Beyond the Rules

The reply came as something inarticulate and disbelieving, a strong Pittsburgh accent in play. Kimmer glanced down at Rio, who looked up with perfect timing to raise an eyebrow at her.

“Hunter’s going to hate this,” Kimmer told him. “They really want us to play nice in their backyard.”

“Look, sputzie,” said one of the BGs. “We only want the scrawny guy we followed here. There’s no need for you to get hurt.”

“No need at all,” Kimmer agreed, hoping she heard the sound of small-town-cop sirens in the distance. Unless these suited goonboys took off across country on foot, they couldn’t leave this little section of Glenora without meeting the cops on the way out. And Kimmer would be on their tail…squeeze play. She saw a rustle of movement and carefully sighted a foot in front of it, squeezing the trigger of the twelve-gauge.

The spring brush exploded in bits of leaves and twigs. Damn, that thing has a kick. But she’d been prepared and stayed firmly in position, braced between the spreading limbs. The goonboys scrambled wildly into the bushes, cursing copiously. Kimmer saw a glint of metal. “Here it comes.”

A quick volley of shots from someone who obviously felt he had ammo to spare, and Kimmer ducked behind the tree trunk. She was sure they were out of pistol range, but even goonboys got lucky. They’d take turns laying down cover to dart up the side of the road, getting closer…maybe getting close enough.

Rio knew it, too. “I’m going to draw them off,” he said. “I doubt I can get their interest more than once…better not waste it.”

Blam! Blam!

“Won’t,” Kimmer told him. Won’t waste anything.

“What the hell?” Hank growled loudly from the SUV between gunshot volleys. “Don’t play games with these people, Kimmer! Just…do something!”

Blamblamblam!

“Nice,” Kimmer told him, her cheek still pressed against smooth bark. “You don’t even have the guts to say it. What is it you want me to do, Hank? Exactly?”

Blam! Blamblamblam!

“Whatever it takes!” Hank’s voice crept toward panic. “Just stop them!”

Uh-huh.

Blamblam—click!

“Reload,” she said, but Rio was already away, running crouched just behind the crest of the hill and heading for another tree. He made a god-awful amount of noise and then took position behind the tree, holding the tire iron up to his shoulder so the sun glinted along its length.

They took the bait. They turned toward him, revealing themselves to Kimmer, and as one BG slammed a new magazine home, the other raised his pistol at Rio.

Kimmer aimed between them and took a deep breath. No turning back now. Once she drew blood, she’d be explaining herself to the local law; she’d also drag Hunter into the mess. From this distance the pellet spread meant she’d hit them both without truly damaging them. It wouldn’t end this confrontation unless they took it as the warning it was and withdrew.

If only the cops were closer.

But now it was more than Hank in trouble. Rio stood within their sights, drawing fire for her. Drawing it from Hank, who deserved no such sacrifice.

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

They both went down, tumbling away in surprise, losing ground downhill away from the road. Good. That bought some time for the cops to close in. Not much time, but—

She and Rio startled in unison as the Suburban’s engine revved. Hank! That puny-assed—

Rio reacted immediately, running for the vehicle with long strides, dirt sticking to his socks and the tire iron in hand. The SUV swung past him, building speed, and with a grunt of effort he managed to draw even to the open tailgate and fling himself into the back. For an instant Kimmer thought he’d bounce right out again, but he must have found something to grab on to; his feet disappeared inside.

And that left Kimmer. Kimmer, sitting in a tree and staring stupidly at her stupid brother’s stupid break for it. So much for the plan to sandwich the BGs between Kimmer and the cops she’d so fervently hoped would arrive in time.

No way in hell was she leaving Rio to take this one alone. Not when she had the only gun.

Though maybe while he was bouncing around in the back, he’d find those shotgun shells they needed so sorely.

The shotgun had a sling strap. She pushed the safety on and ducked through the strap, freeing her hands so she could climb swiftly out on the branch and then down the rope to the tire. She could just barely push off the side of the hill while crouching in the tire and she did it, swinging back closer to push harder, propelling herself into the open air over the road as the BGs struggled to pull themselves together, smarting and bleeding but still well-armed.

