I nodded.
“Listen, the mayor is holding another press conference, and he’s requested the heads of law enforcement be present. I know, it’s a waste of my time, but people are afraid.”
“They should be. Because the only ones who can identify this guy are dead,” I said.
“Killers like him are your specialty, Abby. Find him.”
Just as Reilly spun on his heels, his cell phone rang.
“Reilly speaking… What happened? Jesus Christ! Do not pursue. I’m ordering you to stand down until backup arrives.”
“What?” Kang and I asked in unison.
“The shooter showed up at your home. Pratt’s down. Hansen’s wounded.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Hansen tightened his belt around his left arm, just above the elbow. The bullet had passed clean through. Pratt hadn’t been so lucky. Shot in the face at point-blank range, he had dropped like a discarded marionette.
When they arrived at Abby’s home, the two agents had decided to conduct a walk around the property. As they emerged from the side of the house, they saw the outline of a man standing on the sidewalk. He appeared to be carrying two bags of groceries. The sun had already set, and the only street lamps were posted at the opposite ends of Pfeifer Street, where it intersected with Stockton and Grant. It was darker outside Abby’s home.
They approached the man to inquire if he needed any help. Pratt led the way, identifying himself as an FBI agent. That was when the man fired the first shot.
Hansen had just enough time to draw his weapon and return fire while running back around a nearby car. The exchange was brief, but by the time Hansen peeked back over the hood of the vehicle, the shooter had disappeared. He checked on Pratt and confirmed his initial suspicion before calling Reilly. He’d then ignored the order to stand down and went looking for the guy who tried to kill him.
Where did you go, asshole?
Hansen looked up and down the street and figured the guy had reversed course and headed away from the house. He moved forward slowly along the sidewalk, slightly crouched and favoring his arm.
Sirens screamed in the distance. Soon a flurry of red and blue lights would swarm down on his position. Hansen knew a perimeter would be set up in an effort to contain this guy. And that frightened him the most.
The area was purely residential. It was a weeknight, and families were home. Any one of these dwellings could end up as that son-of-a-bitch’s last stand. A loose cannon in the corner had no other option but to keep firing.
Clearly this guy had no fear. Death wasn’t a deterrent. He had fired on an FBI agent without so much as giving it any thought. Not the kind of guy who surrendered.
Hansen noticed the throbbing in his arm had worsened. Until that point, just the thumping in his chest kept time. His breaths were forceful but not from overexertion. His neck was slick, his eyes jittery, and his trigger finger jumpy.
A lady opened the front door of her home, and Hansen told her to get back inside and lock herself in. He continued down the street, methodically searching, anticipating.
Is that movement?
He turned quickly, pointing his handgun at a tall hedge separating two properties.
I heard something.
He spun around. His eyes searched the low brush across the street.
Come on, Hansen. Pull it together.
His eyes focused back on the street ahead. He stood exactly in the middle of Pfeifer Street. It was also the darkest area. Hansen worked to bring his breathing under control. Each breath sounded like a typhoon blowing.
Surely he had painted himself as a target.
Surely the sights on the shooter’s gun were targeting him.
Surely his time had also come.
But Hansen pushed forward. His partner had been gunned down only minutes ago. He had to avenge his death. He couldn’t allow him to become another statistic. He had to find this guy. He had to be the one to put an end to this man’s reign of terror.
As far as Hansen was concerned, he had no intention of allowing the justice system to play its course. He took on the role of judge and jury that night. And the Glock in his hand was his mallet.
He walked past the tall hedge he had targeted earlier, convinced he was clearing the street as best as he could with each step.
Click.
He was so wrong.
Covering the distance from the hotel to my home was about a six-minute drive, if you drove like I did with a siren screaming, lights flashing, and the accelerator pedal pinned beneath a shoe.
Kang gripped his armrest. “Sheesh, Abby. I think we caught air off that last hill.”
He was probably right, but I had brought Hansen and Pratt in on my investigation. They made up my team. I had already failed one of them.
We sped north on Stockton Avenue, barreling through each intersection. Through my rearview mirror, I could see that Reilly was keeping up with us. He had jumped into his SUV and followed me out of the hotel.
The next right was Pfeiffer. I waited until the last possible moment to ease off the gas as I hooked the wheel to the right. The tires screeched as they gripped the pavement, forcing the vehicle to hug the corner. I hit the switch for the high beams and lit the street.
“There!” I shouted.
“I see them.” Kang had already drawn his weapon and unfastened his seatbelt.
Ahead of us were two men standing on the sidewalk. One man held a gun against the back of the other’s head. I knew Hansen’s body posture. There was no mistaking, even at forty yards away, he wasn’t the one pointing the weapon.
I slammed my foot down on the brake pedal, and the car came to a quick stop. Both of our doors flew open, and we stepped out, careful to remain behind our metal shields. I heard Reilly’s SUV come to halt behind us, his door opening as well.
From our position, we were about fifteen yards away, and the headlights of my vehicle acted like spotlights on a deadly stage.
