by Diane Capri
The farther she moved from the casino entrance, the quieter the night became while the noises dissipated on the open air.
Kim heard snippets of conversation now and then from all sides. A few arguments and angry tones, but mostly people were laughing about their wins and losses as they made their way along.
The roar of vehicle engines as they started up and rolled past in both directions became more distinct to her ears.
She’d trotted halfway down aisle four when she heard a woman somewhere ahead scream, “Leave me alone!”
Kim had spoken only briefly to Nina inside the crowded casino, but the pitch and timbre of the screamer’s voice seemed familiar.
Several vans and large pickup trucks were parked between the screamer and Kim. She couldn’t see what was happening on the other side.
“Leave me alone, I said!” the woman screamed again. This time, the command was followed by a gunshot.
Kim broke out into a full run, weaving between vehicles for cover, headed toward the voice, drawing her own weapon as she went.
She didn’t slow down to contact Greyson or the others. She figured they’d have heard the gunshot and be on the way.
Up ahead on the right, a full-sized RV camper was parked, it’s nose protruding into the aisle. Kim slowed as she moved up closer to the engine block.
Over her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, she heard the woman arguing with a man somewhere on the other side of the RV.
“I said, get in the car!” he growled angrily.
“And I said no,” she replied.
From this short distance, Kim recognized the voices. Murphy and Nina.
But she couldn’t see them. Not yet.
Kim placed her back to the RV’s front quarter panel and looked around the parking lot. She didn’t see Perry, Hammer, or Greyson coming to back her up.
“I’m not going with you. I’m going home. I’ll be ready in the morning. Like we planned,” Nina said at a more normal volume. She was angry, but she was also crying.
Nothing worse than a domestic dispute with guns in a parking lot.
As Hammer had said, this could end badly. Very badly. Domestic disputes too often did.
Kim crouched low and poked her head out to look around the nose of the RV. Murphy and Nina were standing near the Jaguar.
Nina was crying. She’d dropped her purse on the ground. In one hand, she held a small pistol.
Murphy stood nearby, maybe ten feet away. He had both hands up, palms out as if to show he took her threats seriously. And maybe he was.
“Nina, come on,” he said, calmly, trying to settle her emotions, too. “What are you doing here? Please just get in the car. We’ll go to your place, get your stuff, and then go.”
“What about Redland and Hern, huh? Are we just going to leave them behind? That’s not what we planned. We’re all leaving tomorrow. At dawn. In the helo. That’s what we planned. That’s what we’re doing,” Nina said, still crying, snot running down her nose and tears streaming from her eyes.
The pistol hung loosely in her limp hand. She waved it around when she talked.
“I told you. We can’t do that now. We have to go tonight. Redland and Hern will catch up. Don’t worry about them. They’ve survived plenty of missions more dangerous than this. They’ll be okay,” Murphy continued to coax her, edging closer.
“No. I’m not going until tomorrow. That’s the end of it.” Nina raised the gun and pointed it directly at his chest as if she might shoot him where he stood.
Kim stepped out into the lamplight, weapon ready. “Put the gun down, Nina. I don’t want to shoot you. But I will. And from this distance, I won’t miss.”
Murphy saw her first.
Nina faltered. She swiveled her head to glance over her shoulder toward Kim’s voice.
Seeing his chance, Murphy rushed Nina and knocked the pistol out of her hand. It fell onto the pavement and skidded under the Jaguar.
He grabbed Nina around the torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Then he spun on his heel and shoved her into the passenger seat of his Jaguar and slammed the door.
“Murphy! Stop! FBI!” Kim yelled, holding her weapon, prepared to shoot.
He ran around the back of his vehicle, crouching low behind the Jaguar.
Before she had the chance, he raised his own weapon and fired toward her.
Two quick shots, both went wide. Maybe he’d aimed wide, or maybe he was a bad shot. It didn’t matter. She returned fire and took cover.
While she was out of range, he opened his door and jumped behind the wheel. He fired up the engine and threw the transmission into reverse.
She ran toward the Jaguar. She was ten feet away when he slammed the accelerator and the Jaguar bucked backward out of the parking space.
He slapped the transmission into drive and sped forward.
Shooting the driver at this point wasn’t safe. Too much potential for collateral damage.
Kim pulled her cell phone out and hit the redial for Perry. She stood watching the Jaguar’s retreating bumper for a few seconds.
“On my way. Coming in behind you,” he said before she had a chance to say anything at all. “Hammer and Greyson should already be there.”
She swiveled her body quickly to check the aisles in the immediate area. Which was when she saw Hammer seated on the ground.
Greyson stooped down next to him with a first aid kit. Greyson’s vehicle was parked in the next aisle, lights flashing, and the door was open.
A small crowd of onlookers had already gathered to gawk.
Kim kept her eye on the retreating Jaguar and jogged over to help. “What happened?”
“Murphy shot me.” Hammer’s left bicep was bleeding profusely, even as he covered it with his right palm and applied pressure. He was breathing rapidly and he looked pale. Probably shock. Maybe too much blood loss.
