“We were trapped up there. But at least we can shoot anyone who comes through the door.”
She hoped Kyle Richardson had located them. That he had called in the police. The cavalry. She didn’t want to die in this basement. She didn’t want to die at all. Her heart raced even as she tried to calm herself. Memories returned of the other ambush, of being shot in the back. Of lying there, knowing in her heart that she was going to die. That she was going to be responsible for a rookie’s death. Bleeding out, not knowing why.
Her breath caught in her throat and she willed herself to focus on the here and now.
She would know why people were shooting at them. Why Jason was under attack. Why Gina Perez had been killed and Jason framed—because as she thought about it, she realized that nine millimeter in his car had to have been planted, most likely at the station. It must be the weapon that had killed Gina, and that’s why SWAT had been called in when they suspected Jason was at his sister’s house. It made sense … but now wasn’t the time to focus on the details. Now was the time to focus on survival.
The door above them leading into the laundry room burst open. She saw the flash of a gun and she fired, three bullets, center mass. The gunman fell to his knees, then toppled down the stairs.
They couldn’t see him, but she smelled gunpowder and blood. He wasn’t moving. She feared he was dead.
More shouts upstairs, running on the floor above them. Definitely two more. Then silence. Creaking, like they were walking slowly back and forth. The front door slammed shut and then she heard nothing.
Still, they waited.
“Search him,” she ordered Jason.
He used the light from her cell phone to find the body. First Jason checked his pulse. “He’s dead,” he said.
Her stomach flipped. It had been the second time she’d killed someone. The first had been in the line of duty. Even though she’d had no real choice, she wished it could have been different. Taking a life was never easy.
This time she’d had no choice, either. That didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
Deal with it later, Moreno.
Jason kicked away the gun that had fallen under the dead guy’s body, then went through his pockets. Scarlet walked up the stairs cautiously, peered around the corner into the kitchen. She didn’t see anyone, but closed the door to give them a little warning before take two.
She went back down the stairs. The ceiling was low—so low that it brushed against Jason’s head when he stood up.
“The guy’s name is Eric Peterson,” he said. “I think this is one of the guys who ran me off the road.”
“Are you positive?”
“No, but he looks familiar and I don’t know him.” He showed Scarlet the driver’s license. He lived on Glendale Avenue in Burbank. She didn’t recognize him.
“Anything else?”
“No badge, a little money—about a hundred bucks. Wait—an ID card from Armor Plus.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know—security of some sort. No address on the ID.”
“Leave it all. I suspect they’re trying to wait us out. Or worse, they’re reloading.”
“Wouldn’t neighbors have called in the shots?”
“Possibly—with the fire power they had, someone was bound to hear them. But this place is secluded. We’re in the hills. It echoes. Even if someone calls it in, it’ll take the police a while to narrow down where the shots came from.”
She didn’t like that she couldn’t hear anything above them. But she feared if they went up to the kitchen to take a look, someone would be waiting to blow their heads off. Jason must have had the same thought because he didn’t suggest it.
“Jason—they want you dead. What do you know that someone wants to keep secret?”
“I have no idea!” He let out a long breath. “Maybe they think I know what Gina planned to tell me. But she didn’t say anything, not on the phone, except that she didn’t trust Mercer.”
“They don’t know that. They’re playing it safe, taking out everyone who might know whatever it was that died with Gina.”
“I’m not going to let her die in vain,” he said. “I can’t, Scarlet.”
“We won’t.”
“This isn’t your fight. I don’t want you to die because of me.”
“I’m not going to die. Neither are you.”
Waiting wasn’t Scarlet’s strong suit. Maybe the remaining shooters had left when they suspected their partner was dead or captured. A dead guy who could be traced would jeopardize their plans. Even someone who was trained against interrogations might give up something. If they suspected Scarlet had killed Peterson, they’d worry that she’d searched him and learned his identity and who he worked for. Even if his employment had nothing to do with this attack, it would give the police a place to start their investigation. The other shooters could have disappeared to regroup and plan. Count their losses. Something.
She started up the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“Stay flat against the wall,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Just—quiet.” She knew this was a risk, but they couldn’t stay down here forever.
There was no landing, no way to sidestep the door. A narrow, sagging wood railing prevented a fall, though she wouldn’t want to test it with her weight. She knelt down, then reached up and turned the knob.
Before she opened the door, she smelled it. But the scent didn’t quite register until she pushed the door open and saw the flames outside the kitchen window.
“Fire!” she said.
“Stop!” Jason called as he ran up the stairs and stood behind her. “They could be waiting to shoot us when we escape.”
“I’m not going to be burned alive,” she said, panic rising.
They stayed low and crawled through the kitchen and into the living room. The rooms were rapidly filling with smoke. The walls quickly turned to flames , as if they’d doused the inside and outside of the house with accelerant—gasoline by the smell—and tossed matches in every corner.
Except for the front door.
“There,” she said.
“No,” Jason said. “That’s where they’ll be waiting for us. It’s the only wall not on fire.”
