That bad news was even worse news for Maddie and Dingo. Because if Stank was right, and Nelson was going to kill him, Eddie, and Dead-Eyes? Nelson was definitely going to kill Maddie and Dingo, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As Shayla pulled into the same gravel area where Peter had exited the truck, her phone whooshed, rapid-fire, with incoming texts, five times in a row.
She parked, grabbed, and looked—it was Peter. Trouble connecting with Z, his text read. Forward to him.
He’d sent a series of photos that she immediately messaged on to Izzy Z-for-Zanella. They were of the back of the building—concrete block, nondescript, single window with security bars covering it, single metal door—plus three shots of the interior, taken through one of the windows.
She could see Maddie, duct tape over her mouth, tied to some kind of support pillar.
She could see Dingo, his body language radiating his anxiety.
And the final picture was of the three men that Dingo had told them about in his text, as they huddled together in the back of the room. The body language there was crazy, too. They were definitely freaked out about something.
She texted Peter: Izzy hit traffic. New ETA about 55 mins.
The texts went out more quickly if she kept them short, so she hit send and then wrote: No cell service at convenience store. Send.
I’m where you dropped me. Send.
Please come back so we can figure out a plan B. Send.
Shayla’s phone rang.
“Get out of there.” Peter spoke softly and didn’t say hello.
“No. I have cell service here. Those photos for Izzy? They’re still sending.”
“Fuck.”
“Peter, we need to figure out—”
“Something’s up,” he said. “I’m hearing only bits of it, but our three bad guys are worried as fuck about something. I do know their boss—Nelson—will be here in about twenty-five minutes. Figure twenty. We are out of time. Wait, shh! One of them is saying something—I need to listen….”
As Maddie turned to watch, Stank broke away from Eddie and Dead-Eyes, moving toward her and Dingo. “Our best shot at surviving this is to kill these motherfuckers, right now! He’s going to kill them anyway—and if we do it for him—if he gets here, finds them dead, and us gone? He’s gonna let us go. It’s called détente. He’ll know that we won’t ever come back, and he won’t come looking for us!”
“That’s bullshit,” Dead-Eyes countered, following him. “He will come after us. If we’re out there, floating free? He’s going to know that the second we hit trouble, the minute we catch a case, we’re going to be looking to make a deal.”
“You’re bullshit!” Stank exclaimed. “You’re a fucking idiot, Cody! No way are we going to cop to three murders just to make a deal—because that’s what we’d have to do. We’d just be screwing ourselves.”
“I’m just saying it’s fucking idiotic if we kill them and leave,” Dead-Eyes—Cody—said. “And do what, then? Go where? I say we kill them—and stay. We show Nelson that we’re loyal—and move up in his organization.”
“How about if I make a deal?” Dingo called out, his voice thin and reedy in the sudden stillness. “Right now. I’ll confess—to the police—to killing Daryl, if you let Maddie go. Right now! Just let her walk out the door!”
“Dingo! No!” Maddie said, but it came out “Mmph! Mmph!”
Pete could hear Shayla breathing on the other end of the call as he watched through the hole in the roof, as Dingo offered to sacrifice himself for Maddie.
When he’d first climbed up here, he’d secured his length of rope on an ancient antenna that had held his body weight. He’d tested it. And he’d coiled it there, ready to grab-and-go when it was time to slide back down to the ground.
“Hey,” he told Shay, as he picked up that rope now, as in the garage below he could see that the three armed bad guys had rejected Dingo’s offer. No deal! No deal! There was a fuckload of shouting. And when armed idiots got into a raging disagreement, it never ended well. “I think out of everything I told you, I left out the most important part, and that’s I love you. I didn’t want it to go unsaid.”
“Peter.” Her voice was thick with emotion because, as always, she knew what he was about to say.
“Call nine-one-one, Shay, and then get yourself to safety. Please. I can’t wait any longer. I’m going in.”
He cut the connection. Peter had cut the connection!
