Kill Shot

by Susan Sleeman

  “At least make sure the fed you send can handle a weapon as well as I can.”

  “No can do. The only person like that is me, and as much as I’m glad to save your butt like I did so many times downrange, I have something else I need to do.”

  A big belly laugh rumbled through the phone. “Seems to me you’ve gone soft in the head. It was totally the other way around. I was the one saving butts.”

  “Whatever.” Rick closed their conversation by reiterating his warning to take care. He grabbed the notepad and rushed to Max’s room.

  Max answered his door in a flash and didn’t bother asking what was going on, just stepped back to let Rick enter. Rick headed straight to the chairs by the window, but decided he was too antsy to sit. He handed the list of guys to Max and told him about the call.

  “We also need to consider the soldiers who didn’t graduate,” Rick said. “But that’s a long list. Twenty-four guys, to be exact. I’d like to start with the short list of graduates, and have Kaci run checks on the ones who washed out. Then, if need be, we dig deeper into them.”

  Max nodded as he peered at the notepad. “The graduating class started with a total of eight guys. Three are dead, leaving five men in that group who could be our killer.”

  Rick nodded. “Subtract the senator and my friend Levi from the group, and that leaves only three possibilities. Marcus Floyd, Dirk James, and Jim Patton. Patton and James are still active marines stationed out of Pendleton. They can’t move about freely like civilians can, so getting an alibi for the night of the theft and the murders should be easier.”

  “And this Floyd guy?”

  “From what Levi said, I think he might be our guy.” He shared about Floyd’s injury and living conditions.

  “I’ll get local agents out to the base and to Floyd’s house. We’ll bring all three guys in to question them. Might hold them for their own protection, too.” Max eyed Rick. “I’ll also assign an agent to your buddy once he hits the States.”

  “Already told him to expect a sidekick after he lands. We need to warn the senator, too.”

  Max glanced at his watch. “He won’t like the late-night call, but it can’t be helped. I’ll impress upon him the importance of going to ground until we can get a detail on him.”

  “You planning to tell him about the smart bullet?”

  “Can’t do that yet.”

  “Then how will you get him to hole up somewhere?”

  “I don’t know, but warning him that a sniper is after him should do the trick.”

  “If he’s like every other sniper I know, he’ll think he can handle the situation on his own.”

  “After working with you, I totally get that.” A wry smile crossed Max’s face. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Better?…Not sure, but Neal serves on the Senate Committee on Armed Services, and I’m thinking Griffin and Santos’s deaths might be a ruse to cover up an assassination attempt on Neal. Means he could be the next on the list and deserves the best team for his detail. We should head to D.C. to watch his back.” Max frowned, so Rick rushed on. “We need to interview him anyway. We can take care of both things at one time. If he’s the next target, we’ll be in place to capture the shooter.”

  “True.” Max narrowed his eyes. “What about the local leads we haven’t run down?”

  “Like what? The employees Griffin worked with or the shooting ranges? We can turn them over to locals, and you can follow up on collection of the McDonald’s videos via long distance.”

  “And what about Olivia? We can’t leave her unprotected.”

  “Simple. She comes with us.”

  Max eyed Rick, his gaze mining for any hidden agenda. He could be looking for a personal reason Rick wanted to bring Olivia to D.C., so Rick put on his best poker face and didn’t argue his case to further inflame Max’s suspicions.

  Max looked at his watch. “We go now so we’re camped on the senator’s doorstep before he gets out of bed in the morning.”

  “Understood.” Rick headed off to wake everyone so the team could be in position before the sniper struck in D.C. and claimed the senator’s life.

  Chapter 22

  Washington, D.C.

  Sunday, September 17

  5:00 a.m.

  On the D.C. Beltway with Olivia beside him in the car, Rick tapped his thumb on the steering wheel. He was antsy and impatient. Too much time had passed without information on the senator’s safety. Max had left Neal a voice mail before they’d left Atlanta, but they hadn’t heard back. No way Rick’s concern would abate until Max called in an update.

  If only Rick had been able to continue on to D.C. with the team, but due to her lack of security clearance, Olivia couldn’t land at the team’s top-secret airfield there. So they’d made a stop at Turner Field at the Marine Corps Air Facility in Quantico, Virginia. While there, Rick dropped off the fence post at the FBI lab for the Toolmarks team to review. The rest of the Knights had continued directly to the senator’s condo, and Rick and Olivia were driving to D.C.

  “Come on, Max,” Rick muttered. “Call.”

  Olivia faced him. “Relax, or you’ll burn out before we even get to our destination.”

  “Something’s wrong. Max should have called by now.” His phone chimed in Max’s ringtone, and Rick picked it up to answer. “About time.”

  “You sitting down?” Max asked.

  “In the car,” Rick replied, his gut tightening. “Almost to the office.”

  “You’ll want to detour to the senator’s condo. He’s been killed. Same ammo. Found him on his balcony.”

  Just as Rick had predicted. Worse, even. “When?”

  “ME puts Neal’s time of death about the time I left a message to warn him.”

  “Do you think the call woke him, and he stepped out there?”

