Beyond the Rules Read online

  “Sounds like a plan.” He pulled the crammed weekender upright on the bed, zipper pulls tinking against each other.

  Kimmer regarded it with skepticism. “It might explode.”

  “Hasn’t yet,” Rio said, and gave her that look, the one that meant he’d seen beneath her words and the face she’d put on. “I’m coming back, you know. As soon as they don’t need the help.”

  Whenever that might be. But out loud she said simply, “Okay.”

  He watched her, a long, searching look. He opened his mouth, closed it…and opened it again. “Kimmer,” he said, oh-so-carefully, “how I deal with my family…how you deal with your family…it’s not about them. It’s about you. Whatever you do or don’t do about this thing with Hank, it’s about you.”

  She heard him. She heard the unspoken parts, too—that it was about the two of them, as well. About Kimmer and Rio. She nodded, unaccepting but understanding. And when she went to kiss him goodbye, she made it one for him to remember.

  Albert Wolchoski spent the time awaiting his trial in the Schuyler County jail in Watkins Glen, but there’d be no chatting with him there in a way that Owen—or Kimmer—considered discreet. He was still an oddity among the prisoners, an actual big-city goonboy among the drunks and petty criminals and wife-beating scumbags, and his every move and every conversation was of note.

  So Kimmer planned to have her little chat when Wolchoski went on his field trip to the Primary Care Center beside the hospital in Montour Falls. All on the up-and-up, as Chief Harrison knew what she was up to and had no problem with it as long as his transporting officer stayed in the room. Rather than make herself another visible oddity at county by joining them at the front end of the trip, she pulled over to the shoulder just south of Watkins Glen and waited. Roger Conners, the transporting officer, expected her.

  But sitting there gave her time to think. Too much time. Too many events whirling around the core of her life, sharp-edged and slicing into what she thought she knew. Rio…gone. Leaving a void bigger than she’d imagined possible after only a handful of much-interrupted months together. Her home…invaded. Tossed and turned, and even though she’d expected it to happen, she’d also thought she could deal with it. She’d thought expecting it would prevent the lingering feelings of anger and violation.

  Wrong.

  And after all these years, she’d made herself vulnerable to her family. She’d let Hank stay in her home—almost as big a violation as the break-ins. She’d even phoned him not once but twice.

  The second time hadn’t gone any better than the first. Worse, in fact. Hank’s wife Susan had accused her of making trouble, had told her to stay out of their lives. Had hung up on her.

  And alone in the violated house, Kimmer had found herself staring at the phone with no better understanding of family than she’d ever had. For all she knew, this was simply part of it. The rudeness, the hanging up.

  Then Rio can keep it.

  That wasn’t fair. He’d never hung up on Carolyne; she’d never hung up on him. They played their word games, they teased each other, they got upset with one another…but they didn’t batter at one another.

  Fairy tale. That’s all it was. Rio was wrong. Dealing with family was all about them. It was about what they did to you, and how you managed it.

  Kimmer kept her eyes on the rearview mirror, watching for the squad car. She practiced some deep breathing. Her thumbs beat a tattoo on the steering wheel until she realized what she was doing and then went back to the deep breathing. She stared at the cell phone, tempted to call and confirm Wolchoski’s follow-up surgical appointment. And then she glanced in the rearview mirror and froze, astonished by the look of her own face. A haunted look, one she’d so often seen as a young woman but thought she’d long grown out of. She might as well still have that long, unmanageable mane of curls; she might as well still have the port wine stain splashed across the side of her face. Her eyes glinted back at her with the clear deep blue they’d always had, and yet they suddenly struck her as young and frightened and powerless.

  She wasn’t that person anymore. She was Chimera as much as Kimmer. Hank’s reappearance into her life, Rio’s departure, her house in a shambles…none of it mattered. She had all the strength of the girl who’d run away to find her own fate. The girl who’d taken her mother’s rules to heart and built herself into the resourceful young woman who’d once caught Owen Hunter’s eye at a dark bus stop.

  And boy, was Wolchoski going to regret he’d been any part of this.

