“We should get you inside,” Jules continued oozing concern at Harper. “Do you have additional security? What I’d like to do is have Sam direct your team and set up a perimeter around this house—at least until we locate Milt.”
Yeah, Jules was pretty fucking good at this. He clearly knew, from their past conversations with Harper, that the man was no criminal mastermind. How had Jules put it? The lawyer was down with the fraud, but when it came to kidnapping and murder, he was in over his head. And that combined with Jules’s charm and sincerity as he said things likeI’m concerned for your safety, made Harper tell them exactly what they needed to know.
“These gentlemen are it, for now,” Harper told them, andthe words weren’t even out of his mouth as Jules said, “Nah,Sam’sit.”
That was the word Sam had been waiting for.
He put his full body weight behind his elbow, which he drove hard into Dumber’s face, even as Jules skillfully knocked the weapon from Dumb’s hand.
Sam dispatched Dumber’s sidearm with a kick that sent the damn thing flying into the cactus-filled landscaping of the front yard as he used his other elbow to slam the man down to the ground.
Jules dispatched Dumb just a little less elegantly—because of their size difference, he used a full body pin to keep the larger man on the ground.
But before Sam could draw his own weapon to bring a little more order to the chaos, he realized that Harper had taken advantage of their preoccupation with the gunmen to jump behind the wheel of his car and start it with a roar.
Kevin, however, back in the rental car, was paying close attention, and he stepped on the gas and turned the wheel, aiming directly for Harper’s Lexus. Neither car really had the chance to get up much speed, but thanks to Kevin’s quick thinking they met, nose to nose, in a metal-on-metal screech that sure as shit woke the neighbors.
And yup, there they all came, peering out of their houses to see what-the-fuck. The police wouldn’t be too far behind.
“You good?” Sam called to Jules who was still pinning Dumb.
“Very much so,” Jules called back as meanwhile Kevin, who handled his weapon with the same ease as a ten-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, got out of the rental car to point it at Harper, who was looking dazed from the sudden deployment of his car’s airbag.
“Hands up where I can see ’em,” Kevin ordered the lawyer, who immediately complied.
Or maybe it was the fact that Harper was headed for prison that had smacked him so hard in the face that he was stunned.
As Jules scrambled back to his feet, Sam saw that he’d not only taken possession of Dumb’s weapon, but he’d ziptied the man’s hands and feet. He tossed his extra zip ties to Sam—he must’ve stashed a bunch in his jacket pocket while they were driving over here—before opening Harper’s car door.
“Pop the trunk, would you, please?” Jules asked the man, although his polite words were definitely aided by the visual of Kevin holding Rod’s spare handgun with a boatload of bad-ass attitude.
Harper did as Jules requested, moving slowly and carefully, and the back trunk of his car opened and lifted.
“You didn’t stay in the car,” Jules said to Kevin.
“Hands back up there, Skippy,” Kevin ordered Harper before telling Jules, “I figured it was best for all of us not to wait to see ifthisdouchebag had a firearm under his seat. Fool me twice, et cetera et cetera.”
Jules laughed. “Yeah, okay. Well. We’ll talk about this later.”
“Oh, I’m sure we will.”
Sam heard Jules laugh again as he finished zip-tying Dumber and fetched the weapon from the front yard.
Distant sirens signaled the approach of the local police and Sam got out his phone to call Lindsey and get tied into her LAPD buddy, to ease the coming potential friction.
Phone to his ear, he gave Lindsey the sit-rep as he went to join Jules at the trunk where, yup, there he was.
Mick O’Rourke, aka Wig-Milt, the former MiltonDevonshire Junior, squinted up at them in what must’ve been, for him, the sudden glare of too-bright light. His face was bloody—he’d been hit in the head and it was still oozing—as Jules helped him sit up.
“Hang on a sec, Linds, switch with me, Doc,” Sam ordered, taking over the whole gun-in-Harper’s-face thing while Kevin holstered his weapon and ran for the rental car where he’d stashed his first aid kit.
Jules meanwhile had pulled the gag out of Mick’s mouth, and the first thing the man said, “Is Emily safe?”
“Yeah,” Sam heard Jules say. “She’s with Rod; she’s very safe, but she’s worried about you. Let’s get you out of here, and while Kevin takes a look at that cut on your head you can use my phone to give her a call.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Rod said as he sat with Emily in the parking lot of Palm Springs’s 24-hour Starbucks. They’d gotten coffee from the drive-through, to help them through the excruciating agony of wait mode.
She’d moved into the front seat where he’d told her the story of how he’d met Jules—and Kevin, too. A rapist had targeted girls in their rural high school, including Rod’s little sister, along with a girl who’d been one of Kevin and Jules’s best friends.
