Shotgun Honeymoon Page 20

  And nothing else mattered.

  “Fat Cat,” he ordered harshly. “Carmichael has ’em at the Fat Cat.”

  11:37 p.m., The Fat Cat.

  “Isn’t this just the stupidest man-trick you’ve ever seen in your life?” Janina wheezed at Tobi.

  “Geez, yes.” Her friend nodded. Which set her rocking helplessly. Which set them both giggling hysterically, not wise under the circumstances, since they were both lying on their stomachs, hog-tied in plastic wrap and freezer tape with their hands behind them, wrists to ankles, heads up, necks more or less loosely connected to the entire contraption by meat-packing string, which sort of made them look like acrobatics-class rocking horses, which in turn was what was causing the giggles and making them rock. It was undignified, uncomfortable and extremely difficult to breathe because every jerk on the string made it cut into their necks.

  But every yank caused another strand of the oft-wrapped string to break.

  So stupid about covered the whole thing right down to the fact that Janina nearly had her wrists loose from her ankles because sweating beneath the plastic wrap was causing it to get slippery. Buddy had also done a lousy job of wrapping and taping their wrists to their ankles with the abysmal-quality freezer tape that wasn’t really meant to stick for long periods of time.

  The whole thing was too much.

  And all because the half-bagged Buddy hadn’t come prepared to deal with her and Tobi once he’d captured them. Nor had the drinking buddy who came along for some hell-raising but who hadn’t turned out to be his “daddy.” One look at Buddy’s true intentions had sent the guy—who Janina recognized as having been with him that fateful evening Buddy’d tripped her—scrambling for the desert night on the double. Leaving the used, and undoubtedly out-of-town-stolen Hummer II parked in the middle of the Fat Cat’s counter.

  Buddy, she reflected, never had been good at the follow-through his father required. No doubt why she’d never pegged him as having been there the night Maddie’s brother was killed.

  Or why she’d never thought of him as a wife beater until he’d hit her that once.

  She thunked over onto her side. Another piece of string popped loose around her neck.

  “You get the feeling Buddy’s daddy never let him be a Boy Scout?” Tobi sort of gasped, thonking sideways, too.

  “This kitchen’s sure not prepared for torture tying.” Janina rasped back. She squirmed in the direction of Tobi’s voice. “You ever play Mummenschanz when you were a kid?”

  “Huh?”

  “You know. Mime acrobats. Dressed in black. Used blocks for heads and feet, or tubes for bodies or whatever. They were on Sesame Street. Did a lot of tumbling. Impossible stuff. They were great. We used to try everything they did.”

  “Ah…”

  “Never mind.” She twisted her hands under the film of plastic. “Think I’ve sweated enough to slide my hands out of this wrap if you…”

  She felt a slight tug and her hands drifted a bit then suddenly wrested free of their prison. Her aching shoulders sagged gratefully, but she gagged when the multiple loops of string unexpectedly threatened to cut into her throat. When they abruptly separated from her ankles, and her feet clunked heavily to the floor, she gasped and lay still, breathing for a moment, letting stiff muscles and joints relax back into the shape they were meant to inhabit. Then she gingerly rolled over and unwrapped and untaped her feet, found a box cutter in a nearby drawer and turned to Tobi’s bonds.

  “Where’s Manuel?” Tobi asked.

  Stricken, Janina looked at her and shook her head. She had no idea whether or not he’d come down from the office and gone out front before Buddy’s arrival. Or if Buddy’d had found him or…

  Tobi swallowed hard. “We should look for him.”

  “Yeah.” Janina didn’t want to find him the way Tobi was afraid they’d find him either. “Maybe we should call police and rescue first?”

  “I’ll call, you ” Tobi said with alacrity, absconding with the non-dirty work—as usual. “That’ll be fastest.”

  Janina glared at her friend. “You know I hate you.”

  “And you know how this works.” Tobi half winced, half grinned at her. “Them as can, designate, and them as forget to, look for the blood.” She gave Janina a look of devilish innocence. “Besides—” she shrugged “—you know you love me. Who else would put up with you?”

  Russ, Janina wanted to shout, but at the moment, she wasn’t as certain about that as she wanted to be.

