Michael’s appearance went totally unnoticed until he lifted his enormous water gun and shot a stream of hot water at a man standing only a few yards from the lake front. The man shrieked in anger and pain. The reddish hue of his skin was visible even in the dark night and limited light.
But that stream of water and the attack in general were cut short as Ace erupted from the darkness and grabbed hold of Michael from behind. Ace wrenched the kid to one side and took him right down to the ground where he quickly used zip ties to secure his hands and his feet. It was like watching a rodeo cowboy rope a steer.
All around the courtyard, other skateboarders were being plucked off their transportation. They shouted and called to each other, but it didn’t matter. They were popping up exactly where they had just a few nights ago and Laurie’s men were ready for it. Soon enough, there were teenaged boys on the ground with their hands and feet zip-tied behind them and skateboards rolled crazily all over the cement sidewalks threatening to trip anyone not paying attention to where they were walking.
“Great work!” Younger called out to Jax. “Gather up the skateboards, will you? The police are en route with the juvenile authorities right behind.”
“Seriously?” Jax looked thrilled. “I thought they wouldn’t investigate.”
“Turns out you just have to talk to a detective who doesn’t like the idea of lawbreakers becoming public entertainment,” Younger fired back. “We’re all good now.”
At least, that’s what Younger thought. They were all good, as in the young men were all caught and dealt with, but that was just about the time Younger spotted Josh Bentley on the fringe of this entire operation. He was speaking to some of the security guards and patting them on the back as though he was somehow taking part in what was happening.
Younger watched with growing fascination as Bentley heartily shook hands and joked with the men. He smiled at tourists and shook their hands as well. It was as though he was reshaping history in his mind to be whatever he wanted it to be. And in this case, Josh Bentley figured he would just play the hero.
“Excuse me!” Younger called out to Josh. “Are you supposed to be here? I mean, really. Are you honestly trying to pretend you weren’t suspended for inappropriate assumption of authority?”
“That’s not a real charge,” Josh argued with a look of supreme confidence on his face. “I don’t know what they do in the Marines, but I’m going to say they don’t follow the law very accurately.”
“Right,” Josh said sarcastically. “And as a colonel, you would know.”
“Exactly.”
“Except you’re not a colonel. You were never even a commissioned officer. You were a sergeant.” Younger let those words sit for a moment before going on. “We’ve gotten some information on you, Sergeant Bentley. And I have to say, it isn’t all that flattering.”
The crowd of tourists and shoppers were looking from Josh to Younger with mild interest. Their attention was still on the show and that was as it should have been. But the employees? They were staring at Younger as though he was offering them a far more important display than some balls of fire and steams of water shooting into the sky.
“What are you saying?” Ace asked Younger. “How can you pretend to be a colonel if you’re not? Wouldn’t the military figure it out?”
“Not when you assume the identity of a father who had passed away after serving more than fifty years in the military,” Younger explained. He could see the significance of this fact settling into their brains. Soon enough they were going to start asking more questions and then nobody would be believing anything that Sergeant Joshua Bentley had to say at all.
Chapter Thirty
“I can’t believe he would show up here and try to take credit for all of this if he honestly had nothing to do with it!” Elena’s shock was palpable and Laurie could not blame her for that. It was shocking if you were a regular sort of person who didn’t think it was necessary to steal other people’s lives and try to claim their accomplishments as your own.
Laurie spotted Josh exchanging a few words with Younger. She wasn’t entirely sure what she had expected from that confrontation, but this wasn’t it. Josh still had a wide, fake smile on his face. The police were here. There were a lot of officers stamped with juvenile justice patches on their arms. The courtyard was getting a little too full, and Josh was wandering about as though he were honestly still trying to play it off!
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Elena murmured. She folded her arms so tightly that she was wrinkling her suit. “He’s actually coming over here. Does he honestly believe I’m going to buy whatever story he’s selling?”
“We have in the past,” Laurie reminded Elena. “I don’t know how many times I doubted him. I honestly did. But I couldn’t get past the idea that there was just nobody in the world who was going to lie about such a thing! Who would do that? And so I allowed him to convince me that he was right and I was wrong and eventually I thought I was going nuts.”
Elena took a deep breath and for a moment, Laurie wondered if she hadn’t been a victim of the same kind of situation. How many lies had Josh Bentley been telling her?
“Elena! I’m so glad that you could come this evening,” Josh blustered as he approached. His expression was filled with good humor while Laurie felt like hers was frozen in disbelief. “Now you can see what I was talking about. I knew I could arrange a way to trap these little hooligans and get them out of the way and off the promenade!”
“Right.” Elena just stared at Josh for a long moment or two. Then she shook her head. “Are you really going to try to make me believe that, Josh?”
“What do you mean?” His good humored expression seemed frozen in place. He stepped closer, close enough that Laurie felt her alarm bells going off. What was he up to? “Of course I expect you to believe the truth!”
“Josh.” Elena cut a glance at Laurie and then looked back at Josh. That was evidently all it took to set him off.
