Beyond the Rules

If Hank thought he was here to see his little sister, he had a thing or two coming.

She jammed the war club in her back pocket—Hank would do well to pale if he recognized it, given the events of the night she’d departed—and headed back down the stairs.

Rio puttered in the kitchen, putting away lunch leftovers and the desserts they’d brought home for later. He’d poured them each a glass of bright blue Kool-Aid, his current favorite flavor. Raspberry Reaction. A third glass stood off to the side, filled with ice, waiting to see what Hank preferred. Rio didn’t react as she stood in the kitchen entrance, slipping athletic Skechers over her bare feet, but he knew she was there; he pointed at the glass he’d filled for her.

As usual, he seemed to fill the room—he always filled the room, no matter how large it was, though calling her kitchen roomy went beyond exaggeration and straight to blatant lie. He’d gone to lunch in a tailored sport coat over jeans and a collarless short-sleeved shirt, a look he carried off with much panache. Now he’d dumped the coat and still looked…good.

Oh, yeah.

For a wistful moment, Kimmer wished they could simply lock the door and exchange frantic Kool-Aid flavored kisses. Forget Hank, forget family…just Rio and Kimmer, warming up the house on a beautiful spring day.

But Hank was on the way. They had no more than minutes. In fact, he should have been here by now. Kimmer strongly suspected he’d gotten lost. She wished she could take credit for the missing street sign between her street and the main road…it was enough that she’d neglected to mention it to Hank. She sighed heavily and reached for the cold glass.

The sigh got his attention. He turned to look at her, tossing the hand towel back into haphazard place over the stove handle, his mouth already open to say something, but abruptly hesitating on the words. He stared; she raised her eyebrows. He cleared his throat. “I like that sweater.”

Kimmer smoothed down the hem. “It’s unexpectedly easy to remove,” she informed him.

“That’s not fair.” He seemed to have forgotten he held his drink.

She shrugged at his ruefulness over Hank’s impending arrival. “You’re the one who wanted me to give Hank his say.”

That brought him back down to earth. “But—” He narrowed his eyes at her, accenting the angle of them “—you told me you couldn’t use your knack on me.”

“I can’t,” she said, sipping the drink. It wasn’t what she’d have chosen, but it was cold and felt good on her throat.

“Ah.” His expression turned more rueful yet. “That obvious, am I?”

“Oh, yeah.” She gave him a moment to digest the notion, then nodded at the front door. “Let’s wait on the porch. I don’t want to invite him in.”

He followed her outside, latching the screen door against the cat she seemed to have acquired when Rio moved in—an old white marina cat with black blotches, half an ear and half a front leg missing. Rio had seemed almost as surprised as Kimmer when it showed up along with him, muttering some lame-ass explanation about how it was too old to survive alone at the dock. OldCat, he called it.

Big softie. That was Rio, deep down. Too intensely affected by the lives of those he cared about, even the life of a used-up cat.

Though the cat did look comfortable on her front window sill.

Kimmer helped herself to a corner of the porch swing and sat cross-legged, shuffling off her Skechers. Rio took up the rest of the seat and stretched his legs out before him, taking up the duty of nudging the thing back and forth ever so slightly. Down by the barely visible stop sign, a blotchy green-on-green Suburban traveled slowly down the main road, passing by her unidentified street.

Rio settled his glass on the arm of the swing. “You may have to go get him.”

Kimmer didn’t think so.

After a moment, she said, “When I was little, my mother used to rock with me.”

“I thought—”

“Before she died,” Kimmer said dryly. “Sometimes my father would be out with my brothers—some sports event, usually. It was the only time we had together. And she spent it rocking me, trying to pretend she wasn’t crying. It was too late for her, she said, but not for me. So she spent that time whispering her rules to me. How to survive. Making damn sure I wouldn’t end up like she did.”

He frowned, hitched his leg up and shifted his back into the corner pillow. They’d been a long time sitting this day; no doubt it was starting to ache. If so, he didn’t pay it any close attention. “You’ve never really said—”

“No. I haven’t. Who’d want to?” She felt herself grow smaller, drawn in to be as inconspicuous as a child hiding desperately in an attic. Except as soon as she realized it, she shook herself out of it, deliberately relaxed her legs to more of an open lotus position. “I don’t want to go into it right now. I can’t. I’ve got Hank to deal with. But I wanted you to know at least that much, before you watch how I handle this. Every time I say or do something you wouldn’t even consider saying or doing to your family, think about the fact that my mother used her most precious private time making sure I knew no one would take care of me but me. Making sure I always knew to have a way out. That I always knew what the people around me were doing. That I always saw them first.”

