by David Archer
“And the address?”
“1400 Wild Turkey Lane. It’s down on the south side, one of those areas that are still mostly desert. Couple of little subdivisions around there, but this house sits off by itself.”
“And that’s where I will find the witnesses?” Garrett was looking closely at him.
“That’s where they were the last I knew,” Chance said, carefully keeping his face straight. He got to his feet. “After this, I'm done. If I see you again, you will not like the consequences.” He turned and walked away without another word, and he heard Garrett get to his feet behind him, and then heard him repeat the address to someone over the phone.
Okay, Roberts, Chance thought. It’s up to you, now.
Chapter 19
Special Agent Sherilyn Roberts put the phone down with an unusual look on her face, and her partner stared at her for a moment.
“Sherry? What’s the matter?”
“That was Reddick,” she said. “He says the DOJ guy who was murdered last night was fighting corruption in the WitSec program, and was staging the deaths of certain witnesses so that he could hide them away safe. Apparently he brought Reddick and his partner in on it, and now somebody has kidnapped Reddick’s kids to try to make him tell where the witnesses are being held.”
“Reddick? You believe him?”
Roberts stared at the phone for a couple of seconds, then looked up at McCord. “Yeah, I think I do. He’s giving the people who have his kids a phony address, and he figures they’re going to head there pretty quick to try to finish off these witnesses. Get us a response team and let’s get out there. 1400 Wild Turkey Lane.” She got up from her desk and checked her weapon while McCord was calling for their backup. “Come on, move it. If Reddick is on the up and up, we probably have about thirty or forty minutes to get prepped for this, and we have to make a stop at his office to pick up some evidence.”
McCord slammed down the phone and got up. “SWAT Team will meet us there. I'm right behind you.”
The two of them hurried out of the building toward Roberts’ car and were rolling only moments later. Luckily, Pete’s office was only a dozen blocks away and they got there quickly. They hurried inside and Josie was already holding out the flash drive for them.
“So, what is this?” Roberts asked as she took it. “Reddick said it’s a list of protected witnesses?”
“That’s what it seems to be,” Josie said, being careful not to say too much. “It’s way over my pay grade, I can tell you that.”
“Hell, it’s probably over mine. Do you have any idea what’s really going on here?”
“Me?” Josie squeaked. “I'm just the receptionist. I don’t even know what’s going on in my own office.”
Roberts looked at her for a moment, and then gave her a half grin. “Yeah, right.” She turned and left without another word, and McCord glanced at Josie before following her.
It was a twenty minute drive from the office to the house under normal circumstances, but Roberts pushed the car and even blasted her siren a couple of times to bypass red lights. They arrived in less than fifteen minutes, and spent another three minutes slipping the lock to get into the house. As soon as they were inside, she opened the garage door and had McCord bring the car inside. He parked it right next to Darrell Johnson’s Chrysler, which was still there.
“That’s the car the police are looking for,” McCord said. “Johnson, the guy from DOJ? That’s his car. Nobody seemed to know where it went.”
“We do now,” she said. “Here comes SWAT.”
A large black van pulled up and Roberts hurried the Special Weapons and Tactics people inside the house, then ordered the truck out of sight. The driver turned around quickly and headed back toward one of the main streets, where he could find a parking lot behind a building in which to wait until he was called.
“Agent Roberts, I'm Special Agent McKinnon,” said the SWAT team leader. “What’s the situation?”
“If my information is correct,” she said, “we are shortly going to be visited by people who expect to find WitSec witnesses hiding here. We want to take them alive if at all possible. It seems there might be an organization within the U.S. Marshals that’s been selling out our protected witnesses. If that’s true, I want to hang every damn one of them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” McKinnon said. He began barking orders to his men, and they were ready for whatever might happen within minutes.
Roberts and McCord sat in the living room to wait. “Jim, this could get nasty. Are you wearing your vest?”
“Never leave home without it,” McCord said. “Becky would kill me if I did.”
“And somebody else will kill you if she doesn’t. We’re going to let SWAT handle this, and we just go in for the mop up. Got it?”
“Hey, that’s why they get the big bucks. I'm perfectly content to let them handle the messy stuff. Besides, we still get credit for the arrest, right?”
Roberts grinned at him. “If there is one. If there isn’t, I'm going to look pretty stupid, and Chance Reddick is going to wish he’d never heard of me.”
McCord grinned back. “I'm pretty sure he feels that way already.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at her. “You really think he’s a killer?”
“Even worse,” she said. “I think he’s a vigilante. That detective back in Kentucky? He said there’s no doubt in his mind that Reddick killed those gang bangers that murdered his sister. He just can’t come up with proof, but he’s still working on it. Then we got the Cardwell and Finnigan murders, and a few unexplained deaths up north, where he used to live. Finnigan? Turns out he was the guy who Pete Dixon swears ordered the deaths of his family a few years ago. Not being able to get him is what drove Dixon to being a drunk, according to the local cops who knew him, and a lot of them think he might be involved in Finnigan’s death.” She smirked. “I think Reddick killed Finnigan out of some kind of loyalty to Dixon. You ask me, the guy sees himself as some sort of judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one.”