Greyson tore open a big gauge bandage and handed it to Hammer, as he opened a roll of tape. “Put this on the wound.”
Perry drove up beside them and pushed the passenger door open. “Jump in!”
Greyson said, “I’ve called an ambulance and backup. Go ahead. I’ll catch up as soon as I have Hammer under control.”
“Copy that.” Kim dove into the passenger seat.
Pedestrians in aisle four noticed the flashing lights and meandered through the parked vehicles, heading to see whatever was happening.
Perry was forced to slow enough to avoid the pedestrians. He weaved around them, moving forward slowly, giving Kim enough time to fasten her seatbelt.
“What happened?” Perry asked.
She gave him the quick facts. “I thought his two shots were aimed at me and went wide. But maybe he was trying to hit Hammer.”
Perry said, “Did you hit Murphy?”
Kim replied, “He moved pretty quickly, both before and after my shot. I didn’t have a visual the whole time.”
Perry glanced quickly across the cabin. “Which means what? You hit him or you didn’t?”
“Odds are heavily in my favor. But I can’t definitively confirm.”
When he cleared the last of the pedestrians in the row, he raced as fast as he dared across the bottom of the parking lot toward the exit.
He turned onto the long driveway and accelerated toward the road.
At the intersection, he said, “Which way?”
They both peered through the windows, looking for Murphy’s retreating taillights.
Kim pointed. “There! Turn left. He’s heading north, away from Carter’s Crossing.”
While Perry drove across the bumpy pavement in hot pursuit, she hung onto the handle overhead and stared, sweeping her gaze across the landscape. The last thing they needed was another vehicle coming across the road at a high rate of speed.
But she kept the Jaguar’s taillights in her line of sight at all times.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
10:35 p.m.
Murphy kept his foot on the accelerator, putting as much distance between him and the SUV as possible while he navigated through the casino’s busy parking lot.
He floored the accelerator when he made it to the long driveway. At the road, he turned left, away from Carter’s Crossing. He planned to take the backroads to his safe house.
Once he turned off the main road, five miles ahead, he’d reach the cover of the trees. Night shadows and unfamiliar terrain would slow his pursuers down.
The main road was one of the worst in Carter County. With all the money the damn casino was making, they could have paid to fix the road. It was old and dotted with the kind of small sinkholes that the locals had been pressuring the mayor to fix.
The Jaguar bounced in and out of one pothole after another, slowing progress and jarring his body all the way to his teeth.
His left leg throbbed with every hard bounce. He’d taken a grazing bullet from Otto’s gun along the outside of his left thigh. No big arteries along there, so the wound was not fatal. But it hurt like hell and distracted his focus.
“What are you doing? Where are we going?” Nina kept sniveling and shouting out from the passenger seat.
He’d told her to be quiet several times. She’d ignored him. He’d tried to tune her out. But she kept breaking his concentration.
“Let me out of this car! I don’t want to go with you!” she screamed at deafening decibels.
“Nina, I’m warning you,” he said in the stern tone that had sent many soldiers ducking for cover.
“I want out!” Nina screamed.
He couldn’t take another moment of her nonsense.
He lifted his right hand off the steering wheel.
Briefly.
Just long enough to backhand her a solid blow across the mouth. Hard enough to loosen a few of her teeth to prove he was serious.
“Shut. Up,” he demanded, grabbing the steering wheel again. “I need to think. I can’t do it with your hysteria filling the entire cabin.”
Whether he’d startled her into submission or she’d finally managed to control herself, he didn’t know.
He didn’t care much, either.
Her silence was exactly what he needed. If she started that crap up again, he’d be justified in delivering a more permanent solution.
While he’d had his right hand off the wheel, the Jaguar had drifted slightly and bounced through another deep pothole.
“Dammit,” he said, gritting his teeth.
Blood oozed from his leg. He felt it soaking his pants, running down to his socks and into his shoes.
He ignored the pain. He’d suffered worse in combat and street fights. He’d lived a long and violent life. He had the scars to prove it.
This wasn’t the first time he’d been shot and it wouldn’t be the last.
The more distance he put between the casino and the Jaguar, the less traffic he met on the main road. There were few streetlights out this far from town.
He stole a glance at the odometer. He was close. He peered into the darkness, looking for the dirt road where he could turn west and make his way through the backroads to his safe house.
The turnoff was on the left side of the road. There were tall weeds on both sides. You’d have to know it was there, or you’d miss it driving past at a reasonable speed.
He could lose them back in the woods. Failing that, at least he’d have the cover and the advantage of familiar surroundings.
He slowed and turned on the high beams, watching through the dirty windshield for the narrow turnoff.
“If you’re looking for Moab Road, you’ve got another couple of miles to go,” Nina said, more reasonably than she’d said anything in the past hour. “There’s a sharp curve and then a big oak tree on the right, about twenty feet before the turnoff.”
Murphy remembered both the curve and the oak tree after she mentioned it. He’d seen the oak several times in daylight. It had been hit by lightning years ago and the big old trunk was split straight down the middle.
He sped up again, watching for the curve and the oak tree.
