Page 56 of Shane
I’d like to see you try.
“But you said grab the woman he was with,” some guy muttered. “You never said there was two—”
“I meant the blonde in the picture, not the redhead. Don’t you guys know the difference? Shit, I should’ve hired former military. At least they know how to follow directions.”
“But I—”
“But nothing!” A single gunshot blasted outside the silo, maybe even outside the barn. Everlee wasn’t sure.
“Jiminy Christmas,” she whispered as she climbed faster. She needed out of this nightmare before it got worse. Right. Damned. Now.
Chapter Twenty
Still stumbling eastward through acres of dry, scratchy weeds now that they were well past the cornfield, Shane tugged the burner phone out of his rear pocket and thumb-dialed TEAM HQ. He hoped to bypass Alex Stewart and speak with Mark Houston. Shane didn’t want to have to explain to his new boss on his first mission thatsome guyshad mysteriously known where Everlee was, had flown in, kidnapped her, and taken her away by chopper. Her being targeted didn’t make sense, and Shane didn’t want a confrontation with his boss until he had solid intel. She wouldn’t have left voluntarily, no way. She had to have been badly hurt if she hadn’t fought back. And there was no way her ex had orchestrated this high-tech abduction. Not knowing who he was up against wasn’t a good bargaining position for any new hire. By then, Shane was ready to drop, so he did. Just folded up and fell on his knees at Tuesday’s feet.
She crouched onto the parched, furrowed ground beside him. “Oh, my gosh, your ear’s bleeding. I’m sorry I didn’t notice that before.”
“D-d-damn,” he stuttered, realizing she could still run away, or worse, overpower him. Maybe kill him. Killing men was a black widow’s specialty, wasn’t it? But something else told him Tuesday wouldn’t have stayed in the first place if she’d meant to kill him. Black widows didn’t kill anyone until they got what they wanted, right? Wasn’t that how they worked?
“Tip your head back and drink,” she ordered, a bottled water already pressed against his bottom lip.
“Shane, Shane! What’s happening? Can you hear me? Pick up!” some unknown woman’s voice barked from the phone in his hand, her tone laced with worry and panic. Almost motherly. If your mom was in need of a cigarette and her first cup of coffee for the day.
Hmmm, coffee…
Shane chose the cool taste of water over conversation but took the bottle from Tuesday to keep her from thinking he was a complete weakling. Running the hand with his phone in it over the top of his pounding head and down the back of his stiff, sweaty neck, he refused to fall apart again.
The woman yelling at him had to be that Mother person, the one Alex had tasked to make travel arrangements. “Mother? Err, umm, Ms. Kennedy?” he asked when his tongue was finally wet enough that he could sound halfway intelligent.
“Call me Mom. Everyone else does,” she clipped. “Where are you guys?”
“Arkansas. Closest mile marker is... err, was…” He pressed the cool plastic water bottle against his forehead and closed his eyes, striving to pull that precise detail out of his scrambled brain. It finally came to him like a lucky shot out of the dark, but it arrived too late for him to pass it along.
“Never mind,” she snapped. “You didn’t ring in on your TEAM phone. Where is it?”
“Ah…” Shane pulled the phone in his hand away from his ear and looked at it. Oh, yeah. Burner. Not TEAM. Man, his head was mixed up. Placing it back to his ear, he told Mother, “We tossed them. Didn’t want anyone tracking us or Ms. Smart. Sorry, I—”
“Where’d you get the burners?”
“Umm… Everlee bought them at…” He honestly couldn’t remember the name of the convenience store back in Texas. Until Tuesday whispered it into his other ear. Oh, yeah. Then he recalled the bright, flashing neon sign over the front door. Shane passed the info to Mother.
“Good. What’s Everlee’s number?”
“Ah…” Shane shook his head, going to disappoint Mother again.
“Never mind,” she bit out. “But the next time you two decide to go dark, you’d better call me as soon as you can with your new numbers. I can only work so many miracles in a day, Shane. And for God’s sake, give each other your burner phone numbers. Shit happens. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jesus, he’d never gotten his ass reamed by so many women in the same day.
Clattering sounded over the connection. Had to be fingernails. At last, Mother returned with, “Okay. No problem. I’ve got you now. And Everlee, too, if she bought both phones at the same time, which I’m assuming she did. Just a matter of tracing the purchase, the vendor, and serial numbers.”
Okay. That made sense. Kind of.
“Is Ms. Smart still in custody? How’s Everlee?”
Shane bowed his head, ashamed, but going to admit another failure. “I, umm, lost Everlee, ma’am, but Tuesday’s right here, and she’s not exactly in custody because—”
“I said call me Mom.”