Three hours later, a slight figure slipped into the back garden carrying two long cylindrical objects. He moved gracefully and purposefully. Doug's bear vision had no trouble making out his erect posture. Flamethrower. He was dressed in head to toe black.
Doug waited until the firebug was kneeling in front of the vent. He was on top of him before the firebug could connect the canisters to the vent. Flamethrower went down with his face in the sharp edged gravel border. He screamed. Well six hundred pounds of bear could have that effect on a man. Particularly when one great paw was placed directly on the back of your skull.
Len came out of the house carrying his revolver. Doug backed off of his prey and headed for the kitchen. Len put a booted foot on the intruder's back and took the safety off with an audible click. He said nothing.
The cops arrived two minutes later. Maddie woke up to her lover standing bare chested in his jeans. He frowned at her skimpy nightie when she sat up sleepily."
"Caught the bugger. Get dressed," he commanded. "Cops will probably want to talk to you." He grabbed his shirt and left the room barefooted.
About the only surprise was that the suspect's canisters were full of nitrous oxide. The arresting officers didn't pay much attention to his claim that he had been attacked by an animal.
Apparently they thought buddy had been trying his own laughing gas. Either that or the little shrimp was still stunned by being bowled over by the two big guys. They cuffed him and took him away.
"Enough nitrous oxide there to put the whole house in a deep sleep and spark a fire too. And best of all, there'd be no traces," Len told Maddie and Doug. "Have they got enough to put that SOB away for good?"
Doug nodded. "They found his car. And an AK47. Probably the one he used to take out the meth cooks. Don't know if they can tie him up to Parkhurst's death. But they'll try. Certainly his DNA was all over Maddie's car so they should be able to get a conviction."
"Just one thing I don't understand," Maddie put in. The men looked at her in alarm at her icy tones. "Why didn't either of you heroes tell me you were waiting for an armed villain in my garden?"
"Night all," Len said. "Going to try to get some sleep." He beat a hasty retreat.
* * *
Doug sort of wished Len hadn't left him alone with Maddie. His nerves were still jumping from the excitement of capturing Flamethrower. It had been difficult to just subdue him and not set teeth to flesh and rend him limb from limb.
His bear had been howling to utterly destroy this creature that had dared to threaten his mate. Somehow he had found the internal discipline to use just enough force to hold the firebug down until Len could take over.
But now adrenaline was riding him hard. He didn't want to have a fight with Maddie. He wanted to leap on her to assure himself she was safe and still his mate. But she was glaring at him and tapping one foot in a manner he knew boded ill. He braced himself for an unpleasant interview.
Madeline looked at Doug's stubborn set face. He had his emotions clamped tightly under control, but a muscle was twitching in his cheek and she felt his misery. She put her arms around him and hugged him hard. "He could have shot you," she whispered huskily.
"Nah. He had his hands full with his tools and the gas. And he didn't come hunting bear, he had a little pop gun on him and a knife. Nothing that could have hurt me." Doug rubbed Maddie's tense back with his hands.
"You jumped him as a bear! Dear heaven. That was why he kept complaining about the dog."
"Yup. He didn't get a clear look because I knocked him face down into the gravel and kept him down. By the time he was able to look around, there was nothing to see but Lenny."
"You took a big risk with your secret." Maddie hugged him tighter. "But you should have told me you expected him tonight."
Doug put his chin on Maddie's shining hair. "I didn't want you butting in and getting hurt," he said in his command voice.
Suddenly she understood. He was so focused on keeping her safe that he wasn't able to concede her right to know what was going on in her own house and life. Alpha male. She sighed. "I don't think I would have liked knowing you were waiting in the garden for a bomber," she said.
"It's over." He rocked her. "Let's get some sleep, I have to be out of here at zero nine hundred which is in three hours."
It was too much on top of everything else. Afterwards she could never remember what either of them had said, except for her final words, "If you go, don't bother to come back."
Len was eating bananas and cereal and drinking coffee when Madeline entered the kitchen at just after ten. She was still in a foul temper. She was late for work and Doug had gone. All his stuff was gone too.
"Hey," said Len. "Coffee's still hot." He returned to his cereal.
Maddie drank coffee, peered out the window, and tried not to cry. She didn't know if she had driven her bear away, or if she had been abandoned.
"Do you know where Doug went?" she asked Len.
"Had an appointment with Alexander and some honchos at Homeland. Doug seemed to think they were going to offer him a job right here in Portland." Len looked happy.
"What about the Army?"
Len looked at her more closely. He didn't seem to like what he saw. "You guys didn't make up last night," he said accusingly. My mom always says, 'Let not night go down upon your wrath.' You guys should've made up before you went to bed."
"We had a fight instead."
Len looked as alarmed as his open and cheerful countenance would permit. "No making up at all?" He shook his head. "I would've never gone off to bed, if I didn't think you two were going to make up.
