I glanced to Ty and our eyes locked. A slight grin came over his lips.
I threw the drink into his face and jumped out of the seat. I spun around and elbowed Caleb in the face and his head snapped back. I ducked under his firearm, bringing my shoulder into his arm as I pressed down on the weapon. It clunked on the floor.
The girl next to me grabbed my legs and bit into my thigh. I kneed her in the face with my other leg as I felt Dax’s arm around my throat. He bent me back as Ty got up and rammed his fist into my face. He did it again, and again, and again, until I felt dizzy and my face was numb. He uppercutted me in the chest and knocked the breath out of me. I crumpled to the floor like paper.
“Get him the fuck outta here,” Ty said.
I felt hands in my armpits and the tile underneath me began to move. We were in a dark hallway and then I smelled oil and rubber tires. The warm cement of the garage flew at my face as they threw me down. A door closed behind me and I tried to turn over but the pain in my chest made me almost black out so I didn’t move.
A hand grabbed my arms and twisted them together in front of me at the stomach. I groaned in pain as I heard the roll of duct tape and felt the sticky pressure of my wrists being bound together.
Trevor flipped me over as he taped up my legs. He reached for my Desert Eagle and took it out, discharging the clip, emptying the bullets into his palm, and then tossing the gun and the clip on the cement floor. He walked away and I couldn’t see him but heard as he dumped the bullets into a plastic bag.
“You shoulda just kept your mouth shut,” he said. “You woulda been rich.”
I was breathing hard, sucking in air as fast as I could. But it felt like my face was buried in sand and I could only get in a puff before the air was cut off again.
“How,” I gasped, out of breath, “how would I’ve been rich.”
“Retirement, brother. That’s what this whole thing is about.”
I looked at him. He was at a workbench near the door and I saw him get out a chainsaw and start shaking canisters of gas to see if they had any fuel in them.
“Remy was your retirement?” I said, trying to pull at the tape on my wrists. It made my chest feel like it was about to be torn in half but the vision of the chainsaw kept me pulling.
“One of ‘em. Ty calls ‘em all investments. They give us a cut of what they sell and we leave ‘em alone.” He reached to the top shelf for a red canister and shook it; it was full of fluid.
“Why’d you kill him?”
“I didn’t. Dax did. He hated that motherfucker. He was always arguin’ with him about cuts. We were just asking twenty percent. That seem too high to you?”
He looked at me like he actually expected an answer and when I didn’t say anything he turned back around.
“So the motherfucker, Remy, goes to Juarez to his boys. The cartel, right. And gets a hit taken out on Ty. You believe that shit? That little faggot had the balls to take out a hit on one of the highest ranking cops in Nevada. Even though he was snitchin’ on us to IAD. Surprised the fuck outta us.”
The door opened and Ty came in. I could still hear that a party was going on. It was the perfect cover; fifty people could swear that all four of them were at the party the whole night.
“Hurry this up,” Ty said. “I wanna get it over with.”
“Ty,” I said, trying to sound as calm as I could, “you don’t have to do this. I’ll go, man. I won’t say anything. I’ll just go. I’ll leave the state.”
“Yeah? You and that asshole Brennen? You guys gonna go live on a beach somewhere, huh? They’ll find you. Brennen’s been working with the Feds to nail my ass. We’ve been careful up till now, but we couldn’t be careful anymore ‘cause of Remy’s stupid ass.” He came and leaned over me, checking my face. “You can take a punch, Baby Boy.”
“I don’t give a shit about Brennen. Just let me go and I’ll never speak to him again.”
“Bullshit. The FBI shows up at your door one day and you don’t tell ‘em about me? That I killed that faggot and then lied about it? That we were comin’ after your girl? Oh, and don’t worry about her. Dax took off to take nice care a her.”
“This isn’t you. This isn’t like you, Ty. I’ve seen good in you, man. Those girls. You saved those girls. There’s good in you.”
He grinned. “Those girls are partial payment to the cartel. They were rounded up at the farm by a coyote and are headed across the border.”
I locked eyes with him and neither of us moved. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
“No! No,” I screamed, fighting against the tape on my wrists. “You motherfucker!”
He laughed and stood up. “You keep a chair open for me in hell, Baby Boy.”
Ty walked out and mumbled something to Trevor about hurrying up. He shut the door behind him and Trevor made sure it was locked before he came over with the chainsaw. He placed down garbage bags next to me and then moved me onto them. Then he got out his firearm and laid it down next to the chainsaw.
He went over to the far side of the garage and got what looked like a butcher’s smock. It was orange and spattered with oil and grease. He tied it around his back and came up to me again. As he knelt down to get his gun, I spoke.
“You wanna know something that no one else does, Trevor?” He looked at my face, his hand inches away from the weapon. “You know how it’s administrative policy that you don’t keep your gun chambered? I’ve never been big on administrative policy.”
His eyes went wide and he thrust himself at his gun. I slammed the clip into my Deseret Eagle, which I’d picked up when his back was turned, and fired the only round I had. It hit him in the throat and there was a wet, spattering sound. Like fruit hitting a wall. I threw my weight on him as he fell and I had my shoulder on his gun. He was choking, blood pouring out of him like a waterfall. I kept the pressure on the weapon as he tried to roll me off. He was pushing me off it when I bit into his cheek.
