Chapter Eight

The next day, I felt more rested after falling into a deep sleep in my own comfortable bed with Kitt safely beside me, but I was still unsettled and uneasy. I was feeling more protective of Kitt than ever before. I needed more information to figure out what was going on and why his brother had said their father had left Kitt out of the will, when it was a lie.

I began to wonder about the guys who attacked us in Arkansas—had they really been associates of the gang from Atlanta who had threatened to come after Kitt? Or had it been someone else sent after him?

Whoever they were, they had been ready and willing to take us both out. I had no doubt that they had come to Arkansas with that specifically in mind, and we had both been on their hit list. I needed to find out if the police had determined who they really were. After what Walter told me about Jazz Devlin, I felt that obviously, I’d been mistaken—or deliberately misled—about what was going on all along, and that made me feel like I was played for a fool. I didn’t like that worth a damn. Once Kitt was up and showered, we went out for breakfast. Neither of us had much to say, but Kitt kept touching my hand and nudging my shoe and using any excuse to touch me, reassuring himself, I guess.

After Kitt ate some scrambled eggs and toast and I had some fruit—which was about all I could stomach that morning, Kitt sat back in his chair and stared across the table at me. “Aren’t we going to talk about my brother?”

I glanced around us and shook my head. “Not here. Let’s wait until we’re back in the car.”

He nodded, but I could see he was impatient and bursting with questions. The problem was that I didn’t have any answers for him.

As soon as I paid for our food and we reached the car, he turned in his seat to face me.

“Tell me who attacked us in Arkansas.”

“I have no idea, and they had no ID on them. But they were obviously there to kill us.”

“But how would they know where we were? Did they find out from your agency? Are the people you work for in on this too?”

He was too smart for his own good and mine. He had immediately smelled a rat in all this. I still didn’t have any answers for him, though I hated the fact that it sounded like he might be beginning to doubt my motives. I rubbed a hand over my face, feeling exhausted. “I don’t know, Kitt. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself and decide what to do about it.”

“You have to talk to your boss. But don’t you go to that office. Set up a meeting in a public place. Then all we’d need is a good plan to get back out safely.”

“When did you get so smart?” I asked, smiling to show I was teasing. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I need more information first. Lucas might not be involved at any of this. I’ve never had reason to doubt him, and I don’t like to start now.”

He surprised me by scooting over beside me and kissing me. It was so sweet I wanted more. It was all I could do to keep from taking him back inside my apartment and keeping him there in bed all day. “What was that for?”

“I’m just glad it was you who came after me in Albuquerque. And especially in Las Vegas. I just wanted you to know that. I don’t doubt your intentions toward me at all. I know you want the best for me.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, because it is what I want. But you’re way too distracting. Sit back over there and let me think.”

He moved back to his side of the car, pouting a little, so that I had to go ahead and give him a few more kisses anyway. This thing was getting out of hand, but there didn’t seem to be much I could do about it.

After a while, I put him firmly aside and tried to think of what to do next.

****

He was like a runaway train, though, and there wasn’t any stopping him. “Do you think my brother hired your agency to track me down and k-kill me?”

“No,” I said firmly. “No, Kitt, my agency is more or less a private detective agency, and that’s all it is. There was never any question of us hurting you. Not ever. Surely you know I’d never…”

“No, I don’t mean you. I mean the people you work for. Could my brother have promised them money to get rid of me?”

“No! I mean…I don’t know, but I certainly intend to find out. I’m going to talk to Lucas.”

“I can go with you to see him.”

I just gave him a look and shook my head. “No, Kitt. I don’t want to put you in any more danger until I can figure out what the hell is going on.”

“We could meet Lucas in a public place.”

“What’s this ‘we’ business? No, there’s actually no need to leave you alone while I see him in person. I think I’ll just call him instead.”

“That won’t be nearly as much fun.”

“Exactly. But I think I’ve had enough ‘fun’ to last me a while.”

That evening, I gave Lucas a call and he answered right away.

“Rio. I’ve been waiting for you to call me. Where the fuck have you been?”

“Nice to talk to you too, Lucas.”

“Why haven’t you contacted me before this?”

“Because it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure exactly who set us up in Arkansas. I had to protect Kitt, and that has to be my number one priority.”

The explosion on the other end of the phone came pretty quickly. “Are you saying…? You seriously think I set you up?”

“What would you have thought? I couldn’t take the chance.”

“Why the fuck would I want to do that, Rio?”

