by Matt Lincoln
Mrs. Vale was screaming, the bat held above her head with both hands. “Run!” she was yelling. “Go! Run!” She turned to Hills, a furious glint in her eyes as she brought the bat down toward him.
“Hell no,” he grunted as he jumped to the side, colliding into the back of an armchair but managing to avoid the strike. Mrs. Vale brought the bat careening down onto the ground, and Hills wasted no time in kicking it sharply out of her grasp the moment it struck the floor.
As he dealt with her, I turned on my heel and ran into the house. It was obvious now that someone was in here. Someone important enough to Mrs. Vale that she’d just bludgeoned a cop over the head to protect them. I skidded to a stop as I raced into the kitchen and spotted someone in the back corner, fiddling with the doorknob.
“Stop!” I yelled as I ran toward the man.
He had dark hair like Jorge did, but he wore a hoodie, soI couldn’t see his arms. He stopped and turned to look at me as I ran toward him, his face twisted into an enraged scowl. I reached my hands up to tackle him, and my eyes went wide with shock as he pulled a machete out of his belt and swung it at me.
I veered to the side in time to avoid skewering myself on the large knife entirely, but not enough to prevent it from slicing through the skin of my arm. I hissed with pain as I instinctively pressed my right hand to my left bicep. It was wet and warm, and I could tell that I was bleeding heavily.
He swung at me again, and I ducked down to avoid his strike. He swung again, and this time I swerved to the side, contorting my body so much that I almost lost my balance.
He struck again, and this time, I crouched to the side and used the momentum of his own strike to shove him down to the ground. He fell with a grunt, and the knife clattered to the ground. I rushed to kick it away, expecting him to reach for it again. To my surprise, he moved in the other direction, toward a cabinet to his right.
He pulled it open, and I caught a flash of something metallic.
I dove out of the way as he pulled the gun out of the drawer and fired at where I’d just been standing. The bullet struck the wall behind me with a pop, and he lowered his gun to fire at me again. Before he could, though, the sound of a gunshot echoed across the kitchen, and he screamed as his shoulder exploded into a burst of blood.
I looked back and found Hills standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his own gun in his hands and pointed at the suspect, who was still yelling.
Mrs. Vale was yelling now, too.
“What did you do to my baby!?” she screeched as Hills crouched down beside me. “I’ll kill you if you hurt my baby!”
“You okay?” He asked as he examined the wound on my arm.
“I’m fine,” I replied as I turned back to the suspect, who was, surprisingly, quickly getting back up onto his feet. He’d dropped the gun when Hills shot him in the arm, likely unable to even hold it anymore. Before either Hills or I could stand up, he shot out the door at a run.
“Crap,” I muttered as I clambered back up onto my feet and chased after him, Hills right beside me. We didn’t have to go far, though, because Holm and Chapman were right outside, their guns out and trained on the man.
“Get down on the ground!” Chapman roared at the man, who had frozen in his tracks a few feet away from the two agents. “Hands behind your head and down on the ground, now!”
The man turned to look back at us and then wildly around the backyard for a few seconds, as though trying to calculate his chances of escape. Despite that, eventually, his shoulders sagged as he crumpled to his knees, all the fight in him gone.
“Face down on the ground,” Chapman yelled again. He waited until the man had complied before he and Holm rushed in to yank his hands behind his back so they could cuff him. He screamed in protest as they jostled his injured shoulder, but I felt no sympathy for the guy, not after he’d sliced me up and then shot at me.
“I need to go check on the mom,” Hills grumbled as he put his gun back in its holster. “She’s cuffed, but she might be halfway down the street by now.”
“I’ll help,” I replied as I followed him back into the house. Normally I would have assumed that an old lady would be fairly harmless, even if she was a suspect. This one had brutally attacked Burke, though, so we couldn’t take any chances.
“Stop!” I barked as we stepped back into the house. As if trying to prove my point about not being harmless, Mrs. Vale was kneeling on the ground in the kitchen, futilely attempting to pick up the gun her son had dropped with the hands that were cuffed behind her back. I quickly rushed up to her and knocked her to the ground, wincing slightly as the motion caused a lance of pain to shoot up my arm.
“Stay still,” I growled as Hills walked quickly over to us. He kicked the gun away before crouching down to take over for me.
“Ow!” the woman screeched. “This hurts! This is brutality! Stop!”
“Yeah, too bad you knocked out the only police officer in the house,” Hills grunted as he kept her still on the floor of the kitchen. “He might have cared.”
Speaking of Burke, I walked briskly back into the living room to check on him, pulling my phone from my pocket as I went. Head injuries weren’t necessarily fatal, but the longer he went without medical attention, the more likely it was that he wouldn’t wake up again. I grimaced as I accidentally covered my phone in blood as I attempted to call. I’d been holding my hand against the cut that the suspect had given me, which was still bleeding pretty profusely.
“Don’t worry,” I muttered to Burke as I reached down to take his pulse, my other hand holding the phone to my ear. It was strong despite the pool of bright red blood around his head, which was a good sign. “We’re going to get you fixed up.”
