The goon dropped his cigarette, which sparked on the stone pavers. He fell to his knees less than ten feet from Wainwright. He stayed there, staring directly at Wainwright for several seconds with dead eyes before he fell facedown, blood spurting from an arterial neck wound. He made no sound, as the crossbow bolt had cut his larynx upon entry and severed the carotid artery on exit. There was just one thing for Wainwright to do: clean up.
He dragged the dead thug to the side yard. With the body hidden behind a hedge, no one would see it unless they searched for him. That maneuver brought Wainwright to the side of the house, next to what looked like a study. But Lacey was on the inside, and that was where he had to go.
LACEY WAS CAREFUL TO make no noise whatsoever as she moved down the hallway. Her objective was to reach the lower level to somehow help her husband. A good weapon would be a cast-iron skillet. The kitchen was the place to look. And she did so without disturbing the TV watchers in the great room. She’d seen no one moving around the house. If Collette had told Murtagh’s men about a rescue, they would be on patrol, checking doors and windows. So she kept her mouth shut. Good girl!
It sounded like the goons were watching a cartoon show. From the voices, Lacey couldn’t tell how many men were in the room, but it was more than three—maybe a lot more. In the kitchen, she looked at the mess left for the poor housekeeper. On the cooktop, she found the item she needed, a large cast-iron frying pan. She dumped the hash-brown remnants into the sink and wrapped the handle with a dishtowel for a more secure grip. Don’t want this thing slipping out of my hand while I’m beaning a bad boy, she thought with a smile.
WAINWRIGHT MOVED DOWN the side yard toward the rear, then crawled under the windowsill of a bookshelf-lined room. He peeked into the next set of windows where he heard voices. He needed to count noses in the room but was unable to see the area closest to him. A large-screen TV entertained five men enthralled with Tom and Jerry. After crawling to the next window, he took another peek; two more giants sat on a couch yelling at the cartoon. So there were seven guys in the great room. Okay, that works. Amiti, Wilson, and I can deal with seven—I hope! That’s when he heard the dogs barking.
WILSON MADE HIS WAY to the back of the mansion. He raised his head to peer into the kitchen window. A bald guy was grabbing two beers from the refrigerator, popping the caps, and leaving the room. He looked again a few seconds later and saw Lacey Kinkaid. She was alive and—probably—unharmed. Phew! What’s she doing? Wrapping a dishtowel around a skillet? Well, our gal’s still a smart one.
Lacey was alone in the kitchen. Wilson tapped on the windowpane, but she didn’t hear it. He tapped again, harder this time. She spun around, raising the weapon/pan as she came face-to-face with the stranger. Although Wilson had seen many photos of her in the last few weeks, she had no idea who he was. He stood upright and raised a hand to wave a hello. Just then, one of the men in the great room headed for the kitchen. Wilson ducked in time, staying under the window to try to hear what he couldn’t see. In response to Wilson’s move, Lacey hid the frying pan behind her back in her right hand, her left hand dropping to her side.
“Hey, what’re you doin’ down here? Does the boss know you’re out of your room?” The thug turned his head toward the stairs. “Did he give the okay for you to—”
Lacey smacked him on the side of the head, like the Babe digging for a homer over left field at Yankee Stadium. The goon did an impression of al dente spaghetti, folding to the floor, unconscious or dead. A TV commercial must have come on, as three other goons came into the room and saw what she had done. One grabbed her by the arm, making her lose her grip on the skillet, which clattered loudly on the tile floor. Lacey tried to spin away from the man, but he wrapped his massive arms around her in a bear hug and held tight. Another knelt to help his fallen comrade, while the third yelled for those still watching TV to come help.
The racket reached the second floor and brought Murtagh down, followed by three of his card-playing bodyguards.
AS LACEY HAD VIOLATED their implied agreement, Murtagh ordered his men to return her to her basement cell. He’d keep her in there until he escorted her to the bank to recover the photos from her safe deposit box in the morning. It took three goons to take this fiercely fighting female back down there.
Henry had parked near the fountain in the center of the motor court. He hopped out, unlocked the trunk, and oh-so carefully unwrapped the bomb.
