Exception to the Rule

Kimmer deliberately loosened her suddenly tight grip around the soup can. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was to admire a man as object, not as individual. Even this man, radiating his presence so loudly that Kimmer felt the heat from here.

And the longer Carolyne took, the more obvious it became that Kimmer just stood there. She abruptly crouched down, pretending to examine an item on the lowest shelf. Pork and beans, extra flavor nuggets! As near as she could tell the flavor nuggets were lumps of lard. Yum.

Rio tore open the Oreos and popped one into his mouth; after a moment he inclined the bag toward the store owner, who caught on with delayed surprise and shook his head.

Kimmer heard another car pull into the small gravel parking area; she thought nothing of it. Not until she saw the doubt on the store owner’s face, and the small step he took back from the counter. Not until Rio Carlsen glanced out the door, straightened, and put the cookies on that counter to murmur, “Watch those a moment, will you?”

Damn. Did I miss a secondary tail? No one could have found them through Scott Boyle, who knew less than Kimmer about Carolyne’s destination. And it was hard to believe anyone with Rio’s background could miss a tail all the way between here and Albany….

Could just be a local tough with bad timing.

Kimmer stood just as Carolyne came out of the ladies’ room, all her attention on the PDA upon which she swiftly worked her stylus and none at all on the enlarging population of the store. Two men strode through the door, all but taking up all the air in the room. Not local toughs, oh no. BGs—Bad Guys. Goonboys. All the same to Kimmer, interchangeable and less than affectionate nicknames.

These particular goonboys were big, well-groomed…a definite city look to them. And while they might have thought they’d struck a casual note with their polo shirts tight over beefy muscle and barely worn jeans, their intensity of purpose came through loud and clear. Carolyne missed it as she came to a stop at the end of the counter, frowning fiercely at her electronic notes and completely unaware that as soon as they arrived, they aimed that intensity of purpose right at her.

They should have paid more attention to Rio. Kimmer did. She hid a small smile at his minimalist tactics, for he merely stuck out his foot and sent the foremost goonboy sprawling across the floor. The cardboard Steelers memorabilia display went down, striking Carolyne; she leaped back, head jerking up and eyes going wide as she suddenly realized the situation developing around her.

“Caro,” Rio said, not raising his voice at all as he stepped in front of the second goonboy, “get in the car. Lock it and go.”

“I’m calling 911,” the store owner blurted, groping around under the counter, his gaze darting from Rio to the second goonboy to Carolyne.

Carolyne looked startled. “I can’t go without you—”

“Do it,” he said, and this time his voice held a steely tone that widened Carolyne’s eyes.

Probably her first glimpse of Rio Carlsen, spyboy. Kimmer had seen the like often enough; she stayed small and quiet—and ready. But Carolyne had already lost her chance. While Rio stood in the path of the second man, his stance almost as casual as he’d been with his cookies at the counter, Kimmer eased around the end of the aisle in time to see the first man getting to his feet, his face ruddy with anger and embarrassment—and also filled with more determination than Kimmer liked to see in a goonboy.

Beside the counter, the second man growled something low and threatening; Rio responded without heat. “I don’t think so.” And then Kimmer left the moment to him, for Carolyne had gone into retreat, skipping backward toward the bathroom she’d just vacated as her assailant lunged at her.

Can of soup. Bad guy. No-brainer.

Kimmer pitched the can with a wicked arm.

As the can of chicken noodle bounced off the man’s head, Carolyne finally turned to flee, running along the wall coolers, taking out a display tree of chips and heading for the door. Good. She was their weak spot, and now she’d bolted out of reach. Kimmer pulled the short, stout toothpick blade from her pocket and flicked aside the stubby leather sheath, covering the short aisle in a quick pounce. A glance showed her that Rio had shifted again, keeping himself between Carolyne and her would-be kidnapper but also effectively blocking the door so she couldn’t escape. Just hold him off a moment—

Her own goonboy rolled on the floor with a surfeit of cursing, blood gushing from his ear. Kimmer just barely heard the store owner in the background, shouting into the phone. “Send someone quick! There’s a big fight in my store—there’s blood!”

There was indeed blood. There might even be more. Kimmer landed knee first on the goonboy; she thought she felt a rib give way beneath her. It got his attention; he might have flung her right back off again if he hadn’t felt the cold flat blade of her knife on his face, pressing down against his cheek with the tip brushing his lower lashes.

