Shot Through the Heart
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Nicole Helm
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22
Chapter One
Holden Parker didn’t need a mission to make him feel alive, but boy, it sure did help. Six weeks of investigating and not one minute of fieldwork had left him antsy and ready for action. Real action.
He hadn’t joined the secretive North Star Group five years ago to wait around. He’d joined to do some good in the world.
For four years, he’d been able to stay in the field, constantly working to help bring down the Sons of the Badlands, a powerful gang that had run roughshod over the poorer communities in South Dakota.
In the past year, assignments had slowly dried up as the Sons had withered down to a noncriminal element. Holden knew he wasn’t the only one who’d been afraid that was the end of North Star.
But the head of the group had come through with a new assignment a few weeks ago, and even though Holden had only been backup on that mission, it had been good to be in the field again. He was ready for more.
After six long weeks, Shay had finally called a leader meeting for this morning. Which meant assignments were going to be doled out—real, in-the-field assignments. Holden practically skipped to the meeting room.
He met Sabrina Killian in the hallway and grinned, because next to a mission and a nice, cold beer, there were few things he enjoyed more than irritating Sabrina.
“You know it’ll be me next. Shay’s not sending you out on a mission when you’re still banged up,” Holden said, nodding at her arm, which had spent six weeks in a cast up until yesterday.
Holden himself felt much better with it gone. Then he didn’t have to feel guilty for not letting her finish off the guys who’d ambushed her on their last mission. He knew she could have taken them, but he’d also known her arm was seriously injured, so he’d stepped in.
Sabrina had not thanked him.
She scowled at him now, and he knew she hadn’t forgiven him for it. Sabrina wasn’t the forgiving sort. He supposed, perversely, that’s what he liked about her. In a little-sister sort of way.
He saw too much of himself in Sabrina, which was why he’d convinced the old head of North Star to give her a job after she’d tried to beat him up in a seedy South Dakota bar years ago. He’d seen too clearly a person bent on destruction, just like he’d once been.
“We’ll see,” she muttered at him, walking shoulder to shoulder down the narrow hallway.
“Hey, remember when I saved your butt a few weeks ago?” He slung his arm around her shoulder. She shrugged off the gesture before giving him a saccharine-sweet fake smile.
“Hey, remember when I kicked your butt a few years ago? Besides, if you’d given me a little more time, I could have taken those guys on my own. Fractured arm and all.”
“Must be losing your touch. Want to try me now?” Holden offered, spreading his arms as if to offer her a free punch.
She tossed her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder. “When you’ve hung up your warped moral code about hitting women who were this close to being Navy SEALs, I’ll fight you.”
Before he could respond to that, someone cleared their throat.
Holden turned to see Shay standing in the entrance of the conference room, arms crossed, boss glare on her face. She’d been with North Star longer than any of them and had been tapped by their old leader to take over when he’d retired after a major injury almost two years ago.
Holden wouldn’t say he liked her better than Granger McMillan, as he didn’t really like having a boss, but what he did like about both his former boss and his current one was a shared desire to take down the bad guys. And a willingness to get the job done.
“Children,” Shay said blandly. “If you’d enter so we could get this started?”
Sabrina sent Holden a haughty look, then sailed into the room in front of him. She took her usual chair, so Holden took his. He glanced at the empty one next to him. Reece wouldn’t be coming to this meeting. Or any following meetings.
Reece Montgomery had quit. Left North Star for domestic bliss. Holden tried not to think about it, because the whole thing gave him the creeps. That a contained and hard man like Reece Montgomery could be undone by some innkeeper and her son was a bit terrifying.
Holden had no desire to be taken down in such a way. Ever.
Elsie Rogers sat at her computer in the corner tapping away, and at least some things would stay the same. As head of IT, Elsie barely ever left the digital light of her computer screen, and Holden doubted she ever would.
But Shay was going to have to promote one of the lower field operatives to replace Reece. It had been six weeks and she hadn’t done it. And no one had pressured her to. Holden knew he should. He was now the senior field operative, after all. But he kept his mouth shut instead. They’d had enough change the past few years.
“What we have in the wake of the whole situation from a few weeks ago is two highly dangerous weapons in the hands of two highly dangerous individuals,” Shay began, standing next to Elsie as she spoke to him and Sabrina.
“So, let’s go,” Holden said.
“As if anything is that simple. From what our friends at the FBI can figure, we’ve just tangled with a highly specialized, complicated death machine.”
“I thought it was a weapons dealer,” Sabrina said with a frown.
They’d taken down a group selling black-market weapons to the wrong kind of people six weeks ago. The group had been thoroughly dismantled as far as Holden knew.