And here came Hank, hauling the Suburban around the hairpin turn from the clearing, forced to slow down for the rutted section. Kimmer adjusted the arc of her swing, leaning to the side and pushing the tire around until she hung precariously out over nothing, high enough to see nothing but sky.

Time to let go. And if her timing was off, to go splat.

Kimmer landed with a painful klunk, denting the roof under the luggage rack. The shotgun smacked her in the back of the head, the metal smacked her bare feet and palms, and her forehead made contact with…something. She squinched her face up as if that would clear her head, clinging to the luggage rack as the vehicle bounced beneath her.

“Kimmer?”

That was Rio’s voice, filtered through metal and glass and creaking shocks, and she thumped the roof twice in affirmation. She wanted to bellow to Hank that he should slow down—hell, he should just plain stop—but he’d already scraped the Suburban by the sedan in a painful screech of metal and she knew better than to think he might give her shouting a second thought. Best to just hang on.

Yeah. So much for Plan A.

The road grew a little smoother, giving Kimmer the wherewithal to turn around and watch their back.

And here came the sedan. Backing down a road it hadn’t been built to climb in the first place, and doing it with the careless haste that said the driver had already decided it would be sacrificed to the cause.

Which was killing Hank. And now, killing Kimmer and Rio.

She flattened out over the luggage rack, wrenching the shotgun around into a useable position. Eventually the road would get smoother. Eventually she wouldn’t have to hang on with all her fingers and toes just to keep from being jounced over the side.

They hit pavement. The sedan lost ground with a hasty three-point turn but then more than made up for it with the increased speed of forward movement. Hank responded with a lead foot, and they screamed downhill toward the residential area far too quickly for the sake of playing children or loose livestock. You fool. I took us away from this area for a reason. From inside the vehicle came the sound of raised voices, Rio’s emphatic and Hank’s shrill and defiant. The Suburban wove back and forth, wildly but briefly, and then continued as it had been. Kimmer, a little vertiginous at the landscape speeding backward past her, took the activity to mean that Rio had tried but failed to wrest some sort of control from Hank. And then they hit a series of turns for which she could only clutch to the luggage rack, grateful for its presence and cursing centrifugal force.

He couldn’t have any idea where he was going.

Nor did Kimmer, until she finally got a glimpse of the Dairy Queen on the way by and knew the road they traveled, and where it went.

Where it stopped.

The docks.

Kimmer could only imagine Hank’s cursing when he realized he’d driven into the asphalt equivalent of a box canyon. Quaint, bobbing wooden docks all around them on this little jetty, populated by a plethora of gently rocking boats—sailboats, pontoon boats, a speedboat or two. No launching bay; this area was meant for cars to back up and unload. Not even enough room for the Suburban to turn around without backing up to the wider parking, bait sales and gas and propane refill area they’d just passed.

No time for that.

The Suburban rocked to an uncertain halt. Kimmer gave two sharp knocks on the roof beneath her, letting Rio know she was still aboard. She uncrimped her fingers from the luggage rack and pushed up to her elbows, bringing the shotgun to bear.

The sedan, unsteady on its wheels from the abuse it had taken, shot around the corner into the parking area. The goonboys were just mad enough to keep accelerating when they could easily have crawled to a stop and still had the same result.

The Suburban was trapped at the end of the lot with only one place to go.

Seneca Lake.

With perfect timing, an old station wagon loaded to the fenders with kids and fishing gear and flotation devices came ambling around the corner, not far behind the sedan.

And this, Hank, is why I took us up the damned hill.

Two cartridges left and no other way to warn the innocent bystanders on this family-run dock. With a wicked curse, Kimmer jumped to her feet, legs braced wide, toes finding purchase on the roof rack. Only peripherally aware of the vehicle’s sway beneath her as Rio disembarked, she pointed the shotgun at the sky and pulled the trigger.

The station wagon screeched to a halt; the figures within made emphatic gestures at her and each other. Other people on the edge of her vision reacted, withdrawing. Someone shouted at her.

And the sedan kept coming.

One cartridge left.

