Smoke Screen (The Darcy Lynch Series Book 2)

by Elin Barnes

  “Already done. I’ll wait here until somebody comes, then I’ll head over your way.”

  “Okay,” Darcy said, and hung up.

  The next house was the largest on the block. The door was open. Darcy walked up to it and announced himself: “Detective Lynch with the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office. Everything okay in there?”

  There was no response. He walked into the foyer, then took a step toward the next room and heard a whimper. It was low but undeniably human.

  He knew he had to wait for reinforcements, but he had no idea how long they would take. By the time they showed up, whoever was in there might already be dead. He closed his eyes and remembered the cold warehouse in Seattle, running around the building, trying to find Gigi. He’d gone in and seen his CI bleeding on the floor. He hadn’t waited for reinforcements and he’d still been too late.

  He would never be too late again.

  He pushed forward, his gun close to his chest, pointing in front of him. Another faint moan followed by a distinct “Hush.” He took a few steps closer to the doorway leading to the next room. Darcy wished he had a search mirror so he could look inside without showing half his face. He then looked up toward the window and saw the faint reflection of the man he was after, holding a woman hostage.

  “I know you’re there,” Darcy said.

  There was no response.

  “Come on, you have to let her go. Let’s just do this man-to-man,” Darcy said.

  “Throw your weapon into the room and walk in here very slowly,” the man replied.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Then I don’t think we have much to talk about.”

  Darcy called Sorensen. “Mute your phone,” he whispered. He then put the phone away and focused back on the perp.

  “Let the woman go.”

  “This is how it’s going to work: you render your weapon and come in with your hands behind your head. Then I’ll tell you what my demands are.”

  “Okay, I’m coming in.” Darcy took a deep breath, readjusted his vest and inched his way in.

  “The gun first.”

  “I told you, I can’t do that,” Darcy said, entering the room, holding the Glock high over his head.

  The guy had the woman in a chokehold. She was pregnant; probably in the last trimester. A Sig P226 with a suppressor pointed directly at her belly. Tears flowed down her face, but she wasn’t making a sound. Her right hand gripped the perp’s muscled arm, and the left protected her baby.

  “Come on, let her go. She’s pregnant.” Darcy didn’t dare look around. “What’s your name?”

  “Don’t pull that shit on me, man. I’ve done it a million times,” he scoffed.

  “Are you police?” When he didn’t say anything, Darcy added, “Military? A Marine?”

  The perp pulled the woman closer to him and moved a few steps backwards. “Who’s coming?” he asked.

  “Local law enforcement,” Darcy said, and saw the man look down the hallway to his right. “SWAT is on its way too, but they’ll take a little longer.”

  The man looked composed. There was a thin sheen of sweat covering his face and sweat stains under his armpits, but that was probably from the run.

  “You know things will go much better if you stop this now,” Darcy urged.

  The perp kept silent and glanced into the hallway again. Darcy knew he was weighing his options.

  “There’s no escaping this.” He hoped Sorensen was listening. “We know Bishop and Mitchell are involved. If you help us, we can help you.”

  The mention of the names caught the man’s attention. He eyed Darcy as if he was trying to figure out how much he knew. A second later he pushed the pregnant woman hard against Darcy, who grabbed her before she fell on the floor.

  “Are you okay?” he asked over the sound of glass breaking.

  She nodded, still not making a peep. He helped the woman to her feet and ran after him.

  “He’s jumped through the window, south side of the house,” Darcy said, trusting that Sorensen could hear him.

  Darcy was tempted to jump but decided to look outside first. Before he could spot the perp, a bullet hit the windowsill. Darcy returned fire and heard steps moving away. “Stop shooting. You’re making things worse,” he shouted.

  He cleared the shreds of glass from the window frame with the barrel of his gun and heaved himself through. Darcy landed on the ground and saw the perp running the long driveway toward Scenic Road. He pulled the Glock. “Stop or I’ll shoot you,” he yelled.