  “If it did, he never listened to the message, as it was still displaying on his phone as a new voice mail when we arrived. Looks like he went out for a middle-of-the-night smoke, which his wife said wasn’t uncommon.”

  “Text me the address, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Rick ended the call and slammed a fist against the wheel. “Senator Neal’s been murdered.”

  “Oh, how awful.” Olivia clutched her hands together and rested them on her denim skirt.

  His phone dinged, and he activated the address from Max in the phone’s GPS. “We’re rerouting to the senator’s condo. I won’t have time to find an alternate safe location for you. You can’t stay in the car, so you’ll have to come with me. I’ll try to find a quiet place for you to wait.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Since I had to miss church today, I’ll find an online service or devotional on my phone.”

  He nodded, but honestly, he couldn’t think about missing church right now. He hadn’t been attending, but at least he now realized he should start going again. He’d rectify that after they had their killer behind bars and returned the ordnance to MilMed.

  “I need to caution you,” he added. “We know the shooter was in D.C. as late at 0130. Means he could still be in town and watching.”

  Fear flashed in her eyes. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “As we move from the car to Senator Neal’s building, you’ll need to follow my every instruction even if it makes no sense to you.” He tried to smile, but failed. “No questioning. Just do as I say as quickly as you can.”

  “Of course.” She fell back on the seat, her hands tightening even more.

  He’d scared her, but he’d had no choice. A healthy respect for the danger would ensure she reacted quickly, and maybe he had a chance of protecting her from the same fate as Neal.

  Rick made a quick U-turn and followed the route into the heart of D.C. to the senator’s high-rise condo. Local police had cordoned off the street crowded with early-morning pedestrians pausing to gawk.

  Rick found a parking space on a side street. He turned off the engine and faced Olivia. “On the walk to the building, I need you to rem
ain on the inside and close to me. No stopping or getting ahead. Okay?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll scope out the area first, and then I’ll come around to open your door.” He didn’t wait for her to respond, but stepped into the refreshingly cool air. At only sixty degrees, it was easier to breathe here than in Atlanta, but apprehension still tightened his chest.

  He searched the street lined with tall buildings where a shooter could easily hide on a rooftop. He honestly doubted their suspect would be hanging out in the area after killing a senator, but killers could be unpredictable. Especially a serial killer who’d gotten away with multiple crimes. The more lives they took without getting caught, the bolder they became.

  Rick checked both sides of the street, but there was no way he could see the extreme distance a smart bullet could travel. He had to believe in his skills. And in God, he supposed. He was the only one who could really protect Olivia from these deadly bullets.

  He opened Olivia’s door and stepped back. She moved to the inside of the sidewalk as instructed. With a hand on her lower back, he urged her even closer to the buildings. The senator’s high-rise soon came into view, and Rick scanned the floors to the top, not surprised to see lights glowing in most windows and occupants watching the action. Thankfully, Neal’s balcony wasn’t located at the front of the building, in view of onlookers.

  Rick displayed his credentials to the officer manning a barricade, and then to the officer of record at the front door. He took down Rick’s information, and they stepped under the wide portico to enter a spacious foyer with pricey furniture and decor. Not surprising when a one-bedroom condo sold for over half a million in the sought-after Penn Quarter.

  Rick directed Olivia across the foyer and away from the windows. He let out a long breath, releasing his stress over moving her safely inside. He displayed his credentials for the uniformed doorman, who stood to the side gnawing on his lip, then arranged for Olivia to wait in a small office on the main floor.

  Once she was settled, Rick started for the door, hating with every step that he had to leave her behind. He paused and looked back at her. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”

  She held up her phone. “Going to church, remember?”

  “Right.” He forced out a smile. “You can reach me by cell. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Just go do your thing.”

  “Promise me you won’t leave this room for any reason without me by your side.”

  “Even to go to the restroom?”

  “Even then. Call me. I’ll come down to escort you and wait by the door.” He could tell by her look that she believed he was overreacting, but there was no way he could go overboard in his efforts to keep her alive.

  At the lobby elevator, he selected the seventh out of nine floors, and the nearly silent car took him to the senator’s condo. Rick slipped on disposable booties and gloves from the box at the doorway before entering the condo. The small foyer opened up to a large combination living room, dining room, and kitchen with pricey artwork filling white walls. A slight woman sat on a small sofa, her arms crossed and her head bowed. No doubt the senator’s wife. She looked up, her eyes swollen and red.

  “If you’re looking for the others, they’re on the balcony with Philip.” A sob wrenched from her throat.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  A clipped nod, and she dabbed a tissue at her eyes.

  He moved past her to the sliding door and onto the balcony. Max and Shane stood to the right, an area directly outside the room Rick thought to be the bedroom. Neal lay in congealed blood in front of them. Dead. Murdered.

  Rick ground his teeth together. How had he failed another marine? Three dead now. How many more before Rick figured out the shooter’s identity? How many?

  Guilt tried to overwhelm him. He wanted to grab the turquoise owl figurine from the patio table to smash it on the concrete, but balled his fingers into fists instead. What good would it do to destroy something? It wouldn’t eliminate his guilt or frustration. He could far better serve the senator by focusing, figuring out the shooter’s hide location, and bringing in the killer.

