Stephanie Doyle - Calculated Risk

“You know, nobody ever told me you had such a sense of humor. You don’t honestly think I believe you’ll pay up after I give you what you want. I want you to get on the phone now and wire the money. Lucky for you I’ve memorized my bank account information.”

She watched his face turn red under his sun-kissed skin, but he pulled a cell phone out of his pants’ pocket. “Five million, correct?”

“That was before you insulted me with Wonder Boy here. Make it seven.”

He tilted his head back and a noise that she imagined was supposed to be a laugh fell out. “You think you can negotiate? With me?”

“I think I’m holding all the cards,” she said confidently.

Minutes were ticking by.

Q, where the hell are you?

The boat bumped against the shore of the island. Quinlan hadn’t bothered with trying to get to the dock, figuring the path of least distance would be quicker. He jumped out and made for the cabin that he knew to be tucked inside the thicket of trees.

Sadly, the obvious answer to Sabrina’s question was that Quinlan was still facedown on the ground on the other shore. She thought again about the angle of the shot. Her instincts told her it couldn’t have been more than a graze, but there was no way to be sure.

The final hand of cards had been dealt.

“Not quite,” Kahsan stated in opposition to her previous statement. “You are, after all, just a woman. And I, for one, know how squeamish and emotional women can get.”

He moved like a snake reaching out to pull Kevin toward him. Then he pushed his gun down the front of the boy’s pants. Kevin’s eyes went wide, first with confusion, then with horror.

“Are you a virgin, boy? I would hate to think I would shoot your pecker off without it ever knowing a woman. But if she insists…”

Kevin was shaking so much he couldn’t answer.

“It won’t kill him, but it will be awfully painful. Especially if I start with the balls. Naturally, we’ll move on from there to his kneecaps.”

“Please…don’t.” Kevin started sobbing uncontrollably.

Sabrina struggled to remain impassive against his tears and against Kahsan’s threat, which she had no doubt he would act upon. A good poker player had to know her opponents in order to win. She had to know when to bluff, but more importantly she had to know when the other players were bluffing, too. Kahsan didn’t seem to be the type.

Her problem was that she was supposed to be a heartless mercenary. A traitor to her country. The thought of a boy being tortured in front of her should have had no impact. Then she heard the cock of the gun.

“Stop. Okay, you win. Not because I give a damn about this kid, but I truly don’t want to see his little willie go flying across the room. I’ll get you past Arnold’s password and then we’ll talk about his encryption code.”

She moved up a step to stand in front of the monitor. Kahsan stood about two feet away with the gun still down the kid’s pants. She stared at the boy’s crotch, then glanced back up at Kahsan. “You getting turned on?”

Immediately, and predictably, he pulled the gun free. “Just get it done.”

She glanced over at Kevin’s self-constructed computer and lingered. “Hey, kid, what’s this button here?”

Without thinking, the boy stepped closer to her and, in doing so, brought Kahsan, who was holding on to his arm, closer, too.

She had to hope that the explosion would be enough to knock them all down. Best-case scenario, Kahsan would lose his grip on the boy and the gun. And Sabrina also had to hope that, regardless of the physical damage done to her, she could move quick enough to either reach the gun or take Kahsan out in some other way.

She’d fought through physical pain before. She knew she wouldn’t freeze up, but there was no way to know if whatever was left to her would be enough to defeat him. There were way too many variables for her liking, and the odds weren’t in her favor. But they had run out of time.

It was now or never. With a silent goodbye to Arnold’s work and her hands, Sabrina reached for the keyboard, her fingers finding the first few keys.

“Kahsan!”

The shout came from the doorway. Sabrina looked up and saw Kahsan’s gun hand aim toward the voice. Picking up the first thing she could get her hands on, she swung Kevin’s computer like a bat and was able to make contact with his hand. The gun went off, but the shot was wide.

Then Sabrina watched as a bloody Quinlan fired back. Three steady emotionless shots to Kahsan’s chest sent the man flying against the back wall, as his body was ripped apart by the power of the Defender’s bullets.

There wasn’t even a question of hitting the kid. Q’s aim was too good.

“Nice shot,” Sabrina said, then quickly held her hands up when she saw her own gun pointed at her. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys. You get that, right? Q, tell me you get that.”

“Relax,” he said as he lowered his hand. “It didn’t take me too long to figure out your Annie Oakley impersonation. You cut it pretty damn close.”

“I had to make it look real.”

“It felt real,” he admitted.

“Yeah. You’re still bleeding.” She went in search of something that would curtail the flow of blood from his temple and came up with a roll of paper towels. She tossed the roll to him, then joined him as they stood together over Kahsan’s lifeless body.

His eyes were still open, the shock of defeat still there somehow, even though his life was most assuredly over.

“He doesn’t look so scary now,” she murmured. She turned and saw Kevin on his knees picking up the pieces of his broken machine.

“You all right, kid?”

“I think you broke it,” he whined.

Sabrina decided not to point out that in doing so she might have saved his life, certainly his sex life. She was about to tell him so, when a sound in the distance caught her attention. A faint noise roared over the water, getting louder as each second passed.

“I think the cavalry is here,” she informed them.

Quinlan picked up the gun that had fallen from Kahsan’s hand and turned to face the door. “Listen,” he told her. “They’re probably going to take you into custody until they get this mess straightened out. But I’ll make sure Krueger understands what you did here today.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

He squinted at her, but she wasn’t sure if that was because there was blood running down his eye, or because he was truly confused. A few seconds later, three agents came through the door in perfect formation. Two low, one high.

“The place is secure,” Quinlan told them. He set both guns down on the workstation and held his hands up. Because he did, Sabrina did, too.

“We’re cool. The bad guy is dead.”

Immediately, the agents rushed to Kahsan’s body. One checked for vitals, the other had already removed a kit from his waist pack and was taking fingerprints. The fingerprints would provide concrete identification along with the DNA they would no doubt extract.

A moment later, a large figure was framed in the doorway. Sabrina would have recognized him by the bulldog expression, if she hadn’t been expecting him.

“Assistant Director Krueger,” she announced. “Good to see you again.”

“Ms. Masters,” Kruger replied, his face lifting a little with what she imagined was anticipation. “Tell me it’s him.”

“It’s him.”

Krueger walked by them, ignoring Quinlan’s rather pointed glare and stared down at the body. “Can I say now that I really never thought this would work?”

“So little faith,” Sabrina admonished.