Cassie reached back in the car, then sat in the driver’s seat, and Lawson heard the clacking of handcuffs locking into place.
“Now, Lexi, be a good girl and reach into my pocket.”
Lawson took a big step forward.
“Ah ah ah. No no.” Bobby put his gun to Lexi’s head. “Right there is close enough.”
Lawson stopped. There was only the length of the car between them now, but it might as well be a mile.
“Go ahead, Lexi, my phone is in my front pocket.”
“Do as he says, Lexi.”
Lawson was desperately racking his brain for a way out of this. Any way he could save his daughter. But right now the safest thing for her was for him to stay back, and it was killing him.
Lexi hesitated, but then reached and got Bobby’s phone and handed it to him. He took it, never moving the gun from her head. He punched some things on the phone’s screen, then held it to his ear.
“Yeah, I know where Cassie Foster is, the wanted FBI agent. In the Berkshire subdivision.” He paused to listen. “Yeah, that’s the one. Hurry, she has a gun!” He ended the call, then looked at Cassie in the car. “I would just kill you, Cass. But if for some reason they did find out it was me, killing a federal agent would bring on a special kind of manhunt. I’ll let the people in prison take care of you. As I’m sure Lawson can tell you, the law isn’t very welcome there.”
Bobby moved his gun from Lexi’s head back to Lawson. “This guy, however, they may give me a medal if they find out I killed him.”
Lawson knew what that meant, the bullet was coming. There was nowhere for him to go, so he launched himself forward in a last-ditch effort to save his little girl. Before he could get his hands on Bobby, he heard two gunshots break the silence of the night, followed by a terrible burning sensation, right before his face met with the blacktop below him.
The last thing he heard, as his consciousness was being dragged into darkness, was Lexi screaming.
39
A heartbeat was the only thing that was registering. Rapid in pace and pounding in his ears. Lawson felt as if he were swimming. But there was no water, only darkness. Slowly, another sound came to him, but it was as if it were at the far end of a long tunnel. It sounded like a car horn. Finally, he felt something under his fingertips. Rocks? Pavement maybe?
Then there was the burning.
Then there was the recollection of why there was burning.
Then the memory of Lexi screaming.
Lawson’s eyes popped open and he jumped to his feet. Just like that, he was back in the middle of a nightmare. Cassie’s car was in front of him. That was the horn he was hearing.
“Lawson! Lawson, please get up!” He heard a sobbing cry from inside the car. Then he remembered Cassie handcuffing herself inside, and then, the gunshots.
Lawson stood too quickly, and the dark neighborhood swirled all around him. He was forced to drop back to one knee. The burning was coming from his left shoulder. He touched his shoulder and his hand brought back a puddle of blood.
“Lawson, please! Please tell me you’re not dead!” Cassie continued to scream.
Lexi. Where’s Lexi?
Lawson stood once again and found that there was no car behind the stolen Prius. Bobby was gone, and so too was Lexi. Cassie honked the horn a couple more times, but she took in an audible gasp of air when she found Lawson standing in front of the open car door.
“Lawson!” Her face was wide with shock. “I thought you were dead!”
“I moved right before he shot me. Got me in the shoulder just outside of the vest. I probably should have just let him shoot me in the chest.” He looked to his shoulder. His black shirt was glistening in the street light. Drenched in blood.
“You’ve got to get to a hospital. You’ve clearly lost a lot of blood.”
“How long have they been gone?” Lawson was only worried about one thing.
“Four, maybe five minutes. I thought you were dead, Lawson.” Tears welled in Cassie’s eyes.
“Do you have any other weapons in the car?”
“N-no,” Cassie said. He took the guns and the key to the handcuffs with him. “Lawson, you can’t go in there. The police are on their way. We can make sure they go to De Luca’s home. It’s just right there, they’ll have time to save her.”
Lawson didn’t respond. He began rolling up the sleeves on his button-up shirt, then walked toward the back of Cassie’s car.
“Lawson?”
