Then several things happened almost at once.
The detective fired and the gunman simultaneously stepped back, causing Rice’s shot to miss and hit the pool sign beside him. At the same time Adam exhaled and sank, hearing the boom of the shotgun only a second after he dove.
Fire traced along his side and one shoulder as the water around him filled with bubbles from the buckshot…and blood. He’d been hit!
As he struggled to regain his bearings underwater, Adam heard the distorted sound of two more sharper pops, which had to be the detective finishing off his assailant. He could dimly hear Rice yelling…probably calling for backup.
Clawing his way back to the world above, he gasped for air as he broke the surface.
To his amazement, he saw the man reloading his shotgun again.
“DAMMIT! STOP!” Rice yelled as he walked closer and fired again.
Once again, the old man stepped aside precisely as Rice fired. The bullet whined off the chain link fence behind the space he occupied a mere second ago. Raising the shotgun again, he fired one barrel at the detective, dropping him on the spot. Then he wheeled around as Adam dove again, filling the water around him with lead.
More blood filled the water and white agony lit up his back. The water was slowing the buckshot down, but not enough to keep it from chewing into him. Only staying deeper could do that.
But this time Adam’s lungs were full of air, making it difficult for him to stay near the bottom. He frantically tried to kick, but his weakened legs were losing the fight against buoyancy. Desperation drove him as he scrabbled at the bottom of the pool with his hands, hunting some purchase to pull himself along and away from the old assassin. Yet even this was no solution. The effort burned what air he had until his vision started to darken around the edges.
Knowing that he had no other option, Adam readied himself to push up and grab another gulp of air. He realized with despair the killer’s shotgun would be ready and waiting for him when he did. He was about to die and he didn’t even know why.
But he needed to breathe.
Steeling himself, he launched from the bottom. The surface rush toward him and he winced in preparation for the worst…but just then he heard the detective’s gun start firing again.
Breaking the surface, Adam saw Rice laying on his side and firing rapidly in the direction of the killer. He was obviously hurt and bleeding, but he must have either gotten very lucky and not caught the full blast of the shotgun, or more likely was wearing a bulletproof vest of some kind.
The old man evaded the first round, but this time two more caught him before he could move again. With a look of stunned surprise, he fumbled with the shotgun then watched it slip out of his hands and into the pool.
Dropping to his knees, he raised his head and stared at where Adam tread water and gasped for breath. Adam looked back and met his eyes.
Nothing but the same expression of sorrow and regret, now mixed with pain, showed on the old man’s face. He gasped for breath himself now, blood spreading on his coveralls. Then, leaning to his left, he slowly fell over on his side.
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed.
Adam could see Rice pulling himself to his feet with the aid of the chain link fence. The detective wobbled erect, steadied himself, then began to stagger in the gunman’s direction. He was definitely hurt.
Looking back at his downed attacker, Adam saw the old man’s eyes were still fixed on him.
“H…h…how about th...that,” his would-be killer wheezed. “I g…guess I’ll b...be joining you o…on the other side. S…serves me right, I s…suppose. S…sorry M…Mag…” Blood bubbled around his lips as he reached into his jacket again.
Mental warning bells screamed, and Adam dove again
There was a titanic “THUD” and the world above the surface went white, and then orange…and then Adam’s world went black.
###
“I told you! I don’t know who he was! I never laid eyes on the man before in my life!”
The interrogation room smelled like vomit and Lysol, and the harsh fluorescent bulb wasn’t doing Adam’s still ringing head any favors.
“Really? He suuuurree seemed to know you. And he apparently wanted you dead in the worst way possible. Instead, he manages to kill one of my best detectives!” The large man with the crew cut and bull neck slammed down a folder full of papers. A couple of pictures spilled out, showing the wreckage of his apartment complex’s swimming area. Thankfully, the body parts had been covered with cloth. “I want to know why he is dead!”
Adam couldn’t remember the name of the detective yelling at him, and he wished he could say he had ceased to care. His head hurt, his body hurt, his throat and chest hurt from aspirating water, and as a final indignity they hadn’t returned his braces when they hauled him down here so he was effectively crippled. He had no intent of trying to escape…hell, that was a laugh…but it killed his soul to know how easily he could be stranded by the simple removal of his footgear.
“He saved my life.” Adam groaned. “I’m sorry he died. I would give anything to be able to undo what happened. I told you everything I remember, and everything the man said to me. I don’t know what else to say.”
“What you told me was that you were attacked by some old country bumpkin, who dodges bullets like some Hollywood Kung Fu master while apologizing for all the trouble. And then he blows himself the hell up when he is denied the privilege of shooting your sorry ass! What you have told me is shit!”
The bull-necked officer glared at him, both palms on the table, a vein now throbbing at his temple. His complexion under his crew cut glowed beet red, and Adam harbored no illusion this man might be putting on an act.
“I…did not…kill…Detective Rice.” Adam measured out. “I nearly died with him, and all I know is it had something to do with David’s disappearance. I don’t know how that man did what he did. I don’t know why he wanted me dead. And the only thing scaring me worse than the fact a man like him was willing to die in an effort to kill me, is the fact he spoke like he belonged to a larger group of people. I…am…scared…to the soles of my feet…and exactly like you, I don’t know what’s going on.”
