by Rick Blechta
“Why are you here?”
“To make sure Olivia is all right.”
“And what do you know about my precious stepdaughter?”
Jackie played her one remaining card. “Everything.”
The response was laughter from Maxine. “Oh, I doubt that very much. Olivia is a shifty little creature. For instance, I’ll bet she’s told you that I killed her brother, which is totally ridiculous, of course. It was actually me who shielded her from the police. There would have been a trial; she would have gone to prison – or worse – if it hadn’t been for me.”
Jackie swallowed a few times, attempting to ease the pain in her throat. “Then why did her friend Maggie have to die?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jackie had been watching Dave when she’d asked that, and his eyes betrayed him. He, for one, knew what she was talking about.
“Why haven’t you had Olivia murdered?”
“Murder my own stepdaughter? Preposterous!”
“No, Maxine, not preposterous.”
Jackie managed to turn her head far enough to see Olivia standing in the doorway. She didn’t seem very steady on her legs, but the pistol in her hands was steady enough.
“Tell her why I can’t die.”
Chapter 24
Racing up the long, winding drive to Sunnyvale from the county road, Shannon couldn’t help crossing herself while saying a silent prayer. Roy’s idea probably wouldn’t work – and it could go drastically wrong, but it was the only plan they’d had time to come up with.
Reaching into the back seat, Roy retrieved a metal box. “You use a cop-issue Beretta, right?”
“Yeah.”
He slipped out the clip to check it, then slammed it home and put it on her lap. “Safety’s on. Here are four more clips.”
She stopped the car momentarily to put the clips in her pocket and stick the pistol under her right leg, where she could reach it easily. Having to concentrate on driving, she couldn’t see what he took out of the case for himself, but it was big, and knowing Roy, it would have a lot of stopping power.
“The front gate is right around the next bend. Don’t stop too close to it,” he said. “All set?”
“I’d feel better if we had the cavalry right behind us.”
“That ain’t gonna happen. It’s us against the house, girl.”
Shannon nodded. “I’m ready.”
Since turning off the road, she’d had the high beams on. Roy also had roof-mounted lights, and as she swung the Hummer through the last turn, she flipped them on, hoping to get that much more cover by blinding whoever was on duty.
“Don’t let the nice decorations fool you,” Roy said, “That is one strong gate.”
The span of both halves of the gate was about fifteen feet, almost the same amount in height, and the decorative points looked as if they might be pretty sharp. On both sides were substantial brick pillars leading into ivy-covered, brick walls.
“My bet is there’s glass or spikes embedded in the top of those walls,” Roy said,“but they also have to preserve their country club appearance for the gentry. They’d tell you it’s to keep the media out.”
A uniformed man stood in the small guard house to the left of the gate. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he used the other to motion them to stop.
“Here goes nothin’,” Shannon said, as the guard stepped out of the hut and walked towards them.
“He’s carrying,” Roy told her.
“And he’s got communication on his belt. This is not good.” Rolling down the window, she said in her best cop voice as the guard stepped up, “Plumas County Sheriff. We got a call that there’s been trouble up here.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “Since when does Plumas County have Hummers?”
Roy leaned over towards the window. “Since the FBI got involved in some funny business going on here. Open the gate!”
“I need to see ID,” the guard said stolidly.
Now it was change to Plan B, so Shannon, while keeping her eyes straight ahead, said out of the corner of her mouth, “Sorry about this, Roy.”
She floored the Hummer.
The vehicle’s tires squealed and didn’t get any traction for a moment. Then it shot forward twenty feet to the gates. They actually held for a moment before Roy and Shannon went through with a horrendous sound of shredding metal. Slouching down low in case the guard unloaded on them, they sped forward as fast as they could. A golf cart went spinning as they slammed into it.
“Stay to the left! Stay to the left!” Roy shouted as the drive divided. “There’s a parking lot ahead, and the door into the admin building is on your right. You’ll see it in a moment.”
“Let’s hope there aren’t armed guards pouring out of it,” Shannon answered tightly as she accelerated up the drive.
The lot was nearly empty, and she yanked the wheel right then left, executing two screeching turns before jamming on her brakes right in front of the glass doors. The roof lights flooded the reception area just inside. Another guard was at the main desk with a phone in his hand.
She hoped there wasn’t a gun in the other.
“Bail out your side,” Roy yelled as he threw open his door.
Shannon grabbed her pistol, opened her door, hit the ground and rolled. She left a fair bit of skin on the pavement, but in her keyed-up state, she didn’t even feel it.
Scrambling to the side of the building, she inched toward the glass doors. Roy was on the opposite side, waiting.
As the seconds ticked away their advantage in surprise, she began making motions to indicate that the guard inside might not be able to see much because of the headlights and spots on top of the Hummer blinding him. Roy nodded his agreement. He poked his head forward to look inside, then pulled rapidly back, gesturing to indicate that the guard was coming, and Shannon would have to take care of him.
The door pushed open and the guard stuck his head out cautiously, looking left at Roy. He had a walkie-talkie in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Shannon used the opportunity to step forward and put her gun to his head. “Move slowly. Drop your weapon and the walkie-talkie, and you won’t get hurt. Do it now!”
