A moment later, the town car slipped into a recently vacated spot along the crowded curb. Cyrus turned in his seat and looked back at her. “What would you like? I’ll run in.”
“How about a nice bottle of red?”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth when she saw confusion in his eyes. Or, perhaps, indecision.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Ma’am. When it comes to wine, I’m out of my depth. I can tell the difference between red and white without someone holding my hand, but knowing what’s good and what’s not? Not so much. To be honest, I sort of just cheat and associate the quality with the price.”
Gertrude felt a sputtering laugh escape her lips before she had a chance to rein it in. She instantly felt regretful for it, and that sensation struck her as odd. To the best of her knowledge, the only time she’d ever been gentle or anything less than entirely transparent in expressing her opinions was with Ashley. But Ashley was family. Could it be that she was coming to respect this young man? It wasn’t like her at all.
Oh, I do hope this one turns out to be on the level, she thought.
“I’m sorry,” Gertrude offered with some chagrin. “It’s just that most people go to great lengths to offer opinions on wine. It’s all very pretentious. I’ve always suspected that in a blind taste test every one of them would be wrong as often as they were right. Your quip about the price, sadly, is how many of them ultimately make their selections.” She explained. “So, I apologize for laughing.”
Cyrus offered a grin, not at all embarrassed by her outburst. “It would be a mistake to walk in there and pretend I know what I’m doing,” he admitted. “And it would be an even bigger problem if you and your granddaughter were stuck drinking skunk wine all night.”
Gertrude found herself unable to deny his simple, practical logic.
“If you can tell me what to look for, I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Cyrus said.
Looking out her window, Gertrude considered the selection of the small corner market. “It’s hard to say what they’ll have,” she decided. “It would be best if I come along.”
Chapter 10
Costello’s Market
Hennings, South Carolina
6:16 p.m.
After helping Gertrude Waterford exit the rear passenger side, Cyrus held the door as she entered the small corner market. There wasn’t much to the place. It was perhaps a thousand square feet located on the ground level of the three story building that paralleled one of the city’s central boulevards. Though clearly a small time establishment, the tile floors were clean and had an impressive shine. The shelves of the shop were covered with the basic sundries when it came to groceries, tobaccos, canned and jarred staples, and other dried goods. And along the back wall, Cyrus saw what appeared to be a rather impressive selection of wine arranged across a lattice-like series of interlocking shelves that stretched nearly to the ceiling.
The shop might be small, but it was clearly well maintained. Likely an establishment run by a family who took great pride in what they had and strived to make the most of it. A short, elderly man of Mediterranean descent stood behind the counter near the cash register, as Cyrus and Gertrude passed through the front door. The clerk offered a warm smile and a silent but friendly nod when Cyrus said “hello.”
Making their way through the shop took only a short time, but Cyrus could tell by Gertrude’s short steps and the way she leaned more heavily on the cane that she was tired. It also meant that dinner with her granddaughter must be important to her. In the nearly two weeks he’d chauffeured the woman, she’d never gone anywhere but home after a day at her office. She was clearly suffering the effects of a long day.
Cyrus wished he knew more about wine. He could’ve saved her the trouble of making the trip into the market for something so trivial.
They reached the wine racks and Gertrude began her selection process when the chime on the front door sounded. They’d been the only customers when they’d walked in, and Cyrus was glad to know that the impressive little shop wasn’t suffering for traffic as he’d first thought.
Judging by the look of approval in the old woman’s eyes and the time she was taking to select a bottle of wine, Cyrus realized that Gertrude was also impressed with the quality of the selection. Stepping back, he allowed her more room as she shimmied slowly back and forth in an effort to narrow her options.
The hair on the back of Cyrus’s neck began to prickle. It was a curious sensation, but one he was all too familiar with. His eyes first moved to Gertrude, but she was alright—so focused on the rack of wine that a bus could crash through the front of the store without even drawing her attention. Moving on, Cyrus turned; looking over the tops of the short shelves, he was surprised to find the old man missing from his place at the cash register.
Moving quickly down the aisle, Cyrus reached the end and gained an angle that brought him a clear view of the front counter. The old man lay slumped across it, the small hat he’d been wearing was knocked from the top of his head.
Cyrus felt his heart hammer and his adrenaline surge as he took a step back into the cover of the aisle, only to stop short as he felt the unmistakable sense of cold metal being pressed against the back of his neck.
“Not another step,” the voice threatened from behind him.
In an unnecessarily slow manner, Cyrus brought his hands up and held them at his sides. “It’s okay,” he said calmly. “We don’t want any trouble. I’m going to turn around now, very slowly. And then I’ll give you my wallet.”
Following through on his promises, Cyrus completed his turn and came face-to-face with a wide shouldered man in a black ski mask. The man held a pump action shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. It was raised up to meet Cyrus’s eye level, leaving him to look directly down its darkened muzzle.
A second gunman was standing along the back wall, holding the end of a chrome Beretta 92FS semi auto to Gertrude Waterford’s head. The second man was shorter; all Cyrus could make out was the ski mask and his upraised gun over the top of the shelves that separated them.