He blinked again, letting his lower lashes brush the knife to confirm its presence. For an instant he considered taking his chances; Kimmer pushed the knife down, dimpling the skin but not cutting it. “Let’s be quick about this,” she said, Bonnie Miller’s accent fully in place. “Unless you’d still like to be here when the police arrive.”

“Who the hell are you?” His words came out muffled thanks to her knuckles against his mouth, but she found them understandable enough.

“Someone who wants answers,” she said. And who doesn’t want anyone else to hear me get them. “How’d you find them?”

His eyes, already quite full of seething anger, made room for perplexity.

“All right, then, how’d you find her?”

Understanding dawned. Cooperation didn’t.

She twisted her fingers in his collar, glanced back over at Rio as he staggered back into a display of small foam coolers. He took his opponent with him, and she looked down again, meeting enough of a sneer that she sneered back and drew a careful pinprick of blood from the tender flesh of the goonboy’s lower eyelid. He squirmed, surprised, bucking slightly beneath her. She snapped at him. “Don’t do that, you jerk! Or are you already blind in that eye?” He stilled; she leaned closer, lowering her voice as the store owner drew closer in horrified fascination, the phone drooping from his hand. She covered the short blade of her knife with her thumb, hiding it from prying eyes. “Did you tail me?”

“You?” He’d gone still; no doubt he could feel the little trickle of blood down the side of his face. “I don’t even know who you are.”

“Ex-softball pitcher,” she told him, not taking time for the curse that leaped to mind at the realization that Carolyne had more than one set of goons on her tail. “What’d you think of my curve ball?”

He gave her a few blistering oaths in response, but he’d learned his lesson; he didn’t try to move. When he’d finished she leaned closer, right up to his bleeding ear, and whispered, “The police are coming, asshole. Tell me how you found her, or you know what? I’m going to pop this eye like a grape. I haven’t done an eye in waaay too long….”

“God, you’re crazy!” he blurted.

She nodded wisely, still up close and personal. Chimera, the crazy version.

“Aw, hell. She’s bugged, okay?”

“Where?”

“Like I know? You stupid bitch, I didn’t plant the bug, I’m just following it to make the snatch.”

Kimmer released his knit collar, keeping the knife firmly in place as she reacquired the soup can. In the background, glass broke; the store owner dashed back to his counter with a cry of dismay. “Well, you’re not making the snatch today,” she told him. “But while you’re here…that’s a nasty mole, there, beside your nose. You want I should remove it?”

“You crazy bi—”

Kimmer slammed the soup can against his already battered head, a calculated blow. He grunted with surprise and impact, and his eyes rolled up. He didn’t quite go all the way out, but he wasn’t going to be chatty for a few minutes. In that time, she hoped to be out of here.

She eased back from the man, wiped her hand on his shirt to clean it of the small smear of his blood and reached back for the knife sheath, securing the knife without looking. Rio’s opponent wrenched himself away and bolted for the door, first slamming into it and then yanking it open to escape.

Rio scrambled up from the remains of the foam coolers, staggering a little on his feet, one hand to his back but his expression purely intent on the escaping assailant. He wanted to give chase—that was clear enough—but he didn’t. Especially not as Carolyne threw herself at him, exclaiming over his welfare.

But only for a moment. She might be terrified, and she might have led the sheltered life Kimmer pegged on her, but she pulled herself away, trembling legs and all, and stood apart as she followed her cousin’s gaze.

To Kimmer.

Kimmer stood, hefting the soup can. “That softball’s coming in handy, isn’t it?” Innit, in Bonnie Miller’s voice. She gave it a hard edge, the voice of a woman who’s been in tussles. Her own voice, in fact, when things got too personal. “Didn’t mean to hit him quite that hard, though.”

The store owner leaned over his counter to frown at the man. “He was talking just a moment ago—”

She gave a short, decisive shake of her head. “I was afraid I’d…well, you know…killed him. He roused up for a minute there, but he’s still pretty out of it.”

“You’re all right?” Rio asked. She didn’t blame him for his puzzlement over a total stranger who’d come to Carolyne’s rescue, his sharp-eyed assessment of her. At least he hadn’t seen the knife.

