When the Man Comes Around: A Gripping Crime Thriller (Lawson Raines, Book 1)

by Bradley Wright

  “I told you, we had it, now it’s gone for good.”

  “Then get more proof, Lawson. You can’t go back to prison for something you didn’t do.”

  Lawson stared at Lexi for a second, then looked back at the road. She at least still had some innocence left. He didn’t want to shatter that too. “It’s not that simple.”

  Lexi was adamant. “Sure it is. Take this.” Lexi turned Lawson’s hand over and placed a small recording device in his palm. “Before you kill him, make him confess.”

  Lawson smiled. “You’ve seen too many movies. Why do you have this anyway? Can’t you record things on your phone nowadays?”

  “It was Mom’s.”

  Lawson thought the recorder looked familiar.

  “Aunt Erin said Mom used to record herself singing on it all the time. So, it’s what I record my song ideas and stuff on.”

  Lawson wanted to turn the car around and just drive away with Lexi. But he knew she would never forgive him if he left her aunt Erin with De Luca.

  “Anyway,” Lexi said, “make him confess before you kill him. Then maybe you can hear me sing sometime.”

  Lawson knew the odds of that were slim, but it warmed him to hear her say the words. “I’d like that, Lexi. If you’re half as good a singer as your mom, you’ll sound like an angel.”

  Lexi just looked down, then back to the window. Lawson put the recorder in his pocket. He didn’t have the heart to tell her it would never work.

  37

  Lawson turned the Prius into the neighborhood that ran adjacent to De Luca’s. Along the way, he was able to avoid a couple of roadblocks that had been set up to catch him, thanks to Cassie guiding him around them. Her tech guy, Troy, was proving to be quite an asset. Up ahead of them, parked in the street in front of a Lot for Sale sign was Cassie’s car. She was already out, pacing the street.

  “Is this your girlfriend?” Lexi asked.

  “No, Cassie used to be my partner in the FBI. And she was very close with your mom. She was at the hospital when you were born.”

  “She knew Mom?”

  “Very well. Have her tell you some stories tonight.”

  Lexi turned to face Lawson. “I’m staying with you.”

  Lawson pulled in behind Cassie’s car and turned to Lexi. “You know you can’t do that. It’s going to be dangerous going in there to get your Aunt Erin. Cassie will take great care of you. You’ll like her, I promise.”

  Lexi didn’t say anything, she just turned and faced forward in her seat.

  “Wait here,” he told her. “I’ll be just a second.”

  Lawson opened the car door. Cassie came rushing over. “Where is she? Can I see her? I can’t believe you found her!” She gave Lawson a quick hug. He didn’t return it.

  “I need you to keep her safe.”

  Cassie stepped back, astonishment on her face. “Lawson, I—you can’t go in there by yourself.”

  “What else would you have me do? She can’t sit here in the car while we go in. What if neither one of us makes it? It’s not like I have a sitter on call.”

  Cassie was quiet for a moment.

  “You can’t go in there alone. Let me find someone to help us. I’m in between partners, but I know a couple of really good—”

  “Cassie. Stop. A few hours ago, I wasn’t even sure I could trust you. Director Billings wants me dead, you think I am going to trust someone in the Bureau?”

  “Then we just let the police handle it. That’s it. I’m calling it in.”

  “He will kill Lauren’s sister.”

  “So? That bitch kept Lexi from you all these years.”

  Lexi had stepped out of the car without them knowing, and she spoke up from the other side of the car. “She’s not a bitch. She’s the only reason Dan didn’t kill us both. He’s a lunatic.”

  Cassie could only stare at Lexi. Lexi’s face was glowing in the red taillight of Cassie’s car in front of them.

  “Oh my God. You look just like your mom,” Cassie said to Lexi. Then she looked at Lawson, her mouth agape. “It’s even more uncanny in person.”

  “I’m not staying with her, Lawson.”

  Lawson gave Cassie a stern look. Cassie walked back to her car.

  Lawson turned to Lexi. “You want me to keep them from hurting Erin, don’t you?”

  Lexi nodded emphatically.

