The Shadow Tracer

by Mg Gardiner

  Harker didn’t flinch. “None of this will be put into action until I have transported the prisoners to federal lockup. Did you not understand? I don’t need Sarah Keller here. I just need her to have been here. Because once I use her credit card, it’ll be like bees to honey. The Worthes will come.”

  Lawless didn’t know whether Harker considered him a prisoner or not. But he knew he needed to get Sarah and Teresa and Zoe out of there. He needed backup from the Marshals Service, and that would take several phone calls—to his boss, who could call people in high places, who could then order Harker to stand down.

  His most burning worry was Zoe. She shouldn’t be here. She was in a sheriff’s station, but extremely vulnerable.

  He glanced toward her just in time to see her slide off the plastic chair. For a moment she stood staring at nothing, as though listening to sounds and vibrations none of the rest of them could hear. She looked around the lobby, slowly—at the desk, at Harker and the sergeant, and then past them, out the glass-fronted door.

  Lawless said, “What is it?”

  Her gaze lifted to meet his, gleaming and frightened. “Something’s coming.”

  50

  Lawless followed Zoe’s gaze. Outside was nothing but darkness, seen through the reflected fluorescent lighting off the door and windows. But somehow the air in the room seemed to thrum.

  “What’s coming, Zoe?” he said.

  She stared out the door into the night. Then she looked up at him. “I want to leave.”

  A high-pitched hum invaded his head. He held out his hand. She took it.

  Outside, several hundred yards distant along the highway, headlights rose.

  Sgt. Butler noticed their watchfulness. He looked out the door. A dark vehicle droned up the highway toward the crossroads and station house. Harker had taken out his phone and was scrolling through numbers. Lawless said, “Men.”

  The vehicle held its speed as it approached the crossroads. It rushed straight through, disappearing westward, maybe headed for Arizona, or Malibu.

  Lawless swallowed, feeling bizarrely relieved. Harker gave him a disdainful look.

  Zoe lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “I want to go. Please.” She looked up at him again. “We should leave. Where’s my mom?”

  Another set of headlights appeared on the highway, high beams, coming their way. Zoe squeezed his hand.

  The vehicle swelled into view, slowing at the crossroads. It was a van. It angled across the road into the sheriff’s station parking lot and stopped sideways across the empty parking slots outside, parallel to the front wall. In the light leaking from the station’s windows, the spray-painted silver alien glittered on top of it. It was the UFO Tours van.

  Sgt. Butler walked back behind the counter. One of the Roswell deputies headed for a vending machine in the hallway.

  Holding tight to Lawless’s hand, Zoe backed up a step.

  Faces filled the van’s windows. The driver got out. Looked like the man in the ball cap who had been at the side of the road earlier, when …

  “Harker. Sergeant,” Lawless said. “Lock the door.”

  Harker looked up from his call. Butler glanced at Lawless, perplexed. The driver walked along the far side of the van toward its rear end.

  “Now,” Lawless said. “Lock it. Deputies, watch him.”

  He grabbed Zoe and moved toward the hallway.

  Butler said, “What the hell’s got into you?”

  “Sergeant,” Lawless barked. “That van was broken down on the highway. Why is it here?”

  The driver lifted the tailgate. Two other people climbed from the van and walked toward the station. In front was a chunky woman wearing an I BELIEVE sweatshirt. Behind her was a young woman. Close behind.

  The tailgate slammed and inside the back of the van there was a bright flash.

  One of the deputies said, “It’s on fire.”

  He rushed to the door and ran outside.

  “Where’s the fire extinguisher?” Harker yelled.

  Lawless shouted: “It’s the Worthes.”

  The van seemed to whoosh, and filled with flame. The people inside it screamed. Lawless felt himself detach from the room and zoom out, as though seeing the scene from above.

  Another deputy ran outside with the fire extinguisher.

  The girl behind the I BELIEVE woman reached around her and brought up the matte black shotgun she’d been holding at her side. With one hand she aimed it at the deputy and fired.

