Secrets 02 - Kill Me Again, page 19
"Dude, they've got guns."
"Ssshhh! They're talking!"
Olivia moved to the front of the barn again, sliding the gun from the back of her jeans, and crouched there to watch and listen--and pray.
"Thomas Skinner, I presume?" Adam, who was growing more and more used to thinking of himself by that name, spoke to the only newcomer who was not wielding a handgun. Though he had no doubt the bastard had one on him. Or more than one.
"That's right. Where is she?"
He was a big guy, but not in a good way, Adam thought. He was bulky, and a lot of it was muscle, but there was excess fat, too, and he had that puffy, pasty-skinned look of a man who drank too much, smoked too much and ate too much. His hair was dirty-blond and brush-cut. He had a scar on his chin, and pale blue eyes that didn't look normal or natural in any way. And his raspy voice and yellow-stained teeth gave away his nicotine addiction as much as the smoky smell that clung to him like an aura.
"I decided not to bring her."
"Oh, you decided? And you have that kind of pull with her?"
"I don't have any pull with her at all," Adam said, deciding not to antagonize the man. "I've only known her a couple of days. I'm just helping out here."
"You're not helping a damn thing. I came here hoping you'd see my point of view and figuring she'd show anyway. No Sarah, no deal."
Adam shrugged. "Fine. I'll send the disks to CNN or something."
"No skin off my ass, pal." Tommy turned to walk a few steps away, then stopped and bellowed, "Sarah! You'd best get your ass out here, bitch, or I'm gonna have my guys kill your boyfriend."
Adam rolled his eyes, turning and pretending he was about to walk back to his SUV. But as he did, he passed near one of the thugs and easily swung behind the man, gripping him in a solid headlock with one arm and using his free hand to press his gun to the man's temple. "Drop your weapon, and I'm not asking twice."
The other two men leveled their guns at him, but no one fired. They couldn't, not without hitting their cohort. The thug in Adam's grasp dropped his piece. It thudded to the grass. Adam nodded at the other two henchmen. "Now you. Come on, give 'em up or he gets it."
"Do you think they care?" Skinner asked.
"Good point." Adam aimed his gun at the boss, still using the henchman as a shield. "Give them up or he gets it," he said.
Skinner held his gaze. The man was trying to read him, Adam knew. He kept his face expressionless, cold as ice, holding the other man's eyes without flinching or blinking. Let this bastard see that he meant business here.
"Okay," Skinner said. "Okay, take it easy."
"We agreed to meet. You and me," Adam said.
"And Sarah," Tommy countered.
"No, we never agreed to that. And these three weren't part of the deal, either. Lose 'em or I walk. And if I walk, you never see those disks."
Tommy slanted a look at his men, then nodded, and they dropped their guns. Then Tommy looked back at Adam. "Now what?"
Adam let go of the man he held and gave him a shove toward the others. "You three, take the Lincoln and go for a ride. You can pick up your boss in twenty minutes. Come back a minute early and I'll shoot him."
The three looked at their boss.
He nodded. "Do it."
They bent, reaching for their weapons.
"Uh-uh-uh," Adam warned. "Leave 'em where they are and just go. You can get 'em when you come back."
Eyes narrowed, they straightened and backed toward the car. Adam wondered if they had other guns in there. Maybe. Probably. But would they risk getting their employer shot? He didn't think so.
He felt a huge surge of relief when they started the Lincoln and drove away, but he tried real hard not to let it show. When they were out of sight, he faced Skinner again, but he still held a gun on the man. "How about you put your guns on the ground, as well? I know you've got some on you."
"How about you just give me my fucking disks and show me where you've got her hidden? Huh?"
"Guns."
"No." Tommy turned. "Is she in the barn? Hey, Sarah, are you in there? I'm coming in. You might as well face me, woman, because this isn't happening until you do."
Adam cocked his gun.
The other man stopped and turned to face him. "I will see her."
"Tell me to my face. Did you send the thug who tore up her house?"
"Not directly, no."
