“So was Lucy’s and dye is cheap,” Danny said.
“Good point,” Rainey said, “but still, that would take brass balls to come face to face with me. Besides, Jean would be in her sixties now. “
“How old do you think Ann is?”
Rainey shook her head. “I have no idea. You saw her, what do you think?”
Danny shrugged and asked another question. “How did Katie find this company to build the tiny houses?”
“Ann came to the shelter. She said she thought it would be a good idea to construct tiny houses for women in need and they were willing to do a build-one-get-one-free deal with no design strings attached.”
“Sounds innocent enough,” Danny commented.
“Or too much of a coincidence that they do business on former Hale property,” Rainey countered.
Danny tried logic. “It would be a good way for a business like this to get free publicity and a tax write off.”
“Not buying it,” Rainey said, resolutely.
“But you didn’t check them out?”
“Katie complained that I never trust her to be smart enough to avoid trouble. So I stayed completely out of this project except for exchanging a few emails and design ideas.”
“You’re never going to listen to her again, are you?”
Rainey stared ahead at the garages, one of which likely held her kidnapped wife.
She answered Danny with one word, “Nope.”
“And you never met Hart?”
“No, again. I have no idea who Hartwell Burke is.”
Danny picked up the notepad he had thrown on the dash. “Wait a minute. That name, I know that name.”
From inside his chest pocket, he pulled a small flashlight that Rainey would have bet a million dollars was there. Danny was a creature of habit. He flipped through the pages of his notes.
“Here it is,” he said, pointing at the page. “Obadiah Hartwell Hale. I knew I’d seen that name before.”
“Eugene H. Hale. What do you bet his middle name is Hartwell?”
“I think we have a winner,” Danny said and threw the notepad back on the dashboard.
“We should call for back-up, don’t you think?”
Danny held up his phone. “I tried. Try yours.”
Rainey hit the call button on her steering wheel. “Call Katie.”
“No signal detected,” came the automated reply.
“This isn’t a cell tower down. The power is out, judging by the street lights,” Rainey said, “but we’re still close enough to plenty of working ones to have a few bars. I think the signal is jammed. Hang on.”
Rainey dug into the center console and came out with a black plastic square shaped device, resembling a digital timer.
“It’s a cell phone jammer detector. It was a gag gift from Molly because she says I’m paranoid.”
Rainey pressed the “On” button. A red indicator light began to flash on the unit, and the digital display read, “Detected.”
“I’ll be damned. It works,” Rainey said. A wave of dread crashed into her chest. “Well, now. That has all kinds of implications, doesn’t it?”
Danny removed his weapon from its holster, checked the magazine, and then racked a round into the chamber. He asked, “Do we leave and get a signal or stay and walk into what is most assuredly a well thought out plan to get rid of the four of us?”
“Send Brooks an email. It’s worth a shot. The Hotspot might connect to a random frequency the jammer isn’t covering. It’ll keep trying to connect as long as there is email in the outbox.”
Rainey hit the switch that kept her interior light from coming on. With her headlights on the bright setting, she created the equivalent of a flashlight’s blinding disorientation. It would be difficult for someone in the garages to discern who she was or what she was doing. After activating the latch release for the trunk, she opened the driver’s side door and slid out into the slowing rain, calling over to Danny as she went, “When you’re done, meet me at the back of the car.”
Rainey took off the long duster and put on the windbreaker she kept in the car with the words “Bail Agent” in large yellow letters on the back. If cops were coming, she wanted to make damn sure they could identify the good guys. She grabbed a Bell’s Bail and Investigations hat and slid it over her wet curls, giving some relief from the rain.
After opening the gun safe welded into the trunk floor, Rainey grabbed several magazines for the Glock she had tucked back in her holster after leaving the prison. She took out the shotgun she kept stored in the safe and opened a box of shells. After making sure the shotgun was fully loaded with one in the chamber, she filled her windbreaker pockets with the remaining shells. Danny slinked around to the back of the car.
