by D. L. Line
“Sorry, big guy, nothing personal. This isn’t about you.”
Scooting back behind his bale of straw, Bradley quietly waited for the person he knew would be coming next.
v
Terri startled when she heard the commotion in the barn. It sounded to her like something metallic striking something solid, followed by the sound of a large object hitting the floor. She tried to reach Bobby on the radio, but there was no response. Weapon drawn from the back of her jacket, she moved as quickly and quietly as possible, without running, to the source of the noise.
The main entrance to the barn was like a bridge spanning a small dip in the ground that led to the downstairs entrance of the large building. She opted for the lower entrance since the wide ramp to the large open door provided her with absolutely
• 215 •
D.L. Line
no cover. After half sliding down the hill to the lower door, she pushed it open as gently as possible, cringing as it squeaked on its rusty hinges. It was pitch black in the musty bowels of the barn, so Terri dug out her flashlight and twisted it to bring the bulb to life. Stepping over the threshold, she swung the beam of light around the area, making sure that her weapon was pointed the same direction, and stopped as she found the steps that led up to the main level of the rickety old building. There was still no motion anywhere in the barn, and she was getting concerned that she’d left the house unguarded, so she tried Bobby on the radio again.
“Field One, this is Base One, over.” Nothing. “Field One, come in please, over.” Still nothing. “Shit. Bobby…Come in.”
The silence was deafening as she felt the panic start to rise. Fighting it down, she headed carefully up the steps. She swung the light around the area, coming to rest on a large dark mass lying among the scattered straw on the floor. The shape was all too familiar, and the impact of that sight slammed into her painfully. It was Bobby, and he wasn’t moving.
Her own adrenaline kept her moving forward as she crossed the space to check on Bobby. Crouching low on the ground, she checked his neck for a pulse. Relief followed when she felt the strong beat beneath her fingers and finally noticed the steady rise and fall that indicated he was still breathing. Quickly scanning the area, she spotted the shovel lying on the ground next to Bobby’s unconscious form, and immediately became aware that the shit had finally hit the fan, and she was left alone to deal with it.
Before she even had a chance to pull her phone out of her pocket to call the sheriff for assistance, she sensed a presence behind her, and before she could turn to see what that presence was, she felt the one thing that every agent feared the most. The business end of an automatic handgun pressed to the soft
• 216 •
On DangerOus grOunD
flesh at the back of her neck. She gasped and froze as a cocky voice that she’d heard once before on the telephone spoke to her with a cheery nonchalance that made her blood run cold.
“Agent McKinnon.”
Terri swallowed hard as the hammer of the gun was cocked back, feeling it click as it locked into place.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”
• 217 •
• 218 •
On DangerOus grOunD
Chapter twenty-nine
Terri didn’t move. She could barely breathe. The muzzle of the weapon pressed against her neck never wavered as Davis stood there. Her legs were beginning to cramp as a result of the awkward position she was in, half kneeling, half squatting. Her finger itched at the trigger of her own weapon, still in her right hand, as she contemplated her next move. Now, if she could only figure out what the fuck that next move was.
Davis finally started to talk. “Agent McKinnon, I must say I’m surprised to see you here. More specifically, you and your rather large friend. I would have thought that my little decoy stunt in Kentucky would have had a bit more impact. It seems I have underestimated you, and that’s a problem.”
Terri gritted her teeth, fighting hard against her panic and rage. Figuring that he was looking for a question from her, she obliged. “Why?”
“Why?” Davis was incredulous, quickly becoming agitated. “Because I had one thing to do, and you’ve made it harder than it needed to be. This could have all been so simple if you could have left things alone and let them play out the way they were supposed to.”
• 219 •
D.L. Line
Losing the fight against rage, she growled out her next question. “And let you kill her?”
Davis was starting to come unglued. “Yes, let me take away her life just like she took away mine.” He pressed forward with the handgun for emphasis, spitting out his next question.
“Don’t you get that?”
Terri was grasping in her head for the right answer that would keep Davis from blowing her brains out when she spotted something moving peripherally in her vision, approaching the barn from the direction of the house. Since she couldn’t see, she could only hope that Davis had his back turned and was completely unaware that there was an extremely agitated little dog streaking down the hill, ready to remove the stranger’s foot from his ankle. Terri waited for the precise second when Snickers began to bark to make her move.
Davis’s attention wavered for just a second, long enough to process that something was behind him, and Terri sprang into action. Jumping up from her crouch, she swung her right arm back in a wide arc, hand still clutching her weapon. She caught him hard in the side of the face with her wrist, missing his jaw with the butt end of the gun, shocking him far more than the appearance of the canine cavalry did. He tensed as the blow landed, and pulled the trigger of his gun. The blast hit Terri low on her rib cage. The Kevlar vest stopped the bullet, but the impact broke several ribs and knocked her from her feet with its force. It twisted her in the air, dropping her hard on the floorboards, face first, opening a large cut over her right eye. She struggled to take a breath against the red-hot bolts of pain that shot through her injured right side.