"Indirectly, then?"
Tommy tipped his head to one side, gave a noncommittal shrug.
"Explain," Adam said.
The man sighed, clearly unused to being told what to do. But somehow Adam knew how to deal with his kind. It felt as if he'd done it before. Often. It was as familiar as breathing or combing his hair.
"Look, I didn't even care she took those disks in the beginning, you know? She only did it to protect the assholes who were on them."
"Right. She knew the police would take your computer and disks when they searched the place. And she didn't see any reason to put your customers in jail along with you."
Tommy nodded. "She trashed my hard drive, ripped it right out of the damn PC, and took all the disks I had for backup. But I didn't give a shit about that. I didn't need that information anyway."
"Then why are you so desperate for it now?"
Tommy lifted his brows. "Have you seen who's on it?"
Adam shook his head, even though it was a bald-faced lie. "No."
"Well, I'll tell you, there are some heavyweights on there. Maybe they were nobodies when they were buying weed from me back in the day. But some of them have risen pretty damn high over the years. Public faces. If the info on those diskettes gets made public, their careers would, you'll pardon the pun, go up in smoke." He laughed softly.
"So you want the disks so you can blackmail people?"
"Oh, I've already been blackmailing them."
"How?" Adam asked. "How can you get people to pay for something you don't even have?"
"I don't. I get them to pay me to tell them who does have it."
Adam shook his head slowly.
"I tell the rich bastards the disks exist. Then I tell them if they want to know where to find them, they'll have to pay for the information. They pay, and I give them fictional little Professor Dupree's home address."
Adam felt the wind leave his sails. "So you've known about Olivia for how long?"
"My people tracked her down within two years after she supposedly died. She switched identities with her murdered roomie only a few weeks after she arrived in that hole-in-the-wall town. Did you know that?"
"No," Adam lied. Why tell the man something he didn't already know? he thought.
"I couldn't do anything about it at the time, being incarcerated. By the time I got out, I no longer cared about revenge."
"Bullshit. You've been taking revenge right along, just doing it in a roundabout way," Adam said. "How many people did you tell about her?"
Tommy shrugged. "Three or four."
"How long ago?" Adam demanded.
"All within the last few months," Tommy said, then shrugged. "I needed the money. The economic crunch hit me, too, you know."
Not as hard as Adam would have liked to hit him, though. "Which of them sent that thug to her house?"
"How would I know?"
"I think you know. I think you know exactly who it was."
Skinner shrugged. "Give me my disks and I guarantee it won't be a problem anymore."
"No? You can guarantee me no one is going to try to harass her, hurt her, kill her? No one's going to go after her?"
"I can't guarantee you that. But if I let them know I'm the one with the goods on them--that she doesn't have the disks anymore--why would they bother?"
"In case she looked at the disks. They could kill her just for knowing what's on there."
Skinner lifted his hands, palms up. "Nothin' I can do about that, though, is there? That's out of my hands. Hell, for all you or I know, there might be dozens of people jonesing to murder the traitorous bitch. Way beyond the handful I set onto her trail. Probably every guy she's ever fucked over."
"You know what I'm asking you," Adam said.
The other man sighed. "I'll make sure those who've been told she has the disks know that I have them now. And I won't mention her in any future dealings. Is that good enough?"
"And you won't go after her, either," Adam added. "Or reveal her secret to anyone else--ever."
Tommy shrugged. "I might agree to every last one of those terms--if she would show her freaking face and ask me herself."
"That's not going to happen."
The man shook his head slowly. "No Sarah, no deal."
"I'm right here," Olivia said, stepping slowly out of the barn. She met Adam's eyes briefly, sending some kind of message, but one he couldn't read. It seemed to be one of urgency. As if there were some reason to hurry things up.
"Sarah," Skinner muttered. He looked her up and down, blatantly and thoroughly. "Well, you don't look much like a backstabbing whore, even now."
"No? You look exactly like a lowlife scumbag, though. I guess I'm better at camouflage than you are, huh?"
"You always were," he said.