29
Ethan
It turned out that Burke wasn’t the only one who needed fixing up. Even though I’d known that the injury I’d received during the fight was severe, I hadn’t realized just how bad it was until I’d gone to the hospital. The cut wasn’t very long, but it was deep enough that it had caused some muscle lacerations.
“It isn’t just the skin that’s cut,” the doctor had explained. “The muscle underneath is severed as well. Not a lot, but enough that it can lead to some major problems if it doesn’t heal correctly. Now, for a laceration is superficial, you could probably get away with just immobilizing the arm if you really wanted to avoid any kind of surgery. However, I have to warn you that doing so could potentially lead to complications further on, including loss of mobility in your arm.”
That sure as hell couldn’t happen. Losing full control of my dominant arm could seriously impede my ability to do my job. How would I even hold a gun?
In the end, I decided to get the sutures. Luckily, the procedure was a fairly simple one that the doctor could perform immediately, instead of having to prepare an operating room. Unfortunately, the doctor informed me that I would be unable to use my arm fully for the next six weeks.
The four of us were in one of the waiting rooms now, waiting to hear how Burke was doing. Everything had been a little chaotic for the past few hours as I got my own injury tended to, but from what I’d been able to gather, Mrs. Vale had managed to crack his skull open with the blow she’d given him. Impressive for a little old lady. Horrifying but impressive.
As for Mrs. Vale, despite her claims that she’d been horribly injured when Hills had knocked her down, the doctors had cleared her almost immediately and sent her off to be booked into jail for assaulting Burke. And her son, according to what Holm had told me, had been cleared a little bit before I was and sent back to the police station so we could interrogate him.
“Clear through and through,” Holm had said as we sat down to wait for the results of Burke’s surgery. “Good shot, Hills. Thanks to you, they were able to patch him up quickly. Now we don’t have to wait around to be able to interrogate him.
Hills had just grunted impassively in response. Since then, we’d been sitting here, waiting.
“It could be worse,”
Holm noted as he reached into a bag of potato chips he’d gotten out of a vending machine somewhere in the hospital.
“How?” I asked vaguely as I looked down at the sling my arm was in. Six weeks seemed like an impossibly long time. How was I supposed to hold a gun? Or dive? I wasn’t supposed to get this thing wet.
“You could be dead,” he replied before popping one of the chips into his mouth. “I saw that machete he cut you with. The thing was like a foot long.”
“I guess,” I replied. “Don’t know how I’m supposed to shoot now.”
I flexed my left hand and imagined doing it with my non-dominant arm.
“Don’t,” Chapman remarked as he turned to look at me. “I hurt my shoulder once. I got shot. I almost killed Charlie on our next mission because I couldn’t aim straight.”
“That was really great,” Hills replied sarcastically. “His arm was screwed up for like three months, too, because he didn’t tell anyone he was hurt and kept using it.”
“It hadn’t even been a year since I’d joined MBLIS,” Chapman mumbled. “I didn’t want to mess everything up so early.”
“Great,” I muttered under my breath. As if it wasn’t bad enough to think that I might not be able to have my partner’s back in a moment of crisis, now I had to worry about accidentally hitting him with friendly fire.
Before we could say anything else, one of the doctors walked through the doors leading to the operating rooms and came toward us.
“You’re here for Officer Todd Burke?” the man asked as he looked at us. He was bearing plastic blue scrubs and a matching blue operating cap that completely covered his hair.
“That’s us,” I replied, an uncomfortable sensation falling into the pit of my stomach at his serious tone.
“He just got out of surgery,” the doctor informed us, and I gave an internal sigh of relief. “He’s still sleeping, and he probably will be for several more hours. We won’t know the extent of damage that the TBI might have caused until he wakes up, but for now, he’s stable.”
“That’s great to hear,” Chapman replied.
“Yeah,” I added. “Thanks for letting us know.”
“Of course,” the doctor replied before turning and walking back through the doors.
“That’s good,” Hills muttered once the doctor was out of earshot. “The way that old bat hit him over the head, I was sure was a dead man, to be honest. Poor guy fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.”
“Well, hopefully, he comes out of it alright,” I replied as I stood up, my arm feeling uncomfortably awkward and heavy at my side. Traumatic brain injuries, even after they’d physically healed, could have severe and lasting effects. Loss of speech, loss of motor functions, everything. The brain controlled it all, so if even one small thing got damaged, it could be life changing.
“Two who scum bags are waiting for us back at the station,” Hills growled, his voice low and dripping with fury. “Let’s go see what they have to say about this.”
We headed out of the hospital and into the parking lot. Holm drove us back to the station since one of my arms wasn’t working, and Chapman and Holm insisted that Hills wasn’t allowed to drive them again.
“What happened?” I chuckled as I climbed into the back seat. I’d ridden to the hospital in the back of an ambulance since the paramedics had been concerned about the volume of blood my injury was spurting. In hindsight, knowing just how bad it had been, that had been a good call.
“Just Charlie almost getting us all put in the hospital with his crazy driving,” Chapman muttered as he turned to glare at his partner.
“Two of ours were down.” Hills frowned back at him. “I was just trying to get to the hospital as fast as possible. We got here in one piece, didn’t we?”