With deliberate movement, Kimmer resettled the gun at her shoulder, perfectly aware of the dramatic silhouette she made standing braced on top of the SUV. She considered it fair warning. She’d fired on them before; they’d know she wasn’t bluffing. She could see their silhouettes: big, dark blots, the passenger with his gun held ready. They’d be out and shooting as soon as they stopped—or out and grabbing up prisoners, which could only lead to shooting in the end. They didn’t know her. They must be counting on her nerve to fail in this peculiar game of chicken.

Wrong.

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

Someone screamed. The windshield shattered and the car veered wildly. For a moment Kimmer thought it would plow right into the Suburban. She crouched, ready to leap away from any collision, and then the car sheered away toward the side of the parking lot and the clear path to the—

“Kimmer!” Rio shouted, and Kimmer dove for him, perfectly willing to use him as a landing pad to get behind cover because anysecondnow—

The goonboys and their car ran smack into the propane storage tank, smack at the juncture of tank with intake and outflow pipes. The initial impact of metal against metal preceded the explosion by just enough time to distinguish one sound from the other.

Kimmer hit Rio and Rio hit the ground and the ground rocked beneath them. Shrapnel struck the Suburban in a series of staccato pings; jagged shards of tank metal dug into the asphalt and the wooden docks beyond. The station-wagon family and any other spectators were long gone. The dizzying blast of noise settled into the roar of flames as the sedan burned. From inside the Suburban, Hank muttered a long string of profanities, making free and repeated use of the phrase “fuckin’ crazy bitch.”

Kimmer pushed herself off Rio’s chest. She found it a good sign that he helped, disentangling their arms to support her shoulders. She found his eyes, the warm sienna irises almost hidden by pupils wide with shock and anger and concern. She grinned down at him. “Hey,” she said. “Was it good for you?”

Owen Hunter, Rio thought, had used remarkable restraint. At the time Rio had been too pumped to appreciate it, stalking around with the impulse to pick up the damned tire iron even though there was nothing left to hit and the cops would have taken him down for it anyway.

Or they would have tried.

“How’s your back?” Kimmer had kept asking and he’d repeatedly said it was fine, knowing it would be a lie once the adrenaline rush faded, but for the moment, true enough. Besides which, another six months of physical therapy had made the difference; he hadn’t expected further improvement at this point but he’d gotten some anyway.

All a good thing, for by the time the fire department, the cops and Owen Hunter had hashed out the situation to everyone’s temporary satisfaction—meaning the fire chief was unhappy, the cops were disgruntled but willing to discuss things further without making outright arrests and Owen Hunter had displayed his remarkable restraint any number of times—Rio had stiffened up considerably and was thankful for the heating pad now tucked between the side where his kidney had once been and the oversized, overstuffed recliner of Kimmer’s he found so comfortable.

More comfortably yet, Kimmer sat sideways in his lap, curled up to flip through the style magazine she’d finally fessed up was a guilty pleasure after he’d found it tucked behind the cookbook she never used. Not quite under the mattress, but she blushed enough so it might as well have been.

He liked that she’d blushed. She wouldn’t have been that vulnerable with anyone else. She’d have kicked his ass for snooping around.

Not snooping. He lived here now. For now. Him and the battered, failing OldCat he hadn’t been able to leave on his own back at the Michigan dock. For now and for…who knew? Kimmer’s wasn’t a large house, and her personality filled it. Claimed it. Made Rio aware of how hard she’d fought to get here, and that unlike himself, she’d never shared space with a loving, squabbling, all-for-one family.

Just the hard, cruel family which included the man now watching ESPN in the small TV room, a space meant for a dining room but where Kimmer had chosen to isolate the television so she could have this den for quiet moments. Perfect, quiet moment, turning the pages of her magazine while Rio rode the edge of sleep beneath her, arms loosely around her waist, hands clasped against her hip, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, her slight movements as she scanned the pages, the occasional nearly silent snort of derision at some piece of haute couture for which she saw no use, the movement of her shoulders when she grinned, laughing under her breath at some joke within the pages. Eventually she rested the magazine on the fat arm of the chair and let her head tip against his shoulder, her short curls soft against his neck. Dark curls, so short they never grew sun-streaked. Intense, like Kimmer herself.

After some moments, she murmured, “Sleeping?”

“Yes.”

