“That would make him one of us.”
“I know.”
She pondered those words a few moments. “If he gets worse, I’ll give him a shot to see if it takes. The mayor won’t like it if we lose him before we get some answers.”
“That leaves us with only one problem, then,” the man said. “What do we do about our superior?”
“I don’t see the problem,” Mira said. “Eliminate her.”
Stone was utterly confused by the conversation. What he thought was going to be a simple arrest was turning into a strange situation that did not make much sense to him. Hearing this kind of talk made him want to sling his car door open with enough force to knock the man standing outside his door sprawling across the ground. Then, pushing off the seat he would bolt into the night leaving them all far behind him. But that wasn’t going to happen. He was far too weak in both mind and body to overcome the odds.
Agent Caine had pulled her car off the road into a patch of tall weeds. She was parked across the street and about seventy feet back from where Mira was hemmed in by government sedans. She didn’t want to get too close and be seen by Mira. There was a good chance that she’d be going undercover later. Right now, she’d let the other agents take Mira in for questioning.
She took a cautious sip from the cup of hot coffee she had just picked up at the Golden Pantry just before Mira had picked up Stone. It was still good and hot. She had only taken a drink from it when she first bought it. When she was told that they were going into a subdivision she figured that Mira was about to stop somewhere. She didn’t want to be caught with the coffee in hand if something suddenly came up. Thankfully it hadn’t.
It had been a long day. She was glad to see it finally coming to an end. All she was waiting for was confirmation that the lady was in custody.
After a few minutes had passed she looked over at the man in the passenger seat. He had an earpiece in his left ear and a tiny mike inches from his mouth. “I understand,” he said.
“Is it done?” she asked.
“Almost.”
Her eyes narrowed and she peered out the window to see why it was taking so long. No one was making a move to remove the woman from the car. That made her unusually nervous. She turned back to her passenger to ask what was going on.
“There’s been a change in plans,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
He slipped out a 9mm Glock from underneath his suit jacket.
At first, she didn’t comprehend what he was doing. She thought that he was about to go over to the stopped car to try to get things moving. Instead, he pointed the gun at her chest.
“What are you doing Chad?” she asked. Gingerly, not wanting to draw his attention, she began to carefully push the lid off her coffee cup.
“I like you, Candace. It’s been a great two weeks. But you’re interfering with our plans.”
The lid to the coffee cup came free. She let it fall to the floor of the car. He watched it fall for a brief second before he understood what she was up to.
She threw the hot cup of coffee into his face and ducked under the direction of his gun barrel. His gun went off in a blast that shattered the window behind Candace showering her with glass.
The man screamed, swiping at his face with his free hand. Before he could gather himself, she slid out her own Glock 40 caliber from her shoulder holster. When the man’s gun swung back in her direction she fired. The shot hit the man in the center of his chest and drove him back against the door. As his arm swung back he pulled the trigger again. The shot struck the steering column shattering much of it. The steering wheel dropped downward, barely clinging to strands of wire and strips of plastic.
“Three shots,” Mira said. “Why two shots? One should have been sufficient.”
The man outside her window looked confused. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t die with the first shot. Or maybe he missed.” He slipped the mike on the headband closer to his mouth. “Chad, what’s going on?” There was no response. “Chad. Is there a problem?” No response. “He doesn’t answer,” he said to Mira.
“I don’t like it,” the woman said. “Check it out.”
The man motioned to the other two men to follow him.
As they walked away Mira turned and looked over at Stone.
Stone could see her through the slight opening of his eyelids, though to her it looked as if they were completely closed, as if he were passed out. At that moment Stone felt utterly powerless but knew with a certainty that he had to find a way to get away.
Through the windshield of the car, Candace could see the three men, like darkened spirits inching their way toward her, their guns drawn. She didn’t think that they could see her in the confines of the darkened car, but that would begin to change as they neared the car.
She looked down at the dead body slumped over against the door. His blood had splattered out his back and over the passenger window and door. She was suddenly nauseous. She had never killed anyone. She had never even shot anyone before. She looked back at the approaching men. There was no time for contemplation. She would have to put that off till later.
There was no driving the car. Her assassin had inadvertently destroyed her best means of escape.
She quickly picked out the remaining shards of glass from the blown-out driver side window. She squeezed through the open frame onto the shoulder of the road. Encroaching upon the shoulder were tall weeds that stretched several feet high. She crawled across the hard, rocky ground disappearing into the weeds just as the men reached her car.
Luckily, the full moon was still hidden behind a blanket of thick, black clouds, providing her with an added bit of invisibility. She hoped that it was enough.
She crawled through the underbrush away from her car and toward Mira’s. She was banking on the idea that the men would assume that she would be attempting to escape the scene and not moving in closer to the action.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She flipped it open and pressed the speed dial to Horace’s office. He was the one directly over her and would be sure to get her some back up as quickly as possible.
