Edge of the Heat 5 (15 page)

“Now I’m going to walk over to that side of the bed. Don’t think you can kick me or grab me with your legs. I will be quicker than you, and merciless. I will not fight. I will just shoot.” She took the gun out of her waistband and pointed it at him once more.

“I won’t move,” Jerry promised her.

As she walked over, slowly, watching him for movement, Jerry had a moment to fervently wish this was all some sort of sex play. That she would shoot the gun and out would pop a plastic slide with a banner that unfurled to say BANG! Then she would throw the gun away and climb on top of him, her stern, calculating look instantly dissolving into a coquettish, hungry look. She would rip off his underwear and have her dirty way with him. Jerry felt his body respond to the intimate images marching through his brain. He’d loved Sara for months now, he was sure of it, but he’d never so much as kissed her. He wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt him. But one look at her face told him kissing was the last thing on her mind.

Frantically, he locked his eyes on the gun she held in her hands and recalled gunshot victims he’d worked on, trying to turn off his body. He was getting hard, and this was a ridiculous time for it. If she saw it, she would think he was a ... a pervert or something. Or one of those submissives who got off on people beating them.

Relief flooded Jerry as Sara took the blankets in one hand and pulled them to his waist. She knelt and pulled them tight, tucking them under the mattress down the full length of the bed. She stood, surveyed her work, then retreated to the desk against the wall.

Jerry relaxed his muscles for a second and blew out an anxious breath. His shoulders were already starting to ache from the awkward positioning. Maybe he should have stayed in Westwood Harbor. Maybe jail would have been the better choice.

Sara turned back around and Jerry almost choked on fresh terror. She held a small needle and syringe. This scared him 100 time more than the gun.

“This is sodium pentathol Jerry, that’s all. You weigh what, 190 pounds?”

“193,” he whispered, his eyes locked on the syringe.

“This is 175 mg. It won’t hurt you, or even knock you out. I know you had 3 beers downstairs so I adjusted the dosage slightly. I just want to be sure that you tell me the whole truth.”

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
, Jerry’s mind recited stupidly. Jerry told it to shut up and rifled through his mental filing cabinets to see what he knew about sodium pentathol. He came up with exactly nothing. He didn’t know if that dosage was safe or not.

“I’m going to inject this into the big vein on your arm right there. You want to hold very still. This drug causes tissue necrosis if it gets outside of the vein. As long as you hold still that won’t happen. And Jerry, if you yell, I’ll knock you out.” She tapped the butt of the gun, in her waistband. “I really, really don’t want to do that, so don’t yell, OK?”

Jerry nodded, fear nibbling at his insides.
Still love her
? Some crazy part of his brain gibbered.

Sara bent over his arm, close enough that he could smell her sweet, feminine smell.

Biggest cluster fuck of my life,
he had time to think before he felt the prick of the needle in his arm.

S
ara hesitated for a moment before pushing the needle into his vein. She knew that once she did, any slim chance she had once had for a real, healthy relationship with him would dissolve like a pile of sugar in a heavy rain. And oh did she want to hold onto that slim chance. Her heart ached with it. But she knew it wasn’t possible, drug or no drug. So she pushed aside her want and pricked his arm, carefully depressing the plunger on the syringe. She watched the liquid transfer from the syringe to his body and felt what slim humanity she’d managed to gain in the last year slip away with it. Now she was nothing but a soldier again. A dishonored soldier without a general.

Sara wondered when she’d become dismally poetic. She pushed away the thoughts and stepped back to watch the drug take effect. Jerry’s face, stamped partly with fear and partly with dismay, softened. His muscles gradually relaxed. His eyes closed and he took a deep breath, and Sara knew he was ready.

“Jerry.”

“Mmmm?” Eyes still closed.

“Jerry, listen to my voice. It will calm you, soothe you, make you feel sleepy and relaxed. I have some questions to ask you and it’s very important that you tell me the first answer that comes into your mind. When you answer the questions that way you don’t have to worry or stress about them. When you answer with the truthful answer that first comes into your mind you can feel good and know that everything is going to be OK. Do you understand?”

