Page 30 of Heston
It happened without notice. Without sound. Suddenly, London’s arms wrapped around Heston’s head. Her hand was at the back of his neck, pulling his face into that warm soft spot between her shoulder and neck. Like an opium addict, at the first hint of her sweet, feminine scent, he wrapped his arms around her and sucked every last atom of that unique fragrance into his heart. He was that drowning man gasping in a belly full of his first breath above water. Shaking. Afraid she might shove him away again.
Until a sob shuddered out of her. “I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered, her tender arms a welcome shackle around his stiff neck. Around his broken heart. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think. I was so excited, but then I was just mad, and I reacted, and… I’m sorry I left you that night, Hes. I never thought about what it would do to you. I was selfish.”
“No, it’s my fault,” he finally admitted. “I never gave you a chance. I was mad the minute I opened our front door. They were just a couple green boys from Tennessee. I took it out on you. I lashed out, and I know I hurt you.”
She sobbed, “I hurt you back, and you’re right. You’re more than just my friend. I said that to be mean. But I don’t want us to go back to the way we were, Hes. I need my dreams, too. I can’t live on just yours.”
“I know, I know,” he breathed, his eyes squeezed tight against the emotions raging inside. Funny how repentance worked. For the first time in years, his body was in tune with his soul. He could see light at the end of the dark tunnel his life had become. All because he’d confessed his weakness to the woman he adored. Hmmpf. If he kept this up, he’d soon be explaining how that inner caveman of his lost control sometimes. How it took over when he’d lost sight of her when the trailer exploded. Hell, his inner caveman took over at the slightest hint she might be in trouble.
Lifting his head, Heston ran his hands up her biceps to her neck, up until he cupped her jaw. His thumbs landed on her teary cheeks. Slowly, he tipped forward and covered her mouth with his. Heaven. Heaven was London, and he was the devil cast out from heaven, the prodigal lover finally returned to the place of light and stars. The taste of her was pure ambrosia. Overcome by their reconciliation, he devoured everything she gave. Her lips, her mouth, the soft, sweet sigh she breathed into his face.
The fire between them ignited into a scorching blaze, creating its own energy. Its own thunder and lightning. Demanding more. He’d waited so long, hoped so hard for this precise reaction from her. Asher had better stay the hell away for a long time.
Until two popping sounds registered for what they were. Gunfire.
“On the floor!” Heston ordered, pushing London to her knees, away from the windows and below the countertop. Which wasn’t much cover for what sounded like a fifty caliber.
The door slammed open. “We gotta go!” Asher bellowed. “One sniper. Maybe two. You with me, Contreras?”
“You bet!” Heston volleyed back. But… “No!” he corrected himself. “I’ve got to stay with—”
“Go!” London barked. “I’m not helpless, you big, hairy ape. I’m—was—a Forest Service LEO, remember? Go get the bastard who’s shooting that cannon before he hurts someone. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll stay inside and blow the first sucker who opens my door to hell.” She tossed the sat phone at him. “Take this. I’ve got my cell. Call if you need my help.”
Well, okay then.Heston caught the phone and nearly smiled at the belligerent woman staring him down, the one giving him orders. Callherifheran into trouble? Not likely. But the armed and dangerous version of London was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Look at the sturdy black GLOCK 22 in her right hand, a 40 S&W caliber, standard capacity fifteen rounds. That was what the subtle bulge beneath her jacket was. Damned good choice. This woman was packing, and she knew how to use a GLOCK. Correction.His woman. The one with starbursts of green in her pretty, but fierce aqua eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” he told her gruffly. “I’ll call out my full name when we return so you’ll know it’s me.” Which was Heston Carter Contreras.
“Copy that,” she barked like a damned federal agent. “Now go do what you do best. Protect and serve.”
He planted one last, wet kiss on her bossy mouth, then turned and dropped out of the camper where Asher knelt covering him. “How many?” he asked, keeping Asher in his peripheral at his left as he drew one of his two pistols.
“Two, gawddamnit. Not sure they’re both trained snipers, though.”
“The guy behind that fifty cal is who we want. He’s east of us?”
