Colorado Manhunt

by Lisa Phillips

  She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. But the longer it takes to find him, the better the odds are that the criminals who are tracking him will find him first. There are more of them. They can fan out and cover more ground faster than we can. There’s no perfect solution here. All we can do is make the best decisions we can and then act on them.”

  Bounty hunting was not an exact science. There was a lot of uncertainty. Mistakes were made. Hours were wasted chasing down dead ends. That was the nature of the job.

  Lauren got plenty of teasing about what she did for a living. Some of it came in the form of gentle jabs. A lot of it came as harsh criticism. People often asked her why she didn’t get a real law enforcement job. The truth was she liked tracking down people. And while the idea of becoming a US marshal was appealing, that wasn’t a career path she could pursue. Because if she left Denver for training and then traveled all over the country to apprehend fugitives, who would look after her mom? With bounty hunting she could decide how far away she would travel and how long she was willing to be away from home.

  She reached the store’s service counter. Behind it, a high-speed printer shot sheets of paper into a cardboard box. It took a few seconds for the nearest service clerk to notice her and walk over. A second clerk, farther in the back, was busy packing and taping a row of large boxes.

  Lauren quickly sketched out what she wanted on a blank sheet of copy paper, got a destination email address so she could transmit the digital photo of Matt she had on her phone, and then waited for the clerk to make a sample flyer for her to look at.

  At a stand-up desk behind the counter, the clerk opened the email with the file image, looked at it, looked at Jason, looked at the image again, and then looked at Lauren with her eyebrows raised and a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Matthew is his identical twin brother,” Lauren called out over the continuing noise of the printer.

  The clerk, who nodded slowly, didn’t appear entirely convinced.

  “So my brother is basically on a Wanted poster now.” Jason sighed heavily and shook his head.

  “We’ll find him,” Lauren said. Please, Lord, help us find him, she prayed silently.

  “I’m obviously not heading back to Sweetwater today,” he said. “I need to make a couple of calls. I want to confirm that my neighbors are still willing to look after my animals. And I need to call my clients who have appointments for me to come out and do welding repairs and reschedule them.”

  “You can head back to Sweetwater,” Lauren said. “You don’t have to go with me to Boulder.”

  “Yes, I do have to go to Boulder,” he said firmly. “I need to do whatever I can to help keep my brother alive.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started tapping the screen.

  The clerk walked up with a printout of the flyer with Matt’s picture at the top and the pertinent details, along with contact phone numbers, beneath it. Jason glanced at it, shook his head sadly, and then walked away toward the front of the shop as he started talking on his phone.

  “That looks fine,” Lauren said to the clerk. “I’ll take fifty copies. Save the file. I might be back for more.”

  “Sure.” The clerk walked back to her computer.

  The high-speed printer finished its run. Now that it wasn’t so noisy in the shop, Lauren could hear Jason’s voice as he spoke on the phone, although she couldn’t understand his specific words.

  And then she heard a loud boom followed by another, and then another.

  Gunshot blasts! Again!

  “Everybody get down!” Lauren yelled as she dropped down behind a self-service copy machine and drew her pistol out of her holster.

  Shards from the storefront windows flew across the lobby, the jagged projectiles slicing through the air in a wide arc across the front of the store. The buckshot and debris from the shattered windows caught part of the blinds, ripping them down. Display racks and framed signs and pictures on the wall clattered to the floor.

  How had the bad guys found them again?

  She heard one of the clerks scream behind the counter. As the scream died down, she heard the frantic, shaky voice of the other clerk obviously talking to a 911 operator, pleading for help.

  Jason.

  Where was he?

  From her vantage point, Lauren couldn’t see him. She crawled forward to peek around the corner of the copy machine. She had a better view of the front of the store, and she saw movement, but it wasn’t Jason. It was a man striding through the front door wearing a ski mask with a shotgun in his hands. Outside the front door, a large black SUV with a driver behind the wheel idled at the curb.

  The shooter stepped over the threshold, ratcheting the shotgun and scanning the store as though he wanted to confirm that he’d killed Jason. Maybe he wanted to finish off everyone else in the shop. Leave no witnesses behind.

  Icy fear rolled through Lauren’s body, making her hands tremble and finally settling in her stomach. But she forced her feelings aside. Jason didn’t have a gun. As far as she knew, no one else in the shop did, either. She couldn’t just wait for the cops. Everyone in the store was in immediate danger. She had to do something.

  The gunman walked farther into the shop, moving closer to the position where she was crouched down. If she stayed where she was, he’d eventually see her and shoot her. Or he’d step on her and then shoot her. If she tried to move to a different position, he’d hear the broken glass crunching beneath her feet. There was no moving to a more protected position before she engaged him. She had to do it here and now.

  Heart thundering in her chest, taking shallow breaths because her lungs were tight with tension, she waited until the gunman turned his face away from her and then she jumped up with her gun pointed at his head. “Freeze!”

  He swung the shotgun around and pointed it at the center of her chest.

