Secret Assignment (25 page)

“Maybe we should give your brother a call,” Leo added.

So he’d already given up on Gideon? Was he that confident that Stephens had killed him? The unbearable thought nearly paralyzed her.

“Still have my phone?” he asked.

“It’s in my bra,” she muttered before she could stop herself.

“Give it over or I’ll get it myself.”

The phone wasn’t the only thing in her bra, she realized, hope fluttering through her chest.

“Now,” Leo commanded.

She reached under her shirt and pulled the phone free. As she handed it over her shoulder to him, she let the utility knife fall into her palm while he wasn’t looking. She took a deep breath and brought her hands together, easing the largest blade open.

“Your brother’s phone number?”

“He doesn’t know where the journal is. He can’t get it for you, no matter how many ways you threaten me.” She lowered her hand to her side, the knife blade facing backward. She kept it hidden within her palm, ready for her first chance to make a move without getting herself killed.

“They can find it if they want it enough.” Leo pushed the gun barrel against her temple. “Number?”

“Gideon’s the only one who knows where it is,” she said more urgently. “So you’d better call off your rabid dog out there and pray he hasn’t already killed your only chance of finding that journal.”

She felt Leo go tense behind her. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” She infused her voice with a cocky confidence she didn’t really feel.

But it seemed to work. After a moment of silence, Leo gave her a push in the back. “Walk.”

She walked ahead, moving as quickly as she dared without looking as if she were about to make a break for it. If she could just get to Gideon and reassure herself he was still alive, they had a chance of turning this whole mess around on Leo and Stephens.

But long before they reached the cabin, which was barely visible now yards ahead, the gunshots ended. Even as the last blast of the rifle rang in the trees, a dreadful silence swallowed it whole.

Despair rattled through Shannon’s body like a chill.

* * *

T
HE RIFLE STUTTERED
uselessly, out of ammunition. From his crouched hiding place at the side of the house, Gideon heard Raymond Stephens spit out a string of profane curses.

Time was up. The best-case scenario was that Stephens was out of ammo altogether, but Gideon couldn’t count on such a good outcome. He pulled the Walther from its holster and made his move.

Stephens was digging in his pockets, his movements shaky with adrenaline-fueled mania. He found a handful of rounds and tried to shove them into the rifle’s chamber. As Gideon came roaring around the edge of the house, he jerked the barrel up and tried to get off a shot, but the rifle jammed.

Gideon hit him with a tackle, grunting with pain as he landed on top of Stephens on the ground. A sharp ache centering around the old bullet hole in his chest made him gasp for breath, but he didn’t have time to coddle himself. Stephens was already digging for another weapon.

Gideon stunned him quickly with three hard, fast punches to the face. Stephens’s eyes rolled back in his head briefly, long enough for Gideon to flip him onto his stomach and twist his arms behind his back.

Gideon called Stephens a few choice names as he searched the man’s pockets. He came away with a Smith & Wesson and a lethal-looking Bowie knife, both of which he shoved into the pockets of his own pants.

Stephens sneered at him. “Big man, what’re you going to do? Kill me like your daddy killed your mama?”

Gideon ignored the taunt, digging in the man’s pockets for further weapons. He came across a handful of flex cuffs and grinned with grim satisfaction. “This,” he said with grim satisfaction as he cuffed Stephens’s hands behind him, “is what you call being hoist with your own petard.”

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Stephens struggled to turn over, but Gideon slammed his palm against the back of the man’s head and shoved his face hard into the ground. Stephens cried out in pain, his voice muffled by a mouthful of mud.

Gideon felt a rush of rage. This man hurt Shannon. He’d shoved her into a car and tried to hold her captive. He’d ripped her watch from her arm, making her bleed. The temptation to shove his face deeper into the mud, to hold it there until Stephens stopped struggling, was damn near overwhelming.

But he resisted it. Instead, he found a measure of satisfaction in fastening the man’s ankles together and using a third flex cuff to hogtie his hands and feet together behind his back. Using the cuffs like a handle, he hauled Stephens off the ground and carried him through the cabin door.

“I’ll kill you!” Stephens growled, trying to bite Gideon as he threaded a fourth flex cuff through his bindings and attached him to the chain set into the wall.

