Wild Ways

Meg swallowed, knowing he was right but resenting the fact that he took it so matter-of-factly. I am inexperienced, she felt like shouting at him. So give me a break! Let me take Reggie back to the people who want him so my boss will let me be one of his agents and I can find out who killed my brother!

Did any of O’Dell’s agents get what they wanted by bursting into tears when things got tough?

The thought almost made her laugh. O’Dell’s agents, to a man, were walking advertisements for testosterone and macho heroics. Bullets and balls, the old agency joke went.

“So, where is the little guy?”

“He’s not here,” Meg said instantly, praying that Reggie was listening from the other room and had the sense to hide. “I’m not as inexperienced as you seem to think I am. Reggie’s in a safe place. Sorry to have led you on this wild-goose chase, but that was the point.” She smiled ingenuously, praying he took the bait.

And for a moment she thought he might. He glanced around the room again, frowning now, looking undecided. Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, Special Agent Mary Margaret Kavanagh—that’s a hell of a mouthful, by the way. Mind if I just call you Irish for short?”

He was prowling now, peering in the closet, behind the drapes, glancing around at her now and again as though not entirely sure she wasn’t going to haul out a Mack Ten and start blasting away at him. Meg watched him silently, heart hammering against her ribs as she strolled casually toward the table where her handbag lay.

“You wouldn’t let the little weasel out of your sight, for one thing,” Blackhorse was saying. “And for another, I was on your tail ten minutes after you left Haney’s office, and you came straight here.”

“You weren’t on my tail.”

He just shrugged. “You were good, I’ll give you credit. Better than most, in fact. If you don’t get yourself killed before you get some experience under your belt, you’ll be pretty damn good.”

“I am pretty damn good.”

“You’re not bad.” He smiled as he said it, swinging his head around to look at her. His gaze drifted to her handbag, maybe three feet away now. “You wouldn’t have another gun in that thing, would you?”

Meg let her eyes widen with innocence. “Of course not.”

He laughed. “I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Irish—you can’t lie for spit. That’s something you’re going to have to work on if you want to be successful at this secret agent business.”

“Will you stop calling me a secret agent!” Trying to distract him from the handbag, she strode across the room angrily. “I’m a government agent! Law enforcement of sorts. Or at least a lot closer to it than you are.”

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t seem impressed. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got in here.” Still keeping an eye on her, he grabbed her bag and upended it over the bed. A variety of things spilled across the faded bedspread, but the thing both of them looked at for a silent moment was the small, satin-blue Targa semiautomatic pistol.

Rafe smiled. He looked at Kavanagh, but she just gazed back at him stonily, and he wondered what other armament she had stashed throughout the room. He took a couple of steps backward and rapped on the connecting door. “Come out of there, Dawes.” Silence answered him and he hammered his fist against it. “I said come out, Dawes.”

“He’s halfway to Canada by now,” Kavanagh said impatiently. “Once he knew you were here, he’d have been out the door and gone.”

Rafe ignored her and tested the knob on the connecting door. It turned easily and he pushed the door open gingerly. The other room was pitch-dark, drapes drawn, lights off. The back of his neck prickled and he gave the door a shove with the toe of his boot. “Dawes? I know you’re in there, so stop playing games and—”

He sensed more than actually saw something move in the darkness, something coming straight at him, and he recoiled instinctively. The suitcase flew by him, inches from his face, and Rafe swore and dropped like a stone, grabbing for the Beretta even as his mind took in two separate images: Reggie Dawes taking aim with another suitcase, and Kavanagh diving for the gun on the bed.

He took Dawes out first, ducking under the suitcase that came cartwheeling through the doorway and grabbing the little guy by the front of his T-shirt. Dawes gave a squeak of terror as Rafe pulled him into Kavanagh’s room, then shoved him ferociously. Dawes hit the wall with a thump and slowly slid to the floor, eyes glazed, down for the count. And in the same motion, using the momentum to spin him around, Rafe had the Beretta out and aimed.

