Cold Aim

by Janice Cantore

  28

  Ice paced like a caged animal in his small hotel room. After he’d taken care of the checker, he’d hotfooted it back to where his bike was stashed. Good thing about a small town, the sidewalks folded up early. He’d not noticed anyone in the area when he hopped on the bike. He chugged carefully up the road he’d seen the Fed take, and it wasn’t long before he found what he was certain was the shelter. He probably would have found it even without the cashier. The place was gated, and tight security in a small town was a dead giveaway that something was different.

  Parking the bike, Ice carefully took a walk along the fence line. It was good security; in the dark it wasn’t easy to tell if he could breach it. Because the exterior of the dwelling was well lit, he was able to view most of the structures on the property and recognized that getting in was not going to be easy. The fence around the property was climbable, but that would be time-consuming. The only way to get in quickly was through the front gate, but how? It wasn’t like he could just drive up and ask for admittance. And he was on a motorcycle—that was more problematic.

  It was then that this spitting, icy rain had started. He’d pulled his hood up and headed back to his hotel. He’d intended to pack his stuff, finish the job at dawn, and then be gone. But this freezing, icy, on-and-off rain had stopped him. He was used to working in climes where the weather didn’t restrict him like this. Being on the bike in this weather would be treacherous. On the way back to the hotel, he’d almost lost control in a slide on the slick roadway.

  A nagging anxiety about exactly how he’d kill the girl and get out of the state undetected weighed down on him. He was having trouble formulating a plan. Ice realized that it had been a mistake to get rid of the cashier so quickly. He could have used another couple of days for reconnaissance.

  Fear that the girl would be moved and the pressure of Gage coming had forced his hand, and the more Ice thought about it, the angrier he got. He knew Cyrus was nervous—this was the closest anyone had gotten to him—but Ice never should have let pressure influence the way he did his job.

  While he paced, he tried to figure out how to get out of the hole he found himself in. His burner phone buzzed with a text and he picked it up. It was from the work crew supervisor. They were delaying the work start this morning because of the icy conditions.

  Ice responded with a thumbs-up emoji and tossed the phone back on the bed. A small bit of good news. He had no intention of returning to work. This would just mean a few extra hours before they’d notice “Jim Smith” was gone.

  His other phone vibrated with a text, and Ice cursed. Gage had arrived—he must have flown—and Ice was out of time. He took several deep breaths to center himself. It didn’t take long for him to calm down. Gage would have a plan, and Ice would go with the flow. If that didn’t work, it would be on Gage, not Ice.

  He texted Gage the name of his hotel. Twenty minutes later the big man knocked on the door.

  “You find her?” he asked.

  “Yeah. She’s holed up in a women’s shelter nearby.”

  “Feds?”

  “Only one that I’ve seen. But the place is locked down tight. Not sure yet how we can get in.”

  Gage grinned. “I am.” He pulled a wallet out of his pocket and handed it to Ice.

  Ice took it. Inside was a US marshal ID card, the real deal from what he could tell. It had the name Joseph Turner under Gage’s picture.

  “I got the creds, man. I’ll drive up there and take her right from under their noses.”

  “They’re not going to just give her to you.”

  “Oh yeah, they will.” He retrieved some more papers. Ice looked them over. They were as authentic as any he’d ever seen, court orders that Roberta Impala was to be released to US Marshal Joseph Turner ASAP.

  Ice was impressed, but he kept his expression blank. “How do you want to play it?”

  “I say we drive over there now. I’ll head straight for the front door. If it goes smooth and they hand over the girl, we beat feet out of here. There’s a private jet waiting for us at the airport.”

  “And if they don’t just hand her over?”

  “Well, it’s scorched earth—you know that.” He tapped the ballistic vest he was wearing. “We go in hot. I don’t think the cops here are anything to worry about.” He arched an eyebrow, and Ice shook his head.