  “Then I have to go in there and do what it takes to get her, and you can’t come with me.”

  “Like you had to do to the guys lying in the hallway of that club, right?”

  “I’m going to do whatever I have to, to save her.”

  Lexi shut the Prius door and walked around the front. “Then I’ll stay with her.” She turned, walked over to the passenger door of Cassie’s Nissan Maxima, and waited for Cassie to unlock the door.

  Lawson cleared his throat to get Cassie’s attention. Cassie looked at Lawson, he nodded toward Lexi, and Cassie fumbled for her keys and hit unlock on her remote. Lexi got in the car without saying another word.

  Lawson joined Cassie by her car. Cassie looked impressed. “Looks like you’re a natural at this dad thing. She snapped right to it.”

  Lawson’s mind was on what was next. “Just take her somewhere safe. I don’t like going in here alone any more than you do, but there is no other way.”

  “There is, but I understand.”

  “You can’t take her back to your place, De Luca might have more of his men around. So where will you go?”

  Cassie walked around to her trunk and opened it. “It’s not De Luca’s men I’m worried about. Them I can handle.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Yeah, well, word—and I’m sure video—from our little party at Sokolov’s earlier got back to Director Billings. I’m just as wanted as you are now.”

  “For helping me.” Lawson said.

  Cassie didn’t say anything as she pulled out a duffel bag from the trunk. Then she looked at him. “No, no apology necessary, Lawson. It’s just my career and life I put on the line for you.”

  “I . . . I’m . . .”

  Cassie saved him the trouble, “It’s fine. You know I’d do it all over again.” She unzipped the bag, reached in, and pulled out a SIG Sauer P228, a silencer fitted to its barrel, and two extra magazines. “This was the best I could do. I figured when I left my house earlier to meet you at Sokolov’s, there might very well be an APB on me afterward. I put this together for just such an occasion. I figured if I’m going down, I might as well give you the best shot I can at taking De Luca with us.”

  She also produced a bulletproof vest.

  “It’s one size fits all. I already adjusted the straps as big as it will go.”

  Lawson removed his shirt, put the vest on, then put his shirt back on. Good thing it was an ultrathin vest, because his shirt was stretched at the seams. He then tucked the gun in his waistline and placed the spare magazines in his pockets. He was happy to see that it was a SIG. It’s the gun he spent hundreds of hours on the range with when working for the FBI. It was no coincidence, since of course Cassie knew that about her partner as well.

  “Oh.” Cassie reached in her back pocket and pulled out her phone. “Troy sent this to me on the way over.” She turned the phone’s screen toward Lawson. “Remember our old informant, Larry, in the case we were building against Tony De Luca before everything happened?”

  Lawson did. “Yeah, they killed him not long after I was sentenced.”

  “Right. Well, do you remember how he used to always tell us that De Luca built a secret way to get out of his house in case he was ever raided?”

  “Yeah, but he never told us where.”

  “Probably cause he didn’t really know. But last year we busted one of De Luca’s dealers. He was young and apparently thought it was fun to make videos.”

  Lawson took the phone from her hand and said, “And he recorded De Luca’s escape route?”

  “He did.”

  Lawson wat
ched the dark video. The camera was obviously in a cellar, there was row after row of wine bottles and barrels. He watched as the camera focused on a large wine rack against a wall, eight shelves tall in total. A hand appeared in front of the camera and reached through the fourth shelf and pressed against something on the wall. The next thing the hand was doing was pushing the entire wall in, the wall opening into a tunnel.

  Lawson was shocked. “You can’t be serious. De Luca ever find out this was recorded?”

  “Not that we know of. We couldn’t do anything with it, since it’s on private property and all. But I kept a copy of it just in case. It is a whole lot harder to get away with things in 2018. The entire world records everything.”

  Lawson looked up from the video of someone walking down a dark tunnel to find a wry smile on Cassie’s face. The only light on the video was the flash that was coming from the phone’s camera. Then the man walking the tunnel stopped, his hand out in front of the camera again, this time to grab hold of a string that wasn’t visible without him taking hold of it. He pulled, and just like an attic, a door came down out of the ceiling and the hand unfolded the wooden stairs that were attached to it. He walked up the stairs, pushed on what must have been the flooring that covered the door, and just like that, he was standing in a bathroom.

