Firstborn (19 page)

“And that’s another thing,” Will countered.  “She has a PhD.  Her name is
Doctor
MaCall.”

***

Taryn’s typically calm demeanor had gone out the window within minutes of Aislin’s call.  She had known it.  She knew her sister well enough to know that she would go all Rambo on her own to save Will.  She always did have an overinflated ego when it came to her skills from MSC.

“Sean, for the love of Pete!  We’re never going to get there in time if you don’t hit the gas some time today.  I could just kill her myself, you know.  She tries me, Sean.  She really does.  It would serve her right if they put a bullet in her sugar cookies.” 

“We’re not going to do her any good if we get there too far ahead of the rest of the team.  Unless you know exactly how many militiamen we’re dealing with and how heavily armed they are.  Do you have that information?”

The feminist in her twitched, wanting to remind him that she was in charge.  But he also had a point and had been a valued employee for years.  Instead, she settled for insulting him.  “Doofbag,” she muttered pettily with a hint of a pout.

He grinned at her as he coasted to a stop two streets over from the bank.  After consulting his radio, he confirmed that other teams had surrounded the bank within a block or two. 

“We’ll zero in with the word from the boss lady.” 

The boss lady tucked her device into her ear and tested it briefly.  She nodded to Sean and climbed out of the car, firmly ordering, “Move in.  Be discreet. Extricate Will Archer and Jac…at any cost.”

The police had also been notified and were on the way.  They preferred to handle these matters themselves, but Joe MaCall had some pull with the department he had served for twenty years.  His former partner happened to be the current police captain, and he had offered his support with extracting Joe’s oldest daughter.

She was walking briskly down the sidewalk with Sean when a horn honked behind her.  Irritated with the noise on the almost deserted streets just before midnight, she glared at the driver for drawing unwanted attention.  The window must have rolled down, emitting a fairly loud twang of country music while he coasted slowly beside her.  Annoyed, she shot him another dirty look while putting a finger to her earpiece, to drown out the background noise.

“I thought that was you,” the driver called out, finally turning down the music.

With irritation at an all-time high, she stepped away from Sean and took a step toward the truck.  “You have somewhere to be?  Get there,” she snarled, barely able to see the driver inside.

“MaCall?” a voice in her ear questioned.

She again pressed a finger on the device in her ear.  “Keep moving,” she told her team.  “All systems are go.”

The man in the truck was also confused.  “All systems are go?”  He wondered what games she was playing.  “Damn you are a difficult woman,” he cursed when she walked away from him again, hustling after the man who had continued walking ahead of her when she had stopped.  Personally, the truck driver thought that the man was an ass if he was going to walk off all pissy and leave her alone on a fairly deserted street near midnight.  He put the truck into park and ran around the front hood.  “Hey, if you need a ride home, I can give you one.”

“Get lost,” she called over her shoulder.

“Did your car break down again?”

With that, she knew exactly who she was dealing with and turned to see Gray Campbell standing in the streetlight.  She turned on her heel and stormed to stand in front of him.  She was wearing slacks this time with a dark blazer, but she still had on heels and could almost look him in the eye.  Given that he was 6’2” it was rare to have a woman with that kind of height.

“Seriously.  Clearly that guy is an asshole to leave you running after him on this street at midnight.  Let me drive you home.”

Her face came close to his and was evidently outraged.  “I don’t have time to stroke or shoot down your mother loving ego.  So get out of here and go home.”  Her eyes were sparking with fury and he noticed her fists were clenched at her side.

“You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

“A what?”

“We’re within a half block of ground zero, MaCall.  Are we moving?”

“Negative.  Wait for my orders.”

“Your orders?” Gray asked.  Then he saw the device in her ear.  “Who the hell are you?”  And then he remembered her ordering him to send her bill to MaCall Securities.

In an effort to get him to shut up and get back in his truck, she pulled her gun out of her holster and checked the safety.  “I’m a woman who doesn’t have the flipping time.  Get out of here.”

This time, he went back to his truck and gunned the engine.  She wasn’t an idiot.  The man hadn’t fled in fear.  A former Special Forces soldier doesn’t run like a fool when he sees a handgun.  He had been angry.  She was both flattered that he had taken the time to stop and furious with the way he assumed she had needed him to rescue her.

Putting the mechanic out of her mind, she jogged to catch up with Sean.  Outside of the bank, there was no sign of Jac.  A quick search indicated that she had been in the bushes on the side of the bank, tucked in the shadows. 
And given the fact that her phone was lying on the ground and had last made a call to a cell number that the MSC had registered to Adam Holt, she thought it was likely that her sister was being held with Will inside the bank. 

Holt had nothing to lose and everything to gain.  He wasn’t going to hold them hostage.  He was going to kill them.

“Hold position and watch for signs of Jac and Will.  It looks like Holt has both of them inside.”

“Shall we dance, Basia?” Sean asked, using the Polish term for boss lady with a hint of respect and affection.

“Two minutes.  Then we dance.”

She stood for two minutes, watching the windows and straining to hear any kind of noise from the building.  Standing rigidly to avoid any nervous fidgeting, she almost told her team to
“move in” no fewer than four times.  Finally, she did a mental countdown with the second hand of her watch.  But before she could give her team the verbal nod, chaos erupted inside, with shouting and gunfire echoing through the silent night.

***

Will watched intently, silently pleading with Jac to wake up and fight.  His nose still hurt from where Holt had pressed his gun a few minutes before.  Now, the man was twenty paces across the room, watching the window for signs of police involvement.  Through the doorway stalked the blond man, approaching rapidly with the extra chair. 