  From the shadows beneath the store’s shattered front window, Jason sprang at the gunman, launching his full weight onto the man’s back and nearly knocking him to the ground.

  But the gunman managed to stay on his feet, staggering and shoving the barrel of the shotgun backward, jamming the butt of the firearm into Jason’s ribs.

  “Drop your weapon!” Lauren yelled. She kept her gun trained on the grappling men, but there was no way she could get a clear shot at the bad guy.

  Jason grabbed the barrel of the shotgun with both hands, doggedly hanging on to it as the gunman twisted and turned, cursing as he tried to wrench it out of Jason’s hands.

  Finally, Jason let go with his right hand so he could throw an uppercut to the gunman’s chin. It connected with enough force to stun the guy, and Jason immediately followed up with a second punch to the jaw.

  Outside, the driver in the waiting car blared the horn.

  Lauren heard multiple sirens in the distance, getting closer.

  The gunman cursed, let go of the shotgun and ran out to the waiting SUV, which sped away.

  With trembling hands, Lauren holstered her handgun.

  Jason walked over to her. He laid the shotgun down on the copy machine next to where she was standing, and then wrapped his arms around her. She felt his lips pressed against the top of her head, his exhaled breath warm and comforting in the midst of all this chaos. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” she answered. “How about you?”

  He squeezed her a little tighter. “Never better.” Without letting go of her, he yelled back to the shop employees, “Anybody hurt?”

  They both answered that they were all right.

  Red and blue lights flashed outside. The police had arrived.

  “I can’t help wondering if Tony had something to do with this,” Lauren said. “Maybe he called somebody as soon as we left the restaurant. Described my SUV. Told them we were in the neighborhood.”

  “It’s possible,” Jason said. “A
s soon as we’re finished talking to the police, let’s go find out.”

  * * *

  “We went back to Santiago’s and talked to Tony,” Jason explained to Al and Barb. “We told him what had happened at the copy shop with the gunman, and he seemed genuinely shaken.”

  He exchanged glances with Lauren, and his heart warmed in his chest. She was a remarkable woman. Smart. Brave. Resourceful. And despite everything that had happened to them since they’d first laid eyes on each other, she still seemed determined to track down Matt. She was not a quitter. Jason had begun to feel like they really were working together. They weren’t just using each other to reach their common goal of finding Matt.

  “Tony called his wife while we were still talking to him,” Lauren added, directing her comments to Al and Barb. “He told her to take their kids and go to her mom’s house. Just to be safe.”

  The four of them were sitting at the dining table at Al and Barb’s house, getting ready to dig in to the Chinese takeout food Al had brought home.

  “The police told us that the criminal group Matt is connected to, the people trying to kill him now, has informants all over Denver,” Lauren continued as she dished some fried rice onto her plate. “It’s possible somebody working at Santiago’s saw Jason, thought he was Matt and called in the tip.”

  “After talking to the police, we decided to get the rental car,” Jason said, putting a couple of big spoonfuls of kung pao chicken on top of the pile of rice on his plate. Fear and stress after the attack at the copy store might have killed his appetite earlier in the day, but he was hungry now. Life did go on. And apparently Lauren felt the same way, because when dinnertime rolled around she’d said she was pretty hungry, too.

  “The thugs know what Lauren’s SUV looks like, and I’m sure they have the license plate number,” Jason continued. “It seemed smarter to leave it in a parking garage downtown and get something else to drive to Boulder tomorrow.”

  “Good plan,” Al said.

  “You’ll both stay here tonight,” Barb said. It was less an invitation and more a command. She turned to Lauren. “You already told me you were worried about leading the gunmen to your house and putting your mom in danger. You can’t be one hundred percent certain no one saw you exchange vehicles, so it would still be smart for you not to drive to your mom’s house.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Jason said. And he truly was touched to know that they would be willing to help the brother of a man who’d skipped out on them after they’d bonded him out of jail. “But I’m the person drawing gunfire since the bad guys can’t seem to figure out I’m not Matt. I think the safest move for you, and for Lauren, would be for me to take a cab back to a hotel downtown and get a room there.” He turned to Lauren. “I’ll be back here first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Lauren shook her head. “No, I think you should stay here. If you go back downtown, you increase the chances of somebody dangerous seeing you. It isn’t just our safety that matters. Yours does, too.”

  Her gaze lingered on him, and his heart beat a little faster.

  “This isn’t our first rodeo,” Al said. “Remember, we sell bail bonds. That means when people don’t show up for their court date, we call in bounty hunters like Lauren to find them and haul them to jail. You think Barb and I don’t have a long list of people who want to harm us? Of course we do.”

  “So we’ve got good, solid locks on the doors,” Barb said. “And an excellent security system. Not to mention vigilant watchdogs who will let us know if anyone tries to break into the house in the middle of the night.”

  Watchdogs. Jason had to laugh out loud at that. The watchdogs were Daphne and Flower, a couple of chunky and slightly bug-eyed Chihuahuas.

