Jackson

by Dale Mayer

  She hopped to her feet and walked into the guest bedroom while Jackson was still on the phone to Kanen. She dressed again and came out, snatched up her purse and stood beside the kitchen counter, waiting for him to get off the phone.

  Jackson spun around, took one look at her and his eyebrow shot up to his forehead. “Uh-oh.”

  Kanen said, “Uh-oh, what?”

  “Deli is fully dressed and looking like she wants to go out. I suspect she wants to double-check on Carney.”

  “Ouch,” Kanen said. “Sorry to ruin your evening. I think I’ll meet you there.” And he hung up.

  Jackson didn’t say another word. He grabbed his keys and led the way.

  “Can you drive even after all that wine?”

  He shot her a look. “Absolutely. You shouldn’t be driving. You’re much smaller than I am. That alcohol would have affected you more.”

  “It’s hardly a contest because I’m going regardless,” she said. “Carney went out of his way to help us. I don’t want him hurt because of it.”

  “Agreed,” Jackson said. He pulled up the address on his GPS. “Twelve minutes. Let’s go.”

  He pulled his Jeep from the parking lot and took off. It took longer than twelve minutes because the traffic was surprisingly heavy. They pulled up beside a small ranch house. Several similar-looking houses were on the block. All the lights were off on the one they were interested in.

  Jackson frowned and said, “It isn’t that late, is it?”

  “No,” she said as she dialed Carney’s number again.

  They walked up to the front door. While the phone rang in her ear, they could hear it ringing inside the house. She frowned, looked at Jackson and knocked hard on the front door. No answer. She reached out, grabbed the doorknob and twisted, but it was locked.

  Jackson jerked, put a finger to her lips and then pulled her out of the way. He put her against the wall next to the front door and whispered in her ear, “Stay here. Stay low and quiet. I think someone is inside.” He bolted around the back.

  She watched him go, wishing somebody was here with her. Just as she thought that, Kanen pulled up behind Jackson’s Jeep. She held her fingers to her lips and motioned that Jackson had gone around the corner of the house.

  Kanen stepped up beside her and whispered, “What have you heard?”

  “Carney’s phone rings inside. Jackson thought he heard somebody.”

  Just then they heard shouts from the back of the house. She heard Jackson’s voice. Kanen jumped off the front porch, raced around in the opposite direction to where Jackson had gone. And as he left Deli’s sight, bullets pierced the front door. She screamed and ducked farther out of sight.

  Somebody bolted through the front door, crashing through it like a bulldozer. She reached out with her foot as the man came out on the front porch and tripped him. He fell onto the concrete porch steps, scrambled to get to his feet, but she tackled him on his back. He went down hard again, but then he got up, easily carrying her with him. She reached for his ears, twisting and grabbing, her nails scratching his skin as she tried to get him to stop. He pulled her over his shoulders and tossed her to the ground and kept running.

  Just as suddenly Jackson came around the corner and barreled right into him, but the intruder was light on his feet and bolted with Jackson on his heels.

  Kanen was behind them, but he stopped when he saw her and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?” he asked, brushing her off.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Go after him. I’ll see if Carney is okay.”

  “We’ve already called 9-1-1. See to your friend.”

  She ran inside the house, turned on the lights and found Carney on the floor, groaning. She dropped to his side to see his eyes open and a half smile on his face.

  “Hey, little girl. What kind of trouble did you get me into?”

  “I’m so sorry, Carney,” she cried out. “It’s the same damn trouble James and Magnus got into,” she said. “Who knew this would still be reverberating around us?” She checked him over. “One bullet high in the shoulder. I don’t see any other injuries. Do you feel pain anywhere else?”

  “No,” he said, “but my shoulder hurts like a son of a bitch.” In the distance they could hear sounds of a siren. He groaned. “My wife and kids are visiting her mom for the weekend. Damn good timing, if I do say so myself.”

  “Oh, that’s such a relief,” Deli said. “I worried if anybody else was in the house.”

  “No.” He tried to sit up and then fell back down, gasping in pain.

  She reached over and patted his cheek. “You stay right here. The ambulance is outside. You’ll be at the hospital in no time.”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “And since when is that something to look forward to?”

  EMTs rushed toward her. She was shoved out of the way as they dropped beside Carney and started working on him. She backed up into the kitchen. She did a quick check of the rest of the house, but, like he’d said, no one else was here.

  One of the men looked at her and asked, “What the hell happened?”

  “Jackson and I interrupted a gunman attacking Carney,” she said, pointing to their patient on the floor. “I tripped the attacker as he escaped out the front door and jumped on his back, but he threw me off. However,” she said, “I scratched his ears. You should swab and scrape under my nails. I know DNA results will take time but it could be helpful down the road.”

  The EMT frowned but did as she asked. “Why were you here?”

  “It was a hunch.” She shrugged. “Carney’s head of security for the navy garage where I work. Two other men who worked with us have been killed in the last two days, plus a third navy man.” Her voice was a low undertone. “We came tonight because I was afraid Carney was next on the hit list.”