  She refocused her attention on the road, ignoring her own reflection in the mirror. And there, finally, came the city squad car. Kimmer started her Miata and rolled along the shoulder until the car passed, then pulled smoothly out to the pavement. Finally. She’d already double-checked on Hank, and after she talked to Wolchoski she could report to Owen and Chief Harrison and throw herself back into her work. She’d leave loose ends behind, but nothing she couldn’t live with. After all, there was no keychain memory stick. No reason the damn goonboys couldn’t eventually figure that out. And Hank had said the two toasted goonboys were the only ones involved in the murder. Whatever else these current goonboys wanted, Hank’s hide was apparently not included. Time to wipe her hands of the whole thing and reclaim the life she’d built for herself.

  Even if some very small, very tentative little voice said it all didn’t quite make sense.

  The squad car traveled out ahead of her; there was no need to ride its tail on this road. Fifty-five miles an hour, light traffic. But when something even farther out moved across the road, she couldn’t suss out the details, only knew that it raised her hackles.

  Here we go.

  She leaned on the accelerator, making up ground.

  Not enough. The squad car slewed badly over the road, brakes squealing; it lifted off one set of wheels and flirted with flipping before settling to a hard, rocking stop.

  By then she could see the figure rise from the shoulder, could see the Chevy Malibu at the other side of the road cutting across asphalt to angle to a squealing stop in front of the squad car. The figure ran up to the squad car, smashed a crowbar against the window, and tossed an object inside. Smoke instantly poured from the broken window, and by then Kimmer had the Miata up past eighty, swerving around the road debris of the spiked stop stick, shredded tire and crippled squad car to target the back corner fender of the Malibu. And who knew, dammit, that the Malibu’s driver would choose that moment to back up slightly. Just enough so she hit it hard, but not so much that it stopped her cold. The Malibu spun out of her way as her air bag blew, a stunning explosion that knocked her hands off the wheel and left her blinded and dazed.

  When she blinked she’d come to a stop and the air bag was slowly collapsing into her lap. A quick, if still blurry, glance to the left showed she’d ended up halfway on the shoulder, clear of oncoming traffic. A quick and blurry glance to the right showed the Malibu turned around to face directly against traffic in the middle of her former lane. And smoke still poured from the squad car with a dark silhouette hunched over the wheel coughing and fumbling in a way that told Kimmer Officer Roger Conners was too stunned or injured or otherwise incapacitated to get his seat belt undone.

  And coming back up on the squad car from the shoulder, the same figure she’d seen once before. Hammy Hands.

  The goonboys were back on the job.

  Kimmer didn’t wait to see if this was a jailbreak or an execution. She fumbled for her own seat belt, grabbing the SIG Sauer holstered at her side, and then surprised herself by tumbling right out of the car when she opened the door. Get it together! Half stumbling, half running, she skidded into place behind the driver’s side front wheel and took another accounting of the scene—the Malibu still where it had been, the driver stunned behind the wheel. Hammy Hands on his way to the back door of the smoke-filled squad car in a crouch that was far from friendly, and Roger Conners still all but passed out at the wheel.

  If she was a cop sh
e might have given him warning. She might have tried the old freeze, sucker! line that always worked so well in the old cop shows. But she wasn’t, and when she discovered her hands still unsteady from the impact she’d just taken, she merely braced her two-handed grip against the edge of the car before she pulled the trigger.

  Hammy Hands spun away from the car, discharging his own gun through the back window with such timeliness that his finger must have already started its pull before Kimmer’s bullet even struck him.

  Not a jailbreak. Execution.

  Hammy Hands rolled away from the car and into a desperate crawl away from the vehicle, gun still in hand and with any luck quickly clogging with debris as it jammed into the ground along the way. Kimmer pushed away from the Miata, one eye on Hammy Hands and one on the anonymous figure silhouetted behind the wheel of the Malibu. Pigeon Man, no doubt. His hands moved on the wheel, cranking the tires around; roadside gravel and bits of scattered glass spat back at Kimmer as Pigeon Man hit the gas, the tires squealing until they took solid hold.

