“Tricks, load up!” Bo called as she used the remote to unlock the doors. She opened the passenger door for Tricks and tossed the leash onto the console. Tricks was still barking, and Bo started to turn to call her again.
Something hard jabbed painfully at the back of her skull, and a man said, “Don’t make a move, or I’ll blow a hole in your damn head.”
CHAPTER 26
BO FROZE. HER SKIN PRICKLED AS IF ICE CUBES HAD slid down her spine. Her knees wobbled like gelatin. Her throat and lungs seized, her heart rate leaped into a full gallop.
But while her body was reacting to the twin bombs of terror and adrenaline, her mind somehow distanced itself, fought for clarity. Two thoughts occurred. One, the voice and accent were American, which meant this was likely Mr. Kingsley. Two, she’d been right about the hacker being right under Axel’s nose. How else could they have been located so fast, when they had talked to Axel just last night?
Tricks was still barking; she was surprised Morgan hadn’t already stepped outside to see what was up. Because he hadn’t, maybe he’d glanced outside the window and was already in action. She had no idea what form that action would take, or what direction he would come from.
Kingsley grabbed Bo’s hair in a painful grip and jerked her head back. “Shut the dog up, or I will. Now!”
Galvanized by the threat, Bo managed to say, “Tricks, sit.” Her voice was thin, but at least it worked.
Her head was at such an angle that she could barely see Tricks out of the corner of her eye, but Tricks stopped barking and her butt hit the ground, and she looked up with her big doggy grin, expecting to be praised and petted. “Good girl.” To Kingsley she said, “She’s a golden retriever. They’re very friendly.” God, don’t let him mistake Tricks’s barking for aggression and shoot her; most likely her barks had meant Someone new to pet me!
“No shit,” he said, jabbing the pistol harder against her skull. “Do I look stupid? But she’s a pretty dog; I might take her with me when I finish here.”
How pathetic was it to feel grateful that Tricks might survive even if she and Morgan didn’t?
Think! She had to think. There was a pistol in the holster at her waist, hidden by the bag slung over her shoulder, if she could get to it without him noticing. Pulled tight against him as she was, he’d notice any movement. Then it didn’t matter because he switched hands with the weapon held to her head and swiftly frisked her, immediately finding the pistol and jerking it off her waistband. “How about that,” he said sarcastically. “Who would ever think the chief of police would have a gun? Did you think I wouldn’t check?”
They knew who she was. She doubted the Kingsleys would have been able to find out both the location of Morgan’s cell phone and her identity without using government assets, so they had—just not the United States government.
She wondered how long he’d been out here. Had he seen them go in, but perhaps hadn’t been close enough to get an accurate shot? Pistols weren’t distance weapons. On the other hand, maybe he’d simply been waiting to catch one of them alone. If it were Morgan, he could kill him and leave, but Bo was the one who had come out of the house first. She knew damn good and well he intended her to be the shield between him and Morgan.
Her thoughts raced feverishly. How good a shot was he? He was a lawyer, right? How likely was he to be expert with a pistol? Competent, maybe, but when people like him went hunting, they were more likely to do game hunting with important clients they needed to impress. Shooting with a scoped rifle was a far cry from being accurate with a pistol.
But what if he was? Unlikely people took up target shooting.
And target shooting was very different from shooting at people, who didn’t just stand there unmoving. One of the classes Jesse had insisted she take had emphasized always running when faced with a pistol, that the odds were you wouldn’t be hit. Okay, if she could pull free—
That thought was interrupted as he tightened his hand in her ponytail, wrapping it around his hand and jerking her toward the house. “Keep your mouth shut, open the door, and don’t try anything. Where is he?”
“He . . . he was in the kitchen when I came out, but he was going to change clothes so . . . I don’t know for sure.”
“When we go in the door, where’s the kitchen?”
So he either hadn’t had a chance to reconnoiter and look through the windows, or he’d been too afraid to try. Walking up to someone’s windows during the day and peering in was kind of noticeable. “To the left,” she said, letting her voice quiver. That was kind of accurate: ahead, and somewhat to the left, but definitely not directly to the left.
“Which way does the door open?”
“Ah . . .” She actually had to think about that, because she opened the door both going and coming and either direction seemed natural to her. “To the right.”
He pushed her forward.
Surely Morgan had seen them. Surely he’d slipped out the back door and was easing around the side of the house. But what if he had gone upstairs for something? She had no way of knowing. She stumbled to buy time; it wasn’t much of a pretense because of the way he had her head pulled back. She couldn’t see where she was putting her feet. If she hadn’t known every foot of her property so well, she really would have stumbled and fallen.
“Stand the fuck up,” Kingsley snarled, pushing her forward another foot or so.
Morgan would have heard Tricks barking, in any event. She had to trust that he’d at least looked out the window.