He whirled back around.
“Who are they shooting at?” Dev asked.
Logan shook his head. “I have no idea.”
Thup.
A cry of pain.
CHAPTER SEVENTY — NINE
Erica and Clausen exited via the sliding glass door and split up, Clausen going left while she went right.
Scanning the darkness, she looked for any sign of movement. There were no places for anyone to hide against the house or the back of the garage, with the grass running right up to the foundation. Closer to the back of the property, though, along the cinder-block wall that served as the fence, was a metal gardening shed, and beyond it, across the rear of the lot, was a wide section full of bushes and trees and plants.
She headed for the shed first, pausing a few feet away to listen.
Breathing. Faint, either coming from inside the shed or out further in the bushes.
She moved over to the door, but immediately saw the sound couldn’t have been coming from within. The door was padlocked.
Whoever was hiding had to be in the bushes.
She glanced at the other side of the yard. Clausen had headed straight for the planted area on his half, and was working along it in the opposite direction.
Erica clicked her tongue once against the top of her mouth.
Clausen turned, and she motioned to the section of the brush area where she thought the voice had originated. With a nod, Clausen switched directions so they were closing in on the area like a vise.
As Erica inched forward, she looked specifically for any pattern in the shadowy vegetation that didn’t fit.
Movement, subtle at first, then a rush of leaves slapping against each other.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” a man said, popping out of the brush, his hands above his head.
He was large, not tall but fat.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“Please don’t hurt me. I haven’t done anything.”
“Answer my question.”
The man hesitated. “Kurt. Kurt Abbott.”
“That name means nothing to me.”
“This…this is my house.”
“Oh, it is, is it? Then tell me, Kurt Abbott, where’s the girl?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Abbott wasn’t a very good liar.
“Step out of the bushes,” Erica said. “Slowly.”
Abbott didn’t move. “Why?”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“Please. Just go. I won’t call the cops or anything.”
Erica’s face hardened. “Get your ass out here. Now.”
As Abbott was about to take a step forward, another man erupted out of a bush just to the right.
Erica and Clausen swung their guns around and pulled their triggers, but both fired in surprise, their shots going wide.
Clausen fired again.
With a cry of pain, the man went down.
“Holy shit,” Abbott said.
The guy on the ground was also big, but in the muscular-and-tall way.
Erica used her foot to roll him over, while Clausen kept an eye on Abbott. The injured man winced in pain. His arm hugged his gut, the shirt beneath turning dark with blood.
Most times, Erica liked to leave the gun work to others, but after the two days of frustration, and now this, she was pissed off. “Who the hell are you?”
“Go to hell, Dr. Paskota,” the man grunted. Then he smiled. “You’re too late. She’s gone.”
Erica’s eyes narrowed, her sense that everything was working out slipping away. She put her foot on back of the hand the injured man was pressing against his wound, and shifted her weight onto it.
The man cried out.
“Who are you?”
CHAPTER EIGHTY
The first thing Harp saw as he and Barney neared the other car was that Alan was not there. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to worry about that at the moment, because the second thing he noticed was Markle pushing himself off the ground.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Harp said, rushing forward.
He raised the tire iron he’d taken out of the back of the Cherokee.
“Go to hell, old man,” Markle said. He started to stand, not taking the threat seriously.
Harp clenched his jaw, hesitated a second, then swung.
The tire iron slapped the side of the man’s head. He twisted toward Harp, dazed, his eyes trying to focus on his former captive before he dropped to the ground.
“Harp!” Barney said.
“What?”
“You hit him!”
“Yeah, I did.”
“You…you might have killed him.” Ever the doctor, Barney dropped to his knees and checked the man’s pulse.
“Well, he and his friends wouldn’t have hesitated to kill me.”
“He’s alive,” Barney said, relief in his voice. He looked back at Harp and smiled. “Good thing you’re not so strong, huh?”
“‘Good thing you’re not so strong,’” Harp shot back like a sixth-grader. He thrust the tire iron into Barney’s hands. “Take it.”
“Why?”
“Next time it’s your turn.”
“I can’t hit him. My oath.”
“Oh, good Lord. Give it back.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY — ONE
As Logan reached the sliding glass door, he heard another cry of pain.
Dr. Paskota was standing over someone on the ground, her foot pushing down on the person. Her companion had a gun trained on a man standing in the bushes.
Rachel’s husband, Logan realized. Which meant the man on the ground had to be Richard.
Dammit. Why hadn’t they gotten out of here?
“Who are you?” the doctor demanded.
The time for stealth was over. Logan raised his gun and fired through the open door from inside the house. Though he was a good marksman, it was dark and the weapon was an unfamiliar one, hindered by the suppressor. The bullet went left of its intended target, clipping Dr. Paskota in the arm instead of hitting her in the shoulder like he’d intended.
She jerked sideways and dropped to the ground, facing the house.