He saw it illuminated in the high beams about half a mile ahead. He turned off the headlights and hurried around the curve to get out of sight of the SUV.
He waited until the very last minute to slow down.
Murphy slammed the brakes hard and turned, running across the grates over the culvert and then deeper into the cover of the woods onto Moab Road.
The old gravel roadway hadn’t been graded in years. It had washed out in several places. Driving over it was like riding off-road across rocky terrain.
The Jaguar didn’t have the suspension for such conditions.
Nina held onto the overhead handle. She whimpered off and on as if in pain. He didn’t care.
He’d slowed to barely moving, using the headlights to his best advantage, but it was rough going. Ten miles of this and he’d turn onto better travel conditions for the remaining miles.
For now, he winced with every bounce and kept moving.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Thursday, May 12
Carter’s Crossing, Mississippi
10:50 p.m.
Kim continued to watch Murphy’s Jaguar while she pulled out her cell phone and called Gaspar. After three rings, he hadn’t picked up, which was unusual. She let the call keep ringing another dozen times before she admitted defeat and disconnected.
Perry’s full attention was on the road and the vehicle ahead. He’d increased his speed as much as he’d dared, given the road conditions. But Murphy had a significant head start and knew the roads. Perry didn’t.
The distance between them widened.
“Check the GPS. See if you can figure out where we are and where he might be going,” he said when she hung up the phone.
She flipped the GPS on and while it scanned for a signal, she tried Gaspar again. Once more, he didn’t answer.
The GPS finally located itself. A map came on the screen showing the county road they were driving. There was no name or number on the map. The road ran parallel to Carter’s Crossing’s Main Street and the railroad tracks, toward Tennessee to the north and deeper into Mississippi on the southbound side. No crossroads showed up nearby.
Kim hit the redial on her phone to call Sheriff Greyson. When he picked up, she put the call on speaker.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Looks like we’re traveling on one of your worst county roads. We’re moving about forty miles an hour between one big pothole and the next. GPS says we’re north of the casino. East of Carter’s Crossing,” Kim replied. “Any clue where Murphy might be headed?”
Greyson said, “There’s nothing out that way to interest him that I can think of. He must be planning to double back toward town at some point. He could be headed to Kelham. Maybe planning to enter from the north side. There’s an old, unused gate over there.”
“Unless he has a breakdown of some kind, we’re never going to catch him on this road. He had too much of a head start. Where’s the next road that crosses this one and comes back west?” Perry asked.
“About fifty miles or so north. You might ask Deveraux. She knows this county like the back of her hand. Could be a backroad of some kind that I’m not aware of,” Greyson replied. “Meanwhile, I’ll send someone out to Kelham to watch for him. And I’ll get somebody out to Nina’s place, too. Just in case they head over there.”
“How’s Hammer?” Perry asked, keeping his attention focused on Murphy’s bouncing taillights in the distance.
“He’s on his way to the hospital. Tough SOB thinks he’s a Marine or something. He refused to ride in the ambulance. Insisted on driving himself,” Greyson said.
“Did he make it over to the hospital?” Kim asked.
“He’ll be okay. Too pig-headed to be anything else,” Greyson said. “One thing you need to know. Redland and Hern are not on base. Hammer called the MPs. They checked. Redland and Hern are still AWOL.”<
br />
Kim nodded. “Which means they’re actually in the morgue like we thought. Had to be them we found dead out at the barn.”
Greyson sounded tired and weary. “That’s a solid bet. The coroner has sent off the dental records to the army, with Hammer’s name to expedite the request. We should get something back soon.”
“The army never does anything soon, Greyson,” Perry said, swerving to miss a big pothole in the roadway.
The SUV caught the edge of it and bounced like a basketball. Perry’s head hit the roof. Kim was tossed up as far as her seatbelt would stretch and slammed back down into the seat.
When they’d both landed on their seats again, Murphy’s vehicle had disappeared.
“What the hell?” Perry said, speeding up while he scanned the road and both shoulders, looking for the Jaguar.
Greyson said, “What’s going on?”
“We lost Murphy,” Kim said. “Big curve in the road ahead. He’s on the other side. Or he might have turned his lights off. It’s damn dark out here.”
“Could be an ambush,” Greyson warned. “Hammer says Murphy thinks fast on his feet, so expect him to do something crazy if he feels cornered. If he killed Redland and Hern, he won’t care about adding two more notches in his gun.”
Kim said, “In the parking lot back there at the casino. When he and Nina were arguing about leaving. She wanted to wait until tomorrow. Murphy said they were going tonight. Can you ask Hammer if he has any idea where Murphy was supposed to go tomorrow at dawn when Kelham is slated to close up?”
Perry said, eyes straight ahead, straining to see Murphy’s vehicle, “Find out how he was planning to get out of there, too. Kelham has an airstrip. The CO should have bug-out plans in place. It’s the army. There will be records.”
“Yeah. I’ll ask him and call you back,” Greyson said before he rang off.
Perry found a stretch of good pavement and sped up to close the gap behind Murphy.