  She went to look for Manuel.

  Jonah fishtailed to a stop in the middle of the highway, then jammed on the gas and jerked hard out of the path of an oncoming semi and careered onto the side of the road, breathing hard. Damn, whatever had made him do that had come too close this time. If he kept listening to it—whatever it was—he’d get himself killed sooner than later.

  Deliberately he shook off the remnants of the sinking, wrenching fear tumbling through his belly and focused. Sure enough, reason surfaced. Alerted by some instinct, Levoie or otherwise, he stuck his hand in his uniform breast pocket and fingered the ring Russ had given Janina on their wedding day. Gem and metal heated instantly to his touch, seemed to fuse with the skin of his palm in a manner that had nothing to do with August’s high heat.

  Curious, he switched on the pickup’s interior lights to study the ring. Nothing.

  With something akin to misgiving, and full of reluctance, he lifted his palm to his nose and sniffed the ring. Instantly his senses whirled, head spun. He shut off the interior lights and closed his eyes to the sudden kaleidoscope of impressions a single whiff threatened to drown him in.

  He huffed air, shallow breaths, making sure not to breathe more of the Janina-and Russ-soaked ring than he had to. He’d worked toward this end a long time and achieved nothing like this, so why now?

  Because now it was necessary, instinct answered, that was why. Now there was need.

  He closed the wedding ring into his fist, held it at arm’s length and took a deep breath. All right then. He would respond to the need, help his brother, his new sister, and take on the side of himself he’d hunted since adolescence.

  Leaving the truck at the highway’s edge, he headed into the Arizona brush, found himself a likely spot where he wouldn’t be disturbed, and focused his energies not only on what he needed to do but on Janina’s ring.

  Chapter 16

  Janina found Manuel pinned beneath the Hummer that was lodged in a lopsided slump half between the kitchen pass-through and the swinging doors into the kitchen. He was bleeding from numerous cuts, and unconscious, but his pulse was strong.

  Shaking and queasy, she gulped relief. “I found him,” s when her voice was ready to cooperate. “He’s alive—”

  “Ain’t that nice,” Buddy observed.

  Janina whipped around. Gun loose in one hand, his other arm crooked around Tobi’s throat choking off her air, Buddy teetered his way through the debris, dragging the struggling Fat Cat waitress with him. Janina’s gaze locked with Tobi’s. Tobi, fish-mouthed, gasping for air, then deliberately flashed a glance downward, back at Janina. And blinked once. Janina tightened her jaw, gave her friend the slimmest curl of a smile in response. Felt around her for something heavy but hand-size.

  “You’re mine now,” Buddy said, coming to an unsteady halt atop a pile of rubble. “No bully cops here to rescue you this time.”

  “No daddy here to see you either, Buddy,” Janina said quietly. “And your friend from the Hummer ran. Bet he called the cops the minute he saw what you wanted to do.”

  “No.” Buddy shook his head in momentary confusion. “My daddy didn’t run. He told me…” He looked at her, rubbed his temple with the fisted weapon—and took a menacing step forward. Leveled the gun. “No. You quit now. You always did this. Tryin’ to get between him ’n me. He tol’ me. You need to be managed. Taken care of. I brought him to show him I can. He didn’t run. Told me you were fer me. Said he’d show me how. Worked it on
that other one. Showed me. Not his fault I couldn’t do her like he said. But it’s different now. He said—”

  A vehicle skidding and screeching to a halt near the diner’s destroyed front window arrested his attention, caused the gun to waver. In the same instant Tobi sank the nails of both hands into the bare forearm at her throat, and Janina came up with a full sugar container and threw it hard at his head. She followed it by surging to her feet, table leg in hand and, as soon as the sugar bottle hit Buddy and he loosened his hold on Tobi, she belted him with the piece of curved steel.

  He screamed and staggered, but bewildered and enraged, didn’t go down. Instead, he attempted to lunge at her across the rubble. She sidestepped him, smacked him in the ear with the pipe at the same time Tobi jammed a loose chair into his path and tripped him.

