Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  “Gun!” I yelled. “He’s got a gun!”

  I scrabbled backwards, trying to keep the bulk of my car between me and the gunman even though I’d seen his shots punch through metal.

  A cop crouched down beside me, weapon drawn.

  “He’s got a gun,” I said again.

  “Is that your car, ma’am?”

  The officer was a woman, sturdy and solid and serious.

  “Yes,” I said. My vision was starting to blur and my hands were shaking. “He hijacked me.”

  “Can you move?”

  My thigh was wet with blood, but so far my leg still seemed to work. “I think so.”

  “Let’s get you out of here.”

  With an arm around my shoulders, she hustled me behind her patrol car, both of us crouched over as we ran as fast as my leg would allow. Once there, she called in the situation on the radio attached to her uniform.

  I could hear more sirens closing in. She must have called for backup before I opened the door. Had she seen the gun? Or maybe she’d seen me pepper spray the guy.

  “He’s a pro,” I told her. “I think he’s got some kind of incendiary device. He was going to kill me and set fire to the car.”

  Her eyes narrowed. I could tell by the expression on her dark-skinned face that she’d made the connection. People didn’t die in car fires every day in Reno. Whether or not she was directly involved in the investigation, I was willing to bet she knew about Melody’s murder. I wondered if she knew Richards.

  She crab-walked to the open door of her cruiser, and a moment later I heard her voice over a loudspeaker instructing everyone to clear the area.

  I risked a peek around the driver’s side of the cruiser. She was still crouched down, not giving the gunman a clear shot at her head. She was waiting for backup and protecting civilians. She wasn’t going to play the hero and charge a professional killer with a gun.

  I could understand that, but from her position she wouldn’t be able to see if he did the same thing I’d done—simply bail out of the car and run away. Her cruiser was directly behind my car, and her view of the passenger side of my car was blocked.

  I doubted getting caught and doing time was part of the gunman’s plans. He couldn’t afford to stay in the car, not with more police on the way.

  If he got away, he’d be free to come after me again. Maybe next time he showed up in my life with a gun, Samantha would be with me. That thought was too horrible to contemplate.

  I scooted around the back of the cruiser and peeked at the passenger side of my car just in time to see the door open.

  “He’s coming out!” I yelled.

  A cloud of powder from the deployed airbags poured out the open door. It made the car look like it was already on fire.

  The gunman rolled out much the same way I’d done, only he still had the gun. His straw hat was long gone and the lower half of his face was covered in blood leaking from his broken nose. He didn’t look like a tourist now.

  “Drop the gun,” the officer said.

  She wasn’t using the loudspeaker anymore, but her voice was loud and clear and strong. I had no doubt that he’d heard her even over the blare of approaching sirens and the sounds of downtown traffic the next block over.

  At least my car’s horn was no longer adding to the din. Maybe he’d shot the horn to put it out of its misery, but I doubted he would have wasted the bullet.

  He stayed crouched down, using my car as a shield much like I’d done. He was probably trying to decide if he should make a run for it.

  Thankfully all the spectators who would normally hang around the edge of a collision had long gone, either because the cop had told them to leave or they’d heard me shout that he had a gun. There was no one within easy reach that he could use as a hostage or a human shield.

  Then he looked my way, and I saw pure, raw fury steal the calm expression from his face.

  I ducked behind the cruiser just in time.

  A bullet slammed through the police car, exiting out the back of the trunk just a fraction of an inch away from my head.

  He must have calculated where my head would be when I ducked away for cover, and he’d only been a hair’s breadth off.

  I flattened out on the ground as another bullet followed the first.

  I couldn’t run although every instinct in my body was telling me to run. I’d make a smaller target staying flat on the ground.

  Provided he didn’t scuttle down the side of the cruiser, out of sight of the cop, and just take me out as soon as he spotted me.

  I twisted my head around and tried to peer beneath the cruiser. The hot asphalt burned my cheek, but at least I had a narrow view of the street beyond the cruiser.

