Do or Die Reluctant Heroes

Aaron returned from the grocery store to find a strange car parked in front of his house.

It was a nice car. Dark color—not quite black, not quite gray, fuel efficient but capable of getting up to speed when needed. Brand-new model, still had a trace of glue on the back window where the sticker had been.

He didn’t slow, didn’t falter. He just kept going around the cul-de-sac and went out the way he’d come, into the neighborhood, heading back toward the main road.

The car had been empty, with no one inside to see him and follow. That was good at least.

Aaron had also made note of the fact that whoever had been formerly driving that car wasn’t sitting on his front stoop, waiting for him to get home.

No doubt they’d already overridden the security system and let themselves in through the back.

He was calm and thinking clearly, even though the world had gone into high-def around him—a sign that his body was creating large amounts of adrenaline. He glanced in the rearview mirror at Rory, who was fast asleep in his car seat, a goofy smile on his sweet little face as he dreamed about something good. Rice cereal or sweet potatoes. They’d yet to give him ice cream. They were taking their time introducing potential allergens, because Shelly had been allergic to everything as a little kid. Food allergies ran in the family.

Aaron turned right on Clark, realizing that he’d already figured out where to go, what to do. Drop the little man at Shelly’s sister Francine’s apartment, then circle back around on foot, to try to get a look at the owner of that mafia-black vehicle.

Of course, if Davio Dellarosa or his thugs had found the house where Aaron and Shelly lived, it was possible they’d also found Francie’s apartment, too, so he got out his phone and called her.

It rang once. Twice.

“Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered. His sister-in-law currently worked nights—legitimate nights, waiting tables at a twenty-four-hour restaurant right off the interstate—but she’d be awake by now, wouldn’t she …?

“Hello?”

“France,” he said. “It’s Aaron. Are you okay?” As soon as he asked, he realized why Ian had been such a stickler for what had seemed like clandestine bullshit. How exactly was she going to answer that question with her phone on speaker, some a*shole’s gun against her head? No, genius, I’m not okay …?

Knowing Francie, she’d get herself killed, shouting out the truth, or yelling for him to save himself.

He quickly spoke over her with Ian’s code, saying, “You still looking to moonlight as a dogsitter, cuz I just met a guy at the gym who’s going out of town.”

At the exact same time, she was already answering his question with a question, “What’s going on?” And then she realized what he was saying, so she cut him off with, “Yes, I’m supposed to say yes, right? If I’m alone and I’m safe, it’s yes, or shit, maybe it’s what kind of dog does he have, because I don’t do … I forget. Pit bulls, which is stupid because I like pit bulls. They’re misunderstood.”

“Close enough,” Aaron said. “I’m pulling into your driveway. Get your ass down here. Bring your bug-out bag.”

“F*ck!” she said. This was an occasion where Shelly wouldn’t bitch about Francine’s potty mouth, because the word was entirely appropriate. “No way! Not now! It doesn’t make sense, I just—” She cut herself off. Started over. “What happened? What’s going on?”

Aaron told her about the car parked in front of the house. “Plus I got a phone call hang-up this morning.”

“God damn it!” She came out of her second-floor apartment, carrying a bag that was barely larger than a school lunchbox, which really shouldn’t have been that big of a surprise. It was Shel whose bug-out bag was the size of Texas, even though it was supposed to be necessities only—something you could grab, and go. “We’re supposed to be safe.”

“Apparently that was just wishful thinking.” Aaron got out of the car and cut the phone connection as she came down the stairs and moved into normal conversation range.

She was wearing … What the hell was she wearing? Pink boxers and a nearly transparent tank top, beneath which she wasn’t wearing a bra. At least she wasn’t wearing it in the traditional way. She had one looped around her neck like a doctor’s stethoscope. She also had a pair of jeans and a T-shirt hanging over her arm. She’d managed to put on her socks and sneakers, although the laces flopped about, untied.


No doubt about it, with those assets, even with her blond hair in a fuzzy braid and no makeup on her almost ridiculously beautiful face, she could have made a fortune in Hollywood.

Truth was, Shel’s sister Francine was the best driver Aaron had ever met—and that included his Navy SEAL brother. She was no slouch when it came to security, either. Rory was safe in her capable hands.

“I haven’t even showered yet,” she grumbled, as she threw her bag into the back, next to Roar’s car seat. “I smell like feet, ass, and onions rings.” She realized that he was holding open the driver’s side door for her. “Where are you going?”

“You remember where the safe house is?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, but I’m not going to say it out loud,” she countered, narrowing her eyes at him. “Especially since we’re going there together. Right?”