  Simultaneously all hell—or heaven, as the case may be—broke loose. A large predatory bird screamed through the broken window, reversed to brake in full flight in order to come at Buddy, talons first. It descended sharply, wings spread, beating the man about the head anytime he attempted to rise, using its talons and beak to rake exposed skin whenever threatened, but lifting obligingly out of the way when Janina shooed it or made a move to continue dealing with Buddy herself. And when Russ, pumped full of dread and adrenaline at the sight of the Hummer parked inside his wife’s place of employment, finally hurled his battered body through the wreckage sans help from Guy and Jeth, the big bird cocked its head as if to give him an avian once-over. Then it shook something on a leather thong out of its breast feathers, hooked it into its beak and tossed it at Russ before taking wing and vacating the premises.

  “Janie? Janina?” Damn, he couldn’t see her, where was she?

  Too intent on staying conscious, erect and getting to Janina to notice anything else, Russ missed the wink of precious metal and gem arcing into the beam of the headlights Jeth had left on.

  “Janie, please. Answer me.” The object thrown by the bird hit him center forehead, staggered him. He opened his good hand, caught the ring as it fell. Dropped in his tracks and stared at Janina’s ring in confusion. “What the…?”

  “Russ?” Janina spun from where she’d finished laying Buddy low with the heel of her hand to his nose and a follow-up knee to his groin, and spotted Russ collapsing into the mess that used to be his favorite booth. “Oh, geez. Russ!”

  Fast as she could move, she scrambled through the rubble to reach him, tried to catch him and ease him down. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in the hospital. Who let you out? If anything more happens to you, I’ll…”

  “Kill me?” Russ asked weakly. “Are you—”

  “Fine,” Janina snapped. “Psychically demolished but physically intact. Mostly. As far as I know and no thanks to you. And no I don’t want to kill you, I want to shake you within an inch of your life. You brass-plated, pigheaded, closemouthed, uncommunicative nincompoop.” Then she threw her arms around his neck, heedless of his hiss of pain, and burst into tears.

  Outside, the wail of sirens and honking emergency vehicles rolled through the night and into the parking lot outside the diner. In a moment the Fat Cat was inundated with firefighters and paramedics, Winslow police, sheriffs and the highway patrol. Jonah showed up last.

  “Shh, Janie, shh.” As best he could, Russ pulled her close, needing the feel of her living, breathing and warm against him more than he minded the ache. “It’s all right. We’re all right. It’s done now. You got him. We’re okay.”

  “No, we are not.” She pushed back. Smeared the ball of her thumb across her cheek. Snuffled emotion away while she watched a pair of firefighters work to free Manuel from beneath the Hummer. Planted her tongue behind her bottom teeth to get control of her quavery chin and looked her husband close range in the eye. “No, we are so not okay, it’s all out pathetic.”

  “Janie, I—”

  “No, don’t. It’s my turn to tell you.”

  She reached out, kneading the muscles in his damaged shoulder until he grunted when the immediate throbbing turned into excruciating pain. “Janie, damn, that—”

  She grabbed his chin, aiming for his attention. “Talkin’ here. Listen up.”

  “Got it. Absolutely.” He cleared his throat, worked his jaw around a groan, and nodded. “I’m silent as long as you quit killing my shoulder.”

  “Be glad I don’t kill you,” Janina said thickly, but with asperity. “Because after all this, you deserve it.” She gulped, swiped at her face again, determined not to cry more. Failed. Took a deep breath and let it out in one long flow of anguished chatter. “I mean, you seduce me into marrying you then you don’t come home, then you’re the most attentive husband ever, then you get shot being stupid and you nearly die in my arms, then you don’t die, but won’t let me near you in the hospital even while you’re telling me you’re worried about me being alone ’cuz of Buddy and his daddy and you think I’m pregnant so I go take a damn pregnancy test and I’m not and you still won’t let me stay with you, so what am I supposed to think, blast it?

  “And then this happens and Buddy says his daddy always had me marked for him—did you know that? He’s nuts—and you’re not in the hospital where you’re supposed to be and I was on my way there when Buddy got here and what would I have done and you’ve never told me you love me and I—I c-can’t have babies and you want them a-and…”

  “Janie.” He said it softly, hoping to interrupt her, get her attention. He wanted to touch her face, but couldn’t reach her with his right hand and his left was strapped to his chest with his arm. “Janie, don’t.”

