Packing Heat (28 page)

“But you live in Washington. Kind of extravagant to have a house you never use.”

“It was my parents’.” Which said it all, judging by Cole’s expression, and made her add defensively, “I do use it. It’s a pretty good bribe. A bunch of stars live in the neighborhood, including this guy just down the hill from me who likes to meditate in his backyard. Naked. He’s been doing it for years, which should tell you how old he is and what a treat it would be to see him sitting cross-legged on a bamboo mat. Not that I ever saw him meditating, because my mother would never let me look out the west-facing windows from two to four in the afternoon, which is a shame because there are some really great views of the Pacific Ocean. And after the kidnapping I didn’t want the house sold. It was the last place I lived with my parents, you know, but I couldn’t live there again, so I only ever heard him meditating—”

“Okay, I get it,” he said, looking bemused.

“I’m sorry,” Harmony said, “too much information. I’m a little nervous.”

He got that, too. “You think they’re holding Richard at your house?”

“Yes.”

“Because your neighbor is into meditation.”

“And he rings a gong while he meditates.”

“In his backyard. Naked.” Cole took a few seconds to get that mental picture out of his head. “Why would they use your house?”

“It’s the last place I’d expect them to be.”

Cole pulled the car over just before the entrance ramp to the freeway. “How sure are you?”

“Nowhere near a hundred percent.”

“If we don’t go to the meet and the kidnappers are there with Richard, they may kill him when we don’t show. If we go to your house and the kidnappers are there, they may kill him when we show up unexpectedly. There’s no way to be a hundred percent certain, but you need to think about this, make sure you’re going with your best bet.”

Harmony exhaled carefully, running everything through her mind again, then running it by Cole. “I’m sure South Central is an ambush and Richard won’t be there.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

“And Richard uses my house whenever he’s out here and not on a case. They didn’t grab him there, but they would have been watching him, so they must have known about it.”

“And even if we don’t show up in South Central, I don’t think they’ll kill him with thirty million dollars on the line. They’ve waited this long, my bet is they’ll wait to hear from us again before they do anything that final.”

“Then we have to go now,” she said. “Get on the highway, follow it north to Mulholland Drive, then head east, and don’t worry about speed limits. The Russians are expecting us to show up for the meet in less than fifteen minutes. When we don’t, they’ll head for the house, too. If we want the odds to be even, we need to get there before Leo and Irina.”

She pulled out her phone, speed-dialed Mike by touch and put it to her ear. Nothing happened. She pulled it back and stared at the display, puzzled for a second before the “no service” message on the screen made sense, and then she went cold, her blood beginning to pound in her temples.

“Treacher had my phone shut off.” She dumped it in her bag and grabbed the prepaid phone instead. She flipped it open and went through the same motions. Again, the phone was dead. “This one doesn’t work, either, but there’s no way Treacher could know about it.”

“Shit,” Cole said.

She looked over at him. The muscles in his jaw were knotting and unknotting, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Nausea joined her other bodily reactions. “What’s going on?”

“It got wet the night we were apart.”

“Wet?”

“It was raining cats and dogs. A mudslide put me in the ditch.”

“Under any other circumstances, that would be hilarious.”

“Yeah, it was a real laugh riot.”

“Get off the highway,” Harmony said, ignoring Cole’s wounded dignity. “Take the next exit. Find a pay phone.”

He did, but they were back in Beverly Hills, among the expensive shops, restaurants, and gated homes.

“Damn it,” Harmony said, “there aren’t going to be any pay phones here. Everyone has a cell phone, and we don’t have time to buy another disposable.”

“Now what?”

Try not to panic,
she thought, racking her brain and coming up empty.

“This is no time to draw a blank.”

“You’re not helping.” Harmony closed her eyes, shutting out everything—the fact that time was growing short and Cole was expecting her to come up with a miracle solution, one that probably didn’t involve the cops. The FBI wasn’t going to ride to their rescue, either, which pretty much left them on their own. Her biggest impulse was to throw up and so what if it was on the doorstep of one of the snooty fusion restaurants that were popping up . . .