“Barely,” Holm scoffed under his breath.
“You almost took out a palm tree,” Chapman retorted as Holm started the car and pulled out of the hospital parking lot. “Which is impressive because it was the only tree within a hundred yards of us.”
“It was in the way,” Hills replied dismissively.
He and Chapman spent the rest of the short drive back to the station bickering. They quieted down as soon as we arrived, though, and both of their expressions immediately turned serious.
“Let’s go,” Hills grumbled darkly as he stepped out of the car and looked up at the station. “I need to have words with this man.”
The station was significantly quieter this time around. It wasn’t surprising since the sun was starting to set, and there were, therefore, fewer people out and about now. One of the officers looked up at us as soon as we stepped inside and beckoned us over to his window.
“You’re the agents, right?” he asked as he looked at us.
“That’s us,” I replied as I reached into my pocket to pull out my badge.
“The Sergeant’s waiting for you,” he replied with a satisfied nod after looking at my badge. “I’ll let you through.”
He gestured toward the door we’d walked through earlier as he reached forward and pushed something on his desk. There wasn’t any light or noise to indicate that the door had opened, which was actually a smart security feature.
“Thanks,” I replied before striding toward the door and pulling on the handle. It swung open easily, and I stepped inside, Holm and the Vegas agents right behind me.
“Do you remember how to get to his office?” Holm asked as we walked down the hallway.
“I think it was to the left and up some stairs?” I replied. I was pretty sure I remembered. I was good at taking note of my surroundings, and I remembered passing by several rooms filled with officers and students. We didn’t have to wonder for long, though, because we spotted Leeland as soon as we turned the corner.
“Agent Marston,” he greeted me as our eyes met, his smile much weaker than it had been earlier today. He looked worn out. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he carried a tablet under one arm. “Hills, Holm, Chapman. It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry to see that you’re injured.” The smile vanished from his face entirely as he looked down at my arm.
“It’s nothing,” I assured him. “All part of the job. And it’s definitely nothing compared to what Burke’s going through.”
“Yes, the hospital had been giving me updates,” Leeland replied sadly before clearing his throat and pasting on a smile again. “But he’s going to be alright. He’ll be back to work in tip-top shape in no time. But anyway, you’re here about Velasquez, right?”
“That’s the suspect’s name?” I asked as he led us down the hall, this time to the left, away from the classrooms and toward a different part of the station. My heart was thrumming with adrenaline as the thought that we might finally be able to speak to Viper coursed through my mind.
“We ran his prints,” Leeland replied as he handed me the tablet he was carrying. “Javier Velasquez, twenty-nine years old. Dropped out of high school at sixteen. Spent a year in juvenile detention back in Colombia before moving here with his mother and older brother Jorge. Since then, he’s been moving from job to job and generally just kept his head down from the looks of it.”
“Nah,” Hills scoffed. “That just means that he hasn’t been caught. Innocent people don’t run when they see the police, and they certainly don’t attack federal agents with machetes and guns.”
“Well, that’s all we were able to find on paper,” Leeland replied as we came to a stop outside one of the doors. “I’ll trust you to find out the rest.”
He unlocked the door and led us inside. It was the kind of interrogation room that was just one big room bisected by a wall of glass, as opposed to two completely separate rooms. There was a small door leading into the walled-off area, and I could see Javier inside. He wore a set of gray jail clothes now, and his arms were visible. Sure enough, they were clean, with no snake tattoo in sight. Unfortunately, this really wasn’t Viper.
“You two should go in,” Chapman suggested as he looked at Hills and m
e. “You were the ones who actually went in there, after all. He might feel more intimidated if it’s the ones who arrested him doing the questioning.
“Do you mind?” I turned to ask Holm. Honestly, I really wanted the chance to question the guy myself after he’d severely limited my ability to work for the next six weeks. Holm hadn’t had much of a chance to participate in the interrogations, though. So far, I’d been the one to head most of them.
“Go ahead.” He grinned. “After what he did to you, I know you’re dying to get in there and tear him a new one.”
“Thanks.” I smiled back at him before turning toward the door.
“I’ll watch from out there,” Leeland said as he took a seat in the chair directly in front of the glass, his eyes narrowed and trained directly on Javier. “I don’t want to interfere in your process.”
“Alright,” I replied as I pushed open the door that led into the smaller room. Hills stepped in right behind me.
Velazquez looked up at us as we entered, fear evident in his eyes. There were multiple bruises on his face, and I could see bandages peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his shirt.
“Javier Velasquez,” I greeted him as I dragged one of the chairs out from beneath the table. It made a harsh, grating noise as it scraped across the floor.
Velasquez flinched in response, and I could tell that he was tense. That was good. It might make it easier to get him to break if he was already wound up. I sat down and opened my mouth to begin the interrogation, but before I could speak a single word, Velasquez cut me off.
“I want a lawyer!” he blurted out, his words running together into a barely decipherable jumble.
I blinked in surprise before snapping my mouth shut, doing my best to hide the annoyance and disappointment that I was feeling. This again? The higher-ups of this organization clearly knew a thing about criminal law since this was the second time one of them had tried to impede our investigation by demanding legal counsel.