by Glenn Rogers
Chapter 48
Tuesday Night
“That you got this far, Mr. Badger, is a testimony to your skill,” Bahara said. “You are to be congratulated.”
“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “If you think those three were good, you don't know what good is.”
A small rueful, smile softened her face momentarily. She shook her head. “Typical,” she said. “You Americans are so arrogant.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but with good reason.”
I looked at Monica. Her intense eyes willed me to understand what she was about to do … the same thing I'd do in her place. I gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Suddenly, she bent forward, exposing most of Bahara Durrani's upper body. Before Bahara could respond, I brought up my gun and fired. At the same time, Alex, who’d had come up behind me and realized what was about to happen, shot the young woman on my right. My shot had taken Bahara in the center of the chest. Alex's shot had also been center mass. In an instant, both women lay dead on the floor. Neither of them had gotten off a shot.
Monica raised back up as I stepped to her. I removed the duct tape from her mouth and she said, “What took you so long?” She was clearly annoyed.
I smiled. “I love you, too.”
“Yeah, well, that's no excuse. Untie me.”
I could have used my large bowie knife, but that would have been overkill. I pulled a smaller knife from my pocket and cut the cord from each of her wrists and ankles. She stood up, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me like I’ve never been kissed. It was deep, and powerful, and long. Wow.
When the kiss ended, I asked, “You all right?”
“Couple of bruises. Other than that, I'm okay.”
“I'm sorry it took so long. We didn't even know where to begin looking.”
Before she could respond, gunfire filled the small room. Alex went down. With my left hand, I pushed Monica away, reaching for my weapon with my right. I dove over her and rolled and came up gun in hand ready to fire. In the closet just outside the door to the safe room, was another young woman, a replica of the young woman who lay dead on the floor. Behind her was another large Middle Eastern man. Each had a nine millimeter and were firing in my direction. Fortunately, they weren’t very good shots. The young woman threw herself to her right. I fired twice and the big man went down. The young woman was still firing. One of her shots hit me in the middle of the chest and knocked me down, momentarily stunning me.
The next thing I knew, she and Monica were fighting in the small room. I assumed she had emptied her clip and then charged in to finish the job by hand. The young woman was good, but she was giving away thirty pounds and five inches to Monica, who was blocking every punch or kick she threw. And that’s all Monica was doing, just blocking. I realized she was toying with her.
“That's it?” Monica asked, as she blocked another kick. “That's all you've got? Not so easy this time, huh? Last time your boyfriend held my arms from behind while you kicked me. Gonna be different this time, bitch.”
Then Monica attacked. She came straight and fast, with a front kick to the young woman's gut and a punch to the throat. That’s all it took. The young woman was down and out.
Alex had taken one in the chest that had knocked him down and stunned him, and one in the leg. Monica checked the young woman she had been fighting.
“She’ll be all right,” she said.
I found a belt in the closet and used it for a tourniquet around Alex’s leg. It looked to me like the bullet had gone through and had not done too much damage. There was a large towel hanging next to a sink. I tied it around the wound.
“You okay?” I asked him.
“No major damage. Maybe you should go check the other rooms to make sure there are no more surprises.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Monica picked up the pistol the first young woman had carried and checked the load. “I'll go with you,” she said.
“I'll make a couple of calls,” Alex said, “while you secure the scene.”
Monica and I went from room to room and secured the second floor. Then we went back downstairs and went through each room. No more surprises.
When we returned to the safe room, Alex said, “Heidi is on her way and so is Caleb with a team.”
“Heidi?” Monica asked.
“She drove us,” I said.
“Heidi?” she said.
“She wanted to help,” I said. “She also wanted to keep an eye on Alex, make sure he'd be okay for their date.”
Monica looked at Alex and smiled. “A date with Heidi? Alex, good for you. Heidi's hot.”
“Yes, she is. And she's also a discerning woman of taste. That's why she's interested in me.”
“So that’s what you were doing this past week,” she said. “While I was being held prisoner, you were cozying up to Heidi.”