Davis had recovered somewhat, turned fully away from her, and was now squeezing off shot after shot toward the sound that had distracted him. Snickers was apparently smart enough to know that bang trumped woof every time, and he
• 220 •
On DangerOus grOunD
darted off to hide in the underbrush near the barn. Before Davis had a chance to realize what was happening, Terri was crawling fast, feet sliding on the loose straw, struggling to turn her body in an attempt to return his fire. She heard a loud crack, recognized immediately that it was not gunfire, but didn’t have time to react as the weakened floorboards of the old building gave way, dropping her hard onto the packed earth of the lower level of the barn. As she cried out against the pain and struggled not to lose consciousness, she became dimly aware of laughter followed by the sound of footsteps quickly leaving the barn.
Gritting her teeth against the pain-induced nausea and vertigo, Terri hauled herself to her feet and lurched toward the open door of the lower level of the barn. She was still clutching her handgun, hugging her gun arm close to support her injured ribs. She emerged at the bottom of the small hill that she’d slid down just moments before, and scrabbled up it, pulling herself into the main part of the back yard. Using the back of her left hand to wipe away some of the blood that was running into her eye, she spotted Davis in the moonlight as he ran toward the house, knowing there was no way she could catch up before he got there. She could only pray that he did something stupid once he arrived, or this whole thing could be over soon in a really bad way.
Terri kept an eye on him as she struggled up the hill to the house. The gash made it hard to see, the broken ribs made it difficult to breathe and impossible to run, but she kept going, making the best speed possible.
v
Bradley pulled the back door open and stepped up onto the screen porch. Using his elbow to break the glass, he reached
• 221 •
D.L. Line
in, unlocked th
e interior door, and went into the house. His head was pounding, threatening to explode. It was dark inside and he was unfamiliar with the layout of the house. He only went a couple of paces before he tripped over a rug in the mudroom, swearing through clenched teeth as he struggled to keep his footing. “Fuck this,” he said, turning on the light from the first switch he found. Overhead fluorescents blinked on, illuminating his path toward the one thing that he needed to locate. He hesitated for a moment, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the light and the hot spikes of pain to level out in his head, and turned to head into the kitchen. There was only one doorway that led into the rest of the house, so he followed the trail, stopping in the living room long enough to turn on one small lamp. Still no one. He rattled the locked door to the office, but stopped when he heard a voice upstairs, just loud enough to bring a smile to his face.
“Terri, baby, is that you?”
He didn’t answer. Smiling, he flipped on the light and started up the stairs, slowly, stepping as lightly as possible toward the sound of that voice that he remembered so vividly. The voice of the person he’d spent the last ten years dreaming about, and there was nothing that could keep him from her now.
v
Terri couldn’t risk following him into the house, so she moved as quickly as her injuries would allow past the back door, through the gate, and around to the front of the house. She fought the nightmare images playing through her head. Images of losing everything to a stranger with a gun. Terri couldn’t do this again.
But she had to. She forced down her fear and willed herself
• 222 •
On DangerOus grOunD
to act like the professional that she knew she was. Experience told her that her best shot would come from the front yard as he headed up the steps. There were large windows in both bedrooms, as well as an even larger window at the top landing of the stairs, and Davis had so thoughtfully provided enough light for her to watch every move he made.
She had the advantage that the spotty cover of darkness provided between the patches of light spilling out of the windows, so she made her way painfully over to the trunk of a large maple tree, leaning against its rough surface for support as she made one last half-successful attempt to wipe the freeflowing blood away from her eye. Barely able to lift her arm from her shattered right side, she supported her gun hand with her other hand and took as deep a breath as she could muster in an attempt to calm the painful shaking and line up for the shot.
v
Bradley arrived on the landing at the top of the stairs, swiveling his head to determine which bedroom the voice had emanated from. He turned to his right just in time to come face-to-face with someone in the doorway. With more than a little amusement, he watched as the face that had haunted his every waking and sleeping moment appeared with a trace of a hopeful smile, and morphed quickly to an expression of wideeyed terror. Before Jen could register what was happening, he grabbed her by the front of her shirt, forced her back against the door frame, and pulled up his gun, slowly turning it just enough to allow him to place the muzzle snugly up against the opening of her left nostril. “Well, well. Dr. Rosenberg. Look at you, all grown up.” He pulled tighter on her shirt. “Remember me?”
• 223 •
D.L. Line
Jen nodded, trying to move as little as possible, as Bradley continued to taunt her. “Terri, baby?” He actually laughed, but just a little. “I love that you’re screwing the FBI. Good for you. I certainly can’t blame you. That Agent McKinnon would definitely be a trip that I’d like to take.” He tilted his head and leaned in closer to her face, pushing for a reaction. “Too bad I had to shoot her.”
The reaction was not what he expected. He watched as her eyes left his and looked over toward the window that he realized too late was right behind him. He released his hold just enough to turn, lowered his weapon, and asked, “Who’s out there?”
v
Terri watched the intense interplay through the window. She fought hard against her own panic and almost blinding pain to keep her weapon trained on the psychotic killer who was holding Jen against the door frame of her own bedroom with a loaded gun up her nose. Moving just a little to adjust her sweaty grip on the automatic weapon, she squeezed her left eye closed to line up the sights on the slide of the gun. Everything played out in close-up slow motion as Davis released Jen and turned to see what was outside.