He shook his head. “I’m going back to take a look.” She started to argue, but he cut her off. “Only a look. I’m not stupid.”

“That’s arguable. But I’m not going to tell you what to do—only what I’d do. What your brother would want us to do. Which is get the f*ck out of here. Fast.”

“Yeah, well, Ian’s not exactly here, is he?”

“It’s common sense. We get to safety, then regroup.”

“And what happens if, after we regroup and go back to investigate, the car’s already gone?” Aaron asked. “Do we just stay away from the house, never go home again, in case it was Davio? Maybe someone just parked in front of the wrong house.” But as he said those words, he didn’t believe it. “I’ll go, I’ll look, I’ll meet you. Soon.”

“Suit yourself.” Francie shook her head in disgust as she tossed her clothes onto the passenger seat—with the exception of the bra which she now fastened, backward, the clasp around her waist. She twisted it so that the cups were facing forward, and she tried to pull it up underneath her tank top—or maybe she didn’t try, at least not very hard—to keep it all under cover. With Shel’s sister, anything was possible.

But accident or not, she very definitely flashed him a nipple in the process, then laughed at whatever strangled noise had come out of his throat.

“You know, you could’ve married me,” she teased him as she climbed behind the wheel.

Aaron said what he always said when she got obnoxious. “Only in your dreams, Angel-cake.” He closed the door, and she rolled her eyes and laughed derisively up at him through the open window, same as she always did.

This time, though, neither her laughter nor her tough-guy attitude hid the cloud of worry in her eyes. “I love you. Be careful.”

“I will. Text Shel. Three words: Code one. Charlie. Then shut off your phone. Completely. You know the drill, France.”

She nodded. “Way better than you, babe.”

Aaron looked past her at Rory, who was still sound asleep in his seat, still dreaming about things that made him smile.

“We’ll be okay,” Francie said, and he nodded and turned to go, but she caught his wrist. “No unnecessary risks. And FYI, that car could be the police. Looking for you.”

Aaron was well aware of that. He almost got in beside her. Almost. But he had to go and look. He had to know.

“If we need to move on, well, then we’ll move on,” Francine told him. “A full year is a pretty good run. Especially since we’re living practically in the motherf*cker’s backyard. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Aaron said. “I do know. Text Shel, then go.”

She nodded again, reaching for her phone as Aaron turned and set off at a quick jog back toward his house. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t sprint. Last thing he needed was to get stopped by the cops for being large and running without sneakers on.

He knew all the cut-throughs—the backyards without fences or pool cages—because he made a point to run the route every few weeks. Sometimes he did it under the cover of night, sometimes during the day. He knew all the obstacles and all of the alternatives, and in a short amount of time, he was back behind the very solid white fence that provided him and Shel and Rory with privacy. There was a reason theirs was the only house in the neighborhood with a second level. They could see out, over the fence, from the master bath’s window, but none of their neighbors could see in.

He’d drilled a peephole into the tough plastic wall for precisely this reason, although he never went onto the patio without checking to be sure the hole was properly corked.

Because a large man could stand on their neighbor’s side of the fence and be completely hidden from view by the shrubbery and tropical plants that grew in their garden.

Exactly where he was standing right now.

Hoping that a spider wasn’t on the verge of crawling down his shirt, and that the lush vegetation didn’t include poison ivy or one of its tropical cousins, Aaron used his pinkie to push the tiny cork through. He could imagine it falling, near-silently, into the flowering shrubs that lined his side of the barrier, in the yard just outside of the pool cage, to the right of the house. The previous owners had used the contained outdoor area for a dog run, and after Rory got a little bit older, he and Shel had been planning to do the same. Get a dog, or better yet, get two. Butch and Sundance. Shelly already had their names picked out.

Stick around for a few decades.

Grow up and grow older here, together, in their beautiful home.

Christ, this was his home. For the first time in his life, Aaron had had a home that was really and truly his own.

Francie’s words echoed in his head. If we need to move on, well, then we’ll move on.

A year was a pretty good run, considering that he and Shel had been nomads for so long, first in the Marines, and then working for Ian. But Aaron had wanted more. He’d wanted happily-ever-after.

He closed one eye and brought the other to the tiny peephole, expecting to see nothing but an open or broken door, assuming that whoever belonged to that car was already inside his house.

Instead, she was right there, lurking near the slider to the kitchen—a woman. And even though she didn’t look like any mob hit man Aaron had ever seen, he could tell, immediately, that she was carrying. Her hand was in her bag and she held herself at ready. Her clothing was dark—the kind of outfit that a businesswoman might wear. The better for getting lost in a crowd after a gangland-style execution.