“Pull over here,” she said, dragging her tiny purse and her useless phone out of her duffel, practically out the door before he stopped the car because her brain had finally kicked back in. She leaned back inside to meet Cole’s eyes. “I’m going to call the cops, but we’ll sort it out later. I promise.”

“We don’t have much choice,” he said, looking miserable.

Harmony kneeled in the passenger seat and kissed him, intending it to be a short, sweet reminder that she had his best interests at heart.

He slipped a hand around the nape of her neck and took it deeper. “In case we don’t have time later,” he said when he finally let her go.

Harmony wrapped her hand around his wrist. “We will.”

He returned her smile. “Nice to see the optimism is back.”

She squeezed his wrist once, then backed out of the car, taking a precious moment to straighten her jacket and pull “privileged California blonde” around her like an invisible cloak.

She couldn’t go to the police station. They’d probably recognize her. If she told them about the kidnapping, they’d call in the FBI, and while they were hashing it all out, Leo and Irina would get back to the house and who knew what would happen?

She needed to buy some time to go in and get Richard out, which meant alerting the LAPD and hoping like hell they’d show up in time.

She opened the door and stepped inside, took one look at the restaurant’s hostess, and pasted a vapid smile on her face, walking in like she owned the world and concocting a lie on the spot. “I’m, like, meeting my boyfriend for brunch, and I’m, like, unforgivably late,” she said to the hostess. “Again.”

The hostess, whose name badge proclaimed her as Christine, never batted an eye. Harmony had to give her credit; she was obviously sick and tired of the entitled rich, but she never showed it. “I’m sorry, Miss, no one is waiting.”

Harmony let loose a little giggle. “He probably left and now he’s all, like, mad and stuff.” She huffed out a breath, letting her shoulders get into the action, then took out her cell phone, rolling her eyes dramatically as she held it up. “And I forgot to charge my phone, see? So I’ll have to use yours.”

“I’m not supposed to,” Christine said, but she didn’t stop Harmony from leaning over the reception desk and picking up the cordless phone.

“It’ll just take a sec,” Harmony said, waving her hand in dismissal, and walking toward the front door to keep the hostess from hearing her lie to the police.

She dialed information and let the operator connect her, working her way through the phone tree and smiling over her shoulder at Christine, who was getting antsy. “He’s back at work,” she lied, “so he put me on hold, and, like, I just have to, like,
hold
. You know how it is. Men can be so, like, touchy about stuff like this.”

Finally a real person came on the line and she turned away, pitching her voice low enough, she hoped, so the hostess couldn’t hear what she was saying but the police could. “I need to report a vagrant wandering around my house in the Hills,” she said. “Yes, I’m inside with the doors locked, but there’s a lot of glass on the canyon side of the house, and he looks crazy. I live all alone at the end of the road—Viewmont Drive,” she said to the obvious question, adding her address. “No, he hasn’t done anything yet, except dig through my trash. No, I didn’t see him do it, so it might have been coyotes . . . Okay, I pay a lot of taxes, and I know the police chief . . . Good, come as soon as—Oh, darn, I think I see him again.” And she disconnected abruptly in the hope it would lend her story more immediacy.

The police still weren’t going to take her very seriously, but they’d eventually send an officer, hopefully after she and Cole had had enough time to do what they needed to do. As backup plans went, it left a lot to be desired, but it was the best she could do with two dead phones and a looming deadline.

She turned back to the reception desk only to bump into Christine, who’d been standing about three inches behind her, eavesdropping. She snatched the phone out of Harmony’s hand and marched behind the desk, glaring at her.

“Sorry,” Harmony said, “it’s a, uh . . . a punk! You know, like Ashton Kutcher,” and when the hostess looked out the windows, she said, “he’s not here, he’s at the address.”

“You’re making it up.”