“You’re talking in halves.” He prodded her with a sock-enclosed toe, gently, and then withdrew. “There’s so much you’re leaving out.”

She heard the sounds before she even reached the house. Flesh against flesh. Chairs overturning. A muffled cry.

When she was younger, she wouldn’t let herself believe it. But she was eight now, and she had her world figured out. She flung her school papers to the ground, gold stars and all. She charged up the porch stairs and through the creaky screen door and all the way to the kitchen, and she was only an instant away from launching herself onto her father’s back, right where the sweat seeped through his shirt from the effort of hitting her mama, when Mama looked up from the floor and cried out for her to stop.

Startled, her father turned around to glare at her. “You’d better think twice, little girl.”

She’d looked at her mama, pleading. Let me help. Her mama shook her head, right there where she’d fallen against the cupboard, her lip bleeding and her eye swelling, the kitchen chairs tumbled around her. She lifted her chin and she said, “Remember what I told you, Kimmer. Stay out of this.”

And her father closed the door.

“Yeah,” Kimmer told Rio. “There’s so much I’m leaving out.”

Hank’s Suburban crawled into her driveway only a few moments later, as Rio did what only Rio could do—establish a connection between himself and Kimmer solely with the honest, thoughtful intensity of his gaze. He’d done so even before he really knew her, baffling Kimmer into temporary retreat. Always it was about trying to understand what lay beneath the surface—and though he usually did a spooky job of uncovering just that, this time Kimmer could see the struggle. He couldn’t quite fathom how it had truly been, or how resolutely it had shaped her. “You don’t have to understand right this minute,” she told him, a quiet murmur as Hank slammed the reluctant door of the old Suburban and made his way up to the porch with misplaced confidence. “Just keep it in mind.”

And Rio nodded, going quiet in that way that would leave her free to deal with Hank.

Hank jammed his hands in his back pockets and settled into the arrogance of his hipshot stance. “I get the feeling you’re not going to invite me in.”

“It’s a pleasant afternoon.” Kimmer looked out over the yard, where daffodils and forsythia still bloomed. “Why waste it?”

“Kimmer. That was Mama’s nickname, once. And you’re just like her. She didn’t know how to take care of family, either. She died to get away from us…you just ran.”

She gave a little laugh. “What makes you madder? That I escaped, or that I’ve done well?”

“Is that what you call this?” He glanced at the little house behind her, the modest yard before her. The Morrows on one side, the Flints on the other.

“Ah.” She looked over the yard in bloom, that in which she found such peace. “If this is your strategy to keep me listening, it’s not working very well so far.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a meeting to attend, so if you’ve got something to say, best say it. Otherwise, go away.”

Rio knew better than to give her a puzzled glance, even though he knew she had nothing planned for the afternoon, that Hunter had her on call but not on assignment. That she was expected to visit and confer on some upcoming operations, but had no set time for doing so. No, Hunter wasn’t what she had in mind. Not with those long legs of his stretched out beside her—not to mention the smudge of Kool-Aid blue at the corner of his mouth. Quite clearly, it needed to be kissed off. Maybe Raspberry Reaction was her favorite flavor after all.

And then Hank blurted, “I need your help.”

For an instant, words eluded her. When she found them, they were blunt. “You must be kidding.”

“You think I came all the way up here to kid you?” Hank threw his arms up, a helpless gesture. “You think I want to be here talking to you and your—”

“Ryobe Carlsen,” Rio said in the most neutral of tones. “Konnichiwa. We can shake hands another time.”

Hank’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly Kimmer thought they looked nothing like hers at all. “You were there,” he said to Rio. “Leo said there was a man involved.”

“There were several, in fact. But I was one of them. I was certainly there when Leo mentioned how you planned to hand Kimmer over to him.”

Relief washed through Kimmer. Rio might not truly understand what Kimmer’s family did—or more to the point, didn’t—mean to her, but he knew Hank had a lot to prove. She should have known, should have trusted Rio.