Her shoes were … stupid. Really nice and extremely expensive, but they were not designed for running or even moving swiftly, and it was this that made the hair on the back of Aaron’s neck rise even more.

Whoever she was, she was confident that she wouldn’t have to run. Not even a little bit, not ever.

She came, she killed, she slowly strolled away.

As he planned his next move—she would hear him if he took her photo with his phone, so he worked to change its settings to silent—she said something. Her voice was too low for Aaron to make out her words, but he put his eye back to the peephole so he could look at her again. And he realized that she wasn’t alone, because she wasn’t on the phone—she wasn’t wearing a Bluetooth or any other kind of headset. And he realized in a flash of horrified dismay that Ian was with her—his brother was here!—and that she must’ve had him at gunpoint.

Except Ian moved toward her so quickly that she didn’t have time to aim her weapon and fire. He pushed her hard against the wall in a full body slam that made Aaron’s teeth hurt in sympathy. He knew exactly what that felt like—although he wasn’t too sympathetic because his brother had just essentially disarmed his captor.


Ian said, “Who the hell are you?” Those words came through clearly. The next part was harder to hear, what do you something, then, “Or did his brother Davio send you?”

Words to make Aaron’s blood run cold.

“No!” The woman’s voice was low but clear. “God, no! The Dellarosa thing was just a guess. A good one, apparently. I had no idea—”

Aaron was up and over the fence in an instant—he’d practiced that move weekly, too. But he realized, as he was in midair, his boots heading for the crunchy gravel in the dog yard, that his surprise entrance was going to be viewed by his brother as an attack, rather than the appearance of the cavalry reinforcements that it truly was.

Sure enough, Ian heard Aaron before he even hit the gravel, and did one of his Navy SEAL ninja moves, going from up in the mystery woman’s face to a left-handed draw with a deadly-looking Glock. Right or left hand didn’t matter—Eee could shoot the stinger off a wasp at a hundred feet in the dark. But what surprised Aaron was the fact that his brother didn’t pull Dellarosa’s hit woman in front of him as a shield. Instead, Eee stepped in front of the bitch, as if he were protecting her.

It didn’t compute, but Aaron had other things to focus on—such as making sure his own older brother didn’t kill his ass. As he headed for the gravel, he had to decide whether to curl down and make himself the smallest target possible, or to go big and make sure Eee recognized him, maybe by shouting out some of that verification code that his brother was so keen on using, if you could overlook all the months that he didn’t bother to visit, call, or write more than one of his stupid postcards.

But Aaron didn’t get a chance to say more than “Yo, Eee!” because he didn’t stick the landing. His ankle rolled—son of a bitch—the pain hot and sharp. As he went down, hard, he kept his hands spread, out and empty, to show that he wasn’t armed.

The stones in the dog yard were various shades of yellows and browns, most of them round and smooth, but not round enough or smooth enough to keep from tearing the crap out of his elbow as he bounced through them a few times before skidding to a stop.

Ian had moved with him, tracking him with the business end of the sidearm that he didn’t fire and he didn’t fire and … The expression on Eee’s face didn’t change. He didn’t blink, didn’t smile, didn’t otherwise move a muscle, he was so in the moment. But Aaron knew that he’d been recognized because his brother lifted the barrel of the weapon and turned his attention back to the woman, who’d taken advantage of the few seconds of chaos to make a break for the door that led out of the pool cage and around to the other side of the house.

Ian stashed the Glock in the back waist of his jeans, his movement deliberate and calm in comparison to the woman’s flurry of panicked flight. Just a few steps and a turn and he caught her by the arm, and he used her own momentum to swing her back around.

Those shoes she was wearing were definitely not made for running. As Aaron watched, pushing himself up and onto his feet—ouch—she tripped or maybe slipped on the pavers that surrounded the pool.

And instead of catching her, steadying her, and keeping her from falling, Ian put his other hand on her real-woman-sized butt and pushed, giving her lift—enough so that she went, pinwheeling and flailing, shoulder bag and all, into the pool.

Splash.

It was only then that Ian turned to Aaron and said, “Hey, D.A. Nice to see you.”

* * *

He’d pushed her in.

Ian Dunn had pushed her into the swimming pool.

Phoebe sputtered and coughed as she flailed her way up to the surface. Her wet clothes were heavy and she only managed to get a quick bit of air before the water closed over her head again.

She was in the deep end, and it was pretty freaking deep, and she struggled to get the strap of her bag up and over her head, because it was helping to weigh her down. She wasn’t a particularly strong swimmer to start with, and the cut of her jacket made it hard to move her arms, so she kicked her feet, which did little more than dislodge her shoes. Still she somehow again broke surface, and she tried to see which way she needed to swim to get to the shallow end, but she ended up gulping water instead of air, which was not good.