She shrugged, struggling to hide the anger that fueled her through such moments and lingered afterward. He’d certainly not understand that, not from your average woman in such laid-back rural surrounds. “Might get the shakes in a minute or two, but I’ll do. And the cops are coming.” There was no help for it now; she had to bring up her destination, even as she plunked the gas money on the counter. “I don’t need to see them again. I’m gonna be gone. I believe I’ve got enough gas to get right on to Mill Springs.”

“But that’s where—” Carolyn cut off her words, giving Rio an uncertain look. Rio hadn’t taken his eyes from Kimmer; his gaze made a definite impact. Not a blow…but a connection.

“Well, sure—that’s where this road leads,” Kimmer offered, lingering when she should have been moving right on out. Was that a siren? She looked at Rio, wondering if he’d heard it, too. “Bonnie Miller. Maybe I’ll see you there.” She tossed the soup to him.

Rio snatched it out of the air and gave her a slow smile, one that kicked off an instant surge of resentment. Don’t be personable, dammit. Don’t turn real. Stay an object.

But of course he had no clue to her thoughts, and made things even worse. He gave her a short formal bow, a gesture performed with such casual flair she thought it must be ingrained. “Bonnie Miller,” he said, making no move to introduce himself or Carolyne, “see you in Mill Springs.”

“You’re just leaving?” the store owner demanded. Much of his authority had returned with the disappearance of goonboy two and the dazed condition of goonboy one.

Rio tossed a few bills on the counter, picked up his cookies and soda and took Carolyne’s hand, leading her out of the store without haste.

Kimmer lingered long enough to lift an eyebrow at the store owner. “I wouldn’t take anything that fellow says too seriously. He’s concussed, you know?”

“You can’t just go,” the man said, but Rio was gone and Kimmer went through the door with no qualms. They didn’t need the locals to get tied up in this.

Now all she had to do was warn Rio about the bug without blowing her cover.

Yeah, right. As if.

But as she hesitated by the corner of the store, she found Rio and Carolyne in conversation beside a car that definitely didn’t match the description she’d been given. He’d switched somewhere along the way. Smart man. Carolyne’s voice rose, and it held a frantic note. “But they found us! How on earth—you’re sure no one followed us?”

“I’m sure.” Rio offered her a cookie and she gave him an incredulous look. So he opened the driver’s door, tossed the cookies inside and inserted one of the sodas into the holder at the corner of the dash, handing the other to Carolyne. “There’s not much doubt about it, Caro. We’re bugged. It’s not the car—we switched it. We’ve got to get out of here—” for that really was a siren Kimmer heard this time, small-town cop probably hoofing it from the other side of the county “—but as soon as we find a spot to pull over, we’ll search our stuff.”

Ah, good. Sometimes things were easy. Kimmer plopped down behind the wheel of the Taurus and cranked it up before she even got the door closed. That was the end of that.

Except she knew, as she pulled out onto the two-lane road that would take her to Mill Springs, that it was really only the beginning.

Chapter 3

C arolyne sank against the car, her hands covering her face. “I can’t believe it. How could anyone have bugged us? When?”

Rio watched Bonnie Miller’s battered dark green Taurus pull out of the parking lot, his inner eye flashing back to the store. That soup can had come from nowhere. Nice arm. Intense eyes, indigo flashing in the daylight at the storefront…hiding something. Nice….

“You’re smiling! How can you possibly be smiling?”

Rio gave her a startled glance. “Hey,” he said gently. “We’re okay.”

But he swallowed hard at the sudden surge of protective anger that tightened his body. Carolyne—genius, worrier and fugitive—had not made his life choices, the ones that had put him in physical danger, the ones that had taken advantage of his low-key approach to high-stakes situations. She didn’t deserve this fear, or this forced flight from home. She didn’t deserve to tangle with dangerous operatives and kidnap attempts. And besides all that, she was his cousin. She was family, dammit, and Rio wasn’t going to let anyone treat his family this way. He’d watched CIA case officers SUDSBERG die, and BOXXER…and Rio’s local agent Sakhim. Station mates and friends. That was enough.

And she wouldn’t take comfort in seeing his anger. He took a breath, reminded himself that she was fine. Not a scratch. Still on track for safety in hiding.