  The street, and a pair of canvas loafers.

  He was doing exactly what I’d been afraid he would—crab-walking slowly toward the back of the cruiser.

  “He’s coming down the passenger side!” I yelled at the cop.

  I rolled and tried to get my feet under me, but my abused thigh refused to cooperate. Instead of sprinting away, my leg almost collapsed beneath me.

  I got ready to hit the ground and roll again when the cop’s gun went off, a big booming sound compared to the return fire coming from the gunman.

  I was in the middle of a shootout, and I was the only person without body armor or a gun. I’d never felt more helpless in my life.

  The shooting stopped abruptly when the cavalry finally arrived on the scene.

  Two more police cars skidded to a stop behind me. Car doors flung open and cops spilled out, pointing shotguns and handguns directly at me and the passenger side of the cruiser.

  “Freeze!” one of the new arrivals yelled. He was a big Hispanic cop who probably bench pressed elephants in his spare time. His shotgun was pointed in my direction.

  I would have liked to do nothing else except freeze only my body had other ideas.

  I had just started to raise my hands up in the universal sign of I give up, please don’t kill me when the world around me started to gray out.

  Great. Just great.

  I had just enough time to shift my weight so I wouldn’t fall on my face—or my bad shoulder—before the gray turned to black, and I fainted right there in the middle of the street.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE INTERVIEW ROOM in the F.B.I. field office didn’t look that much different from the one in the downtown Reno Police Station. Plain walls, plain metal table, plain metal chairs. Norton sat beside me, but instead of Detectives Archulette and Squires, one lone F.B.I. agent sat across from us.

  Special Agent McCarthy was a solidly-built forty-something. Dark hair, dark blue eyes, and the kind of chin that looked like it had been chiseled from granite. He could have been a model in a L.L. Bean catalog, except his stare would have given him away as something more than a handsome version of the guy next door who looked good in whatever he happened to be wearing.

  Special Agent McCarthy was the kind of guy who could look at you and you’d swear he knew everything you’d done wrong your entire life. Evil Santa would have a stare like that.

  “My client will be happy to cooperate,” Norton said to McCarthy. “Provided we receive assurances that no charges—federal or local—will be pressed against her.”

  McCarthy didn’t say anything. He just turned that stare on me.

  My legs were trembling, and I couldn’t put it all off to the ten stitches I had in the top of my thigh.

  The doctor who’d stitched me up in the Emergency Room had told me I’d been lucky. He’d called it a “scratch.” I was pretty sure scratches were the things I got from my cat, and so far I hadn’t needed stitches for any of those.

  The police had stood watch outside my cubicle in the Emergency Room. I’d been allowed to call Norton. After he’d arrived at the Emergency Room, I’d snuck in a call to Kyle, and then we’d all made a trek to the Federal Building where the Reno police handed me over—reluctantly, I thought—to Special Agent McCarthy.


  I didn’t think the police officers were entirely convinced that I’d had nothing to do with Richards’ death. The cop who’d found herself in a shootout with the gunman who’d kidnapped me had originally pulled me over because a BOLO—be on the lookout—had been issued for me in connection with the explosion that killed Richards. I’d already been questioned in one car bombing, and the helpful security guard at the bank building where Sewell worked had recognized me when one of the cops who’d responded to the explosion showed him my picture, just like I knew he would.

  Even I was impressed with how fast the cops had issued the BOLO for me. It had only been a minute or two old when the cop who’d pulled me over had spotted my car.

  Any other day I would have freaked at the idea of being the subject of that kind of police attention. Today? Not so much.

  By the time I’d recovered from my faint at the scene, I was in the back of an ambulance. I had an I.V. in my arm and a cold pack on my forehead.

  The paramedic told me that between the blood I’d lost and the heat and the stress, he wasn’t surprised I’d passed out. They’d already treated two out-of-towners for heatstroke—one on a golf course and one fisherman trying to catch trout in the Truckee River west of town—and that I’d been lucky.