  The “nephew” accelerated.

  Darcy cupped his right hand and fired. A dead click made his heart stop. “Misfire. A fucking misfire,” he whispered between gritted teeth, hoping that Sorensen was close.

  The perp must have heard the muffled click with no bang because he stopped running and, faster than Darcy was able to rack the slide back, turned to face him and fired his own weapon. Darcy rolled toward the wall as Sorensen screeched to a stop at the beginning of the path, closing the perp’s exit route.

  The “nephew” never took his eyes off Darcy. A shot hit his back, pushing him forward. The next four shots exploded his rib cage. The perp fell on the ground, lifeless.

  Sorensen got out of his car and ran to them, yelling, “What the fuck?”

  Chapter 78

  It took them a few hours to clear things with the local police, but finally they were able to get the bodies up to the San Jose morgue. Virago had to come personally to smooth things out with the Carmel PD captain. Her jaw seemed temporarily clenched, and she looked more pissed than Darcy had ever seen her.

  Before she left to drive back up to the station, she summoned both of her detectives and said, “I want to talk to both of you as soon as you get back. I suggest you start driving now.”

  Sorensen refused to talk to Darcy the entire ride. Every time he tried saying something, Sorensen cupped his ear and yelled, “I can’t hear you. I’m deaf after having to shoot my gun inside of my car.”

  Darcy wasn’t in a talking mood either. His head was spinning. He kept replaying the events, trying to figure out if there was anything he could have done differently.

  Still in silence, Sorensen parked and locked the car. When they reached the elevator, he shoved his hand close to Darcy’s face and said, “You need to go up the stairs. I can’t stand being in a closed space with you any longer.”

  “Man, it happens. You tell me you’ve never had a misfire?” Darcy said, not understanding why Sorensen was being such an asshole.

  “Nope.” The elevator started beeping because Darcy was holding the door open. “I had to kill a man because you couldn’t wait for backup. I don’t give a shit whether you had a misfire or not.”

  “I couldn’t wait for backup? What the hell are you talking about? He would have been long gone if I hadn’t gone after him.”

  “That’s procedure. You need to wait for backup, because when you don’t, bad things happen. You should’ve never gone into the house without backup. You should have waited.”

  “Wait for what? For him to escape through the back door? He was a trained killer. Our only option was to go after him if we wanted to have a slim chance of catching him.”

  “You put a pregnant woman in danger like you put Jon in danger. You’re out of control,” Sorensen yelled at him, and kicked Darcy’s foot out of the way.

  The doors of the elevator closed, and the noise stopped.

  Darcy ran up the stairs and met him when the doors were opening. “You told me to get him after he shot de la Rosa. He’s a killer. I couldn’t let him escape.”

  Uncharacteristically, Sorensen walked by him without having the last word. Darcy stood in place for a second and then decided he didn’t want to stay in the bullpen. He headed back to the stairs, but before he reached the door, Virago stepped out of the other elevator right in front of him.

  “In my office. Now,” she said, not looking at either as she walked past them. “Both of you,” she added
.

  Sorensen pushed his way through the door first, and Darcy closed it behind him.

  “I have to waste some of my detectives’ time to investigate both of your officer-involved shootings before I send the reports to IA and the DA.” She took off her glasses and massaged the bridge of her nose. “What the hell happened?”

  “We got a call that de la Rosa was in Carmel,” Sorensen yelled.

  “Detective, we’re right here,” Virago said, signaling with her hand to bring the volume down.

  “Sorry, boss. I’ll be hearing-impaired for a few days from shooting my weapon inside the car.”

  “Oh, please,” Darcy said under his breath. Yeah, he knew the ringing in the ears wasn’t pleasant, but Sorensen was being pathetic.

  Sorensen stared down at Darcy for a few seconds. “We went to ask him a few questions. When we got there, there was a suspicious character in his house who turned out to be the perp. He took off running after shooting and killing de la Rosa, and Lynch went after him.”