The entire situation frustrated Cyrus instantly. That the two gunmen had gotten the drop on him at all was obviously the first problem. Then, there was the question of what to do about it. If he made a move, what would that do to his cover with Waterford? Would it be blown? There was also the question of what these punks were actually doing in the store in the first place. If they really were punks, they would be focusing on the cash register. But so far, they seemed interested in anything but the cash. They’d taken out the old man at the counter without letting him raise even the hint of an alarm. But rather than grab the money and run, they’d gone out of their way to come after him and Waterford at the back of the store.
Doing the math, Cyrus didn’t like the way things were adding up. He didn’t think these two were there to rob the store. It might’ve been an easy assumption with the ski masks and the guns. Especially that chromed out Beretta, he realized. He hated those things with a passion. The 92FS was a solid weapon alright, but chrome? He was pretty sure those were only ever made for the movies. Any time he saw one in real life, he felt the urge to slap the owner upside the head. What was the point of a chrome-plated gun?
So while the two men in masks looked the part of street thugs, right down to their choice in weapons, their disregard for the cash register told a different story. Gertrude Waterford seemed the more likely target.
Slowly and deliberately, Cyrus reached into his inside jacket pocket and retrieved his wallet. He held it up between two fingers and watched the reaction in the gunman’s eyes. When he failed to focus on the wallet the answer was simple; Cyrus knew he was dealing with a professional. And that changed everything.
The man with the shotgun reached out and grabbed Cyrus by the collar. Dragging him to the end of the aisle, he shoved him up against the rack of wine.
Cyrus looked over at Gertrude who was standing less than two feet away with a bottle of wine locked in the white knuckled grip of both h
ands.
“You alright, Missus Waterford?” Cyrus asked in a tone intended to inspire confidence.
When she didn’t respond, he repeated the question.
Her eyes snapped into focus and swiveled to meet his. “I… I don’t know,” she admitted in a scared, hollow voice.
“Shut up!” the man with the shotgun ordered, giving Cyrus a painful poke in the ribs with the barrel of the gun.
Cyrus looked at the wine bottle that Gertrude held in her hands. “Is that what you decided on?” he asked. “Did you find something good, or did you just pick based on the price?”
A small smile spread across Gertrude’s lips. Maybe it was because of the joke, or maybe the absurdity of the circumstances under which he was making it—either way, it didn’t matter. The shorter gunman, the one holding the chrome Beretta to Waterford’s head, took exception to Cyrus’s casual nature and decided to intervene. He turned the gun and pointed it at Cyrus. That was good; getting the gun away from Gertrude’s head was Cyrus’s goal.
At the same time the Beretta was being poked at him from one direction, the shotgun was coming at him from the other. Grabbing the pump action handle of the shotgun and stepping back, Cyrus pressed himself tightly against the rack of wine behind him. Simultaneously, he pulled on the shotgun as it was being pushed in his direction. It slipped past his ribs, and he yanked it further.
The shotgun discharged.
The moment the gunman pulled the trigger, Cyrus was already pushing the Beretta aside with his free hand. As the shotgun blast slipped past Cyrus with a thunderous roar, the Beretta rocked and discharged a round that flew uselessly across the store. Cyrus pulled the 9mm from the smaller man’s hand and watched the lifeless body skid across the floor. He’d caught the full force of the shotgun blast dead center in the chest.
All of this quick action left Cyrus holding the chrome Beretta 9mm. Lashing out with a brutal front kick, Cyrus sent the man with the shotgun staggering backwards. The shotgun slipped from the man’s grip as his arms windmilled for balance as he went flying onto his back.
The moment the shotgun struck the floor, Cyrus placed one foot atop the weapon. It was his way of accounting for the gun while keeping the sights of the 9mm trained on the man he’d just kicked.
“Don’t move,” Cyrus warned, “Just stay down.”
It didn’t matter. Cyrus knew were calculations running through the man’s mind. The resulting decision was obvious when it flashed in his assailant’s eyes. Covered by the ski mask, Cyrus didn’t need to see the man’s face to know what was about to happen. Still, he let it come. If only for the resulting police report and an improved chance at smoothing things over with Waterford after it was over.
The gunman reached into a holster secured around his ankle and pulled free a snub nosed .38. “Gun!” Cyrus shouted. He stepped between the gunman on the floor and Gertrude Waterford, who was a few feet behind him.
A single gunshot exploded inside the confines of the small market. The weapon’s report echoed off of the cinderblock walls and stung Cyrus’s ears.
Cyrus felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Gertrude. Somewhere along the way she had dropped her cane but somehow managed to hold on to her bottle of wine.
“Are you alright?” she asked. Her voice was a ghostly whisper as she looked around him and saw the last gunman’s body sprawled across the floor, his head split open like a gruesome melon.
“Fine. How about you?”
She offered only a slow but affirmative nod. Her face was pale and she was taking short breaths but she didn’t seem hurt. “I think we’re going to be late for dinner.”