He popped the trunk of the car, lifted up the mat, but there was no spare tire and no tire iron. Sirens were wailing in the distance. A familiar sound at that point. They had been the soundtrack to his entire day, it seemed. The night air had cooled a bit, but it had to be somewhere in the nineties still. Lawson couldn’t tell if his shirt was wet with sweat or if it was all blood.
“Lawson, wait for the police, I’m begging you.”
“Where’s your tire iron?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I had a flat a couple of weeks ago. I guess it never made it back inside. You don’t have a choice now but to wait for the police.”
Lawson walked back to the open door. “And sit in a jail cell while they take my daughter from me again? I’ve lived that once. I’ll welcome death before I let that happen again.”
Cassie dropped her head, dejected, but resigned to the fact that she would do the same thing if she were in Lawson’s position.
“At least wrap that wound before—”
“Tell the police to get ahold of your tech guy so they can see the feed into De Luca’s security cameras.”
“Lawson, they’ve already killed those cameras. Troy called me on the way here. De Luca has taken the entire system offline.”
Lawson’s fists clenched at another door slamming in his face.
“You know you are just going to get yourself killed.”
“Probably, but not before I take at least one of these sons of bitches with me.”
Cassie wanted to help. “I think the entrance to that escape tunnel is in the pool house. It’s really the only place it could be. That’s your only shot at this. If they think you’re dead, they at least won’t be expecting you.”
The sirens were closing in.
“Lauren’s brother-in-law slit her throat, Cassie. Why?”
“I don’t know, Lawson.”
“For money? Then he took my daughter and beat the shit out of her all these years?”
Lawson swung his fist and pounded a large dent in the roof of Cassie’s Nissan. His chest was heaving, his anger was boiling over.
“Lawson, calm down. You don’t even have a weapon. You can’t go in there with all that rage. You have to be smart.”
“All I have left is rage.”
Lawson’s face went blank. The sirens were closing in and his daughter was in the hands of madmen. He didn’t say another word. He couldn’t say another word. He turned away from Cassie’s car, headed straight for the large brick wall that waited ahead of him in the darkness. The wall that separated him from everyone who had ever done him wrong. From the people who had his daughter, and from the man who murdered his wife.
40
Lawson winced as he pulled himself up the brick wall. His shoulder was still leaking, the pain was still burning. He jumped down and his feet landed in soft grass. One of the few lush lawns you would find in Vegas. In front of him was nothing short of a palace. Though it was only dimly lit, he could see a resort-sized pool that sat like a pond in front of the monstrous Mediterranean-style home beyond it. All of this paid for by the pain and suffering of others. The De Lucas were a family that had been profiting off heartache for far too long. It was time to bring that all to an end.
Between him and the pool was what looked like a miniature home compared to the main house. Lawson knew it had to be the pool house. It was the only place that really made sense as to where the tunnel in that video could have led. Lawson stayed low. He knew security would be heightened, but he doubted there would be many eyes
on the pool house. He crouched and moved forward to its back wall. A light breeze moved through the palm trees that dotted the pool area. He leaned around the corner, and over fifty yards away at the back door, he could see two men standing guard. He looked over the mansion once again, and crippling anxiety squeezed his heart. His daughter was in there with people who only wanted to do her and her father harm. What if he didn’t make it in time? What if they killed her before he could get there?
Lawson swallowed hard. He took a deep breath and let some of the anxiety subside. It didn’t do any good to think that way. It’s just that he had never gone into a situation like this. Not in all his years of law enforcement where the stakes were so high and so personal. It made it especially worrisome that he was so out of practice. The only thing he had going for him was the momentum of the day. He had seen a lot of action and come out on top. He needed now to have confidence in that. He needed to know he could make it. To believe he could save her.
Think like a detective.