She barked out an order—“Jen, get down!”—and pulled the trigger. The blast and resultant recoil of the weapon drove her arm back, sending lightning bolts of pain through the right side of her body, driving her to her knees and forcing her to gasp for air. Visually, she followed the shot up to the window, straining again but finally losing the fight to remain conscious.
v
• 224 •
On DangerOus grOunD
It all went south so quickly. He heard the voice outside and saw Jen throw herself to the floor, covering her head with her arms. He turned back to try to catch her, but was stopped as the glass of the window shattered inward and something slammed hard into the center of his back. Fighting to breathe against the intense pain that ripped through his chest, he looked down to watch the red stain rapidly spreading out on the front of his light blue button-down shirt. He struggled to make sense of what had just happened. “My shirt…”
He crumpled to the floorboards as fragments of glass continued to rain down on him. Jen shakily pulled herself up by the door frame and shouted down at him, releasing all of her terror and fury in a single outburst, taunting him one last time.
“Who’s out there? That was my girlfriend, you asshole.”
• 225 •
• 226 •
On DangerOus grOunD
Chapter thirty
Terri was still moving a little slower than normal. She puttered around the kitchen of her townhouse, making tea and scooping kibble. As Jojo happily began munching, Terri grabbed a white ceramic mug with bright rainbow letters that proclaimed her to be the “World’s greatest girlfriend.”
She smiled at the sight of her new favorite mug, remembering the first time she saw it, overflowing with flowers, sitting on the tray table as she woke up in room 335 of Rockingham Memorial Hospital. That was ten days ago. The first two days were spent in the hospital where Jen had never left Terri’s side, not even when the nurses suggested that she should. Terri turned back toward the stove and reached up to select a variety of tea from the cabinet overhead. She winced as a fresh bolt of pain shot through her side, reminding her that things were still not quite right. She pulled her arm down, hugging it close against her injured ribs, remembering the doctors had told her that she’d probably still have some discomfort for at least a month. “Ow.” She tugged at the hospital-issue rib support binding and started the process over again, this time using her left hand to reach up and remove the bright green Plantation Mint box.
She debated going back upstairs to check the news on
• 227 •
D.L. Line
the Internet, but stopped when she noticed the time on the microwave. She smiled. It was almost three in the afternoon and she knew Jen would be arriving any minute. The pain was gone now, replaced by the flapping of butterflies in her belly. She couldn’t wait to see Jen.
The FBI had graciously given Terri and Bobby time off to recover and finish their final reports on the Davis case from home. The reports were filed, their wounds were healing, and life had slowly returned to normal. Jen had had a week of classes to get through, but then she got ten days off for spring break, and was now on the way, Snickers in tow, to spend the entire time in DC.
The doorbell rang. Terri headed toward the front of the house and the commotion as Jen struggled, wrestling with her laptop case, large wheeled suitcase, and a really wiggly little mutt straining against his leash. Jen dropped the luggage, released the dog, and let the computer bag slide down her arm to the floor. Snickers immediately spied Jojo staring wideeyed from the doorway to
the dining room and bolted after her, grateful to have something to chase after being cooped up for two hours in the car. Jen and Terri just laughed and shook their heads, moving closer together to say a proper hello. Jen held her arms out, not sure what to do, so Terri took her by the hands, pulled her close, kissed her softly, and backed away.
“Jen, you can touch, you just can’t squeeze.”
Jen still didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t want to hurt you. I saw what you looked like in the hospital. That was the nastiest bruise I’ve ever seen. Not to mention thirteen stitches and that incredibly sexy black eye.”
Terri recalled her own images of what she’d looked like in the hospital. It really wasn’t very pretty.
She took Jen by the hands and pulled so their bodies were touching. “Jen, sweetie, I’m really lots better now. I even got
• 228 •
On DangerOus grOunD
my stitches out yesterday.” Just to demonstrate her muchimproved physical condition, Terri pressed forward, offering a much longer and deeper kiss than the first one. As she felt Jen start to relax, she ended the kiss, smiled a little, and said, “See? Much better. Now, why don’t you grab your stuff and we’ll take it upstairs? I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Terri led her up the steps to the second floor and into the bedroom. Terri sat on the edge of the bed, needing a moment to rest. Jen sat, placed a tentative arm around Terri’s shoulders, and leaned in carefully to give her a quick kiss. She noticed the large business envelope sitting on the nightstand. “Is that what you wanted to show me?”
Terri smiled and grabbed the envelope, presenting it with great ceremony. Jen turned it over. “Go ahead, open it.”
Jen undid the metal brads that held the envelope closed and pulled out the single sheet of paper. It was a certificate, homemade on the computer but fashioned to look official. She grinned as she read the proclamation out loud. “Federal Bureau of Investigation Certificate of Valor, presented on this date to Snickers Rosenberg, for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.” Jen looked up from the certificate, sniffing as the tears began to flow. She laughed. “He’ll love this. Thank you.”