Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

to. He tried to remember how he’d ended up in the rain with Lacey underneath him, but he couldn’t.
    Then he did.
    “Lacey,” he said in a low, urgent rasp against her ear. “Are you hurt?”
    “Breath—knocked—out. That’s—all.”
    “Did you see who was shooting at us?”
    “A man.”
    “Only one?”
    “Don’t—know.”
    The agony that knifed through Ian’s right arm when he shifted to draw his gun told him he had at least a sprained wrist and more likely a fracture. Either way, his right hand wasn’t any good. He flexed his feet. Everything moved. The pins in his old ankle injury had held.
    From above them came the sound of rolling dirt and pebbles, a curse, and then silence except for the rain. The light was fading, but it was still good enough for the man to see them.
    Lacey wondered if she would feel the bullet that killed her.
    “If I move, he’ll see it,” Ian said against her ear. “Can you get my gun out of the holster?”
    Hidden from the killer by Ian’s wide shoulders, Lacey reached inside his ripped, muddy jacket and fumbled with the harness. Her fingers were cold, scraped, numb, and shaking. “Why doesn’t he just shoot us?”
    “Bullet holes are hard to explain. A wreck on a dark rainy afternoon isn’t.”
    Earth and pebbles and water rolled down the hill to them.
    “Hurry if you can,” he breathed.
    “I’ve got it, but I can’t see the safety,” she whispered raggedly. “Can’t feel it. Too cold.”
    “Put the butt in my left hand.”
    She pushed the cold metal against his palm, waited for him to take off the safety for her, and tried not to think about the sounds coming down the hill.
    “Can you see him without moving?” Ian asked against her ear.
    She didn’t want to look. She looked anyway, careful to move barely at all. “He’s about a third of the way down the hill, angling toward us from my left.”
    Too far to risk it . Ian breathed warmth over her ear as he put his lips against it. “Lie still. No matter what.”
    Rain poured down in cold, relentless sheets.
    The man came closer, slipped, and cursed. “Hey, you two all right?”
    Lacey didn’t move. Neither did Ian.
    Soft, sucking sounds came, boots slogging and sliding through mud.
    She locked her teeth against the scream clawing at her throat. Everything in her rebelled at lying motionless, helpless, while a killer approached to make sure they were dead.
    A rock thumped into Ian’s back. Another one clipped his ear. He felt the tension in Lacey’s body and wanted to reassure her, but it was too late. The killer was too close, all options closed except one.
    He rolled over firing and kept on firing until the gun was empty.
    At first nothing happened. Then the man spun, jerked like a marionette, and flopped facedown in the dirt, all strings cut.
    Without taking his eyes off the fallen man, Ian released the empty magazine, braced his gun upside down between his knees, and yanked a fresh magazine from the holder on his belt. Ignoring the rain and his dirty fingers, he reloaded with his left hand.
    “Stay here,” he said.
    “You need more than one hand.”
    Numbly she followed him across forty feet of slippery hillside to the place where a man lay facedown, his arms flung limply above his head as though he’d grabbed at something that gave way, letting him fall. The hands were empty.
    Ian crouched and jammed the muzzle of his gun behind the man’s ear.A groan answered, and an instinctive jerk away from whatever was causing pain.
    “He’s still alive,” Ian said, disgusted. “I never could shoot worth a damn left-handed.”
    Lacey let out a breath that she hadn’t been aware of holding. “He’s got a rifle somewhere.”
    “It’s off to the left. Don’t touch it. Bastard probably has a shell in the chamber.”
    With a careless yank, Ian rolled the man over and shoved the gun muzzle hard under his chin. Beneath a coating of mud, blood, and rain, Ward Forrest stared up at the man he’d tried to kill.

Savoy Hotel
    Late Tuesday night
68
    W ith an unconscious sigh of relief that she was finally going to get a long, hot shower, Lacey unlocked the hotel room. Ian beat her to the door handle.
    “After me, remember?” he said.
    She just stared at him. Like her, he had disinfected scrapes and clean bandages wherever the doctors had found blood. He had dried mud just about everywhere else. If she hadn’t been so tired that she was light-headed, she might have found his looks amusing. But she