“I don’t know. But I did find out some interesting information about Jazz Devlin.”

“Like what?”

I filled him in on Jazz’s financial problems and there was a silence on the other end. “Shit. So he lied to us? But what would be his motive to get us involved?”

“He needed to find Kitt and get him back here. He lied to us about the inheritance, and he’s probably been lying the whole time. Kitt was never cut out of any will and he comes into his inheritance on his twenty-first birthday, in another month or so. The motive is money of course. If Kitt was out of the way, Jazz Devlin will inherit Kitt’s part of the money from his mother’s will.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes. How come the firm didn’t know about all this anyway?”

“We don’t run a credit check on our clients, Rio. And we don’t question what they tell us without cause. We had no reason to doubt his word. He told us about his father’s will, and he told us that Kitt had been cut off by their father. We had no reason to suspect another will. Jazz is a successful businessman as far as we knew. He said he was Kitt’s only source of support, and we had no reason to doubt his word. He paid for our services up front, and his only concern seemed to be to find his kid brother. There was no reason to think otherwise.”

“Okay. Well, just so you know, I’m finding him a good doctor and a lawyer, so he can get this ridiculous guardianship dismissed. After that, we’re going to go to the police over the attempted murder in Arkansas, and they can sort all this out.”

“Wait a minute—you’re finding him a lawyer? Why you? What’s your interest in all this?”

I hesitated. Then took a deep breath and just said it. “Kitt is my interest.”

There was a short silence and then Lucas sighed. “Rio, I hope you know what you’re doing there. Kitt Devlin is young, and he has a lot of problems.”

“You don’t know him. Don’t assume you do.”

“Do you have any proof that his brother doesn’t have his best interests at heart?”

“Other than the fact I believe he sent killers after both of us? No, that’s about it. Do you have any proof that he does?”

“But are you sure? You can’t just go around accusing people unless you have proof. Don’t you think you might be jumping to conclusions?”

“Anything’s possible. But I’m not accusing anyone of anything. Yet. We’re getting a lawyer to work on the guardianship, and then we’ll take his advice about going to the police. They can be the ones to investigate this thing.”

“Wait. Let’s talk about this.”

“I think we’ve talked enough, Lucas. I’ll be in touch.”

I ended the call and turned to see Kitt looking at me with wide eyes. “Did you just quit your job?”

“I’m not really sure.” I shrugged. “Maybe. Looks like we might be staying in a hotel tonight. I don’t think the apartment is safe right now. It’s just a hunch, but they’ve been right so far. We’ll go by and get a change of clothes. Tomorrow we’ll find that lawyer.”

I packed a few things in a hurry—I was getting pretty good at that now. I heard Kitt moving around in the living room. I checked the thermostat on the way out, turning down the heat a little while I’d be gone. It was then that I heard the front door suddenly open, as Kitt gave out a scared, startled shout of alarm.

“W-who are you?” I heard him say. “What are you doing here?”

It was then that I got the biggest scare of my life as I heard a familiar, raspy voice say, “Hello. You must be Kitt. Just be quiet and answer my questions. Where’s Rio? Tell me now.”

I recognized the voice, of course. It belonged to my boss all right, but not Lucas. This was Ed Colton, the owner of the firm, and Lucas’s father-in-law.

Maybe Ed had some perfectly good reason to be here—maybe he had come with some kind of message for me—but then why hadn’t he knocked? Why had he just barged in? There had been no call ahead to let me know he was coming either, so I could only assume the worst. And the worst was knowing that my Kitt was out there alone with Colton—and Colton was holding a gun on him.

I immediately got that sick feeling—the crazy one I got sometimes when I was on patrol back in Afghanistan and still got when shit was about to go down. Those old instincts kicked in and I instinctively crouched down, easing out of the bathroom and slipping next door to the bedroom, looking for my Glock. I knew exactly where it was in my bag which was on the floor just inside the door.

I heard Kitt talking, saying I had gone out. I knew Ed wouldn’t believe him. I sent up a few fervent prayers for his safety and somehow kept going.

I eased back out in the hall, peeked around the corner and saw him. Ed was an older guy, but he had a large frame, and right now, he looked like a stranger, dressed in all dark clothing and with a grim, determined look on his face. He was still standing by the door, his eyes darting around the room.

“I said, where’s Rio?”

“I-I don’t know,” Kitt said, sounding scared. It broke my heart to hear him. If Colton so much as touched him…

“He’s gone out.”