Jerry smiled. Sara ordinarily loved his joking, easy manner, but just before now it had been bothering her. It made it hard for her to read him. He’d smiled like this several times before she got the drug in him and it just made her think he was hiding something even more. Now though, she knew it was just the drug and how it had turned off the parts of his brain that made him worry or think about his actions.

He slowly opened his mouth and said “I understand,” the smile still on his face.

“Who do you work for?”

“Westwood Harbor Fire Department.”

“Who else do you work for?”

“No one.”

“Who is your boss?”

“Captain Horace Burns.” Jerry laughed. “We tease him about that, don’t we? Tell him he starts every fire we have to put out.”

Sara smiled in spite of herself.

“Who have you killed?”

Jerry laughed again. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Who have you stabbed?”

“Nobody.”

“Who have you shot?”

Jerry giggled madly, almost girlishly. “You know this. Norman Foster. He deserved it though. He tried to kill Emma. I would shoot him again if I had to.”

“What do you do for the DCIA?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you know what the DCIA is?”

“No.” Jerry laughed again. Sara could see the flexi-cuffs biting into his relaxed wrists. She grimaced and wondered if she should loosen them. No way to loosen flexi-cuffs though. Maybe she should just cut them off of him. Her questioning was revealing that he was just what he said he was. A fireman, that’s it.

Just a few more questions
, Miss-All-Business whispered.

“Are you a spy?”

“No. I’m a Firefighter and a Paramedic.”

“Are you an agent?”

Jerry laughed again. “Like an insurance agent?”

Sara smiled. She marked that one in the ‘no’ pile.

“Why did you follow me?”

“I thought you needed help. I’ve been looking for you for days.”

“How did you find me in Las Vegas?”

Jerry’s brows drew together even while his mouth grinned. “Find you? I didn’t find you. You found me.”

Sara leaned forward. “Wait, you mean you didn’t know I was here in Vegas?”

“No.”

“Why did you come to Las Vegas?”

“I didn’t want to get arrested. Besides, I was coming here on vacation in two weeks anyway. I took an early vacation so I didn’t have to take a concrete vacation.” Jerry laughed wildly at this. Sara barely noticed. Her mind forced her back to a day about 2 months ago, at her gym. She was working on Jerry, massaging his leg around the scar tissue, and he was telling her that it was almost time for him to return to work, but that he was going to take a short vacation to Las Vegas first. Fast forward to that night when she decided to abandon her Sara Acosta personality and her life in Westwood Harbor. She could have gone to Vegas, New York, Miami, Chicago, or a couple of places in Canada. But she picked Vegas. She didn’t even consider another location.

Sara put her head in her hands in an uncharacteristic moment of doubt and self-flagellation. Had she been ... what?
Hoping
he would find her?
That was stupid
, Miss-All-Business piped up.
You’ve never been stupid before. You need to grab your stuff and get out of town, quick before your stupidness catches up with you.

Sara focused on Jerry. She reached down to pull a knife out of her boot to cut him loose with, and that’s when the whole world exploded. She had time to think
shredder gun
, and then she was swarmed.

***

J
erry waited for the next question. This was fun. This was awesome. He felt happy, and like he and Sara were getting along great. She was asking questions, he was answering them. She even smiled once. He felt on top of the moon. Pretty soon she was going to let him out of these cuffs and then maybe they could really talk. Or go gamble. Or kiss. His mind seized on that last one. She’d let him kiss her now, he just knew it.

He watched her put her head down and press her hands to her cheeks. She looked sad. He was just about to tell her everything was going to be OK, when a loud boom shook the room, the bed, the building. Jerry looked up, interested. What was going on? Did Sara know this was going to happen? He smiled as people swarmed into the room. They were yelling, but Jerry couldn’t tell what was being said. His ears were ringing too loudly.

The first man he saw was wearing SWAT gear. He trained a large, mean-looking shotgun at Sara. His lips pulled back in a grimace and his teeth flashed as he yelled. Jerry could barely make it out. “Put your hands up! Put your hands up!”

Jerry’s hearing returned in a whoosh and he realized they were yelling “Police!” Sara was crouching on the ground, but as the man with the mean-looking shotgun got close to her she propelled herself forward, under his gun. Jerry saw it driven upwards into the man’s helmeted face by the force of her shoulder. Jerry’s mouth dropped open in an O of surprise.

