Page 50 of Some Like It Deadly
Security car is on the street…And the panic button was in her pocket attached to her keys. She’d transferred them from her purse to her jacket pocket when they were setting up for their meetings. If she could reach them, she might be able to set the button off without getting a bullet in the head for her trouble.
“She’s my assistant.” Richard’s tone turned chill. “They’re hard to find.”
“That you just want to eat food with naked, sure. You like expensive things, living in your expensive house and, hell, this is a pretty lady. I’m sure she’s pretty pricey too.” Something was offabout the man’s voice—the taunts. It didn’t fit the profile of one of the fanatics trying to off the royal family.
They were after political capital and big, splashy statements.
A man with a gun in the dark? That said personal.
Too personal.
Time to redirect his attention. “What do you want?”
Richard’s gaze lasered on her. She saw the order in them and ignored it. He wanted her to be quiet, to let him handle it. No. Being quiet allowed the gunman to focus on Richard. That could get him shot.
Unacceptable.
“Do you know who he is?” The gunman eased closer to her. A miasma of tobacco, smoke and astringent surrounded her. Based on body heat, he had to be within inches of her body, but only the gun touched her head and it didn’t move.
“Clearly she knows who I am.” Richard attempted to regain his attention. “She works for me.”
“No, she works for hotshot attorney Richard Prentiss, pretty boy front man for big name corporations and royal families, but does she know you’re a fraud? That’s what I want to know.” A whine interjected into the nasal snarl of his voice, a break in his speech patterns suggesting that his education hadn’t continued much past high school. He pressed the gun into her head with more force and she looked down.
She dropped the files in her left hand and reached for her right pocket at the same time. His feet were visible behind her. He couldn’t be more than three or four inches behind her. Easily in jabbing range.
“Do. You. Know. Who. He. Is? Did he tell you about how he got his money? How his Daddy took it? How he rubs elbows with the rich and the famous and my family got nothing?” Anger coated in desperation. Definitely personal. He didn’t want to make a statement.
He wanted revenge.
Richard let out a long breath because he’d gotten it too. She spared him a look. The shadows around his eyes hid his emotions well, but she knew it had to hurt. He hated what his father had done. “Look, what’s your name?” He’d gone from deal making to placating—a guy like this wouldn’t respond to either. He wanted to hurt someone and he’d picked Richard to hurt.
Fingering her pocket, she found the panic button and pressed it.
“Yeah, you don’t know my name. Why should you? I’m just some chump whose family your father screwed.” Rage made his tone nastier. “You like getting where you have by walking on other people? You think it makes you untouchable?” A hard hand locked on her neck, but the palm was slippery with sweat and the pain only sharpened her focus and gave her a window because he’d moved his gun. The man holding her couldn’t be quite six feet and he had strength in his grip, but he was nervous and the hand with the gun trembled. “You make all the right noises and send checks off to charity, all the while keeping your pockets lined with the money of other hard-up people. Just like your father.”
“He’s nothing like his father,” Kate interjected.Pay attention to me. Pay attention to me.
“Kate, shush,” Richard ordered, then switched rolls to negotiator. “My father is a son of a bitch who stole from people. He took their money and he buried it. I have no idea what he did with it or where it went. I never saw a penny, but if you want a check today for the full amount, I’ll write you one. Just let her go. No one has to get hurt. Too many people have already been hurt.”
“Yeah, well, if you’d just died in your car, this would have been over and the pretty lady wouldn’t be in the middle of it.” Spittle flew out with the words and his hand trembled more.
Where the hell are they?It had only been seconds—some rational part of her mind recognized that fact. But when a man had a gun, seconds counted.
“Fine, you want to shoot me?” Richard spread his arms wide. “I’m right here. Shoot me. But you let her go first. She had nothing to do with this or with my father. This is you and me.”
Kate’s heart stopped again. Was he insane?
He just told the crazy man with the gun to shoot him.
The fingers biting into her neck jerked her back one step and she took it, slamming her heel down on the man’s foot and driving her arm up hard to knock his aim toward the ceiling.
The world slowed down. Kate kept moving. All she had to do was lock the guy’s arm up. A pressure point in his elbow would make him release the gun. But Richard lunged forward and the man’s rage bounced off the walls around them. A glancing punch caught her in the ear and he brought the gun down, pointed directly at Richard.
At this distance, he couldn’t miss. She wrenched back from the struggle and stepped right into the path. The bullet slammed into her chest, then a second one burned a path through her abdomen. The force struck like two sledgehammer blows and she exhaled hard.
Another shot cracked through the silence and fear clawed at her. She didn’t feel that bullet.Richard!But it was the gunman who dropped and Kate shuddered, staring across the floor at the man’s bloodied forehead.
A single bullet hole marred the side of his temple—the other side of his head was gone.