“I wouldn’t use Ashton like that,” Harmony said, walking out the door in a huff, which she lost before she got to the car.

“Well?” Cole said as he floored it away from the curb, hanging a U-turn in the middle of late-morning traffic and leaving car horns blaring in their wake.

“There’s hope.”

Cole snorted. “That might make me feel better if it wasn’t your own personal motto.”

Harmony’s home was no different. It sat at the end of the street, a little higher and a little apart from its lone neighbor. Cole parked down the street, out of sight of the house, which wasn’t difficult since the area between her and her neighbor had been allowed to remain natural with scrubby underbrush and trees growing wild.

The yard around the house was a different story. The lawn was well-kept, studded with flower beds, flowering shrubs, and trellises sat at one side of the house covered in flowering vines. The house itself was a castlelike fantasy in natural stone and weathered cedar, with turrets and alternating roof levels.

“Jeez,” Cole said, keeping his voice down, “where do you keep the dwarves and the house-cleaning forest creatures.”

“I don’t live here, remember? And I’m not exactly Snow White.”

No, but it was the kind of fairy-tale-looking place he could see her living in.

“I don’t recognize the car in the driveway,” she said quietly.

“At least we know they’re here.”

“Someone is.”

“Who else could it be?”

“Who else,” Harmony repeated grimly.

Cole wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her back, out of sight of the house. “You don’t have to do this,” he said to her. “Now that you know where he is, you can call the FBI and let them deal with the Russians.”

“If the FBI shows up, it won’t be to negotiate. They’ll come in with guns blazing and Richard will be the first one killed.”

“Then come with me and we’ll disappear.”

She leaned into him, but not before he swore he saw tears in her eyes. He didn’t hear them in her voice. “You don’t mean that, Cole. If you wanted to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, you’d be gone already.”

“I’ll go if you will.”

She didn’t say anything, but he felt her take a breath, then another. She was probably chanting mantras, too, but he couldn’t tease her about it. “C’mon then,” he said. “I’m going to make sure you get through this in one piece, and you’re going to make sure I don’t go back to jail.”

She nodded, and when she stepped back her eyes were absolutely dry. “The front entrance leads to the main level of the house, with the bedrooms above,” she said. “There are two more levels below the main floor, built into the hillside overlooking the valley, and there’s no telling where they’re holding Richard.”

“You know the layout. What do you suggest?”

She got to her feet and walked across the front yard like she owned the place, which she did. “If it was me, I’d stay in the lower two levels. Everything they need is there—kitchenette, maid’s quarters—and there’s nothing behind the house so they could even use the pool without being seen.”

“Maid’s quarters? Pool?”

“It’s California.”

And she was rich, which was something he’d been trying not to think about. Kind of hard to ignore it when she retrieved a key from a false stone near the front entry and led him through the door to a world he’d only dreamt of building for himself. It took a real effort to remember he might meet a different destiny altogether there.

Harmony stepped inside and shut the door behind them, easing back so she was leaning against it, her hands behind her. They ought to get moving, but Cole didn’t try to hurry her. It had to be hell to walk into that house again and remember the last time she was there, the moment she’d learned her parents were never coming home. It had to be hell knowing the last person she considered family was facing the same danger, and she was the one who stood between him and death.

She faced it, though. She pushed away from the door, slipped out of her shoes, and moved silently across the foyer and up the stairs directly across from the front door. This time Cole was rooted to the spot, dealing with a flood of . . . pride and respect—and optimism—that caught him off guard. They might actually get through this, he thought to himself, as long as they stuck together. She motioned him to stay there, but he followed her while she made a quick check of the four palatial bedroom suites on the topmost level of the house, then went back downstairs and made a similar check of the living areas, kitchen, dining room, media room, entertainment area and home office.