“Oh, for the love of God,” she heard Dunn say before she went under again.

There was no way that she was going to drown in someone’s backyard swimming pool, but now she was gagging and choking, her lungs burning, and the urge to inhale was strong even though she was underwater, and she had to get back to the surface, but she couldn’t.

And the consternation and annoyance she was feeling took a solid turn into a flash of full panic—holy God, was she really going to drown in someone’s backyard swimming pool?—when she suddenly felt Dunn join her in the pool with a rush of force and bubbles.

She felt his arms go around her and he unceremoniously hauled her up out of the water so she could breathe. Air, air, real air! She flailed as she coughed and spat and choked, and the terror wasn’t gone because she still couldn’t stand and there wasn’t much of Dunn to grab onto because he had her from behind in a rough version of a lifeguard hold. She felt him pull her through the water, and even though she couldn’t see much of anything through eyes that were both stinging from chlorine and tearing from the coughing that still wracked her, she tried not to fight because she knew he had to be taking her to the side of the pool. And sure enough, he kept one arm around her, looped just under her arms, as he grabbed for the edge to keep them from both going under again.

And still, Phoebe could do little more than cough and wheeze and hack as her lungs burned and she replaced water with air, thank God. She felt Dunn maneuver his leg beneath her, attempting to support her butt with his rather massive thigh, as if she weighed little more than a child.

It served to boost her up a bit more out of the water, which was good, except when he tried to loosen his hold on her, which made her turn toward him in alarm and grab him more tightly.

Before jumping in to rescue her, he’d taken off his shirt and his jeans and probably his boots as well, and her hands slipped against the wet smoothness of his shoulders and back. He was a large man, and there was a lot of smooth skin beneath her fingers, covering a vast expanse of very firm muscles.

“I got you,” Dunn said into her ear. “You’re good.” His voice changed then, and Phoebe knew that he was talking to the man who’d come over the back wall—the one that Dunn had drawn her Glock on before he’d tossed her into the pool. Why on earth had he tossed her into the pool? “Who the hell lives in Florida but doesn’t learn to swim?”

“I know how to swim. I just don’t do it particularly well,” she tried to protest, but her voice was weak and the man who was outside the pool spoke over her.

“Who the hell buys a house in Florida—in cash,” he said, with a ton of snark in his tone, “but then doesn’t live in it for more than a few days before vanishing off the face of the earth?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Dunn said. “How are you?” He didn’t wait for the other man to respond. “Help me get her out of here.” He spoke into her ear again. “Come on, honey. Loosen your death grip on me, and use those hands of steel to grab onto my brother, Aaron.”

His brother?


Phoebe looked up, way up, at the man standing at the edge of the pool. Up closer like this, even without her glasses, which were now at the bottom of the pool, she could see that he was younger than Dunn by quite a few years. His hair was shorter and lighter, and his eyes were more green than blue. And even though he was tall, he wasn’t quite as super-sized. He was more sculpted, more … elegant. More slender and beautiful and less raw-boned. Less Stone Age and more Bronze Age—but still the kind of man who enjoyed living in a cave. He was completely, obviously, absolutely Ian Dunn’s brother.

“Aaron, Phoebe.” Dunn kept the introductions cursory. “Phoebe, Aaron.”

With a great deal of unhidden disgust, Aaron held out his hands and Phoebe let go of Dunn and reached for him. He took her by the wrists, and she did the same, and with Dunn pushing from the pool, she was up and out of the water and plopped inelegantly down onto the pink brick pavers, still working to spit the last of the chlorinated water out of her raw and burning lungs as her hair dripped into what was surely her makeup-streaked face.

Former SEAL that he was, Dunn wasn’t going to need any assistance getting out of the pool, and Aaron didn’t try to help, instead stepping back so as not to get splashed. But Dunn first dove to the bottom to collect her glasses, and then her bag and shoes, which he set beside her—as if they weren’t completely ruined and useless. Her phone, her wallet, the files she’d taken for one of the other cases she was supposed to be simultaneously working on …

“You pushed me in,” Phoebe accused him in a voice that was raspy and raw as she put her glasses on with shaking hands, while he used the edge of the pool to thrust himself up and out, water sheeting off of him.

She expected him to deny or at least make excuses: It was an accident; I tripped; I didn’t mean to … But instead he said, “Yup. Sorry. It had to be done,” as he used his hands to squeegee off his face and push back his unruly hair.

