Last Shot at Justice (A Thomas Family Novel Book 1)

by Kristi Cramer

  The short cop spun her around and threw her over his shoulder so he could carry her down the hall to the bathroom. She grunted at the pressure of his shoulder against her bladder.

  “Jeez, girl,” he said, slapping her on the butt. “You ever hear of exercise.”

  “Bet I can outrun you, puff daddy. And hand you your ass in the ring.” It just wasn’t in her to beg for mercy, and she doubted she would move Neil to charity by begging, anyway.

  “Oh yeah, little miss boxer.” He tried out his best Brando, which wasn’t very good. “‘I coulda been a contender.’ Yeah, right.”

  “You wanna go a round?” she asked as he set her feet down on the hallway floor. “Cut me loose. I’ll show you a contender.”

  Neil just smiled. “Maybe I would, except that in about ten hours you’ll be dead. So we’ll never know who would win. Get in the room.” He pushed her through an open doorway into the bathroom. She had to hop to keep from falling over.

  “You gonna cut me loose, or what?” she asked. Now that she was within reach of relief, she couldn’t help a little extra hop, to let her distress show. If Neil was just following orders, as she suspected—if he had a heart at all—he would cut her loose.

  The way he looked at her made her think he was going to go with “or what,” but after a long moment he motioned for her to turn around as he opened his knife.

  “I ought to just pull those sweats down and let you make do with everything still tied up,” he said as he cut the cable tie from around her wrists. “The devil knows it would be hilarious, but I’m not worried about you overpowering me.”

  Mitzi wasn’t going to question his motives at this point, now that he was giving her a break. She shook her hands out and gave a little hop to turn around.

  “You gonna watch?” she demanded.

  “You think I’m gonna turn my back on you?” he retorted.

  “Creep.”

  “Whore.”

  The situation with the name calling would have been laughable, except that it wasn’t. Neil leaned against the door frame, facing in, but he did turn his head to look down the hallway instead of directly at her.

  “Good grief,” she mumbled, but went about her business, extremely glad to see that there was the scrap end of a roll of shop towels abandoned on the edge of the sink along with some other construction trash, including wadded-up painters tape and newspaper.

  When she moved the roll to pull off a sheet, she saw a bit of steel lying on the counter under it. She carefully put the roll back on top of the glinting steel. Then she stood and hopped to the sink—putting her back to Neil—and turned on the water to wash her hands. She quickly lifted the roll of towels again and snatched up the bit of broken utility blade, hiding it between her fingers as best she could.

  Neil would either see it, or he wouldn’t.

  “Thanks,” she said when she turned around. Neil just spun her roughly around so he could put another set of Cobra Cuffs around her wrists. Then he grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder again to carry her out to the front room. He dumped her to the floor next to Blue.

  “Knees,” he said, and she dropped before he could push her. Even so, she lost her balance and he had to catch her to keep her upright. “The big guy will just have to deal,” Neil said. “I ain’t cutting him loose, and I ain’t gonna hold it for him.”

  ⋘⋆⋙

  “I’ll deal,” Blue muttered, watching from the corner of his eye as Gration walked back to the door and both he and Neil left the room. “Well?”

  “Oh, do I feel so much better,” Mitzi said, a profound tone of relief in her voice.

  “But did you find out anything useful?”

  “From what I can tell, Neil is just a foot soldier, doing what he’s told. If he doesn’t have specific orders, he’ll follow his instinct, which in his case tells him to be careful. But he doesn’t think we’re much of a threat. He thinks we’re just pawns.”

  “Aren’t we?” Blue asked. “I don’t feel like we’re in a position of strength here.”

  “Well, we’re better off now, since I did find something useful in the bathroom.”

  “Oh?” Blue glanced down to see a small, determined smile on Mitzi’s lips.

  “Just a bit of a broken utility blade that the painters left. I managed to hide it so Neil didn’t see me take it.” She looked over her shoulder toward the door. “And when he put the new cuffs on he got sloppy. You have to really be thorough to pull this kind tight. I flexed and turned my wrists out a bit, so I have a little slack. Not enough to slip free, I’m afraid, but I think I can make something happen.” She was rustling around, and he leaned back to see if he could help her.

