Highlander Assassinated (Highlander In Time #16)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

L issa was breathing slow and steady, poised like a cat ready to pounce — the intruder just needed to take another few steps before he’d be in the perfect position for her to spring out and disarm him. But then, for no reason she could figure, he stopped in his tracks. For a horrible, frozen second she wondered if he’d somehow figured out that she was there. But his eyes weren’t on the bathroom door. No, they were fixed right ahead of him, on something at the other end of the hallway. With the way the bathroom door opened, Lissa couldn’t see what he was looking at, but the horrible sinking feeling in her stomach was her intuition telling her she didn’t need to see to know what was happening.

“Danny, what are you doing here? You’re going to get in so much trouble.”

It was Angela’s voice, of course — but in a low, breathy, almost sultry register that Lissa had never heard her use before. From where Daniel’s eyes were fixed, Lissa gathered that she’d just stepped out of her bedroom and into the hallway. It had been barely five minutes, Lissa thought, gritting her teeth so hard that her jaw ached. She’d been given exactly one instruction, and it had taken her all of five minutes to disobey it. Now she was standing in a hallway, presumably still in those ridiculous pajamas, with an unbalanced man pointing a shotgun at her and her bodyguard stuck in a deeply disadvantageous position.

“You made me do this.” Lissa felt a terrible calm pass over her at the sound of the man’s voice. The first syllable told her everything she needed to know about him — whatever toxic combination of entitlement and illegal drugs were coursing through his system meant that he was completely out of control. And, more to the point, he was well beyond reason — which was why Lissa felt fear, but not surprise, coursing through her when she saw him lifting the barrel of his shotgun and aiming it unsteadily down the hallway. As she’d guessed, there was no hint of training or proficiency in his movements — but you didn’t need to be a skilled marksman to shoot a woman at the other end of a hallway. It would be harder to miss Angela than to hit her — and that was assuming she stayed where she was.

“Danny, please,” Angela started, her voice low and soothing — but that wasn’t what made Lissa act. It was the sound of the floorboards creaking, indicating that her damn fool of a client had done the dumbest possible thing she could possibly have done, and begun walking toward a man with a shotgun leveled at her. And sure enough, the man’s fingers were moving for the trigger.

Lissa was already in motion. The sound of the bathroom door slamming open reached her ears at what felt like the same moment she made contact with the gunman, and the roar of the shotgun was deafening. Angela screamed, but Lissa could tell that the shot had gone wide, shattering an antique mirror a few paces away from them in the hallway. Lissa took full advantage of Danny’s shock to wrestle the weapon out of his hands. But the relief of disarming him didn’t last long. His shock gave way to fury in record time, and with an inarticulate scream of rage he thrashed against her grip and broke loose.

In the curious suspension of a high adrenaline situation, Lissa watched as if in slow motion as Danny stumbled forwards. Angela was still at the far end of the hallway, frozen in shock with her hands over her ears. The shotgun was still clattering away in the opposite direction where Lissa had tossed it, but it was clear that Danny had no intention of reclaiming it. Even as he righted himself, she could see him reaching into his jacket — and though she’d only had him in her grip for a minute, she’d felt enough hard objects through the lining of that coat to know he was almost certainly about to pull out another lethal weapon. Gun, knife, or just his bare hands — whatever it was, Lissa knew that he’d be able to do a hell of a lot of damage to her client if she didn’t act right now.

And so, simply and cleanly, Lissa drew her pistol, took a heartbeat to aim, and fired a shot directly into Danny’s retreating back.

The second shot was more muted than the noisy roar of the shotgun, but there was no doubt as to its efficacy — Danny went down like a sack of bricks, his furious yelling silenced with almost comic immediacy by the impact of the bullet. Lissa moved forward to see what had fallen from his outstretched hand, but before she could reach him, Angela was all but on top of her. For a moment, she thought the young girl was going to throw herself into her arms, so loudly was she sobbing — but instead, she found herself being battered around the head and shoulders, Angela choking out curse words between her sobs.