Clausen hit the grass, too.
“Who’s in there?” the doctor yelled.
Logan stepped to the side, out of direct line of the guns. He pointed at the window on the other side of the door. Dev nodded, dropped into a crouch, and snuck over to it.
Staying in the darkness, Logan edged back out just enough so he could see the woman.
“The next shot takes you down,” Logan yelled.
Thup-thup. Thup-thup.
Bullets flew into the house, but hit only wall.
“You want to try again?” Logan asked.
“Harper?” Dr. Paskota said.
“Right on the first try, Doctor.”
There was a pause. “How about we make a deal? We walk away, and you can come out and help your friends.”
Dev whispered, “The other one’s sneaking up to the house.”
That wasn’t a surprise. Logan hadn’t believed the woman for a second.
“How about you put your guns down and we don’t kill you?” Logan countered.
“I don’t think so. Tell me, is the woman with you?”
“Not anymore. Right now she’s with her husband and baby. Oh, and my dad, too.”
“I guess I misjudged you, huh?”
“I guess so.”
Dev looked over. “Can’t see him anymore.”
Logan stepped back so he could no longer see what was going on.
“So tell me, Dr. Paskota, what are your clients going to say when the FBI shows up at their homes and starts asking about these babies you’ve created for them?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough to know that creating children just so they could provide parts for a biological parent is probably going to get you quite a few years in prison.”
Silence, then, “That’s not going to happen. Once we take care of you, I’ll find the girl, and this will all just be a bad memory.”
Logan was about to agree with the last part, but before he could say anything, someone shouted, “No!”
Then Reggie barked.
CHAPTER EIGHTY — TWO
Alan wasn’t about to just stand around and wait. As soon as Mr. Harper was on the phone, he quickly made his way back to the corner.
He was only halfway to his sister’s house when he heard several dull thuds coming from somewhere near her place. He picked up his speed.
The front door was open, but he was smart enough to not rush through it. Instead, he decided the best idea would be to circle around the house. That way, he might be in a position to surprise the people who were trying to hurt his wife.
With effort, he climbed the fence and let himself down gently on the other side. Reggie was in the pen. When he saw that his visitor was Alan, he struggled to his feet, loped over, and began licking Alan’s hand.
“No, Reggie,” Alan whispered, petting the dog on the head.
He moved over to the gate of the pen and slipped his hand through the wire, undoing the latch. Suddenly there were more of the thuds. This time they were accompanied by voices-a woman and Logan Harper.
It was clear the woman was one of the people after his wife and daughter. All the anger and emotions that had plagued him since his wife left suddenly had focus.
This woman. She was the problem.
He tried to focus on what was being said, but was having a hard time making some of the connections. Logan was saying something about creating children and biological parents and prison, but it didn’t fully make sense.
What he heard next did.
“That’s not going to happen,” the woman said. “Once we take care of you, I’ll find the girl, and this will all just be a bad memory.”
Emily. She meant Emily.
No. No. No!
Without even realizing it, he was running through the gate.
“No!”
CHAPTER EIGHTY — THREE
“It’s Alan,” Dev said, his view on that part of the yard better than Logan’s.
Immediately they both raced for the door.
“She’s not yours!” Alan yelled.
Thup.
Logan sent a bullet toward Paskota. He twisted to the side as he raced out the doorway, and fired twice at the man along the wall. As Logan’s bullet caught him in the shoulder, the man spun and reflexively pulled his own trigger.
Alan, who had just rounded the corner, yelped as he fell to the ground.
“Watch him!” Logan said to Dev, with a quick nod at the guy he’d just shot. He whipped back around to cover the doctor, but Dr. Paskota wasn’t there anymore.
If shehad gone into the bushes, Logan would have heard that. So the only place she could be was along the side of the garden shed.
“It’s over, Dr. Paskota,” Logan yelled. “You know it is.”
As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, he raced quietly across the grass to the shed.
“You’re a dead man, Harper,” the woman said.
CHAPTER EIGHTY — FOUR
“It’S over, Dr. Paskota,” Harper yelled. “You know it is.”
Erica’s mind raced. There had to be some way out of this. She was Dr. Erica Paskota! She was the one who called the shots. She was the one in charge. Things couldn’t be this fucked up. They just couldn’t!
She winced as pain radiated out of her wound. Her wound! She’d been shot! She never thought in her entire life a bullet would ever touch her skin. This was wrong, all wrong!
“You’re a dead man, Harper,” she yelled.
This should have been simple. She should have already been on the way back with the girl.
Done.
Done, done, done.
But she’d been shot. And it was that son of a bitch Harper’s fault. He shouldn’t have even been involved at all.
I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get out of here.
But even as the words repeated in her mind, they began to sound hollow.
“Dr. Paskota, put your gun down, and come out,” Harper said.
He was only a few feet away, just around the front of the shed.
