* * *
Inside the van, Dugan heard the exchange of gunfire. He, as well as several others who were in there with him, immediately bolted out of the vehicle.
“Take cover!” he yelled at Toni even before he made it to the entrance. “Get under a table! Now! Everyone, shots fired! Shots fired!” he cried, alerting the rest of his team.
He was running now, hearing the screams emanating from the restaurant as the people who were trapped inside dove for cover.
Dugan knew his main focus was twofold. He was to catch the shooter and he had to take Oren prisoner. But all he could think of at this moment was that he had to find Toni and somehow get her to safety without any incident.
Running into the restaurant as people came stampeding out, Dugan expected—hoped—to find Toni hiding under a table or seeking shelter somewhere else, out of the line of fire. Instead, he found her only half hidden behind a table that had been pushed down on its side.
She had a gun in her hand.
The same one that he’d seen in her car the night he helped her deliver Heather.
“Damn it, get down out of the way!” he shouted at her across the room as he ran toward her.
Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard. But even now, the chaos was subsiding. Rising from her knees, she was on her feet. “I think I got him,” she said. “I hit the shooter in the leg.”
At first, it almost sounded as if she was talking to anyone within hearing range, but then it became clear that she was talking to Dugan as she looked over the heads of others toward him.
“The shooter,” she repeated. “I think I shot him in the leg.”
“Ryan, take your people and fan out. Search the area,” Dugan ordered. “The shooter’s hurt. He shouldn’t have been able to get far. Bring that SOB back to me!”
Several undercover detectives left immediately, searching the entire restaurant as well as the immediate perimeter. However, after more than twenty minutes, they all returned empty-handed. The gunman had gotten away.
Meanwhile, there were several people down, most of them patrons who’d had the misfortunate to be in the way of the shoot-out. At first glance, it didn’t look as if there were any casualties. But as Dugan came closer, he saw that Oren and his bodyguard had not only been hit, they were both dead. The gunman had managed to get off more than six shots, of which two had hit the drug lord and one had gotten the bodyguard. Each man had caught a bullet to the head.
Toni came forward, her legs feeling like lead again. There was noise in the background, people talking, but it was all blending into a meaningless roar as she stopped to stand over Oren’s body.
Her mouth was so dry, she was having trouble getting the words out. “Is he—is he...?”
“He won’t be asking you for a second date,” Dugan told her quietly. And then he put his hand out for her gun. “I’m going to have to take that from you.”
“I have a permit for it,” she told him, repeating the same words she had said that first night.
“Still have to collect it. Procedure,” Dugan explained. He beckoned over one of his men. “We need ambulances here,” he told the man who had brought Toni her water. “At least three of them. Maybe more.”
“What about Oren and his bodyguard?” the “busboy” asked, nodding at the fallen drug lord and his henchman.
“The coroner is going to want to see them,” Dugan said. “Damn, there goes our chance to question them,” he lamented. “Not only that, but now we’ve got someone from the cartel—or a rival gang—running around out there—or at least hobbling.” He didn’t like what this meant. Things were escalating. Then, turning toward Toni, he thought of what she’d wound up doing. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing your gun?”
She said the first thing that came to mind. “You didn’t ask.”
His expression was grim. “Very funny.”
“When can I get that back?” she asked, nodding at the weapon in his hand.
“Later,” was all he said. And then he took a closer look at her. Concern was etched on his face. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she answered. And then her knees buckled. Dugan managed to catch her just before she could hit the floor.
Holding her steady, he eased Toni into a chair. “Here, sit,” he told her.
“I’m fine,” she repeated. She saw the skeptical look on his face and waved it impatiently away. “I just got a little dizzy, that’s all,” she mumbled, beginning to get up again.
“I said sit,” Dugan ordered, pushing her back down. Pulling another chair over, he sat down next to her. “Take a deep breath.” Watching her, he asked, “You want to go to the hospital?”
Toni did what he said. She took a deep breath and blew it out. But she wasn’t about to go anywhere. “I don’t need to go to a hospital, Cavanaugh. I just need to go home.”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere except the hospital in this condition,” he told her. “You’re shaking.”
Toni raised her head defiantly. “No, I’m not.”
Ignoring her protest, he stripped off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She attempted to shrug it off to give back to him. “I don’t need your jacket.”
Dugan put it on her shoulders again, his movements a little rougher this time. “Stop arguing with me,” he told her. She glared at him but said nothing. “Did you ever shoot at a man before?” he asked, thinking that was why she was shaking this way.
She surprised him by saying, “Once.”
“So you’re an old hand at this,” he said, and Toni couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or not.
She looked back at the drug lord’s body. Oren was lying on the floor just a few feet away from her. Had he been closer, she might have wound up on the floor next to him, as dead as he was.
“He’s really dead, isn’t he? Oren,” she specified, nodding over toward the body.
“He’s really dead,” Dugan confirmed.