  He knew what she needed—hell, what he needed, too—but he had a couple of things that had to be gotten out of the way first. “Buddy’s father was picked up tonight. He’s the one who really shot Maddie’s brother, put it on her. That, on top of everything he did to her…” His gut twisted again over the everything he hadn’t known about, including how Maddie had been torn up so badly inside that bearing children was out of the question for her.

  He worked his jaw. “She said she told you what she asked me and how I reacted.”

  Tears flowed like rain, threatened to become a late-summer monsoon. Janina lifted her face and didn’t hide from what frightened her. She nodded. “She told me before you got shot. And while you were in surgery, we talked about it again. She wants Jess to have the baby. I told her…” She bent her head. Whispered, “I told her if I couldn’t have them, someone should.” She met his gaze, cognac brown to midnight blue. Loneliness spilled out of her, through him. “It’d be a beautiful baby, Russ. You could baby-sit. Maybe I could be its favorite aunt, if not its mother.”

  He heard it in her voice, felt in his gut the statement she didn’t make, “While you find someone who can have kids with you.”

  He shut his eyes, sank away from her. Was that what she believed about him, thought of herself? His stand-up, never insecure, talk-back or take-’em down bride? The woman he’d felt part of from the moment he’d entered her? Knew without a doubt…

  “Judas, Janie.” Him and his vaunted sensitivity to women and all creatures female. Damn it all to hell. “Janie, listen to me—”

  A uniformed officer squatted beside them. “Sorry, Lieutenant, but we’ve gotta move you and your lady out of here so the crews can work. Paramedics want to check her out, and you’re lookin’ a bit rocky yourself, you don’t mind me sayin’.”

  The skin beside Russ’s left eye tightened marginally. Oh but he did. He minded a lot. Not the fact that the uniform thought he “looked rocky,” but the interruption, the umpteenth million and one on top of way too many in his month-old marriage, the anniversary of which he’d not had the opportunity to celebrate because he’d been in the hospital without his wife, shot by a man who hadn’t really even wanted to shoot hi

  As gently as possible he eased his good arm from Janina, traced her cheek with his forefinger, and grabbed the shocked cop by the shirtfront.

  “Get out of the middle of my marri
age. Before I put you out of it,” he said evenly.

  “Russ!” Janina grabbed his hand, tried to pry his fingers open. “Stop it. Let go.”

  “No.” He turned his head. Eyed her deliberately. “I’m tired of you thinking the wrong things, sick of the department and whatever else getting between us at the wrong times. It stops now, here.”

  Somewhere in the diner’s superstructure something groaned loudly. Janina cast a nervous glance ceilingward.

  “Ah, really, Russ, this might not be the best—”

  Nearby, the Hummer shifted sideways in the kitchen’s pass-through amid shouts. The rescue team slid a stabilized Manuel safely from beneath the vehicle and got him out of the building just as the massive SUV settled heavily into the spot where they’d been. Russ ignored it all.

  “Hang it, Janie. It’s what we’ve got.”

  Janina succeeded in tugging one of Russ’s fingers out of the cop’s crumpled uniform shirt. “Trust me. We could have it out there.” She jerked her chin at the parking lot. “Really. All of it. Whatever you want, we can have it.”

  “Trust you…” He cut her a sideways glance from beneath his lashes. “And whatever I want. Hmm.”

  If she’d been in more—no, make that less—of an “I love you, we’re in danger of things falling on us, now let me get you out of here” frame of mind, she probably would have noted the very devilish Levoie bent of his “Hmm.” But she simply nodded and promised him frantically, “Anything.”

  “Good.” He released the officer. “Got a flashlight?”

  The uniform gave him ticked off. “Outside.”

  Janina shoved her shoulder under Russ’s good one and agreed readily. “Yes, please.”

  Seemingly from nowhere and everywhere, all three of Russ’s brothers turned up on cue and gently moved Janina aside.

  “But…” she protested.

  Guy shook his head. “Trust us,” he advised. “You’ll be glad you did.” Then he hiked Russ up by the torso while Jeth and Jonah grabbed a leg each.