“Hey, Collette. How ’bout you collect the sacks of snacks?”
They walked to the entry door. Henry, carrying the bomb, followed Collette.
The Assassin watched the two proceed to the house with their respective burdens. He recognized the large pipe bomb. Although bombs weren’t his weapon of choice, as a professional he was familiar with all weapons used in his line of work.
Collette put the food on the kitchen counter for a self-serve meal, while Henry very carefully placed his package on the dining room table. Burgers and fries in hand, several of the men gathered around the table to gawk at the contraption. Others took their food back to the great room to enjoy some more intellectually stimulating television.
The three amigos reconnected at the rear of the house. A short huddle told the tale. Wilson repeated what had happened to Lacey: three goons had hauled her off to the basement. They revised their plan on the spot and moved to the farthest point from the dining room’s French doors. The Assassin unslung his sniper rifle, uncapped the variable power scope, and sighted on the bomb through the doors. He placed the scope’s reticle on the bomb’s triggering device. Then he inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. Gradually he applied pressure to the trigger, a slight amount, then a bit more, slowly increasing to four pounds of pull. He exhaled with the recoil of his shot.
The explosion vaporized the four gawking thugs standing in the former dining room. Three of those in the great room were severely wounded by shrapnel and wouldn’t be of any use for a long time. But Henry was neither a gawker nor a TV aficionado. He’d left the trunk of his car open and was on his way to close it when the blast hit. The explosive shock wave blew him out the just-opened front door and slammed him into the side of his car. Stunned and disoriented, he pulled a pistol from his shoulder rig. Pivoting from left to right, he scanned for a threat.
He found one.
Wilson had his weapon pointed at Henry’s head. “Drop it and you won’t die for the honor of Murtagh.”
The honor of Murtagh? That’s nice. As Henry thought that, he fired one shot at Renato Wilson’s forehead.
Wilson’s nerve endings messaged a reflex action to his trigger finger. It twitched. Henry died at the same moment Wilson dropped dead on the spot, just before his face splattered on the pavers. The motor court was now populated with two dead bodies, with the promise of more to come.
Wainwright arrived at the side yard just in time to witness the mutual murders of Henry and Wilson, as did one of Murtagh’s henchmen. Holy crap, Wainwright thought. Not Wilson. Damn it. The thug stumbled out of the smoke-filled ground-zero interior of the house, coughing bloody spitballs on his Uzi. Wainwright took aim as he yelled, “Drop the gun!” The thug started to think about the words he’d just heard as he turned toward the direction of the voice. Call it what you will, but Wainwright considered the turning a provocation. With the speed of an adrenaline-fueled reaction, he put a .45 caliber hollow point into the henchman’s chest. The bullet expanded on impact, shattering into hundreds of tiny shrapnel pieces, each ripping out flesh and bone in its powered path. The thug’s heart exploded in his chest in that millisecond. The exit wound was made larger by the chunks of shattered ribs following the projectile’s path. The treatment did cure his cough.
RENATO WILSON HAD INFORMED Carson Starr in detail of the rescue plans, believing that Starr was a committed member of their team.
Of course, he wasn’t.
Starr only wanted to control the photos. Killing Lacey was the way to do that and why he and Zack Grandy had climbed the rear fen
ce of the Kings Road mansion. The brothers-in-law were twenty yards from the dining room when the French doors exploded, spraying wood and glass shards into the night.
Both hugged the ground as fast as they could, then inventoried their physical conditions. They had sustained cuts to their faces and arms. Grandy’s suit coat was shredded from the force of the blast. Glass particles were embedded in his face and chest. Starr, who had followed Grandy by a few yards, had sustained fewer cuts.
“You alive?” Starr asked.
“Barely. What happened over there?”
“Well, it wasn’t a firecracker. I’m bleeding all over. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Hold on, Carson. You were behind me. I took most of the damage, so can it! You bullied me into coming out here to save ourselves, and we’re going to finish this here and now. We’ll never get a better chance.”
The sound of automatic gunfire came from the front side of the smoldering mansion. The mayhem coming from Murtagh’s home in the early hours of Monday morning didn’t go unnoticed by the LA County Sheriff’s Department.
