They both stared at the badge he pulled out. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” he whispered and ran his thumb over the embossed letters. Jason Stuart. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Not a professional criminal. Professional law enforcement.
Fuck. This did not bode well, but they didn’t have time to think through all of the ramifications.
The last thing the man carried was a wallet. Naveen added that to the stash in his pocket, then gently eased Agent Stuart’s gun out of his holster. The weight of it was heavy and unfamiliar in his palm, but he gripped it tightly and kept his thumb away from the trigger. “Follow me,” he said grimly.
She didn’t argue with him, for which he was grateful. After ensuring there was no one waiting behind the other side of the door to jump them, they crept through. The front room of this shack was no more extravagant than the back. The space was bare of furniture except for a broken-down table. The windows were poorly boarded up, and glass littered the floor. Here, too, there was a single bulb illuminating the place, hanging above the table. Naveen was frankly impressed the place was wired for electricity.
There was no sight of Stuart’s friend, because he was outside, Naveen learned, when they opened the front door a crack. The man had his back to the building, and he stood about a hundred yards away, phone held to his ear.
A hundred yards in the other direction? A black SUV, the Ford insignia matching the one on the keys he’d taken from their resident federal agent. There were no other cars visible. There was nothing else visible, except the sun dying over the mountains in the distance. If a tumbleweed danced over the barren landscape, he wouldn’t be surprised.
He closed the door. “Make a run for the car. I’ll create a diversion.”
“We don’t need a diversion.” She tapped his hand. “Give me the gun.”
“Why?”
“Do you know how to use a gun?”
“No. Do you?”
“Yes.”
That was as good of an argument as any for her to be handling the weapon. He passed it over. “Do you have a plan?”
“We’re going to threaten him with it and run.”
That had been his hypothetical idea, but he balked now that it was coming to fruition. “We’re going to threaten a man who is probably a federal agent with a gun that is undoubtedly identical to the one on his hip?”
“Do you have a better idea?” she parroted back his own earlier question.
Better? No. He cast his gaze around the nearly empty place. “That bottle of moonshine’s still intact. If we can find a lighter, we could make a Molotov cocktail.”
She pursed her lips. Her hair was more down than up now, the curls getting bigger by the minute. “You want us to Molotov cocktail our way out of here.”
He gestured. “It would be a distraction, at least.”
“This is the desert. One spark could set forty miles ablaze. I don’t want to create an ecological disaster.”
“Well, that’s very responsible and Californian of you.”
“I also don’t have a lighter.”
He took a deep breath. They truly didn’t have another quick way out of here. “Fine. Let’s go before Stuart wakes up.”
She checked the crack in the window boards and nodded at him. She was as soundless as a ghost as she slipped out the door, and he followed. With the man’s back to them, he wondered if they might be able to get all the way to the car without any confrontation.
Until he stepped off the rotted porch, and the wood creaked under his foot. He didn’t even have time to wince, because the blond whirled around, his camel coat flaring around him, pulling his gun with lightning quick reflexes.
Mira’s gun was already up, her hands steady. “Drop your weapon.”
The well-dressed guy sneered. “Your dad taught you well, Mira. Where’s my partner?”
“In better condition than we were when you brought us here. Now drop it,” she repeated, and undid the safety.
“You think I’m worried?”
She tossed her head, the queen of this shack and all she surveyed. “You should be. You can’t kill me or your boss will be annoyed. But I can kill you.”
His thin lips curled up. “Girl, you have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Neither do you.”
“Is that right?”
As far as Naveen could tell, Mira wasn’t even blinking. “Go start the car, Naveen.”
Normally, Naveen might not be keen on taking orders, but he understood the nuances of this particular, hopefully never to be repeated, situation. He took one step, but Burberry shifted the gun his way. “I can’t kill you, but your friend seems pretty useless.”
That was both stinging and worrisome. What a conundrum: he may not want these people to think he was involved in this criminal enterprise, but he also couldn’t be seen as expendable. “If you think I’m useless, then you really don’t know all the things clients tell their attorneys.”
Burberry’s eyes narrowed, but they swung back to Mira when she took a step toward him.
Naveen took advantage of his inattention to sidle a little closer to the car as Mira spoke. “You have three seconds to put down your gun. One.”
Burberry rolled his eyes.
“Two.”
The kidnapper took a step.
Naveen expected Mira to say three, but instead a shot rang out, and then another one. All three of them stared at each other in surprise as Burberry staggered back a step, red staining his lush neutral coat at his side and his arm. He dropped to his knees, his gun falling out of his fingers. “You bitch.”
Naveen didn’t have time to balk at someone getting shot in front of him for the first time ever, though his brain was stuttering. “Run,” Mira gasped, and he did exactly that.
Naveen hopped into the SUV and hit the button to start it, throwing it into drive. Mira’s smaller figure ran around the hood and hopped in. She hadn’t even closed the door when he smashed his foot on the accelerator.
A series of sharp pops behind them almost made him swerve off the road, and he glanced in the mirror to find their weaving kidnapper, his bleeding arm close to his side, his non-dominant hand awkwardly extending the gun as he shot at them and missed.
“Get down,” he growled, relieved when Mira complied.
The shots blessedly stopped as Burberry became a tiny figure, then vanished.
It took a good five minutes of silence for Naveen’s grip to loosen up on the wheel, and that was about when Mira’s head poked up and she returned to her seat. She deposited the gun into the cup holder, then quietly buckled her seat belt and rested her hands in her lap.
“You shot someone.” The words were loud in the quiet of the car.
“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse, and far away, no longer holding the chill of her composure.
“Have you ever shot someone before?”
“No. Have you?”
“Of course not.” Guess she really did know how to use that gun.
Why he should be surprised by that, he didn’t know, except he figured it may take his brain more time to square up his mild-mannered accountant ex-girlfriend with the woman who could escape zip ties and shoot a federal agent.
“You’re going very fast.”