  Carney turned to look at her as he was loaded onto the gurney and smiled. “I owe you one for that. If you hadn’t come when you did, I’d be a dead man right now.”

  “I’m just sorry we didn’t come sooner,” she said in a stark voice. “I’d have done anything to keep you from being hurt.”

  He smiled. “I’m a big guy. I can take a lot before I go down permanently.”

  She nodded and knew he was right. But bullets would still stop everyone. As far as she was concerned, too many people had died already.

  *

  Pissed at missing his man—but with a photo of the gateway car—Jackson returned to Carney’s house, slid an arm around Deli’s shoulders and tucked her close to him. “Carney will be fine.”

  She gave Jackson a misty smile. “Thank heavens for that. We still need answers.”

  “And we’re getting there,” he said. “Remember what you said? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get there before the next murder was to happen?”

  She frowned and stared up at him. “We didn’t though, did we?”

  His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “No, in a way we didn’t, but you might want to consider that, this time, Carney didn’t die. He will make a full recovery, and that’s because of us. So, although we didn’t stop Carney from getting shot, he’ll make it through this. Let’s keep working on this and see if we can get to the next victim before he’s even attacked.”

  “I’d love to,” she said. “Just missing one thing. That’s a name as to who the next victim is. Also we have to consider that maybe there aren’t any more victims. Maybe the murderer has cleaned up his act or has tied up all the loose ends.”

  If only it were that simple, Jackson thought.

  As far as he was concerned, both he and Deli could be on that hit list. So his words were truer than ever in terms of making the killings stop before it became an issue for him or her. He wished Carney had been able to tell Deli who his attacker was. Being struck from behind inside his own house implied intimate knowledge of who Carney was and where he lived. That could have been anybody he worked with. And that was a consideration.

  He turned toward Deli. “Who else besides James, Magnus, and
Carney works in that garage with you?”

  She frowned at him. “Probably another dozen guys. But that would be way too obvious, wouldn’t it? You can hardly take out your coworkers until you’re the last man standing and not have the police become suspicious.”

  “But the killer doesn’t have to take out everybody. And he’s already brought plenty of suspicion on the garage employees with his first three kills. Plus, if the killer’s not planning on sticking around, maybe it doesn’t matter who suspects what,” Jackson suggested.

  “It’s possible. But it could just as likely be any of the supers above the mechanics or the security guards who work in that garage. Or it could be the men in the garage beside us. That would be even better cover.”

  “Do you always go back to the same garage on the same base?”

  She nodded. “Yes, mostly.” She turned to Carney’s house. “But it has to be somebody who has access to personal information, like where Carney lived.”

  “Unless it was a coworker. You work long enough with somebody, and you end up sharing a lot of personal information. Or it could be a friend, somebody he may have seen at a bar or had over.”

  “Or somebody who has access to the computer systems or who knows how to find out where somebody lives through the databases, like an HR manager, a personnel director—a hacker.”

  “Any and all are possible,” Jackson muttered. “We may have to sic Kanen on this one.”

  “All these men dead or hurt …” she murmured.

  “We know it is all about the truck,” Jackson said, “and whatever it was carrying—whether authorized navy gear or something smuggled in among the authorized navy gear. As far as Kanen could tell, there was absolutely no rhyme or reason for which equipment got into any particular vehicle. It was all packed up systemically, in one truck after another and sent out. So whoever loaded those boxes in my rig—or just a witness of that—must have radioed somebody else to intercept my vehicle and to get what they needed.”

  “Which would explain them shooting the vehicle while you were in the store, to keep you from driving off with it. So they could get the material out then.”

  Jackson shook his head. “That wouldn’t work. I made a very quick stop so I wouldn’t get too far behind the convoy. Also, I parked right up front by the restaurant next to the store. Nobody could have gotten into the back of the truck without somebody having seen them. Not to mention they should be secure.”

  “So then they did the next best thing, tried to disable the vehicle so it would die a little bit farther up the road. But when they got there, I was there.” She raised both hands in frustration. “And all we’re doing is going over old ground.”

  “No, not necessarily. Besides, sometimes, by going over old ground, we come up with new answers.”

  “Why didn’t they just shoot us dead on the road?” she said bluntly. “I could see that maybe they didn’t have the time or opportunity, but, by showering us with gunfire, that certainly made us more suspicious.”

  “Didn’t it though? They might have been hoping we’d take off into the bush, and they’d pull a U-turn and come back to get what they wanted. But it didn’t work out that way. They might have been discussing coming back and killing us as a last resort, but Max was on their trail soon afterward, so they took the opportunity to get the hell away and to firm up plan B.”

  “I think that’s pretty shaky,” she muttered. “They could have just hopped out, killed us both, gotten what they wanted and carried on.”

  He held back from saying there was a good chance the bad guys were still planning to do that, but, on the roadside, he had grabbed her and pulled her behind the vehicle as the gunfire had splattered the military truck. And, as the shooter’s pickup drove past, they were also being followed, so they didn’t have a chance to come back for a second round of firing.

  She walked toward his Jeep. “At this point, I just want to put it all away for a while.”

