wheels from the abuse it had taken, shot around the corner into the parking area. The goonboys were just mad enough to keep accelerating when they could easily have crawled to a stop and still had the same result.
The Suburban was trapped at the end of the lot with only one place to go.
Seneca Lake.
With perfect timing, an old station wagon loaded to the fenders with kids and fishing gear and flotation devices came ambling around the corner, not far behind the sedan.
And this, Hank, is why I took us up the damned hill.
Two cartridges left and no other way to warn the innocent bystanders on this family-run dock. With a wicked curse, Kimmer jumped to her feet, legs braced wide, toes finding purchase on the roof rack. Only peripherally aware of the vehicle’s sway beneath her as Rio disembarked, she pointed the shotgun at the sky and pulled the trigger.
The station wagon screeched to a halt; the figures within made emphatic gestures at her and each other. Other people on the edge of her vision reacted, withdrawing. Someone shouted at her.
And the sedan kept coming.
One cartridge left.
With deliberate movement, Kimmer resettled the gun at her shoulder, perfectly aware of the dramatic silhouette she made standing braced on top of the SUV. She considered it fair warning. She’d fired on them before; they’d know she wasn’t bluffing. She could see their silhouettes: big, dark blots, the passenger with his gun held ready. They’d be out and shooting as soon as they stopped—or out and grabbing up prisoners, which could only lead to shooting in the end. They didn’t know her. They must be counting on her nerve to fail in this peculiar game of chicken.
Wrong.
Kimmer pulled the trigger.
Someone screamed. The windshield shattered and the car veered wildly. For a moment Kimmer thought it would plow right into the Suburban. She crouched, ready to leap away from any collision, and then the car sheered away toward the side of the parking lot and the clear path to the—
“Kimmer!” Rio shouted, and Kimmer dove for him, perfectly willing to use him as a landing pad to get behind cover because anysecondnow—
The goonboys and their car ran smack into the propane storage tank, smack at the juncture of tank with intake and outflow pipes. The initial impact of metal against metal preceded the explosion by just enough time to distinguish one sound from the other.
Kimmer hit Rio and Rio hit the ground and the ground rocked beneath them. Shrapnel struck the Suburban in a series of staccato pings; jagged shards of tank metal dug into the asphalt and the wooden docks beyond. The station-wagon family and any other spectators were long gone. The dizzying blast of noise settled into the roar of flames as the sedan burned. From inside the Suburban, Hank muttered a long string of profanities, making free and repeated use of the phrase “fuckin’ crazy bitch.”
Kimmer pushed herself off Rio’s chest. She found it a good sign that he helped, disentangling their arms to support her shoulders. She found his eyes, the warm sienna irises almost hidden by pupils wide with shock and anger and concern. She grinned down at him. “Hey,” she said. “Was it good for you?”
Owen Hunter, Rio thought, had used remarkable restraint. At the time Rio had been too pumped to appreciate it, stalking around with the impulse to pick up the damned tire iron even though there was nothing left to hit and the cops would have taken him down for it anyway.
Or they would have tried.
“How’s your back?” Kimmer had kept asking and he’d repeatedly said it was fine, knowing it would be a lie once the adrenaline rush faded, but for the moment, true enough. Besides which, another six months of physical therapy had made the difference; he hadn’t expected further improvement at this point but he’d gotten some anyway.
All a good thing, for by the time the fire department, the cops and Owen Hunter had hashed out the situation to everyone’s temporary satisfaction—meaning the fire chief was unhappy, the cops were disgruntled but willing to discuss things further without making outright arrests and Owen Hunter had displayed his remarkable restraint any number of times—Rio had stiffened up considerably and was thankful for the heating pad now tucked between the side where his kidney had once been and the oversized, overstuffed recliner of Kimmer’s he found so comfortable.
More comfortably yet, Kimmer sat sideways in his lap, curled up to flip through the style magazine she’d finally fessed up was a guilty pleasure after he’d found it tucked behind the cookbook she never used. Not quite under the mattress, but she blushed enough so it might as well have been.
He liked that she’d blushed. She wouldn’t have been that vulnerable with anyone else. She’d have kicked his ass for snooping around.
Not snooping. He lived here now. For now. Him and the battered, failing OldCat he hadn’t been able to leave on his own back at the Michigan dock. For now and for…who knew? Kimmer’s wasn’t a large house, and her personality filled it. Claimed it. Made Rio aware of how hard she’d fought to get here, and that unlike himself, she’d never shared space with a loving, squabbling, all-for-one family.
Just the hard, cruel family which included the man now watching ESPN in the small TV room, a space meant for a dining room but where Kimmer had chosen to isolate the television so she could have this den for quiet moments. Perfect, quiet moment, turning the pages of her magazine while Rio rode the edge of sleep beneath her, arms loosely around her waist, hands clasped against her hip, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, her slight movements as she scanned the pages, the occasional nearly silent snort of derision at some piece of haute couture for which she saw no use, the movement of her shoulders when she grinned, laughing under her breath at some joke within the pages. Eventually she rested the magazine on the fat arm of the chair and let her head tip against his shoulder, her short curls soft against his neck. Dark curls, so short they never grew sun-streaked. Intense, like Kimmer herself.
After some moments, she murmured, “Sleeping?”
“Yes.”
She moved slightly against him. Oh, yeah. Wuh. Like that. And then she said, “No, you’re not.”
He smiled without opening his eyes. “Honey,” he said, “I could be almost dead and that would still happen.”
Her cheek moved against his shoulder as she, too, smiled. “Okay, then,” she said. “Just checking.”
“Nice shooting, by the way.”
“Had to be. Last cartridge. I wasn’t expecting the whole propane-tank thing, though.”
“I wasn’t expecting Hank to identify the men as the ones running his chop shop.” Rio kept his voice low, although the televised sound of car engines and crowds—and his sporadic couch coaching—inspired little concern that Hank would actually hear them. “Boom, the end of all his troubles. He never lifted a tire iron, never touched the trigger. Just a victim.”
“I never expected anything else,” Kimmer said, and traced Rio’s collarbone through the fabric of his T-shirt in a way that made him want to rip it off. Okay, that, Hank might notice.
Too damn bad they’d both decided the unpredictable man was best kept close to home—a decision Owen had emphatically endorsed. For although the Hunter Agency had taken only a generation