He did as he was told. “What the hell do you people want?”
Roy moved forward and picked up the two things the guard had dropped. “Get him inside. We make too easy a target out here.”
They hustled the man inside and around a corner. Roy stayed back to keep a lookout.
“Did you call the Sheriff’s office?” Shannon demanded. “Well, yeah,” the guard said in a how-can-you-be-so-stupid tone of voice. “Wouldn’t you?”
He looked amazed when Roy said, “Good. Maybe they’ll hustle their butts a bit more.”
“Some people arrived here about twenty to thirty minutes ago,” Shannon said. “Where did they go?”
“I... I don’t know.”
“That’s bullshit. Are they in this building?”
“No,” the guard said, but his eyes gave him away when they flicked momentarily over Shannon’s shoulder to the corridor beyond.
“Roy! Any signs?”
“Not yet.”
She looked down at the guard’s belt, where a ring of keys hung. “We’re going to lock the front door. Move it!”
He wasn’t moving smartly until Shannon jammed her gun into his back.
“We got to move, girl,” Roy called out. “There’s probably another way into this building.”
They hustled the guard into a nearby closet and locked him in, then sprinted down the dark hallway.
The walkie-talkie chirped. “No sign of them outside the front of the admin building. They must be inside. Frank, you there? Talk to me, Frank.”
“Good,” Roy said to Shannon as they moved forward. “Not knowing if he’s a hostage will make them move more cautiously.”
At the far end of the broad corridor were double doors. The sign on one said Treatment Suite. As t
hey pushed through, lights went on.
Both froze in crouched positions, eyes and weapons on the move, looking for sources of danger.
“Motion detection lighting,” Roy sighed. “I hate those things.”
On either side of the area there were rooms with names indicating their use for various new-age treatments: aromatherapy, candling, homeopathy. None seemed to be occupied.
At the end of the corridor, they found a stairway going up. There was also a door to the outside. They made sure it was locked.
Roy crept up a few steps on the stairway and leaned out, looking up, then came back to Shannon.“There’s a light on up there. I’m assuming it’s turned on for a reason. It’s not bright enough to be corridor lights.”
She smiled grimly. “Nowhere to go but up.”
At the landing, they could hear voices.
Shannon crept forward, crawling the last few steps so that her head barely cleared the floor at the top. Looking to the left, she saw a similar layout to the floor below, but at the end room on the left, the door was open and she could just make out the back of someone standing just inside. This room was also the source of the light.
“Tell her why I can’t die,” a woman’s voice said. The words seemed to come from the person in the doorway.
Shannon backed down a few steps to Roy. With her mouth against his ear, she outlined the situation. He nodded his understanding.
They silently crept forward. At the top of the stairs, she moved left, flattening herself against the wall while Roy went right, sliding along the end wall toward the opposite side of the corridor to spread out the targets if anyone got stupid.
She slipped forward another fifteen feet, then stopped. Should she bust in on them or wait for more information? Lives could hang in the balance of her decision.
***
“Put down the gun, Olivia,” Dr. Smith said, sounding more in control of himself than he had all evening. Perhaps his stunted professionalism was finally kicking in.
Jackie saw that Olivia’s eyes were moving all over the place. Whether it was drugs or nerves, she couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t bode well for the situation.
“No!” Olivia’s voice was definite, defiant. “
Where the hell did she get a gun?” Richard asked in amazement.
“Dr. Smith keeps one in his bottom desk drawer.”
“Give the gun to Dr. Smith, Olivia,” Maxine said, sounding completely unconcerned. “It’s dangerous to be waving something like that around.
“Tell Jackie why you can’t kill me!” the girl repeated, swinging the pistol back at Maxine.
“I would never want to kill you, Olivia,” Maxine answered. “You’re my stepdaughter.”
“You started killing me when you had me locked away in here!”
“It was for your own good. You know that.”
“No, it wasn’t, and you know it! You needed me alive so you could stay in control. I’m not as stupid as you think I am. I figured it out. My daddy said he would look out for me, that he would set things up for after he was gone.
“He wouldn’t have wanted me to be here, rotting. They were giving me drugs. You had them do that, didn’t you? You made it so I would never get out. My daddy loved me. He’d never have allowed this to happen to me. He told me what he’d planned. There could only be one reason why you were doing this and why I’m still alive.”
Maxine made no response, but she’d gone pale.
“You know what the really funny thing is, Maxine?” Olivia laughed, and it had an ominously hysterical edge to it. “I don’t want the damn money. I never wanted it. You can have it for all I care. If you’d just bothered to ask me, I would have told you that.”
“Put down the gun, Olivia, and we can talk, if that’s what you want. I can see now that I was wrong about you.”
“It’s too late for that. You’ve hurt people.” The gun swivelled to indicate Richard and Dave. “These men did more than come to fetch me back, didn’t they? This big man didn’t fly back with us. He stayed in Toronto to deal with Maggie.You knew I would have told her everything, and that’s why you had her killed, wasn’t it?”
“That’s preposterous!”