  “I learned something too,” he said, watching her carefully turn the broken blade in her fingers. He didn’t see how she was going to make use of it. She needed leverage to cut through the tie—more than she could bring to bear with just her fingers.

  “What’s that?” she said, bowing her head in concentration.

  They heard a sound outside the door, and she stopped moving. Blue quickly sat forward and bowed his head, too. After a moment, he risked turning his head and saw Gration standing in the doorway, watching and listening.

  “Eyes forward, hick,” Gration barked.

  From what Mitzi had whispered about him earlier, Blue knew Gration was a wild card. The kind of scoundrel that likes to endanger good men for fun, just because he can. The kind of animal who hurts little girls for kicks. He suspected that Chief Hatfield’s control of him was tenuous at best.

  After what felt like ages of silence, Mitzi risked a look over her shoulder. She sighed when she looked back.

  “What did you learn?” she whispered.

  “Leigh Ann is alive and apparently fine,” he whispered back. “While you were down the hall another man came in and said, ‘The girl wants to know what all the shouting was about.’ Gration told him to tell her they just had the TV turned up too loud. Then the other man said, ‘She wants pizza tonight.’ Gration cursed and told the man to see to it once they were done in here.”

  “Huh,” Mitzi said. “It doesn’t sound like they’ve been hurting her.”

  “I know. It’s good, but weird.”

  “No. It makes sense, I guess. I mean, maybe Cantrell made up some reason for her to come with him, like telling her she was in danger or something. He probably told her someone was planning to hurt her mom by hurting her, and she needed to hide out for a few days.” Mitzi paused, working the logic out.

  “She’s twelve,” Mitzi continued. “She surely knows who Hatfield is. Why would she doubt the two of them? She’s probably had a cop with her twenty-four/seven for her ‘safety.’ That’s why you saw her and didn’t think that she was a prisoner. She’s not, she’s just hiding.”

  “But she really is in danger, isn’t she?” Blue asked. “They’re not going to let her go home to her momma and say ‘but I wasn’t kidnapped,’ are they?”

  “I’m afraid not, Blue. I think the Chief’s plan is to kill us all, make it look like we were the ones who kidnapped her, while he did his best to avert a tragedy.”

  “But he won’t quite make it in time,” Neil said from the door.

  Blue looked up at the ceiling in exasperation as Neil walked around to stand in front of them. He stood a good five feet away—farther than Blue could ever hope to cross before Neil could draw his weapon. The pistol was in a hip holster, and his hand rested on the hilt.

  “Told you I’d be looking in on you,” Neil remarked. “I’ve got nothing better to do and all the rails I can snort to make sure I don’t get lazy about it. You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Well, keep thinking. It ain’t gonna do you any good.”

  They heard the sound of footsteps shuffling up the stairwell, and Neil looked toward the door. “Be right there,” he said to whoever was there. “I’d tell you to knock off the chatter, but whatever. It’s not like talking is going to get you anywhere. Miss me,” he added, and wal
ked back out of the room.

  Blue got the distinct notion that he wouldn’t be gone long, although the smell of hot pizza wafting into the room told him they would be occupied with eating for a little while. His stomach growled as he looked down at Mitzi.

  “I still don’t know why they’d go to the trouble,” Mitzi said. “I don’t think the original plan was supposed to work out this way. I mean, I saw the payoff for this job, which means it was already in motion before they had a reason to target me. They targeted me because they were afraid I’d figure out what the payoff was about once the news about Leigh Ann broke. If I hadn’t dropped my lighter, they would have shot me last night rather than try to pin the kidnapping on me. I would have been just another victim of gang violence in the District. The irony, of course, is that I wouldn’t have remembered the payoff without being prompted by them trying to kill me.” Mitzi looked up at him again.

  “They couldn’t have known about you in advance. Me surviving that hit, and us winding up here is just one big happy accident for them. But I still don’t know why they would stage a kidnapping in the first place.”