Adam leaned tiredly back in his chair and met the officer’s stare. He intended no challenge as he held the man’s gaze, he had nothing to challenge with. There simply were no options left to him. He was completely helpless. Whatever happened…happened.
For a moment longer, the enraged policeman glared at him. Then with a contemptuous snort, he scooped up the folder and left the room, slamming the door on his way out.
Adam stared wearily at the door for a moment, then rested his head in his arms on the table. He tried to still his racing mind, and take the opportunity to relax. They had been at this for hours. But while his body seemed more than willing to do its part, his mind seemed determined to betray him.
He had almost died today.
He lived through no feat or skill of his own, but sheer dumb luck and the sacrifice of another man. Maybe a better man. His own infirmities had rendered him worthless in the face of danger. And even now he sat slumped in this chair, a prisoner as much of his useless legs and feet as of any locked door. He knew exactly what that officer must have been thinking…“what was the point of losing a valuable human being like Andrew Rice, over a helpless, pathetic creature like him?”
Adam didn’t even want to think about the probability of Rice having a family and kids. He groaned at the thought he might have to face them too, but that likelihood existed. It would only be proper for him to attend Rice’s funeral.
Sitting there with his head buried in his arms on the table, he began to wish those two lawn maintenance employees hadn’t run over and dragged his unconscious body out of the pool. He could have slept through his own drowning, and all this misery would have been avoided. Instead, he got to sit there against the ruins of the pool house, stupidly attempting to shake the ringing out of his ears and trying to rem
ember how to say “Thank you” in Spanish until the police arrived. A quick trip to the emergency room, and a harried doctor who extracted over twenty pellets of buckshot lodged beneath his skin before pronouncing him fit for questioning, resulted in another ride to the nearest station house.
Since then, he had sat in this little room, being yelled at by Officer Crewcut.
The sound of an approaching argument impinged on his dark little world, coming through the door to the room. Apparently a heated debate was being conducted on the move, and it seemed to be heading this way. Adam wondered if they were now debating a revision of his role from that of witness, to one of “suspect.” He supposed anything that could make the situation worse should be expected.
He raised his head as one of the voices, female, caught his attention. As it grew nearer, there could be no denying its owner.
“Oh no,” Adam groaned, “not this…”
The door flew open and Ellen marched into the room.
Looking the very personification of what a smart, professional, and very expensive female lawyer should be…Ellen Tauber hadn’t changed a bit since the last time he saw her, eleven months ago, when they had decided that realities had to be acknowledged and agreed to go their separate ways. Even in her “lawyer suit,” as she liked to call it, she represented everything his former life had been. A life that seemed like an eternity ago.
“Hello, Ellen.” He smiled weakly from his position at the table.
Ellen stopped in her tracks, and surveyed him up and down for one long, interminable slice of time. A frozen silence hung in the air, and it only took a single look at her face for Adam to recognize it as the silence of a hissing fuse. The drama coming next was now inevitable.
“Holy SHIT!” she finally exploded.
CHAPTER TWO
ONSLAUGHT
“If you need anything, just push the button there,” the nurse informed him while gathering up the blood pressure cuff.
Adam gave her a tired nod and sank deeper into the pillow. The silence and dim lights of his hospital room were a blessed relief after the fireworks of the day.
The nurse opened the door, stepped aside as Ellen stalked into the room, then quietly closed it behind her as she left.
“First,” Ellen snarled, “I’m going to find out who the doctor was who signed off on sending you to the police station, and then I’m going to crucify him. Then, I’m going to find the meathead who leaned on that doctor and I’m going to crucify him! And then…”
“Easy there, Caesar,” Adam interrupted from his bed. “You’re gonna have the roads lined with crosses at the rate you’re going.”
And that wasn’t an understatement.
Ellen had gone ballistic at the sight of him, back at the police station. She demanded to know why such an obviously injured man wasn’t in a hospital, why he didn’t already have an attorney present, why the victim of an attempted murder was being treated like a criminal, and whose ass would she be having nailed to a door when all these answers became known.
Adam felt sure his interrogators had witnessed many a hissy fit from defense attorneys before, and they probably blew them off as another part of a day’s routine events. But when Ellen Tauber of Tauber, Mirsch, and Wilcox…daughter of state judge Anthony Tauber, granddaughter of state senator Marshall Tauber, and niece of former Attorney General Conrad Tauber…started pulling on her ass-kicking boots, prudence demanded it be taken seriously.
Now she stood at the foot of his bed, hands on her hips, and eyes filled with far too much of what looked like pity for his comfort. He had been dreading this conversation since she had stormed into the interrogation room two hours ago.
“Damn it, Adam! Why didn’t you call me?”
“Well,” he offered, “they never really gave me a chance at a telephone.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she snapped, “but now that you mention it, I’m going to find out who signed off on that little brainstorm and nail his hide next to the others. But let’s get back to the topic at hand.”