  He went down against the van. The girl shoved the I BELIEVE woman away. The driver came around the back of the van, pistol in his hand. The second deputy was trying to open the van door. He turned, hand on his holster. The driver shot him in the chest.

  The van was roiling with flame, screams seeming to emanate from everywhere. Somehow the people inside lurched out the far side, some with their clothes on fire.

  “Don’t let them get through the door,” Lawless yelled.

  But Sgt. Butler was lumbering for the gun locker. He pulled at the key ring on his belt.

  Lawless turned to put his body in front of Zoe. “Harker, where’s my weapon?”

  Harker had drawn his own gun. He and Marichal both. They turned to the front door just as the girl with the Mossberg kicked it open and came through, firing.

  51

  Sarah was already on her feet, brought up by yells from the lobby, when the gunshot boomed through the station. She gasped. The blast was deep and heavy.

  “Zoe. Oh God.”

  She pounded on the door. “Harker, let me out.”

  More shouts from the lobby, and another shot. A man screamed.

  “Zoe.” She slammed her fist against the wood. “Open the door.”

  She yelled through the wall to the other interrogation room. “Teresa, can you get out?”

  “No—door’s locked.”

  Sarah looked around the room. She picked up one of the plastic chairs and started bashing it against the doorknob.

  The shotgun blast missed everybody and tore chunks of wood from the front counter. The man with the semiautomatic pistol charged through the station door and fired, hitting Sgt. Butler in the thigh. Butler cried out and fell to the floor.

  Lawless hoisted Zoe onto his hip and backed around a corner. He needed a weapon and he needed it now. The little girl clung to him. He was barely aware of her, just chattering teeth and rapid breathing, little hands squeezing him around the neck.

  The woman with the Mossberg swept the barrel back and forth. She looked impossibly young and absolutely bloodless. Blond hair and slim jeans and utter confidence with the shotgun. Butler dragged himself across the floor, trying to draw his service weapon from the holster on his hip.

  The woman leveled the barrel at him and fired.

  Harker and Marichal ducked low and ran into the desk pen, behind the Plexiglas wall. They crouched behind a desk and counted, synchronizing. On three they stood and fired through the glass toward the lobby.

  Their shots sounded like ball bearings crunching into Glad Wrap. They punched neat holes in the Plexiglas. The blonde threw herself across the front counter and slid to the floor on the far side. She came up pumping the shotgun. Harker and Marichal ducked. She fired across the counter and blasted a hole in the glass a foot wide.

  Lawless needed a weapon, but even more he needed to get Zoe out of there. He held her tight and ran down the hall. He heard pounding on a door. He threw it open.

  Sarah stood inside with a chair overhead, ready to slam it down on his head.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Michael.” She dropped the chair. Her eyes were wild. He handed Zoe to her. They ran.

  Sarah held Zoe tighter than she thought possible. “How do we get out of here?”

  Lawless rushed to the room next door and let Teresa out. She looked strangely calm. She had Zoe’s backpack in her hand. She said, “What can I do?”

  More gunfire echoed from the lobby.

  Lawless pointed deeper in
to the building. “Find the back exit. Go.”

  Sarah ran, Zoe bouncing on her hip. She looked back and saw a man appear at the top of the hallway: Grissom Briggs. He had a silver gun in his hand. He raised it and fired.

  Her skin seemed to spark. The shot hit the wall at the end of the hallway ahead of her. She skittered around a corner with Teresa on her heels.

  Lawless saw Grissom Briggs round the corner. He threw himself through the door of the interrogation room. Briggs fired and hit something solid—concrete. He retreated.

  Across the hall, in the Plexiglas pen, Marichal and Harker were pinned down behind a desk.

  Lawless said, “Where’s my weapon?”

  Harker glanced at him with regret. “Car. Outside.”

  From the parking lot came a low boom and an orange fireball filled the view. The walls and windows shuddered. The UFO Tours van had exploded.

  Lawless could see it through the glass partition: it had flipped over the curb and landed against the front door of the station. Flames shot from it as from a rocket booster. They licked against the eaves of the building.

