Hush (40 page)

In either scenario, he and Bax were dead. Riley, too, only they'd wait until, one way or another, she told them the whereabouts of the money first.

What he had here was a brief window of opportunity.

“I'm getting ready to hang a hard left,” he told Bax. In his side mirror he could see the pickup, a big white monster with a billet grille, roaring up. Two men on board: professionals. Sunlight
pouring through the windshield glinted off a silver gun barrel in the passenger's hand. “I'm going to be driving, so you're going to be doing most of the shooting. When we go by the SUVs, you pick: driver or tire. But get one or the other.”

Bax said, “I'll get both.”

Had to love the guy's optimism.

“Don't get killed,” Riley said, staring up at him. He could see how hard she was breathing, hear the tension in her voice. She flicked a glance toward the backseat. “Either of you.”

“Hold tight, Angel.” With that, Finn drew his Beretta and hit the button that rolled down the windows. As always in a situation like this, he felt a fierce calm descend. His heart rate slowed. So did his pulse and respiration. The rush of hot wind whipping outdoor smells through the car's interior hit his face and sent Riley's hair flying. He could hear the rattle of the pickup, see that its grille was almost even with the Acura's passenger door.

Shock and awe, baby
.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Finn leaned out the driver's side window just far enough to get the job done. With unerring precision he snapped off a quick shot that shattered the pickup's window and caught the driver square in the middle of the forehead:
money shot
. The staccato
pop
was lost in the roar of the wind. Even as Finn withdrew, the driver slumped, the horn blared as his dead body landed on it, and the pickup veered wildly toward the Acura. Finn took advantage of the few seconds before impact to stomp the accelerator and yank the wheel left. The Acura squealed past the skidding pickup with inches to spare.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Riley gasped as she was
thrown toward him and her body came up off the seat, then was caught by her seat belt and flung back down again.

“
Stay down
.”

Brakes screamed as the SUVs tried to avoid the fishtailing pickup and started sliding themselves. Up ahead, the semis were braking, too. The smell of scorching tires filled the air.

“Suck lead, assholes!” Bax screamed. As bullets pinged into the Acura
rat-a-tat-tat,
making Finn cringe, Bax fired, loud bangs that told Finn he had opted for the rifle.

The front tire of the nearest SUV exploded, sending it zigzagging wildly.

“Way to do it!” Finn yelled.

The rifle banged some more.

The steering wheel shook beneath Finn's hands as he fought it for control. The margin for error was so slight—the wall of trees was inches from the side of the car and the swerving SUVs took up most of the pavement. Trees flashed by the windshield in a green-brown blur, bullets peppered the sides of the car right along with flying gravel, and as they hit grass they bounced like ping pong balls. Then the Acura was flying back the way it had come, partly on grass and partly on the pavement. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Finn that the pickup had crashed into the wooded slope on the right side of the expressway, both SUVs were off the pavement, and the semis were angled across the road, one in front of the other. Finn counted three men outside the vehicles, two rushing toward the pickup and one leaning back against the side of the beige SUV holding his arm, and felt a surge of triumph mixed with relief.

“We did it,” Bax exulted.

“Way to get the job done,” Finn congratulated him, and glanced at Riley, who was cautiously sitting up. “You okay?”

“Fine. I can't believe we're alive after that.” Pushing her hair back from her face with both hands—Finn rolled up the windows so it wouldn't blow anymore—Riley looked at him. Something in her face reminded him that she'd just seen him kill a man. Their eyes met. Finn felt naked:
This is what I am
. He didn't like the sensation. Mouth compressing, he returned his attention to his driving, and eased the Acura back up on the road.

“You saved my life again. Thank you,” Riley said quietly, and something tight inside him eased just a little bit. He nodded, and she then slewed around to look at Bax. “Neither of you are hurt?”

“No.”

“No.”

Riley looked back at the site of the wreck they were rapidly leaving behind and shivered. “Will they come after us, do you think?”

“I only got the one tire,” Bax confessed. “Other than that, I don't know what I hit.”

“Whatever you hit, it worked,” Finn said, glancing at him through the mirror. “Good man.” Then, to Riley, “They won't come after us. Not right now,” and refrained from telling her that there were probably dozens more exactly like them.

“We're going the wrong way down the expressway,” she pointed out.

Worried as he was, her matter-of-fact tone almost made him smile. “I'll get right on that.”

T
he safe house was an ordinary-looking brick two-story not too far southwest of Dallas. It was in a semirural neighborhood with no near neighbors, set back off the road and ringed by trees.

Four men in two cars were waiting for them when they arrived. The cars were parked on the street in front of the house, and the men got out and headed toward the Acura as it pulled up the driveway.

It said a lot about the current state of her life that as soon as she spotted the waiting cars Riley's heart leaped into her throat.

“Finn.” There was warning in her tone. Alarmed, she sat straight up in her seat.

“It's all right. They're backup,” he said.

The thought that she now needed all these armed guards was terrifying. But given what had happened on the expressway, she was prepared to accept his judgment that she did.

The men followed them into the house. They were introduced to Riley as Agents Foster, Hagan, Waters, and Silverman. She didn't inquire what agency they were from, and they were pretty much interchangeable in their dark suits and white shirts and ties.

In fact, Finn fit right in with them.

Inside, the house was ordinary looking, too: living room, dining room, family room, kitchen, and half bath on the first floor, three bedrooms and two baths above. The new recruits deployed themselves around the first floor. Riley, Finn, and Bax hit the kitchen, which as it turned out was fully stocked. Tired and shaken as she was, Riley was hungry. It was almost 4 p.m., and she hadn't eaten anything except a nibble of toast at breakfast with Finn. She made herself a bologna sandwich, ate quickly, then headed upstairs, leaving Finn and Bax still at the table. Finn had carried her suitcase into the master bedroom when they had arrived, and that was where she went.