Of course, that wasn’t something that came easily. Emotional trust was against the rules.

She took a deep breath, suddenly aware of just how much this encounter was taking from her. Tough Kimmer, keeping up her tough front when all she wanted to do was ease across the swing into Rio’s arms. Except—

It was her own job to take care of herself. Her very first lesson.

So at the end of that deep breath, she made herself sound bored. “I can’t imagine how you think I can help you at all.”

“Leo said…well, hell, you made an impression on Leo. He says you took down the Murty brothers when you were in Mill Springs. And he came back to Munroville spouting stories about terrorists. He said you’d taken them out.”

Kimmer flicked her gaze at Rio. “I wasn’t alone.”

“He said they shot you, and you didn’t even flinch.”

She touched her side, where the scar was fading. It had only been a crease at that. She shrugged. “I was mad.”

“He said,” Hank continued doggedly, “that you were connected. That your people came into Mill Springs and did such a cleanup job that the cops never had anything to follow through on. Even those two guys you sent to the hospital—Homeland Security walked away with them.”

“Leo talks a lot,” Kimmer said. But she suppressed a smile. Damned if Hank didn’t actually sound impressed. “And you still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“The point,” Hank told her, “is that that’s the kind of help I need.”

“You want me to get shot for you?” Kimmer shook her head. “Not gonna happen.”

“You gotta make this hard, don’t you?” Hank shifted his weight impatiently, coming precariously close to Kimmer’s freshly blooming irises.

Yes. But she had the restraint to remain silent, and he barged right on through. “Look, I’m in over my head. I let some people use a storage building for…something. They turned out to be a rough crew, more’n I wanted to deal with. An’ I’ve got a wife and kids—bet you didn’t even know I had kids—and I wanted out. Except I saw a murder, damned bad luck. They know I want out, and they don’t trust me to keep my mouth shut.” He looked at her with a defiant jut to his jaw, daring her to react to the story. To judge him.

Kimmer sat silently, absorbing it all. Hank on the run from goonboys. Hank scared enough to track down a sister he’d abused and openly scorned. Hank here before her, asking for help she wasn’t sure she could or would give him. Assuming I believe a word of it in the first place. Wouldn’t it be just like her brothers to send one of them to lure her back down home where they probably thought they could control her?

Out loud, she said thoughtfully, “‘Bad luck’ is when you’re on your way to church and someone runs a red light in front of you. Witnessing nastiness at the hands of the goonboys you’ve invited into your home is more under the heading of ‘what did you expect?’”

His face darkened, something between anger and humiliation. “You gotta be a bitch about it? I’m asking for help here, Kimmer.”

“I’m not sure just what you’re asking,” Kimmer told him. Except suddenly she knew, and she spat a quick, vicious curse. “You want me to kill them. You actually want me to kill them.”

Hank hesitated, startled both by her perception and her anger, and put up a hand up as though it would slow either.

Rio looked at her in astonishment—Mr. Spy Guy, somehow not yet jaded enough to believe this to be something a brother would ask a sister.

But Kimmer, so mad she could barely see straight, still caught the unfamiliar sedan traveling too fast as it passed by her street. She watched as it stopped and backed up to hover at the intersection.

“Dammit, Hank, did you tell anyone you were coming to see me?”

Startled, he at first looked as if he’d resist answering just because he didn’t like her tone. By then Kimmer was on her feet, now bare. Rio, too, had come out without shoes. Sock-foot. He never wore outdoor footgear in the house out of respect for his Japanese grandmother’s early teaching, even if he didn’t use the proper slippers while indoors.

Family. She wanted to snarl the word out loud. She didn’t take the time. Hank had followed her gaze and blurted, “Just a few people, but they didn’t know why—”

“They didn’t have to,” Kimmer said, and by then Rio was beside her—and the sedan had turned sharply onto the narrow back street of wide-set houses, the acceleration of the engine clearly audible. “Keys, Hank!”

“What—”

She turned her gaze away from the car long enough to snap a look at him. “Your damn car keys. Hand them over!” She didn’t wait for compliance, but headed for him. No time to run inside for any of her handguns, no time to hesitate over anything at all.

“They’re in the—hey!”