He was right, but she almost couldn’t think through her fear.
Fire burned loud. And this one increased in volume as the flames spread, making the old wood house moan. A fire here was extremely dangerous—the dry summer, the trees and shrubs all around. The entire Topanga Canyon could go up in flames—
She pulled out her phone and crawled back to the kitchen. She dialed 911 and didn’t know if it could get through. All the people, the wildlife, the potential loss of property and life because some bastard wanted Jason Jones dead for an unknown reason … The reality sunk in and through her fear, she was enraged.
She slid the phone across the floor, hoping it would keep its signal. She and Jason needed to find a way to get out, and she didn’t want to risk losing the signal. Dispatch would be able to track the GPS of the phone to locate them. Find the house and the fire and hopefully stop it before they lost anything but Diego’s house.
Sorry, Diego.
The fire was hot and growing hotter. Smoke filled the space, sucking up their oxygen, making it difficult to breathe.
“We have to get out,” she said. She had to shout to be heard, though Jason was only a foot from her.
“Kitchen door,” he shouted, pointing.
She agreed. They might be shot dead. But they had to take the chance, because after two more minutes in the house, they’d be dead anyway.
They crawled, staying as close to the ground as possible while still moving as fast as possible. Jason led the way. The door was unlocked, and even though flames crawled up the walls of the kitchen, the door was still intact. He pulled it open. Scarlet tried to look around, but the smoke stung her eyes and she saw nothing but light and dark.<
br />
And flashing. There was flashing all around them. And sirens. She heard them over and above the crackling flames.
She and Jason half-crawled, half-ran from the house.
Scarlet realized she wasn’t quite thinking straight because her first thought was to protect Jason. Subconsciously, she sensed the fire truck and men dressed as firemen, but she also knew that only minutes ago … well, she didn’t know how long ago, really … people had been shooting at them. Two men with masks—fire masks? Oxygen tanks?—approached and she held up her gun.
Jason was coughing on the ground next to her.
She coughed so hard her chest hurt. She blinked but still couldn’t see anything but shapes. Shapes like men with helmets.
You’re not thinking, Scarlet. They’re firemen.
What if they weren’t? What if it was a ruse? Her head spun and everything blurred. She couldn’t see, dammit! She needed to see.
“Easy. Easy, ma’am.”
Her arm dropped and she collapsed. She felt her gun being taken from her hand. No, no, no, don’t take my gun! Something was over her face. Her body was being carried away from the house.
“She’s bleeding.”
Jason. She had to protect him like Krista protected her.
She fought with whatever was on her face, but she couldn’t move her hands.
“Ma’am, it’s okay. Just take it easy.”
Voices, running, a spray of water. Lights and sirens.
Police. Fire. They were safe.
Safe for now
Chapter Six
“No, I’m not going to the hospital,” Scarlet said. And she meant it.
The paramedic—a muscular woman with piercing green eyes—frowned. “You need to be fully examined, Ms. Moreno. You have multiple lacerations.”
“But I wasn’t shot.”
The glass and wood splinters had hit her and Jason , producing several nasty gashes on her arms. One of them was from a bullet that had grazed her, which burned like hell, but she wasn’t going to the hospital unless the bullet was actually inside her and needed to be removed.
She’d been out of it by the time she and Jason escaped the house. Now, thirty minutes later, the fire was contained. The fire fighters had moved fast, not only working on the fire itself, but saturating the area surrounding the house. Luck was with them—there was no wind. If the Santa Anas were blowing, it would have been a far more deadly fire.
Jason was sitting in the ambulance across from her. He had similar injuries, but he was also cuffed to the gurney. The responding officers had his name and ID for an arrest warrant, and she had told them to please call Detective Richardson before they took him anywhere. Now that Scarlet was thinking straight—straighter, at least—she needed to convince Richardson to put Jason into protective custody.
She’d already given her statement, including identifying the dead guy in the basement. The fire fighters couldn’t go inside to retrieve his body because the fire had been burning too hot. She’d already overheard conversation that it was arson, started outside of the house. Someone had doused the external walls with gasoline. Because it was an old house, it had burned quickly.
They had been extremely lucky.
“Ms. Moreno,” the paramedic was saying, “I strongly advise that you go to the hospital to be thoroughly examined. You could have shrapnel I’m not seeing with the tools I have.”
She shook her head. She had too much work to do. She needed to tell Krista that she was okay, then call her brother and enlist his help to ensure that Jason was put into protective custody. She needed to follow up on what Jason had told her, look into Gina’s background, into Mercer, find out what Gina knew that got her killed. Get Jason out of this mess. A cop in prison might as well have a target on his back.
Jason had come to her for help. And now someone tried to kill her. If they thought she was walking away, they didn’t know her.
She took off the oxygen mask. Breathed deeply a few times and only coughed once. “I’m okay,” she said. “Really.” Scarlet knew the rules—they couldn’t force her to go to the hospital. The green-eyed paramedic was skeptical, but the woman didn’t have time to argue with Scarlet.