  He waited until she was back in the passenger side, then he hopped around to his side. “Ready for bed then?”

  “I was ready a long time ago,” she said with a yawn. “But, right now, after seeing what happened to Carney …”

  Jackson turned the Jeep around and headed home. “I’ll make a few phone calls when we get there.”

  She nodded. “Everybody needs to be brought up to date. We also have to see if anybody else is likely to be in the murderous line here.”

  He didn’t share his earlier thoughts, just stayed quiet, hoping she’d fall asleep on the way home.

  But, instead of falling asleep, she seemed to stare moodily at the windshield. Her arms crossed over her chest, her body still, she was silent as she pondered these recent events.

  “Just remember Carney will make it.”

  “And so will Max,” she said with a heavy sigh. “But we don’t know about the current status of Barney, the other guy, do we?”

  “No, but I can call when we get back, if you want an update tonight.”

  She waved her hand as if to say it wasn’t important. “He’ll either make it or not,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it right now. Max was driving, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Why didn’t they shoot Barney?”

  “He was bent over, digging to find something.” Jackson pulled into the driveway as he thought about her question. “Angle perhaps, opportunity perhaps.” He turned to stare at her in the darkness. “What are you getting at?”

  She turned to look at him. “What if Max was involved?”

  Jackson stared at her in surprise. “I was pretty sure that mentally we had cleared those two. Are you thinking both of them might be involved?”

  She shook her head, twisted her hands, palms up. “I have no clue who is involved and who is not. I just don’t want to miss out on an opportunity with a suspect only because we like them.”

  “I get that,” he said and frowned. “Come on. Let’s get inside.” As they walked toward the apartment, his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket. “It’s Kanen,” Jackson told her. “Hey, you got any news?”

  “Outside of the fact that Carney will be okay,” Kanen said in exasperation, “no. Why? What are you up to, and what do you have?”

  He stopped, Deli moving a few steps ahead and sitting down on the short brick wall that lined the front of the apartment building. “Deli was just wondering if we’ve cleared Max and Barney. She’s afraid one of them was involved, and the other one was intended to get hurt or killed. Or possibly both were involved. Of course that means the murderer isn’t one of them.”

  First came silence and then a low whistle. “Well, that’s an interesting angle,” Kanen said slowly. “I’m not sure we took that closer look, did we?”

  “I’m not sure we did,” Jackson said. “I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Max, sharing details of our investigation, and would hate it if he was involved.”

  “I doubt he is. What would be the point of shooting them and running them off the road then?” Kanen asked. “Then again, we can’t knock anyone off the list at this point.”

  “I should have another talk with Max,” Jackson said. “We’re back at my apartment now. Deli is exhausted. I need to get her into bed.”

  Kanen almost snickered.

  Jackson sighed. “Definitely not a night for that.”

  “It’s always a night for that,” Kanen said, his voice firmer. “Besides, you need a rebirth of life and not a renewal of death.” And he hung up.

  As Jackson walked toward Deli, his hand out toward her, he said, “Kanen thought we had knocked Max and Barney off the list too. But you could be right. We have to take another look at them.”

  “And I hate that,” she cried out passionately. “I really like Max.”

  “Doesn’t mean he had anything to do with all this,” Jackson said firmly. “We can’t jump to conclusions just yet. There could be another dozen suspects.”

  “Like who else might have had access to t
hose security tapes?” she asked suddenly.

  “Exactly like that,” Jackson said. He sent Kanen a text asking about that. “And we have to keep thinking like this. Keep bringing up possibilities, keep bringing up ideas. Did anybody have no other family, a loner type, our shooter? Or, if blackmail was involved, who had family members to be threatened? Did anybody have money problems? Was anybody seriously in hock to a loan shark or up to their ears in gambling debts to a bookie? Was anybody vulnerable to take a payout and to betray their country?”

  “It could take days to find out that information,” she said, all her fire and ice gone once again.

  They walked up the stairs to his apartment. He checked his door before unlocking it, entered, turned on the lights, did a quick walk-through to ensure there’d been no unauthorized visitors. But, since the hair he’d placed on the outside of his front door hadn’t been disturbed, he assumed all was safe inside. But he couldn’t make any assumptions anymore.

  He led her into the spare room, then said, “Go crash.”

  She didn’t even argue. She walked in, closing the door in his face. He heard some rustling behind the door for a few minutes and then silence. At that point, the light he could see underneath the door clicked off.

  He smiled. “Good,” he said. “At least one of us will get some sleep.”

  Chapter 13

  Deli lay in the bed, too exhausted to sleep, her mind rolling over and over again with all the faces of the dead she’d seen recently. Thank God, Carney would be fine. But she and Jackson had to stop this killer before whoever it was came back after another one. And she had no clue who would be next. If they followed the pattern, by rights it should be her and Jackson. That was a horrible thought.

  But it made sense because they were two witnesses left behind. And, of course, Max. Although he was under tight security. She really wanted him to not be involved. But how did one know at this point? He was still in the hospital. Then she thought about it, wondering. She found the number for the hospital and called. She asked if Max was still a patient there or if he’d been released.