"Listen, you gotta understand, Dougie takes life serious. If he thinks he's responsible for a thing, he takes responsibility. If you made him think you were mad because he saved your life, he'd think it was his fault-one hundred percent.
"But honestly, I don't know how else you wanted him to save you. He got out there in the bushes and waited for the bad guy, then he took him out. One stop shopping. Of course the real work was the recon when he found the guy for Homeland."
"What do you mean, recon?" Maddie asked.
Len squinted at her as if she wasn't very bright. "Doug didn't say. But it was obvious he was going after that bomber. Cops had a bunch of stuff in hand to charge that joker with, so Dougie got them something good."
"He didn't tell me anything."
Len sighed. "That's the thing with Dougie. He don't say much. He's spent so much time keeping stuff under his hat, he's a real need-to-know kinda guy. Plus that bitch—pardon my French—he married, fucked him up big time. If she could find fault, she found fault. Poor sorry sumbitch couldn't please her no way, no how."
"What do you mean?" Maddie asked in a small voice.
"Well when a bear bonds it's for life. You get some widowed bears who remate, but not very often. Our Doug he bonded with that Cherry, but she was bad news. Big time. He couldn't never do nothing to please her. House was too rough. Hanover was too remote. And competitive with it.
"So okay, she was career Army. Fair enough. But every post Doug got to be closer to her, she would apply for a better one. Finally went her length in Afghanistan. Doug was holding the record for most patrols brought safely through, didn't Cherry have to go take another tour, try to outdo him? Got blown up for her pains.
"And poor Dougie's been suffering ever since."
"He's still in love with his wife," Maddie said.
Len shrugged. "Damn strange, one-sided love if you ask me. Doug deserves a chance at some happiness. You wouldn't think it to look at him now, but he was a merry son of a gun when he was a lad. I remember the things he and his litter mates used to get up to."
"Litter mates?"
"Didn't you know? Bears have multiples. Doug's one of triplets. Sam and Tom are his cohort. Doug led the three of them into some mischief I can tell you. If there was a tree they climbed it. It there was rapids they rafted them.
"My aunt Katrina was right glad when he was
accepted at West Point. Thought the Academy would tame some of his wildness. Ask me, it pretty much cut off his balls."
Maddie goggled at Len. "Why would you say such a thing?"
"I blame Cherry mostly. Don't know what she did to him, but pussy whipped wasn't the half of it. Pardon my French. Don't think Doug ever managed to do one thing right after he met up with that woman. Ever thing he liked to do, she found fault. Hunting, well hunting was different in South Carolina. Not so crude." Len snorted.
"Christmas with his folks, well, we have tradition in Savannah. As if Uncle Ed and Aunt Katrina were celebrating some pagan festival with sacrificial infants." He looked at Maddie and gentled his voice. "He deserves some happiness. He's a good man. Little dumb about women, mostly, but he has a good heart. And he'd die for you, you know."
"He's gone," Maddie blurted. "I told him not to come back."
It was Len's turn to goggle. He didn't have one word more to say.
* * *
Alexander was thinking that if what his boss wanted in his new bomb disposal expert was a taciturn, tight lipped curmudgeon, well, Lt. Col. Douglas Enright was the right candidate for the job. Of course there was something about Enright's bearing: that poker straight, look-you-in-the-eye, take-no-prisoners posture that was magnificent. But even for Enright this brusqueness was pushing things.
Morgan was looking overwhelmed by this interview, so maybe Enright was playing his cards just right. Of course, it helped that he had more experience than God. But a little friendliness would be good about now. Or if he could manage more than one stingy sentence in response to Morgan's questions.
Doug was sitting in Alan Morgan's office, participating in the interview while his mind tried to blank the fight with Madeline. He couldn't seem to assimilate the fact that whatever he had had with Maddie was over. And if Maddie didn't want him, then there was no purpose in staying in Portland.
Morgan was asking him something. Doug replayed the man's words in his head. He stood up. "Thank you for your time, sir," he said. He held out his hand. After all he outranked this idiot.
Morgan shook his hand heartily. "It's been an honor, Colonel," he said. "You'd be a real asset here in Portland. You could consider this position as a continuation of your service to your country."
What else would he consider it? Morgan was a bleating fool.
"You think about it, Colonel," Morgan went on. "We'd be pleased to have you start whenever the Army releases you."
"Thank you," Doug said curtly. Had he been offered the job, after all? Snafu.
Alexander stood up too. He smiled at his boss. "I'll see Col. Enright out, sir," he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Patrick Alexander followed Doug out into the bright June sunshine. "Jesus, Enright," he said. "Did you have to be such a surly shower with Morgan?"
Doug glared at him. "I was perfectly civil."
Alexander's cell made an odd burbling noise, he whipped it out and consulted it. "We have a problem," he said. "That white panel van cruised by Ms. St. Clair's house twice this morning, and is now parked outside her gym. Guys who are following it radioed for backup."
