Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(122)

Mick charged.

Too soon, too fast, I thought, and instead of swinging my pan, I dashed right just in time for Mick to feint left. I darted out of the kitchen, moving away from my unconscious daughter, toward the living room. If I could topple a lamp, make a disturbance visible through the front windows, maybe the passing patrol car would see it. The uniformed officer would stop to check it out.

Mick was moving. Sidestepping right, then left, then ducking, then lunging. The sliding, shifting rush confused me. Up, down, right, left. I had my frying pan up, trying to be prepared for anything, for everything, as he suddenly dove low, caught me around the waist and crashed us both to the floor.

I went down hard, fingers still locked around the handle of my pan. I brought it down onto his head, hammering, hammering, hammering. Except Mick had used my own trick against me. He was in too close, I couldn’t get enough momentum in the swing to really hurt him. His face was buried between my naked breasts and now, as I beat against him ineffectually, I could hear him laughing into my chest.

“That’s right, fight, fight, fight!”

I wasn’t going to win. He was too strong, too big, too well-trained. My best efforts, he found funny.

He suddenly reached up, caught my right wrist in a bone-crushing grip. I cried out. My cast-iron skillet fell to the floor.

And that was that.

He rose to his feet, grabbing my shoulders and dragging me to standing. This close, I could see that his brown eyes were just as crazy as his blue eyes had been. He was enjoying this. Relishing every second as his face lit up with the possibilities.

Behind him, the door to the basement stairs suddenly opened, a shadowy maw that revealed a second impressively large male, stepping soundlessly into my kitchen, while pressing a single finger to his lips. Z. Sans the green cobra tattoo and black commando gear.

I didn’t move. I didn’t make a sound. I stood there, totally bewildered, my wrist aching, my shoulders bruising, as Z walked smoothly forward, leveled a .22 caliber pistol and shot Mick at point-blank range through the side of the head.

Mick collapsed sideways.

Z stood over his man and fired twice more.

Then, at long last, my house fell quiet.


Z HANDED ME THE GUN, wrapping my right hand around the grip.

“Neighbors will call in gunfire,” he announced crisply. “Police will arrive momentarily.”

He reached behind me, dragging a throw off the sofa and draping it around my bare shoulders.

“I was never here. You fought him off. Well done.”

“You killed him.”

“He accepted the terms of the assignment: You and Ashlyn were off-limits. He broke the rules twice. In our line of work, failure has consequences.”

“You…you knew he’d come back?”

“I suspected.”

“I don’t understand. It was okay to kill Justin, but not Ashlyn and me?”

“The terms of the assignment,” Z repeated. He had a crumpled piece of paper. Now he pressed it into my hand. “Radar asked me to give you this. You won’t want to share it with anyone. And it’s probably only good for the next twelve hours.”

He turned, heading for the basement door.

“Wait.”

He didn’t break stride.

“I want to know the override code,” I blurted out. “The code you’re all using to get into my house!”

He didn’t break stride.

He was leaving. Just like that. Arrive, survey, conquer. My frustration bubbled up. As well as my loathing at always feeling so powerless. At the last second, it occurred to me that I wasn’t in the prison anymore, and that I was hardly helpless.

I raised the .22, the pistol Z himself had handed to me, and leveled it at the back of his head. “Wait. I said wait!”

Z finally paused, turning slightly. “Your daughter probably requires medical attention,” he commented.

“I’m tired of being a pawn!”

His voice, as calm as ever. “Then pull the trigger.”

My arms were shaking. My whole body, now that I noticed. And all of a sudden, I wasn’t exhausted anymore. I was enraged. At this man, for violating my home, my family. At myself, because heaven help me, I was already going to pop that first pill. But also, mostly, perversely, at Justin, because he’d gone and gotten himself killed and I still loved him and I still hated him and what in the world was I going to do with all those conflicting emotions? How would I ever get closure?

Z staring at me patiently, his expression almost testing. I wasn’t the one who would give him any trouble. His research said so.

I pulled the trigger.

And the chamber clicked hollowly. Of course, Z, the omnipotent, always one step ahead. He’d loaded his pistol with exactly three bullets, discharged all three rounds into Mick’s head, then handed me a useless weapon. I expected him to smile mockingly.

Instead, he said simply, “Good for you. Welcome to the first step of taking your life back.”

Then he was gone.

I checked my daughter first, who was slowly regaining consciousness. Next I found the phone, calling 911 and requesting the police as well as an ambulance. Finally, I went upstairs and retrieved a bathrobe, still gripping the gun with my right hand as I slipped the piece of paper from Radar beneath my pillow and prepared for whatever was going to happen next.