  I supposed I had. The gunman could have killed me. I could have been killed in the crossfire.

  The gunman hadn’t been so lucky. I didn’t know who shot him—the cop who’d pulled me over or one of the other cops who’d showed up right before I hit the asphalt—but he’d been pronounced dead at the scene.

  I’d managed to have a quick conversation with Norton at the hospital before the police escorted me to my meeting with Special Agent McCarthy. I brought Norton up to speed, giving him the Readers Digest version of what Richards had told me about Melody and Sewell and the undercover operation the feds had going in their latest attempt to make some kind of charge against Gordino stick.

  I also told him how the gunman had seen me taking pictures of Sewell and then seen me dropping Richards off, and that he’d probably jumped to the wrong conclusion—that I was part of the feds’ undercover operation—and he’d decided to take care of me as well.

  Norton wanted me to wait and see what the F.B.I.’s position was in all of this before I made an official statement. He doubted they’d be able to charge me with anything other than interference with a federal investigation, not that I’d done that intentionally, but he wanted to cut a deal just the same to make sure none of this could come back and bite me in the ass.

  Norton also told me that the cops had issued a BOLO for Ryan in connection with Richards’ murder. He’d briefly been in custody while I’d been at the hospital having my leg stitched up, but he’d been released when his alibi checked out. Ryan had been meeting with a funeral director planning Melody’s services during the time that I’d taken Richards on a ride around the city. He couldn’t have planted the bomb that killed Richards.

  With Ryan off the hook for Richards, Reno P.D. had cancelled the BOLO on me as well. That didn’t mean I was totally in the clear. There was still Melody’s murder to consider.

  Melody, who’d been Richards’ snitch.

  Who’d been Sewell’s girlfriend, even while she’d been Ryan’s fiancé.

  “I can’t speak for the local police,” McCarthy finally said. He turned his gaze back to Norton. “I’m sure you realize that, Mr. Greenburger.”

  “Officially, yes. Unofficially?” Norton shrugged. “I’ve frequently been amazed at what a little inter-agency cooperation and goodwill can accomplish.”

  There’d been no inter-agency cooperation when it came to Kyle. He was currently cooling his heels in the waiting area.

  If it had been Ryan, he would have been pacing. Kyle didn’t pace. I knew he’d spend his time just sitting in one of the uncomfortable visitor chairs, his feet flat on the floor, back straight, seemingly calm and unconcerned.

  I’d always thought I was pretty good at waiting, too, but my trembling legs said otherwise. I just wanted to get this over with and go home.

  Provided my new home wasn’t a jail cell.

  “Give me a reason to make that happen,” McCarthy said.

  Norton leaned forward a little and gave McCarthy an icy stare of his own. “We all know what was going on here. Your operation was blown. The guys at the top were cleaning house. My client just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the very most, all she’s guilty of is being overzealous about doing her job. It’s one of the reasons I keep offering her a permanent spot on my staff. Which, I might add, she continues to turn down, against all common sense.”

  To his credit, McCarthy didn’t blink. “You know how this goes, counsellor. I need something from you before I can go to bat for your client.”

  Norton had warned me that the feds would want a taste of the information I had to offer in exchange for immunity. I’d told Norton that I didn’t have anything to use. All Richards had done was share the fact that his investigation existed. He didn’t have any proof against Sewell when it came to money laundering—even Melody hadn’t been able to get anything concrete against the man. Sure, he’d told me what Melody’s assignment was supposed to have been, but that plan had died along with her. Richards couldn’t prove that Sewell had anything to do with Melody’s death.

  What Norton wanted me to do wasn’t exactly bluffing, but it was close. I’d warned him that I wasn’t a good poker player, but I’d agreed it was the best piece of information we had.

  “Melody went beyond what Richards told her to do,” I said. “He wanted her to convince Sewell to buy her things, expensive things he’d need to dip into the boss’s money to pay for. Enough money that it would be missed.”