She lowered her head briefly, took a few steps closer, stood just beyond what Adam figured was arm's reach from Skinner, then met his eyes again. "I think you and I both know I didn't have any choice but to do what I did to you, Tommy."
"You had a choice."
"Yeah? And if I'd told you I was leaving you, what would you have done?" He shrugged.
"Come on, Tommy, you broke my arm for burning your toast. You remember that?"
He had enough shame to look away. Briefly, quickly, then he was glaring and belligerent again.
"You'd have killed me. And you know it. I didn't have a choice."
"The choice," Tommy said, "was to stay. Show some fucking loyalty for fuck's sake."
She shook her head. "And let you beat the hell out of me at will? What kind of a life would that have been? Would you live like that, Tommy? If some son of a bitch broke your arm for burning the toast, what would you do?"
"I'd kill the bastard," he said. "But I'm a man. It's different."
"Not so different." She lowered her eyes, and her voice as well. "Not so different at all. I got the gun, loaded it. I stood over you while you slept off a drunk one night, and I put the barrel right up to your temple, almost touching, but not quite. I put my finger on the trigger, and I'm telling you, Tommy, I almost did it. I almost shot you. I thought it was the only way."
His eyes widened, and his skin seemed to pale a little in the darkness. He looked as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He said, "I don't fucking believe it," but it was clear that he did.
"Believe it. You'd be dead, and I'd probably be in prison right now if I hadn't been interrupted. I was ready to do it, Tommy. That's how badly I wanted to get away from you. I was going to put a bullet in your head. But just then someone pulled in, one of your regulars, looking to score an ounce. And that's when I got the idea to talk to the cops instead. Not about your abuse. I'd tried that before, and they never listened. You were one of them. You'd spent too long telling them about your half-lunatic girlfriend and her delusions. They didn't believe me. But I could give them evidence of your dealing. I could prove that. They had to listen to me then, Tommy."
"You're even worse than I ever imagined," he told her.
"And you ought to be on your knees thanking God for that prison sentence," she said. "It's the only reason you're still alive." She moved a step closer, on a roll now.
It seemed to Adam that once she started laying down the law to this bastard, it was like the floodgates opened, and everything that had been churning up her insides came pouring out all at once. "And I'll tell you right now, Tommy, if you start fucking with my life again, I won't make the same call. I will kill you this time. I swear to God, I will."
He stared at her as if stunned, as if he'd never seen her before. "It's almost funny, you threatening me, you know that? Do you really think you're scaring me, Sarah?"
She leaned a little closer. "You just try me, you son of bitch, and I'll scare you plenty."
In one fast move he grabbed her, jerked her right up against him, mashing her face to his chest. Adam reacted, raising his weapon and aiming it, but Skinner quickly spun Olivia around, still holding her hard. He had a fistful of her hair, and he used it to yank her head up and back, so it covered the bulk of his face. Adam couldn't even take a head shot at the bastard.
"Now," Tommy said. "Let's quit with the melodramatic bullshit and get this over with. Give me my motherfuckin' disks."
Suddenly Adam was feeling a panic he didn't think he'd ever felt before. The man could kill her. He could end her life at any second. He had to do something, had to find a way to take the shot. And yet Olivia held his eyes, silently telling him no.
"Whoa, whoa, easy now, Skinner. You know damn well I didn't bring them here. You wouldn't have, would you?"
"If you didn't, then Olivia is going to cease to exist. Not that she ever really did."
Adam kept the gun on him, holding up the other hand. "That's not how any sane person would do this and you know it."
"It's how any amateur would have done it, though," Skinner said. "But you're no amateur, are you? No, you're a pro. What did you do, Sarah, find yourself an outlaw a little badder than your ex? Hmm? Did you think he could protect you from me? How much is he milking you for this, anyway?"
She tried to shake her head, but she could barely move it with the gun pressed to her temple as it was. "I didn't hire him. He's not a criminal, not a pro. He's nothing like you."
