Free A Matter of Time 05.5 - Just Jory (MM) by Mary Calmes Page A

endure because of this latest debacle.
    “I should just run away,” I moaned.
    “You––”
    “Not that I could. I mean disappearing, changing my name, altering my face… None of that would stop him. If he wanted to find me, he could do it in a heartbeat. He’s got a whole Federal database at his fingertips, for crissakes. I mean, it would be one thing if he was, like, hunting you, for instance,” I said, gesturing at the man squatting in front of me. “That might take him like ten seconds longer, after he ran down all your known associates and all that crap, but he’d find you too. And the man is tenacious! He had to find these drug cartel guys once, and he spent two years in Columbia, but he found everyone, and they’re either dead now or rotting in prison.”
    The partner inhaled sharply and I looked up at him.
    “Can you imagine? There you are living your life and then, bam,” I yelled. “He just shows up out of the blue and drops the hammer on you. And it’s not like he doesn’t have this mad-crazy temper sometimes, and this revenge streak a mile long. The man is just unstoppable. And you know, I bet some of those guys he busted in South America would have loved to come home to the US. But I know he left them in some cesspool somewhere just so they could get the whole  Midnight Express experience.”
    “Jesus.”
    I turned back to the leader with his ski mask up. “In all seriousness, though, he’s not gonna actually shoot me, but I won’t be able to get on the bus with you to, like, wherever you’re going. I mean, he’d either be on it or on top of it or like I said, he’d just shoot you in the head. Sam always says that Kevlar would be fantastic if it came in full body armor. But your neck, and your collarbone, and of course your head…all that’s vulnerable. And he’s like a really good shot, like crazy good, like sniper good. Oh, I know,” I got excited, thinking of a good frame of reference as I smiled at them. “Do you guys watch Bones? Like David Boreanz’s character, like that––he’ll just put a bullet in your brain.”
    The first guy, the guy in charge, who no longer had his rifle pointed at me, took a breath. “You’re saying that along with the cops, there’s a U.S. Marshal out there who wants to kill me and my partner?”
    “Well, yeah,” I shrugged, lifting my hands. “I mean, you put PlastiCuffs on me, which are a bitch to get off, by the way. Like, in the movies people just cut them off with a knife or something, but you can’t. There’s a special tool you have to use to clip them. It’s just as bad as when––and they do this all the time––they have a character flip the safety on a revolver.”
    “There’s no safety on a revolver?” The lady beside me asked.
    I scoffed at her, shaking my head. “Yeah no, it’s so stupid.”
    “Really? I had no idea.”
    “And you wouldn’t,” I patted her knee. “Unless you lived with a cop or a guy who knew his guns.”
    “Are you married?” She asked me.
    I beamed at her. “Yep, have been for awhile. We’re waiting to hear from an adoption agency on a kid right now.”
    “Oh,” she cooed.
    “Look at me!”
    I turned back to the guy who had not pulled his ski mask off.
    “You need to talk to your––”
    “Did you know that the SWAT guys are all about saving the hostages and just shooting you dead? Sam told me.”
    “Serves them right,” the lady beside me said. “I have kids at home.”
    “We all do,” the man on the other side of me said. “And I really like the sound of your husband. He sounds like a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy.”
    “Oh no,” I shook my head. “He’s wonderful and kind and loving. It’s just, you know, this is gonna make him psychotic. And he’ll be worried about you guys too, and like I said, his gun is like a cannon and he knows where to aim it.”
    I looked back up at the guy standing above me with the rifle.
    “Are you okay? You look sort of