  Gage continued. “I’ve got the hardware in the car. You’re my backup. Any hitches for me, you’ll know what to do.”

  Ice studied Gage. He stood six feet nine inches tall and probably weighed three hundred pounds. He’d done some boxing and worked as a bouncer before Cyrus hired him. He was a scrapper, but he didn’t read people very well. He could at least serve as a distraction, though. He’d get Ice through that first gate. Maybe the fake order would work, maybe it wouldn’t. But scorched earth covered a lot of ground, and things could get ugly if the one Fed put up any kind of resistance.

  In spite of the simplistic plan, Ice found himself smiling. Yes, this could work. It wasn’t the first time someone would be stepping in front of him. The point person usually took the first bullet.

  He nodded. “Okay, let me tell you about this shelter.”

  Ice explained everything he knew. He drew a crude map of what he had seen on his brief recon trip, then dressed in his best jeans, set aside his work boots for a pair of shoes, put on the body armor Gage had brought for him, and armed himself. Ice normally hated anything that restricted his movement, but the vest could come in handy.

  Gage had also brought an assortment of weapons, and since this might be a scorched-earth situation, Ice put away his favorite weapon, his shiny .357 revolver. He picked up a couple of 9mm automatics that Gage had brought because the clips each held fifteen rounds. He hadn’t loaded the clips, so none of his prints would be on the casings. He put one in a belt holster and the other in a shoulder holster. Then, for security, he put his little .38 revolver in an ankle holster. Lastly, he jammed a box of extra ammo in his pocket. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but with his close-cropped hair and a close shave, he was certain he’d pass as an agent.

  When they were ready, he took his belongings and climbed into Gage’s rental car. It was a nice ride, a top-of-the-line Dodge Charger. He’d seen Fed cars like this, so that was a good thing. But for Ice the biggest perk of this ride was that it would make a good getaway car, impervious to the cold and spitting rain. Despite the dark day and storm clouds, Ice put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  Gage drove leisurely, and when they reached the gate to the shelter a little after 8:15 a.m., he punched the intercom button, placed his fake ID up to the small monitor.

  Ice straightened his sunglasses and held his breath, knowing that they’d only get one shot at this.

  29

  It was a guardedly somber day at the church, and in the town as a whole. Tami was well-known and liked. And word spread rapidly about what had happened. The Rogue telegraph was on overdrive. In her year plus working in Rogue’s Hollow, Tess felt crime here more personally than she ever had in Long Beach. Someone, usually someone Tess knew, always knew the victim. Crime, especially violent crime, hit home.

  Tess knew that it hit Oliver particularly hard as she watched him console Tami’s mother at the church. Sadly, the woman could tell her nothing about who Tami might have been with.

  Tess planned to follow them to the hospital, but when it became apparent that Rosita really didn’t know any more about her daughter’s “date,” she decided that she could do more in town, trying to find the culprit.

  “I understand, and I agree,” Oliver told Tess. “I’ll call you if there is any news.”

  “Thanks.” Tess reached out and gripped his arm. “I’ll find the person who did this—I promise.”

  He nodded. “I know you will.” He touched her hand briefly before heading for his car.

  Several people from the prayer team followed Oliver and Rosita to the hospital. Tess watched them go, wishing she felt as comforta
ble with the prayer team and other members of Oliver’s church as she thought she should be. That niggling worry hit again. She’d realized early on that Oliver was the whole package—he was as dedicated to his church as she was to her job. Sometimes fear struck. Could the two of them really forge a life together when their two professions often seemed intent on pulling them apart?

  “Do you really think you’re any good for him?”

  “What?” She turned, frowning. An older woman Tess knew in passing—Alana was her name—had come up behind her. Alana was a longtime church member, from before Oliver was hired, and part of the meals ministry that had kept Oliver fed after Anna’s death.

  “Pastor Mac. He deserves a woman completely dedicated to him, to his calling. You can never be that woman.”