Asher nodded. “Just watch your southern exposure. Pretty sure that’s where the second shots came from. Jackass can’t shoot for shit. He hit two trees, didn’t come close to the camper. The shot that hit it was all fifty cal.”
“Alex did say the Irishman was chicken shit,” Heston grunted.
“Copy that. Stop Fifty Cal now, nail the Irishman later. Unless you want him taken alive. I wouldn’t mind. I need a little practice with my knife.”
“We’ll see,” Heston replied as he took a cautious step eastward. Taking prisoners in Washington state posed a wealth of jurisdictional problems, but hey. That was why Mark Houston and Murphy Finnegan got paid the big bucks. As for that knife comment, time would tell if Asher got the wet practice he wanted.
“Swing right,” Ash whispered, nodding to the lush undergrowth. “Away from the camper, straight into those bushes. I’ll go left and brush him your way. You take him down.”
“Copy that,” Heston replied, fading into the shade to avoid being spotted by Fifty Cal.
Like every other mission he’d been on, he’d researched the area surrounding Mount Rainier, as well as the White River campground’s layout, while he’d waited for word on Kelsey andAlex. Rainier’s highest peak sat at 14,232 feet above sea level. The 112 individual sites were let on a first-come, first-served basis. Most were obscured from each other, for privacy and scenic value, by the mountain’s abundant, lush, and oftentimes, dripping-wet greenery.
Sites went for twenty dollars a night. Loops A, B, C, and D lay east of the White. Goat Island Mountain lay to the west, on the other side of the White. No RVs or trailers longer than twenty-five feet were allowed. There were no sewer, water, or electrical hookups. The trailer where Alex had found Kelsey had been stashed at the extreme north end of Loop B, east of site twelve, but not in a site. Two footpaths ran through the campground to the east bank of the White. Glacier Basin Trail went west from the footbridge over the White to Glacier Basin. The Wonderland Trail went east a short while before curving southward in a wide arc around Emmons and Fryingpan glaciers before it continued circling Mount Rainier.
From Alex’s description of the events that day, he and Kelsey were up high on the southern bank of the upper White River, just short of Emmons Glacier icefield. He’d been facing downhill. Kelsey had been facing uphill. She’d been standing less than a foot from him when she’d been hit. He’d tried to grab her, but her body had rotated in the direction of the impact, to her left, away from him. Emmons Glacier did the rest. Once she’d collapsed, her unconscious body slid swiftly downhill until the icy glacier dropped her into the White River.
And yet, Alex had completely misdiagnosed the strike that struck her. He’d been adamant he’d seen red mist. Which, in sniper vernacular, meant Kelsey’d suffered a clear and fatal, penetrating brain injury that should’ve ended in her death. Not a finger-length, raw, oozing abrasion that had only scored the left side of her skull. The physics of a fifty caliber round fired from a distance close enough to remove a person’s head dictatedinstant death, no matter where it struck the skull. It did not ever justinjure anyone. The kinetic energy from any sniper rifle was a powerful force to be reckoned with. Ninety percent of all gunshot wounds to the head ended in fatalities, but most of them were caused by much smaller rounds. Most victims succumbed before they made it to the nearest hospital. By all accounts, Kelsey should be dead, and Alex should be planning her funeral.
But she wasn’t. Which meant one of two things. Either the sniper had barely missed his target through some minor miscalculation of temperature or air current, or any one of the many factors a decent sniper accounted for before he fired. Or… the sniper hadn’t missed Kelsey because he’d never intended to kill her, only wound her. Had in fact waited until she’d moved into his predetermined line of sight, and had unwittingly put herself in the center of his bull’s eye. Which brought Heston back full circle to his expert assassin theory. He wanted to meet that guy. Preferably not in a dark alley. And when he did, he’d end the bastard and let Asher decide what body part he wanted to take back as a trophy.
That line of logic led him back to the science behind smart guns and smart munitions. All interesting. All very plausible. But Heston knew of only one man currently working to solve the variables that had made smart guns pipe dreams instead of DoD-approved weaponry carried by United States military members—Jed McCormack of McCormack Industries, Rosslyn, VA.