  Darcy continued: “He went into a house, where he took a pregnant woman hostage, but then he tried to escape through a side window. I went after him. I told him to stop. He didn’t. My weapon misfired. The perp shot back at me as Sorensen arrived and shot him. It was a good shoot. He saved my life.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” she said. “What I wonder is, why did he have to?”

  “You too?” Darcy asked, now genuinely surprised. He saw Virago lock eyes with Sorensen. Darcy got out of his chair and started pacing. He wanted to leave but knew he had to stay.

  “Sorensen, give us a minute, but don’t go anywhere. Yee will take your statement.” Before he left, she added, “If you have any concerns at all, wait for your lawyer.”

  “I don’t.”

  She nodded, and he left. Once the door was closed, she looked at Darcy, but waited for him to sit back down before she started talking. He knew she wouldn’t say a word until he had, so he took the same seat as before.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to you,” she said.

  Darcy had no idea where this was going. He started rubbing his left temple but stopped almost immediately.

  “A month ago you only wanted shitty cases nobody else would touch, all the boring stuff that would keep you as a desk jockey. Now you’re going rogue, getting into shootings at the first opportunity you get, putting yourself and others in danger.”

  “It’s the nature of the job.” He fixed his eyes on hers.

  She eyed him back and sucked her cheeks in. “No, it’s not, and you know it.” She squeezed the armrest on her chair, then let go and leaned forward. “I get what you did for Saffron. That was legit. However, you put Jon in danger unnecessarily—”

  “That was—”

  She put a hand up, and he stopped talking.

  “I know you were trying to get them. The moment they started shooting, you should’ve stopped the pursuit and called in the location. You know that. Jon could be dead right now. Hell, you could be dead right now.” Before he tried to interrupt her again, she shoved the hand closer to his face and continued: “The same thing today in Carmel. The moment the perp went into the house, you should have waited for backup.”

  Darcy fought an overwhelming urge to walk out of Virago’s office. He didn’t owe her or the Sheriff’s Office anything. He didn’t need the job either.

  She continued the lecture: “I’ve worked with Sorensen a very long time, and he’s never killed anybody before. I’m sure it was a good shooting, but I wonder why it had to be done at all. You’re the only one who can answer that question.”

  “The perp would’ve escaped. I made a judgment call and went in to make sure he didn’t. My weapon misfired. It happens.”

  She wringed her fingers. Her eyes remained locked on his. They were hard and dark. “That’s not procedure, and you know it. You should’ve waited for backup or for SWAT instead of running into an unknowable situation.” Taking a long moment to proceed, she finally said, “I don’t need any dead heroes on my squad.”

  “I don’t have a death wish, Captain.”

  “You better sound a lot more convincing than that when you talk to IA,” she said, and pointed at the door, indicating that she was done with him.

  Chapter 79

  Ethan was amazed that the police hadn’t figured out how to block their communications from being picked up by scanners. He’d just heard that Carlos de la Rosa was dead and that Curtis had been killed. His crew was getting smaller by the day. He had to wrap this mess up.

  He needed time to think. Maybe go to the gym and lift some weights. He always felt better after sweating a little. But he had something else much more soothing than working out.

  He double-checked that his front door was closed and headed for the playroom. It had been originally built as a safe room by the previous owner. They must have been a rich, paranoid couple. The moment he saw the condo and the real estate agent told him about the panic room, he knew he had to buy it. The foot-thick walls and steel door that only opened with his fingerprint were perfect to keep his toys secret.

  He removed the four books on the second shelf and kneeled to see the keypad. He entered his pass code, and the fingerprint reader appeared. He pressed his right index finger against the pad, the light turned from red to green, and the big door unlatched.

  There was dry blood on the floor from de la Rosa that he needed to wash soon. Beautiful Belle looked up at him, her eyes only half-open and semifocused, her lips blue. Then, as if the last couple days came rushing back to her brain, she recoiled, and her body tensed.