  For an instant Kimmer was impressed with herself, that her very approach would scare him into leaving a colleague behind. And then she realized there were people on the other side of the road—Good Samaritans, stopping to help a cop in a traffic accident without even thinking the accident wasn’t an accident at all. Hadn’t they even heard the gunfire? Kimmer made sure they would, firing off a round into the hard ground of the shoulder and not waiting for their reaction as she turned her complete attention back to Hammy Hands, certain by now he’d think to turn back on her and catching him just as he torqued his body around to swing his sights on her while the rest of him still lay in the dirt.

  No time to brace on anything, hardly time to bring the gun up into a Weaver stance, both hands supporting the grip, body centered and balanced and blam! the 9 mm round drilled Hammy Hands in the chest. He fell back and she wasted no time darting up to grab his gun, her eyes watering at the smoke curling out of the squad car windows to dissipate on the light breeze.

  Please be calling for help, people. Please don’t just be gawking.

  They’d crossed out of Watkins Glen…surely there was a sheriff’s deputy around here somewhere. Or a state trooper. Or even the nearest EMTs…

  Kimmer wrenched the gun from Hammy Hands’s weak grip and hesitated long enough to realize his gurgling noises were a plea for help. She gave him a hard look. His big hand wrapped around her ankle, changing the plea to a demand, his fingers digging into thin skin over bone, painful enough to feel like he’d cratered her flesh. She deciphered his first guttural words even as he repeated them, “Get help.”

  “I am help,” she said, twisting her leg free. “But I’m busy.” And she left him on his back, his hands scrabbling ever more weakly against the ground.

  She had a very bad feeling about Wolchoski. She made it to the squad car and tried to yank the back door open; damned if it wasn’t still locked. Finally steadier on her feet, she ran around to Conners’s door and yanked that, too, until Conners managed to unlock it. Kimmer held her breath, tears already streaming down her face from the gas, and leaned in to fumble at Conners’s seat belt. It finally clicked free and she retreated, smacking the door lock controls on the way.

  When she pulled the back door open, Wolchoski fell out. Kimmer ducked to catch him, crouched up against the car door and awkwardly shoving back at him with her shoulder while she tucked her gun away. It was like shoving toothpaste back in the tube. Beside her, Conners staggered out of the front seat and fell to crawl away, choking and half-conscious.

  It was just about time to start laughing at the absurdity of it all. Kimmer’s eyes watered; her nose ran fiercely and she swiped a hand across her face, regaining just enough clear vision to see that Wolchoski’s eyes were still open. Still seeing.

  “Tell me,” she said, her voice ragged but her words hard. “What the hell is this all about? Who sent you? What does Hank Reed have to do with any of it?”

  Pounding footsteps came up beside her—a man’s tread, heavy and work-boot hard. Kimmer got a glimpse of him bending to help the officer and kept her attention on Wolchoski, who might be alive for the moment, but judging by the hole in his chest and the bloody froth at his lips, might well not make it until help arrived. She’d come to question him…she damned well intended to follow through. She fumbled for the short, stout toothpick blade in her back pocket and pulled it out to rest the blade at his ear, hidden from anyone who might come up on them. She pricked him with it; his eyes widened. “Talk to me,” she said. “Or we can make your last moments the worst you’ve ever had.”

  “You…can’t—”

  “No?” She smiled at him. No doubt a truly fearsome sight, with airbag marks on her face, eyes red and nose running from the tear gas. “You don’t get it. I’m not a cop. I live by my own rules. Now get chatty.” And do it quickly, before you die on me.

  He looked down at the blood-rimmed hole in his shirt, a wound that made the brace on his leg seem an absurd precaution. There was very little blood; Kimmer knew it meant he was bleeding on the inside. He passed his hand over the wound in what might have been disbelief, losing focus. Kimmer got it back again, raising a spot of blood on the soft skin beneath his ear. “Who sent you? And what about Hank?”

  “In over his head,” Wolchoski said, and gave a little laugh—but stopped short, startled, at the blood that came up with it. “He thought he could save himself…he just put things off.”