  The weapons locker had to be close. Sgt. Butler had been headed for it. He looked at Butler’s body on the floor twenty feet away.

  He called to Harker: “Cover me.”

  Harker rose and fired two rounds through the hole in the glass wall at the front counter where Reavy was hiding.

  Lawless burst from the interrogation room and ran to the sergeant’s body. His heart was hammering. From the front of the building came the smell of smoke and the sound of flames consuming wood. The roof had caught fire.

  Lawless scrabbled for the keys on the sergeant’s belt. He saw Briggs lean out from behind a corner of the front counter. Sleepy eyes and a T-shirt that said STFU.

  “Harker,” Lawless said.

  Harker fired another round. Briggs retreated. Lawless scrambled to his feet and ran down the hall. Tried the keys in the door labeled FIREARMS STORAGE. He got it open just as the shotgun fired at him.

  He pitched inside. A gun rack greeted him. Four rifles, four shotguns, and storage for handguns. Opposite wall: ammunition.

  He unlocked the rack and took a shotgun. It was a Remington 870, a law enforcement favorite, and it felt reliable in his hands. He got two handguns, stuffed one in his holster and the second in the small of his back. Grabbed boxes of ammo. In the hallway more shots rang out.

  He loaded the shotgun magazine to capacity and racked a shell into the chamber. Took a breath, and pressed his back to the wall by the door. Just as the fire alarms rang and the sprinkler system kicked in.

  52

  Sarah ran to the end of the hall. It split in a T. She ran right around a corner and threw open a door. It was a windowless storage room. More shots echoed from the lobby. The fire alarm blared. A second later the sprinklers popped down and sprayed the station, but the smoke and crackle of flame continued.

  “We have to find the back door,” she said.

  “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  “Hold on.” She gripped Zoe, her own arms shaking.

  She tried another door: locked. They would have to go back and cross the hallway, putting them in view of the lobby. Teresa put a hand on her arm.

  “Let me go first.”

  She led them back to the hallway and peered around the corner. Pulled back. A second later a shot punched through the opposite wall. Sarah’s legs felt like water.

  Then, in the distance, another shotgun blared. Lawless shouted, “Harker, with me. Marichal—cover the back. Find Sarah.”

  Agent Marichal skittered around the corner. He was panting, his face dripping water from the sprinklers. He looked as angry as Sarah had ever seen a man.

  He held his service weapon at his side. “You okay?”

  It was the most ridiculous thing anybody had ever said to her. “Super.”

  He handed over her messenger bag. “Weapons, ammo.”

  Out in the hall, voices rose. Harker and Lawless were shouting at each other.

  “We have to find a way out the back,” Sarah said. “I thought it was this way, but … gotta be around the corner and past the interrogation rooms.”

  Marichal nodded. He looked at Teresa. “Sister, can you run?”

  “I can do whatever you need,” she said.

  The sprinklers sputtered and shut off. The flicker of orange flame still reflected in the wet walls and floor. The fire had crept under the eaves and into the space above the ceiling. The sprinklers had done nothing to quench it.

  Marichal looked at Zoe. “You’re being awesome. Stay brave, kid.”

  Sarah’s throat caught. Zoe looked at him, lip quivering, and might have nodded.

  “Follow me,” he said. “Single file, right behind me.”

  He took a breath, leveled his weapon, and spun around the corner. When there was no gunfire, Teresa followed, then Sarah.

  Marichal hurried along the hall until they found another turn. He paused and held his gun level toward the lobby. “Go.”

  Sarah and Teresa ran around the corner. At the end of the hall was a fire door.

  Sarah beckoned. “Marichal, this way.”

  She ran to the end of the hall and stopped. Teresa pulled up alongside her.

  Marichal caught up. “I’ll go first.”

  “When we get outside, what do we do?” Teresa said.

  “Run. Run for cover and don’t stop.”

  The sheriff’s station should have been cover. It should have been the place to run for safety. Sarah had no confidence that any other structure in this little crossroads would be better.