West Hollywood lay at the jurisdictional junction between the Los Angeles PD, the Beverly Hills PD, and the LA County Sheriff’s Department. All these policing agencies walked the line to avoid encroaching on others’ turf. Kings Road was the LA Sheriff’s responsibility.
Three black-and-whites rolled minutes after dispatch received the first of many phone calls. The cruiser’s light bars lit the neighborhood in flashing red and blue. The duty sergeant was in the second squad car that arrived. He asked the ranking first responder, “Whatcha got, Andrews?”
“Not sure, Sarge. The gates are locked, and I can’t see anything up the hill.”
The long, winding, uphill drive was accented with large shade trees that prevented the deputy from seeing anything from the road. But they heard plenty. The automatic weapons fire was distinctive, and the smell of cordite in the air gave assurance that a small war was being waged on the other side of the fence. The sergeant had probable cause to enter the property, but with live fire everywhere, safety for his officers was paramount. The sergeant called for a riot van, a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle.
“That baby will make short work of this mug’s gate. Then up the drive it’ll go to unload a ten-man SWAT team to take on those perps. But we’ll have to wait for them here.”
MURTAGH WAS ON HIS way back upstairs as the dining room exploded. The shock wave was like the kick of a giant mule—quick and damn hard. Fortunately for him, the blast pushed him to the floor as a mass of debris flew over his head. The sound of gunshots in the front drive brought him back to the reality that he was under attack. He assumed Wainwright had come to rescue Lacey. Pal, you just made a terrible mistake. Your last one!
Murtagh found one of the many handguns he had stashed around his place. He had hidden them throughout the house for an emergency, just like this. In the kitchen, he grabbed an army Colt M1911, a .45 caliber semiautomatic, from the catchall drawer. This large-caliber would be sufficient to knock a big man down and keep him there. Come on, Wainwright. Let’s dance, you sonuvabitch! With the pistol loaded with a full magazine, Murtagh went to the basement to retrieve his prized trophy: Lacey Kinkaid Wainwright.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, revenge is a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. It’s also called payback, retribution, retaliation, or vengeance. The dictionary definition, however, wasn’t nearly as graphic as what Lacey was feeling. As she sat on the cot in her basement cell, she heard gunfire following an explosion that had rocked the house to its foundation. She’d seen a man in cammies earlier and then a stranger at the kitchen window. Wainwright had to be close. Oh, Garth. Your love for me is putting your life at risk. My love for you has never been stronger than now. Please be safe.
The door to her cell burst open with a bang. She was praying it was her husband.
But it wasn’t.
STANLEY CHAMBERS WALKED as far as the four-car garage on the left side of the driveway. One of the roll-up doors was open. When he heard the explosion, he took cover inside. Stunned by the blast, he was on his knees, concealed behind a wheelbarrow. He watched in disbelief as Wilson shot Henry, and vice versa. That horror was followed an instant later by another hoodlum dying at the hands of Wainwright. These events definitely didn’t bring out hero qualities in Chambers, the staid Bostonian portfolio manager. But when several enormous men poured out the front of the house, firing automatic machine pistols, any hero element he might possibly have possessed deserted under fire.
Chambers continued his concealment as two of the bandits took on Wainwright. The first fellow fell from Wainwright’s fatal volley to the side of his head and dropped in a heartbeat. Seeing a piece of his pal’s skull flying toward him, the second Murtagh minion ran toward the dark cave of an open garage door. The current tenant watched the goon coming toward him. He desperately needed a means of protection from the armed, dangerous man. A power drill on the workbench wasn’t going to help. Neither was the push broom or leaf rake. Scanning the tools, his eyes stopped at a pole saw used to trim tree branches. Stored on wall hooks, it was more than fifteen feet long and included a curved saw blade. Chambers stood, reached for the pole saw, and pivoted toward the running gunman, who had closed the distance between them to less than twelve feet. As Chambers turned, the sharp blade caught the outlaw in the neck. His forward momentum did the rest of the job, as the saw blade sliced through soft flesh. It wasn’t clear to Chambers how the thug had died. Heart attack, bleed out, whatever—it didn’t much matter. When your head is severed, who cares about the technicalities?
