Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(114)

She climbed on, clutching her bag. She couldn’t look away from his eyes. Breaking that eye contact would rip something vital out of her.

She shouldn’t have agreed to this. She saw his logic, she followed his reasoning, but only with her head. Not with her heart.

The bus lumbered away. She craned her neck back, staring at his tall, broad, graceful body, the coat blowing back like an old-fashioned greatcoat. His hair lifted in the wind. His love for her shone from his eyes. She clung to the sight of him. Every second she could look at him was a desperate gulp of air.

And she was about to dive underwater.





Tearful farewells played hell with the grinding war machine.

Miles was a mess when her bus turned the corner. Luckily for him, icy algorithms and laser sharp hyper-functioning wits were not required to buzz around on a motorcycle and look for a car rental. He was so grateful for the alternative identity the McCloud Crowd had given him on his thirtieth birthday. A costly, blatantly illegal gift. To think he’d laughed in their faces at the time. Hah. Payback.

Petrie said that they had recovered a Glock 23 revolver from a dumpster right near the car that held Barlow’s body. His gun. As if he’d be stupid enough to murder a cop and then dispose of the gun in a dumpster at the scene. Then again, normal people did dumb things in the aftermath of committing violent crimes. He was a long way from normal now. Farther than he’d ever dreamed he’d get.

In any case, the impending manhunt just accelerated his agenda. He wished he could go to the McCloud Crowd, with their experience, their confidence, their ferocious expertise, like he’d been doing ever since they’d discovered each other years ago. But the time for that was past. He’d gotten them all into this f*cking tarpit. He’d put their young, vulnerable families at risk. Now he had to put it right.

One fatal strike, fast and hard. As far from everyone that could be used against him as possible. Lara, the McCloud Crowd and their progeny, his parents, hell, even Cindy was probably in danger, if they’d fingered Jeannie. He’d lived with her for years, and followed her around for years before that. He hoped Erin had warned her.

He rented a car with the alternate driver’s license, the matching credit card. Rain poured down. It would take hours to get to Blaine. He found some mindless rock on the radio to zone out to, and hit the road.

His thoughts kept on drifting rebelliously over to that fantasy he’d spun for Lara of their life together. The days and the nights, the winters and the summers. Jesus, he had to stop that self-indulgent shit. He wasn’t coming out of this clusterf*ck with his life intact. He’d be lucky to survive at all. Or not. Maximum security prison, or death row. Neither of them could be characterized as lucky. Oregon had the death penalty on the books, though they’d never used it.

Maybe they’d make a special exception for dickheads like him, who murdered cops and billionaire philanthropists.

It occurred to him that with his developing abilities, it was quite possible that no prison could hold him unless he chose to be held.

That idea did not make him any happier. Life as a fugitive. Great.

He blew out a hard, sharp breath. Time to rev up the war machine and do the hard thing. As far as it took. Even if he had to forget who he was. Become something else entirely.

He would finish that bastard before they ran him down.





It was pissing rain and dark when Lara got to the Portland bus depot. She roused herself from her contemplation of the raindrops coursing sideways on the bus window, the streaks and blurs of colored light, to scoop up her bag. She had to change buses again. The money bag was belted around her waist, since it made her flipping nervous, carrying thirteen thousand bucks around in a tatty old gym bag, and the canvas was thick and uncomfortably scratchy against her skin.

The bus station blew her mind. It was the first time she’d had to deal with a big, crowded public place since Miles had pulled her out of the rat hole, and it was overwhelming. Intense echoing noise, the swirling crush of fast-moving people, the garish colors of the candy stands and the magazine racks, the juice and soda machines. So much blazing fluorescent light. She was grateful for the sunglasses.

Keep it together. Just act normal, just keep moving. This is what normal looks like. One little story swirling with a whole bunch of other stories. A strand in a cobweb. Normal. Normal.

She peered at her ticket, eyes watering. Her eyes were a problem. She was nearsighted, and had worn contacts way back when. A million years ago, the pre-rat hole, pre–psi-max Lara Kirk. A woman she barely remembered. They’d abducted her in the night, and she’d been without vision correction ever since. Not that it had mattered in her cell. It sure mattered now, though. Her blurry vision made her feel vulnerable and naked. Like she needed any more of that.

She had to walk all the way over to right under the monitor, take the sunglasses off and peer up, squinting for a long time to figure out the numbers, the destinations, the gates.

hey u howzitgoing popped up on her internal screen.

It literally weakened her knees. She was flooded with warmth and unreasonable joy. Edged with terror, of course.

im good everything proceeding as planned and u?

still driving. ways 2 go still. miss u

ME 2

did u eat? he demanded, predictably enough.

She laughed out loud, and the woman standing next to her to check the monitors gave her a nervous glance and edged away.