“Hey, we were busting our butts looking for you. Had to kill a bunch a people in the process, too.”
Monica looked at me.
“Esposito, Junior.”
Her eyes searched mine for a moment. I gave a small shrug. She’d ask me about it later. She turned her attention back to Alex, knelt beside him and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said. Then her smile got bigger and her eyes got mischievous and she said, “You dog, you.”
“Really? I've been shot, and you're making sex jokes.”
“I'm just happy for you Alex.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, who's this other person you called, this Caleb?”
“One of my agents.”
“We should probably call Frank, too,” I said, “don't you think, just out of courtesy?”
“Sure,” Alex said. “You or me?”
“I'll do it while I go down and wait for Heidi.”
“And you,” I said to Monica, “need to call your parents. They’re worried sick.”
“They’ll be in bed,” she said.
“Call them.”
I called Frank as I went down the stairs and gave him a brief explanation of what had happened. He said he was on his way.
Heidi was just pulling into the driveway when I opened the front door. As she came into the house I told her Alex had been wounded.
“Is he okay?” she asked, horrified.
“Just a leg wound. Bullet went clear though. He'll be fine.”
“Where is he? I want to go to him.”
I led her upstairs and she ran to Alex and knelt beside him. She asked if he was okay, inspected his leg, and kissed on him on the mouth.
I looked at Monica and said, “Why don't we wait downstairs for Caleb and his team?”
As we were going down the stairs, I said, “There were three of them, weren't there? And you killed one of them.”
“Yeah. Got a good shot to his throat. Collapsed his windpipe.”
“And broke the other guy's nose and injured his throat, too.”
“Yeah. I'd have killed both of them if it hadn't been for that little bitch. She hit me from behind while I was dealing with the big guy. Then, when he got hold of my arms from behind, she kicked me in the ribs and got in a good right hook. Knocked me out.”
“And they kept you in the safe room the whole time?”
“Yeah. Kept one hand cuffed to a safety handrail near the toilet. I had water to drink and could use the toilet. They brought food twice a day.”
“Did Mrs. Durrani explain why she took you?”
“Yeah. Said you killed her son.”
“I did. In Afghanistan. CIA sanctioned.”
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned to me, took my face in her hands and said, “I knew you’d come. I never doubted it.”
“I love you,” I said.
“And I love you.”
We kissed again, and while we were kissing the FBI arrived.
Chapter 49
Tuesday Night
Monica, Heidi and I followed Alex's ambulance to the hospital. Caleb and another agent followed al
ong as well, as did Frank. We all sat in the waiting room, which, given the late hour, was otherwise vacant. Caleb took Monica's statement about being kidnapped and held. He took my statement about assisting the FBI in her rescue. He asked about each person we had disabled or killed during the rescue operation. When he had what he needed, he asked us to sign our statements and thanked me for my assistance. Then it was Frank's turn. He had brought Detective Branch along. She took detailed notes during Caleb’s interview and asked Monica and me to sign a statement for the LAPD as well. She said she’d fill in the details later. That way, we wouldn't need to go downtown to sign the document. I knew she’d get it right and appreciated her thoughtfulness.
The doctor came out and told us that Alex was okay. As I had suspected, the slug had gone clear through and had done no serious damage. He’d given Alex something to help him sleep. We should go home, he told us, and come back tomorrow. Given what Monica had been through, I agreed.
We took Heidi home. I thanked her for helping. She thanked me for letting her help. She hugged Monica and told her she was glad she was all right.
Once Heidi was safely behind her door, I asked Monica if she wanted to go home. She said, “No. Right now I just want to be with you. You can take me back to my place tomorrow.”
It had been just after four a.m. when we drifted off to sleep. We had both been wired and not at all sleepy. We’d snacked on what I had in the cupboards and talked about innocuous stuff, enjoying being with each other again. We showered together and made love and had then, finally, fallen asleep. It was ten a.m. when we awoke. We made love again and then showered and got ready to go see Alex. We stopped at an IHOP for breakfast, again talking about anything but what had happened. We weren't ready to talk about it yet. It was too big a subject and we both knew what had to be said. We'd get to it. But we needed a little more time.