“You — you didn’t have to — you monster — how could — I was about to — he wasn’t going to?—”

Lissa felt some of her frayed nerves give way entirely. She caught both of Angela’s wrists, gripping a little harder than was strictly necessary in an effort to shut the woman up for a minute. Angela struggled, but Lissa didn’t let go.

“Are you going to stop hitting me?”

“Fine,” Angela spat.

Lissa released her. She was then treated to perhaps the filthiest look she’d ever received — let alone from someone she’d just saved from a man with a shotgun — before Angela flung herself down beside the prone form of Danny. Lissa moved forward gingerly, aware that Angela was interfering with a crime scene that would absolutely take the rest of the night to explain to the police once they arrived. She took a few photos on her cellphone just in case Angela tried anything else insanely stupid, like concealing the weapon that was gripped in Danny’s outstretched hand. Just as Lissa had feared, it was another weapon — this one looked like a hunting knife, the kind with a long, serrated blade. Lissa decided against giving too much thought to what he’d intended to use that one for. Thankfully, it was at that point that Lissa saw the familiar sight of red and blue lights reflected through the bathroom window, and breathed a sigh of relief that the whole scene would soon be out of her hands.

“The police are here, Angela,” she said, trying to keep her tone as gentle as she could. “You’ll need to move away from him so they can?—”

“I’m glad they’re here,” Angela declared tearfully, scrambling to her feet. She drew herself up to her full height and pinned Lissa with what was clearly designed to be a withering stare. “I’m going to tell them exactly what you did.”

Lissa spread her hands, nonplussed. “Good. So am I.”

“You killed him!” Angela’s voice rose in shock.

“I neutralized an immediate threat to your life,” Lissa pointed out, grateful for the calm that settled over her shoulders like a mantle, for the lifetime of training she’d had in not letting her emotions decide how she reacted to accusations like that one. “I did my job.”

“Your job,” Angela spat. “Your pathetic job. You’re fired, bitch. How do you like that?”

She considered pointing out that it was Angela’s parents who’d hired her, not Angela — but somehow, the distinction didn’t seem especially important right now. Instead, she shrugged. The flash of indignation in Angela’s eyes was more satisfying than it should have been.

“He fired a shotgun at you at point blank range, Angela. He was coming at you with a hunting knife. What did you think he was trying to do?”

“You should have found another way!”

“I did find another way,” Lissa snapped, feeling a little more of her patience give way and hoping like hell that the cops got here before she got downright unprofessional. “The other way was for you to stay in the safe room like I told you while I waited for the cops to come and get this man. Instead, you came running out here and nearly got yourself killed.” She bit her tongue on pointing out that without Angela’s interference, she most likely wouldn’t have had to shoot the man, either. A wound like the one Danny had sustained could easily be fatal, and as angry as she was with Angela right now, she didn’t want her looking back on this event and thinking that she was responsible for his death… even if that was technically true.

“He was just — I just needed to talk to him,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

Lissa took a deep breath, reminding herself for the hundredth time that it was part of her job to be kind to this woman. No sense trying to reason with her about Danny — best to change the subject. She reached out for the light switch on the wall nearby, making Angela flinch as the dark space was flooded with light.

“There’s broken glass everywhere,” she said, scanning the floor that lay beneath the ruined mirror. “Are you hurt? Did you step on any?”

It was just enough to distract Angela for long enough for the police to come through the door, their own weapons drawn. Lissa had put away her own weapon, and she made sure to remain still while the cops took in the scene, turning toward them to ensure they got a good look at her face — as much as the sexism annoyed her, it was nevertheless the truth that police officers tended to be far less threatened by a six-foot figure dressed all in black when they could see immediately that that figure was a woman. Angela, of course, needed no assistance in looking unthreatening — the fluffy pajamas and tear streaked face did that for her. At the sight of the uniformed men in the doorway, something in her seemed to give way, and she hastened down the hallway toward them, sobbing loudly.

What could she do? Lissa stood by the bleeding man on the floor, waiting for the paramedics to arrive, trying to keep her irritation off her face as Angela fell into the arms of one of the cops.

“Thank God,” she heard Angela wail. “Thank God you’re here. Listen, I want to press charges against that woman. She killed my boyfriend.”