He screamed and let the weapon go and started clawing my face. I lay on top of him as he started sucking wet, useless breaths. They slowed and I watched as the life left his eyes.
I sat up, my chest pounding with pain. I reached down and undid the tape at my ankles. I stood up and found a vice on the workbench. I put the edge of the tape around my wrists on the corner of the vice and pulled. The tape began to tear. When it was loose enough, I put my wrists on the floor, my foot on the tape, and pulled up as hard as I could, ripping the tape off.
I ran back and grabbed both guns, and opened the door leading into the party.
CHAPTER 20
I made my way through the crowd of people. I was bloodied and had guns in my hands but no one seemed to care except for one girl who looked me up and down and then stepped out of the way. I saw Caleb. He was standing near a couch, a beer in his hand as he spoke with a Latina woman that was sitting on the couch.
“Don’t fucking move,” I whispered, coming up behind him and jabbing the gun in his ribs.
He didn’t except for a slight turn of his head to catch a glimpse of me. “You won’t shoot me in a crowded party.”
“The fuck I won’t. Where’s Ty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me where he is.”
“No. You’ll just have to shoot me.” He turned around and faced me. The gun was now pointed at his stomach. “That’s what I thoug—”
Before he finished I fired two shots into his guts, spattering blood over the girl on the couch behind him. People screamed and began running. I stared at the gun in Caleb’s hand, the one he had slipped out from his belt while I was talking to him.
Everybody was running for the front door so I ran to the back. I went to my Jeep and climbed in. I had to stop a moment to catch my breath before I started the Jeep, and took off.
The Bolden precinct was empty except for a few cars. I stopped right in front of the glass doors and got out, tucking the guns away in my belt and putting my shirt over them. I ran to
the door and pushed through; they were unlocked. I looked to the receptionist desk and saw that it was empty.
Maria would be here until late in the night, until they found a safe house for her. I hoped she had already transferred but didn’t think it could’ve happened so fast.
I went down the hallway as fast as I could and peeked into every room. All of them were empty. The entire precinct had been cleared out. I got to the end of the hall and turned left. On the right hand side a door was open a crack and I looked in.
Rows of beds and couches were set up; it was a break area for the officers working double shifts of thirty-six hours or more. I saw Dax glancing under each bed, his weapon in his right hand and pointed to the ground. He got to the last bed and went to the opposite row to begin looking under those.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he said in a playful voice. “I just wanna talk. You can do that, right? Just talk?”
I opened the door and stood at the entryway. His eyes came up and met mine. I had my gun to my side.
“We don’t have to do this,” I said. “Just put your gun down, Dax.”
“Sorry, partner, doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?”
“I’d rather die than have him be disappointed.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
He smirked, his eyes unblinking. “’Cause he’s the devil, Baby Boy.”
There was a long moment when neither of us moved or spoke. I kept the gun at my side, hoping he would lower his. I watched his fingers and his shoulder. I was hoping the fingers would loosen and the gun would drop.
Instead, the cloth at the shoulder began to crumple as he lifted his weapon. I fired. The round missed him and went into a bed. His round grazed my arm as I jumped to the side. He got up and ran at me, firing. I took a breath, held it, and aimed. I fired two rounds. I hit him in the shoulder and he jumped away, out of the path of my shots. He crawled under the beds and was out the door before I was on my feet.
I used the bed to stand and began to run out of the room, my sternum forcing me to scale back and eventually walk.
“Maria!” I shouted. “Maria!”
I ran into the next room. It was offices. The one after that was a break room with gray tables, chairs, and vending machines. I was about to run out when I noticed a crack between one of the Coke machines and the wall. Gun first, I slowly walked to it.
I put my shoulder against the wall, the gun aimed behind the machine. Maria screamed and held her hands up over her face.
“It’s me,” I said, putting my gun away. “It’s me, it’s me. Come on.”
I took her hand and helped her out. I put my arms around her a few moments to calm her down.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” I lifted her face to look into mine. “Where’s Elis?”
A male voice shouted, “He’s dead.”
I turned around just as the blast from the shotgun exploded out of the barrel. I jumped to cover Maria but the spread caught me in the ribs and back. I flew into the wall and slid down.
Ty walked over and stood over me. He stared down at me and then paced between the tables, running his hand over his head.
“What the fuck!” he shouted. “Look.” He lifted his arms, as if claiming the building as his. “Look at this place. I cleared an entire fuckin’ precinct with one phone call. Who do you think runs this department, Baby Boy?”
“Sheriff,” I gasped.
“Sheriff? You kiddin’ me? You think the sheriff could get everyone outta here with one call and no questions asked? Everyone except your chica and Elis, rest his soul.”
“There’ll be questions,” I said, wheezing.
“We had some homie lined up to be put in here, but I like this better, Baby Boy. Crazy-ass vet goes nuts in his own department. Kills a decorated IAD detective and his own girlfriend.”