Rainey asked, “If you need more magazines for your Glock, there are two more in there.”
“Are we just going in there guns blazing? We don’t know that Katie and Cathleen are in there. They could be on the way home by now. We don’t know if these people are guilty of anything other than sending a picture of you and your family to an inmate in a threatening email.”
Rainey tilted her head and gave Danny her very best, “Are you serious?” expression.
“Yeah, okay,” Danny said, “but the smart move here is to go get help. We don’t know which garage to breach, do we?”
Rainey looked over the raised trunk lid to the garages one hundred yards away. A drop of icy rainwater trickled under her collar and down her spine. As if answering Danny’s question, the entry door of the garage on the left opened slowly, revealing nothing but darkness inside.
Danny saw it too. He said, “I’ll be damned.”
“There’s your sign, Agent McNally,” Rainey said, handing him the old FBI baseball cap she kept in the trunk. “Here, so when the cops come, they won’t shoot you.”
“How will they know to come? We’re gambling on that email going through.”
“You go then,” Rainey said. “Leave me here and go get help.”
“I’m not leaving you. I’m just trying to raise the odds for Katie and Cathleen.” He put his hand on Rainey’s shoulder. “If we don’t succeed, no one knows where we are.”
Rainey had an epiphany. She smiled at Danny and reached into the trunk, where she removed a wrapped present and proceeded to open it like a child at Christmas. Once opened, she held up a handheld device, colored bright tennis ball yellow.
“Do you know what this is?”
Danny shook his head.
“This was to be Katie’s next gift when I screwed up. By the way, you should stock those. Marriage tip.”
“What is it?”
“This my friend,” Rainey said as she pulled out the small antenna on the device, “this is a waterproof personal locator beacon that will set rescue in motion to this location in about five minutes from when I push this button. After that, we’re about ten minutes outside Hillsborough. If everything goes as advertised, we should have help in fifteen minutes.”
“Push the fucking button, Rainey.”
Rainey grinned. “I put batteries in it already. Good thing I believe in being prepared. That’s not paranoia, by the way.”
“Jesus, you’re killing me. Push the damn button,” Danny said.
Rainey pushed the button and put the device on the pavement behind them. “This will bring them close enough.”
Danny wiped the rain from the bill of his cap. “By the way, I might have had bad luck with women, but even I know that is a shitty gift. I don’t think I’ll be taking marriage tips from you.”
Rainey said, “She’ll love it if it saves her ass,” and meant it, while she slid her ballistic vest over the windbreaker. “I’m sorry, I don’t have two vests back here, but you’ll be inside the car. It’s a giant bulletproof vest. Just stay in it.”
Rainey closed the gun safe and made sure it was locked. She grabbed a flashlight out of the trunk and checked to see that it worked.
Danny adjusted the hat to fit hi
s head and then stuffed the two magazines in his jacket pockets, rechecked his weapon, and asked, “If I’m in the car, where will you be?”
Rainey smiled, “Combat tactics, Agent McNally. Since I don’t have any flash/bang grenades to cover my entry, you are going to be my noisy distraction.”
#
Rainey slipped into the shadows of the surrounding forest and made her way southward around the parking lot.
“Why don’t I go look in the window?” Danny had asked.
“Because my vest will not fit you,” Rainey argued.
She crept toward the garage, setting her sights on the windows lining the south side of the building. The sun had now slipped below the horizon. The trailing wispy gray clouds they left in Butner arrived. The worst of the storm had passed. It wasn’t completely dark, but it was still hard to see. Thunder rolled overhead, but the lightning merely flickered in the sky. Rainey couldn’t use the flashlight for fear of giving away her position. She moved as quickly as she could without slipping on the patches of accumulated hail and dead falls littering the forest floor.