"Bullshit. I've seen the prick in action, hon. Hell, I'd hire him myself if the situation was different." He met Adam's eyes. "So you figured we'd make a deal and do what? Agree on a location for the drop?"
Adam nodded. "Yeah, that's what I figured."
"Well, you figured wrong." Tommy looked down at Olivia, and his smile was slow and chilled Adam's blood. "Dead wrong. This is way overdue. So long, baby." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, then moved his finger very slightly, but Adam saw it and knew what he was doing. He was going to do it. He was going to kill her!
Adam had to take a head shot, even at the risk of killing her himself. He had no choice. He had to do it now. He leveled the gun, looked down the barrel, lined up the site with Skinner's forehead.
Olivia met his eyes, gave a nearly imperceptible nod and mouthed the words, "Do it."
14
Olivia held Aaron's eyes and thought they would be the last thing she ever saw. And as much as she was unsure about him, she knew right then. She knew. No matter who or what he was, he was sickened at the thought of Tommy putting a bullet into her skull. His skin had gone white. And his eyes--God, there was so much going on in his eyes. And yet his hand holding that gun was as steady as a rock.
Maybe he could do it. Maybe he could shoot Tommy between the eyes and not hurt her. Maybe he could even do it in time. Because he was her only hope. It was still only a little past eleven-thirty. The cops wouldn't be here until close to midnight.
And then she saw someone--and for some reason she was sure it was Bryan--crouching in the woods between the barn and the road. She wouldn't have seen him if he hadn't moved. He emerged slightly and lifted his gun, and his stance said he was about to spring the trap.
And then she was hit by something that felt like a football tackle. Someone slammed into her from the left, sending her and Tommy both crashing to the ground. Tommy's hand hit the dirt and the gun went off, even as it went flying out of his grip to land in the deep grass, instantly invisible.
She scrambled away from the bastard, moving instinctively toward Aaron, realizing that one of the boys was picking himself up off the ground. Sam Overton. God, he'd saved her life! His friend, Kyle, was lying on his belly, still in the bushes, watching it all with wide eyes.
"Freeze! Police!" Bryan shouted, his voice deep and commanding. "Don't you fucking move a muscle, Skinner. You're completely surrounded."
Tommy froze where he was, still lying in the grass. Sam and his pal went still, too. Olivia didn't. She kept moving, every cell in her body pushing her toward Aaron. He was moving toward her, too, and in seconds his arms came around her and he was holding her, pulling her with him as he ran, even as she struggled to break free so she could check on the boys.
The other cops came out of the night, dark shapes emerging from the deeper darkness, weapons leveled as they closed in around the little group.
Aaron backed up slowly, his arms tight around Olivia, saying, "Thank God you guys are here," as he did, and with a few steps he and Olivia were outside the ever-shrinking circle of peace officers and still moving.
"Aaron, what are we doing?" she whispered.
"Getting the fuck out of here. They're occupied. We're running."
"But we don't have to--"
Suddenly gunshots rang out. Aaron grabbed her around the waist and pushed her to the ground, landing on top of her, one hand covering her head. She tried to peer up to see what was happening as weapons exploded all around her. "What's going on?"
"Skinner's men are back," he whispered harshly. "They were probably hiding somewhere, watching, the whole damn time! I should have figured. Stay down!" As the shots increased in frequency, he pushed her head down harder. She jerked free of him so she could see what was happening, terrified as she saw Sam Overton still lying on the ground, curled around himself, clutching one shoulder, his shirt stained dark with his own blood.
"Sam! Oh, God, Sam's hurt!"
"Come on. Come with me," Aaron said, trying to draw her away. "That's Carrie's son!" she cried. Aaron anchored his arm around her waist and dragged her with him as he crawled, belly to the ground, away from the shootout toward the road.
"We can't just leave them!"
"I'm sure your buddy Kendall has already called for backup by now. They have the thugs outnumbered, anyway, and--"
"There are people hurt! That boy who saved my life just now is the same one who found you in the ditch and saved yours! He's Carrie's son, Aaron, and he's bleeding!"