From her vantage point, looking up at him through the water-spotted and slightly blurry lenses of her glasses, he was quite literally larger than life. Right at that moment, with his hands up on his head, his muscular chest bare, and his boxer shorts clinging to him in a most revealing way, water matting the hair on his chest and his legs and his eyelashes, he was ridiculously attractive. Even with his more conventionally handsome younger brother standing next to him.

Of course the fact that Aaron was looking down at her with unconcealed dislike in his pretty hazel eyes might’ve had something to do with it, as if she weren’t a person but instead a pile of excrement left on his pool deck by a wart-covered troll with an intestinal ailment.

“Phoebe who?” Aaron was asking Dunn. “Who the hell is she?”

“Phoebe Kruger.” Dunn glanced down at her. “She says she’s my lawyer.”

“I am your lawyer,” she said, still in that raspy voice, taking the opportunity granted by the eye contact to ask, “It had to be done?”

But Aaron was even more incredulous than she was. “Your lawyer works for Davio Dellarosa?”

“No,” Dunn said, but then corrected himself. “Well, she might. But it’s more likely that she works for Manny. We just met this morning, so …”

“I don’t,” Phoebe said. “Work for Manny. Or Davio. Or any other random Dellarosa.” With her ability to breathe mostly back, she started to peel her wet jacket from her shoulders—until she realized that the water had made her white blouse transparent. Neither man noticed, since Aaron had gotten way up in his brother’s face.

“What the hell, Eee?” he asked. It was then that Phoebe saw that he was holding her Glock. Dunn must’ve put it down when he’d shucked off his jeans and boots and shirt, and Aaron had it now. He held it like he knew how to use it, which wasn’t comforting at all. “You think she works for the Dellarosas, so you bring her here …?”

“It really doesn’t matter who she is or who she works for,” Dunn said, wringing out his shorts as best he could.

“Damn straight, it doesn’t matter,” Aaron retorted. “She could be motherf*cking Mother Teresa, and you still shouldn’t’ve brought her here. The more people who know where we are, the more likely one of them will tell someone who’ll tell someone else, who’ll pass along the info to that motherf*cking maniac who—”

“Probably already knows exactly where you and Shelly live,” Dunn calmly finished for him. “Aaron, it doesn’t matter who Phoebe is or who owns her. It doesn’t matter if she does legal work for Manny Dellarosa or washes his dishes or even sucks his dick. Or does all three simultaneously. Because Manny knows. He knows, because I made a deal with him to keep you safe. He’s been keeping Davio in line.”

Aaron was silent at that, just staring at Dunn.

Phoebe raised her hand, her need to set the facts straight winning out over her desire not to upset the man who held her handgun. “For the record,” she said, “I’ve never so much as met Manny or Davio Dellarosa, let alone—”

“Since when?” Aaron interrupted her to ask his brother. The expression on his face was terrible, and Phoebe closed her mouth, focusing instead on becoming as small and invisible as possible. Just as she’d had no desire to drown in someone’s backyard swimming pool, she hated the bitter irony of being shot and killed with her own deadly weapon. “This deal you made …?”

“I contacted Manny a year ago,” Dunn told his brother quietly. “When we realized that Pauline was going to die. I knew Davio would find her from her death certificate, if not from her medical records. And if he found her, he’d find you.”

Okay, wait, who was Pauline? Dunn had mentioned a Francine, during his attempt to get in touch with his former teammates. But as Phoebe looked from Dunn to his brother and back, she decided now was not the time to ask.

Aaron, meanwhile, was staring at Dunn. “Jesus,” he breathed. “What did you do? Are you actually working for Manny Dellarosa?”

“I am,” Dunn responded, holding the other man’s gaze. “At least I was. Before today’s shit hit the fan.”

“Jesus, Eee,” Aaron said.

“I did what I had to. And it was working. The deal I made. But it all got royally f*cked up today.”

When Martell Griffin had handed him that so-called Get Out of Jail Free card. But the truth was, nothing was ever entirely free, was it? Especially not if Manny and Davio Dellarosa now believed that Ian had information that could hurt their family.

“Right here, right now, we’ve gotta go,” Dunn continued. “You’ve gotta call Shel and go pick up your kid. We’ll meet at the contact point and regroup. I’ll fix this—I will. I can. I just need a little time. And a chance to talk to Manny.” He glanced over at Phoebe at that, and she shook her head.

Despite what he believed, she did not have access to Manny Dellarosa. Although, maybe her law firm did. And wasn’t that a creepy thought?

“So everything we did, everything you put in place to keep us safe and hidden was, what?” Aaron was asking his brother. “Just one of your bullshit con jobs to keep us on a tight leash, while you sold your soul to the devil? God, I knew it—all that time. I f*cking knew it!”

