by Mallory Kane
He centered himself behind the outbuilding and climbed over the fence, praying that if one of the guards came around the corner he’d be out of their line of sight. To his surprise and delight, the outbuilding had a window that faced the fence—and it was open. Using the flashlight app on his phone, he climbed in the window, careful not to knock anything over. The inside was as neat as a pin. Tools were hung on a pegboard along with electric and gas trimmers and blowers. A large riding mower sat near a garage-style door on one end of the building. A wheelbarrow filled with potting soil occupied the middle of the freshly swept concrete floor.
A coverall hung at one side of the door on a hanger, with a pair of safety goggles on a peg beside it. Looked like the groundskeeper was obsessive about cleanliness. Rick held up the coverall. It was large and also clean. Its pants legs and sleeves looked as though they’d been folded up right out of the dryer, to fit a shorter man. Quickly, Rick put it on and rolled down the sleeves and legs. Then he hung the goggles around his neck, ready to put on. With any luck, if one of the guards saw him they’d think he was a groundskeeper.
He opened the front door of the building, glanced around then stepped out, holding a clean, freshly sharpened spade. The west-facing side of the building had no windows or doors on the ground level. A narrow wrought-iron balcony ran along the second floor. It would be an easy four-foot jump from the roof of the outbuilding. Was it a good idea? Who knew? It was his only choice.
Ducking back inside the building, he looked for something smaller than a spade that he could use as a weapon. The two best choices were a ball-peen hammer or a long-bladed Phillips-head screwdriver. He chose the screwdriver. Easier to conceal and easier to use. He could stab, rather than wasting time or energy swinging his arm.
Before he left the building again, he called dispatch. “Detective Rick Easterling, requesting backup.” He gave them the address and told them to approach silently and with caution. “At least three armed guards outside the building. At least two inside with innocent civilians.”
“Understood, Detective. Is this a hostage situation?” the dispatcher asked.
“Yes. The civilians are there against their will. Both are bound. At least one is gagged.”
“Are you inside?”
“Not yet.”
“Detective, do not go in alone. Wait for backup. Repeat, wait for backup. Do you read?”
“I read. Easterling out.” I read, but I don’t agree.
He checked his watch, then hoisted himself up to the ledge of the window on the back of the building. The balcony had two sets of French doors. One almost directly in front of him and one on the other end of the building. He doubted they were unlocked, but he’d known how to pick the locks on a set of French doors since Johnny taught him when he was nine. The only thing that worried him was whether the upstairs was being guarded. He shrugged. The only way to know was to do it.
He climbed onto the roof and crawled across it. Standing, he jumped across to the balcony and put his back against the wall beside the second-floor French doors. He listened. Nothing. It was getting late in the afternoon and the sky was cloudy, so there was no glare on the glass. He took a quick glance inside. The room appeared to be a large bedroom converted into a conference room. A long, polished table sat in the center of the room, surrounded by comfortable-looking meeting chairs. To his relief, it was empty.
The handles on the doors were original and very nice, but they hadn’t been manufactured to keep out a second-story man. Rick had the doors unlocked within seconds. With his right hand holding the screwdriver in the coverall pocket, he slipped out of the room and onto a landing with a wide, winding staircase leading to the ground floor.
He could hear voices. Ready in case there was a guard upstairs, he paused to listen.
“—said shut up!” a man said.
“Gag her,” snapped a second man.
“That’s right,” Sin said defiantly. Rick heard the anger and fear in her voice. “Go ahead, but it’s not going to do you any good. I’ve got backup coming.”
“I said shut up. Hand me that other rag,” the first man said.
Rick heard fabric tearing.
“You’re Beau’s men, aren’t you?” Sin asked. “He must be desperate, hiring punks like you to do his dirty work for him.” Then, she started to scream. “Aahh! No! Help! Hellllp!”
Almost immediately, her voice was muffled. “Mmhnn! Mmhnn!”
While Rick was listening to their words, he’d been assessing the sounds, trying to figure out where each one of them was standing, based on their voices and what he’d seen through the windows. Sin was probably directly underneath him on the floor below. T-Gros was across from her, about fifteen feet to Rick’s left. What he couldn’t know for sure was where the two guards were. They were moving around.
The staircase was curved, so at the bottom, he’d be facing the large window in the back. Sin would be to his left and T-Gros to his right. He probably wouldn’t get a chance to take both of the men down, unless he could throw one of them into the other one. But he could try.
He checked the time again. It had been six minutes since he’d called for backup. He had to count on them getting there before the men could take him down. That was his only chance. Below him, Sin was still making as much noise as she could, even though she’d been gagged. Rick smiled grimly. If her goal was to distract and piss off the men, it sounded like she was doing an excellent job of it. He started for the stairs.
“Shut up, you bitch! Hey, where’s the dope?” the first man said, sounding irritated.
“Right here. There’s still half a syringe-full.”
The words sent Rick’s heart slamming against his chest. It was the bad dope. Those were Beau’s men, so it was Beau who’d put it out on the streets. Beau who had killed Johnny, Carlos, and had almost killed Sin.
“Well bring it over here. I’m ready to shut this one up for good.”