Doug sprinted for Adam's pickup. He pulled out his duffel and performed a lightning fast change from his dress blues into his work clothes. He took his Glock out and set it on the dash. "You coming, Alexander?" he asked?
Alexander opened the passenger side door and hoisted himself in. "You got a plan?" he asked as Doug pulled out and headed for the highway.
"I've always got a plan." Doug laid it out for his companion.
Maddie's text came as they pulled off the highway and started down the street to Glorious She. Doug passed his phone to Alexander. "We have a problem with access to room 66, come a.s.a.p. She's signed it with two little bitty females holding hands and a Smokey the bear. Weird. You got any idea what she means?"
"Maybe. Some. Room sixty-six is the dumpster. Access is via a little door that doesn't look like a door, so that the patrons don't use it. I think Maddie is telling us to come in the side.
"Do-rag has her and another woman and maybe my cousin Len. He's a firefighter, thinks on his feet.
“Your guys have any sort of an update?"
Alexander pulled out his cell and talked to someone fast and furious. "We got a hostage situation. Guy in the van is tentatively identified as Brice (Hammerhead) Blake. Long rap sheet. Sounds like the biker type you were calling Do-rag. He's got St. Clair and her manager in her office and is demanding you in exchange. Nothing about the firefighter.
"You want to pull over while we think for a bit?"
Doug made a hard left down an industrial street. "Tell your guys we're going across the railroad tracks and into the parking lot from the adjacent lot. We'll be scaling the wall behind the dumpster. Ask them not to shoot us."
He braked at the railway just hard enough to see that nothing was coming and hit the gas. He hung a right into the loading area of the furniture manufacturer behind Maddie's mall. He parked parallel to the twelve foot wall and climbed onto the roof of the cab with the Glock at his waist. He dropped over onto the lid of the dumpster. Alexander was behind him puffing a little.
Maddie had told him that you couldn't see the dumpster from any of the gym windows because she didn't want the gym patrons looking at it. But the staff had access by the delivery door opposite. Alexander was bent double trying to make himself small as they crossed the lot. Doug ignored him and sprinted for the tan door that blended into the tan siding.
He found himself in a narrow corridor. The cinder block was painted white and chipped from delivery carts banging into it. At the far end there was a grey floor to ceiling door. From the other side Doug knew it looked like more blond paneling, and that the door slid sideways on oiled rails rather than opening into the corridor.
Moved silently. Because Len said he had oiled the rails when he was watching Maddie. Maddie's office was next door. The supply cupboards were directly opposite, concealed behind floor to ceiling panels.
The window in Maddie's office was a long slit about nine inches high. Enough for some light but not enough to give anyone a view of the dumpster and parking lot. So if Do-rag had Maddie in her office with Leeann and Len—and that was what Doug thought the text was telling him—no one knew he and Alexander had arrived.
Alexander was almost on top of him looking for direction. Doug gave him the rest of the plan. Then he slid the door ajar a mere crack and listened.
He could hear Madeline's voice soft and soothing. "He had a meeting this morning. He probably turned off his cell. But he'll turn it on when he's through. Could I lower the blind, sun's right in my eyes?"
A guttural male voice replied. "I got no problem with the sun in your eyes. You sit tight, ho." There was the sound of someone looking through drawers. Papers slid to the floor. "This is all your fault, ho. If you had just heard Eric out instead of getting Enright to off him, man would not be dead."
"But I thought Eric killed himself." This new voice was shaky and huskily feminine.
"No way," Do-rag was positive. "He wouldn't have shot himself when we had a good thing going. Enright took him out."
"Oh, Jesus," moaned the second woman.
"Jesus, ain't got nothing to do with it. Enright blew my man away and I am going to blow him away."
"You and Eric were a couple?" Maddie asked in the same soothing tones she had asked about the blind.
"You bet. More than a year. If you had just listened to Eric. This place was perfect for what we had in mind. Nobody thinks nothing if a gym has lots of customers, lots of deliveries."
"I don't understand," Maddie said a shade louder just as three short rattles could be heard in the hall.
"Eric figured that no one would be expecting a gym to be a cover for selling nose candy."
Maddie's gasp covered the three sharper raps from across the hall. From the office came the sound of things being dumped on the floor.
"You got any of them little strappy things wome
n like to use?" Do-rag snarled.
"I'm not sure," Maddie's voice was steady and quiet but puzzled. "What sorts of straps?"
"You know, them little stretchy things you bitches pull instead of lifting weights." Do-rag sounded pissed. He paid no attention to the sound of the delivery door sliding quietly on its rails..
"Exercise bands?" Maddie said brightly. "Sure, I've got lots. They're in the supply cupboard right beside my office," she lied. She paused. "What do you want them for?"
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