Because we had help, he realized.

Although not strictly true. He’d had options he hadn’t taken, not once he’d seen the second man go down. Two opportunities to have killed his opponent and one crippling blow that Rio had pulled. He’d chosen not to escalate the situation, not as long as the conveniently flying soup can had reduced his opponents.

Shaking off such thoughts, he opened the nearest door—the back seat—and gestured Carolyne into the car to the background tune of the approaching siren. “We’ll go down the road a way, pull over and find the bug. Once we find it, we’ll have a better idea when we were tagged. But until then…our new friend Bonnie has the right idea.” He made sure her feet were out of the way, then closed the door, ducking into the front seat. “We don’t need to be here when the police arrive.”

Carolyne groaned in disbelief and sank down in the seat, shoving aside the hasty pile of luggage they’d thrown in the back when they’d switched cars just north of Erie. “God. Hiding from the police. I can’t believe it.”

Rio spun the wheel one-handed, an arm across the back of the passenger seat as he looked behind, backing the car at a speed that made Carolyne shut her eyes, squinchy faced. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but this just might be an actual case of being too smart for your own good.”

She kicked the back of his seat. “I can’t believe you even said that!”

He grinned, shifted into drive and pulled out onto the road. By the time they passed a police cruiser coming from the opposite direction, he’d reached a sedate pace; rather than be seen as accelerating—by which the police might just guess he’d only just pulled away from the store—he cruised there until they were well out of sight.

Carolyne poked her head up, giving him a critical gaze in the review mirror. “You’re bleeding.”

“Long way from my heart.”

“You take this all so lightly!”

This time he looked into the mirror to meet her frightened gaze, big blue eyes that looked much better when they weren’t so red rimmed. “I don’t,” he assured her, and his back twinged slightly to remind him of that bad landing in the coolers. His opponent had been damn good…just not good enough. “But we’re okay. And we’re doing fine. Within a mile or so we’ll lose that bug, and they’ve got no way of knowing where we go from here.”

“But we’re headed right for Mill Springs! Of course they’ll guess—” But she cut herself short. “We’re not, are we? Headed the way we were going, I mean.”

“We’re not,” he affirmed. “We’ll turn around once we’re clean. And looky here—this is just the place.” He stepped on the brake hard, easing up just enough to keep from losing rubber, and made an abrupt turn into a single-lane asphalt road labeled Private Drive.

“But—”

He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Trust, Caro. Trust. We’ll only go far enough so we’re not easy to spot from the road. Mr. and Mrs. Private Drive will never know we stopped by.”

All the same, he did pull almost completely off the asphalt once he’d jockeyed the car through a series of J-turns to face the main road. Just in case Mr. or Mrs. Private Drive tried to pass by.

“Out,” he announced, cutting the engine but leaving the keys in the ignition. “For now we’ll assume we’re each clean, but that’s it. Everything else gets searched.” After a moment’s thought he went to the car trunk and pulled the carpet piece covering the spare tire. He put it on the ground beside the now open passenger door—Carolyne sat sideways in the seat, her sneakered feet on the ground. Pink sneakers. Very girly.

He gestured at the carpet. “Let’s start with your purse. Dump it on out.”

She upended the purse an inch from the ground, gently shaking it until the lining hung upside down from the loose crochet. “There,” she said. “I’ll bet you always wanted to do this.”

“Honey, I started my spy training early. Your first purse held a fake lipstick, a taped-up picture of that guy who played Bobby Ewing, an address book in which all the i’s were dotted with little hearts and a Texas Instruments calculator. There was a note from some guy, too, but I’ll pretend I didn’t look.” He glanced up at her dropped mouth and raised brows and added a wary “You’re not going to kick me again, are you? Because there’s not a nice thick car seat between us at the moment.”

She closed her mouth, and then muttered, “I’ll wait till you get back in the car.”

As Rio replaced the contents of the purse—considerably more than had been in that first version—he saw the police cruiser speeding back down the road. Hunting this car, he thought. If he were an officer and had a choice between running after a soup-flinging woman—even a soup-flinging woman with an unusual edge—or the couple who’d started the trouble, he knew whom he’d go for.