“Listen, Wayne, you gonna kill her? I mean, she’s a cop.”
Sin rocked back and forth, bringing the front legs, then the back legs, then the front legs again, slamming down onto the tiled floor. At the same time, she was doing her best to yell.
The man called Wayne cursed. “Whadda you suggest? You wanna take her shopping?”
“Naw, I just think it’ll go better for us if we don’t kill her.”
“Go better? Go better? You planning on getting caught? Because I’m not. It’s great that she’s a cop. Look at that coward T-Gros sitting over there pissing his pants. Nobody’s going to believe a word he says. It’ll be his prints on the syringe. They’ll find a dead cop in his restaurant. There’s already traces of bad dope in here, and every place he owns.”
For the first time, Rick heard T-Gros’s voice. He was gagged too, but not as tightly as Sin. His words were muffled but Rick caught most of what he was saying. “Please, no. Don’t do this. Call Beau. I’ll do anything. Call him. Call him.”
“Shut up, asshole. Now, gimme that syringe!”
Rick bolted down the stairs, roaring at the top of his lungs and brandishing the screwdriver. He spotted the second man, the one who’d just handed the syringe to Wayne, and he leapt at him from barely below the halfway point of the stairs. The man, startled, didn’t have time to get out of Rick’s way.
Rick took him down and stabbed him in the stomach with the screwdriver.
Wayne had turned and was rushing toward Rick with the syringe in his hand. He got to Rick before Rick could get the screwdriver out of the first man’s stomach. Rick felt the sting of the needle going into his back, through the coverall and his shirt. He yelled and whirled, bucking Wayne off, and went for him with his screwdriver. But Wayne had let go of the syringe and was reaching for his gun.
The two of them scuffled. Rick dropped the screwdriver and grabbed Wayne’s hands. He could feel the cold metal of the gun against his skin, but he couldn’t grasp it. Wayne was large and strong, and as an afterthought, Rick noticed that he had a bandage o
n his nose. It was Wayne’s nose that Sin had broken.
“Bastard,” Rick grunted. “You killed Carlos and tried to kill Sin. So Beau paid for your bail?”
Wayne was doing better at grabbing the gun they both were fighting for. One of Wayne’s hands was wrapped around the gun’s barrel. The other was wrapped around Rick’s right wrist. Rick only had one second to make his best decision. He let go of the gun and shoved his knuckles right up Wayne’s nose.
Wayne screamed.
The gun went off. Twice.
*
Lusinda couldn’t take it anymore. She’d been waiting for days. At least that’s how it felt. She looked at the clock on the wall of the interrogation room of the Bureau of Public Integrity. It couldn’t be right. She must have been here longer than three hours. She checked it against her phone. Same time. She stood and stepped over to the window that looked out on the street and watched the headlights passing by.
If O’Reilly didn’t hurry up, she was going to go out into the squad room and make a scene. Of course, it would do no good. It was late and O’Reilly was the only one here besides her. The others had gone a long time ago, after over two hours of interrogation. She’d told them everything she knew, including that Jack Adams was Rick’s half-brother.
Now O’Reilly was waiting for word from the hospital about Rick, and in the meantime he was working on the mountains of paperwork that had to be completed about the incident.
But Lusinda didn’t care about the paperwork. She didn’t care how much trouble she was in. All she cared about was Rick. She had never seen anything as frightening as watching Rick and Wayne struggling for the gun. When the gun went off, the explosion had reverberated through her entire body. She’d screamed against the duct tape covering her mouth.
Both men had frozen. For an endless stretch of time, they’d stood there, locked together in a gruesome, doomed dance. Then she’d seen the blood dripping between them and screamed again.
Her muffled effort had been drowned out by the shriek of sirens she hadn’t noticed until that instant. Then a voice amplified by a bullhorn ordered the guards to drop their weapons. Seconds later, a swarm of SWAT team officers broke in through the front door and Rick and Wayne fell to the floor.
Things quickly became a blur of activity. Her hands and feet were cut loose and someone peeled the tape off her mouth. She started screaming, Rick! He’s been shot! Help him! and ran toward the two men, but the officer who had peeled the tape off her mouth had grabbed her. He, with help from a second black-clad person, got her out of the building and turned her over to EMTs who put her in an ambulance and gave her a tablet to swallow with a bottle of water. By the time another two ambulances had roared away, sirens blasting, Lusinda had become much calmer and O’Reilly was there.
She’d been a fairly good girl, once the tranquilizer had kicked in. She’d refused to be taken to the hospital to be checked out, and had demanded to be taken to Rick. Nobody listened to her though. So she’d endured the examination at the Emergency Room and had agreed to go with O’Reilly back to the BPI offices to be interrogated and debriefed if he took her to the hospital immediately after, to see Rick.
Now it was three hours later, she was still waiting and the tranq the EMTs had given her was long gone from her system. Even so, she’d kept her cool for the most part, until now.
She stomped over to the door and flung it open. “O’Reilly!” she shouted.
He appeared right in front of her.
She jumped, surprised. “Where did—never mind. I need to go to the hospital, now!”
“Okay,” O’Reilly said. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “In just a few minutes. Let’s sit down.”
