What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(54)

She glanced at Rae, still sleeping hard. The child had been through enough hell. She didn’t need to hear them talking about danger and death. Rae shouldn’t know about death and pain at all.

But she did. She did.

“What happened to them? There were four shooters—three men and the man in charge. I shot two of them, wounded them badly and knocked one unconscious, but none of them were dead, and I left the goddess for them.”

“As a diversion,” Max said.

She nodded. “They were after us, Rae and me. I was carrying her. We got into the canyon, into the fog. I heard a rifle shot. I sent her away and passed out. Easy pickings for them.” She dug her hands into the robe’s wide pockets. “Where did they go? How did they not kill me? Why didn’t they take the head?”

“Good questions,” Zone said. “Nils called, wanted me to search for you. I said no.”

“Who says gallantry is dead?” Kellen asked.

Obviously, Zone didn’t give a crap about his lack of gallantry. “I heard a rifle shot, too, then a bunch of pistol shots, then more rifle shots. I was headed to the lookout to get in out of the firefight before I was a casualty.” He made no apology for running away.

Kellen didn’t blame him. “Not your battle,” she said.

“No shit.” Zone sighed mightily, and in a flat tone of resignation, he said, “Then I ran into the kid, and she dragged me to get you. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“She never does.” Kellen cleared her suddenly clogged throat.

Zone continued, “On the way, we met Di Luca and he had grabbed you.”

“I sprinted up that mountain.” Max leaned forward, gaze fixed on her, intense and grim. “I got into that place where the trees thinned and the path narrowed. Fog drifted like terrorized ghosts. I could see trees looming up, rocks. But I couldn’t hear anything, anyone. Then someone shouted. And that rifle shot. Then no more shouting. I thought... I thought Rae was dead. You were dead. I ran toward the shot.”

“Hero,” Zone said.

Fiercely angry, Max jerked around. “If they’re dead, I have no reason to be alive.”

“Wasn’t being sarcastic,” Zone said.

Max closed his eyes, opened them and nodded.

“What happened, Max?” Kellen whispered.

“I saw a body. Then another. I found a trail of blood and another body, still warm, shot twice, once at close range.”

Kellen broke a sweat. She wasn’t out there anymore, in that wilderness of trees and stones looming out of the fog, but Max’s words brought the anxiety, the fear, the desperation back to her. People had died for that head. Rae had almost died for that head.

She got up, went to the sink, poured herself a glass of water and sipped it. “Four shooters,” she repeated. “None of them dead. Don’t get me wrong, I would have killed them, but with a pistol I couldn’t aim well enough, not at that distance. I killed no one.”

“Then shooter number four offed them all.” Zone was matter-of-fact.

She chewed her lip. “So one of the remaining mercenaries—the boss, I bet—must have killed the rest to keep the payment for himself.”

“But he didn’t take the head.” Zone indicated his workshop; he’d covered the Triple Goddess with a cloth.

Kellen was glad. She got tired of locking eyes with that statue, and every way you turned there were eyes, if not the goddess’s, then that relentless mercenary. “He was ruthless,” she said. “He must be the one who slit Horst’s throat. And killed his other men.”

“Why isn’t he out there?” Max tapped the radar screen. “We should have at least one human life showing on this screen. He should be watching for his chance to grab the head. When is he coming back for it?”

Kellen looked again at the Triple Goddess, and even though she was hidden beneath that cloth, Kellen could feel her gaze, critical, demanding that Kellen be all the things a woman must be—mother, warrior, protector. She looked toward Rae, toward that small face so sweet in repose and so vibrantly, irritatingly alive when awake. She whispered, “He wanted to eliminate the witnesses.”

The events of the past few days rose in a tide of memory and overwhelmed her. She pulled the chair toward her, tried to sit, missed.

“Kellen!” Max lunged for her.

She thumped on the floor and burst into tears.



29


Max sat beside her, hovered as if he didn’t know what he should do. “Kellen, what’s wrong?”

“Rae... She used the last little square of her blankie to bandage my arm.” Why that came out first, Kellen couldn’t say. Why did that make her feel more guilty than all the other horrible things that had occurred on their journey?

Zone didn’t care what her reasoning was. He said, “Fuck me a-runnin’,” went into his workshop and shut the door. Hard.

Max gathered Kellen in his arms. “Shhh! Don’t cry so loud. She’ll hear you!”

Kellen totally agreed, but she couldn’t stop. “It’s all bloody and crusty and the rest of her blankie is nothing but a ball of yarn and I promised to crochet it again and I don’t know how!” Kellen was wailing now, feeling absurd and trying to muffle her sobs in her robe.