St Kilda Consulting 04 - Blue Smoke and Murder

but he was there, flashlight in one hand and weapon in the other, kicking Ski Mask’s gun away.
    Not that it mattered. Even the darkness in the bottom of the dry creek couldn’t conceal what two bullets at close range had done.
    “I’m coming in, Jill. Don’t shoot me.”
    He waited for an answer.
    All he heard was the harsh sound of his own breathing and the yammer of ops in his headset, demanding information. He ripped the headset off and let it dangle around his neck as he went toward the darkness at the bend in the streambed.
    When he saw Jill sprawled facedown against the pale sand, he went to his knees beside her. Fighting to breathe slowly, he put two fingertips against the pulse point in her neck and prayed like the choirboy he once had been.
    Be alive.
    Be alive!
    His own heart was beating too fast for him to feel if there was a pulse in her neck. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
    He felt the heartbeat under his fingertips at the same instant she groaned.
    “She’s alive,” he said raggedly, replacing the headset. “Now shut up until I find out how bad she’s hurt.”
    Faroe’s snarled order stopped all communication.
    “Jill,” Zach said gently. Then more firmly. “Jill!”
    Dazed eyes opened, looking very green in the cone of the flashlight’s glare. She breathed with the gasps of someone who has had her breath knocked out. “I thought—you said—shut up.”
    “Them, not you.” He kissed her sweaty, sandy cheek. “Where do you hurt?”
    She rolled over, gasped as pain shot through her right arm, sat up, and said, “Pretty much everywhere, but it all still works after a fashion. You okay?”
    He gathered her close. “I am now.”

92
    BEAVER TAIL RANCH
SEPTEMBER 17
6:46 P.M.
    F lashlight beams danced through the brush and finally came to the edge of the dry creek.
    “We’re coming in,” a male voice said through Zach’s headset.
    “Just don’t fall on us,” Zach said.
    Two St. Kilda operators jumped down the bank and landed in the sand like paratroopers.
    “Anybody need a medic?” the female op asked.
    “No,” Jill said.
    “Yes,” Zach said.
    “You told me you were okay,” Jill said instantly, running her hands over him, searching for hidden injury.
    “Not me,” he said, kissing her gritty forehead. “You.”
    “Nothing wrong with me that soap and water won’t cure.”
    Zach winced and touched his earphones. “Faroe wants me to be sure. Or it could be Lane. Their voices are getting more alike every day.”
    She leaned over the tiny mike that rested along Zach’s jaw. “I’m okay. Dirty, tired, scuffed up some, but nothing dangerous.”
    “Where’s the shooter?” one of the ops asked.
    “About forty feet up the draw,” Zach asked.
    “Dead?”
    “Oh yeah,” Zach said.
    “Know him?” the op asked.
    “No. We’ll need fingerprints. He was wearing full body armor.”
    “Gotcha. Photo ID won’t help.” The op turned and started up the dry wash.
    “Why will it take fingerprints?” Jill said.
    “Are you sure you want to know?” Zach asked.
    The sound of Velcro being stripped open told Zach that the op had found the shooter and was removing body armor.
    “That man killed Modesty,” Jill said flatly. “I have a right to know.”
    “I shot him twice in the face at pretty close range.”
    She drew a ragged breath. “Okay. A photo ID wouldn’t be much good right now. Do we know who the well-dressed dude was?”
    The remaining op switched channels, talked quietly, and turned to Jill. “The ID we ran on the DOA makes him as a Carson City lawyer.”
    Jill blinked. “What was he doing here?”
    “Good question,” the op said. “We don’t have an answer. Yet.”
    The female op’s voice carried through the darkness. “Well, hello, Harry.”
    “You recognize the shooter?” Zach called.
    “Not by his beautiful face, that’s for sure,” the op called back. “He’s got a tatt on his left pec. Susie. That was his third wife’s name.”
    “You know him?”
    “I worked for Harry ‘Score’ Glammis while I went to college. He was private eye to Hollywood’s rich and corrupt. I quit after Harry beat his wife’s lover to death and got away with it. Still has the scars on his knuckles. It wasn’t the first time he killed someone. Always in self-defense, of course.”
    “A real sweetheart,” Zach said.
    “Word was he had anger-management issues,” the female op said dryly, “aka ’roid rage. Looks like you solved his problem