I tried to stand again and the pain shot through me so powerfully that I fell back to the floor. Ty laughed. I shouted as loud as I could, feeling a new pain in my throat. It made him laugh even more.
“Get as angry as you want, that’s what I tried to teach you.”
“This,” I said, “it’s just for motherfucking cocksucking money?”
“Not just money. My retirement. If you think I put in blood for twenty years to sit in a studio apartment and collect pension and social security you’re as deluded as those assholes up in administration. I deserve more. We deserve more. We’re the only thing keepin’ these stupid bastards in their happy little homes. The only reason people can sleep at night without gettin’ raped and murdered is ‘cause we’re out on the streets bleedin’ into the cement. We deserve more.”
“You want more money, go work on Wall Street. That’s not why I became a cop.”
“No,” he said calmly, as he lifted the shotgun, “you became a cop to die.”
He paused, and turned, looking out the windows. You could hear the sirens in the distance getting closer. They weren’t more than half a minute away. He looked to me and I grinned and placed my iPhone down on the floor; the screen said 911 and had a time log of nearly four minutes.
“I turned it on when we came in,” I said. “It’s caught some good stuff, don’t you think?”
He lifted the shotgun, his face contorted in rage. But the sirens were outside now and tires were screeching. The blast of the shotgun would bring them right here. He lowered his weapon, his eyes filled with hate and rage, and he sprinted down the hall and was gone.
CHAPTER 21
The paramedics had run in and tried to tear open my shirt. I took it off, showing them the Kevlar underneath that was now pockmarked with the buckshot of a 12 gauge. My ribs were a dark purple and they thought that I had fractured some of them. They insisted that I ride an ambulance to the hospital for a proper evaluation as bits of bone may have come loose.
The ambulance ride was bumpy but quick. There were two people in there with me: a paramedic and an EMT. They joked and laughed and barely noticed that I was lying on a stretcher with my neck held in place with two cushions and a strap around my forehead and chin.
We got to the hospital and I insisted I could walk. They refused, but compromised and unstrapped me, letting me be wheeled in on a wheelchair. Maria was right behind us in my Jeep and she came in and walked through the admittance paperwork. We sat in the ER. Maria rubbed my back but we didn’t speak for a long time and then she finally said, “What do you think’s gonna happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Detectives will be down here soon. I need to go over everything with them. How did…how did Elis die?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it. I just saw them drag him into a room and he was screaming. I heard a shot and it went quiet.”
We didn’t speak again until a nurse came out of some automatic double-doors and said they were ready for me. Maria wheeled me in and we got a room on the far end of the hall. It was white and cluttered with furniture and machines. There was a sink and cabinets, jars filled with Q-Tips and tongue depressors. A young doctor came in and nodded hello. He went through my medical history with me and then checked my ribs and my back. He pushed on my chest, listened to my breathing, and then ran his hands over the ribs.
“Fractured ribs,” he said. “We’ll have to do an X-ray to make sure. How’s the pain on a scale of one to ten?”
“Six.”
“We’ll give you something for that. Just hang tight.”
I turned to Maria and took a deep breath when the doctor had left. She stood on the side of the bed and held my hand. Her make-up had faded, revealing her true countenance and I thought she was even more beautiful without the make-up.
We waited some fifteen or twenty minutes and I was staring at some posters on the wall when she said, “When are those detectives supposed to get here?”
I picked up my phone and dialed dispatch; they should have followed us over. Or at least had some uniforms come and take our statements.
“Dispatch.”
“This is Officer Thomas Boyd, call number 12876. I’m calling about an Officer Down that was called in about half an hour ago at the Bolden precinct.”
“Just a moment…Officer, I don’t have an Officer Down call from that location.”
“I’m probably wrong about the time.”
“I’m looking at everything for tonight. There’s no call.”
“Well we were just there so I don’t—” I stopped and looked up at the door. I hung up the phone and swung my legs around the bed to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Maria said.
“We need to get outta here now.”
“Why? Tommy, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
I took her hand and went to the door. I opened it and looked down both directions. The hallway was empty. She was saying something behind me and I looked to her and put my finger to my lips. At the end of the hall I saw an exit sign over some double-doors. We went through it and into a dark hallway. There were chairs on either side of us and the walls were mostly glass. I pulled Maria along and she didn’t say anything as we got to the end of the hall and found another door with an exit sign, this one leading outside. It was a one-way door and I knew we wouldn’t be able to get back in from this entrance once we went out. I looked around through the windows. The exit was in the back of the hospital near the supply entrance. I pushed it open and we went outside.
It was warm and the sky was clear but there was no moon. We kept low as we peeked around the corner to the parking lot.
“Where are we going?”
I didn’t answer as my eyes scanned the lot. I saw my Jeep and stared at the cars surrounding it. They were empty.
“I don’t know. Just away from here.”
We began walking toward the Jeep when a Dodge Viper pulled to a stop in front of the hospital. I saw Dax in the driver seat. He stepped out, his arm in a sling, freshly bandaged at the shoulder and down over the forearm. Ty got out of the passenger seat. I grabbed Maria and we ran around the corner.
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