I’m not getting out of here, am I?
The thought actually relaxed her for the first time in…years.
Harper had said she would be going to prison, but he was wrong.
She unscrewed the suppressor from her gun, and slipped the barrel into her mouth without hesitation.
CHAPTER EIGHTY — FIVE
As much as Logan hoped she would come out peacefully, he knew she wouldn’t. Her arrogance wouldn’t allow that. He would just have to keep her there until the police arrived. They could figure out how to get her out.
He heard the faint squeak of something being unscrewed.
What the-
With sudden realization, Logan raced around the corner.
Dr. Paskota had the muzzle of her gun in her mouth. She was opting for the coward’s way out, but he couldn’t let that happen. He dove, his hand knocking into the weapon just as she pulled the trigger. The blast was so loud that Logan didn’t even hear himself hit the ground. He did, however, feel her gun fall on his back and roll to the ground. He flipped around, intending to grab the weapon before she could get it again, but he needn’t have bothered.
Dr. Paskota was lying on the ground, unmoving.
“No, no, no!” Logan said as he pulled himself to his knees.
“You all right?” Dev called out, his voice sounding tinny and far away.
“I’m fine.”
Logan put a hand on the woman’s neck, sure she was dead, but there was a pulse. It wasn’t very strong, but it didn’t seem to be in danger of stopping.
He flipped her over, and saw what had happened.
He hadn’t hit the gun in time to pull it out of her mouth before it fired, but he had moved it enough so that the bullet ripped through the doctor’s cheek instead of the back of her head, leaving a nasty hole that was now covered with dirt.
But she was alive, and she would answer for what she’d done.
He ripped the sleeve off his shirt and tore it into several pieces. He used a strip to wipe the dirt away from her facial wound, and stuck another over the hole. A third he used to tie off the wound on her arm. He then grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her out from behind the shed and into the yard.
He checked the others. Of all the injured, Richard had it worst. Gut shots were never good, and his only chance was to get to a hospital soon.
Logan looked over at Kurt, who had yet to move from where he’d been standing. “Come here.”
Kurt mouthed something, but Logan couldn’t hear it.
“What?”
“I’m fine where I am,” Kurt said, his voice barely audible to Logan.
“Come here and keep pressure on this,” Logan told him, his hand pushing down on the makeshift bandage over Richard’s wound. “He tried to save your life, for God’s sake.”
That got Kurt moving. He took over for Logan, who then joined Dev next to Alan. The bullet had caught Sara’s husband in the meaty part of the thigh.
“Don’t think it hit the bone,” Dev said. “And it’s not bleeding too bad, so no artery.”
Logan glanced at Alan, wanting to ask what he thought he’d been doing, but the pain in the man’s eyes stopped him. The truth was, Logan knew what Alan had been trying to do.
“Where the hell are the cops?” he asked Dev.
His friend gave him an odd look. “They’re like a block away. Can’t you hear them?”
Logan shook his head. “Ever had a gun fired right next to your head?”
His friend grinned. “Once or twice.”
The police rushed in a few minutes later, shouting at everyone to get on the ground. Of course, everyone was already on the ground, either injured or tending to them.
Once the cops secured all the weapons and confirmed the danger had passed, the EMTs were allowed to come in and assess the wounded.
Richard, as Logan expected, was the first out the door. Dr. Paskota went next, then Alan and Dr. Paskota’s companion.
Logan and Dev were ordered to sit at the patio table and wait with an officer assigned to watch them.
A thought suddenly occurred to Logan. “There’s another one,” he said to the cop. “He’s across the street, on the other side of one of the sedans parked there.”
“You mean the one the two old guys with the tire iron were watching?” the officer said.
That answered that.
Fifty minutes after the police stormed the house, FBI Special Agent Kara Sanchez arrived. She didn’t look much older than Logan, and had her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail.
“You’re Logan Harper?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What the hell were you thinking? Do you know how many people could have been killed here?”
“I do. Do you know how many people were killed?”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve created one giant mess here, my friend, and I don’t envy you.”
Logan looked past her, making it clear he was checking to see if anyone else was around. “Really?” he said. “What I thought I had here was a case that could make an FBI agent’s career.”
“Oh, is that so?” she said, her attitude unchanged.
“It is.”
She looked at him for a moment, and he saw what he knew he would-a subtle shift in her eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHTY — SIX
Logan was in the middle of his story when Callie arrived. As soon as she had made the calls to the police and Special Agent Sanchez, she’d left Riverside. Now, as Logan went on, she confirmed many of the points he told Sanchez, and soon they were all heading to the hospital.
Though Sanchez wanted them all to travel together, Logan insisted on taking his own car. He had a very important reason for this, a promise he had yet to keep. So, after Callie gave Sanchez her personal assurances that Logan wouldn’t bolt, they headed over separately-Callie with the agent and Dev with Logan.
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