And then she headed for the stairs leading down. Before they’d descended halfway she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. He didn’t hear anything but the pounding of his own heart, but it felt . . . different. Not deserted. She pulled her gun and took the rest of the stairs two at a time, Cole right on her heels, ending up in a huge room that ran the length of the house and held a pool table, jukebox, pinball machines, and Leo and Irina. Her left eye was still puffy and just turning from purple to green.

A figure sat in the shadows at the end of the room. Harmony stared in that direction, her shoulders relaxing just for a second before she squared them again. By her reaction Cole assumed it was Richard, but they had only a split-second to assess the situation and react.

Irina was on the same page, pulling a gun and stepping up to Richard. “You move, he dies. Put down gun.”

“You won’t shoot me,” Harmony said, “and you won’t shoot Richard as long as you need him to gain our cooperation.”

“And where’s the third Russian?” Cole asked.

Harmony paid him no attention, completely focused on Irina.

Irina held her gaze, smiling coldly. “You wish a rematch.”

“It was always going to come down to this,” Harmony said. “Cole’s right, you can’t shoot us. Your only hope is to capture us and make us give you the account number and password.”

Irina shrugged with one shoulder, a thoroughly Russian movement. She pulled the gun from Richard’s head, popped the clip, and tossed it aside, and set the gun in his lap. It didn’t do them any good since Richard’s hands were tied behind his back, but the balance of power swung to their favor. Until Harmony took the clip out of her gun, and set them both on the pinball machine next to her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cole asked her. “I thought you wanted to get Richard free.”

“I will,” she said, never taking her eyes from Irina’s face.

Cole shot a glance at the pinball machine, but Leo shifted to within a few feet of him. He could go for Harmony’s weapon, but he had no experience with guns. Leo would be on him before he could get the clip in correctly, let alone get a shot off.

He could only stand there and watch the two women circle before Harmony attacked. She caught Irina by surprise and got in a blow that rocked the other woman’s head back. Irina responded with a flurry of punches aimed at Harmony’s ribs. At least one of them landed. Harmony hunched over, eyes closed, breath wheezing out, absorbing what had to be excruciating pain.

Irina moved in for the kill—or at least the take-out, and for a minute Cole thought it was over. He should have had more faith, but then he’d never seen Harmony so . . . scary.

The California girl was gone, anger taking over, cold anger comprised of everything the Russians had put her through, days of helpless worry, of hearing a man she loved like a father tortured, of losing that first fight and questioning everything she was and wanted to be. She went after Irina relentlessly, using every fighting trick in the book, clean and dirty.

Cole stayed out of it, but he was staking everything on Harmony. If she lost, there was no way he could take on both Russians. Leo clearly felt the same. When it was apparent that Irina wasn’t going to come out the winner he moved, but not toward Cole, and not toward Harmony’s gun. He dove into the corner where Irina had tossed her clip.

Cole went after him, but Leo got there first, the whole thing going into slow motion. Cole’s feet moved but didn’t seem to get him anywhere. Leo scrabbled in the corner for the clip. Harmony still struggled with Irina, and Richard was still tied up in the shadows.

Then everything happened at once. Leo came up with the clip, but instead of going for Irina’s gun, he flipped the clip into Richard’s lap then turned and lumbered at Cole. Cole couldn’t stop his forward momentum. He crashed into Leo and they went down in a tangle. Leo’s head hit the floor with a sickening thud, and when Cole climbed off him he didn’t get up. He was, however, snoring.

Cole turned to see Harmony standing over Irina’s inert body. She was savoring the moment, Cole thought, but only briefly before she ran over to Richard, intending to set him free.

Richard pulled his hands out from behind his back and slapped the clip into Irina’s gun as he stood up. The light fell on his face for the first time, and Harmony’s steps faltered. He had no bruises, no cuts, and they already knew he hadn’t been tied up.

“You’re the third kidnapper,” Harmony said. “You set up the whole thing.”

“Dos vedanya,”
Richard said in the Russian-accented voice that Cole recognized from his one phone call to the kidnappers. He opened his arms wide and smiled at Harmony. “How about a hug for your uncle Richard?”