LITMIR.BIZ

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luggage rack as the vehicle bounced beneath her.

      “Kimmer?”

      That was Rio’s voice, filtered through metal and glass and creaking shocks, and she thumped the roof twice in affirmation. She wanted to bellow to Hank that he should slow down—hell, he should just plain stop—but he’d already scraped the Suburban by the sedan in a painful screech of metal and she knew better than to think he might give her shouting a second thought. Best to just hang on.

      Yeah. So much for Plan A.

      The road grew a little smoother, giving Kimmer the wherewithal to turn around and watch their back.

      And here came the sedan. Backing down a road it hadn’t been built to climb in the first place, and doing it with the careless haste that said the driver had already decided it would be sacrificed to the cause.

      Which was killing Hank. And now, killing Kimmer and Rio.

      She flattened out over the luggage rack, wrenching the shotgun around into a useable position. Eventually the road would get smoother. Eventually she wouldn’t have to hang on with all her fingers and toes just to keep from being jounced over the side.

      They hit pavement. The sedan lost ground with a hasty three-point turn but then more than made up for it with the increased speed of forward movement. Hank responded with a lead foot, and they screamed downhill toward the residential area far too quickly for the sake of playing children or loose livestock. You fool. I took us away from this area for a reason. From inside the vehicle came the sound of raised voices, Rio’s emphatic and Hank’s shrill and defiant. The Suburban wove back and forth, wildly but briefly, and then continued as it had been. Kimmer, a little vertiginous at the landscape speeding backward past her, took the activity to mean that Rio had tried but failed to wrest some sort of control from Hank. And then they hit a series of turns for which she could only clutch to the luggage rack, grateful for its presence and cursing centrifugal force.

      He couldn’t have any idea where he was going.

      Nor did Kimmer, until she finally got a glimpse of the Dairy Queen on the way by and knew the road they traveled, and where it went.

      Where it stopped.

      The docks.

      Kimmer could only imagine Hank’s cursing when he realized he’d driven into the asphalt equivalent of a box canyon. Quaint, bobbing wooden docks all around them on this little jetty, populated by a plethora of gently rocking boats—sailboats, pontoon boats, a speedboat or two. No launching bay; this area was meant for cars to back up and unload. Not even enough room for the Suburban to turn around without backing up to the wider parking, bait sales and gas and propane refill area they’d just passed.

      No time for that.

      The Suburban rocked to an uncertain halt. Kimmer gave two sharp knocks on the roof beneath her, letting Rio know she was still aboard. She uncrimped her fingers from the luggage rack and pushed up to her elbows, bringing the shotgun to bear.

      The sedan, unsteady on its 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

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