I could see that he was holding a similar Glock to the one I now had in my hand. His gun was trained on Kitt, who was crouching down beside the sofa on the floor, hugging himself, his eyes wide. He looked scared out of his mind.

Don’t move, baby , I kept saying over and over to myself in my head, scared for both of us, but mostly Kitt. That gun was big and lethal and pointed right at him.

I knew I had only one chance and that it wasn’t even a good one. I had to draw Colton’s fire away from Kitt long enough for me to take him out, which meant I had to take him off guard. Not easy with someone who was well trained, especially when he was surely expecting something. And when and if I got a chance to take my shot—probably the one and only chance I’d be getting—it had to take him out the first time. I had to kill him first and ask questions later.

The idea that a person could or should aim for an arm or leg anyway is the result of people watching way too many cop shows on television. It also greatly overestimated most people’s sharpshooting skills and mine in particular and reflected a misconception of real-life dynamics.

In reality, hands and arms are the fastest-moving parts in the human body. The average trained shooter could move his hand and his forearm across his body to aim at me as I came around that corner in a twelfth of a second. Of course, he could pull a trigger on the gun he already had pointed at Kitt in far less time than that. There’s just no way I could react, shoot and reliably hit him in the time it would take to keep him from killing one or both of us. No fucking way. My only chance was to aim for his center mass, hope I could eliminate the threat, and keep shooting until he wasn’t shooting back. Period.

My plan, such as it was, was to dive around that corner shooting and hope for a fucking miracle. I had about a tenth of a second to react to him once he pointed his gun in my direction, which I knew he’d do the second he saw me.

I took a deep breath and tensed myself to go. It was at that exact second that the ringer on my phone went off, blasting out Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock!

The phone had been in my pants pocket the day before, and at some point, I’d taken it out and put it on the kitchen counter. Then I’d forgotten all about it. Kitt must have found it and been up to his old tricks again of changing my ring tone.

Colton whirled and fired off a shot in its direction, blasting the phone all to hell, but I was already diving out from around the door, twisting my body and aiming for his center mass. I dropped the son of a bitch where he stood.

The aftermath of any sudden and shocking event is always a little chaotic and this one was no different. My ears were ringing with the sound of the shots still reverberating around the room. I wondered if anyone would come to investigate or if the neighbors had called the police. Kitt was shaking so hard I thought he was somehow hit at first, but a quick check proved that he was just scared out of his mind, and rightly so. If it hadn’t been for that stupid phone going off when it did and distracting Colton for that split second, we’d both probably be dead.

A glance at him as I’d passed by him on my way to Kitt showed me that he had to be already dead, but I went back over to check his pulse anyway. There wasn’t one. Colton was dead, and the wounds were on his chest. Though they were messy, they were relatively small. I knew the exit wounds would be so much worse.

I went back to get Kitt to his feet and I sat him on the couch, pulling his head down to my shoulder so he wouldn’t have to see the body.

“I need to call the police,” I told him.

“He shot your phone.”

It occurred to me suddenly that Ed Colton might not have been acting alone and someone else might be on the way to finish the job. I went to the door and looked outside, but the hallway was empty. A quick check of the immediate area proved there was no one else around, though I hoped someone had called from another apartment and help was on the way.

I went back in and found Kitt still where I’d put him and told him to come with me. We’d go down to the security desk in the lobby to make sure the police were coming.

I hadn’t wanted to go to the police yet, but a dead body had a way of changing plans. We made our way downstairs and found the security guard playing on his phone, completely oblivious to the shots we’d fired several floors up. After he called for the ambulance and the cops, I asked him to call Lucas and to tell him to get over there as soon as he could.

“I’d still like to know how the shooter got in the building,” the security guard said, as we waited for the police to arrive. “Did he have the code?”

“Who knows? You tell me.”

“Other than residents we only give the combination out to cleaning services and the pest control people. But they’re the only ones who have it, other than people who live here.”

“It’s out there, then, so someone may have been paid off to give it out.”

“It needs to be changed then. Hopefully, the police can figure this mess out, but in the meantime, we’re changing the front door lock codes.”

“Fine by me.”

The police arrived minutes later as well as the ambulance and from that point on, I was answering questions. I told them what I knew over and over again. Kitt did too, but they kept asking.

Lucas arrived and things went from bad to worse to terrible once he found out about Ed. The detectives wanted to take Kitt and me down to the station, and we left while Lucas was calling his wife to break the awful news. I didn’t want to hang around for that anyway.