She let out another shaky breath. “I just lost you your main source of information.”
He looked at her as if she was babbling. “You had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, I did,” she insisted. “I saw that guy coming in. I saw him draw his weapon. If I had reacted just a little faster, Oren might still be alive.”
“Giving yourself a lot of credit, aren’t you?” he asked, trying to jar her into reality. “Since when was all this on your head?” he asked. “All you were supposed to do was draw Oren out a little. That was it. Nobody could have predicted this shooter coming in.” He turned then to issue orders to his team. “I want all the restaurant surveillance tapes pulled. Somebody get me an ID on that guy,” he called out to Winston, one of the detectives.
Winston was on the phone already and he nodded his head in response. “Calling the manager now, boss,” he said.
Dugan turned back to Toni. He saw how pale she looked. “Breathe, O’Keefe.”
“I am breathing,” she told him between clenched teeth.
“Breathe deeper,” he instructed. “You’re in shock and unless I’m satisfied that you’re all right, you are going to the hospital.”
“I’m breathing, I’m breathing,” she told him grudgingly.
“Conway, watch her,” Dugan said as he got up. His intent was to go talk to some of the witnesses. He wanted to get their names down as well as their cursory summaries of what had happened from their points of view.
But before he could take a single step away from her, Toni was on her feet.
“I am not an invalid and I’m not a prisoner. I don’t need to be watched,” she said. “What I am is a trained investigative journalist who knows how to ask questions. I can help you,” she insisted, in no uncertain terms. Then, softening, she made it a request. “Let me help. Please.”
He wanted to tell her to go sit down. To just stay out of his way an
d be glad that she was alive. Heaven knew that he was.
The words hovered on the tip of his tongue as he looked at her face. But he could see that she needed to be doing something so that she wouldn’t dwell on what had just happened and what had almost happened to her. He could understand that.
He’d been there himself a time or two, Dugan recalled. He really didn’t want to, but he relented.
“All right,” Dugan said grudgingly. “But if I let you come with me, you have to promise me that you’re not going to get in the way.” Toni was already nodding her head, but he stopped her before she could say anything. “That means no talking unless I specifically ask you a question. Understand?”
She took a breath and nodded. “I understand.”
Her expression told him that she didn’t like it, but that she was willing to go along with what he was proposing. Anything was better than being a bump on a log in her estimation.
“No talking,” she repeated.
He highly doubted that she would stick to her word, but at least he had laid down the ground rules. That meant that if she didn’t listen, he would be able to send her home if he wanted to.
* * *
The next several hours were painful. The restaurant patrons and the staff were really shaken up, and it was a while before Dugan and his people were able to gather all the information that they needed.
He discovered, much to his amazement, that despite being shaken up herself, rather than being a liability, Toni turned out to be a huge asset when it came to calming people down. As a civilian, rather than a police detective or officer, she was able to relate to the people on a level that he and his team couldn’t.
Moreover, she picked up on small things, asked them questions about their families and, also as a civilian, she could relate to their trauma.
She was able to get one woman to stop sobbing and finally talk to them, describing what she had seen. Hers had been the first table the shooter had passed before he opened fire. Her description turned out to be extremely useful.
Slowly but surely, statements were collected and people were either taken to the hospital or released and allowed to go home.
Finally, every one of the patrons had cleared out, leaving only the manager and a skeleton crew in their wake. They were preparing to leave, as well.
“Hell of a cleanup tomorrow morning,” the manager lamented, shaking his head as he surveyed the chaos that was left.
“I’m afraid not,” Dugan told the man.
The manager looked at him in irritated disbelief. “Why not?”
“Our crime scene investigators are going to need to go over everything before you can start the cleanup.”
“They’re not finished yet?” The manager glared at the three men who were gathering what appeared to him to be little more than tiny scraps.
“I’m afraid not. Not by a long shot,” Dugan said, attempting to be comforting.
“How long are they going to be?” the man demanded, clearly upset.
“Hard to say,” Dugan answered honestly. “All I can tell you is that we’ll be as quick as possible,” he promised.
It was a promise that the frazzled manager obviously didn’t believe and didn’t find comforting in the slightest.
“Yeah, yeah,” he complained. “I should have become an engineer like my mother wanted me to,” he said under his breath as he walked out of the restaurant. The door slammed behind him.
“Okay,” Dugan said, turning to Toni. “Time to go.” Once they began to walk out, he said, “I owe you an apology.”
She wasn’t sure just what to make of what he was saying.
“For what?” Toni asked cautiously.
“You turned out to be a tremendous asset tonight,” he admitted. “I don’t think I would have been able to calm that one woman down if it hadn’t been for you.”
Toni shrugged. “I’m good with hysterical people,” she told him. “Once I stop being hysterical myself,” she added with a self-deprecating smile.
They were outside the restaurant now and he recalled that she still hadn’t had anything to eat. “Why don’t I take you somewhere? You never got a chance to have dinner.”