Jac lay still on the ground, silently pleading with Will to stay silent so that she could listen carefully to
determine how close the approaching man was before she launched her defense.  His footsteps echoed around her.  He had to put down the chair.  It might be easier to take his weapon if his hands were preoccupied, but that also gave him another weapon to use against her.  She imagined him swinging a fold-up chair against her skull.  No thank you.  He was drawing nearer and her muscles were beginning to spasm with readiness. 

“Come on, Jac!” Will yelled, urging her to wake up and defend herself.

Beside her head, she heard the legs of the chair touch the floor.

Inspired, she sprung to her feet and whirled to face the blond.  She reached beside her, closed her fingers around the back of the chair, and swung it up through the air at his face.  He flung his arms up to deflect the blow, and Jac took great pleasure in the sound of the chair colliding with his forearm.  Even above the contact, she heard the snap of his bone and watched him curl protectively around his arm. 

With a quick inventory, she discovered that Holt was across the room and quickly closing in as he drew his gun.  Again, she used the chair, hurling it through the air in his direction.  Like the blond, he turned his back and used his arms to protect his head while Jac lunged for the blond.

Using her fists, she punched him in the broken arm and then delivered an uppercut when he hunched over. 
She reached for the gun tucked into the waistband of his pants, while he lay unaware and holding his broken arm.  He moaned in agony and then cried out more loudly when he tried to move his broken jaw.  Relying on him to lose consciousness, she pivoted back to Holt at the same instant when he fired his gun.  A half second before the bullet struck her, she aimed and got a shot off. 

Holt’s bullet ripped through her right shoulder, throwing her off balance for a moment.  Her shot, however, had been spot on and had taken Holt down.  Favoring her arm, she shifted her gun to her left hand and strode toward Holt while periodically training her gun back on the
blond who was still conscious on the floor beside Will.  She knelt beside the body and kicked his gun out of reach of both him and his partner.  A quick check of his pulse indicated that he was dead, though the entry wound between his eyes was also a good indication.

She finally dared to look at Will and saw relief and horror in his beautiful eyes.  His glasses were crushed on the ground, probably destroyed by one of the blows that Holt had dealt to his face. 

And then the blond man was on his feet, taking a play from Jac MaCall’s playbook, and a knife was in his hand as he lunged for Will.  His blade was aimed at Will’s throat as Jac cried out and raised her weapon.  But before she could pull the trigger, an explosion sounded and lifted the blond, throwing him into the doctor’s lap.

Fearing that the blade would wound Will or that the
blond was still alive, Jac raced to his side and pulled the body off, only breathing when the man’s dead body crumpled to the floor.  Will had streaks of blood on him, streaks that had Jac gasping for air and fighting to remain conscious.

“And
that’s
why you wait for your flipping reinforcements,” Taryn scolded her older sister from the doorway, her own gun in hands.

Jac turned to her sister to give her a piece of her own
mind and promptly passed out.

***

Aislin Kearney received the call that all was clear and that her friend and Dr. Archer were safe as she was preparing to take a cotton swab to the keyboard, carefully cleaning between each and every key.  She had never been what one would consider a neat freak, but she needed desperately to do something to make up for the damage she had caused Jac.  But now that they were okay, she could give herself a break.  And then Taryn dropped the other shoe.

Adam had been killed.

Her Adam.  Her Mr. Perfect.  He really had been a perfect boyfriend.  A large part of her knew that he had only used her for her visions, but she couldn’t regret those weeks of being treated as royalty by a man as attractive and intelligent as Adam Holt.  But now he was gone, and she had to accept that she might never feel that cherished again.  Or that important.

Tears sprung to her eyes as she remembered her mother.  She had been cherished by her own father for most of her life.  And Aislin was absolutely certain that she would have wanted the same for her own daughter.  She deserved it.

Lifting her chin, she removed the card from her back pocket.  John Rundstrom was unavailable.  He was married, after all.  His two sons were nearly grown and were the spitting image of their attractively distinguished-looking father.  She could never have a romantic relationship with John.  But did she need one?

She reflected again on her short relationship with Adam.  Had she fallen in love with him?  She honestly had to admit that she loved the way he treated her and the feeling
of being valued.  And a man of John Rundstrom’s power certainly had the resources to make her feel valued and important.  Even without the romance, John Rundstrom could cherish Aislin Kearney for the gift that she had to offer him.

Knowing that she had some serious thinking to do, Aislin turned out the lights of Triskele and locked the door behind her.

C
hapter 18

“I hope you aren’t disappointed, but I begged Will to let me drive you home.”

“Hey,” Jac greeted her sister as she entered her hospital room.

“No problems with the surgery?”

“No problems. It was minor.  Just extracting a little bullet.  No big deal,” she joked in good humor.

“Did you see Detective Wilson today?  Dad told me that they’re bringing in the various militia members to interrogate them about their involvement.”

“Good.  Holt said it was nobody but him and his two henchmen, but it’s good to double check.”

“It’s done, Jac.  Now you can get on with your life.”

Jaclyn smiled in relief, though she wasn’t convinced that it was over.  It seemed as long as someone was aware of the impact that their boy would have on the future, there would always be someone coming after them. 

“How’s the baby?”

“He’s good.  The doctor said I’m due in another thirty-five weeks.  But the baby is fine.  How are you?”

Taryn shrugged good-naturedly.  “Nobody wants to kill me.  So I’m fine.  Granted, I have a stubborn
big sister who is a bit of an idiot sometimes.  I think she took three years off of my life last night, but I’m fine.”

“Whiner,” Jac teased her baby sister.