Shayla sat in his truck, stunned for one second, then two—but then Do it!
She didn’t need Harry’s voice in her head to know that she had to move. Now. Fast.
Instead of hitting the emergency number on her phone, she dialed Lindsey Jenkins’s number, even as she put the truck into gear and peeled out of the lot, heading for the road that led to the front of the garage.
Maddie sawed frantically through the piece of rope that bound her wrists together. She’d made a stupid mistake, and cut through the rope that tied her to the pole, but if she’d done this one first, she would’ve already been free. Live and learn. Please, God, she wanted to live….
“We’re running out of time!” Stank shouted as Dead-Eyes and Eddie argued over whether or not it would work—Dingo confessing to killing his friend Daryl in a crazy drunken fight over some girl. Fiona. Fiona would like that. Fiona was going to love hearing that Maddie and Dingo were dead. Maddie sawed even faster.
“It could work,” Eddie said.
“Nelson’ll never go for it,” Dead-Eyes insisted. “You’re deluded if you think he would.”
“And you’re deluded if you think he’s going to walk in here and give you a good job sticker for killing the girl. He’s going to kill! Us! All!” Stank had reached his limit, and he likewise reached into his jacket and pulled out his gun. With a roar, he turned and aimed it at Maddie.
And she kept sawing at that rope, even though she knew these were her last few moments on earth. Her last effort, her last breath, her last heartbeat.
She wished she’d never sat with Fiona in the stupid cafeteria.
She wished she’d asked her dad for help.
She wished she’d texted him and Shayla back at Manzanar—OK, yeah, let’s meet right now, but hey, heads up, I haven’t showered in days, and both Dingo and I smell a little ripe.
Her father wouldn’t have cared.
She wished Lisa had married him, although she knew why her mother hadn’t. He’d loved her too much, and that had scared her. He’d been too honest and honorable.
Too much like Dingo, who dove—“No!”—to put himself between Maddie and Stank’s gun.
The sound of the gunshot was deafening, so much so that she didn’t hear the force of the roof being kicked in as a man—holy shit, that was her father!—came fast-roping down into the garage like some kind of Marvel superhero.
“Everyone, freeze!” he shouted as he dropped the last few feet onto the concrete floor, and rolled back behind a stack of crates.
Dingo had pushed Stank’s gun aside, and the sheer violence of his attack had knocked both of them over and they were tangled together on the floor.
Dead-Eyes and Eddie had both leapt for cover behind Dead-Eyes’s truck as Stank scrambled out from beneath Dingo, who was motionless on the floor.
“Dingo!” Maddie tried to say. “Ding!” But he didn’t move, and no, no, no, blood was starting to pool beneath him.
“Don’t do it! Don’t move! Don’t make me shoot you!” her dad warned from behind the crates as Stank looked wildly around, from those crates, to the truck that Dead-Eyes and Eddie were crouched behind, to his gun, presumably still beneath Dingo on the floor, to Maddie.
He dove toward Maddie, which meant, of course, her father didn’t shoot as Stank put himself behind her as much as he could. He was sweating as he pressed himself against her, and his breath was foul in her face.
“I’m going to kill you,” she told him, but of course he didn’t understand because her mouth was st
ill covered with that tape.
“Who the fuck are you?” Dead-Eyes shouted as someone pounded on the door at the front of the garage.
“FBI!” a voice shouted. “Open this door! We have the place surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”
Jesus, that was Shayla at the door!
With the thug named Stank using Maddie as a human shield, and with Dingo possibly bleeding out, Pete knew that shouting “Get back in the truck!” was not going to help the situation. So instead of gnashing his teeth in frustration and fear for Shay’s safety, he used the reckless, foolish, selfless gift she’d just handed to him.
“FBI!” he shouted, too. “Weapons on the floor! Back away from the girl! Now!”
Peter was alive!
Shay had heard that terrifying gunshot, but he was in there, still able to shout, so if he’d been hit at least he wasn’t dead.
Yet.
