“A REMOTE, DUMBASS!”
They had to have heard her back in Florida. Red-faced, Luke searched the sidelines until he found him, that rotund little man who had made such a fuss about the noise of hundreds of special agents. He was covering his head with his clipboard and hiding under a table.
He sprinted to the man and dove, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him out into the open despite the fact that the shouting match had turned into a proper fight. A chair came flying past his head. Another shot rang out, and then another. Negotiations had broken down. People screamed and ran for cover.
“WHERE IS THE REMOTE?” Luke screamed over the noise.
The man looked at him as though he’d just fallen from the sky dressed like a rabbit. “WHAT?”
“FOR THE TV! WHERE?”
The man reached into a pocket and pulled out a remote. “Are you insane?”
“It’s a prerequisite!” Luke yelled, and ran to where he could get a clear shot with the only weapon he had.
Dani ran up the steps, bent over. Maria held off the pursuit with her pistol, but she couldn’t keep the bullets from dancing around Dani’s head and sparking off the railings. She disappeared for a moment and reappeared, sliding across the floor of the balcony, sliding under the bottom rail.
“DANI!” Luke cried as she fell. She caught herself by her ankles, hanging upside down from the railing, and jammed the stick into the television.
Three men drew a bead on her helpless form as she hung over the wreckage of the cake contest. Each one of them fell dead before they could fire.
Luke looked over to see his mother standing behind him, her gun pointed in the air. He could almost see the smoke rising from the barrel. “Never underestimate your mother, dear!” she called out cheerfully.
As if in a dream, Luke pressed INPUT. On the screen the words ENTER PASSWORD glowed an evil green.
“EDWIN!” he yelled, and tossed the remote to the man who had long since taken cover behind a barricade of several tables. He immediately dropped it and went scrambling after the batteries. Holding the batteries in with one hand, he typed four numbers with the other and the television flickered to the image of a man behind a desk.
“My name is Richard Thornbrough. I’m the deputy director for the FBI.”
“He was killed last year,” Luke heard one of the agents tell the other.
“I have proof of corruption at the highest level. Ray Addams, Johnathan Killen...” He went on, detailing the names of people who had established ties with organized crime. There was a flicker and another face appeared, this one speaking French. Another flicker and a man in a turban speaking Arabic.
A volley of bullets destroyed the television screen, but the sound kept going.
Every TV in the place, screens that ranged all the way around the room, was playing the same thing. The shooters lost interest in the war at hand, and instead became intent on silencing the televisions, gunfire causing multiple eruptions of sparks and shattering glass to rain down on the combatants.
As luck would have it, they were too busy to pay attention to the mass of police and agents, including the FBI, who surrounded them, weapons drawn.
“DANI!” Luke screamed. Dani stood carefully, rising from where she’d fallen. Luke could see that she was injured; she was limping, but she was alive. He launched himself at her and she ran. meeting him halfway, landing somehow in his arms, lips taking his, climbing him like a pole.
“Well done, my boy!” William said, clapping Luke hard on the back. Luke turned to protest, and somehow lost his grip on the one thing that mattered. Dani disappeared, holding up one finger in a signal to wait. She bent and pulled up a large chunk of cake, all smiles and an evil look in her eye.
He’d seen that look before.
Grinning, Luke stepped back, waiting to see what she intended to do with it.
William never saw it coming.
Dani quite simply walked up to him. Several men with the look of bodyguards found something the other way to draw their attention as she leaned in and smashed the cake into William’s pompous, smiling face.
“Let’s get out of here,” she murmured, turning and pressing her icing-covered body to Luke’s, melding them in a confectionary glue.
Luke did the only thing he could under the circumstances. He kissed his bride.
LUKE GRABBED DANI’S wrist and walked away.
They’d been reassured that Marcus would be okay. He’d been shot in the shoulder, and hit his head on a table when we went down. By the time Luke and Dani had reunited he was already sitting up, giving the paramedics hell. It was his idea for them to go—somehow he’d managed to scrounge a five-dollar bill from somewhere and pressed it into Luke’s hand with a significant look when they’d come over to check on him.
“I’ll be out of the hospital by nightfall,” he’d assured them, though privately Dani doubted it. Tomorrow maybe. Even a bullet through soft tissue would require a certain amount of watching once he’d been stitched up. “And, so you know, I’m retiring after this. You two are on your own.”
“When pigs fly,” Dani had retorted, tears in her eyes. Glad to see he was all right, or at least that he would be.
William caught them on the way out. He informed them the FBI was off the case, and thanks to the information on the drive Ray was now the current object of their interest. William was directing cleanup himself, with icing in his eyebrows and down the front of his suit. Dani’s aim had been true. The look suited him, giving him a clownish appearance.
Despite his insistence on debriefing and the repeated attempts to call his boy back into line, Luke wasn’t listening. He looked tired, worn out. He simply left the building without saying a word, holding tight to Dani’s hand, towing her along, disregarding all demands for questions or resolution of issues.
Truth be told, Dani had had enough. She had no more interest in staying than Luke did, and was thankful he’d taken the initiative.
As they left the building, Dani jogged to keep pace with Luke’s long strides. His jaw was set, his eyes focused on something beyond the parking lot where a plethora of tow-trucks was hauling away the debris of a dozen cars with government plates. “What the matter?” she asked, reaching up to touch his shoulder with her free hand. “Where are we going?”