Rainey advanced like her father had taught her. A few deliberate, slow steps and then listen, a few more steps, listen. She kept her eyes on the building, watching for movement. Danny inched the car closer to the garage, cautiously, trying to draw attention away from Rainey. She stayed out of the glow of the headlights, moving parallel to the structure until she felt she could cross to one of the windows safely.
“Okay, Rainey,” she said to herself, “go get your girl.”
Hoping she wouldn’t be shot the moment she exposed herself, Rainey darted from the cover of the trees to squat under the closest window to the door. Danny dimmed the lights on the car, a prearranged signal to let her know he saw her make the move. He then began to drive in a wide sweeping circle in front of the garage, in an attempt to keep the person in the garage focused on the car.
When the headlights moved from the garage, Rainey took the chance to peek in through the window. The plan was for Rainey to make sure that Cathleen and Katie were not positioned behind the garage door. The plan went awry when Rainey bobbed up and down one too many times, trying to get a good look inside the garage. On the third look-see, Rainey met the face of a man staring back at her.
She had not seen anyone in the garage, but then only a battery operated emergency exit sign shed any light on the dark interior. At the moment she met the face in the window, Danny completed the wide circle and again aimed the car at the big roll-up bay door. The beam of one of the headlights shined into the garage where the smaller door stood open. It bathed the man on the other side of the window in harsh white light. He ducked out of sight just as Rainey leveled the shotgun at his face. She didn’t see much of him, but she saw the red hair and beard.
“Eugene.”
Rainey sprinted toward the open door. Danny, seeing this, jammed on the accelerator. The Charger’s rear wheels squealed and smoked as rubber caught the pavement and shot the car forward. Rainey’s car could go from zero to sixty miles per hour in less than five seconds. It only took three seconds for it to crash through the roll-up door and into the garage. The door folded over the car forming a Charger taco. Danny didn’t let off the gas until he had sideswiped the tiny house parked a few feet inside the doorway and rammed a weighty standing toolbox straight ahead. The crushed door reflected the car’s headlights in dust-filled beams of light shooting in multiple directions, which offered little help with the darkness of the huge garage.
Rainey entered a second behind the car, bolting through the door with the shotgun raised, prepared to take out any threat. She cleared the corner behind her and kept her back to it, as she scanned the inky blackness beyond the scene of the crash.
She did not see the man but yelled into the shadowy abyss where she sensed more than saw movement, “Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Let me see your hands.”
The response, a muzzle flash, came instantly. Rainey crouched and returned one round with the shotgun before she rolled behind the Charger. The brake lights lit her up like a Christmas tree. Danny attempted to get out of the car, his efforts blocked by part of the garage door.
Rainey yelled to him, “Danny, turn the car off. Take your foot off the brake.”
The car went silent. The brake lights blinked off. Now the glare of the headlamps prevented seeing beyond the car.
“Headlights. Kill the headlights.”
She heard Danny yell, “Where’s the switch?”
BANG! PING! Another bullet whizzed by Rainey, hitting the mangled steel above her head.
“Left of the steering wheel, on the bottom edge of the console. Spin the dial until the lights go out.”
Mercifully, the lights went out after a few seconds. The cavernous space glowed red near the front exit. Rainey peeked toward the back of the garage. She could see another glowing exit sign casting a red hue over the rear door. BANG! PING! This time the sound was closer. Rainey dropped to her stomach and peered under the car. The crushed roll-up door blocked her view. She placed the shotgun on the floor and pulled the Glock from its holster.
She could feel the Charger moving as Danny climbed around inside, trying to find a way out. Rainey slid over to the passenger side of the car, where it rested against the tiny house. She thought she heard someone inside the house, but the sound of footsteps running toward the back of the garage needed her immediate attention.
In an instant, Rainey was on her feet. When the silhouette of a man appeared in the red glow of the exit light, she fired two shots.
BAM! BAM!
The first shot broke a pane of glass out of the window in the door. The second shot hit the man in the shoulder. He stumbled forward and pushed through the exit so hard the door rebounded and slammed shut.
