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Ahead? Or behind?
She pointed the Beretta, readying herself.
Someone was coming her way.
But from where?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cassiopeia watched the three men as they assumed positions around the room. Not with any purpose or plan, just here and there, none of them all that attentive. Which told her these guys were amateurs. Hired help. But they’d managed to use Terry Morse to lure her and Cotton into their clutches, so she had to give them credit for effort.
“You know these people?” Lea asked her grandfather.
“They’re knights.”
Cassiopeia heard the pride.
“No, they’re not,” Cotton said, who’d apparently come to the same “hired help” conclusion.
One of the men signaled to a compatriot to snap a few cell phone photos of the stone. The one giving the orders was squat, heavily built, with a squashed nose, gap-toothed mouth and a thick mat of black hair.
“That what you came for?” Cotton asked.
“Absolutely. But you two kind of changed things.”
Nothing about this seemed okay. And the fact that Lea was in the middle concerned her even more. Terry Morse had not a clue who or what he was dealing with.
The man finished taking his pictures. She concluded that getting their hands on all the cell phones in the room might be the quickest route to where this led.
“I did what you wanted,” Morse said. “I got ’em here.”
“Yes, you did,” Black Hair said. “Good work. So tell me, why are you two here?”
Cotton shrugged. “Never visited this part of the country, so we thought a trip would be fun.”
The leader chuckled. “We got ourselves a comedian.”
“I’ll be doing two shows a night at the lodge where we’re staying. I can get you tickets.”
“I heard you talking in the house,” Black Hair said. “What are two federal agents doing here?”
Cotton smiled. “We’re with the Census Bureau, just gathering some information.”
Black Hair lunged to his right, grabbed Lea, and jammed his gun into the side of her neck. Shock flooded the young girl’s eyes.
“Get your damn hands off my granddaughter,” Morse yelled.
“Shut up, old man.”
Morse leaped forward. “Who the hell you callin’ old.”
But one of the other men cut him off, slamming the butt of his pistol into Morse’s left temple, sending him to the floor, groaning.
Lea gasped.
Cotton held up his hands in mock surrender. “No need for that. We can work this through.”
“Then answer my question.”
The gun on Lea remained unchanged.
Cassiopeia decided to go with the truth. “Like you heard, we’re federal agents, here investigating on behalf of the U.S. government. And you’re in a lot of trouble.”
“That still doesn’t answer my question.”
Morse tried to stand, his head clearly woozy, but the man beside him returned him to the floor with a shove. The bees maintained a steady hum, not all that concerned with their presence.
Cassiopeia could imagine what had happened. These men appeared, provided the supposed handshake, used the right words, then talked of the Order and the past. She hardly knew Terry Morse, who seemed like a decent person, the one constant in his life the duty his father had passed down. Sure, it bordered on ridiculous, but it was still something tangible that provided him a sense of belonging. At times, she’d wrestled with her own past, trying to decide exactly where she belonged, and those demons had proven formidable. Luckily, she’d had Cotton there to help. Morse seemed to be on his own, except for Lea.
“I’m not going to ask again,” Black Hair said. “Why are you here?”
The gun remained tight to Lea’s neck. She stared into the girl’s eyes and surprisingly saw more resolve than fear.
Lea had guts.
Like her granddaddy.
“We came for that stone, too,” Cotton said, pointing.
A lie, but it seemed like a plausible explanation. In fact, she firmly believed that it was the right answer to the question.
“Who sent you?”
“The Smithsonian.”
She watched them all carefully, then caught Cotton’s gaze, a current of complicity passing between them, his green eyes crinkling assent. It was as if they could read each other’s minds and she knew what he wanted done. An old trick, for sure, but one that nearly always worked. So she blurted out, “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Black Hair swung around and faced her, keeping hold of Lea.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she said to him.
She stood near one of the hives, a three-foot-tall rectangle slotted with openings. The boxes were made of thin wood and would not survive much jostling.
“I’m no hero,” she said. “Just a paid employee. I can tell you all about why we’re here.”
“I like your attitude,” Black Hair said, and he shoved Lea away, aiming the gun directly at Cassiopeia. “Let’s hear it.”
“I talk better without a gun aimed at me.”
Not a hint of concern laced her voice, which the fool listening to her should have noticed.
But he didn’t.
Cotton used the moment of distraction to inch his way closer to the tables.
The gun slowly lowered.
Cotton’s leg swung up, the sole of his right boot slamming into one of the hives. She took his cue and thrust both of her elbows backward, sending two more of the fragile boxes to the floor. The paper-thin wood shattered, the tops on all three flying off, the honey frames spewing across the floor. The bees, crushed together and stunned for a moment, crawled about in a great furry brown blob, then took to the air.
The humming grew louder.
As did the insects’ agitation.
She knew a little about bees. They’d swarm and aggravate, though they wouldn’t sting unless threatened. But the three men didn’t help matters by vainly swatting at the marauders with their guns.
The first sting came on the intruder to her left, who shrieked in pain. She stiff-armed him hard against the wall, his head slapping the thick wood with a thump. He slumped, feet skidding on the earthen floor, hands clawing fo
r support, fingers caught on the edge of one of the hive tables. Instead of supporting, the table tipped over, more boxes crashing open, releasing a new cloud of bees. She noticed that Lea had immediately hit the floor, lying prone beside her grandfather.
She still wanted that cell phone the one guy had used to snap pictures and darted that way, bees everywhere. She knew once they decided to attack they would not discriminate between friend and foe. The three men staggered for the door, slapping their faces, necks, ears, and scalps.
“Get down,” Lea yelled. “Lie still.”
Cassiopeia dropped to the floor, beside the Morses.
Two of the men fled.
Cotton cut off Black Hair before he could escape. The hand with the gun swung around. Black Hair feinted right, then swung from the left, delivering only a glancing blow, lunging through the bees. Cotton brought his right elbow up with a sharp thrust to the throat. He then wrenched the gun arm down and over his hip, using his weight, twisting and flipping the man in a somersault to the floor.
The gun jarred free.
But Black Hair was quick, rolling through his fall, then rebounding to his feet and bursting out the door.
The bees, now fully stimulated, seemed to have decided that everyone was a threat. A few began to land and she brushed them away. Lea and Morse started crawling to the door.
She followed.
Cotton retrieved the gun and moved for the exit, too.
Shots rang out.
Bullets came through the open doorway, thudding into the walls beyond.
“Stay down,” Cotton yelled.
The bees were becoming an ever-denser shadow. She swiped a few away as carefully as possible, trying not to make matters worse. Cotton belly-crawled to the doorway. She heard the drone of a car engine, then the scrunch of tires on loose dirt.
“They’re gone,” Cotton said. “Let’s get out of here.”
And they did, rushing away toward the house.
“That didn’t go well,” she said to Cotton. “Should we go after them?”
He shook his head. “They’re not our problem.”