  Blue tipped his head to the side, considering. “How does a Chief of Police get a pimp working for him? The pimp who got away with murder. And what was it you said about the Chief to Mack? The gangster who got let go because the crime scene got messed up. What do you wanna bet that one is running errands for the Chief, too? How does the Chief profit?”

  “That’s it, Blue. That is the question, and I think we figured out the answer.”

  “We did?”

  “It’s not the Mayor; it’s her program, the ‘Smart on Crime Initiative.’ If Hatfield can’t hold a heavy sentence over the heads of his little army, and can’t save them from doing hard time in a private prison out of state, then his soldiers don’t have as much reason to do what he wants them to do. They start thinking the risk of doing business on their own is acceptable, and preferable to forfeiting their profit to the enemy.”

  “But how does a kidnapping solve his problem?”

  “If he can turn the Mayor into a victim, get her angry enough to change her stance and go back to the traditional ‘Tough on Crime’ position, then he’s back in business. Whatever Cantrell’s plans were, I bet Hatfield never intended to even ransom Leigh Ann. If the Mayor’s daughter dies at the hands of a criminal....”

  “Mitzi,” Blue said softly. “We’re going to stop him. Aren’t we?”

  “Yes, Blue. We’re going to stop him.”

  “Or die trying.”

  “Or die trying.”

  Blue shifted to the right until he bumped shoulders with Mitzi, and they leaned against each other. He turned his head and bent to press a kiss against her hair. As he did so he saw Neil leaning against the wall outside the apartment door, watching them with a smirk on his face.

  Pinching his nostrils between his thumb and forefinger with a sniff, Neil pushed himself off the wall and disappeared around the corner.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Any luck?” Blue whispered.

  Mitzi shook her head. “Can’t get a good enough grip on it to cut the cuffs. And I can’t reach enough of the duct tape to make a difference. I’m just not that flexible.”

  She had been working at it for close to an hour, near as she could tell. Over the course of several hours, Neil or Gration had been checking on them periodically. But they seemed to have slacked off, and Mitzi had taken the chance to try to make use of the utility blade.

  “Can you cut mine?” he asked. “Or give me the blade so I can cut yours.”

  They shifted as close as they dared to reach their hands together. Mitzi gripped the blade as best she could and carefully felt her way to the cable tie around Blue’s wrists. It was nerve wracking; she couldn’t see what she was doing, and she didn’t want to cut him.

  Blue tensed, and Mitzi realized she must have poked him with the blade. “Sorry,” she muttered.

  “All right, I can’t watch anymore.”

  Startled, they both turned toward the door and saw Neil walking forward to snatch the utility blade out of Mitzi’s hands. “You have been entertaining, but very naughty.” When he stood up with the blade, Neil smacked Blue in the back of the head. “It was fun to watch for a while, but now you gotta knock it off.”

  Mitzi saw Blue’s entire body strain for a moment, and he sat up off his legs as though he was going to try to stand. Before he found out if he could get up, Neil pressed the blade against the scalp behind Blue’s ear and held him against it, his left hand pulling back on the top of Blue’s head.

  “I said knock it off. I’m starting to get tired of you, big man. When are you going to realize that there’s no way you can win? You lost this quest of yours the minute you started thinking with your pecker instead of your brain. If you have any brains, that is, letting yourself get led by a skirt.”

  He pushed Blue, who had to struggle to keep from falling forward. “Make no mistake,” he continued. “I catch you two messing around again and one of you dies. We’re close enough to dawn that it won’t matter.”

  That said, Neil turned around and walked to the doorway. When she looked, Mitzi saw he was still standing just outside the door, watching them.

  “Son of a...” she began, but stopped when she saw Blue. His face had turned a bright shade of red, and he was staring straight ahead toward the blanket that covered the window. “You okay?”

  He turned to look at her, and she saw frustration and anger in his expression. His gaze flicked to the doorway, then turned forward again, but not before Mitzi caught what looked like rage in his eyes.

