“Fine,” she said. “A little sore.”
I stood and faced her. The two holes in her shirt, like those in the QB’s, were blood free. She tapped her knuckles against the bulletproof vest beneath it. “Good thing one of the guys they sent inside was about my size.”
I smiled, then shook my head. “Wait, was that your plan all along, to let him shoot you?”
“It was the only way I could think of to get him to take his gun off of you.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot him first?”
She looked at me like I’d just asked why she didn’t fry him with her heat vision. “He was standing behind you.”
“Yeah, but you’re a professional assassin. Aren’t you supposed to be able to do some Angelina Jolie, bending bullets around corners shit?”
“You watch too many movies.”
Denise and Ethan ran to Robert, who was starting to come around, while Maggie came to me.
“I’m okay, Peanut,” I said as she reached for the cut on my eyebrow, hesitant to touch it. Instead, she wrapped me in her arms and I hugged her back, turning my face away so I wouldn’t stain her shirt.
“She’s got my kids,” Jimmy said. We all turned to look at him, still sitting on the ground, color draining from his face.
“Who does?” Robert asked, on his feet and rubbing the back of his neck. I didn’t need Jimmy to answer to know who he meant.
“Some woman. Middle Eastern. She called me the day after everything went down at your house. Told me I needed to find out where you were. She,” his voice caught in his throat, but he cleared it and went on, “she sent me pictures of the girls at recess, playing on the swings. Said if I didn’t tell her where you were, she’d kill them.”
“Laila and Lexi?” Maggie said, her hand over her mouth.
The girls in her TikTok videos. The ones painting her face in their pajamas and hopping around to “Shake it Off.” Now I knew who they belonged to.
Jimmy continued, “And if I pulled them out of school or sent them to stay somewhere else, she swore she’d kill the rest of the kids in their class.”
“Did you tell her where we were?” I asked.
Jimmy nodded. “I had to. I’m so sorry, Robert. She has my babies.”
“What do you mean she has them?” Robert asked. The concern in his voice was natural, but there was far less anger than I expected considering the man he was talking to had just cold-cocked him and admitted to working with the people who were trying to kill us.
“After you called,” Jimmy went on, “I told her where you were. She showed up at my house. Told me to come up and make sure you weren’t lying, then call her when I got here and keep you all occupied until she arrived with the girls. If I did that, she said she’d let us go.”
“If you sold us out, you mean,” I said, with enough anger to compensate for Robert’s lack of it.
“She said it was the only way.”
“And you believed her?” Erica said, dumbfounded.
“No, of course not! That’s why I looped in these local guys. I figured we could make a stand if we had some help.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Robert said, and there was some of that anger, if only a little. “All the shit we’ve been through, did you honestly think I wouldn’t have your back?
“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said, twin tears sliding down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, brother, but I didn’t know if she had tapped my phone, hacked my computer. I couldn’t risk it. I just want my babies back, Robert. I just . . .” And then the tears took over, and the rest of what he said didn’t make any sense.
“Hey,” Robert said, grabbing his partner’s arm. “We’ll get them back. You hear me? We’ll get them back.”
Jimmy nodded and the sobbing eased, replaced by a groan as he leaned on his elbow, blinking his eyes against the nausea that was hitting him.
“Robert, he needs to get to a hospital,” Denise said. She was right.
“You need to go, too,” Jimmy said. His voice sounded weak. “She knows where you are. She’ll be coming.”
“Not without your girls.”
“Get him up and into the Chevy,” I said. Denise, Ethan and Maggie all helped Jimmy to his feet. I pulled Robert aside and said, “Drop him at the nearest hospital and then take off.”
“In case you missed it, I just made a promise to get his kids back. Running away’s your move, Ben, not mine. Where’s my gun?” He turned and started looking on the ground, scanning for wherever his beloved partner had kicked it after knocking him out cold.
“Listen to me,” I said, grabbing his arm, but he spun out of it and bunched up the front of my shirt with his fist.
“No, you listen, you son of a bitch. It’s not bad enough you drug your own family into this shit, now you’ve put Laila and Lexi in danger, too? You want to go hide somewhere, fine, that’s what you do best, but I’m done playing it safe.”
“Then how about playing it smart?” I shouted. “If you stay here and try to take on The Persian by yourself, or even with Mayberry’s finest,” I motioned to the cops Erica had dispatched with ease, “then you’re dead.”
Robert started to protest but I ripped his hand from my shirt and said even louder, “You’re dead, Robert. She is a trained, expert killer, and there is no way she just has the girls waiting in her car to be dropped off like she’s taking them to a playdate. She will have anticipated every possible move you can make and come up with ways to beat them. You think you’ll take her by surprise? People like her don’t get surprised. You cannot win this fight, I don’t care how pissed off you are.”
Again he tried to speak and again I cut him off. “I can still get Trish to call her off, but I need to know where the uranium is.”
He shook his head. “This again? I already told you.”
“Your uncle’s boat?” I scoffed. “You’re not that stupid, and neither am I. If you called Jimmy because you didn’t trust me, then you sure as shit didn’t tell me its actual location the first time. Where is it?”
