Jacob snorted. It was loud enough to make one of the wedding guests turn. A man in a morning suit with a calla lily on the lapel scowled at him. He covered the phone with his hand and mouthed “Sucker for a wedding.”
Jacobtched down the line at the man who was still hunting for the order.
“Look. We’re happy to go forward with the order,” he said. “I just want to check it’s going to the right address. Unlike everything else Engels ordered this morning.”
“Okay,” the man said. “I’ve got your order here. It’s going to—”
“It should be going to the same address as the last arrangement we sent.” Jacob interrupted. “Not to Mr. Clayton’s home address. Just check that. I don’t have time to clear up this mess today.”
There was a pause that was full of irritated key clicks, and the man came back with, “Okay. I can change that for you now,” he said. “So the arrangement is now being sent to 17902 La Cantera Parkway. Is that right?”
Probably. Flowers didn’t seem like the sort of thing PeaPod usually sent out, but maybe there was a hippy working there.
“That’s right,” Jacob said. He heaved his best put-upon sigh, got another glare from the irritable weddinggoer, and headed away from the noise. “And did he tell you no lavender? None.”
“Ah, no,” the man said. “Nothing about that. But we weren’t going to include….”
“Just put a note,” Jacob said sharply. “Last thing we need is someone else dying. You know, fixing other people’s mistakes is not what I need to be doing right now.”
He hung up abruptly and left the florist to—hopefully—mutter more about what a dick Jacob was than wonder if he should have given out the address. A quick property search should turn up the mystery woman’s address. He glanced down at Fozzy, who listened to him with his head cocked to one side and his bat-tuft ears folded over.
“Yeah. I know,” he said. “I have to call my sister. You’re lucky, Fozzy. None of your littermates have mastered the keypad.”
The call to his sister went about as well as a call could to someone waiting to pick you up from a flight you weren’t on. He had forgotten about that.
Chapter Eighteen
EMERGENCY RESPONSEtimes in San Antonio hovered at the seven-minute mark. The shooters would know that too. That gave them six minutes to carry out the kill order on Ryan. Simon dragged the swearing scientist across the scrubby backyard.
“What the hell is going on?” Ryan asked as he swiped blood out of his eye with his sleeve. “Who are they? Why are they after you?”
“They’re not after me.” Simon kicked the post of the fence down and shoved Ryan across the listing chain-link. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and shoved them into Ryan’s hands. “I’ll lead them off. You head back around to the front and take my car.”
“But—”
Glass smashed in the kitchen window and someone took a shot over the kitchen sink. Simon yanked Ryan out of the way and made him stagger as the bullet kicked up a rut in the dirt. It was enough to convince Ryan that it wasn’t the time to argue. He stuck to Simon’s side as they took off at a run through the maze of lots and randomly angled houses. Behind them two men burst out of the house and gave chase. There’d be a third in a car, waiting to cut them off on the road.
“Who was she? Who was your contact?” Simon demanded. He grabbed Ryan’s sleeve and swung him around a tight corner. A kid stared out the window at them, sticky looking and huge-eyed under a plastic tiara. Simon grimaced and gestured for the boy to get down and put enough force into the gesture that it read like a shout. The kid hesitated and then dropped out of sight.
“I… I don’t know if I should tell you,” Ryan said. Blood dropped off his chin, and his scalp wound bled with wet enthusiasm until it soaked into the collar of his ragged T-shirt. He licked it off his lips, grimaced at the taste of it, and glanced back over his shoulder. A shot rang out, and he flinched and staggered as the surprise broke his stride. “This only happenedafterI talked to you.”
Maybe. They might have planned to snatch him the same as they had Clayton, and the objective had only changed when they saw that Simon was there. Unlikely it would have made a lot of difference in the long run. It hadn’t for Clayton.
The shooters lagged. Simon’sarmmight be a mess, but there was nothing wrong with his legs. And Ryan free-climbed for a hobby. It might not make him any faster, but he had stamina. Simon gritted his teeth and dragged a faster pace out of his muscles—just enough to turn the lead into room to maneuver. With a grunt of effort, Ryan kept pace.
There was a rotting carcass of a pickup on blocks in a dusty garden, nudged up against a peeling metal playset.
“Hide there. Break for the car,” Simon gritted out. “I’ll catch up with you in town. Then you tell me who the hell is behind this. They aren’t on your side.”
Ryan started to argue, but there wasn’t time for that. Simon shouldered him behind the truck and kicked his feet out from under him. Ryan hit the ground with a shocked huff as the air left his lungs, and Simon kept going. He hit the swings on the way past and made the chains rattle and sway.
Once the blood was up during a chase, it was easier to keep hunting ghosts than stop and look for the real target.
A quick check over his shoulder showed that Ryan had rolled under the car. Simon dodged around the side of a building and then another. There was a shed in one of the gardens—sturdy plastic, with a halfhearted lock on the door.
He ducked in behind it and rethought leaning on it when he felt it rock under his weight. His gun was a tempting presence against his ribs, but the thought of the kid’s face at the window kept his hand away from it. There were numerous gunnies in his past who’d rip him a new one for it, but he’d rather get shot than know he’d killed a little kid.
It was bad enough knowing that he already might have—some time, some campaign.
