Page 34 of Winter’s Heart (Three of Hearts #1)

Grabbing another of the kitchen chairs, she dragged it through to the laundry, taking a fleeting glance out of the little window next to the rear door as she did so.

And saw people, lots and lots of people, dark shapes in the dark night, flooding down the driveway around the side of her house, filling up the backyard.

In the glare of the single spotlight lighting up her porch, she could see the FBI agents shouting and waving their guns, but Nikki didn’t have time to stop and make sure everyone was okay.

She had her assignment. The chair was solid wood, and she jammed it up under the back door handle, stopping anyone from entering the house, knowing Jacob had done the same thing with the front.

None of the agents could get in this way unless they had a ramrod, or she let them in.

Task done, she almost wavered, wanting to watch everything unfold outside.

But this was her chance. She couldn’t fail them all now, not when so many people had come to her aid.

Her heart swelled as the image stayed with her while she rushed through the hidden doorway into her bedroom and the enormity of what was occurring hit her.

This crowd was here for her—or, more accurately, because of Russell—but to help her cause none-the-less.

Quickly and silently, Nikki donned her shoes, her jacket and retrieved her backpack from the rear of the wardrobe and was back in the hallway in under thirty seconds.

She took a precious few moments to study Jacob’s back as he stood tall and silent at the other end, by the front door, all his focus directed through the peephole as he watched the unfolding event outside.

Miller was banging on the door, demanding to be let in, but Jacob ignored her, bracing all his weight against the chair as she battered it harder and harder.

Taking a mental snapshot of his broad-shouldered figure, she stored it away for later, then she went back to the laundry room and stood behind the door, leaning around the side so she could peek out of the small window.

The backyard was now crammed with people.

It wasn’t a big yard, and the corners remained dark where the spotlight didn’t reach, but there must be at least eighty or ninety individuals out there.

Nikki wondered if her front yard looked the same, because if it did, then her neighbors were definitely coming out onto the sidewalk even this late at night for a look.

So much for Linstead wanting to keep this on the down low.

Nikki would love to see him explain this away to his superiors.

The crowd in her backyard were all chanting at the top of their voices, “Let her go, let her go,” and they were drowning out any chance that the two FBI agents would be heard over the hubbub.

One agent was backed right up against the door; she could see his left shoulder through the window.

He was brandishing his gun in the air, but wasn’t aiming it at anyone, and even Nikki could tell it was all bluff.

He’d probably tried to get inside already, but the chair was holding fast. Such an old trick, but a good one; it’d been Jacob’s idea.

The second FBI agent was at the rear of the yard, with his back up against her small garden shed.

He was only just keeping the crowd at bay by strong-arming anyone who came into his personal space, pushing them back.

This man—Nikki had never found out his name—had already admitted defeat and had holstered his weapon, but was still yelling at people to get away from him.

Her escape was imminent, but she needed the guy by the door to move; otherwise, she was stuck.

She scanned the faces of the throng who were gathered at the bottom of the steps, chanting in unison and pointing at the agent who’d come to his senses and also put his gun away, but then pulled out a taser and pointed it menacingly at them.

Nikki didn’t know who all these folks were.

Russell must’ve called in every favor from every individual from every walk of life he’d ever known in his fifty-one years.

A face she recognized morphed out of the crowd in the second row of chanting individuals.

Dr. Reshma Siram was a conservation analyst working at the Marine Institute.

Nikki had consulted with her a few times when she’d been trying to decipher her results from various field trips.

The woman was young, but highly intelligent, and while they weren’t close friends, Nikki respected her shrewd mind, even if it were hidden beneath an unassuming exterior.

They locked gazes, her colleague’s face all sharp angles and shadows from the bright spotlight.

Using sign language, she pointed at the agent outside her door and made shooing motions.

Would she understand what Nikki needed? Reshma pushed her bifocals higher up her nose and bit her bottom lip for a second.

Her long, black hair swayed over her shoulders as she considered the people on either side of her.

Then, as if coming to a decision, Reshma gave Nikki the thumbs up, and Nikki held her breath.

For a second, Reshma disappeared into the crowd, and Nikki wondered if the woman was going to renege on her undertaking.

But then she popped up a little way along the line beside a very tall man with a very thick neck and tattooed biceps that bulged out of his tight t-shirt.

Reshma whispered in his ear until the guy raised his head and nodded, an excited gleam in his eyes.

Nikki watched as Reshma moved through the group, recruiting four more of the biggest guys she could find, who all looked at the agent at the top of the stairs with heightened interest as they nodded enthusiastically.

Then with a loud yell that was most unlike the Reshma that Nikki knew, the woman erupted through the crowd and rushed up the steps, straight at the FBI officer.

Did Reshma have no fear? Had she lost her mind?

Or did she not realize the magnitude of what she was doing?

This wasn’t the dutiful and docile person Nikki knew.

A diminutive Indian lady going up against a bull of an agent in a black hoodie waving a taser in her face.

This was no contest, surely? Nikki was terrified for Reshma; she was going to get hurt, and it would all be Nikki’s fault.

But then the five handpicked men all came roaring out of the crowd behind her, charging up the steps like a human storm.

There was a loud scuffle, and Nikki cursed the solid wooden door that stopped her from seeing everything that was happening.

A man screamed in pain, and there was a loud thump as something heavy landed on the wooden deck.

The rest of the throng surged forward, more of them running up the steps.

The loud grunts and screams increased until it sounded like a full-on melee outside her door. Then everything went quiet.

Nikki strained to see what was going on through the small side window, but all she could make out was a tangle of bodies on her back porch, twisting and heaving.

Nikki had had enough; she needed to see what was going on.

She wrestled with the chair under the doorknob, shoving it aside and wrenching the door open.

The pile of humans was still writhing on her back deck, but one at a time, someone disentangled themselves from the mound, then stood back to help pull others out of the heap, until at last Reshma’s original big men were revealed.

Each of them grunted and heaved their way upright, and then there was only a solitary man left lying on the porch.

The agent was unconscious, knocked out cold.

One of the big men, the tattooed bald man, was on his knees, glaring at the agent as if he wanted to kill him.

Someone helped him to his feet, but he remained unsteady, leaning heavily on the good Samaritan.

Reshma pushed her way through the milling crowd until she stood in front of Nikki. “You’re free.” She beamed a hundred-watt smile and repositioned her glasses back up her nose.

“Yes, thanks to you.” Nikki was very unsure what’d just happened, but she didn’t have time to stand around and chat.

“I’m still not safe,” she said, lifting her chin and indicating the other agent who’d been pinned next to the shed, but was pushing frantically at the crowd now, slowly forging his way toward her.

“Oh, yes, right,” Reshma answered brusquely.

“Come with me, then.” Who was this woman?

She looked like the Reshma Nikki knew from the Institute, but that’s where the similarity ended.

It was as if she’d been transformed into someone else, the way she cleared a path with an imperious wave of her hand, drawing Nikki after her and guiding her away as if she’d somehow become the crowd’s self-appointed leader and was relishing the role.

Nikki wondered what was going on at the front door?

Was Jacob faring as well as she just had?

His job had been to stop anyone coming in for as long as was humanly possible to allow her time to escape.

Then, he was supposed to leave through the front door once it was safe and meet her at the end of the street.

She had no time to pause and see, however, because while the crowd still held the agent at bay, they wouldn’t be able to do it forever.

And they wouldn’t have long before reinforcements arrived; Nikki had no doubt Miller had called in Linstead as soon as the group assembled.