She moved slightly against him. Oh, yeah. Wuh. Like that. And then she said, “No, you’re not.”

He smiled without opening his eyes. “Honey,” he said, “I could be almost dead and that would still happen.”

Her cheek moved against his shoulder as she, too, smiled. “Okay, then,” she said. “Just checking.”

“Nice shooting, by the way.”

“Had to be. Last cartridge. I wasn’t expecting the whole propane-tank thing, though.”

“I wasn’t expecting Hank to identify the men as the ones running his chop shop.” Rio kept his voice low, although the televised sound of car engines and crowds—and his sporadic couch coaching—inspired little concern that Hank would actually hear them. “Boom, the end of all his troubles. He never lifted a tire iron, never touched the trigger. Just a victim.”

“I never expected anything else,” Kimmer said, and traced Rio’s collarbone through the fabric of his T-shirt in a way that made him want to rip it off. Okay, that, Hank might notice.

Too damn bad they’d both decided the unpredictable man was best kept close to home—a decision Owen had emphatically endorsed. For although the Hunter Agency had taken only a generation to expand from a small missing-persons agency to the current elite collection of international undercover operatives, it remained more than discreet on its wine-country home turf. It was invisible.

And Owen wanted to keep it that way.

“We’ll be okay,” she added. “The cops aren’t happy, but they know what Owen does for this town—that his operatives go out of their way to keep the area safe. We’ve pitched in on plenty of their difficult cases.”

“They owe you? That’s not exactly how the law is supposed to work. Turn the other cheek is more of a civilian option.”

“Trust me, we’ll earn it when we go in for our little discussion at the station tomorrow. They’ll pry every detail from us, write it all down and look it over as carefully as they would anyone’s. They’ll know Hank isn’t telling the whole story about why those guys were after him, but they don’t have anything on him here. And when there are legitimate choices to be made, they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt. Nothing happened out there today that wasn’t self-defense. And they know I tried to draw the action away from anyone else. Tried being the operative word. And come on, there were so many other things the goonboys could have hit besides that propane tank. That wasn’t fair.”

“Probably the very last things that went through their minds.”

“Yuck.”

Hank’s voice rose above the sound of his television program. “Hey, Kimmer, bring some coffee this way.”

Kimmer stiffened. In that moment she stopped being the woman who showed him glimpses of a gentler, playful self, and returned to being the woman he’d first met. Hard. A woman with edges. A woman who had no intention of being ruled by her past, in whatever form it came. She no longer fit perfectly into his lap; she just happened to be sitting there. And she said, “You want I should make up some sammitches, too? Call up some girlfriends to keep you company? And I got a little bell you can ring anytime you need something, how about that?”

Rio winced.

She knew it; she felt it. For all the ways her knack of reading people failed her when it came to Rio—when it came to anyone close to her, for good or bad—she’d learned to compensate. To observe and know him. She withdrew, sliding off his lap to stand before him. “It’s not the same and you know it.”

Rio’s grandmother had ruled her Danish-Japanese children, and then her grandchildren. His sobo had instilled her courteous, often ritualized ways through the entire family—and those who had married into it soon found themselves murmuring courteous phrases, taking off their shoes at the door, providing slippers to guests…and going out of their way to make guests feel at home. In Sobo’s household, failure to anticipate a guest’s needs—so much as a cup of coffee—was a profound failure indeed. Those in Rio’s generation were more relaxed about such things, but still respectful, still attentive. And though during the years away from home—the CIA years, as Rio thought of them—Rio had adjusted to myriad cultures, he’d easily returned to most of his old ways once he’d come home.

Well, his old ways if you didn’t count the constant adjustments he made for that spot where his kidney used to be, and all the not-so-well-adjusted muscle and tendon that had also been in the way of that bullet.

Rio looked up at Kimmer, found her defiant and hard—that same demeanor that had drawn him in, the one shouting I don’t need anybody when in fact she needed everything. Someone to accept and love her for who she was, just for starters. Petite but carrying hard, toned muscle, lightning-fast in reaction and as quick in improvised strategy as she was on her feet. Features saved from being cute by the hard line of her jaw and the look in her deep, clear blue eyes. And because being honest with Kimmer was the only option, Rio said, “No. Hank is not a good guest, or a welcome one. But it’s not about him, it’s about you.”