Sara screamed, a loud aiaiai sound. She tucked in her head and pushed the man backwards with all her might towards the door, and she was actually moving him! Jerry fought to swim up from under the influence of the drug. Sara was battling with the police in front of him!

Sara had something in her hand. It was a gun, but not his gun. It was smaller, much smaller. She pointed it around the man she was pushing and pulled the trigger. The small retort still seemed loud in the little room. Had Sara just shot a cop? Jerry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see anymore. He closed his eyes and laid his head down on the pillow. He needed to have a little talk with himself about the women he fell in love with. Soon. But right now he just wanted to sleep.

J
erry dozed in and out of what was the strangest sleep of his life. Words flew around him in a storm. His body was manhandled. Someone pulled up his eyelids and peered in his eyes with a light. His clothes and boots were forced on his body. He was placed in a chair and pushed out of the room. And still he slept. He couldn’t care about what was going on in the real world. He didn’t even care what was happening to Sara. Until he did.

His eyes flew open and he jerked forward, but he was tied around the waist and didn’t move much. He tried to make sense of his surroundings, but even with his eyes open, he couldn’t see anything. A hum and a familiar bouncing-swaying feeling told him he was in a vehicle. His eyes adjusted. He was in the back seat of a sedan, driving down what appeared to be a small road with no streetlights and no oncoming traffic. Two men were in the front. Sara was next to him, unconscious, her clothes stained with what could be blood. Her body slumped uncomfortably forward, and he could see her arms were cuffed behind her. Her legs had metal cuffs or shackles on them too. Like she was public enemy #1. Like these guys were scared of her.

Jerry gasped and tried to move to her. His hands were stuck behind his back. He tried to pull them apart. He was handcuffed, but not with the plastic cuffs. These were real, metal cuffs.

“Hey, what’s going on? Why am I handcuffed? Are we going to a hospital?” he croaked, his voice barely registering to his own ears.

The man in the passenger seat looked back at him anyway and grinned an evil grin. He slapped the driver on the shoulder. “Yep, we’re going to the
hospital
alright, aren’t we Chris?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. Jerry’s stomach clenched in fear. He looked at Sara, hunched over, shackled and bleeding, unconscious in the seat next to him. What kind of horrific thing was she involved in? Who were these men? What had happened to the police? These couldn’t be the police, right?

Jerry looked at the driver and passenger again. They looked mostly like ordinary guys. Both had short hair, but not military short. The driver, Chris, seemed a bit on the stocky side. The passenger with the evil grin was slim and looked like he would kick a dog just to hear it yelp and then grin that evil grin and laugh about it.

Jerry’s heart threatened to explode out of his chest. When it had been just Sara in the hotel room, holding a gun on him, he’d been scared, but not terrified. He’d still felt the pull of Sara. Her allure. And he didn’t think she would shoot him out of spite, or malice. But these guys? This situation was like something out of a bad horror movie. Where the victims never had a chance.
A chance of what
? his brain whispered. Escaping? Or even Living?

The passenger leaned forward. “There! Right There!” he yelled, pointing to the left. Jerry jerked forward as the car slammed to a stop. Jerry peered out his window and saw the twin ruts through the desert dust that could be a driveway. The car nosed slowly into them.

Jerry leaned back, his racing mind trying to make sense of all of this. Obviously Sara was more than she seemed. Was she a criminal? Was she a fugitive? But if she was the criminal who were these guys? They couldn’t be cops. Cops took you to the police station, not out in the desert. But how had they gotten Sara away from the cops? And why had they taken him too? Because he was a witness?

Whatever she was, Jerry knew that Sara couldn’t help him now. He was going into this situation blind, but if it was as bad as his heart was telling him it was, he needed to pull himself together, use every resource he had to fight or talk his way out of this and save Sara too. What would Craig do? What would Hawk do? Jerry thought about his friends and desperately wished they were here, or that they even knew he was missing. Wait, maybe that was a key? Maybe he
could
talk his way out of this. He did have friends in the FBI, after all.