“You’ll have to untruss yourself first,” Gideon shot back with a calm he couldn’t really feel, not with Shannon out there somewhere, playing hide-and-seek with an armed killer.

He crossed to the window, looking for any sign of the other man who’d been with Stephens. He saw no one out there.

Checking the Walther’s magazine, he looked down at Stephens, who writhed with impotent fury on the floor. “Sorry. Gotta go. I’ll send someone back to get you.” Easing the door open, he took a peek outside.

And stopped breathing.

Shannon stood at the foot of the shallow cabin steps, a gun to her head. Behind her, the man with the gun smiled with loathsome delight.

“Hello, Gideon. I’m Leo. I think it’s time we have a talk.”

Chapter Eighteen

Shannon locked gazes with Gideon for a brief, electric moment. She dropped her eyes, looking down at the hand with the knife, then looked up at Gideon again.

His eyes narrowed a hair.

“You have something I want, I have something you want,” Leo said in a pleasant, almost singsong voice. “I think we can make an equitable trade, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She already gave you up,” Leo said. “She said you’re the one who has the journal.”

“He won’t give it to you,” Shannon said, willing Gideon to look down at her hand, where the bright red butt of her knife was peeking out from her fist. But he kept looking at Leo, his expression full of loathing and anger.

“I believe he puts a little more value on you than on a silly book nobody can read.”

“He’s a marine,” she said, dropping her gaze purposefully to her hand again. This time, she saw Gideon’s eyes follow her gaze. They slid back up to meet hers, dark with understanding. “Marines don’t put anything or anyone before the good of their country. You might as well just shoot me—”

“No!” Gideon jerked his weapon up and aimed it at Leo, his tone frantic. “Don’t shoot her!”

She wasn’t sure if his cry was heartfelt or an attempt to distract Leo. Whichever it was, it didn’t work. Leo just pressed the gun harder into her temple, scratching the skin and making her gasp.

“Why don’t we start with you putting down your weapon?” Leo suggested. “Slowly.”

Nostrils flaring with fury, Gideon held his gun up and slowly bent, laying it on the steps beside him.

“Where’s the journal?” Leo asked.

“It’s on the island,” Gideon answered. “I can take you to it. Let her go and I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, no. I know a good hostage when I see one.” Leo wrapped his arm more tightly around Shannon’s upper body. “Where’s my associate?”

“I’m in here!” Raymond Stephens called from inside the cabin.

“He’s a little tied up,” Gideon said in a flat drawl that almost made Shannon laugh.

Leo did laugh, the sound rumbling against Shannon’s back. “I think I like you, Gideon Stone. It’s a shame you didn’t take a little more after your father, isn’t it?”

Gideon’s blue eyes glittered dangerously. “I’m nothing like my father,” he answered in a tone ripe with conviction. Shannon couldn’t hold back a smile, despite her fear.

“Go untie him.” Leo pulled his gun away from Shannon’s head, waving it toward the cabin.

It was the chance she’d been waiting for.

She slammed her hand backward, planting the blade of the knife deep into Leo’s inner thigh. He bucked against her, crying out with pain, and she followed up with a hard elbow jab to his rib. He lost his grip and she scrambled away.

By the time she turned back around, Gideon had rolled to the side, grabbed his gun and brought it to bear on Leo. “Drop it.”

Leo stared back at Gideon. “I can’t.”

“Do it.”

Leo swung his weapon toward Gideon. Gideon squeezed off a single shot, hitting Leo center mass. Leo’s simultaneous shot fired wide, spraying shards of wood shrapnel where the bullet hit the side of the cabin.

He fell to the ground, the weapon dropping from his hand.

Shannon stared at Gideon, who was still in firing position, his attention focused on Leo’s trembling body. Carefully, he crossed to where the man lay, kicking the pistol out of reach.

Leo was still breathing, but bloody bubbles erupted from his mouth as he tried to speak. “I was you...once...” His eyes fluttered shut.

Shannon walked carefully to Gideon’s side. He didn’t look at her, still staring down at Leo. “Is he still alive?” she asked.

“I think so. Don’t know for how long.” He reached in his pocket and handed her his cell phone. “Call 9-1-1.”