“No,” Dunn said, as he stripped off his wet boxers. He’d apparently decided not to put his dry jeans on over them. And yes, now he was standing there buck naked, and completely unselfconscious about it. “The secrecy you maintained was insurance. Plus, I wanted to be sure that you kept your head down. The Dellarosas aren’t the only ones looking for you—I’m sure you remember. And FYI, I didn’t sell my soul—I just sold a little bit of my time.”

As Phoebe watched through her eyelashes, Dunn pulled on his jeans, commando.

“Go inside, but be careful,” he commanded Aaron. “I doubt they made it over here before me, but still … Get your go-bags, and while you’re at it, grab something for Phoebe to change into, will you?” He threw another glance at her.

She turned her head and quickly put on her best I absolutely wasn’t looking at your naked ass face, instead watching Aaron as he limped across the patio and over to the slider that had a keyhole.

He grimly unlocked the door, but he turned before he went into the house, and he said, “It was my time, too. That you sold to Manny. Or maybe you didn’t think I’d notice when you vanished off the f*cking face of the f*cking earth, you f*cking douchebag.”

He didn’t stick around to hear Dunn’s rebuttal, which was a quiet but heartfelt and drawn out “Shhhhhhit.”

Phoebe cleared her throat, twice, three times. But when she spoke, her voice was still froggy. “I could, um, actually use a rest-room,” she said. “Before we get back in the car?”

“We don’t have time. You should’ve gone when you were in the pool,” Dunn retorted.

She laughed her disbelief. “Oh, is that why you threw me in?”

“No,” he said. “I had to make sure that if you were wearing a wire, it shorted out.”

A wire.

“Unlike you, I don’t work for Manny Dellarosa,” Phoebe said. “Or his brother Davio or his son Vincent”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“or his nephew what’s-his-name—Berto—or any other stray Dellarosas.”

“Which is what you’d say if you did work for them,” he retorted, throwing her own words back at her. Paraphrased, yes, but close enough.

“That’s true,” she said, which surprised him a little—she could tell. “Your brother said—and okay, tangent! There’s a warrant out for Aaron’s arrest in connection to an unsolved murder. As your lawyer, I have to advise you to convince your brother to surrender to the police—”

“That’s not going to happen,” Dunn said. “Davio Dellarosa wants him dead. If D.A. goes into the system for any reason at all, the Dellarosas have the connections and manpower to reach him, and I’ll be burying him by Friday.”

Wait a minute. “Aaron’s nickname is D.A.?”

“Double a,” he told her as he sat down on the lounge chair to tie up the laces of his boots, “r, o, n?”

She got it. “So Shelly’s his …?”

“Spouse,” Dunn said, which was kind of a weird word choice, similar to saying vehicle for car.

“And who’s Pauline?”

“One of Shelly’s half sisters,” he told her.

“And she died?” Phoebe asked.

“Last year,” Dunn confirmed.

“So who’s Francine?” Phoebe asked.

“Shel’s other half sister,” Dunn said. “The younger, not dead one.”

“Big family,” Phoebe said.

“Not really.”

“I’m an only child,” she reminded him. “So, rewind back to your brother. Aaron. Davio Dellarosa wants him dead because …?”

“It’s a long, ugly story,” Dunn said, “and we need to get moving. Besides, I took care of that.”

“By making a deal, with Manny,” Phoebe said. “You went to jail, and Manny made his brother, Davio, stay away from your brother, Aaron.”

“That’s how it worked.”

“So you became, what?” Phoebe asked. “Manny Dellarosa’s Northport prison inside man?”

“No.” Dunn was absolute. “I wouldn’t do that. I was serving time for Manny’s f*ckup of a son, Vincent.”

Whoa. And suddenly it all made sense. It was Vincent Dellarosa who got drunk and trashed the cars in that bar parking lot. But because Ian Dunn had made a deal to protect Aaron and his family, he’d confessed and then pled guilty to the crime.

But then it didn’t make sense. “If you were simply doing Vincent’s time,” Phoebe pointed out, “then you should’ve been turning cartwheels at the idea of getting out early.”

“It’s not that simple,” Dunn told her.

“Try me,” she said.

There was more to this—she could see it in Dunn’s eyes. But he shook his head. “Imagine if you were Manny Dellarosa, and you had a deal with me—an illegal deal—”

“I’m highly aware of the illegality,” Phoebe said. “And as your lawyer, I have to advise—”

“Shh,” Dunn said. “You’re Manny. And I’m me. And I don’t contact you. I just suddenly walk out of the prison, a free man. Aren’t you going to wonder exactly what I know about you and your f*ckup of a son, Vincent? What deal went down between me and the authorities? FYI, Vince currently has a homicide trial on his to-do list. I’m betting this time, Manny’s not finding any takers to plead guilty for him. The death penalty really gets in the way of that.”