“Turns out, the weapons being supplied were only a small cog in a much bigger machine. Which means they’ll just replace their weapons dealer. The FBI is putting a team on finding out more about this machine, but our job is much more urgent. While the FBI is trying to smoke out the head of the big group, we’ve got to stop two different hit men. Before we fully took down the weapons-dealer group, they shipped off two untraceable, highly powerful guns—and distributed them to two ghosts. And I do mean ghosts.”
“Sounds like a challenge,” Holden said, kicking back in his chair and balancing it on two legs. Man, he was ready for a challenge after all this downtime and thinking.
“Two hit men. Two guns that can make a joke out of Kevlar. We don’t know who the hit men are. We don’t know who the targets are. We don’t even know how much time we have before they act. We know nothing. Except the guns themselves. The first lead we’ve gotten, thanks to Elsie’s tireless work, is the delivery of ammunition for our weapon to two different PO boxes. Each equally untraceable, as the owners don’t exist and security footage gives next to nothing away.”
“So there’s video of the ammunition being picked up?” Sabrina asked.
“Elsie’s hacked what she can, and I’ll show you that in a moment. Either way, you’re going to split up and scout each address out. Our first target is Wilson, Wyoming. This is the only video we have of our suspect retrieving the package from the PO box.”
A grainy security feed showed up on the big screen on the wall in front of them. A man dressed head to toe for winter weather walked over to one of the boxes. He kept his head completely turned away from the camera, blocking a row of boxes from view. He was wearing too many clothes to make out any sort of defining characteristic.
“A bit overdressed, isn’t he?” Holden murmured.
“It’s still cold enough at the upper elevations, but you’re right. Seems odd. Especially since we know what’s in the package. And what makes it more shady...” Shay nodded to Elsie, and another grainy video clicked on.
This video was similarly set up to the first, but definitely a different post office. “Evening, Nebraska.”
Another person, dressed a bit heavily for a summer afternoon, came in in much the same way the man from the earlier video had. Too many clothes to make out defining characteristics, face kept pointed away from the camera, blocking the box as they opened it.
“That gives us two targets. I want you both on it. You can take a team if you want, but the first stages might be best done alone until you actually find the target. Though I’d want a team close by for backup. A full team completely in place before you take action.”
“Define full team,” Holden replied with a wide grin. He knew it would irritate Shay, and that was ever his goal. Because when she was irritated, she didn’t get that far-off look in her eye that reminded him a bit too much of Granger before he’d been injured and quit North Star wholesale.
Holden didn’t want to lose another boss. He didn’t want to lose North Star and the missions that kept him employed and satisfied.
“We’ve got two people, at least, about to be killed, for reasons unknown to us. And that might only be the tip of the iceberg. Either way, we have very little to go on. It’s important. But it’s not more important than your own lives,” Shay said sternly. Too serious these days. The weight of running North Star Group had definitely changed her.
Holden wasn’t sure it was for the better.
“Don’t you think that depends?” Sabrina asked.
Shay fixed her with a hard look. “This is a dangerous mission. You’re risking your life by taking it on, but that doesn’t mean you have to play hero.”
“How would we live with ourselves if we didn’t?” Holden asked, with none of his usual humor or joking. He’d joined the secretive North Star Group as a way out of the gang he’d gotten himself mixed up with. He’d joined to take down the people who’d lied to him and hurt him when he’d been at his weakest, angriest and most vulnerable. He’d joined to be the good guy instead of the bad guy. Mostly thanks to Granger McMillan.
Now, the Sons of the Badlands had been eradicated. As much as Holden was proud to have been a part of it, it didn’t mean his need to erase all the bad he’d done had disappeared. Or ever would.
Shay got that look on her face that Holden didn’t want to parse or think on. It was too much emotion, too much change. They didn’t need it. They needed to act.
Holden turned to Sabrina as the same time she turned to him. In unison, they said the exact same thing to each other. “You take Nebraska.”
“Not a snowball’s chance in flat prairie hell,” Holden replied.
Sabrina dug a coin out of her pocket. “Flip for it?”
“Who carries change around?”
“I found it yesterday in the gym. Thought it’d be good luck. Come on. Call it in the air. You win, you choose where you want to go.”
Holden shrugged and grinned. “Sure. You should know luck always falls on my side.”
She flipped the coin, and Holden called heads. When it landed tails, he muttered an oath.
Sabrina widened her eyes and laid on the fake regret. “Oh dear. It looks like I get to pick, doesn’t it?”
Before Holden could argue with her, Shay interrupted.
“All right. Sabrina, you’re headed to the Tetons. Holden, that means Nebraska for you.”
Sabrina reached over and slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry. I’ll send you pictures of the mountains.”
“Great,” Holden muttered.
No, he didn’t want to go to Nebraska, but hey, a mission was a mission. He’d be glad for it. Flat prairie and all.