Her heart pounded as she stood outside the door to the garage.
Up against the frame, in case they start shooting and try to blast you straight through the thing. Harry’s voice in her head was matter-of-fact. Calm. It’s metal, but who knows if it’s reinforced.
The metal door she was banging on was way off to the right side of the bay doors, in the front of the building, and it had a little window that she’d peeked into when she’d approached, first with a quick bob of her head, and then a longer look. It opened into a small, dark waiting area that was cluttered with boxes and awkwardly stacked furniture, with a cracked-open door that seemed to lead into the main garage.
Peter continued to shout. “You have exactly two minutes before the rest of our team kicks in the door!”
Except there was no team. There was only her. She’d called Lindsey, who’d called the police and the real FBI, and God only knew who-all else, but with Shay’s luck, they’d show up, see her holding that gun, and shoot her. She should’ve insisted Peter take his gun, instead of leaving it with her.
Focus on right now. Double-handed grip on that weapon, that’s right, be ready for the recoil in case you need to pull the trigger. Just a gentle squeeze. Eyes open, brain on, don’t accidentally shoot Peter or Maddie or Dingo. You got this.
No, she didn’t.
Stick to your skill set, Peter had said. Rushing in, gun blazing? Definitely not her skill set. She had to get this gun to him—somehow.
“I’m the FBI negotiator!” she shouted as she tucked the thing back into her handbag. New plan: Talk her way inside and then throw Peter her bag. “I’m unarmed! Let me in so we can talk!”
Do you know for a fact that this door is locked?
Good question. But surely Peter would’ve gone in this way, if it was.
Maybe he didn’t want to risk being seen by coming around the front. He approached the building from the back, remember? He may not have checked it.
She nodded, and reached to try the knob.
And the unlocked door clicked open.
Pete heard a clatter from behind the truck. Holy shit, had he—with Shayla’s help—actually called their bluff?
And yes, the two men behind the truck were arguing. They were trying to keep their voices down, but he could hear them. So could Stank.
“What the fuck you doing, man?”
“He said to put it down.” That was the one called Eddie.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Stank called.
“Kick the weapon over to me!” Pete ordered.
“Kick it over to me!” Stank demanded.
“Nobody move! FBI Agent Harriet Parker, Counterterrorism! You have exactly five seconds to surrender your weapons and agree to a deal, or we will lock you in Guantánamo and you will never get out.”
Holy fuck, Shayla had somehow gotten inside. She was standing there, across the room—just inside the shadow-filled doorway of some kind of front office as she continued to talk.
“Kick me your fucking gun!” Stank shouted at the idiots cowering behind the truck.
“The girl you have kidnapped is the daughter of U.S. Navy Admiral Lisa Nakamura,” Shayla said, as cool as if she were a real FBI negotiator, “who is connected to the arm of the military that runs Black Ops. She’s recently been the target of a terrorist cell, and unless you cooperate immediately, we will assume you are in league with ISIS—”
“Fucking shoot her!” Stank shouted. “Shoot them both! Don’t you know they don’t have any guns? They’re fucking unarmed and you’re gonna surrender to them?”
Pete stood, too, hoping those idiots would see him as the greatest threat and aim for him instead of Shay. He held his hands positioned as if he had a weapon, because this goatfuck hadn’t gotten bad enough—he apparently had to bring pantomime into it, too. “Drop your weapons!” he roared. “Now! Shayla, get down!”
But the moment that he stood and she saw him, she stepped further into the room and flung something at him, hard—her handbag. It came sailing directly at his head.
As Pete caught Shay’s bag, he realized why it was so heavy.
She’d thrown him his handgun.
As he reached into the bag, one of the men behind the truck gave in to Stank’s demands, and his weapon came skittering out from under the truck, directly toward Stank. And Maddie.
Who surprised the hell out of him by pulling her hands free from where they’d been tied behind her back.
Maddie cut through the rope, and her world went into slow-mo.