“Ellen…”
“No! You listen. I know we both went our separate ways, but I thought we agreed it was because we were being realistic, not because we hated each other. I know we needed time apart to get over it and move on, but I never for one second remember us agreeing not to be there if the other one needed it!”
“I understand that…”
“Do you? Do you, really?” Her voice actually cracked for a second, and she stopped and gathered herself before going on. “So why is it I turn on my TV this afternoon and see your apartment complex featured in a terrorist explosion, then when I attempt to find out if you are okay I discover you have been carted off by the police, and THEN after I spend the next four hours using every contact at my disposal to track you down…I walk into an interrogation room to find you so banged up and wasted that I barely recognize you AND allowing the police to walk all over you without even a single peep of protest or request for an attorney? And finally, I get to review the file the police have put together on you to discover you nearly got killed in an accident nine months ago AND had David and Karen vanish on you all in the same month! My God, Adam! Don’t you think I would have wanted to help?”
“I didn’t think it would be fair to you. I figured you would be hurting enough without being dragged into my new drama.”
“Well,” she took a deep breath while gripping her briefcase with both hands, “I’m in it. At least for now. I’m your attorney until the firm can assign you one more appropriate…if I decide it’s necessary. That won’t be till Monday though, so I’m it for the weekend. By the way, I dropped by your apartment to get you a robe and slippers.”
“Thanks.” Adam winced at the thought of Ellen seeing the garbage dump his apartment had devolved into.
“Okay, you’re welcome.” She moved over and sat down in the chair below the wall-mounted TV set. “Now I want to hear it from you…what’s going on?”
Adam spread his hands, staring at the ceiling as if looking for answers.
“I don’t know, Ellen. First I have a detective show up at my door today, questioning me about the murder of a private investigator I hired, then I have this old codger arrive out of nowhere while I’m in the swimming pool and start blasting away at me with a shotgun. The cop shows back up and gets in a gunfight with him, and then the guy blows himself up!” He let his arms fall back to his side. “I have never seen the old guy before in my life.”
For a moment, Ellen merely sat there, tapping her pen against a folder she had pulled out of her briefcase. Then she sat the briefcase down and opened the folder.
“Okay, Adam.” She leaned back, with the folder open in her lap. “I know you’re tired, and you need sleep, so let me catch you up to date with what’s going on and I’ll let you rest.”
He nodded gratefully.
“The police are, of course, very upset over the death of Detective Rice. Couple that with the actions and behavior of your assailant, and they are naturally wondering what you are involved in.”
“What I’m involved in?”
“Adam,” her tone took an even more serious turn, “the man came after you with a sawed off shotgun and a bomb made out of high explosives. According to you, he got into a shootout with a police detective, and never stopped trying to kill you at the same time. That kind of dedication and skill in an assassin is usually only found in those associated with criminal cartels or terrorist groups. Couple that with the disappearance of David and Karen, and then the murder of the investigator you had working for you, and the police are now wondering what all of you were involved in. Which brings me to the question I have to ask…” She paused, either gathering her composure or giving him time to gather his. “Do you know if David and Karen were involved in anything illegal? Anything that might have had them brush up against the likes of people who employ assassins like that?”
“No!” Adam groaned aloud. “You knew them, Ellen. They were never involved with anythi
ng like that! Besides, that man wasn’t an assassin.”
“He wasn’t?” Ellen raised her eyebrows. “He sure wasn’t selling vacuum cleaners.”
“I mean he wasn’t a professional hitman…at least not like one I’ve ever imagined. He was apologizing the whole time, and he acted like he honestly hated ‘having to do it.’ And he said Tucker was still alive, and ‘they’ were taking care of him. He also said Tucker was all shook up after witnessing something…I think he meant David and Karen getting killed…but ‘they’ would raise him as their own.”
“So you’re saying maybe he was just some whack job who killed David and Karen, then decided to keep Tucker, then came after you and the private investigator when he found out you were on his trail?”
“Maybe, but for two things…One, he spoke as if he were part of a larger “they” and two, what this guy did was unbelievable, Ellen. Rice couldn’t hit him. He was maybe 30 feet away, braced and aiming, and he couldn’t hit the guy. The man would simply move at the same time Rice would shoot at him, and make him miss. It looked like something out of some trashy Kung Fu movie, except this guy looked like the old farmer in American Gothic.”
Ellen wrote all this down, then looked up to see him staring at the ceiling again. The lines on his face betrayed how tired he must be.
“Okay, Adam. Go ahead and get some rest. The nurse will be back in a minute to give you something to help you sleep. There is a policeman out in the hall and a bunch more hanging around, so I don’t think you have to worry about any unwanted visitors tonight. A state policeman is going to be coming tomorrow to ask some questions of his own. Don’t worry, I’ll be there. You concentrate on healing.”
With that, she rose and headed for the door.
“Ellen?”
Stopping with her hand on the handle, she looked back at the alarmingly frail version of the man she remembered.
“Yes, Adam?”
“Pennington, my PI, narrowed down the origins of David’s call to within 30 miles of a certain cell phone tower. Do you know of anybody who could narrow it down further?”
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