Detective Kyle Richardson strode toward her, a grim look on his face. Maybe it wasn’t grim. Maybe it was angry. Yep, definitely angry.
Scarlet supposed she couldn’t blame him, but she stood by the story she and Jason had come up with. That she’d tracked him down here, listened to his story, convinced himself to come in. It might not hold up, and if she had to go to court she wasn’t going to perjure herself, but she hoped it never came to that.
But Richardson stopped when he spotted Jason in the other ambulance. He went over and spoke to him, and Scarlet wished she knew what he was saying. The conversation was brief, then Richardson spoke for a long time to the two responding officers, before finally coming over to talk to her.
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it as if he was too angry.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“You don’t know shit, Moreno!”
She bristled. “I know that someone tried to kill Jason and me. Then they burned the house down around us, waiting for us to run out. Fortunately, fire response was good.”
“There’s a body in the cellar.”
“I told them that. Eric Peterson. Armor Plus. Have no idea who he is or what Armor does or why he was shooting at us.”
It was clear from Richardson’s expression that he’d heard of Armor before.
“What? Security, right?” she pushed. The paramedic slapped another bandage on her arm. Scarlet turned to her. “Thank you, you’re done.”
The paramedic turned to Richardson. “She needs to go to the hospital, but she’s refusing.”
“She’s going.”
“Like hell I am.”
“Hospital or jail. Your call.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
“I don’t know that yet. I don’t know anything except you kept information from me in a police investigation, and don’t you dare try to hide behind your family connections.”
She fumed. “I’m not. I tracked Jason down. I’ve been looking for him since you left Leah’s house last night. I called you and told you we were coming in.”
He hesitated, just a bit, but Scarlet knew that she had him on that. She pushed a bit harder. “You must have heard the gun shots before I lost the call.”
He didn’t respond.
She said, “You have to keep Jason in protective custody. Someone tried to kill him, and there’s at least one cop involved.”
“Stop.”
“No!”
He looked at the paramedic. “Give us a minute.”
The woman walked away, over to her colleague who was working on Jason.
“I looked up your record, Moreno.”
She thought he would, but she didn’t know what he thought about it—or even what was accessible in the files. But she wasn’t backing down on this. “Jason will tell you the truth. He didn’t kill Gina.”
“The gun found in his abandoned car matches preliminary ballistics to the bullets that killed his partner.”
“It was planted.”
“Oh, please, Moreno. You’re not that stupid.”
“Fuck you, Richardson. You looked up my record? Great. Then you know I was a decorated cop, a detective who closed cases up until I was ambushed and hung out to dry. I walked away because I knew there was no way I’d find out who was behind it before they killed me. Don’t believe everything you hear.” She shouldn’t argue with him, shouldn’t make him angrier. But she’d always had trouble controlling her temper, especially around people who didn’t listen.
She took a deep breath, then another. “Kyle,” she said softly, “I’ve known Jason since I was a kid. His brother is a decorated Army officer. His sister is a sweet flight attendant. His dad died when he was a teenager and he became the head of the house because Josh was stationed overseas. Jason took
care of everything for his mom, who found herself going back to work while her two youngest were teenagers. He’s a good man. Please listen to him, believe him. Find a way to prove he didn’t kill Perez. Something else is going on here. I feel it in my gut.”
The detective stared at her, then looked at Jason. A minute later he turned back to her. “You must have lived through hell to think that I wouldn’t want the truth. That’s all I want. Guilty or innocent, I’m going to find out what happened.”
“That’s all I’ve asked for.”
“You have to stand down, Scarlet.”
“As long as I know you’re on top of this, I will.”
He almost smirked, but then grew serious and said in a low voice, “Armor Plus is a private security company. They handle mostly corporate security, public events, things like that. Half of them are former cops. Not always retired.” He hesitated, then said, even softer, “I’ll deny saying this, but some of the former cops working for Armor left under a cloud. It’s one of those things we all know but don’t talk about.”
He assessed her, then continued. “You killed one of their people. You said there were two or three people shooting at you, meaning no matter how quiet I keep this, they’ll know it was you. I can’t sweep it under the rug. I have to file a report. You’ll still have to give a statement and have the shooting reviewed. I’m certain they’ve already come up with a damage control plan. They’ll know what we know. They’ll make their story work with the facts. But you’ve put yourself on their radar. That’s not a good place to be.”
“I’ll lay low.”
“Laying low might not be good enough.”
“What are you doing with Jason?”
“I’m bringing him in for questioning. He’ll have his union rep there. He’ll probably want a lawyer. He’s not under arrest—yet. I’ll make sure he spends the next twenty-four under guard at the hospital. At least there he should be safe while we sort through the evidence.”
“Thank you. I don’t suppose I can have my gun back.”
He didn’t even answer the question. Fortunately, she had two back-ups at her apartment.
“You’re not going to the hospital, are you?” he said.
Hit and Run (Moreno & Hart Mysteries) Page 5