“They’ve already spotted it,” Rio said, close behind her.

“You don’t have to come,” she told him, no sting to her words, just simple assessment of the situation as she hauled the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Coming anyway,” he said, just as matter-of-factly. And then gave Hank a little shove toward the back door on his way past. In a moment, he sat beside Kimmer. Hank sat in the back, still baffled.

“Where’s the shotgun?” Kimmer asked, cranking the engine. It hesitated; she gave it a swift kick of gas and it caught, rumbling unhappily.

“I don’t—”

“You do. Where?” She wrestled the gear shift into reverse, giving the approaching sedan a calculating glance. We’re not fast enough.

“Under the seat,” Hank admitted, and Rio ducked to grab it. “Why—”

“What did you think?” She snorted, backing them down the driveway. “Have it out right here in my neighborhood, with all these innocent people going about their lives? In my own house?”

“I didn’t think you’d run!” Hank snapped. “But then, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”

“When the moment’s right.” Kimmer cranked the wheel to catapult them out into the street, looking back over her shoulder through the rear glass of the big utility vehicle.

Too close. They’re way too close.

She couldn’t make herself feel any particular concern about her brother’s safety, but this moment didn’t have to be about Hank. It was about the goonboys, who were now chasing not only Hank, but Kimmer and Rio. Rio, whom she wouldn’t allow to be hurt again. With the vehicle still whining in reverse, she locked her gaze on the rearview mirror. There they were. Goonboys, to be sure—guns at the ready, assumed victory molding their expressions.

She wasn’t in the habit of letting the goonboys win.

Kimmer jammed down the accelerator and watched their eyes widen.

Chapter 2

T he crash resounded along the street. Mrs. Flint popped up from her flower garden next door, horror on her face. Kimmer didn’t wait for her rattled head to settle or her vision to clear. She ground the balky gears from Reverse to Drive and jammed her foot back down on the accelerator, bare foot stretching to make the distance.

The bumper fell off behind them. “Son of a bitch!” Hank groused, scrambling to find a seat belt that had probably disappeared between the seat cushions years ago.

Kimmer glanced in the rearview only to discover it had been knocked totally askew, but Rio saw it, too. He looked back and then turned a grin on her. “Nice,” he said. “They’re stalled and steaming.” He racked the shotgun with quick efficiency, counting the cartridges. “Four. And here I was thinking you might have bored out the magazine plug.”

“That’s not legal,” Hank muttered, still in search of the seat belt as Kimmer bounced them along the uneven street, discovering waves in the pavement she hadn’t even considered before.

“Oh, please,” she said while Rio loaded—one in the chamber, three in the magazine. “You just haven’t done it yet. Got more ammo?”

“’Course. Under the seat somewheres.”

“Find it.” She hit the brake, found it soft and unresponsive, and stomped down hard to make a wallowing turn uphill. “This thing drives like a boat.”

“Needs new brakes,” Hank said. He pawed through the belongings in the backseat, tossing take-out food wrappers out of his way.

“Needs brakes,” Kimmer repeated. “You don’t say.” And to Rio, “How’s it look?”

A glance, a resigned grimace. “They’re on the move again. You have a plan?”

“One that doesn’t include outrunning them?” she said dryly, glancing at the speedometer. Just forty miles per hour—fast enough in this rural-residential area. “Yes. Get the high ground. Pick them off if we have to. Hope my neighbors called the police.”

“I love that about you,” he said. “So efficient. Bash the bad guys—”

“BGs,” she reminded him.

“—and get the cops in on things at the same time.”

“Cops?” Hank popped up from his search. “If I’d wanted to go to the cops, I woulda called ’em from my place and saved myself the trip!”

“Quit whining,” Kimmer said shortly. “And find that box. Unless you just want to get out now? I can slow down—”

“This isn’t my hunting vehicle, you know. Dunno that I’ll find—whoop!”

Kimmer had no doubt that without his seat belt on that last hump of road, he’d been riding air. White picket fence flashed by the side windows as they hit a washboard dirt road and another incline. She spared a hand to grab quickly at the rearview mirror and straighten it. The road made perfection impossible, but now she could get her own glimpses of their pursuit.

Too close. She made a wicked face at the mirror. “Dammit.”