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Al said. “All we need them to do is wake us up if anyone comes around the house in the middle of the night. We can take care of things from there.”

  “So you’re staying,” Lauren said. “Now let’s talk about our plan for tomorrow. In his bond application, your brother listed a couple of former employers here in Denver. I think we should talk to them before we go to Boulder.”

  “Tony seemed like a nice enough guy when he came into the bail bond office,” Al said. “But keep in mind the fact that you don’t really know him. Boulder might be a solid lead. Or he might be sending you on a wild-goose chase.”

  “Fair enough,” Lauren said. She turned to Jason. “After dinner, let’s get started on a list of leads to check out in Boulder. The names of any places or people you could remember your brother mentioning would be helpful.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  As they continued eating, Barb directed the conversation to lighter topics and mutual friends she and Al shared with Lauren. Jason just listened and soaked up the feeling of family and warmth around the dinner table. It was something unusual for him and something he savored every bit as much as the Chinese food. For a minute or two, he let himself imagine what it might feel like to have his own family around his own dinner table every night.

  He glanced at Lauren, and when she looked at him, he quickly glanced away. He turned his attention to the windows instead. He didn’t have much cozy family experience, but he did have combat experience. He knew how to stay vigilant. He would stay up late tonight and set his phone alarm to wake him up very early. He would watch and he would listen. He was a magnet for danger right now. Not just for himself, but for anybody who was helping him. Which made it his responsibility to watch out for everybody sitting here at the dining table.

  SIX

  “I remember your brother working here a couple of years ago. That’s all I’m willing to tell you. If you want to see any of his old employee records, you’ll have to come back with a warrant. We don’t give out information to just anybody. A company can get sued for doing that.” The manager of High Mountain Transport crossed his arms over his chest and stared defiantly at Jason.

  Jason stared back.

  “Could you point us toward somebody else here who worked with him?” Lauren asked hopefully. She could practically feel the frustration radiating off Jason as she stood beside him. She understood that he didn’t care if the trucking company got sued for giving out personal information. He just wanted to find his brother. Alive.

  But there was a time and place for everything. Sometimes intimidation tactics worked. Sometimes they didn’t. Experience told Lauren that the stare down she was witnessing wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

  “If we could talk to someone who knew him, we wouldn’t take much of their time,” she added in the most chipper tone she could muster. If they could get the name of a place where Matt liked to hang out after work, or maybe the name of a friend or girlfriend, that might lead to something more.

  The assistant manager spared her a glance without turning his face away from Jason. “I don’t remember who he hung out with. And it’s time for the two of you to go.”

  “Well, at least we tried,” she said to Jason as they walked from the warehouse out into the cold, sunny morning. This was the second of the two former employers listed on Matt’s bond application that they’d visited. The guy at the first trucking company had been every bit as closemouthed, too. “And both places let us leave flyers behind. Somebody might call us later.”

  “I know you’re right,” Jason said tightly as they got into the rental car. He’d insisted on paying for the rental, even though Lauren told him she could do it and that it would be a business expense for her. It turned out he was determined to be the one who rented the car because he wanted to drive.

  Her initial reaction had been to push back on that. She should be the one to drive. She liked to be in control of a situation as much as any bounty hunter. But then she’d thought about the horrible situation he was in. His brother had jumped bail, and people were out to kill Matt. And those killers kept mistaking Jason for his brother and taking shots at him
. That was a lot of stress to be managing. So if he wanted to drive, she was okay with that. As long as he didn’t think he was taking over anything else.

  “Let’s head on over to Boulder,” she said.

  Before they got to the freeway, Lauren spotted one of the big stores that sold everything from groceries to tires. “Let’s make a quick stop here,” she said, gesturing toward the store. “We need to get you some dark glasses and a hat so you’re not such an obvious target while we’re walking around in Boulder.”

  Jason nodded. “Good idea.”

  They were in and out of the store within a half hour. Along with a baseball cap and wraparound sunglasses for Jason, both of them purchased things they’d need if they were going to be away from home for another few days. Then they got on the highway headed north.

  Lauren’s phone chimed with a message from Kevin, letting her know his dad was home and doing well and asking if she needed any help.

  She glanced over at Jason, who was focused on the highway ahead of them. She didn’t know him nearly well enough to know what his normal demeanor was over a long stretch of time, but since they’d met up at the breakfast table in Al and Barb’s house this morning, he’d seemed more subdued than usual. Maybe she did need Kevin’s help. Maybe it was time for Jason to stand down. It could be that this chase for his brother was too much for him, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

  She cleared her throat. “If you’ve changed your mind and you want to stay back when we get closer to apprehending your brother, I’d understand.”

  He cut her a quick sideways glance. “Why do you want to get rid of me?”

  The bantering tone he usually worked into his conversation was gone. “You all right?” she asked, anticipating that he would tell her to mind her own business. “Because it doesn’t seem like you are.”

  “People are trying to kill me,” he said. “That tends to take the sunshine out of my smile.”