  Marichal said, “We have a lucky break. Harker and Lawless have both hostiles pinned down. Head northwest—the building will block their view of us.”

  He took a hard breath, raised his weapon, and put his shoulder against the door.

  Sarah said, “What do you mean, both hostiles?”

  There were three of them. The Shattering Angel and his wings.

  “Marichal, wait—”

  He rammed the door open and shouted, “Go.”

  A shot and a muzzle flash emanated from the night. Marichal huffed like he’d been hit in the gut with a sledgehammer and fell to the ground in the doorway.

  Lawless kept his back to the wall. Black smoke churned along the hallway ceiling and boiled through the holes in the glass wall of the Plexiglas pen. The sprinklers hadn’t put out the flames. Harker coughed.

  They couldn’t stay where they were. The building was going up.

  But Briggs and Reavy were hunkered behind the front counter. If they could be pinned down for one more minute, maybe he and Harker could get the advantage on them.

  He whistled. “Harker.”

  The FBI agent glanced across the hall. Lawless explained with hand signals.

  One of them had to pin down the hostiles with covering fire while the other went out the back. With the fire and lights reflecting from the windows, people in the building couldn’t see out. But a shooter outside in the dark would have a clear view into the lobby.

  Harker got it immediately. He pointed at Lawless, a jabbing index finger. You. Then he jerked his thumb toward the back of the building. Go.

  Lawless slung the shotgun over his back by the strap and drew the pistol from the small of his back. Harker stood up from behind the desk into billowing smoke. He leveled his weapon at the front counter and fired.

  Lawless dashed from the interrogation room, spurred by Harker’s bravery. He ran toward the back of the station, caromed off the wall, and slid down the corridor.

  Marichal lay splayed in the doorway, legs inside the building, his chest across the threshold. The fire door slowly closed on its pneumatic hinges and hit him. Another gunshot spit from the darkness outside the back of the station.

  He coughed and tried to lift himself off the concrete. He couldn’t.

  Sarah set Zoe down. She pointed at a water cooler a few feet away. “Get behind that. Hurry.”

  Zoe ran and cr
ouched low behind it, clutching her knees. Sarah was shaking so hard she could barely see.

  “Teresa, help me,” she said.

  They each grabbed one of Marichal’s legs and pulled, trying to drag him back inside. A shot cracked from the dark and rang against the door. Sarah jumped and blurted out, “Jesus Christ.” They kept pulling but the door closed with them, pinning Marichal against the frame, his shoulders and arms outside.

  “Roll, Marichal,” she said.

  He groaned and shuddered and couldn’t manage it. “Weapon …”

  Sarah saw his gun outside. He’d dropped it. And damned if she was going to leave it there. It was only a foot outside. She took a breath, took two, and three, telling herself: Do it.

  She lunged, grabbed the gun, and jerked herself back inside. Teresa kept trying to pull Marichal through the doorway.

  “Roll,” the nun said. “Come on, man.”

  Another shot. It hit Marichal in the shoulder with a sickening thud.

  “Goddammit,” Sarah said. She held the gun, but her hand was shaking like a hummingbird.

  Marichal was still conscious but now immensely worse off, and jammed in the doorway, unable to move. They couldn’t get him inside from where they were. And if they left him …

  Sarah got to one knee, steadied herself, and thought: Straight back at the firing point. Where I saw the flash.

  She squeezed the trigger. Marichal’s weapon fired, kicking heavily in her hand. She steadied her hand, braced her right in her left. Exhaled and fired again.

  Hitting anything would be a one-in-a-thousand shot, blind luck. But she didn’t need to hit the other shooter, just suppress her fire. And the night outside went quiet. “Now. Pull,” she yelled.

  She grabbed one of Marichal’s arms and yanked him half-upright. Teresa hauled on his legs. He slid awkwardly through the doorway, moaned, and flopped back on the tile floor. The door shut.

  Teresa rolled Marichal on his back. His body armor hadn’t protected him. Beneath it his shirt was soaked red, blood pulsing from a hole in his shoulder. And the leg of his trousers was sopping.