“Well, that would suck,” McCord said. “To be honest, I halfway like the guy. And even if he is doing what you say, at least it means bad people are getting off the street, right?”
“Watch your mouth, Jim,” Roberts said. “You know better than to say things like that to me. Due process of law, that’s what the Constitution guarantees to everyone.”
“And it’s also the reason so many people walk out of the courtrooms after we bring them in,” McCord shot back. “Are you going to tell me you haven’t occasionally thought about using just a little bit of excessive force when you had the chance?”
“Thinking about it and doing it are two different things.” The look she gave him made him close his mouth without offering another comment.
It was almost forty minutes later when her phone rang again, and she glanced at it to see that it was Chance calling again. “Yes?”
“I hope you’re ready,” Chance said. “I'm pretty sure they’re on the way.”
“Then now might be a good time to tell me who we’re dealing with,” Roberts said. “Spill it, Reddick.”
“All I know at the moment is that a guy named Chuck Garrett, who supposedly runs the witness protection program for this region, is the man who had my sons. I made a deal with him to give him the address in return for my kids, and he handed them over. In return, I gave him the address I gave you.”
“Garrett, huh? I know him. Is he going to be coming here himself?”
“I doubt it,” Chance said. “I just heard him pass the address off to someone else. I have no idea how close they could be, but you could have action coming your way at any moment.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll call you when this is over. You are going to have to give us a statement, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am, and I will be glad to. Listen, I do know that there’s someone else above Garrett involved. No idea who it is, but it’s a woman.”
“And how would you know that?”
Roberts asked. “Did Johnson tell you?”
“I overheard a phone call Garrett made,” Chance said. “It was definitely a woman he was talking to, but that’s all I know. It could be anyone.”
“Well, despite what you might think, there are a few women highly placed at DOJ, and even within the Marshals. I’ll look into it as soon as this is over. Like I said, you just be expecting my call.”
“I certainly will be.”
The line went dead and Roberts put the phone back into her pocket. “Jim, you know Chuck Garrett over at the Marshals?”
“Yep. Seems okay.”
“According to Reddick, he’s the man who had his kids. He’s also the guy who just told someone to come here and look for the witnesses.” She raised her voice. “McKinnon? Get ready.”
Nothing happened for another fifteen minutes, but then a pair of cars pulled into the driveway. Both McCord and Roberts could see that four men got out of each of them, and that each of them was carrying an automatic weapon.
“Holy shit,” she said softly. “This thing is really happening.”
She and McCord got on the floor, each of them with a handgun aimed toward the front door. It burst open a moment later, and two of the men came rushing inside.
“Freeze!” Roberts shouted. “Federal agents!”
Both men turned their weapons and pointed them in her direction, and both she and McCord opened fire. At other points around the house, they could hear automatic weapons fire, the quick staccato sound of a small war taking place.
The two men who had come through the door fell, but neither of them was dead. Both had been wearing bulletproof vests, and McCord jumped onto his feet and rushed them. Roberts screamed at him to get back just as a third man leaned around the door and squeezed the trigger on his submachine gun.
McCord went down, blood spraying from a wound in his right arm, and another in his left leg. Roberts fired three times in rapid succession, taking the gunman in the head and dropping him like a ragdoll. One of the other men was trying to get to his feet and ignored her when she shouted for him to get down, so she fired again. This time, her bullet entered the man’s right cheek and came out through his left temple.
The other gunman on the floor looked at her, then tossed away his weapon and held up his hands. She got up then, hurried over and kicked his gun farther away, then knelt to check on her partner.
“Jim? How bad?”
“Hurts like hell,” McCord hissed. “My arm is bleeding pretty badly, but my leg isn’t.” He was fumbling with his belt and pulled it off as she knelt beside him. She helped him wrap it around his arm and pull it tight, a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding, keeping her gun trained on the other man the whole time.
“Situation secure,” McKinnon shouted, and a moment later, he came into the living room. “With yours, that makes three captured alive. The rest of them were too stupid to know they were outgunned, so they tried to make a stand.” He grinned at her. “It was their last.”
“Okay, my partner’s wounded. Let’s call it in, and get an ambulance out here for McCord. Anybody else hurt?”
McKinnon grinned. “None of my guys,” he said. “You really need to teach these rookies not to play hero.”
“Screw you,” McCord said. “I wasn’t trying to play hero, I was trying to secure our prisoners. I thought everybody else was fighting with your guys.”
“That’s why you stay down until the guns go quiet,” Roberts said. “Becky is going to have my ass for letting you get shot.”
“No, trust me,” McCord said. “It’ll be mine she chews on.”
Local police arrived moments later, and it was only a few minutes after that that the news crews started to show up. Roberts managed to keep them away, but only by promising that they would get a statement later in the day.