Fortunately, he’d asked for the car to be of a bland color, and had ended up with a dirty silver that no doubt bore some fancy car-paint name: platinum dream, arroyo shadow. If the officer behind the wheel was checking the side of the road, he’d missed his glimpse of Rio and Carolyne.

Carolyne hauled out her laptop case and methodically emptied it of peripherals for his examination, none of which seemed suspect. The laptop case, though…

“Here we go,” Rio said. Simple but high tech, a small disk that rested comfortably on the pad of his forefinger once he’d removed it from an inside corner of the laptop case. Not a listening device…just a tracker. “Not well placed. It was dark out…they were in a hurry.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your driveway,” Rio said, and put the tracker on a rock so he could smash it to bitty bits with another, pointier rock. “I took the laptop out early, came right back in for another load. Didn’t lock the car doors until after. Stupid, stupid…” His inner focus on the night before sharpened. “I did hear something out there.”

“Then we switched cars for nothing.” It shook her, the thought that someone had been at her house. When she knelt beside him on the carpet piece to gather up her gear, she’d started shaking again.

“Not for nothing.” He squeezed her ankle reassuringly. “It was a good move. And we’ll keep making good moves.”

She gave a shaky laugh. “What difference can it make, if they’re a step ahead of us? How’d anyone even know it was worth tracking me so fast? I didn’t tell anyone but you! Scott thinks it’s just a business trip.”

“You said your boss suspected a leak.”

She scowled, but it was denial rather than anger. Perhaps a tinge of horror. “I don’t want to believe that. I work with those people.”

“Believe it,” he said, and got to his feet, picking up the trunk carpet as she put her laptop in the car. “Or don’t. It’s not really important. What’s important is that we know there’s already someone looking for you. We won’t see our two friends from the store again—they know we’ve made them. We might not see anyone at all—Mill Springs is a good spot. Small town like that’ll make it easy to spot hired help. And as soon as we get there, I’ll start working on a contingency location. And you—” he paused to look down at her as she climbed in the back seat, apparently prepared to spend the rest of the ride to Mill Springs with her head down “—you put your mind to solving whatever can of worms you discovered, and then this will all be over.”

Carolyne shuddered in exaggerated reaction. “We don’t use that word worm,” she said. “Not where the laptop can hear.”

Hmm. Geek humor. Rio grinned at her as if he’d actually gotten it, and then after a moment he did get it. Worm, computer virus…bad joke.

On the other hand, if she was making bad jokes, perhaps she wasn’t as shaken as she’d seemed by the close encounter.

He hoped not. He very much suspected that her safety—and apparently that of the entire nation—rested on just how fast she could pull herself together and patch up whatever code weakness she’d found.

With Mill Springs fast approaching, Kimmer did just as she’d heard Rio planning: she pulled to the side of the road for a quick search of the car and her belongings, parking in close to the edge of the woods. She hesitated long enough to plug her cell phone into the dash for recharging, guiltily knowing she should have done it much earlier. Stupid things, batteries. Then she started with the car exterior—aside from a few rest stops, her belongings hadn’t been out of sight since she packed them—and didn’t have to look hard. The basic wheel-well tracker bug, easy access and quick to place.

Good God, was there anyone who wasn’t after this woman?

Kimmer contemplated the little bit of technology for a moment, then crushed it under her heel—or tried to. Sneakers, lightweight spy…In the end she resorted to a rock, trying to preserve the bug as much as possible in case Hunter resources could help narrow down a source. Looking at the flattened disk, she couldn’t keep a frisson of apprehension from running down her nape. How long had it been since Carolyne had found the weakness in the laser-guided missiles? Perhaps thirty-six hours? And already someone knew of Kimmer’s involvement and had tailed her, already someone had bugged Carolyne and made a try at her, someone had bugged Kimmer…

Privately, Kimmer thought those who tailed her this morning were likely the same set of undesirables as those who had planted this tracer. Easy enough to have done it as backup before she got in the Taurus, and then tailed her. Once she’d shaken them, they simply hadn’t bothered to pick her up again. They’d wait until she settled in one spot.

But she wouldn’t assume she was right. She’d keep in mind that they might well be dealing with three aggressive groups of Carolyne hunters. And she found herself grateful for the extra buffer Rio provided. He’d backed up that résumé of his with action, and he hadn’t been annoyingly full of himself. She might even consider working with him, except—