Doranna Durgin - Beyond the Rules

She glanced. “War dart.”

He grinned, for the moment truly amused. “War dart. Of course it is.”

His wasn’t the grin she associated with Ryobe Carlsen, former CIA case officer and skilled overseas operative. No, this particular grin belonged to the man who’d left the Agency after a bullet took his spleen and kidney. Eventually he and Kimmer had collided during one of Kimmer’s assignments; eventually he’d turned just this same honest get a kick out of life grin on Kimmer. In response she’d turned the fine edge of her no-nonsense temper back on him, and—

And now here he was at Seneca Lake.

Kimmer’s car hit the rough seam between asphalt and dirt. She’d gained ground with the turn; she spared an instant to warn Rio with a predatory expression that really couldn’t be called a smile.

Rio braced himself.

Kimmer hit the brake, slinging the car around in a neat one-eighty and raising enough dust to obscure the rest of the world. She didn’t hesitate but punched down the accelerator, heading back up the road just as fast as she’d come down it. They ripped out of the dust and back onto asphalt, passing the Suburban.

“I think I lost the dart.” Rio groped along the side of his bucket seat.

“Got my club,” Kimmer said. It was a miniature war club, iron set into smooth red oak wood, sleek with time and use. She handled it with great familiarity and precision.

“You brought your club?” Rio asked. “On our date?”

“As if the whole world is about you. Of course I brought it.” Kimmer didn’t warn him this time; she hit the brake, gave the wheel a calculated tug, and ended up neatly blocking the road. She reached for her seat belt before the car had even rocked to a complete stop. “You coming?”

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, betraying some of the grimness lurking beneath his banter. But he wasn’t as fast about pulling his long legs from the car’s low frame and Kimmer strode past him as the Suburban’s driver—having executed a wide, rambling turn to emerge from the dust and discover himself trapped—came to a clumsy, shock-bobbing stop not far away. The interior of the vehicle filled with a leftover swirl of dust through its half-open windows.

The driver waved away the dust, coughing, as Kimmer stalked his vehicle, alert to any sign that he’d jam the accelerator. The massive Suburban could plow right through her Miata if he wanted it to, but he made no move. As the dust cleared, he seemed oddly mesmerized, watching her with his jaw slightly dropped.

True, she hadn’t come dressed for action. She’d come dressed for lunch—the taupe tunic gleamed in the sun, and slimline black gauchos hit just at her knee, offering a low, flat waistband over which she’d fastened a low-slung black leather belt with a big chunky buckle. But her sandals had soles made for walking—or running—and though she held the war club low enough by her thigh to obscure it, he could have no doubt that she held something quite useful indeed.

She didn’t give him time to firm up his jaw or to reach for a weapon. Nothing about him set off alarm bells; whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he was well out of his league. She went straight to the door, yanked it open and grabbed his hand from the steering wheel. He yelped in surprise as she flexed it down, levering it against his body to take advantage of the seat belt restraint. “Hello,” she said. “Who the hell are you and why are you on my tail?”

“Or my tail,” Rio said, coming up on the other side of the window. Kimmer knew that he’d be looking for any signs of a gun, that he’d keep his eye on the man’s free hand. He eyed, too, the awkward angle of the man’s left arm. “You’re not going to break him, are you?”

Kimmer shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” the man said, and his expression—full of bemusement, floundering in some way Kimmer couldn’t understand—didn’t fit the situation. Didn’t fit it at all. “Ker-rist! Back off, will you?”

Kimmer narrowed her eyes, tipped her head. Thoughtful. There was something about this man…

She knew him.

“Kimmer—” he said, then hissed in pain as her hold tightened.

She knew him.

Not so much the narrow chin and the receding hairline of dark, tight-cropped curls, or the skin, leathery and damaged by sun and cigarettes. Not so much the scowl carved into his forehead.

The eyes. Round, wide-set, thickly lashed. A deep blue, so deep as to look near black unless the light hit them just right.

Kimmer’s eyes.

She released the man’s hand, slammed the door closed hard enough to rock the vehicle, and turned on her heel, striding back to where the Miata glinted Mahogany Mica in the sun. Maybe, she thought, deliberately taking herself away from this moment, it was time to get that BMW she’d been eyeing. Time to move up.

With the BMW, she could outrun even her past.

Rio came up behind her. In the background, the Suburban’s door opened again. Kimmer walked around to the driver’s door, brushed dust from the side-view mirror, and slid back behind the wheel. On the passenger side, Rio opened the door, but he didn’t get in. He ducked low enough to peer inside. “Hey,” he said, a gentle query. “You know him?”

Kimmer didn’t look at him. She pressed her lips together, bit her top lip, and was then able to say in an astonishingly moderate tone, “My brother. One of them, anyway. Let’s go. We’re through here.”

She should have known he wouldn’t get in. Not with the way he felt about family. He’d never understand her reaction. How could he? For all she’d alluded to her past, she’d never truly explained. He knew she’d turned her life around, remolding herself into the fierce, competent Hunter operative who made her own rules. But she’d never shared the appalling truths of her past.

Because it meant reliving them.

She looked over at him, meeting the almond sweep of his eyes. His Japanese grandmother’s eyes, set in the bones of his otherwise Danish family—a face sculpted by the combination. Rio was nothing if not tied to his family, right down to his appearance. And he didn’t understand.

A flicker of desperation tightened Kimmer’s hands on the steering wheel. “Please,” she said. “This is a choice I made a long time ago.”

He tipped his head back at the hefty SUV. “It can be a different choice now.”

“No,” she said tightly. “It can’t.”

He looked at her for another long heartbeat of time, and then he gave the slightest of shrugs and lowered his tall frame into the low sports car. Kimmer breathed a sigh of relief, thanking him with a glance. They might well talk about this, but Rio had done what Rio did best. He’d let Kimmer be Kimmer, accepting her without trying to change her.

Except this time, just a moment too late. Kimmer’s brother crossed in front of the Miata, came around to the driver’s window. Kimmer still had time to turn the key, to floor the accelerator—and yet somehow she didn’t quite do it. Maybe it was Rio’s trust. Maybe she was just tired of running.

Maybe she wanted to think again about pummeling the crap out of a man who had made her childhood miserable.

He stood on the other side of the closed window—not a tall man, nor a bulky one. Like Kimmer in that way. He settled his weight on one leg and crossed his arms. “You don’t even know which one I am.”

She knew he hadn’t changed much, not if he’d tracked her down only to throw that attitude at her.

Of course, he was also right.

“Should I care?” she asked, not unrolling the window. “You all made my life hell. You were interchangeable in that way. Although if I had to guess, the way your ears stick out, I’d say you were Hank.”