Cassie was right. If he let emotion cloud his judgment, he wouldn’t even make it out of the cellar, because he would most likely die of a heart attack from the overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Right now, he needed to focus on what these men were thinking. It would do them no good to kill Lexi now. Not in case Lawson could actually make it to them. Bobby had surely told them about shooting Lawson by then, but De Luca wouldn’t believe Lawson to be dead without seeing it with his own two eyes. They needed Lexi alive so that Lawson’s rampage would end in giving his life for hers. Something he would gladly do and would most likely be asked to do. But he would have to cross that shaky bridge when he came to it. Because right now, if he didn’t focus, he was never even going to make it that far.
Lawson took one more deep breath. The pain in his shoulder had subsided. Either because his body had relaxed from the shock or his adrenaline had numbed the feeling. He crouched as low as he could and walked along the side wall of the pool house. The men at the back door, as far as he could tell, were generally focused on the immediate area around them. He was glad that he had chosen to wear black. It would offer at least a little more shadow. The sirens had closed in behind him, just beyond the brick wall he’d scaled a moment ago. They were probably listening to Cassie’s story just then, deciding what exactly to do with her. He looked back that way and could see red and blue lights bouncing off the surrounding trees. The men at the door must have noticed it too, because they rushed inside, most likely to let their boss know that trouble might be close. It gave Lawson the brief moment he needed to rush around the wall and slide into the door of the pool house.
Once he shut the door behind him, there was only a small trickle of light coming in through the mostly drawn shades. It was enough to see that the place was decorated more lavishly than any home he had ever owned. There was a large bar area, a seating area, and even a few gaming tables. But what Lawson cared about was the door just off to his right. The only one in the entire building.
He walked over to it, pushed open the door, and sure enough, it was the bathroom. He shut the door behind him, and in the complete blackness, he pulled his phone from his pocket. Not knowing about any flashlight feature, he simply made the screen light up and used it to search the floor for a seam. Whoever built the door into the floor had done a great job blending it with the tile. More than likely there was a button, or a latch, but he would need to turn on the light to find it. Instead, he began to bounce on the balls of his feet. He inched forward, bouncing, until finally there was a slight change in the feel of the floor. A give.
Lawson dropped to his knees and pulled one of the SIG Sauer magazines from his pocket. Since Bobby took the gun, he was going to at least get something out of them. At the bottom of the magazine, there was a small and thin lip that jutted out on one side. He took that part of the mag and began trying to wedge it downward on the tile’s seam where he first felt the floor give a little. It wasn’t a science exactly, all he needed was a small opening. After a few more presses, the magazine inched inside something. He pushed it forward as far as it would go and turned the end of it upward. He was hoping for a slight movement, and that’s exactly what he got.
He set down his phone, and with his free hand he wedged what little fingernails he had under that same small opening that he had created. There was no clock on him, yet he could feel one ticking. This was all taking too long. He needed to step up his pace, but without being sloppy. He dug with his nails and began to lift. This was what he was looking for, this was the door. His fingernails burned at the tips as he raised it up just enough to shove the tip of one of his oxfords in that opening. That was enough. He dropped the mag and wedged all eight of his fingers under the trick floor and pulled. It was a great cover. Heavy enough that anyone not looking for a door in the floor would never have found it. Cassie had really come through on this one. Otherwise, he would have had no chance of getting in this house.
Under the lifted cover was a folded wooden ladder. Lawson pushed down with both feet on top of it, and it lowered. He kicked the tip of the folded ladder, and it extended down to the room below.
He was in.
41
Lawson descended the stairs into complete darkness. He had never been a man of privilege, never had the spare money to go on many wine-tasting vacations. Besides, he much preferred the bourbon trail in his home state of Kentucky if ever the whim arose. That said, he did know the smell of barrels holding alcohol from those many visits to the bourbon distilleries, and the room he was in now had a similar scent. Even though he knew he was only in the empty tunnel, the smell beyond the trick wine shelves had made it to him. He pulled his phone and held the lit screen out in front of him. Just like in the video he watched on Cassie’s phone, he reverse-followed the route that it showed. After a short trek, he could see a wall in front of him.
