Page 57 of The Heat is On
“Dude, you need to listen to me. I’m FBI. I can prove it. The real criminal is in that room with his wife. She’s in labor. And—”
“Tell it to your lawyer.”
Sheesh. “I’m not lying!”
“Right.” The marshal hauled him into a lunchroom and shoved him into a chair. “Your accomplice is in the exam room?”
“He’s not—” Rio shook his head. “Yes. Please go make sure he doesn’t get away.”
He got a sort of wry shake of the head. “I’m right outside the door. Stay put.” Then the man left.
And Rio was right back where he’d started.
But at least Skye was safe.
They were wasting time.Okay, maybe taking Archer Mills to the Denali Clinic where he wouldn’t die couldn’t be counted as a waste of time. And sure, Skye understood Stevie wanting to wait until her father was stabilized.
But now that they’d dropped him off at the clinic, now that they were on the way to Buttles’ place, Stevie kept looking at Skye as if her story might be a wild tale, and frankly, every time she repeated it, it did sound a little crazy.
“You’re sure it was Buttles?”
“Dark hair, cut across his face. Yes, it was him. I’m positive.”
“And he was with—”
“A blond guy. Good looking. He called him Pope.”
To her credit, Stevie had been useful. She’d called in the information on Darryl, asked to verify Rio’s identity, and gotten the address of Darryl’s next of kin, something the US marshals had gathered on all the fugitives. Darryl’s home address was listed as only two miles south of the clinic, into the back country.
Please, please let it be hard to find.
Tucker sat in the front seat, glancing now and again past her, through the window to the plume of acrid black and gray smoke that ate at the blue sky. He was trying to raise Seth on the radio.
Skye wasn’t unaware that she should probably be going back with him to fight the fire, that the very last thing he wanted to do was chase after Rio.
Rule number nine: Maintain control of your forces at all times.
She was clearly way out of control—a fire torch lit, that he couldn’t do anything about.
Yeah, well, for the first time in a long time, she knew exactly what she wanted.
Rio. And rescue for all those women he’d talked about.
Seth’s voice came over the radio with a grim report. The winds had kicked up, the fire tripled in size, and the team had withdrawn to the Boy Scout camp to call in fire drops and wait for reinforcements.
“Has the camp been evacuated?”
“Yes. We’re the only ones here.”
Tucker shook his head, his jaw tight, and he probably wanted to throw the radio.
Instead, “Okay. Hang tight, but keep your safety zone in mind. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
He signed off, and Skye didn’t look at him. He tapped his fingers on the dashboard. “How much farther?”
“GPS won’t work for these off-grid places,” Skye said. “I think we passed the road. We need to turn around.”
Stevie’s phone rang and she passed it to Tucker, who answered it. “Marshal Mills’s phone.”