  Taken aback, Tess remembered Oliver mentioning once or twice that a lot of the older women in his congregation were very protective of him. Was that what this was?

  “Pardon me, but I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Tess swallowed and fought to keep the edge out of her voice. She left the woman standing in front of the sanctuary and went back to her car.

  Alana had stabbed at the very real fear Tess felt and worked to bury and ignore. A man like Oliver did deserve someone totally devoted to him, with nothing else distracting her. Someone like the woman he’d lost. Someone like Anna.

  Tess knew she could never be Anna. Could she truly be good for Oliver?

  Tess was good at compartmentalizing, and she stuffed the encounter with Alana down deep when she returned to the station. She hadn’t been in her office long when there was a knock on the door.

  “Hey, how are things going?” Steve Logan asked.

  “Crazy.” She detailed for him her part of the investigation concerning Tami so far. “We think she went in the water at the Stairsteps.”

  Steve whistled. “Wow, and she survived the Stairsteps, then the creek, then the river all the way through Shady Cove?” He stopped to consider this, and it struck Tess hard as well. Tami being alive was a true miracle.

  He continued filling her in on Tami’s condition. “She’s on the edge, had obviously been knocked around by the current. Besides having two bullet holes, her face, hands, and legs were scraped up, so she probably grabbed at bushes along the bank in several different places before she came to the launch ramp.”

  Tess gritted her teeth, the thought of Tami being shot twice causing her anger to ramp up. She’d have to return to the Stairsteps, do a better search. Though she’d looked around the area, they hadn’t known Tami had been shot and had not searched specifically for shell casings. Did they miss discarded brass?

  “Did she say anything about the shooter?”

  “No, but according to the medics who brought her in, at first she was mumbling—delirious, I guess you’d say. She was repeating lessons from water survival courses.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “I took the same classes. You live near a river like the Rogue, you need to learn safety. She kept repeating, ‘Feet forward, head up, try for the side.’ If that’s what she was doing all night, then it probably is what saved her life. I imagine that also enabled her to stop herself at the boat ramp.”

  Tess remembered those commands from when she’d taken a rafting trip. If you fell out of the raft, it was important to turn your body so your feet were pointed downriver, and to try to keep your head out of the water to breathe.

  “Amazing” was all Tess could say.

  “Yeah, she’s tougher than I thought. I bet she pulls through.”

  “We’re sure praying for that.”

  “I put a deputy on her door, didn’t think you could spare the manpower.”

  “Thanks, Steve, I appreciate that. Do you have any idea what kind of weapon was used?”

  “Small caliber. My guess is a .22 or .38. You recover any casings?”

  “I’ll need to give the area a better look. That she’d been shot had not occurred to me earlier.”

  “Let me know. I’ve asked the doctor to preserve any slugs if he’s able to recover them. I’ll call if anything else comes up.”

  Tess walked him to the station door, thankful that Tami was alive and praying she’d lead them to her assailant. In the meantime, she left Bender to try to contact the supervisor of the work crew while she went back to the Stairsteps to look for brass. It was raining lightly; her mother would call it a drizzle. An icy drizzle. And it was cold, which thankfully meant the few tourists had been chased away.

  She first rechecked the area where the car had been parked and then walked to the viewing platform, all the while thinking about the cold, harsh journey Tami took downriver. Tess had rafted the Rogue from the fish hatchery below Lost Creek Lake to the very boat ramp where Tami had been found. It bothered her beyond belief that anyone would shoot a person and shove them in the water, much less a harmless, innocent woman.

  She wished a shooting had occurred to her earlier. But this was Rogue’s Hollow, not Long Beach. What could Tami have done to anyone that would provoke a shooting?

  The viewing platform was off to the side of Midas Creek. Only the far edge was close to the water, and even then, Tami would have to have practically been thrown from the platform to hit the creek and go over the falls. That would have been enough trauma to be fatal, without being shot twice.