  He looked at the body again. Neal’s position told Rick that the senator had been facing east, and that the shot had come from the same direction. The building was one of the tallest in the area, so Rick’s view to the east stretched as far as the eye could see. He turned to find a concrete privacy wall on the west side of the balcony with a fairly round bullet hole in it, meaning the shot had come from a similar elevation. Rick looked for the slug but didn’t see it. Either it had lodged too deeply in the thick concrete wall to see, the team had already recovered it, or it had passed through. Max would have the details.

  Rick joined him and Shane. “Since you mentioned Neal was killed with a smart bullet, does that mean you recovered it?”

  Max nodded. “Passed through the wall behind you and into the adjoining neighbor’s balcony. Brynn’s over there now.”

  “Anyone besides the team see it?”

  Max shook his head. “We got here before anyone else was up and moving. We had the doorman call up, and he woke Mrs. Neal. When we found the body, we immediately went next door and woke the neighbor so we could recover the bullet.”

  Rick peered into the distance. “Looks like the shooter’s escalating.”

  “How’s that?” Shane asked.

  Rick moved his focus back to Shane. “He took a kill shot where he had no hope of recovering the bullet or taking the senator’s HOG’s tooth. If the guy even wore his.”

  “Since the shooter didn’t recover the bullet that killed Griffin, he probably didn’t worry about keeping things under wraps anymore,” Shane said.

  “Then I’m right and he’s getting reckless and escalating quickly,” Rick warned. “A deadly combination.”

  * * *

  “We’re almost there.” Kaci glanced at Olivia from behind the wheel of her compact car.

  “Thanks for driving me.” Olivia yawned after a long day of doing nothing.

  “With our shooter in the wind, we couldn’t very well have you riding on the back of Rick’s Harley.”

  Thinking of his excitement when he’d left to pick up his bike from the airport made Olivia smile. “He really seems to love that bike.”

  “I don’t think love is a strong-enough word.” Kaci wrinkled her nose. “It was a rusty old thing when he bought it. We all thought he was crazy, but wait until you see it. He’s restored every inch, and it’s real pretty.”

  “Should I tell him how pretty it is when I see him?”

  Kaci shot a horrified look in Olivia’s direction. “Not if you want to live.”

  “So he loves the bike, and he’s touchy about it.”

  “Yeah, I mean, it’s a real guy’s bike, you know. At least that’s what he says when he says anything.”

  “Kind of the silent type.”

  Kaci scowled. “I’ll say.”

  Olivia heard the low, throaty rumble of a motorcycle from behind, and she didn’t have to look to know Rick had caught up to them. He roared past and saluted. He wore a worn leather jacket and black helmet, and sat on the motorcycle with such confidence, Olivia’s interest in him rose even higher.

  He disappeared ahead on an exit ramp, his bike leaning into the curve, and Olivia worried he might wipe out. A shudder rolled over her body.

  “What’s wrong?” Kaci asked.

  “I have a fear of motorcycles.”

  “Bad experience?”

  Olivia nodded. “With my dad. He was kind of a daredevil.”

  “Rick seems pretty responsible as far as I can see.”

  “Honestly? I think he’d be the kind of guy to take risks.”

  “He doesn’t have a death wish, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, he’s just a guy who likes the thrill of risky things.”

  “You could be right.
” Kaci took the exit, and they moved into a residential neighborhood with trees and grass, a pleasant sight after Olivia’s day of confinement.

  She’d sat in the windowless office at the condo until lunchtime. Then Rick had picked up takeout and, despite its being Sunday, he’d transported her to FBI headquarters, where she again sat alone in an empty office while a young agent babysat her and the team frantically searched for a lead.

  Kaci turned onto a dead-end street. A garage door sat open in a traditional bungalow with brick siding. The house and landscaping were neat, not a surprise given Rick’s personality. Kaci pulled into the driveway, and Rick stepped out of the garage. He’d removed his helmet and wore the same peaceful expression Olivia had seen when he was with Yolanda, but there was something else lingering in his eyes. Boyish charm oozed from him, and her heart tripped again.

  Oh, man. She was in over her head with him, and the last thing she should be doing was spending the night at his house. Not because she was worried anything improper would happen, but because she would learn more about him, and undoubtedly fall even further for him. She might be open to the fact that God had put Rick in her life, but he had so many unresolved issues. Surely God would want her to use the common sense He’d given her and be leery of those issues, right?

  She turned to Kaci. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Working, why?”

  “I wondered if you could join us for dinner. Maybe hang out for a while.”

  Kaci appraised her for a long moment. “You’re safe here with Rick, you know. He won’t let anything bad happen to you, and you don’t need another agent around.”

  It wasn’t her safety she was worried about. At least not the safety of anything more than her heart.

  “Thanks for the ride.” She grabbed her tote from the back, then joined Rick.

  Kaci departed without talking to Rick, but he waved and eyed the street, his tranquility disappearing. “We should go straight inside.”

  In the garage she turned her attention to the motorcycle. The large bike had a red gas tank and fenders, shiny chrome detailing, and a rich black leather seat that resembled an oversize bicycle seat.