fast enough, for the revolver discharged with a giant smack of noise; the bullet slammed into the wall above Sam’s head.

She leaped up, flinging a chair hard at the gun-toting minion and leaving him to wrestle with it while she charged right up onto the sturdy dining table and skidded across to launch onto Scalpucci from above.

And still Scalpucci managed to grab her arm and her shoulder and slam her into the wall beside him.

Hard.

Her guise flickered away, leaving her reeling, sinking to the floor. Visible and vulnerable and alone.

All wrong.
This was going all wrong. Jethro had made his noise, he’d done what she’d asked; he’d drawn them off. He’d managed to do it in a way he
could
do it, with a veritable chorus of car alarms. And yet Sam stayed within the house, where the lights flicked on and off without apparent reason and screaming resonated
and a certain amount of crashing and thumping made its way out the open front door, audible even above the party music and the huddle of angry young men who’d come outside to shut up their vehicles.

Sam.

Something had gone wrong. In spite of her mind-boggling ability to wear other faces and other bodies and to go unseen altogether…something had gone wrong. And here he crouched behind a car, a tiny gun he wasn’t even willing to use filling the palm of his hand. He curled his fingers around it in frustration, making an awkward fist…and then he looked down at the fist with dawning determination.

Something had gone wrong, and it was time to move.

He stood up from behind the car. Scalpucci’s man was still on the lawn, looming to disapprove of the recent noise and keeping an eye on the angry young men who spat brags and threats from several houses down. Jethro moved along the street side of the parked cars and approached the van from the far side. He didn’t hesitate or lurk or try to keep himself unnoticed; he was good at none of those things. He just walked up like he belonged. He fumbled the safety off, pushed the tiny gun up against the van tire and pulled the trigger.

The combined noise of the discharging gun and exploding tire made a hugely satisfying sound, carrying across to the party, grabbing the attention of the angry young men. Jethro jumped in spite of himself, but as the lookout cursed and hesitated on the lawn, uncertain whether to check the van or prepare for the attention of the angry young men, Jethro went for the front door at rugby speed. He could only hope that sheer audacity counted for something.

Apparently, sheer audacity had its moments.

Jethro burst through the open front door unimpeded as the confrontation outside escalated. Accusation, protest, demands…until finally a querulous voice shouted from next door, “I’ve called the police!”

No telling when they’d get here.

Unless…Jethro helped them along.

No more the truth than what Sam had asked him to do in the first place, but suddenly somehow he didn’t think twice. He put his back to the wall, tightened his hold on the tiny gun, and prepared to do battle on a level new to Jethro Sheridan.

“
Police!
Drop your weapons and come out with your hands on your heads.”

Jeth. Jeth’s voice. It penetrated Sam’s daze.

“Bullshit!” Scalpucci yelled back, not buying the authority—or lack thereof—in Jeth’s voice. The complete lack of flashing light bars might have had something to do with it, too.

“Not for long,” Jeth said steadily. “And meanwhile your getaway van is limping off on three tires. Who’d have thought a big tough-looking guy like that could be chased off by a bunch of kids?”

And Sam marveled, for even she had no idea if Jethro’s words were true.

She didn’t need to know. All she had to do was take advantage of the moment—

She lunged to her feet, still unable to focus and not bothering to try. She was better off than the man who’d taken her chair in his face, and all she had to do was free Gretchen—for Scalpucci had her again—and they could run. All of them, run far and hard and leave this mess
behind. The cleanup would be something else again…but cleanup was for survivors, and first they all had to be survivors.