And found himself staring into the barrel of the Targa. She’d landed on the bed on her shoulder and had rolled onto the floor, snatching up the small gun as she did so. And now she was kneeling between the bed and the wall, looking a little pale, as though unnerved by her own wild heroics. But unnerved or not, her hands were rock-steady. That damned pistol was aimed square at his chest, and it didn’t waver so much as a hair.

“Okay.” He blew out a tight breath and straightened very slowly, the Beretta trained on her. “This could get interesting.”

“Put the gun down.”

He very nearly laughed. “I was going to say the same thing.”

“I’m not playing around here!”

Rafe let his smile fade deliberately. “Honey, neither am I.” He let her think about it. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, Irish, but you’re way out of your league here. Put the gun down, come out from behind there, and we’ll talk.”

She gave him a searing look, but did get to her feet and walk around the end of the bed, her weapon still aimed at his chest. “I won’t ask you again to put that gun down.”

He smiled coolly. “You haven’t got the stones to kill a man in cold blood, Irish. I’ll bet you’ve never even fired that thing at anything but a paper target.” It was a wild guess, but he could tell the instant the words were out of his mouth that he was right.

Faint apprehension flickered across her face, gone in an instant under steely determination. “There has to be a first time.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to kill a man, Irish?” he asked softly. “Ever seen what a bullet can do to a human body at this range?” He dared to take a step closer to her. “Know what it’s like to look in a man’s eyes and watch the life leak out of him?”

“One more step, and we’ll both get the lesson of a lifetime.”

Rafe smiled again. “You’re not going to pull that trigger, sweetheart, and we both know it. No way you’re going to kill me.”

Her eyes narrowed very slightly and Rafe’s heart stopped.

Then she took a deep, unsteady breath. “Well, maybe not.” She looked at him thoughtfully. Then, without shifting her gaze from his, she dropped her aim with unnerving swiftness to a point about eight inches below his belt buckle. “But I bet I can hurt you bad enough that you’d wish I had.”

Rafe felt his belly constrict and had to fight to keep from dropping his hand protectively over his groin.

The apprehension in her eyes had turned cool. “Put the weapon down, Mr. Blackhorse. If you’re the legitimate cop you’d have me believe, you’re not going to shoot me, either.”

“And if I’m not?” He said it belligerently, wishing—not for the first time today—that he’d never left Bear Mountain. No amount of money was worth this kind of aggravation.

Kavanagh lifted one delicate eyebrow and smiled. “Then, Mr. Blackhorse, I’d say the question isn’t whether or not you’re going to kill me, but whether you can kill me quickly enough to keep my finger from pulling this trigger as I’m going down and doing you a very painful and extremely inopportune injury.”

Rafe nearly winced. He was tempted to just walk across and grab the Targa out of her hands and have done with it. Odds were she wouldn’t shoot, but then again…if that gun went off—even accidentally—the damage would be a hell of a lot more than just inopportune.

Swearing under his breath, he swung the Beretta away from her. He cleared the chamber and released the clip, and tossed both onto the table nearby.

She didn’t lower her own weapon so much as an inch. “Take the other weapon out of the holster under your left arm and put it on the table as well, please.”

Rafe thought of arguing with her, then just did as she asked, staring at her challengingly as the Taurus landed on the table beside the Beretta.

“Thank you.” She smiled a disarmingly sweet smile. “Now take the other gun out and put it on the table with the others, please.”

“Other gun?”

“The Smith & Wesson, Mr. Blackhorse. It’s in the waistband of your jeans in the small of your back, and I’d like it on the table.”

Rafe’s teeth grated together and he balked for a moment, then swore savagely and wrenched the weapon from his jeans and put it on the growing pile of hardware. He held his arms out to either side, forcing himself to smile. “Anything else you’d like me to take off?”

“I guess that would depend on whether or not you have anything else I’d be interested in seeing.”

He let the smile widen and dropped one hand to his belt buckle. “Guess there’s one way to find out.”

She smiled tolerantly. “Don’t think a threat to drop your jeans is going to get me so flustered you can get this gun away from me, Mr. Blackhorse. I have five brothers, and I can assure you that I’m immune to adolescent male humor.”