“So you think the Dellarosas are going to believe that you have incriminating information about Vincent,” Phoebe said. “And come after you.” Just as Martell had predicted. She cleared her throat. “Then the best thing to do is to get your family to safety—”

“Which is exactly what I’m doing.”

“I can help,” she told him. “I can contact Martell—”

Dunn had already started to laugh. “Deliver my brother to the FBI, who will immediately arrest him and charge him with murder, or even manslaughter? I don’t think so.”

“Did he do it?” Phoebe asked.

“Kill the guy? Hell, yeah. He protected himself—and Shelly—from a hit man that Davio sent to waste them.”

“If it was self-defense,” Phoebe started.

“It was.”

“Then it should be easy enough to clear up,” she countered.

“It should be,” he agreed. “But it’s not. Because the authorities can’t tell their own asses from their elbows, and while they take their sweet time piecing together the facts in the case, Aaron will be sitting in jail where Davio Dellarosa will end him. So, no. I’m not putting him in that kind of danger.”

When she opened her mouth to keep arguing, he stopped her.

“Look, it’s not going to happen,” Dunn said. “I don’t trust you, I don’t trust Martell. And I sure as hell don’t trust the FBI. So I’m going to take care of my brother my way. Same way I’ve done ever since he was two, when our mother ODed. I’m not stopping now.”

Sweet Jesus. Phoebe lowered her voice. “Aaron doesn’t know you were in prison, does he?” From what Aaron had said, Ian had just mysteriously disappeared.

Dunn glanced toward the house, as if making sure Aaron wasn’t within earshot before he sighed heavily. With his elbows on his knees, his hands were up on the back of his neck as if he had a headache. “No.”


Apparently Dunn had disappeared right after making contact with Manny. He’d obviously stayed away from his family from that moment on—maybe to keep them from talking sense into him, maybe out of his desire to keep them safe. Phoebe could imagine the months’ worth of meetings that his deal with Manny had triggered—and not just with Manny’s screwup of a son to get the facts of the crime straight so that Dunn could make a believable confession, but also with the lawyers hired to guide him through the maze that was the Florida legal system. There would have been at least one deposition, a meeting to hammer out the deal in exchange for that guilty plea, a sentencing hearing—all before the start of that eighteen-month sentence.

“Mind taking my Glock away from him before you drop that anvil on his head?” she asked.

Dunn smiled slightly at that. But his smile faded. “Do me a favor,” he said quietly. “And if you’re working for them—the Dellarosas—just tell me you are. And then help me get in touch with Manny, so I can clear this shit up.”

“I’m not working for the Dellarosas,” Phoebe said for what felt like the hundredth time. “Nor am I working for the government agency who hired Martell Griffin to convince you to save those kids. I’m your lawyer.”

He was silent, just sitting there, gazing at her. When he finally spoke, he said, “I’m going to be really disappointed when you change your clothes, if there’s a wire under there.”

“If you think I’m going to change my clothes,” she said, “right here on the pool deck, in front of you, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Dunn shrugged expansively. “Hey, totally up to you. I asked Aaron to get you something dry to wear because I didn’t think you’d want to mess up the leather interior of your new car. If you don’t care about ruining it …”

“I need a bathroom,” she reminded him.

“And I need a mango lemonade with a little umbrella in it, while I sit with my feet up on the beach at Coki Point in St. Thomas, looking out at the Caribbean for about three weeks straight.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am, too,” he countered. “I’m not going to let you go into Aaron and Shelly’s bathroom and take whatever wire you’re wearing and flush it or hide it or eat it or—”

“If I were wearing a wire, edible or otherwise,” she countered, “then whoever was monitoring the transmissions lost contact with me—abruptly—when you pushed me into the pool. So where are they? Where’s my backup, rushing to my rescue?”

Dunn didn’t respond—apparently he didn’t have an answer for that. And the silence of the afternoon worked beautifully as her Exhibit A. Moments ago, there’d been birds chirping merrily from a nearby ficus tree, but even they were now still. Nothing moved, nothing stirred.

As Dunn glanced up at the tree, his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I mean, either I’m an asset or I’m not, right?” Phoebe continued. “Or—here it comes, wait for it … I’m telling you the truth when I say that I was never wearing any kind of wire in the first place.”

It was then that Dunn launched himself forward off the lounge chair and directly at her, on top of her, pushing her with the full force of his XXL body, back into the pool.