It was a little after noon when we walked into Alex’s room. Heidi was there, sitting in a chair next to his bed, holding his hand. Alex's sister, Susan, was on the other side of his bed.
Alex smiled. “Doctor says I can go home this afternoon,” he said. “Have to go easy on my leg for a couple of days. But other than that, I'm good.”
“I've got some vacation time coming,” Heidi said. “I'm going to take a week off and take care of him.”
Susan was smiling, but she seemed a little concerned. She didn't know Heidi, and I suspect she was alarmed at how fast things were moving between her brother and this new woman in his life.
Alex was smiling, but I could see that he was worried about the whole thing. Heidi may have been moving a little too quickly for him as well. But it wasn’t up to any of us to raise the issue. That’d be up to Alex.
“I'll worry about you less,” Monica said, “knowing you're in such capable hands.”
“You need any help getting home?” I asked Alex.
“I think between Heidi and Susan we've got everything covered.”
Heidi smiled and nodded.
We visited a while longer and I told him Monica and I would take his car that was still at my office back to his office. He gave me the keys and thanked me.
After we left the hospital, Monica wanted to go for a run, so we went back to my apartment, changed, and took Wilson with us to the park to run. It was the most relaxed run I’d had in the past nine days. It felt good.
After four miles, we sat down at a picnic table. There were no other people in the section of the park we were in, so I let Wilson go exploring on his own.
In a moment, Monica said, “We're avoiding talking about it.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Why?”
“I figured we'd get to it when we were ready.”
“I wasn't afraid,” she said. “I was angry.”
I nodded.
“I knew you were looking for me.”
“I was.”
“What did you do?”
I explained how our first assumption was that someone she had investigated and caught in a crime was retaliating against her. I explained how we had gone through all her files looking for possible suspects.
“Who did you suspect?” she asked.
I told her, explaining that eventually we had expanded our search to include people she’d busted as an MP. But even then, we’d come up empty.
“When did you figure it was someone retaliating against you?”
I told her about the first note and how we then started looking at all my past cases, first my PI cases, then my cases as an agent.
“Were there more notes?” she asked.
I explained about the additional notes, and I explained about the CIA missions in Afghanistan.
“When did you figure out it was Bahara?”
I told her about the last note being hand delivered and the image on my security system.
“One of the sisters,” she said pensively. Then, after a brief moment, “I'm sorry you had to endure that.”
“I'm sorry for what you had to endure being taken.”
“Yeah, but I think you got the worst of it.”
“How do you figure? You were the one kidnapped and held against your will.”
“Yeah, but I was okay. I was just angry and waiting. You were worried. You had no idea who took me or why or where. You were all over the place trying to find me. You had nothing or very little to work with. If the situation had been reversed, I don't know if I could have held it together.”
I took her hand in mine. “You could have, and you would have.”
She smiled at me. “I love you, Jake Badger.”
“I love you, too.”
We stared into each other's eyes for a moment.
I said, “Given the kind of work we do, people wanting to get even with us is part of the job. Part of the life.”
“I know,” Monica said.
“If you weren't with me,” I said, “you'd have a lot less to worry about.”
“If I weren't with you,” she said, “nothing would be worth worrying about.”
It was getting difficult for me to control my emotions.
“It would be the same for you,” she said, “if you weren't with me, you'd have less to worry about.”
Tears filled my eyes. “Not being with you is not an option. I love you and I don't care about anything but having you in my life.”
Tears filled her eyes as well.
“Well, then,” she said. “I guess we're stuck with each other.”
“I guess we are.”
Just then, Wilson bounded up onto the picnic table.
“Hear that, Wilson?” I asked. “Monica and I are stuck with each other.”
He responded with a gentle woof and gave each of us kisses to acknowledge his approval.
THE END
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