The Heist

it across his midsection. The move jerked Bob along with the gun, Nick elbowed Bob in the throat, took the gun from him, and whacked him in the gut with the stock. Bob went down to the ground, and Nick held the gun on him. The whole series of maneuvers took maybe three seconds.
    No one was more surprised by the disarming than Kate. She thought she knew everything there was to know about Nick Fox, but she had no idea where he’d learned to do
that
.
    The two guards behind her pressed their guns to her head and all the other pirates were taking aim at either her or Nick.
    “That was a big mistake,” Bob said, doubled over in pain and trying to catch his breath. “You have five seconds to drop the gun or the girl dies.”
    “If she dies, so do you.”
    Bob tipped his head toward his men. “Do you think they care? The ransom is what matters to them. You can save her, but no matter what happens, you are a dead man.”
    That’s when the house blew up. It was like dynamite had gone off in a box made of Popsicle sticks. Flaming debris rained down, there was pandemonium among Tarajans and pirates, and in the middle of the confusion Kate took out the two pirates holding her at gunpoint. She snatched one of their rifles and pointed it at Griffin. “Grab my suitcase and run for your seaplane.”
    “We’ll never make it,” Griffin said.
    “You can die right here, or you can run. Your decision. You have one second.”
    “He has less than that,” Nick said, grabbing Kate’s suitcase, ramming Bob’s gun into Griffin’s back. “Run!”
    They all ran hell-bent for the cove, with the pirates shooting blindly into the darkness in their direction, bullets shredding the brush and pocking the ground around Kate and Nick and Griffin. Griffin stumbled and Nick scooped him up under the arm and kept him moving.
    “We need to find cover,” Nick said.
    “We’ll get pinned down,” Kate said. “You run ahead with Griffin and hope Willie has the plane ready to go. I’ll stay behind and hold them back for you as long as I can.”
    Nick looked at Kate. “Is the laptop in the suitcase?”
    “Yes.
Go!
”
    He shoved the suitcase at her. “
You
go.”
    “No way.”
    “You’re both nuts,” Griffin said. “Give me the suitcase and I’ll go and you can both stay here.”
    “Sounds like a plan,” Kate said, handing over the suitcase. “Keep running until you get to the plane and don’t look back,” she said to Griffin.
    Griffin took off, and Nick grabbed Kate and kissed her with a lot of tongue and his hand on her ass.
    “Just in case we get overpowered I didn’t want to die without doing that,” Nick said, breaking from the kiss. “And in the interest of world peace, if we don’t die I suggest we forget the whole kiss and ass grab ever happened.”
    Kate didn’t think she was likely to forget it. It had been, hands down, a fabulous kiss. And after the dust settled, Kate was going to give the kiss some thought, because Kate was feeling emotions she wasn’t supposed to feel … at least not with Nick.
    She moved to take her position on the opposite side of the trail so she and Nick could take the pirates down in a cross fire, when Griffin suddenly reappeared, running toward Kate in a blind panic.
    “Help!” Griffin said.
    “Fire in the hole,” someone yelled from behind Griffin, and a grenade sailed over Griffin’s head.
    Nick, Kate, and Griffin hit the ground, and an instant later there was an explosion that brought an end to the gunfire from the pirates. Nick looked up to see a man in black limping toward them from the trail leading to the seaplane. The man in black had a rifle slung over his shoulder and was holding another grenade. Behindthe man, and on either side of him, a dozen other dark figures fanned out in the trees toward Griffin’s blazing compound.
    “I see you started the party without me,” the man said.
    He pulled the pin on the grenade and lobbed it in the same direction as the previous one.
    “Daddy!” Kate said, scrambling to her feet, running to Jake. “I knew you would come for me,” she said, hugging him. “You are definitely getting my vote for Dad of the Year.”
    “I have a lot of years to make up for,” he said. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine. I just wasn’t sure if you’d be able to make it in time.”
    “I have lots of friends in the neighborhood.” He waved his arm toward the men on either side of him, who now surged ahead, opening fire on the retreating