  “Hold onto that,” she whispered, not knowing whether he could hear her in the state of mind he was in. “Rage can be a tool, or suicide. You gotta control it. We’re going to need it soon.”

  She saw Blue’s lips twitch and heard his teeth grinding, and she leaned her shoulder against him, hoping Neil would allow that minor contact. He returned the slight pressure, and she knew he was listening. “We will make an opportunity, I promise,” she whispered.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Everyone in the Mayor’s game room jumped when the phone rang.

  Maxon had been awake all night, reviewing every possible scenario, setting every contingent he could think of in motion. He had awakened the Mayor, Suzanne, from restless sleep an hour ago, so she would be good and alert when the time came. The TVs were silently showing twenty-four-hour news, and the recorders were all set to capture every sound, every voice, every nuance of the moment when the phone rang.

  All the careful planning came down to this minute, with all the actors staged and poised for release in the small hours of morning, like hounds at a fox hunt.

  After Maxon had his headset in place, Suzanne lifted the handset with shaking hands and pressed her ear to the speaker. “Yes?” she said softly, deflated by sheer exhaustion and stress.

  Leigh Ann’s voice came across quietly on the phone. “Mom?”

  “Baby!”

  “They say I can come home, that it’s almost over. I’ll see you soon.” Leigh Ann sounded remarkably composed, a little sleepy, but healthy.

  The line went dead.

  “Leigh Ann!” Suzanne cried into the phone, but her daughter was gone.

  “Hang it up,” Maxon directed. “He’s going to call back. One of the limitations of the spoof app is that the voice disguise can’t be turned on or off during a call.”

  Sure enough, the phone rang mere moments after Suzanne laid it back on the cradle. She was crying almost hysterically as she lifted the handset again.

  “Baby?”

  “Cantrell’s Huron Street project in half an hour, building A, unit thirty-four,” the disguised voice said. “Bring the money. Two million cash. Come alone.”

  The line went dead again.

  Maxon watched the Mayor carefully set the phone back on the cradle and lift her head to meet his gaze. “He’s going to kill her,” she said. “I know it.”

  “We
’re not going to let that happen,” he responded in a calm voice, taking his headset off and turning to her husband. “Why would they want her to bring the money to your Huron Street construction site, Mr. Cantrell?”

  Suzanne’s husband shrugged. “How should I know?” He paused for a moment as if in thought. “That project was kind of high profile, made the news because we tore down a few homes for the property. It’s an apartment complex, about two-thirds done. Maybe they wanted somewhere out of the public eye where they could take her for the exchange, but they needed somewhere that Suzanne would easily know. Leigh Ann’s picture has been all over the news....”

  “Yes. They can’t very well drag her through public spaces that they would have to suspect we’re watching. Which we are.” Maxon stood up.

  “Shouldn’t we be leaving now?” Suzanne asked, wringing her hands. “They’re going to kill my baby.”

  “You’re staying here, ma’am,” Maxon replied. “Like we planned. We have the decoy.” He turned again to Cantrell. “You can show us the way?”

  “Absolutely,” Cantrell answered eagerly, before turning to hug his wife. “We will stop them from hurting Leigh Ann. I promise.”

  Maxon watched Cantrell heading for the door, then took a moment to step up and press Suzanne’s hands. He wanted to promise, too, but he had learned that even when he thought he had all the pieces sorted out, something could still go wrong. They were taking a chance in leaving the Mayor out of the transaction, but the plan was solid enough that her actual presence was the least important factor in a successful rescue.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  “It’s almost time,” Neil said from behind them, snapping Blue out of his reverie. “If you’ve got anything you want to say to each other, now’s the time.”

  The white-hot rage Blue had felt at being so helpless had faded to the background over the course of the hour or so that had passed since Neil had confiscated the utility blade.

  He had spent the time pondering his life and all the things he thought he knew about himself: the hard-working, loyal friend who had never yet let anyone down. He measured the values he held most dear against the way he had lived his life: family, faith, integrity, courtesy, respect. He considered the things he might never get a chance to do now: fall in love, get married, maybe have a kid or two.