As she started to move away, Gideon’s hand snaked out and caught her wrist. He turned his gaze to her, and what she saw there sent a flood of heat coursing through her veins.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he whispered. “When I thought I might lose you—”

She touched his face. “I’m really hard to get rid of. Ask my brothers and sisters.”

He smiled at her, flashing those dimples that had first caught her eye. She loved those dimples.

She loved him.

Smiling deep in her soul, she stepped away and called 9-1-1.

* * *

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER,
Gideon sat alone in an interview room at the Terrebonne Sheriff’s Department, waiting for someone to tell him what came next. He’d given his statement to Deputy Massey, handed over his Walther as evidence and now sat in silence, deeply aware of being under electronic surveillance.

Shannon had still been on the phone with the 9-1-1 dispatcher when her brothers and cousins arrived, Doyle Massey and a half-dozen deputies in tow. The Cooper men had looked a little let down to see the situation firmly under control without their help.

They’d left the deputies to do the mop-up, encircling Shannon in a cocoon of Cooper family love and protection. Her dark eyes had met Gideon’s as the Coopers and a couple of the deputies swept her away from the scene, leaving Gideon to tell a suspicious-looking Doyle Massey everything that had happened.

As they passed, Jesse Cooper’s dark eyes, full of meaning, had met Gideon’s. He paused a moment, in the chaos, and murmured, “Give me the book.”

Gideon hadn’t wanted to part with it. But the police would be searching him sooner rather than later. He didn’t want the cops to find it.

He reached into his pocket, palmed the journal and handed it over to Jesse in a handshake. Jesse slipped it nonchalantly into the back pocket of his jeans and joined the others as they headed to the nearest Sheriff’s Department cruiser.

Gideon wondered if he’d ever see that journal again.

The door to the interview room opened and, to Gideon’s surprise, Lydia Ross walked inside, accompanied by Deputy Massey. Gideon smiled at her, relieved to see her safe and sound. He pushed up quickly from his chair and accepted the tight hug she gave him.

“I hear you and Shannon have had yourselves quite the adventure.”

He grinned at her understatement. “Yes, we did. Have you seen her?”

He hadn’t. Not since she drove away with the deputies in the back of a cruiser. Her brothers had followed in the Caddy, which would definitely need a wash and detailing after today.

“I haven’t yet.” Lydia took the seat beside him. “I’m so afraid she’s going to disappear without our getting to say goodbye.”

“Her brothers want to take her home.” Massey stood across the table from them. “But she didn’t seem inclined to leave just yet. I just came here to deliver Mrs. Ross safely back to you. You’re both free to go.”

“No more questions?”

“No, we’re piecing everything together pretty well now.”

“How’s Leo? The guy I shot?”

Massey shook his head. “The paramedics found a broken capsule in the back of his mouth. They’re testing what was left of the contents, but it looked like it might be—”

“Cyanide,” Gideon murmured.

Lydia made a murmur of distress, and he wrapped his arm around her narrow shoulders.

“They’re SSU, aren’t they?” Massey asked.

Gideon nodded. “Or what’s left of it.”

“The Coopers told us about AfterAssets. We’ll be turning over Raymond Stephens and Craig Linden to the Feds.”

“There’s at least a fifth guy, on an Azimut yacht called
Ahab’s Folly.
”

“Nobody’s been able to find him.”

Maybe Damon could give them more information, Gideon thought.

But as it turned out, Damon was gone, too.

“A harbor patrol boat took J.D. and Sam back to the island to check on the chopper,” Jesse told Gideon a few minutes later when he and Lydia ran into Shannon’s eldest brother outside the interview area. “None of his stuff was left in the lighthouse, either. I guess he swam back out to the boat and they took off.”

Gideon swallowed a curse. “I don’t think I like that guy.”

Jesse smiled wearily. “He’s doing a tough job. Being likable isn’t at the top of his to-do list.”

“Where’s Shannon?” Lydia asked.

“Still in there giving her statement.” Jesse nodded toward a closed door. “Where are her clothes and things? We thought we’d go ahead and get them so we can head out as soon as they give her the all clear.”

Gideon’s gut clenched at the thought. “You mean today?”

“Yeah.” Jesse gave Lydia an apologetic look. “I suppose we didn’t really finish the job we sent her to do. You won’t be charged for the time.”