“Slow down, there. We don’t have to hand her over right away. I happen to agree with you. The presence of this kid in the middle of a mass shooting is a little too weird to be pure coincidence.”
Thank God.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gunner continued. “Put a little distance between us and whatever went down here. Lemme make a few calls and see if I can find out what happened and how the kid fits in.”
Chas was massively relieved that Gunner didn’t want to just hand the child over without figuring out what her role in this mess might be. She’d been thoroughly traumatized tonight but seemed to have latched on to him as a safe human. He hated to turn her over to strangers again, particularly cops who might handle her like a piece of evidence.
“I never thought I’d find myself sneaking out of this one-horse town with you,” Gunner muttered.
Chas snorted. “I never thought I’d see you again after the way you left the first time.”
Gunner paused in the doorway, scanning up and down the alley before waving for him to follow. Chas had to hustle to keep up as they swept outside and rushed to a nondescript sedan.
Gunner slid into the driver’s seat, grimacing, and Chas slipped into the passenger’s seat.
“Get down,” Gunner ordered.
“How down?”
“Totally out of sight.”
Frowning, Chas tried slouching, but it wasn’t enough. He ended up lifting the armrest and lying on his side across the center console, the baby cradled protectively against his middle—kind of how Leah had been holding her.
What had Leah been doing with this kid? To his knowledge, she had been divorced for years and had only one grown son, who was both single and a bad egg, in and out of trouble with the law and in and out of jail. Did this baby have anything to do with him?
Chas was surprised at how conservatively Gunner drove, passing through town at exactly the speed limit. But he did notice from his contorted position that Gunner’s posture was tense, very much on alert the whole time. Good to know he wasn’t the only one freaking out a little, here.
“Is it weird being back?” he asked from the vicinity of Gunner’s right thigh, trying to distract himself from thinking about being hunched on the seat of a car, driving through a war zone with Gunner Vance.
“You have no idea.”
“Tell me. I need to think about something else.”
“Everywhere I look, I see memories.”
“Good or bad?”
“Some of each.”
Chas said reflectively, “My early childhood memories are mostly good. You and I had fun as kids. Before all the adult stuff caught up with us.”
“Yeah. Good times,” Gunner said quietly.
A world of pain was packed in those simple words. So Gunner hadn’t escaped Misty Falls unscathed after all. Chas had assumed Gunner had left town and never looked back. Apparently he still carried around some baggage from those last difficult teen years. Chas fell silent. He’d no doubt been part of what had made them difficult.
They drove for perhaps a half hour in silence. The toddler finally relaxed against him and might even have dozed off. She, too, seemed to sense that the worst of the crisis had passed.
“You can sit up now,” Gunner finally murmured.
Chas pushed himself upright, his body stiff from being all crunched over. His yoga instructor would be disappointed in him. “Where are we?”
“The old reservoir road, north of town.”
“Why here?”
Gunner shrugged. “It’s a deserted road. I’ll be able to see anybody approaching from either direction from at least a mile away. And it has decent cell phone reception. Besides, if I were a bad guy, I’d likely be heading south after the fact, toward a major city where I can blend in anonymously.”
“Or maybe they’d head for the Canadian border, which would take them right through here,” Chas disagreed.
“Maybe. But if that’s the case, they’d have passed through here a couple of hours ago.”
“God, I hope so.”
Gunner smiled briefly as he pulled out his cell phone, and Chas was struck by how wolflike that smile was on Gunner’s face. The guy’s cheeks had leaned down over the years and at the moment were covered in a dark three-day stubble that was sexy as hell. His skin was deeply tanned, even at this time of year when the sun was low and winter was on the horizon. He still had that killer jaw, but his once perfectly straight nose had a slight crook in it now. Must’ve broken it at some point.
It was his eyes that had totally changed, though. Sure, they were still as blue as a summer sky, but they were hard now. Like steel. And they had an edge that warned off a guy from messing with him.
“Hey, Spence. Gunner Vance here. You said to call if I ever needed help.”
Chas didn’t hear Spence’s response, but Gunner continued, “I may have a bit of a situation on my hands. An old acquaintance called me tonight. Got caught in the middle of some kind of gunfight in my old hometown. Multiple armed assailants with assault weapons shot up a bunch of folks. My friend has ended up with custody of a baby who was caught in the middle of the incident, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.” A pause. “Local cops got killed. Yeah. All of them, apparently.”
Another, longer pause.
Gunner continued, “I’m on scene. I’ve evaced the guy and the kid. He thinks the baby may be part of the incident.” And then he surprised Chas by saying, “Yeah. Of course I’ve got a clean credit card. We can grab a motel and hunker down.”
Chas had just assumed they would head for the nearest police department, or maybe an FBI field office. Gunner disconnected the call, and Chas demanded immediately, “Who was that? And why does he not want us to go to law enforcement to turn over the kid?”
“That’s an old friend. Smart guy. Used to be my commander on my SEAL team. I trust him with my life. He and I both are… concerned… about what you’ve gotten tangled up in.”
“Concerned how?”
Gunner shrugged as he put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the road. “Call it an intuition.”
“I need you to be more specific.”
In the glow of the dashboard lights, he saw Gunner frown. “In my line of work, a guy learns to listen to his gut. And mine’s telling me there’s more to this shooting spree, and that kid, than meets the eye. I called Spencer to see what his gut reaction was. And his gut agreed with mine.”
“Now what?”
“Now we’re gonna drive for a few hours, find ourselves a nice anonymous little motel, and grab a room. How’s the kid doing, by the way? You two are covered in blood.”
“I had noticed that,” Chas replied dryly. “It’s my next-door neighbor’s blood. She died on my front porch. She had the baby with her.”
“Is the kid hers?
“No. She was in her midfifties.”
“Grandkid?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Besides, this child looks Asian to me.”
“Asian?” Gunner exclaimed. “From where?”
“Best guess, I’d go with Japanese.”
“Interesting.”
“You used to be more talkative. What do you mean by ‘interesting’?”