She eyed him, suspiciously. “Why? What’s wrong?” She grabbed his arm. “Is it Rick?”
“Lusinda, come sit.” He stepped around her and pulled out a chair. Still watching him, looking for anything in his pleasantly handsome face that would tell her what was going on, she sat.
“Okay. What?”
O’Reilly sighed. “I’ve got an update from the hospital. You know, of course, that Rick was shot.” He held up a hand. “The first bullet nicked the right lower lobe of his lung and lodged against a rib. Rick must have managed to turn the gun because the second shot went through the other man’s liver.”
“Why are we sitting here instead of headed to the hospital?”
“They’re taking Rick into surgery right now. He’ll be in Recovery and probably Intensive Care tonight. You should go home and—”
“No!” Lusinda stood up. “Take me to the hospital.”
“Officer Johnston.”
She heard the tone in his voice. She sat back down. “Yes, sir,” she said, doing her best to stop the tears of frustration that were threatening to fall.
“Lusinda, there’s nothing you can do for him. You know that he’s in the best hands.”
She stared at him. “I can be there for him.”
“You need to get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Sir? Please?”
“Lusinda—” Deputy Chief O’Reilly looked at her for a long moment. “Do you have any idea how big a mess this is?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.
“Good. I hope so. Come on.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Officer Johnston? Ma’am?” The voice barely penetrated Lusinda’s consciousness. “Excuse me. Are you with Detective Easterling?”
“Rick? Yes.” She forced the haze of sleep away and sat up. Her back was stiff and one leg was trying to cramp. The Surgery waiting room chairs were not very comfortable. “Yes, sorry. Yes. I’m with him.” When she rubbed her face, her fingers dragged over the tape residue around her mouth. She stood up gingerly. “Is there news?”
“He’s being taken to a room. Fourth floor. Four North, room 468.”
“468,” Lusinda repeated. “Can I go now?”
“It will take them a while to get him settled. It’s a little after seven. You could get some breakfast downstairs in the cafeteria, or freshen up if you like.”
Lusinda’s hand went to her hair, then to her mouth. “Duct tape residue,” she said a little sheepishly. “It’s been a long night.”
The woman nodded. “Yes, Officer. I hope the detective does well.”
“Thank you,” Lusinda said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a towel would you? And a toothbrush?”
The woman smiled. “Normally we tell family and friends they can buy items they failed to bring with them in the gift shop, but I’ll see what I can do.”
A half-hour later, Lusinda felt much better. Her face was red from scrubbing and she’d dampened and finger-combed her hair. A couple of swipes around her eyes took care of any makeup that had survived her tears.
She still had tape residue on her wrists and ankles but she didn’t care. She just wanted to see Rick. She walked down the gray and white halls and slipped inside the softly lit room. The heart monitor was beeping quietly.
Rick’s face looked pale against the dark stubble on his cheeks. He was bare-chested, except for the bandage she saw peeking out from the sheets. His right arm was captive to an IV tube. There was a blood pressure cuff around his left arm and a clip on his middle finger. Above his head was the monitor that kept a running account of his vital signs.
She walked over to stand by his bed and studied his face. His cheeks looked sunken and his eyes had dark purple circles underneath them. Tears filled her eyes and she blotted them with her fingertips.
“Your hair’s more of a mess than mine,” she whispered, her voice breaking. She didn’t have a brush, so she lightly finger-combed the front.
He made a small sound and his head moved slightly. She pulled her hand back. She didn’t want to wake him. She picked up a straight chair that sat against the curtained window and moved it closer so she could sit beside him. She wanted to touch him—the place where the IV tubing pierced his skin, the scrape on his forearm, the blue veins tha
t were visible underneath his smooth, tan flesh.
He turned his head. She looked up in time to see his eyes open and blink. “Hi,” he said, his voice raspy.
“Hi,” she said, smiling, doing her best not to cry at how weak he was. “How are you feeling?”
He licked his dry lips. “Water?” he whispered.
She got the plastic jug that was sitting on the tray table and held the straw to his mouth. “They said you should take small sips, so you don’t get nauseated.”
He drank a little, then grimaced.
“Are you hurting?”
“It’s okay.” He studied her, his sleepy gaze roaming over her face.
“What is it?” she asked with a little smile.
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“No. I’m fine. Everything is fine. Go back to sleep.” She took a couple of tissues and wet them and blotted his dry lips with them.
“Mmm,” he said as his eyes drifted closed.
“Good. Go back to sleep,” she whispered, swallowing the need for him to look at her, to talk to her, to be with her. Seeing him so hurt and helpless was ripping her apart. Rationally, she knew he was under the influence of the anesthesia and until he slept it off, what he said or heard might not make much sense. She had to be content to sit with him.
“Sin? You okay?”
She smiled at him although his eyes were still closed. “I’m fine. Just worried about you.”
“What happened?”
She knew what he meant. “They sent a SWAT team. Do you remember them breaking down the door?”
His tongue licked his dry lips, so she held the water for him. “Tell me.”
“The nurses said you won’t remember.”
He made a noise that could have been a chuckle. “I don’t remember now.”
“Somehow you got into the building.”