This was where he was most likely going to have to risk making noise. There was no way to get this door open without breaking the bottles of wine on the other side. If someone happened to be in the cellar, this mission was going to be a short one. He got to the wall, and just like the floor of the bathroom, he pushed around until he felt something give. He readied himself to plow through it, but luckily he realized he had his wounded shoulder ready to bulldoze. That would have been painful. He switched stances, squared up his uninjured right shoulder, and rushed the hidden door like a lineman hitting a tackling dummy.
The wall gave way to his force, and the crash of wine bottles that followed sounded like it could have been heard out on the street. The floor inside the cellar was poured concrete, so the glass breaking was an excellent metaphor for his two days out of prison. A loud and crushing disaster. If there were anyone guarding the cellar, even one floor above him, they had certainly heard his high-decibel entrance. He needed a weapon of some sort, and he had a feeling he needed it fast.
Fortunately, there was some dim lighting around the cellar. As far as he could tell, nothing had really changed from when the video had been made. He walked forward, and on his right, the barrels along the wall opened up into a cavelike sitting and tasting area. Beyond the couches and the round table in front of them, he noticed a cabinet back against the wall, and hopes of an old school wine opener flashed in his mind. As he made his way to the cabinet, he heard the distinct creaking sound of a door opening at the other end of the cellar. The time for exploring was over.
It was time to fight.
He rushed over to the cabinet and opened the first drawer. Nothing. Whoever had entered the cellar was doing a good job of not making noise. It was eerily quiet down there. Only the smell of spilled red wine for company. In a slow and steady motion, trying to remain soundless, he pushed the empty drawer shut and pulled open the second one. Lying amongst a sea of corks, he found the wine opener he was looking for. Lawson grabbed it, extended the corkscrew, placed it in his left hand in such a way that the corkscrew jutted out between the middle and ring finger of his closed fist, and hurried over to
the opening in the wall.
Out of nowhere, a calm washed over Lawson. As he stood there in the dark, confined space, he began to feel like himself again. For the first time in two days, there was a familiar feeling buzzing around him. Especially as he held the makeshift weapon in his hand. This was a very familiar scenario for him. One instance flashed in his mind as he waited for his mark to make it to his waiting position.
After almost twelve consecutive months of beatings when he first went to prison, Lawson was being hunted by Carl Sampson, one of the most feared men in High Desert State Prison. Lawson had done his first favor on the inside, and it happened to be one of Carl’s closest allies whom Lawson had worked over. Word got back to Lawson that Carl was going to make him pay. After a few close encounters, Lawson knew the man wasn’t going to quit coming, so he decided to make a stand. The man Lawson had done the favor for had gotten word to him that he was going to be cornered by Carl and another man in the laundry room. Just before Lawson left for the laundry room, he managed to pry a spring off his bed. He managed to snap it off to a sharp edge, and much like the cork he was holding in his hand in De Luca’s cellar, he held the spring in his fist. Carl came calling, just as Lawson was told he would. Lawson took a couple of lumps, but ultimately he sank the spring into Carl’s neck and survived the attack. Inmates began looking at Lawson very differently from that moment on. And after that encounter, he knew he could survive anything that prison could throw at him.
Just like he could survive anything he encountered in this mansion in order to save his daughter.
Lawson eased his left eye beyond the wall and jerked his head back when he saw a man walking right toward him with a pistol extended. The man had been focused on the right side of the cellar, or Lawson would have been seen. Lawson closed his eyes and waited, listening for the footsteps of the man against the concrete. A light tap from his dress shoes. With his quick glance, Lawson sized the man to about six feet one. Making his neck about shoulder high to Lawson. When he figured the footsteps to be close enough, Lawson stepped out with his right foot, cranked his hips to his right, and delivered a jarring left hook that landed to the man’s throat. The length of the average corkscrew was about two and a half inches. And every single millimeter of that corkscrew made it through the man’s Adam’s apple.
When the Man Comes Around: A Gripping Crime Thriller (Lawson Raines, Book 1) Page 18