  “Looks like the tunnel leads out to—”

  Headlights turning into the neighborhood interrupted Lawson’s words. Lawson looked right and two beams showered him and Cassie with light. Lawson jerked Cassie by the arm and dove along with her behind the cars, into the small ditch that ran along the road. It was a certainty that they had been seen, but as long as it wasn’t the police, Lawson didn’t really care. Dust from the rocky ground below them kicked up and swirled about in front of them. The car didn’t drive past; instead Lawson heard the brakes squeak as it slowed to a stop behind his stolen Prius.

  “Who the hell is it?” Cassie whispered. Both she and Lawson had their hands on their guns.

  A man’s voice called out after Lawson heard the car door open. “Cass?”

  When Lawson glanced over at Cassie, the look he found on her dimly lit face was one of shock. She slowly rose to her knees. “Bobby?”

  Cassie’s ex-husband.

  38

  Cassie got up to her feet and peered over the stolen Prius. “Bobby, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Lawson stood beside Cassie, his hand not leaving his pistol’s grip.

  “I saw you all over the news, you and Lawson—”

  He stopped talking when he noticed Lawson standing beside Cassie.

  “Lawson, I didn’t expect you . . . Cassie, what the hell is going on?”

  Cassie stepped forward into the lights shining from Bobby’s car. “Bobby, tell me right now what the hell is going on, or I will shoot you, right here, right now. How did you know I was here?”

  Something was off. Lawson could sense it by Bobby’s demeanor, but Cassie’s apprehension really made him worry.

  “Your phone,” Bobby began to explain. “That Find My iPhone app on there. It’s still linked to my phone.”

  “You followed me out here by tracking my phone? We’ve been split up for a long time now, Bobby. What the—”

  “I was worried about you. They’re saying you went rogue or something. I tried to call you.”

  “I’m kinda busy right now, Bobby.” Cassie threw up her arms and looked around at the situation. “And I don’t owe you anything. You have to leave. Now.”

  Lawson took a step forward into the light. “I think you’d better listen to her.”

  Both Cassie and Bobby looked at Lawson.

  “Are you—” Bobby looked back to Cassie. “Is Lawson holding you hostage?”

  “Is everything okay, Lawson?” Lexi had gotten out of the car.

  Lawson shouted, “Lexi, get back in the car, right now.”

  “What’s going on, Bobby?” Cassie said.

  “Lexi is with you? What have you gotten yourself into, Cassie?”

  “Bobby,” Lawson took control of the situation. “I’m only going to say this one time. Get back in your car, drive away, and make believe this was all a dream. You were never here.”

  “I’m sorry, Lawson. I can’t do that,” Bobby said. Then he reached for his belt.

  Lawson pulled his pistol and trained it on Bobby, but when Bobby pulled his gun, he pointed it away from Lawson. When Lawson looked to his right, he saw that Lexi had walked around the front of the car, and now was planted firmly in Bobby’s sights.

  Lawson shouted, “Lexi!”

  “Put your gun down!” Bobby shouted.

  “Bobby, don’t! What the hell are you doing!” Cassie pulled her gun as well.

  Lexi was frozen in fear. “Lawson, help! I’m sorry I got out of the car!”

  Lawson was about to lose his mind. He had come all this way, even gotten his daughter back, and here Cassie’s ex also had an axe to grind? He knew he should have just left with Lexi. It was his first instinct and he should have listened to it. She may have never forgiven him for leaving her aunt Erin, but at least she would have been safe.

  “I’ll blow your head off if you don’t take your gun off my daughter. Right. Now.”

  “Try it, Lawson. Maybe I get a shot off, maybe I don’t.” There was anger on Bobby’s face.

  Cassie tried a different approach. “Whatever is going on with you, Bobby, we can help you. But you have to put the gun down, and you have to tell us what is happening.”

  Bobby laughed. “You can help me? How do you figure that? Every law enforcement agency on the planet is looking for you. Drop both of your guns, right now, or I’ll shoot her.”