“Still going with Plan A?”

“There isn’t a Plan B. Besides, the last little bit is completely rutted—” this as she manhandled the Suburban around a turn that took them from dirt-and-gravel to dirt-and-grass—“and I don’t think they can make it.” They’d left the last farmhouse far behind and now climbed the road over a mound with picturesque spring-green trees. At the crest of that hill the road faded away into a small clearing, one that bore evidence of being a lovers’ lane, teenage hangout and child’s playground. Condoms, beer cans and a swinging tire.

On the nights when Kimmer couldn’t sleep, she found it the perfect target for a fast, dark training run. Less than a mile or so from home, a good uphill climb and at the end a perfect view of the descending moon on those nights when there was a moon at all.

The Suburban creaked and jounced and squeaked, and then abruptly slowed as Kimmer carefully placed the wheels so they wouldn’t ground out between ruts. A glance in the rearview mirror and…ah, yes. The sedan had lost ground. Pretty soon they’d be walking, unless they didn’t realize this road dead-ended and gave up, thinking the Suburban would just keep grinding along, up and over and down again.

Though if they stuck around long enough, they’d hear the Suburban’s lingering engine noise.

Kimmer crested the hill, swinging the big vehicle in a swooping curve that didn’t quite make it between two trees; the corner of the front bumper took a hit.

“Hey!” Hank sat up in indignant protest, scowling into the rearview mirror when no one responded to his squawk. Kimmer finally put the gearshift in Park, unsnapped her seat belt with one hand and held out the other for the shotgun. “Keep looking for those shells,” she told Hank.

“And Plan A is…?” Rio asked.

“I can get a vantage point on them. See if you can find something else in this heap that we can use as a weapon. Tire iron, maybe. Any other nefarious thing Hank might have collected. I’ve got my club, too.” She twisted around to look at Hank. “I changed my mind. Get your ass up here and turn this thing around. It’s going to take time we won’t want to waste if they do come up here on foot.”

“Jeez, when did you get to be such a bitch?” Hank gave her a surly look. “I came up here for help, not to get pussy-whipped.”

“You’ve got help.” Kimmer assessed the semiautomatic, a gun made for a bigger shooter than she’d ever be. No surprise. “You just thought you were going to call the shots. Well, guess what? Wrong.” She slid out the door. Rio was already out and at the back, rummaging around. “Watch your feet,” she told him. “There’s broken glass up here.”

“Got it. And got the tire iron. I’ll keep looking.”

With little grace, Hank climbed down from the backseat and up into the driver’s side. With exaggerated care he began the long back-and-forth process of turning the SUV around.

Kimmer took a few loping steps to the nearest tree, the maple with the tire swinging from a branch made just for that purpose. A lower branch on the other side acted as a step. She pulled herself up one-handed, climbing the easiest route to the branch from which the tire hung. From there she looked down on the road they’d just traversed. It passed almost directly beneath the tire before the hairpin turn that ended at the top of the hill. From there the area spread out before her—small farms and then the smaller tracts of her neighborhood in neat, topographically parallel streets.

The pursuing sedan sat barely visible through the trees, not moving. With the grind of the Suburban swapping ends and gears in the small space behind her, Kimmer couldn’t hear anything of the men who’d been in the sedan, and she couldn’t yet see them.

She waited. Her toes flexed on smooth maple bark, her fingers warmed the wood stock on the shotgun, and she waited, plastered up against the tree to put as much of herself behind the trunk as possible. Beneath her, Rio came to stand beside it—a second set of eyes. And Hank finally finished turning around and cut the engine.

Blessed silence. And then in the roadside not far below them, a flock of kinglets exploded into noisy scolding, flittering from bush to bush like parts of a perpetual-motion machine. Kimmer rested the shotgun barrel on a tree branch and snugged it into place against her shoulder as Rio eased back behind the tree. She raised her voice to reach those slinking below. “That’s far enough.”

The birds hopscotched away through the brush. An annoyed voice asked, “Who—what—the hell are you?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I’m still young,” Kimmer said airily. “Hank will tell you I’m a bitch, though, and I suppose that’s really all you need to know. Plus I bashed up your nice car. I also have you in my sights and this is double-ought buckshot, too. It’s gonna sting, boys. Where do you want I should aim it?”