  “Save himself from who?” Kimmer demanded, feeling that first trickle of desperation as Wolchoski’s face suddenly turned an odd shade of gray. “Save himself how?”

  Wolchoski gave another little laugh. “You should know, Kimmer Reed. But he was only ever marking time. So were you. After this—”

  The same footsteps came up behind Kimmer. She wanted to turn and glare, but knew that would make no sense whatsoever to this stranger who thought he was helping. And when he put a hand on her shoulder, she wanted very much to whirl and sink the little knife into his arm for taking such liberties—but he wouldn’t understand that, either. That was an impulse she thought long buried, carried out of Munroville with her after serving her so well for so long. He said, “Miss? Can I help?”

  Yes. Go away so I can prod this dying man with my knife. On the other hand, she had plenty already, didn’t she? This mess was about Hank, and it wasn’t over after all. Maybe it was really just beginning. She glanced over her shoulder and discovered a wiry man in his fifties, signs of construction work—probably a contractor—written all over him. A man used to taking charge. Good. Let him. “I can’t hold him up any longer,” she said, palming the little knife. “If you can help me get him out of the car…”

  “We probably shouldn’t move him.” The man looked down the road as though an EMT might suddenly appear.

  And Kimmer looked down at Wolchoski’s half-closed eyes. “Oh,” she said dryly, “I don’t think it’ll make much difference to him.” Probably she should have put a quaver in her voice—to judge by the man’s startled look, that would have been best. But Chimera didn’t have to answer to this man. She had to take her information to Owen—and she had to get out of here before the cops arrived or she’d be tied up with them for hours. She couldn’t afford that. And it didn’t sound like her damned brother could afford it, either.

  The man beside her didn’t make any profound comment about Wolchoski’s death. He simply moved in to take the goonboy’s not inconsiderable weight, easing him out of the car as Kimmer casually returned her knife to its sheath in her pocket and backed away, just as casually turning on her heel to head smartly for her car. By the time the man realized she’d left, he had other people moving in. A second bunch had gathered around the cop, offering water, and a teenage girl had gone around the squad car to discover the gruesomely dead Hammy Hands. The fuss she made covered Kimmer’s tracks long enough for a quick check under her car—no copiously leaking fluids—and by the time she heard the faint siren in the backgr
ound, she’d slipped behind the wheel and shifted into gear, heading back toward Watkins Glen. Belated shouting followed her; no doubt someone would get her license plate. She didn’t care. She fully intended to report to Chief Harrison.

  But not until after she spoke to Owen.

  Owen’s office door was closed. Kimmer knocked hard once in warning and walked in anyway, unrepentant under a laser gaze of deep disapproval tinged with anger. Standing beside the visitor’s chair in an unsettled way that meant he’d just leaped up, Owen’s younger brother Dave regarded them both with a certain wariness. No doubt he’d often felt the sting of Owen’s glare, black sheep of the family that he was. Why Owen would offer Kimmer such a reaction momentarily escaped her.

  Then she put a hand to her face. Airbag abrasions. Reddened nose and eyes. Streaks of who-knows-what on her skin.

  “I’m busy,” Owen said.

  Dave Hunter—much leaner than his older brother, his face more aesthetic and his bright blue eyes every bit as commanding as Owen’s—backed away a step. “Not on my account.”

  “We’re not done here,” Owen reminded him.

  “I suspect we probably are.” Dave hitched up a shoulder. “I’m fine as I am, Owen. And I’m always happy to help out when you need an extra hand. But my work…it’s important, too.”

  Kimmer gave him a sharp look, momentarily diverted, fascinated by the unspokens between these two men and by the depth of the determination in Dave’s expression. He meant it, more than Owen had any idea. She raised an eyebrow at Owen. “You’re wasting your time.”

  Owen stiffened in quick resentment. Dave looked at her in open surprise. Then he grinned. “You’re the one.”

  “Yes,” Kimmer said. “I must be. And since I’ve never walked in on this office uninvited before, and since I look like—” she indicated herself with some disgust, gave up on finding a word and finished “—this, then there must be a pretty good reason I’m here, don’t you think?”