Too Hard to Handle (Black Knights Inc. #8)(36)
She reached into her satchel and pulled out an earpiece and clip-on microphone. She handed both to Penni. “Mic up and do a quick sound check,” Chelsea instructed, tossing her satchel to Dan and motioning with her chin toward the door at his back.
Penni inserted the earpiece and clipped the microphone to the collar of her parka while he turned to place Chelsea’s satchel beside Penni’s purse inside the building.
Quietly shutting the door behind him, he almost jumped when Penni’s hushed tone slid through his earpiece. “Check, check. You guys copy me?” And either it was the intimacy of having her East Coast accent swirling around in his ear—you guys sounded more like yous guys—or it was the cold of the night, but something made goose bumps erupt up his spine.
“Copy that,” Chelsea said.
“Roger,” he managed through a clenched jaw.
“I’m picking you up too,” Zoelner’s whispered voice suddenly sounded in their ears. “Welcome to the show, Penni,” he said. “And taking a page from Chelsea’s book, let’s get straight to business. Kozlov is set up on the northwest corner of the square. He’s sticking to a dark spot between a building and an alley. And going by his body language and the fact his head is on a swivel, I’d definitely say he’s waiting for someone. I’m hanging back a couple of blocks. I suggest you guys take up positions near the other three corners so we can cover all the angles should Winterfield make an appearance or Kozlov make a move.”
“I’ll take the southeast corner,” Penni said, a consummate professional even if she no longer carried the Secret Service five-point star to prove it.
Before she could turn away, Dan laid a hand on her arm. When she looked up at him, there was a question glowing in her big, dark eyes. “Penni, don’t…” he began.
What? Don’t what? Holy shit, there were so many things he didn’t want her to do that he didn’t know where to begin. If this breaks bad, don’t try to be a hero. Don’t put yourself in danger; catching Winterfield isn’t worth losing your life. No matter what Chelsea said, don’t hesitate to take a shot if you have to.
“Don’t take any chances, okay?” was what he ended up going with. “You and I have unfinished business to take care of when this is all over.”
“That ‘hell to pay’ you spoke of?” she asked, one corner of her mouth twitching, one dark brow arched flirtatiously.
“Heaven,” he promised her. “I thought we agreed it’ll be heaven.”
Chelsea shook her head and Zoelner’s soft groan of disgust sounded through Dan’s earpiece. Right now he didn’t give a good goddamn that they had an audience. Neither did Penni, apparently, because with a wink and a quick squeeze of his fingers, she went up on tiptoe and kissed the side of his mouth.
“Don’t worry about me,” she breathed against his lips. “I’ll keep chicky,” she added.
Dan remembered the saying from Malaysia. It was her unique way of letting him know she was not only exercising her Second Amendment rights, but that she was zoned in and staying frosty. It should have calmed him, given him a sense of relief.
It didn’t.
And when she turned and strode purposefully down the sidewalk, sticking to the shadows, her footsteps barely audible, he was surprised to discover that letting her disappear around the corner was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do…
*
Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing…
Penni shivered and cursed her English teacher to a life plagued with flimsy toilet paper and stray Lego pieces for introducing her to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Poe possessed a mad penchant for creating a sense of creepy foreboding with words alone, and why that particular stanza from his famous poem should come back to her now was a mystery.
Although, on second thought, maybe it wasn’t so mysterious after all. Because as she stood hidden on the dark stoop of a closed coffee shop, eyeballing the eerily quiet square, she could quite easily imagine a raven alighting atop one of the park benches, its shiny black head cocking, its beady eye glinting in the low light given off by the nearby street lamp, its cawing voice calling hauntingly, “Nevermore!”
Goose bumps peppered every inch of her skin. The hairs on her head stood stick straight. Her panting breaths crystallized in the night air, swirling and coalescing like specters in front of her before disappearing.
She zipped her parka up as far as it would go before shoving her frozen fingers back into her pockets. The place was atmospheric. She’d give it that. And maybe it was the lower oxygen level, but the air around the square seemed abnormally still. Almost breathless.
Or maybe that’s just me.
No joke, she was having a hard time making her lungs work properly. They kept wanting to seize up on her. Which could have something to do with the fact that her nerves were stretched piano-wire tight, the muscles in her entire body burning because she’d kept them tensed for so long. That inner war she’d thought was over and won continued to see the occasional skirmish, and she asked herself for the hundredth time since she left the hotel if she’d made a mistake in agreeing to help.
You already said you would, her old man’s voice whispered through her head. Some folks had little angels or devils sitting on their shoulders and giving advice. She had Sergeant Gerard DePaul. And you’re not a woman to go back on her word.