Hungry as she had been, the food felt like a cannonball in her stomach, and that would be, Riley thought as she headed into the en suite bathroom to freshen up, because she was sick with fear. For Emma: the kidnappers still had not called. For herself: she had nearly died this afternoon for the second time in little more than a week, and she was confident that there were lots of people still out there who were prepared to make her dead.

Having washed her face and hands, brushed her teeth, and applied fresh makeup, Riley was brushing her hair as she walked back into the bedroom, and immediately lost her train of thought as she saw Finn stretched out on the bed, his head propped up by pillows as he clearly waited for her.

He wasn't wearing his jacket or tie, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and had the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His shoulder holster was off: she spotted it on the bedside table. Other than that, he was fully dressed down to his shoes, which rested on the cheerful blue floral bedspread.

Just looking at him made her feel warm all over, which she knew was idiotic. She was willing to bet the rent money that he wasn't there for sexy times.

“Hi,” she said, and waited.

“We need to talk.” Sitting up, he swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet.

Riley put the brush down on the low oak dresser that was right beside her, crossed her arms over her chest, and met his gaze as he stopped in front of her.

She didn't have her shoes on, and he loomed large. Good thing she no longer found him the least bit intimidating.

“So talk,” she said.

His eyes slid over her face. His expression was grim.

“As you may have noticed, we have a situation here. We're squirreled away in a safe house because everybody and his uncle wants to get their hands on you and make you tell them where the money is. My boss wants that money, too, and my whole organization, including those guys downstairs and a bunch of others who are a hell of a lot deadlier, will turn on us in a heartbeat if he decides the best way to get it is to torture information out of you. We don't have a lot of time before this turns nasty. I'm on your side, and they'll get to you over my dead body, but that could happen. I need you to stop lying to me, and tell me the whole damned truth.” He reached out to grasp her arms. His
hands felt warm, and strong, and familiar now. It was the familiar part that got to her. “I know you know where the money is. Tell me.”

Right. It was all about the money. For a moment there, she'd almost forgotten that.

“If we're going to talk about truth, why don't you go first?” She smiled at him. Because she really, really liked him, and because suspecting his motives and not being able to trust him felt like it was turning her heart inside out, it wasn't a nice smile. “Mr. CIA Agent John F. Bradley.”

The skin around his eyes tightened, his mouth thinned, and the grip on her arms hardened.

“I saw your ID number on a text when you snuck out of bed in the middle of the night and the phone rattled the drawer beside the bed,” she said. “And I checked it out.”

He grimaced. Message:
busted
. Then his grip eased and his eyes and mouth returned to normal. “John Finnegan Bradley, CIA's National Clandestine Service, Special Operations Group. The Agency doesn't want its interest in the missing money known, so we're conducting a joint operation with the FBI. Bax is FBI, by the way. For real.”

“You lied to me.”

“In the interests of national security.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Does that line actually work on people?”

He pulled her toward him. “Pretty much, yeah. Riley—”

“Oh, no.” She put her hands on his chest, freed herself from his grip, walked over to the room's one chair, a denim blue recliner,
and threw herself down in it. He followed, and she looked up at him with a frown.

“Your picture was on Jeff's cell phone.” Her tone was abrupt. It was a measure of her growing trust in him that she told him at all. As she'd decided before, if his picture was on that phone for the wrong reasons, telling him she'd seen it could go very wrong. “He snapped it the night he died.”

His face was impossible to read as he looked down at her. “You've been wondering if I killed him.”

She'd never really thought
that
. “More like, I've been wondering if you're one of the bad guys.”

He snorted. “Angel, if I'm a bad guy, I'm the one keeping all the other bad guys from your door.”

“I know. Don't think I don't appreciate that.”

The look he gave her was long, level, and impossible to interpret. “In the interests of clarity, I did not kill Jeff. I was looking for him that night, though. He must have seen me, taken a picture without me seeing him, and then run for it. He knew me, knew what I was there for.”

Riley's hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “You
knew
Jeff?”

He sighed, and crouched down in front of her. “This is full disclosure, right? I tell you mine, you tell me yours?”

“Maybe.” Riley drew the word out cautiously, and he narrowed his eyes at her. But he continued anyway.

“After 9/11, the CIA had a few of us tracking down some insider trades that happened in the markets prior to the attacks. We developed information that enabled us to use the financial markets
to predict impending terrorist attacks. Cowan Investments had a large number of investments from suspect sources, and I was sent down here to check them out. Jeff was a teenager at the time, working in his daddy's office. He didn't appreciate my presence. George didn't, either, but he was old enough and smart enough to cooperate. The fact that I was already familiar with the Cowans and their operation was one of the factors in sending me here to search for the money.”

Even though she hadn't really suspected him of harming Jeff, Riley felt as if a small weight had been lifted from her chest.

“Is that everything?” she asked cautiously.

“That I can think of for the moment. And it's all top secret, by the way.” He stood up, and before she guessed what he meant to do, he scooped her up and sat back down with her in his lap.

“Hey,” she protested.

“It's the only chair, I'm tired, and squatting down in front of you is making my legs hurt,” he said, but she was already settling in, relaxing into his encircling arms, draping her legs sideways across his, sliding an arm around his neck. She had never been a lap-sitting kind of woman but—this was
Finn's
lap.

Their eyes met. Something—hot, but deeper and more profound than that, too—passed between them.

He smoothed her hair back from her face, dropped a quick, hard kiss on her lips.

Her heart shivered.

He said, “Whatever you've done, I'll get you out of it. If you stole the damned money, I'll get you out of it. Whatever secret you're keeping, whatever you've been lying about this whole time, I'll help you fix it. But you need to tell me.”