“Damn,” she muttered under her breath when the call didn’t go thru. She shielded the face of the phone so the light wouldn’t expose her and checked to see what kind of signal she had. She didn’t have a signal. That didn’t seem right. She knew for a fact that there were cell phone towers in the area. She pushed her phone back into her pocket. She figured they must be jamming her signal. Her attackers had probably set this up in advance in case she tried to call out.
She looked behind her to see the two men going through her car and checking on her deceased partner. Her stomach tumbled as she thought about how close she had worked with all of them for the past two weeks. And now they were trying to kill her.
She continued her slow, steady crawl until she was straight across from the back of the FBI car that had pulled in behind Mira. When she saw Mira step out of her car she abruptly stopped. Mira didn’t bother to close her door. It was as if she thought the interior lights might drive away the darkness revealing Candace’s hiding place.
Mira looked toward her and for several tense moments, Candace thought that the woman could see her. That perhaps she was just waiting for some movement to verify her sighting. Slowly, trying to keep her actions subtle and to a minimum, Candace raised her gun toward Mira. Mira didn’t react. Candace was glad of that. If she had to fire her gun the others would be instantly upon her.
Stone heard Mira get out of the car before he saw her. When he dared to open his eyes completely, he found that the process was very difficult, and it took all the concentration that he could muster.
This was the opportunity he needed to escape, but as weak as he was, he wasn’t sure if he could pull it off. He wasn’t entirely confident that he could even get out of the car, much less run away.
With the light on in the car he knew that if Mira were to turn around she would eas
ily spot him should he attempt to leave. What would she do? He could no longer determine if she were friend or foe. Judging from the conversation he heard, the ride she gave him was more than a simple act of kindness. It was all part of a plan. And the gunshots, what was that about?
It all seemed ominous enough to him that he didn’t want to stick around.
He forced himself to the edge of the seat. Then he noticed that Mira had left her purse. He recalled her saying something about having to give him a shot of something. But of what? And how would she know what he needed? And what was this talk about being one of them?
He looked back over to Mira. She had moved away from the car a bit. He picked up her purse and emptied it out on the seat beside him. He sifted through it. There was the usual stuff: a wallet, makeup, a ring of keys, a small box of tissues, a notepad, a couple of pens, and a pack of gum. One thing stood out from the rest. It was a long, rectangular black case.
He opened the black box. It contained a syringe with a covered needle attached, and three vials of a clear liquid. He figured that this must be the dose of whatever it is that he’s supposed to need.
He scooped up the box, reached over to the door handle, and, with all the strength he could gather, pushed open the door.
Mira crossed the road at an angle heading straight toward Candace. Candace lay in the shadows and the tall brush keeping as still as she possibly could, holding her breath, and hoping that her racing, thumping heart wouldn’t give her away. Mira stopped within a few feet of Candace, pausing at the edge of the shoulder before gingerly moving toward Candace’s car.
Candace took to crawling again hoping to get as far away as possible before rising to her feet. She figured that if she could somehow make it to the patch of woods some thirty yards away, she might be able to make a successful getaway.
She made it past the SUV parked behind Mira’s car and parallel to Mira’s open car door. Across the short expanse of asphalt, through Mira’s door, she noticed Stone Wilson falling through the passenger’s side door of Mira’s car. She recognized him from the police video shot from the police car camera when he was first picked up. He didn’t look so good. He might be a part of Mira’s group. Probably was. But as much as she would like to keep moving away from the action, she couldn’t take the chance that he might be a victim also. She had to try to help him.
She crawled a little further, until she was directly across from the SUV that had pulled in front of Mira’s car. Clutching the Glock tightly in her hand she rose up into a crouch meaning to be a smaller target, then headed across the street.
She almost made it. She was only a few feet from the back fender when a staccato blast suddenly pierced the night and she was hit with such a severe blow to the back of her right thigh that it drove her to her stomach. She screamed with both surprise and pain. She fell near the back bumper landing only a couple feet from it. She gasped, and for a moment felt as if she might pass out. She quickly shook off the feeling and stretched for the bumper. Grasping it she began to pull herself forward while pushing off with her left foot. Several more shots rang out in succession. Two of the shots hit somewhere beyond her feet. One hit the car only a few inches above her head, penetrating the metal with a ‘clang’. Two or more bullets whizzed above her head, disappearing into the darkness.
She rolled over onto her back and began returning fire, shooting at the flashes of light because now even the shadows blended together leaving her nothing solid to aim for. At the same time, she pushed with her one good leg and squirmed her body toward the backside of the truck. The couple of feet she needed seemed more like a mile and for an interminable time, it appeared that she might just die here in the street. Somehow, though, she was able to inch her way forward, finally struggling her way up to a sitting position behind the back tire and frame of the SUV.
For a time she tried to ignore the intense burning in her leg, more intent on staring into the darkness from the side of the tire, or the bumper of the vehicle, looking for any movement. The shooting had stopped, but she didn’t think that they had given up on her so easily.
At last, she allowed her hand to explore the wound. She jerked as her hand gently touched the injury sending a sharp pain coursing through her leg. She quickly withdrew her hand. Her fingers came back wet and sticky with the blood that was leaking from her thigh. She wondered how bad she had been hurt but was afraid to look. Besides, now was not the best time to examine the extent of her wound.