Josh stabbed his finger violently in Laurie’s direction. “Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been poisoned against me by this incompetent liar? Do you have any idea how much damage she has done to this retail center? The Landing has been running on a skeleton crew because she refuses to see the truth of her duty to the customers who shop here!”
Laurie looked back at Elena and waited. The “skeleton crew” comment had been a pretty consistent one for a long time now. Josh was absolutely convinced that this was all Laurie’s fault. She had been accused of deliberately fudging the numbers in order to claim there was no money to put more guys on the clock during shifts. The silly thing was that Laurie had showed Josh repeatedly how the numbers looked. He just didn’t believe her.
Elena glared hotly at Josh. “You do realize that Laurie is not the one responsible for the decision of how many employees can be assigned to a certain shift. Right? You get that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josh scoffed with a wild sweep of his hand. He appeared to be in full grandiosity mode. “She’s the one telling you that there isn’t business to warrant that kind of personnel and that you shouldn’t recommend the addition of extra guys.”
“Actually,” Elena began in a deliberately precise tone of voice. “Laurie is the one who has been suggesting to us repeatedly that we reconsider our personnel budget because she needs more manpower.”
“What?” Josh looked confused. “No. Those were my recommendations. You’re just getting the message from her so that she can look good.”
There was a heavy silence for a moment or two. Laurie was flabbergasted that this idiot could just stand there and lie through his teeth. Then he continued to stand there trying to take credit for her accomplishments. It was all rather horrible to hear. Laurie had never felt so utterly invalidated in her life. Except, it didn’t really count because the one doing the invalidating was actually fighting for every last bit of respect that he could, and there wasn’t much he had to hang onto.
“Josh,” Elen
a said slowly. She uncrossed her arms and held them out. “I’m not buying it anymore, and now I’ve discovered you lied about your military service record. That’s a serious offense. Do you understand how serious that is? I can’t have you affiliated with my company. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to let you go.”
Behind Josh, the police were busy trying to corral eighteen teenagers and get statements from anyone who had seen the event go down. There was an ambulance tending to the man who had been scorched by the hot water coming out of Michael Hornby’s water gun.
“She’s lying,” Josh said, his voice rising in pitch until Laurie was sure he was actually panicking. He was certainly grasping at straws. “As much as I’ve been doing to cover for her incompetence, it pains me to say that she’s throwing me under the bus to make herself look good!”
“Josh, that kid on the ground over there is your nephew.” Laurie was abruptly done with this nonsense. All of it. He needed to see they had the whole story. The real one. “You have been colluding with your nephew to have him and his friends do this for you.”
“Do what?”
“Get my job!” Laurie fired back. “That’s been your goal all along and don’t you dare try to deny it! You’ve wanted my job. You have wanted to take it from me and keep it for yourself and you know it. You’re a dirty, rotten liar who has been targeting the people who come to shop here in good faith so that you could get yourself in a position to solve the crimes and make me look incompetent in the bargain. Then you would happily slide into my position and have your cake and eat it too.”
“That’s a damned lie!” Josh shouted.
Younger turned to look at them now. His eyebrows were up in question. Laurie had only just decided to give him some kind of a sign to show that he was all right when Josh Bentley lunged at her across those too few feet that lay between them. His arm snaked around Laurie’s neck and he wrapped her in a nasty bear hug that smelled of fear, sweat, and too much cheap cologne.
“Let go of me!” Laurie shouted.
Elena reached in to help, but Josh was apparently done trying to pretend anything anymore. He hauled off and backhanded Elena with such force that the crack of his hand across her cheek echoed off the walls around them. Elena went twirling away and wound up on the ground with her hands covering her face. But that did nothing to help Laurie.
She could barely see what was happening. Josh had such a tight grip on her neck that her airway felt as though it was collapsing. Her hands automatically went to his arm as though her instincts were demanding she try to dislodge his arm from her throat.
“Stay back!” Josh shouted at Younger and a few of the other security guys. He was now backing toward the parking lot dragging Laurie along with him. Her heels caught on the pavement and each time she stumbled a bit and lagged behind, Josh’s arm would tighten on her throat and she would gag. “I’ll make sure she can never tell another lie!”
“She wasn’t lying, Josh.” Younger Adair moved toward them with both hands loose at his sides. He looked perfectly calm. “This isn’t going to help you and you know it.”
“What do you know?” Josh sneered. “Of course, it’s going to help. I’m going to get out to the parking lot and I’m going to leave. And if you think I’m going to spare her life just because you’re here, then you are out of luck!”
He kept dragging her. Adrenaline surged into Laurie’s bloodstream and she felt as though her thoughts were going at a hundred miles an hour. She had to get out of this stupid predicament. She should have never let him get that close to her. She should have remembered all of those self-defense lessons with Josh when she let him get too close. He was a monster, that was plain and simple.
Technique doesn’t matter. Results.
Laurie let go of Josh’s arm. It did not get any tighter around her neck. He was having a hard enough time figuring out where he was walking in order to get to the street out front. He passed by the kiosk message board on his way out of the promenade and that’s what gave Laurie the idea for her distraction.
