His pulse thundered in his ears as he looked to his left at Julia O’Toole. She might be just the ticket. He’d seen how she kept glancing at Britt Rollins on the flight from Traverse City to Chicago. The blond fed had a thing for the mechanic.
The question was, did the mechanic have a thing for her? And would that thing be enough to stay the bastard’s hand?
Only one way to find out.
Grabbing Julia’s wrist, JD yanked her in front of him. In the same move, he pulled the syringe from his pocket.
O’Toole gasped, but the sound was cut short when he pressed the cold steel of the needle against the tender skin of her neck.
“No!” Britt Rollins yelled at the same time Keplar snarled lowly, “You motherfucker!” His pudgy hand reached for his pistol. “It wasyou?You’rethe one who gave up my assets?”
“Don’t even think about it, Ryan,” JD spat, using Keplar’s first name. No point in standing on ceremony now. “You so much as twitch, and I’ll shove this shit into her veins. She’ll be dead in sixty seconds.”
“Why?” Keplar demanded, his face red as the proverbial beet. “Why would you turn on the bureau?”
JD snorted. “I never turned on the bureau, you idiot.” There was no use denying it. The cat was out of the bag, and it wasn’t getting shoved back inside. Besides, it felt good to inform Keplar he’d been partnered with a cartel plant. It felt good letting the arrogant asshole know he’d been duped from the jump. “Don’t you get it? I was neverwiththe bureau. I was always with the cartel.”
Keplar blinked rapidly as if he couldn’t comprehend that one simple truth.
“You so much as prick her skin, and I’ll plant lead into your brainpan,” Rollins snarled, still steadily aiming in JD’s direction even though O’Toole now blocked a clean shot.
JD laughed, but there wasn’t a drop of humor in it. “You think you’re good enough to hit me and miss Little Miss Human Shield here?”
Rollins didn’t need to say anything. He didn’t pull his trigger, and that was answer enough.
“You knew Knox was innocent all along,” Keplar gritted through his teeth, takingforeverto figure out what everyone else in the lobby had surmised when JD grabbed the blond. “You knew he was innocent becauseyouwere the one who blew his cover. And yet you were gung-ho to help me find him.Why?”
JD chanced a glance at his former partner in exasperation. It was clear he needed to spell things out. “I knew if you didn’t find him and kill him in your hurry to mete out justice, you’d haul him in, and I’d get the chance to give him a heart attack with this lovely little elixir concocted by our own Central Intelligence Agency. I’ve been told it denatures in the body in under an hour and therefore can’t be detected on autopsy. So helping you catch him was a win-win for me. Either you’d do the dirty work, or I would. But the end result would be Knox Rollins in a body bag and unable to tell a jury what he knows.”
“You’re a sonofabitch,” Keplar snarled.
“Takes one to know one, asshole.” JD knew it was childish, but he couldn’t resist getting in a dig. He’d been eating the shit Keplar fed him for months, and, in an odd way, it felt good not to have to pretend to kowtow to the fat fuck.
“Get back,” Keplar told Sabrina and Knox, motioning with his meaty hand. “Back toward the guard desk and?—”
“I don’t think so.” JD pressed the needle harder against O’Toole’s neck, hard enough that she whimpered in fear. “I’m the one calling the shots here.”
His breaths came in short, ragged gasps, his mind flying through the next steps. The mechanic was armed. Keplar was armed. O’Toole and the guard were both armed. JD’s first order of business was to change all that, to restack the odds inhisfavor.
“Take out your weapon, Agent O’Toole,” he whispered close to her ear. “Two fingers only.”
She’d instinctively lifted her hands in front of her the moment she felt the needle at her throat. Now, he saw them shake.
“Nice and easy,” he coached her as she slowly reached into her jacket with one hand.
The lobby was so quiet that he could have heard a pin drop. Hedidhear the guard’s ragged breathing and thesnickas O’Toole thumbed off the snap on her holster.
She used her thumb and forefinger to free the weapon.
“Very good,” he praised, wondering if that washerheart he was feeling beating hard or his own. Maybe both. “Now, drop it on the floor and kick it across the room.”
She did as instructed, and he felt a little spurt of satisfaction when the pistol came to rest against the far wall.
Keeping his eye on Rollins—the man’s finger hadn’t so much as twitched on the trigger —he turned slightly toward Keplar.
“Your turn, Ryan.” He did his best to regulate his breaths since he couldn’t stop the thundering of his heart. He needed to get out. Andquick. Because he might have the situation under control now, but that could change in a heartbeat if one more person walked into the lobby. “Take out your pistol and send it over to join O’Toole’s.”
He could see the hesitation on his former partner’s face. He’d worked with Keplar long enough to know that taking orders from a junior agent—even inthiscircumstance—grated. But, eventually, Keplar pulled out his gun.