  “Babe, don’t be afraid.”

  Ethan walked toward her, his eyes wandering over her naked body. He got close enough to touch her and passed a finger over one of the blisters from the welding torch.

  She winced but couldn’t move back any farther. She was as far away from him as the shackles would allow.

  “Please don’t,” she whispered.

  “Please don’t what?” His fingers traced her collarbone and moved down to her breast. He circled the nipple with his index finger and then cupped the whole breast in his hand. It fit perfectly.

  “Please don’t hurt me anymore,” she begged.

  “Of course not. I’m going to take care of you,” Ethan said, and watched as her skin rippled with goose bumps.

  He reached up to the left handcuff and unlocked it. Her arm fell to her side and shook the rest of her body. She was still hanging from the other one. He went to the table and grabbed a dog collar that looked as if it could subdue a rabid pit bull. Before Ethan walked back to her, he heard his phone ringing in the other room. He hadn’t bothered closing the door, because he knew her voice wouldn’t carry very far anymore.

  “Hold that thought, babe,” he said, wondering if that was the call he’d been waiting for.

  He left the safe room, locking the door behind him. He threw the collar on the sofa and answered the phone.

  “You got my gift?” Ethan asked.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Blake said. “Why did you do that? You don’t trust me?”

  “What do you techie guys always say? Trust but verify. This is the same thing. In case you get the itch to talk to the wrong people, or your high-powered daddy convinces you to give your friends up, we have proof that you single-handedly killed everybody in that house.”

  “You have more video?”

  “I don’t need more video. I got you shooting an innocent man. The police have the guns and matching casings. I also have the glove with your fingerprints and gunpowder residue. What more do you want?”

  The silence at the other end went on for what seemed like a minute.

  “I didn’t touch the Sig,” Blake said.

  “Remember that target practice we did about a month ago?” Ethan reminded him.

  Another minute passed. Ethan could hear Blake pace back and forth.

  “You didn’t have to do this to me,” Blake finally said.

  �
��Oh, I know. I just did it for fun,” Ethan responded, and hung up.

  Chapter 80

  Sorensen looked at his hands. They were trembling just a little. He pushed on the soap sanitizer pump and spread the transparent dollop all over them. The intense smell of alcohol almost made him sneeze. Once there was nothing left to rub, he looked at his hands again. They still felt dirty, so he got another squirt and rubbed them some more.

  He felt Lynch watching him. “What?” he asked, more defiant than inquisitive, and stopped smearing the sanitizer.

  Lynch shook his head.

  Sorensen had a huge urge to get more cleanser, but didn’t. “They just feel dirty,” he said to himself, as if he needed to explain it.

  He’d only shot somebody once before. That perp lived but was now in a wheelchair. It had been a long time ago, when he was still on patrol. He’d walked into a domestic disturbance and found a man beating the crap out of his elderly mother with a wrench. The man would not stop hitting the woman, so Sorensen tried to pull him off her. But the offender was stronger than he looked and shook Sorensen off. After taking a couple steps back, Sorensen told the man to stop or he would shoot him. The man turned around and charged at him with the wrench. Sorensen shot once. The bullet went through the stomach, somehow missing all the vital organs, and lodged in his spine, paralyzing him forever.

  Sorensen didn’t feel bad about that. He had no choice. The perp’s mother was seventy-two and frail, and he’d done a number on her. She eventually recovered from a few broken bones, a concussion, and multiple lacerations all over her upper body.

  Sorensen knew deep inside that he had to shoot the man he killed this morning too. But he still felt as if he’d done something wrong, or could have done something different. Sorensen eyed the hand sanitizer. Before he could grab it, Lynch took it from his desk and moved it just far enough to be out of reach.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, but felt somehow relieved.

  “I’m taking your self-pity away.”

  “Fuck you. I saved your life today. Asshole.”