Rainey heard Danny finally roll out of the driver’s side passenger door.
She called out to him, “Shooter exited the rear of the building.”
Danny slid around to the back of the car and kneeled down beside Rainey. “Do you think he was alone?” he asked.
Rainey didn’t answer. She was distracted by sounds coming from inside the tiny house.
She raised a fist in the air, silently telling Danny to stop talking and stay still.
A muffled voice broke the silence, calling out, “Rainey!”
“That’s Katie. She’s in the tiny house,” Rainey whispered. “Watch my back.”
Danny stood up into a shooting crouch, eyes focused on the back of the garage. Rainey stepped over the tongue of the trailer holding the tiny house. The doors to the utility storage locker built into the end of the structure stood open. She could see the water heater and propane tank inside. Something else caught her eye as the window above the storage locker filled with Katie and Cathleen’s faces.
“Rainey, thank God,” Katie shouted.
Rainey knew the plans for this house. She had reviewed them and suggested the window where Cathleen and Katie were as an egress point, meaning it could be opened and used as an emergency exit if needed. Rainey thought this qualified as an emergency.
“Open the window,” Rainey said.
Cathleen responded with an adamant, “We can’t.”
Thinking the window was stuck, Rainey told the two women, “Stand back. I’ll break it.”
Both women inside the tiny house screamed, “No,” simultaneously.
“Why not?” Rainey asked, confused by their insistence.
With remarkable calmness, considering what she had to say, Cathleen explained, “There is a bomb hooked to the propane tank. The guy said he added C-4 to make sure there wouldn’t be anything left of us to find.”
Rainey took a step back and refocused on the utility locker, realizing the thing that caught her attention was a digital read out on an improvised explosive device. It was blinking one word over and over, “Armed.”
“Holy shit,” escaped her lips before she could catch it.
She looked back up at Cathleen and Katie and forced
a smile.
“Let’s just get you out of there and let the bomb squad deal with this.”
Cathleen shook her head. “It’s tied into the security system. Any attempt to open a door or window will trigger the device.” She sighed, and then added, “Unfortunately, as he explained, it also has a timer that would go off if the device isn’t activated or reset in the next,” she paused to think before finishing, “I believe we have about ten minutes left, fifteen tops.”
Danny appeared at Rainey’s side.
He said, “With all the noise you guys are making, if there was anybody else in here, they know where to shoot.” He looked up at Cathleen and Katie. “Hi, honey. Do you want to rethink hanging out with these two,” he joked.
Nobody laughed. Rainey pointed at the IED.
“We’ve got a big problem.”
“Oh, shit,” breathed from Danny’s lips.
Cathleen began speaking, “I need one of you to take a picture with your cell phone and show it to me.”
Rainey guessed her surprise read in her expression, because Cathleen responded, “Captain Augustine, 303rd Explosives Ordinance Disposal Battalion, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.”
Katie nodded. This was not new information for her. Evidently, the two women had discussed this aspect of Cathleen’s background. It was news to Rainey but welcomed.
“I told you she is not without skills,” Danny said, already holding his phone out to take images of the device. “I’ll take a few from different angles.”
He leaned in for the pictures. Rainey peeked around the side of the tiny house and watched the rest of the garage, as the strobe from the camera briefly illuminated the space. Katie’s van was parked in the next bay. Rainey noticed the loft upstairs and wondered if that trunk of porn magazines was still there, or worse, another killer. The rear exit door swung back and forth in the draft created by the sizeable hole in the front of the garage. Thinking it has slammed shut before, it drew her attention.
“Stay behind the house,” she told Danny. Then she asked Katie through the glass, “Where is Ann?”
“She let us into the garage out of the hail and said she needed to go check on her cat. She never came back. Hart came in and, well, the rest is self-explanatory.”
Rainey with a Chance of Hale (A Rainey Bell Thriller Book 6) Page 17