When everything was under control and McCord had been carried off in an ambulance, she took out her phone again. She found Chance’s last call and hit redial.
“It went down like you said,” she said. “How soon can you get to my office?”
“How soon do you want me there? I need a few minutes to get home and make sure my wife and kids are okay, and then I will be on the way. Will that work?”
“Good enough. I’ll see you in an hour.” She cut off the call, then dialed again. “This is Special Agent Roberts,” she said. “I need someone to go pick up Chuck Garrett at the U.S. Marshals office. Get him in an interview room and let him stew for a while. The charge? Tell him he’s looking at murder, for starters. I don’t know how many counts yet, but I bet there’ll be quite a few.”
She put the phone away, went out to her car, started it up and headed back toward her office. Somebody else could deal with all the paperwork about the house, because she had to start putting together a file on the entire case. She’d gone about a mile and a half when her phone rang again.
“Roberts,” she said.
“Agent Roberts? This is Richard Goff, at the U.S. Marshals office. I have got some of your agents in here demanding to take Chuck Garrett into custody. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“Sure, no problem. I have received information and evidence that Garrett has been selling out protected witnesses. Until I know differently, I want him where I can keep an eye on him.”
Goff let out a sigh. “Yeah, well, that’s the problem. Garrett left the office a couple of hours ago to run some errands, and nobody has seen him since. He’s not answering his phone and he turned off the GPS. We have no idea where he might be at the moment.”
Roberts growled into the phone. “Son of a bitch,” she said. “We’ll get an APB out on him. If he turns up, I want to know it immediately, you understand me?”
“No problem,” Goff said. “I also just got word that five of our marshals were just killed in a shootout with your SWAT team. I'm absolutely dying to read the report on this. Do you have any idea how big an investigation I'm launching over here? I'm locking down every marshal in the state until I know who was involved and who was not.”
Roberts shook her head. “If those were actual marshals, this thing may be a hell of a lot bigger than I thought in the beginning. I'm on the way to my office to meet my source for all this information. I will be more than happy to let you know what I find out.”
“Agent Roberts, I would certainly appreciate it. And I will do the same for you.”
Chapter 20
Chance got home to find Pete’s Crown Victoria in the driveway, and he parked beside it before hurrying into the house. Pete caught him just inside the living room and pulled him aside.
“Listen, since the boys didn’t realize what was happening,” he said, “I thought that might be the best way to leave it. I called ahead and managed to give Gabriella a heads up, and she’s just playing it off like she’s a little bit miffed at you about setting it up for the kids to skip school. I think it might be a good idea for you to keep it that way, at least for now.”
“Yeah, that’s smart,” Chance said. “Thanks, Pete.”
“No problem. I'm going to head back to the office with Josie. I will see you there when you get done here, right?”
“I have to go see Roberts in just a bit,” Chance said. “I’ll let you know what happens after that.”
“Sure thing,” Pete said. “See you later, buddy.” He walked out the door, leaving Chance standing in the living room.
Chance went into the kitchen, where the boys were excitedly telling their mother and grandma about their day. They had apparently been treated well and never realized that anything bad might be happening. Chance figured they would need to know the truth later, but not just yet.
Gabriella looked up at him as he came in, and her eyes told him how much she loved him and thanked him. He winked at her, then went into his sheepish act. “Listen, honey,” he said, “I know you are probably a little mad about this, but it was just once, and I thought the boys might get a kick out of it.”
Gabriella managed to make her fac
e look stern. “We will talk about it later,” she said. She came to him and put her arms around him, then pushed him gently back into the living room. “Is it over?” she asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “At the moment, I think it might be a good idea for you and Grandma and the boys to get out of here for a while. Maybe go over to California, stay in a hotel for a couple of days.”
“Chance, do you think it’s necessary? I hate the thought of being away from you right now.”
“Look, honey,” Chance said. “This is the kind of thing I need to handle by myself. I’ll feel a lot better if I know you and the kids are out of reach, okay?”
She let out a sigh. “Okay. I’ll get us packed up and we’ll go somewhere.” She squeezed him tight, then turned and went back into the kitchen. “Well, boys, it seems your vacation isn’t entirely over. Grandma, how about you come with me and the boys and we go take a trip for a little while?”
Grandma looked over at where Chance was standing, and she caught his almost imperceptible nod. “Why, that sounds like fun,” she said. “Where should we go?”
Gabriella grinned at her. “Ever been to Disneyland?”
That, of course, set the boys off into even more excitement. At their mother’s urging, they hurried into the room to pack some clothes while Chance explained to his grandmother why he felt it was necessary for them to get out of town for a while.
“I understand,” the old woman said. “You do what you need to do, Chance. I will look after Gabriella and the boys, don’t you worry.”
Thirty minutes later, after hasty packing and hurried loading, Gabriella, Grandma and the boys got into Gabriella’s car and were gone. Chance followed them to the interstate, just to be sure no one else was trying to tail them, and then turned and headed for the FBI office.