Phoebe felt herself shouting with alarm and surprise, but the sound of her voice was drowned out by some kind of roar. And it was only right before the water once again closed over her head that she saw what looked like sprays of dust from the pool deck and from the wall of the house. And she realized instantly what that was.

Someone was shooting at them.

The birds had gone silent because someone was out there, and Dunn had realized it and saved their lives. That roar was gunfire, the sprays of dust were from bullets digging into the stone and stucco.

She grabbed her glasses off her face and held her breath as best she could as Dunn dragged her with him, across to the far side of the sparkling water, where they’d be sheltered from the bullets by the wall of the pool. He kept her tightly against him as he pulled her up and out of the water just a little bit, just enough so that she could breathe with her head tipped back.

Her jacket was too heavy. It was pulling her down again, and she clawed to get it off while still clutching her glasses in one hand. Dunn helped her, tearing at her shirt as well—taking the opportunity to see for himself that she wasn’t wearing a wire, shorted out or otherwise.

Unless, of course, it was hidden in her pants. But he didn’t try to get those off of her.

“Aaron!” he was bellowing, “I need cover! At least one shooter in the tree at ten o’clock!” He swept his hair out of his face with the hand that he wasn’t using to keep her anchored to him, and drops of water sprayed her as he said far more quietly but no less intensely, “When he lays down fire—big breath and a push. When we get to the other side, I’ll help you out of the pool. Then we’re heading for the house, for the door Aaron used. Keep moving, even when you get inside—get back, away from the glass, head for the front of the house, stay down, got it?”

Phoebe nodded, slipping her glasses back on. “I want my Glock back.”

Dunn smiled at that, just briefly. “Yeah, I want your Glock back, too. Aaron!”

“Eee!” came his brother’s answering shout from the house. “Go!”

Big breath and a push—but Phoebe did little more than draw in a lungful of air and use one hand to keep her glasses on her nose, before Dunn used his tree-trunk-like legs to push off the pool wall and propel them underwater and back toward the house. She just clung to him, along for the ride.

When they came up to the surface, she could hear Aaron laying down covering fire which meant—please God—that whoever had been shooting at them was now focused on ducking and not being killed, and was thus unable to shoot back.

Or at least she hoped so, because she was about to be a great big target.

Dunn was up and out of the pool first, quickly reaching down to grab her by both arms and pull her up, too. He could have left her there—of that she was well aware—but he didn’t. She barely had her feet beneath her before they were running full-speed for the house, with Dunn shielding her as best he could.

That wasn’t just her Glock making that racket—Dunn’s brother was firing a second weapon, too, from the second-story window of the house. He was probably doing it double-fisted, as befitted his super-macho action-star vibe.

Dunn pushed her through the slider, but her wet feet slipped the moment she stepped onto the tile floor and she lost traction—except she didn’t need it because Dunn was pushing her down, diving with her, somehow managing to be both beneath her and on top of her, skidding with her onto the floor as whoever was out there started shooting again.

And this time the bullets took out the glass doors, shattering them with a crash.

But they were still sliding, and then Dunn was pulling her with him again, scrambling farther into the house, past the kitchen island and into the main part of the great room, heading—or so Phoebe believed—for the front door.

He’d somehow managed to scoop her bag from the pool deck, which was good because it held the keys to her car. Although, shit! “The key fob’s wet,” Phoebe said, and the look Dunn gave her would’ve been comical under other circumstances, because it was clear he had no idea why she’d told him that.


“My electronic car key,” she tried to explain, “went into the pool. I don’t know if it’s waterproof—if it’ll still work to start the car.”

That was where they were going, right? Out the front door to where her car was waiting?

But Dunn didn’t open the front door. Instead he said, “It’s okay,” as he scrambled up to his knees and opened the door to a closet that was perpendicular to the front entrance. He pushed aside a pair of slickers—one bright yellow and the other fire-engine red.

“Come on,” he said, looking right at her, reaching out to grab her hand, as if he wanted her to … go into that closet …?

It was then that Aaron came thundering down the stairs as, simultaneously, the living room window shattered, shot out by gunmen who were apparently also out front, in the street.

There was no going out the front door—it was clear they were fully surrounded—and Phoebe let herself get pushed by Dunn into the closet, even as Aaron dove the rest of the way down the stairs. Dunn caught his brother and all but tossed him through the closet door, too. Aaron then pushed Phoebe even farther in, and she stumbled over boots and at least two pairs of baseball cleats and part of a fishing pole before she realized that this wasn’t just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill coat closet where they were going to huddle in fear before being executed by the mob.

Instead, there was a door—a small door that she had to duck down to go through—that led into a room.

And yes. This house that Ian Dunn had bought a year ago to keep his brother safe had a panic room.