Cyrus smiled. “Yeah… Let’s find you a place to sit while I dial 911. Maybe after that, you can call your granddaughter and see about rescheduling.”
Chapter 11
The Templeton Tower Building
Hennings, South Carolina
10:04 p.m.
After leaving the town car in the parking garage, Cyrus followed Gertrude Waterford to the main elevator. He was surprised when the woman pressed the button for the 6th floor, since her condo was on ten.
The old woman caught his questioning glance and offered a sly smile. “You’re still hungry, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “But what’s on six?”
“Ashley’s apartment, of course.” She watched the elevator’s floor indicator click from one level to the next. “You’re not going to let a little thing like armed robbery interfere with our dinner plans, are you?”
A sense of humor wasn’t among Gertrude’s many talents. A generous man would describe it as dry, but Cyrus was reasonably certain she was making a joke.
Reasonably certain.
“It’s just—” He didn’t know where to begin. They’d finished an extensive round of questioning at the hands of one of the police department’s senior detectives only twenty minutes prior. That Gertrude would want nothing more than to go home and retire for the night seemed a certainty. Apparently, he’d been wrong. He settled for a change of subject. “Your granddaughter lives in your building?”
At least that explained why he was still carrying the bottle of wine. It was the same bottle Gertrude had clutched throughout the entire harrowing experience at the corner market. She’d made her selection before things had gone wonky, as she put it, and was going to drink it if it was the last thing she did.
The old woman smirked. “And why not? I own it.”
Cyrus grinned. “The whole building? I’m sorry. You’re full of surprises.”
He wasn’t at all surprised, in truth. The background information provided by the Coalition’s research department, along with the rest of the case files, had thoroughly documented nearly every aspect of Gertrude Waterford’s life. That included her financial and real estate holdings, as well as her family tree and business contacts made over the last twenty years.
“That’s funny,” she commented as the elevator doors slid open. “I was going to say the same thing about you. Your behavior tonight wasn’t what I would call…” she searched for the proper word. “Typical? At least, given the unusual circumstances.”
Cyrus followed her from the elevator. “It’s that fight or flight response, I guess,” he said dismissively. “I’ve never really been one for flight.”
The apartments on the 6th floor must’ve been smaller than those on the 10th. The 10th floor was split in half, bisecting the entire level into a pair of condo units. But on the 6th, the hallway around Cyrus contained four doors, two on either end of the hall that more or less faced each other. These four apartments occupied the entirety of the 6th.
And Gertrude owned the entire building.
Taking the lead, Gertrude directed them to the end of the hall where she struck the old fashioned door knocker twice against the door of unit 601, before immediately turning the knob and stepping inside.
The apartment was breathtaking in its open, spacious charm. Cyrus was quickly enamored by the wide sweeping floor plan and the way he could literally see from one end of the place to the other. There was a small formal dining area on the left that was segregated by only a half height wall. To the right, was a comfortable kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel fixtures. Beyond that, the rest of the apartment opened up into an expansive sitting area with large comfortable couches and overstuffed armchairs. A small flat screen television decorated the wall to the left, while the right was home to a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that started at the edge of the kitchen and stretched all the way to the rear wall of the apartment. It was covered with hundreds, maybe thousands of books of every color and size.
“I’ll be right out,” a woman’s voice called from a doorway off to the left, past the TV.
“You can put that on the counter,” Gertrude told Cyrus, motioning vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. She continued on to the sitting area and promptly deposited herself onto the sofa.
Cyrus placed the wine bottle beside the sink and looked out across the cou
nter into the sitting room. He could tell Gertrude was exhausted, but couldn’t understand why she insisted on keeping the dinner engagement after all that had happened.
The police had descended on the corner market within minutes of the conflict’s resolution. It seemed that gunshots did not go unreported in that particular part of town, and the response time for emergency services was nothing short of impressive. Of course, by the time they’d arrived, the two gunmen were long past saving.
The questioning that followed the incident wasn’t as accusatory as Cyrus originally feared. While he had complete confidence that his credentials would stand up to scrutiny as well as any background check that the local police cared to conduct, it was Gertrude Waterford who worried him the most. She was an experienced, intelligent woman. It was unlikely that she would simply overlook the way he’d dealt with the night’s events. In protecting her, he might have already compromised his cover. And while he expected as much to happen at some point, it was crucial that he gain her confidence before that time came.
The store clerk turned out to be alright, if one rated a concussion preferable to a gunshot wound. He was taken to the nearest emergency room by ambulance and was expected to make a full recovery. As close as they could figure, he’d been clubbed on the head by one of the gunman before they’d advanced on Gertrude and Cyrus.
Police detectives had asked the expected questions about the gunmen, and the store’s security system went a long way toward answering those questions to everyone’s satisfaction. While the surveillance cameras were not ideally positioned to capture all that had transpired, what was shown made it obvious that Cyrus had acted in self-defense. The detective’s conclusion was that Cyrus and Gertrude were lucky to be alive. The would-be crooks were obviously rank amateurs who wouldn’t be missed.
Dangerous Minds: A Cyrus Cooper Thriller: Book One Page 7