  As she looked over the railing at the stair-stepping waterfalls, a troubling thought creased her brow. Did this violence have anything to do with Chevy, or was it just another matter of an opportunistic work crew member?

  Tess hated coincidences, and this one bothered her as she returned to the station. She and Bender went to work accounting for all the members of the work crew. Bender had had no luck raising the supervisor of the work detail on the phone, so they drove to his house in White City. The weather grew increasingly worse; freezing rain turned to hail. They found the supervisor hungover and grouchy.

  “We’re working a half day today,” he said. “Hoping it will warm up a bit after noon.”

  Tess told him why they were there.

  “My guys have worked their tails off for nearly two weeks and you want to pin a shooting on one of them?”

  “If one of them is guilty, yes. Did you see any of them spend a lot of time with the cashier at the Hollow market?”

  He sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “Nah, no one more than another.”

  “Any of them seem off to you?” Bender asked.

  “No. Like I’ve said repeatedly, they are all hard workers. I was surprised about the thief.”

  They pressed him a little more, but he had nothing to say. Tess knew he’d been angry after the theft arrest. He’d felt that Bender had accused him of not watching his people carefully enough.

  “He couldn’t have been less helpful,” Tess said as she and Bender walked back to their cars. “Let’s split this list up. We have to get all these guys interviewed.”

  “Agreed.”

  Splitting the list gave them each six names. Tess committed the names to memory and pulled up the addresses.

  30

  Ice checked his watch. They’d been at the gate for ten minutes and he was getting antsy. There was a tense back-and-forth at the shelter’s gate, but Gage stayed cool and kept his marshal ID front and center. Finally the gate swung open and Ice felt himself relax. He was in a go-with-the-flow mode, and a keep-a-sharp-eye-out-for-any-opening level of alert.

  “After I park and get out, stand by the car and look official.”

  Ice stared at Gage. “I’m not a moron. Just sell the fake order.”

  “Oh, I’ll sell it. Once I get the girl, we need to be outta here fast.”

  Ice clenched his teeth. He didn’t need Gage acting as if he were some new guy out on his first job.

  “Let’s do a sound check,” he said.

  They each had earpieces so Ice could hear everything that happened at the door. He put a hand to his ear.

  “Check as we kick b
utt,” Gage whispered.

  Ice held a thumb up. “Loud and clear.”

  Gage pulled to the front of the shelter, positioning the car in a spot on the circular drive so they could drive straight away and not waste any time when they needed to leave. He grabbed Royal’s sleeve. “You know what to do.”

  Ice bit back something snarky. “I sure do.” All he’d have to do was wait and watch. It was all on Gage, really. If it went smoothly for him, then as soon as they had the girl, they’d hop in the car and hit the gas. If things went wrong . . . well, they had the firepower to just take her. If anything unplanned happened, Ice would move in fast and shoot anyone who got in his way.

  Gage shoved the car into park but left it running as he opened the driver’s door. Ice climbed out of the car, irritated at the cold rain that was falling, hoping not to be in the elements for long. He took a position at the back door, ready to open it for Chevy, trying to mimic a posture he’d seen cops on TV take. He stood tall, hands clasped in front of him. The Asian woman Royal had seen the other day exited the front door and met Gage on the porch.

  Gage greeted her. “Morning, ma’am, do you run this place?”

  “No, I’m Agent Takano, FBI.” She held up ID. “What do you mean you’re here for Roberta? I’m waiting for a call back from Agent Bass.”

  “Agent Bass should have already called you. The marshal’s office is taking over Roberta’s protection—we should have had that detail from the beginning. I have all the paperwork.”

  There was a rustling of papers. Gage handed Takano the fake court order. She took it and looked everything over. For a minute, Royal thought Gage’s ruse was going to work. But then Takano balked.

  “Agent Bass should be calling me back any minute.”

  Gage moved toward the door, blocking Royal’s view of the agent. “I don’t have time to wait for that. You can see that everything is clear and legal—”