She pulled her hands free, still clenching Dingo’s little corkscrew knife. But as much as she wanted to drive the blade into Stank’s throat, she knew it was dull now, so instead she used her elbow to slam him, hard, in the side of his head.
It didn’t stop him for long—just long enough for her to kick that weapon out into the middle of the room before he slammed her in the face and she went down in a burst of pain and flashing lights.
Stank dove for that handgun, so Pete dispatched him with a quick double-pop to the head, right through the bottom of Shayla’s handbag.
“Any further questions about whether or not we’re armed?” he called to the men behind the truck, as he scooped up that stray weapon and Maddie crawled over to Dingo. It was a rhetorical question, so he didn’t wait for a response as in the distance—finally—sirens wailed. “Slide your remaining weapons over here, then get down! On the floor, hands on your head, roll into the middle of the room, where I can see you. Do it! Now!”
The two surviving kidnappers did as Peter said.
“Shay, you okay?” he called, as Shayla emerged from the office, where she’d thrown herself after throwing him her handbag.
“I am. Are you?”
“Yeah. Maddie?”
Shay tried not to look at Stank’s very dead body, and instead focus on…
Maddie had pulled the duct tape off her mouth, and as she turned Dingo over, her voice shook. “Dad, help me! Please! Dingo’s still alive!”
“Shay!” Peter held out one of the guns, gesturing for her to take it. “If they move—at all—shoot them. Kill shots. Double-pops.”
That was not even close to her skill set, but it was important that the men she was guarding not know it. So she answered in “Harriet” Parker’s cool voice. “With pleasure,” she said, then told Maddie as those distant sirens got louder, “An ambulance is on its way.”
It was then, as Pete knelt beside Dingo and administered first aid, that Shay’s phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket with her left hand—gun held in her right—to see that it was Izzy.
“We found a shorter route, and we’re out front,” he said. “I see Grunge’s truck, parked kinda willy-nilly, but other than that, the place looks quiet. What do you need us to do?”
“Izzy’s here,” Shay called to Peter.
“Tell him to come in,” he called back.
“Please come in. The door to the right is unlocked. We’ve secured this part of the garage,” she reported, “but we’ve got a man—Dingo—down, and two prisoners I could use some help guarding. Oh, and I think
Nelson—the bad-guy boss—is going to show up in a few minutes.”
Izzy had already come inside. “I was gonna say, What’d we miss, but this story tells itself.”
“Z, help me carry Dingo outside,” Pete ordered. “Hans, take over for Shayla. Heads up, we have not yet searched those men for additional weapons. If they move, kill them.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” With a nod at Shay, the SEAL candidate named Hans took over for her.
She moved toward Maddie, who’d stepped back to let Izzy lift Dingo.
“Timebomb, make sure no one’s hiding in any of the back rooms.” Peter continued issuing commands as he and Izzy carried Dingo toward the front of the garage—it was clear this was not the first time they’d moved a badly wounded man together. “Seagull, stay close to Maddie and Shay.”
But despite the fact that her nose was still bleeding, Maddie strode to the bay door and pushed the button that opened it, so that Izzy and Peter could carry Dingo out more easily.
“Ambulance is here!” Izzy announced.
“Back rooms are clear. The garage is secure!” Timebomb called.
It didn’t take the paramedics long to get Dingo onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.
Maddie wanted to ride with him, but there wasn’t room. The paramedics were going to need all of the space possible to try to stabilize him—and the girl instinctively knew that wasn’t good news.
“We’ll follow in the truck, right behind them,” Peter promised her.
Shay handed him his keys. “I can stay here, wait for the police.”
But Peter shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “You’re coming with Maddie and me. Get into the truck. Z, tell the police we’ll talk to them at the hospital.”
Shayla didn’t argue or even ask for a please. She climbed in next to Maddie, who looked at her and said, “You risked your life for me.”
Hi, I’m Shayla seemed an inappropriate response, so Shay said, “It seemed like a no-brainer.”
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