“Look what we did to your stupid plan,” Laurie said as loudly as she could with her neck compressed into a pancake. “We changed it. That’s how we outsmarted you.”
“What?” He turned to stare at the board, obviously expecting to see something that wasn’t there. “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have known! That was the most ironclad plan ever!”
“Apparently not,” she boasted. “We put those kids just where we wanted them tonight. It was like taking candy from a baby.”
His arm was looser. He was stopped and staring at the stupid board. She had visions of someone roaring up on the sidewalk a few yards away and being thrust into the car and taken somewhere to be murdered. But he was stopping.
Before Laurie could process what was happening, he spun her around to face him. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Laurie gazed into his fervent dark eyes and knew she saw something truly mad in their depths. “I participated in a plan to bring you down. I know for a fact that the police are looking forward to hearing how you did it all. They’d love the details.”
“You bitch!”
Younger gave a shout, but Laurie was already on it. As soon as Josh spun Laurie to face him, she went limp in his arms. He could no longer hold onto her. She dropped down to her knees as soon as she felt a gap in his grip. He could not hold onto her. It was incredible. She slipped right through his hold and on her way down, she punched out as hard as she could with her right fist. Her knuckles connected with Josh’s nuts and the man was abruptly keeling over to grab his offended genitalia as Laurie was falling backwards on her backside.
She did not bother to get up and run. There was no time for that. Laurie scooted backwards with every single bit of power she could muster in her legs. She remembered what Younger had said. A woman had power in her legs while a man had it more in his arms. Maybe he was absolutely right. No doubt Josh knew he had been right.
“Laurie!” Younger swept her off the ground and held her close to his chest. He crushed her there, making it almost so she couldn’t breathe. Breathing was a bit optional at this point as far as she was concerned. She was too glad to be in his arms. “Thank God, you’re safe!”
“Did you see it?” Laurie felt the strangest and most incredible sense of accomplishment. Somehow, it felt really out of place. “Did you see me nail him in the nuts?”
With Josh behind her rolling on the ground in a fit and moaning, it was probably unlikely that anyone hadn’t seen her move. It was still totally worthwhile. She flung her arms around Younger and hugged him so tight that she wondered if maybe he couldn’t breathe either.
“Thank you!” Laurie gushed to Younger. “Thank you so much for taking the time to teach me something useful! I can’t believe I managed to get away from him like that!”
Detective Lowell strolled up with two officers hurrying along behind him. The uniformed officers hastily rolled the pained criminal onto his back and trussed up his hands in real handcuffs. Lowell held out his hand to Laurie.
“Let me shake the hand of the woman who just put her attacker in his place,” Lowell told her warmly. “I can promise you that I will be telling that story to just about every single person I see at the office this week.”
Laurie couldn’t help it. She felt like an idiot but she was smiling so big! Her face was split wide open in a grin and her adrenaline was still pumping hot in her veins. “It was Younger who taught me.”
“Well done then, Mr. Adair,” Detective Lowell drawled. “And I suppose if we get a request for a certain reporter to do a story on this incident, we will just give her the details of this one part.”
“That would make it a positive story,” Younger joked to Detective Lowell. “You know Hilary isn’t going to print that.”
“Then we’ve accomplished our goal,” Lowell teased. “But seriously, this was good work, Ms. Talcott. I’ll be letting your boss know we are very impressed with what you’ve done here.
This is the sort of security operation we very rarely see in retail situations and yet it makes our job so much easier.”
“I appreciate the compliments,” Laurie said honestly. Then she pursed her lips. “It’s really too bad the rest of your department can’t be on the same page with you on that.”
“No doubt,” Lowell said darkly. Then his expression closed and a moment later he was just pleasant. “But we’re working on that. It’s always a work in progress. You know? And soon enough, it will all work out for the best.”
“The best,” Laurie repeated. Yes, she could certainly get used to the idea that it was all going to work out for the best.
Chapter Thirty-One
Younger walked into the office on Wednesday morning feeling like a king. The bad guys had been vanquished. Okay, so the bad guys were actually teenagers following the orders of a disgruntled employee, but still, it was a huge win! Or perhaps the reason Younger felt exceptionally good was the case was over and he could officially start dating Laurie Talcott.
“Aren’t you in a good mood this morning?” Caroline mused as she looked up from her desk when he walked in. “I can’t imagine what that is about.”
She had to be kidding. But then, Younger was determined to have a good day today. He had a lunch date with Laurie. He had already asked her to go to dinner with him on Friday night. He was going to take her country dancing at a place he knew in Branson. It was going to be so much fun with just the two of them together that not even Caroline’s sourpuss attitude was going to ruin it for Younger.
“What? You’re not even going to say anything?” Caroline sniffed. “Then maybe I just won’t give you that phone message I got earlier.”
“Excuse me? What did you say?”
Younger turned around to face Caroline’s desk. This was new. She had never withheld phone messages. Ellie had mentioned it in the past. As though Caroline sometimes decided she was too busy to actually deliver a phone message to the desired recipient until a few days after it was received. It had been a problem more than once, but Younger had never experienced it. It could only mean that Caroline was really pissed at him for some reason.
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 70