But it was easy to see from Maxine’s face that it was true. Dave also had a pinched expression. Regardless of how this discussion would end, Jackie knew she had to get free.
“Olivia,” she croaked as strongly as she could, “can you undo these straps with one hand?”
When the girl’s eyes swivelled to hers, one of Maxine’s big men began slowly moving his hand towards the opening of his jacket.
Olivia saw it, too. “Don’t you dare! I’ll shoot you.”
With some training, Olivia would have known that her best bet for controlling the situation would have been to keep her gun trained on Maxine. Everyone in the room worked for her and wouldn’t risk something happening to their boss.
The treatment room was too wide, and the bad guys too spread out for the girl to spot every movement. Even Jackie didn’t notice big Dave making his move until far too late.
“Olivia!” she yelled with more voice than she knew she had.
Two nearly simultaneous shots rang out, deafening in the confined area.
And all hell broke loose as the lights went out.
***
Shannon was nearly at the door.
The person doing most of the talking had to be Olivia.
Roy was moving forward now, hidden in the darkness past the edge of the light coming from the room. He tilted his head a bit more to the side, then pulled back.
In sign language, he pointed to his eyes then flashed the number six, followed by a shrug.
Six people in the room, maybe more. Several of them could be armed. Not the kind of situation to inspire confidence.
A few moments later, she breathed a sigh of relief when she heard Jackie’s voice, although her words came out as if she had the world’s worst sore throat.
When Olivia said something about shooting people, Shannon knew she couldn’t wait any longer. She covered the remaining ground in about two seconds. She could see a light switch on the wall just inside the room, but it was on the opposite side of the door. Still, she felt she could make it since all eyes would be on Olivia.
She didn’t have a chance to move before it was too late.
Jackie’s voice shrieked, “Olivia!” as two shots were fired.
Cursing, Shannon leapt for the light switch and plunged everyone into darkness.
She was about to enter the room when Roy’s hand on her shoulder yanked her back.
“Both sides of the door. Now!”
Shannon took the left side, Roy the right, both using the jamb as partial protection. Someone stumbled towards them and felt along the wall.
The lights went back on.
“Everybody freeze!” Roy bellowed and moved forward.
The volume of the sound in the confined space made everyone in the room hesitate for just that extra moment.
Shannon had her eyes fixed on a big man over near one of the room’s windows. He had a gun in his hand, but it was down. Next to him was a shorter man whose face reminded her of a rat.
“Drop it!” Shannon yelled. He looked at her with astonished eyes, but the gun did rattle to the floor.
“Two on the right!” Jackie croaked.
Knowing she might regret it, Shannon dove into the room, trusting that Roy would cover her. Landing on her side, she had her pistol trained on two large men. One was Maxine’s butler, and the other was the man who’d knocked her down on the street in New York. Both froze with their hands halfway into their jackets.
Roy stepped into the room behind her, gun targeting the men at the far end of the room.
Shannon’s gun was swinging back and forth between Maxine’s two heavies. “Now, gentlemen, use two fingers on your other hand to pull your lapel back very slowly. I don’t like how fast you move, and you’re gone. I don’t miss at this range.”She carefully rose
to her feet, keeping her gun trained on her two targets as they disarmed themselves.“Kick them over to me.”
Smith had crouched over Maxine St. James, who was on the floor, moaning. “She’s hurt.”
“Too bad,” Roy said. “Get your sorry butt up and get those needles out of my girl, then put your lab coat over her. She’s going to catch a cold.”
“Next to me,” Jackie croaked as Smith did what he was told. “Olivia’s been hit.”
Shannon picked up the two guns and stuck them in the waistband of her jeans, then slid around to the other side of the table.
Olivia lay there, crumpled on her side, eyes closed. Her face was drained of colour and her breathing rapid and shallow. A finger of scarlet was snaking out from under her back.
“Christ, Roy,” Shannon said, “this is bad. Can you handle the crowd without me?”
“Sure thing, babe. Do what you gotta do.”
The girl had a light jacket on. When Shannon pushed it to the side, a small ring of blood around a neat hole in her white T-shirt was the only evidence of the bullet that had ripped through the centre of Olivia’s chest. Experience and the trail of blood soaking the knee of her jeans told Shannon that the worst of the damage would be in the back.
Slipping her hand underneath, she found the exit wound with her fingers. Sliding her hand further under, she pressed up hard with her palm, hoping the pressure would slow the leaking blood.
Shannon touched her other palm to the side of Olivia’s face.“Olivia,” she said softly.“Andy Curran sent me. Hold on. Help will be here soon. Just hold on. You’ll be all right.”
Olivia’s eyes fluttered open, and she tried to take a deeper breath. It bubbled ominously, and she winced from the pain, but oddly, she smiled at the woman kneeling over her. Then her eyes slowly shut again. “Roy, we’re losing her!”
“Shit!”
Jackie snarled. “Smith, you’re a doctor. Do something!”
Smith stood above Shannon, looking stricken. “I’m a psychologist. I really don’t know about these things.”
Shannon bent down further, her mouth next to Olivia’s ear. “Olivia, don’t give up! Stay with me. We’re going to pull you through.”