Home > Honor Avenged (HORNET #6)(9)

Honor Avenged (HORNET #6)(9)
Author: Tonya Burrows

   She leaned down and stretched out a hand. No, she didn’t trust him, but he had answers she needed. The answers to questions that had been haunting her for nearly a year now. She wasn’t about to let him die until he told her what he knew.

   A bullet ricocheted off the wall. Again, she didn’t hear it, but she saw it hit, saw the stucco splinter about a foot below her hand. She looked up. The shooter ran across the cliff top toward them.

   She again reached down to the British man, but he waved her off with a red-painted hand. He was bleeding. Had a bullet struck him? “Come on. They’ll kill you!”

   He shook his head. “No, they won’t. At least not right away. Go, Mrs. Giancarelli. Get your kids someplace safe. Find HORNET and give them that drive. Tell them if they want answers, they need to find me before our mates over there do decide to kill me.”

   She couldn’t believe this was happening. She was a real estate agent. The most dangerous thing about her job was the unpredictable housing market. She didn’t flee from gunmen. “Who are you?”

   “Alexander Cabot.”

   “Did you know Danny?”

   He hesitated. Only an instant, but it was enough to confirm her suspicions before he spoke again. “I was his informant.” He drew a weapon she hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying and turned to face off with the men bearing down on him. “Now get the fuck out of here! I’ll hold them off.”

 

 

Chapter Five


   Get your kids someplace safe.

   It hadn’t registered when he said it, but as Leah dropped down the opposite side of the wall from Alexander Cabot, it played like a refrain in her mind.

   Her babies. Were they in danger?

   As soon as her feet hit the grass, she ran with everything she had in her. It had been a long time since her track-star days, a long time since she’d even gone for a run for pleasure, but once a runner, always a runner. She fell into the rhythm of it, ignoring the heat of the pavement searing the bottoms of her bare feet. Her strides lengthened until, two miles down the hill, the dead-end road converged with the Pacific Coast Highway. There she stumbled to a stop and, gasping, glanced around to get her bearings. There was a fire station here somewhere. If she could get there, she could call for help.

   Don’t trust the FBI.

   But, no, that was ridiculous. Her husband had worked for the FBI for most of his adult life. They were family. Far more trustworthy than HORNET. Danny was dead because he’d wanted to leave the FBI and sign on with them. Oh, he never said so, but when he’d joined HORNET for what was supposed to be a training mission, she’d fully expected him to come back from Martinique and put in his notice with the FBI.

   Except the training mission went wrong and he never came back.

   So why would she ask for help from the same people who couldn’t even keep him safe?

   She would call Danny’s former partner, Rick O’Keane. He’d been nothing but kind in the last year, and he hadn’t ghosted her like Marcus had. He’d know what to do. He’d know how to keep her and the kids safe.

   In the end, she didn’t need to find the fire station. As she walked along the highway, a police car pulled up beside her.

   Don’t trust the FBI. Don’t trust anyone in uniform.

   She tensed until the two officers climbed out of the vehicle. Both were women and both appeared genuinely startled and worried by her appearance.

   “Ma’am,” the taller of the two women said soothingly. “Are you okay? What happened?”

   She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Her knees buckled and the shorter officer caught her before she fell. They helped her into the car and drove her the rest of the way to the fire station, where paramedics bandaged her abused feet.

   By the time the officers returned to talk to her, she’d found her voice again. She had no reason not to trust them, and yet she kept her story as vague as possible. Yes, she was attacked while waiting to show a house on Cliffside Drive to a potential buyer. No, she didn’t know who had attacked her. They shot at her and she ran along the cliff, escaping over a wall into a neighbor’s property. The police left to check the house and she begged a cell phone off a female firefighter, who looked as sturdy as a redwood. Next to the massive woman, Leah felt as fragile as a flower, wilted and fading.

   Who did she call?

   Marcus hadn’t answered her calls in months. She had no idea where he was. And she absolutely wasn’t going to call HORNET.

   She accessed the internet, searched for the FBI field office’s number, and dialed. At least she knew Rick’s extension by heart. It used to be Danny’s.

   He answered before the end of the first ring. “Rick O’Keane.”

   “Rick…” Her voice wavered.

   “Leah? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

   How did she answer that? She didn’t even know where to start.

   Don’t trust the FBI.

   Her stomach flip-flopped. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you at work.”

   “No, it’s fine. You can always call. You know that, right? I’m here for you.”

   “I know. I know. I just—I had a bad moment.” She sucked in a breath and let it out slowly for his benefit. “I’m okay now.”

   “You’re sure?”

   “I’m sure. Thanks.”

   “Okay,” he said, drawing the word out. He didn’t believe her. Of course he didn’t. She sounded like an emotional wreck even to her own ears. She wasn’t shot at every day, and it was taking every scrap of willpower she possessed not to have a complete breakdown right now.

   “How about I stop by later, okay?” Rick suggested. “I’ll bring pizza for the kids.”

   She winced. She didn’t want to see him. “Not tonight. There’s too much—” She couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse and broke off. “Some other time. Thanks, Rick.”

   She hung up before he could say more and stared at the phone, turned it over and over in her hands. On a whim, she tried Marcus’s number. It rang and rang and rang and—her heart kicked when the line picked up, but settled again at the familiar computerized voicemail message. She didn’t know why she was always disappointed. He never answered.

   There was only one other number she knew by heart—it hadn’t changed since she, Danny, and Marcus were teenagers.

   Marcus’s angel of a mother, Regina Deangelo, picked up after a handful of rings. She sounded like she’d been laughing her big Italian laugh, and the smile in her voice soothed Leah’s frazzled nerves.

   “Regina,” she said, choking on a sob.

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