NEBRASKA WASN’T QUITE the hell Holden had imagined, but it wasn’t exactly a dream either. It wasn’t all flat. In fact, there were some interesting rock formations that reminded him of South Dakota, where he’d grown up.
Which brought up feelings of nostalgia, regret and a determination to complete his mission and get back to Wyoming headquarters. Ideally before Sabrina did, so he could be deployed to the Tetons and irritate her in the process.
Sabrina’s constant text messages of the picturesque Teton range was a constant reminder there were a lot prettier places in the world than Evening, Nebraska. This place was all small town. Lots of farms. Lots of flat, even with the occasional rock formation.
The town of Evening was minuscule. Made up mostly of a brief Main Street with a handful of businesses clearly kept alive only by a farming population that didn’t have anywhere else to go for mail, banking or necessities.
The post office was a stone square of a historic building. Outside, there was a plaque that said it was on the National Historical Register and that it had been built in 1875. Inside, the lobby would maybe fit five people.
He’d been watching for a few days now. Inside, there was a small wall of PO boxes, and a counter where a friendly enough woman worked every day from nine in the morning until she closed down the entire building to take her lunch break from noon to one. She’d be back at one on the dot and stay open until four.
It was clear from moment one she did not trust strangers or appreciate any of Holden’s charm. Still, she answered his questions. Though it had only been to say she had no recollection of a stranger renting or using PO box 10. In fact, she acted as if that particular PO box hadn’t been rented in years.
Holden didn’t think she was lying, but that meant someone had gone through a lot of trouble to know which PO boxes were empty, and how to break into a PO box. Quickly, too. The security video Elsie had hacked into had showed the man in and out in under three minutes.
A ghost, as Shay had said. The slim positive side to a ghost was he likely thought he had ample time to take out his target. Which meant Holden had more time to find him first.
Holden hoped. Because otherwise this was a very dead end.
On his third day in Evening, Holden watched the post office from across the street, pretending to smoke a cigarette outside the small general store. He deleted yet another smug text from Sabrina and her picturesque assignment, then asked her if she’d gotten any closer to her target.
He smiled when she didn’t respond. She was no closer than him. He wasn’t glad they had zero luck, but he’d enjoy the chance to still beat her to solving his assignment first.
He scanned Main Street again. The chance of his target coming back was probably slim, but the chance of seeing him walking around, shopping at the general store or driving down the street? Well, it was possible.
Even in the middle of the day, things were pretty quiet in this small town. Every once in a while someone would walk by, go in and out of the businesses. Sometimes people drove by. Some stopped. Some didn’t.
Holden would watch them all without them knowing. A skill he’d developed once, many years ago, picking pockets.
A rusty old truck rumbled to a stop in front of the post office, blocking his view. Holden frowned and tossed the cigarette in the trash can. Pretending to take a casual stroll, he moved across the street and then down the sidewalk as the driver got out of the truck and walked to the post office door. She wore an oversize coat, jeans streaked with dirt and a ratty-looking stocking cap over messy braided pigtails.
For half a second, he thought she might be a child, but she’d been driving. Besides, she was too tall and her face wasn’t really childlike. Youngish. Early twenties, probably. She stepped inside, and Holden angled himself so he could watch her through the windowed door. She didn’t stop and chat with the woman behind the counter like the rest of the patrons had done since he’d been watching.
He inched closer, keeping her in view, but he stopped short when he saw what she was doing.
She was pulling a few envelopes out of the exact mailbox he’d been watching. Number 10. He counted once, twice, then three times to make sure it was in fact the mailbox that supposedly nobody owned. The mailbox someone had ordered high-powered, black-market ammo to be delivered to.
Holden eyed the woman. Could she have been the overdressed person who’d gotten the ammo earlier in the week? He’d assumed it was a man, but...
Before she closed the door to the box, she looked back over her shoulder and locked eyes with him, as if she’d felt him watching.
Damn.
Holden smiled lazily. Looking away would bring more suspicion than being a creep. He hoped.
The woman looked back at her mailbox. Her coat collar and pigtails obscured her face, but he figured his best course of action was to stay here and then hit on her. She might remember his face, she might be weirded out, but hopefully she wouldn’t think much of it beyond that.
Especially if she was his target.
After a few more moments, she walked out of the post office. She kept her eyes straight ahead on her truck and didn’t give him a second glance.
“Hi there,” he offered.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t look at him. She just walked by, going straight for her truck.
Hmm.
“I thought small-town folks were supposed to be friendly,” he called after her.
She gave him one cold look, then slid into the driver’s seat of her truck. When she drove away, Holden noted her license plate number, the direction she was going and the size of her tires, then backtracked to go find his car.