“Exactly.” She gave an assertive nod, and if Rio didn’t know her so well he might have missed that faint tremble in her chin. “It’s about me never forgetting the things my family taught me—even if they didn’t mean to.” Not entirely true; Rio knew by now that Kimmer’s battered mother had deliberately left her with a set of rules to live by. “And I guess there’s no hope if I haven’t at least managed to learn that men like Hank will own you—if you let them.”

“That’s not—” Rio started and then stopped, because he could see that the conversation was over, that Kimmer had gone to that place where her past very much ruled her, even if in a way she’d never acknowledge. She hesitated a moment, clad in lightweight drawstring pants and a French-cut T-shirt, and Rio’s experienced eye saw vulnerability beneath that hard edge. When she turned away, it was to stalk out to the front porch on bare feet that had been wrapped in sports tape at heel and ball to cover the damage the day had wrought—tree bark, asphalt, gouging bits of stick and gravel had all left their mark.

Rio had thrown his socks away, but they’d lasted long enough to leave him with little more than a few pebble bruises.

He lost himself in the appreciation of watching her walk away, and then he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, trying to call up the moments when he’d had her in his lap and they’d manage to forget—mostly—that Hank was here, and all the things he’d brought with him. Goonboys. Troubled past. A really bad attitude. And then he sighed and told himself, “Walk the talk, Ryobe Carlsen.”

That meant switching off the heating pad and getting up to walk silently into the next room, where he interposed himself between Hank and the television and said, “I’ll make some coffee. Go out and talk to your sister.”

Hank couldn’t have looked more startled. His gaze flicked past Rio to the television and then out to the front porch. Rio made his point by turning off the television. Before Hank’s open mouth could emit words, Rio jerked a thumb at the front porch. “Go. Talk. She saved your ass today.” And then, as Hank slowly, uncertainly, stood, Rio added a low-toned, “And be nice. Don’t crowd her. Don’t boss her. Just try saying thank you.”

Of course Hank had to open his mouth. “Kinda looks like she’s got you pussy-whipped.”

“You think so?” Rio cocked his head to consider it. “You know what? I don’t. Maybe you and I will have a talk about that another time. For now, you want that coffee? You go be nice.”

Hank shook his head, a gesture of disgust—at just exactly what, Rio wasn’t sure. And didn’t care. Hank headed for the front porch—and Rio found himself walking in the wrong direction to make coffee. He found himself following Kimmer’s brother, stopping to hover within earshot through the screen door.

Hank, diplomat and master of subtlety, let the screen slam behind him, shattering what peace the porch might have offered Kimmer. “There you are,” he said, and it somehow sounded accusing, as if Kimmer had deliberately inconvenienced him by choosing to sit out in the cool spring night. Rio could see her there in his mind’s eye—on the porch swing, her shoulders wrapped with the crocheted afghan she kept out there. “I guess what ol’ Leo said was right, then. You sure did handle those guys. I was kinda hoping to avoid the cops, though.”

“So was I,” Kimmer said dryly. “Gee, I wonder where we went wrong?”

“Rio’s making coffee.” Another accusation, his tone indicating she should be the one in the kitchen. Rio moved closer to the door—close enough to see out—knowing Kimmer had likely detected his presence already.

Kimmer rose from the swing, the afghan still enclosing her shoulders. “And he sent you out here to make nice, didn’t he?”

“Jeez, Kimmer, you turned into a real ball-buster. I don’t even know you anymore.”

“That’s for the best, don’t you think?”

From Hank’s expression, he hadn’t caught the exquisitely dry tone of Kimmer’s sarcasm, but nor did he quite know how to take what she’d said. He finally shook his head. “Maybe you should come back with me. Get to know the family again.”

Kimmer snorted. “I know what I need to know. I think I’ve made that clear enough.”

Hank went squinty-eyed. Together with the thin flannel shirt left open over a dingy white T-shirt, worn jeans made ragged with the rip they’d received sometime today and chin scruff too old to call stubble and not old enough to call a deliberate beard, it wasn’t a good look on him. “You’ve changed, Kimmer.”