On second thought, beheading the thug did have an unintended consequence, which Chambers most definitely cared about. Cutting off someone’s head triggers a myriad of muscles, ligaments, and nerves. The autonomic response caused those nerves to fire off synapse messages to the man’s muscles. Unfortunately for Mr. Chambers, the initiated muscles were in the gunman’s hand. A contraction of the finger muscles put the weapon on full automatic. It’s normal for the muzzle to rise from the recoil force of repeat cartridge detonations. This resulted in Chambers getting lead stitches from his groin to his throat. Stanley Chambers was slaughtered by a headless henchman.
COLLETTE WAS IN THE kitchen pantry when the blast knocked her to the floor; as she fell, she hit her head on a shelf. A few minutes later, she regained consciousness and picked her way through the devastation that once had been the kitchen. The great room was less damaged but empty. Unsteady on her feet, she stumbled her way to the foyer and looked out to the motor court. Henry was there.
Dead.
She couldn’t tolerate seeing any of it, so she ran back into the house. The destruction there was just as unsettling. Collette had no one to console her. Henry was dead, and so were all the Murtagh men she had been close to. Lacey! She hoped to find her alive upstairs in the guestroom. But when she opened the door, no one was in there. Collette wasn’t an overly emotional lass, but having overdosed on body parts and the ruination of the mansion, she sat on the corner of the bed with her head in her hands and cried as hard as she ever had. She had put Lacey in the spot she was in. The journal, the watching, the spying. Even the bugs in the Wainwrights’ home. If she’d never done any of that...Get a hold of yourself. Do somethin’ to help. Sobbin’ ain’t gonna do you no good. Find Lacey and help her!
Collette knew enough about the layout of Murtagh’s house to know where to search for Lacey. She immediately headed for the basement. Henry had said it was Lacey’s first home in the mansion. There, Collette found more than she’d expected. When she opened the unlocked door to the room, she cried out, “Mr. Murtagh!”
He still wore his pj’s, his silk robe, and leather slippers. Murtagh held a large, steel, blue pistol under Lacey’s chin. Holding her by the hair, he pulled her head back, exposing her lovely, long, pale neck. When Murtagh heard his name, he turned toward the voice.
&
nbsp; Lacey felt Murtagh’s fingers relax in her hair. She spun toward his gun hand, grabbing the weapon with both of hers. She clamped her teeth on Murtagh’s thumb as hard as she could bite. He screamed in pain and dropped the gun into her left hand. Lacey, now facing her captor, punched him hard in the solar plexus, sending Murtagh crumpling to the floor.
“Collette, please use that rope they tied me with and return the favor to Mr. Murtagh,” Lacey said.
When his hands had been secured behind his back to Lacey’s satisfaction, the women marched Murtagh upstairs, past the dented elevator, to his bedroom on the second floor. The women encountered neither friend nor foe on their two-flight journey.
In the master suite, which Murtagh recently left, little had changed. The bed was still piled with pillows and sheets, and the poker game hadn’t advanced from the last deal.
“Turn that chair over there to face the wall, Collette.” Lacey waited as Collette did as instructed. “Thank you. Now, Murtagh, put your butt in that chair and lean back against your hands. If you move a muscle, I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head. That would give me more pleasure than I could stand. Now sit.”
She turned to Collette, who seemed amazed at Lacey’s take-charge attitude. “My husband will find us here faster than if we’d stayed in the basement. Besides, this is a much more comfortable place to wait than the dungeon or the war zone.”
Lacey handed the Colt to Collette. “Have you ever fired one of these?”
Collette nodded. “Oh, yeah. My dad took me to the shootin’ range all the time. He said as long as guns was about the house, we’d learn to use ’em, respect ’em, and know everythin’ they can do. I’m familiar with that Colt. It’s an M1911 model, a .45 ACP semiautomatic, with a seven-round magazine. Anythin’ particular you wanna know ’bout it, Lacey?”
Inside Moves Page 24