She had to keep moving. It would be better if they didn’t know exactly where she was. She gritted her teeth, turned onto her stomach, and began to slowly pull and crawl across the hard asphalt. The pain was searing, as if a hot poker was rubbing across her thigh with each movement of her leg. Tears quickly welled up in her eyes, but she wouldn’t allow herself the luxury of making a sound.
She clambered over the curb and for a time enjoyed the soft, cool dirt underneath her.
Stone was about thirty feet from her. He was sitting on the ground beyond the light that exuded from Mira’s open car door. She thought of calling out to him, but she didn’t know how he would react. She couldn’t be certain that he was a victim and not part of the group attempting to assassinate her.
She drugged and crawled in a wide loop to avoid the light from Mira’s open car door. She headed for a large pine tree that would offer her some cover. The moon was beginning to slip away from the clouds, and it would probably be good for her to have a little bit of cover in case she suddenly became visible to any of her attackers.
She wondered where her attackers had gone as she pulled herself up to a sitting position behind the tree. She was losing blood from her leg. It seemed that the bullet had only grazed her but that didn’t mean it couldn’t turn serious if she didn’t stop the blood.
She took out a pocketknife that she carried in her pant pocket. As quickly as she could she cut out a section of the pant leg to expose where the wound was. Next, she cut out one sleeve of her shirt and tied it around the wound. It wasn’t a great bandage, but she hoped that it would slow the bleeding long enough for it to begin to clot.
It had only been minutes since they had tried to kill her though it seemed so much longer. Long enough for them to have formed a plan for her destruction. But where were they? She peeked her head around the tree searching for any movement that she might spot in the nearly total darkness.
A slight breeze was redolent with the smell of rain. She wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. It might make her harder to spot should it start raining, but it also might make it harder for her to escape. She looked up. The clouds were slowly moving across the sky, unmasking a portion of the moon. She quickly looked back down. The landscape had changed. The rays of the moon had washed away some of the black from the night turning everything to shades of gray.
She suddenly saw something. There was a slight movement in the brush straight ahead of her about forty feet. For a couple of seconds, she could make out a faint silhouette. Then it disappeared. She guessed the person may have shifted behind thicker brush. Then there was something else. A spark of light. An apparent reflection off of something.
Eyeglasses. That was what came to mind. The man she knew as Carlos was the only one among them who wore glasses. Silver rimmed, in fact.
She spotted a second glint of light. This light was more muffled, barely illuminated. She squinted trying to see a little better. At once she realized what it was. It was a handgun.
She gripped her Glock with both hands and slowly lifted her arms to chest high, hoping her movement wouldn’t draw attention, and pointed it at the reflected light. For a moment she hesitated, content on being hidden in the shadows. But when she saw movement, especially when the glint of the gun seemed to jerk upward, she reacted quickly.
“Freeze!” she yelled, realizing with a start that she had just given her position away.
As the clouds continued to move away from the moon she was able to make out the partial silhouette of a person. She couldn�
�t tell if the person, who she thought was Carlos, was giving up or just waiting for the others to join him. Before she could decide what to do next she was fired upon. The shot hit the tree above her head. She immediately fired back. The darkened figure, who had apparently been kneeling, toppled over into the brush.
She was at once relieved that she hadn’t been hit a second time. A second hit, though it might not have been fatal, may have incapacitated her enough that the others would catch up to her and finish the job. Then she had a disturbing thought. Maybe this Stone fellow was shot. She quickly looked toward him. He was sitting on the ground to her left a few feet out of the line of fire. Apparently, he had not been hit.
For a time, she remained as still as possible waiting to see if her single attacker would return, perhaps suffering only a minor flesh wound. Or, if others would take up where he had left off.
Her mind felt suddenly numb. She had trouble accepting the fact that her own people wanted her dead. She had always felt like the bureau was one big, extended family, each one sticking up for and protecting the other. Though she had only met the other agents a few weeks ago when her assignment had begun, she had instantly accepted them as brothers. She had trusted them. Now that trust had been shattered.
Why had they tried to kill her? What was their connection to Mira? Were they all part of this group that she had been assigned to investigate? So many questions loomed in front of her, but at this moment she had more pressing things facing her.
Her attacker didn’t jump back up. She relaxed a bit but was keenly aware that there were others out there who wanted her dead and were probably moving into position at this very moment to knock her off.
In the distance, sirens screamed through the night growing steadily stronger. Candace figured that someone must have heard the gunshots and called the police. She wondered if her attackers would be scared off by the sirens or simply step up their efforts to eliminate her.
It came in a rush. A hail of gunfire slammed into Mira’s car, piercing metal and shattering glass. She pressed herself behind the tree as bullets whizzed about her, hitting the tree, blasting dirt and weeds into the air. Bullets zinged past her to the right and left, and into the tree above her head. They were firing wildly as if they weren’t sure of where she was.
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