  Reluctantly, both Cassie and Lawson did as he asked.

  “So why are you looking for me?” Cassie said.

  “Because I knew you’d be with this asshole.” Bobby glanced at Lawson. “You always did have a thing for him.”

  “This is about you being insecure? Are you kidding me?”

  “No, Cass. Good God, you are as dumb as ever. I can’t for the life of me figure out how you ever became an FBI agent. This has nothing to do with you. It has to do with what I should have stuck around and finished ten years ago, but Dan, that moron husband of Lauren’s sister, screwed everything up.” Now Bobby was looking at Lawson. “Stupid son of a bitch got kill-happy and sliced your wife’s throat. You were nowhere to be found.”

  Lawson’s head began to spin. Of all the scenarios, the thousands of possibilities that ran through his mind every day over the last ten years in that prison cell, not one of them involved Bobby. And not one of them involved Erin’s husband, Dan. Why would it? Lawson began to see red. His mind flashed back to him standing on that boat, looking at Lauren holding the phone. Cassie’s words when he asked if she’d picked Bobby up yet—“he had something come up last minute, he can’t make it”—ran through his mind like it was yesterday. Something hadn’t come up. He had planned to do this to Lawson all along.

  Cassie’s voice had a quiver in it. “What? What are you saying, Bobby?”

  “It was the perfect plan. But when Lauren saw Dan on the boat, he freaked out . . . Oh, what the hell does it matter now? I’m finally going to be able to quit worrying about this entire thing, and I’ll be handsomely rewarded for finishing it.”

  Cassie turned to Lawson. “Lawson, you know I knew nothing about this. You know I would never . . .”

  She trailed off, because it was clear that no words were making it to Lawson’s consciousness. He was doing everything he could not to run at the man. But if he didn’t make it to him fast enough, Bobby would be able to fire at Lexi, and he couldn’t take that chance.

  “So what now?” Cassie refocused back on Bobby, who had begun walking slowly toward Lexi. “You’re just going to kill us? What’s the end game here?”

  “The end game is me getting paid. De Luca had already called me to follow you, Cassie. He knew you were at Starbucks, because of some traceable flash drive or somethin
g. I almost missed you, you were handing the flash drive off right when I got there. So I followed you, making sure you weren’t interfering. But then Dan called a few minutes ago. Said De Luca’s men had called from the Pink Kitten and somehow Lawson had managed to get Lexi. That was apparently going to be their bargaining chip for ending this thing. Lawson’s life for hers. Dan said De Luca and he would make it a million dollars if I could keep Lawson from getting to them. Now that I can bring Lexi back to them too, I could really make it out of here a rich man.”

  While Bobby continued talking, Lawson had been talking to himself. Talking himself off the ledge. His emotions were getting the best of him, and he knew that wouldn’t do anything to help the situation. “And you think that De Luca will actually pay you?”

  “What’s the difference to you, Raines? You’re going to be dead.”

  Bobby made a quick move to snatch the back of Lexi’s T-shirt, moved her in front of him as a shield, and pointed the gun back at Lawson. “That’s far enough right there.”

  Lexi began to cry. “Lawson, it will be okay. Don’t come any closer. I will be okay with Dan. Just don’t make him shoot you.”

  Lexi was trying to be brave. Lawson couldn’t believe his little girl. He supposed the thought of losing the only parent she had left would be too much for her to bear.

  “Stop moving, Cass. Don’t make me shoot you too,” Bobby said to her.

  “Let her go!” Lawson shouted.

  “Or what, big man?”

  Cassie held up her hands. “Okay, Bobby. You win. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. Just don’t shoot anyone, and you can still get out of this without doing any major time.”

  “I’m not doing any time. I’m leaving the country with a bag of money. Now, open up your car door, get your keys, and throw them over here on the ground.”

  Cassie did as he asked.

  “Now, get the handcuffs out of your console, and cuff yourself to the steering wheel.”

  “I don’t have handcuffs.”

  “Did you forget I was married to you? I know they’re in there. You always keep them there.”