She turned to call out for Gus when she saw both him and Tiny exiting the hall looking extremely concerned.
“We’re going,” Gus told her abruptly, holding out his hand.
Without thought, Reese headed for him and let him wrap his arm around her waist as he turned her toward the door.
“What’d you find?” she asked.
“Trouble,” Tiny muttered.
“What is that?” Gus asked, not answering her question but nodding to her hand.
Reese held it up. “It’s—”
“Woody’s watch,” Gus finished for her.
“It was sitting on the floor against the wall. He never takes it off. I make fun of him all the time because he’s got a perfect white circle of skin under it, where the face is against his wrist.”
“Yeah,” Gus said absently as he pocketed the watch.
Tiny looked out the peephole of the door and frowned. “We’ve got company,” he informed them.
“Shit. How close?” Gus asked.
“Coming up the stairs. We have to go out the back.”
Out the back? Wait, they were on the second floor. There was no back.
Reese looked between the two men, but didn’t have time to voice any of her questions before Gus was turning her around and ushering her down the hall.
They entered the master bedroom and Tiny immediately went to the window. He cautiously peered out of the blinds and nodded. “Clear.”
While Tiny was opening the ridiculously small window, Gus put his hands on her shoulders. “We’ve got to go out this way.”
Reese wanted to say “duh” but refrained as he kept speaking.
“We found some concerning things in Angelo’s room. I’m guessing whoever was watching us arrive made a call and let someone know we were here.”
“Someone we don’t want to talk to,” Reese deduced.
“Exactly. But we found an address, so once we get you back go the hotel, Tiny and I are gonna go check it out.”
Her first instinct was to protest, to beg to go with them, but she’d promised. So Reese simply nodded.
“Thank you,” Gus said fervently, and despite the circumstances, Reese couldn’t help but feel a little thrill inside that she’d pleased him.
“It’s gonna be a tight fit.”
Reese turned at Tiny’s words, checking out the window set high in the wall. “Tight fit? There’s no way you guys will fit through there.” Hell, it was going to be iffy on whether she would fit. She was much…rounder…than Tiny or Gus. They had more muscles than her though, and broad shoulders.
Then something else occurred to her. “Um, please tell me there’s a fire escape out there.”
“Nope. But there’s a beautiful gutter that might as well be a ladder. I’ll go first, then you’ll come out after me and I’ll help you with your descent. Spike’ll go last, protecting us from above.”
“Wait, protecting us? From what?” Reese asked, just as a loud thump sounded from the front of the apartment.
“Shit. We’re going,” Tiny said as he grabbed the sill and jumped up, managing to swing his legs out the window like some sort of circus acrobat. His head disappeared in seconds.
“I’m not sure about this, Gus,” Reese said, but he didn’t give her time to think about what they had to do. He simply leaned over and picked her up like he was Rhett Butler and she was Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.
Utterly shocked—no one in her entire life had ever carried her like this—Reese wrapped her arm around Gus’s neck as he stuck her legs out the window.
“Turn and face the building when you get out there. Use your feet against the gutter to slow your descent.”
“OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod,” Reese muttered as she clung to the windowsill. She was about to tell Gus there was no way she could do this when she heard a loud bang from inside the apartment. Whoever was at the front door had obviously broken it down, and if she didn’t get her shit together, there was a huge chance Gus would be hurt…or worse. He didn’t have a gun and it was likely whoever had kicked in the door did.
Moving faster than she thought possible, Reese turned so she was facing the building and forced herself to loosen her death grip on the windowsill. She felt Tiny’s hand on her calf and it gave her the courage to grab hold of the gutter and slowly let her body slide downward.
She didn’t dare look up or down, so she felt more than saw Gus above her. Letting out a sigh of relief that he was out of the apartment, she continued her descent. It wasn’t too far to the ground, since they were only on the second floor.
She heard a shout above her head—and that was all she needed to move faster. Loosening her hold, she slid down the gutter like her life depended on it. And when she heard more loud, angry shouting in Spanish, she thought it just might.
Before her feet touched the ground, Tiny was grabbing her around the waist and pushing her in front of him, away from the building. “Go!” he said urgently.
“Gus!” she protested.
“I’m here.”
Reese had never felt so relieved to hear someone’s voice before. Then it was his hand on her back, urging her to run.
She had so many questions…what did they find in Angelo’s room, who were the men who’d broken into the apartment, where were they going, where was Woody…but now wasn’t the time.
When a loud crack of gunfire echoed around them, Gus urged her to run faster.
Reese wasn’t a runner. She hadn’t lied about that. But at the moment, she felt as if she could give any Olympic champion a literal run for their money. There was something about someone shooting at her that gave her the needed motivation to move her ass.
She, Tiny, and Gus ran around buildings, across streets, and even across a wooded park. But Gus wouldn’t let her slow down, and now that they were out of immediate danger—she hadn’t heard any more gunshots behind her—she realized she was breathing like the out-of-shape, overweight thirty-four-year-old that she was, whose only exercise consisted of walking to and from her car a few times per day.
“Just a little farther,” Gus told her, sounding disgustingly not breathless at all.
Saving her breath, Reese nodded. The last thing she wanted was to slow these men down. If something happened to them, she’d never forgive herself. They were here because of her. Because she’d come down here looking for her brother on her own.
She should’ve asked for help. Instead, she thought she’d waltz down to Colombia and find him within hours. For a smart woman, she’d been incredibly stupid. Her brother’s friends were special forces. She so should’ve called one of them.
But it was too late now. She’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it. She ignored the stitch in her side and how the soup she’d eaten earlier was threatening to come up. She needed to deal with whatever was happening as best she could and not be a liability.
But that was easier said than done. Especially when it felt as if she couldn’t get any oxygen into her lungs.
“We’ll stop here for a moment,” Gus said, and Reese had never been so glad to hear six words in all her life. She leaned against the side of the building they’d stopped next to and bent over, doing her best to catch her breath while Tiny and Gus talked above her.