  McCarthy just stared at me with those cold blue eyes. I wondered if he ever lightened up. Ever looked at something just for the enjoyment of it, not to try to dissect its truthfulness or usefulness.

  I could tell he already knew that much. If Richards reported to McCarthy often, I wouldn’t have anything at all to tell him. Norton and I were gambling that he hadn’t told McCarthy everything that he’d told me.

  “She decided she wanted to play a more active role,” I said. “She went to that spy shop in midtown. Bought things that Richards didn’t know about until after the fact. Decided to use them on her own.”

  The shift in McCarthy’s expression was almost non-existent. His lower eyelids rose just a fraction, accompanied by a momentary pause in his steady breathing. If I hadn’t been watching him closely, I would have missed it.

  I’d scored a hit.

  He sat without saying anything, clearly waiting to see if I’d keep talking to fill the silence. He didn’t know me well. I used to be married to a lawyer. I knew how to keep my mouth shut, whether the silence was comfortable or not.

  The silence stretched on long enough that I began to think of it like a staring contest. Who’d break first?

  It wasn’t going to be me.

  I couldn’t afford to let it be me.

  McCarthy knew as well as we did that the spy shop sold all sorts of surveillance gear. As far as I knew, all Melody had done was make a copy of the key to Sewell’s apartment. I kind of doubted that a woman who wanted to play spy would have stopped with a key, and I’d mentioned that to Norton.

  That’s when he’d decided that the key was the bit of information we’d keep to ourselves. He wanted to bait the feds with the information about the spy shop. He wanted them to assume, just like I had, that Melody had gone surveillance crazy on Sewell, only he wanted them to think that I knew all about it. We’d keep the little that I actually knew to ourselves until they came back with an immunity deal.

  Of course, McCarthy or his minions could check with the spy shop to see what Melody had purchased, but that would take time.

  Norton was gambling on the fact that the feds would be worried Sewell might disappear if he figured out he was the next guy on his boss’s hit list. Norton had seemed confident t
hat if the feds decided I had something worthwhile to deal with, something they could use to connect Sewell to Gordino, they’d want to make a deal quickly.

  Me? I wasn’t quite as confident, especially since it was my life on the line.

  McCarthy eventually slid his chair back. If he was in a rush, he didn’t show it.

  “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” he said.

  He got up with the casual grace of someone in superb physical shape. Almost everyone in my life was in better shape than I was. Even Norton.

  I told myself that if I got out of this mess, I’d join a gym. Just not the one Melody had worked at. I doubted I could afford it.

  After McCarthy left the room, Norton gave my hand a quick squeeze. He didn’t smile or make any other gesture that would give me some idea how this was all going. He was probably a kick-ass poker player.

  I couldn’t ask him how he thought this was going either. The room didn’t have any obvious surveillance equipment, but I had no doubt the F.B.I. could arrange to eavesdrop on conversations in its interrogation rooms without being blatant about it.

  So I sat in my uncomfortable chair and waited. And waited.

  The local anesthetic the emergency room doctor had used to numb my leg before he stitched it up had long since worn off. While my wound didn’t hurt enough to make me want to climb the walls, I was more aware of it than I would have been if I’d actually had something else to keep my mind occupied.

  “You called Samantha for me?” I asked Norton.

  I’d been pushing it when I’d called Kyle in the hospital. I’d been out of touch with my daughter for hours now, and the last conversation I’d had with her hadn’t exactly been reassuring.

  “Kyle called her,” Norton said. “Thought it would be better coming from him than me. Lawyers generally don’t deliver good news.” He raised his eyebrows apologetically. “Or at least that’s been my impression when I call someone out of the blue.” He squeezed my hand again. “She’ll be fine.”

  She would be. She might have turned into a weight conscious, fashion conscious teenager, but she was a strong kid. I just hated that she had to be so strong because of me.