It was almost eleven o’clock. She pressed her hand against her abdomen.
“Not sure I could face food.”
“Coffee, then,” he suggested. “And then I’m driving you home.”
He seemed to have forgotten one important point. “But my car—” she began to protest.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll have an officer drive it home for you.”
“Then how will he be able to get back?” she asked.
He could only shake his head in wonder. After what she’d been through, she was still able to worry about someone else.
“The officer following him will drive him back. Any other questions?”
Toni shook her head. “No. But if I think of any, I’ll ask.”
He laughed to himself as he escorted her to his car. “Yes, I’m sure you will.”
Chapter 13
“Don’t you have to go to the precinct, fill out some kind of report about what just happened?” she asked Dugan as they sat in a booth in a small, all-night restaurant. Except for one other couple, they were the only ones there.
“I’ve got other people working on that,” Dugan told her.
Ordinarily, he didn’t delegate things. He would have been at the precinct right now, filing a report about how the case had gone down. But he’d opted to use his judgment, and right now he felt he could do more good here, sitting with her, than anything he could wind up accomplishing at the precinct. Oren and his bodyguard were dead, just like his CI was, another murder he had yet to solve.
Moreover, the shooter was currently in the wind, but there were half a dozen police officers still out looking for him. He doubted that they would find the man, but there was always hope.
He nodded at the coffee cup Toni was holding. “Sure I can’t get you anything?”
“You didn’t even have to get me this,” she pointed out. And then she smiled ruefully. He’d gone out of his way to be nice to her and she was being blasé about it. She knew why she was behaving this way. Because she was attracted to him and she was trying to keep him at a distance so she wouldn’t give herself away. “I’m sorry. I have trouble saying thank-you sometimes.”
“Really?” he asked, feigning surprise. “I hadn’t noticed.” And then the smile on Dugan’s face vanished and he grew serious. He was worried about her. He tried to tell himself that his reaction was just routine—but it wasn’t and he knew it. “You don’t have anything to thank me for. If anything, I should be apologizing. I put you in harm’s way.”
“No,” she argued, “I put me in harm’s way, remember? Whatever happened tonight, I was the one who got the ball rolling. If I hadn’t pretended to trip and fall into Oren’s arms, none of this would have happened.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I honestly thought I was doing some good, getting the ball rolling for you.”
He studied her for a long moment. She began to grow uncomfortable before he finally asked, “You always do this?”
“Do what?” she asked, unclear as to what he was talking about.
“Beat yourself up like this,” Dugan answered. “Because it’s pointless. Just stop,” he told her. “You could examine this from a thousand different angles, but that’s not going to change anything that happened. Nobody can successfully predict the future. You tried to help, but there was no way for you to know that your plans were going to be blown to smithereens by a shooter from a rival cartel.”
“Is that what he was?” Toni asked, suddenly coming to life. “He was from a rival gang?”
“The lab went over the footage from the surveillance cameras and managed to get a hit pretty quick. The shooter was David Padilla. His people belong to the
Sinaloa Cartel and they’ve been trying to cut the Juarez Cartel out of the drug business in Mexico for the last eighteen months. I guess they just decided to bring their turf war here.”
“I shot someone from a rival drug cartel?” Toni asked, trying to wrap her mind around the import of that information.
“That you did.” Trying to lighten the mood, he grinned as he put his cup of coffee down. “Maybe I should start calling you Annie Oakley.”
She hardly heard him. Instead, she was thinking about what he had just said about the other man. “If you know who he is, can’t you go and arrest him?”
“Go where?” he asked. “It’s not like I can just wander up to the local drug-lords-are-us and round the guy up.”
“What can you do?” Toni asked. As far as she was concerned, this was unfinished business. There was someone out there who could have very well killed her while he was shooting at Oren. The thought of it made her feel nervous.
Dugan said to her what he would have said to anyone in this situation—and hoped it would satisfy her. “We wait until we hear word about another shipment that’s coming in, or we get information that allows us to conduct a local drug bust and get someone to flip on Padilla in exchange for a lesser sentence.”
She read between the lines. “But that’s not anytime soon, is it?”
“You never know,” he told her evasively.
She frowned. What he was saying was hardly a course of action. There had to be something else. Something she could do.
“I can try putting the word out,” Toni finally said to him.
“You?” Dugan questioned. What sort of “word” was she talking about?
She could see that he didn’t believe her. But she did have credentials in this game. She just hadn’t been specific before because she couldn’t be. “I know people who know people.”
That sounded incredibly vague but he had an idea that she wasn’t just talking. His face clouded up. “Listen to me. I do not want you getting any more mixed up in this than you already are.”
If she closed her eyes, she could see it all happening again. The shooter, the people screaming. Oren dropping practically at her feet. His bodyguard going down at the same time. “I think it’s too late for that.”
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