The shooter looked directly at us. He was Asian, and his clothing fit the description: jeans and a fashionable, long-sleeve button-down. He didn’t appear injured, nor did he look like a crazed killer. In fact, he had a calm demeanor.
“Drop the gun!” Kang shouted.
I stared into the man’s dark eyes. They were cold, without heart.
“Drop it. Now!” Kang continued with his commands.
A smile formed on the shooter’s face.
It was then I realized this would only end one way.
I fired.
So did the shooter.
Chapter Forty-Nine
One man lay face down, the other was on his knees. Kang and I moved forward, weapons still drawn and trained.
“Hansen!” I called out. He didn’t answer.
Kang moved to secure the shooter. Reilly was a few steps behind both of us.
I knelt next to Hansen when I reached him. He was shivering and still had a tight grip on his weapon.
“Let’s put this down for now,” I said as I carefully eased the handgun from his grip. “Everything’s under control now.”
He looked at me with glassy eyes and tried to speak, but no words came out of his slack jaw. And then he began sobbing. He choked on his breath as tears formed in his eyes before trailing along the sides of his face.
“It’s okay.” I looked at his arm and adjusted the belt before reaching around and feeling the back of his head. The shooter’s bullet had completely missed. “You’re fine. You’re alive with us here. We got you.”
“If you hadn’t fired, I—”
“But I did, and you’re still here. That’s all that matters. Come on. Stand up.” I holstered my weapon and then helped him to his feet. “I want you to wait in the car until a paramedic can look you over.”
Hansen slowed as we passed the shooter. Kang was busy checking for a pulse. He didn’t have to—the hole in the shooter’s head said it all.
I nudged Hansen to keep him moving forward. “Nothing to see here. Let�
�s keep walking.”
Of all the newbie agents, Hansen had always stood out to me. He was a go-getter, never afraid to help out and get his hands dirty, and always eager to learn. I’d really had high hopes for him.
But the man I walked next to that night was someone else.
I put Hansen into the front seat of my vehicle. He was still shaking, and his eyes looked right through me.
“Where is Pratt’s body?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, and his foggy gaze fell to his lap. I lifted his chin and turned his head so his eyes were looking straight into mine. There was nothing there. Just nothing.
I closed the door and went looking for Pratt. Reilly had already found him farther down the street, on the sidewalk outside my home. From the look on Reilly’s face, the slight chance that Pratt might still be breathing faded away. The cavalry had come too late.
If you ask me, we lost two agents that night. Even though the shooter’s bullet missed the back of Hansen’s head by millimeters and he survived, I knew deep down that the chances of him coming back from that were low. That brush with death had shaken him like nothing else.
“How’s Agent Hansen?” Reilly asked.
“Aside from the GSW in his left arm, he’s alive but…”
Reilly nodded that he understood me. “How did you know the guy would pull the trigger?”
“His eyes. We had him cornered, and he knew that.”
“You saved Hansen.” Reilly motioned with his head to my vehicle.
“Did I? Did you see him?”
“Give the guy a chance to recover. Some time off and counseling could bring him back.”
A load of BS was passing over Reilly’s lips. He knew it. I knew it. But that was what supervisors were supposed to say, right?
As first responders filled the street, my neighbors began appearing on their porches and front yards. I couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t often a shootout took place outside their front doors. I avoided making eye contact with any of them. I wonder how many of them saw me shoot that man dead. The media had already turned up. My neighbors could turn on their televisions and receive their briefing that way.
Kang was standing near the shooter’s body when I caught up with him. He inquired about Hansen, and I told him the same thing I’d told Reilly, but I could tell Kang knew what was up. He’d heard Hansen sobbing.
“Any idea who the shooter is?” I asked.
“He has no ID. We’ll have to print him and see if we get a hit.”
I knelt down and lifted the cover that had been placed over the body. I removed my flashlight from the holder on my belt and lit his face for a better look. “You think he’s a local or someone sent from China?”
“Hard to say.” Kang knelt down next to me. “Not much time has passed since Xiaolian was found. What, like a week? He could have been dispatched from overseas, or he could be a local answering to someone back in the motherland.”
“My gut tells me he isn’t from here. I also don’t see any tattoos that would associate him with any of the large Triad factions in town. That tells me he doesn’t work for anyone in particular. He’s a contract killer for hire.”
“Violent and ruthless way of working too,” Kang added.
“If he is from China, his clothing suggests he’s from a large city: Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong.”
“Or Taiwan, since that’s where the ship came from.” Kang started checking the clothing tags. “Prada shirt and Guess jeans.”
He removed one of the shoes and looked at the label inside before showing it to me. It was a no-name brand. Did it mean anything? Maybe. Finding where the brand was manufactured and sold might pinpoint his home.
“Anything?” Reilly asked as he came up behind us.
I stood. “Nothing to identify him right away. No visible gang tattoos. He doesn’t seem local. We’ll run his prints through our database and circulate his picture. Hopefully something will come out of that and lead us to the person who hired him.”
“If he turns out to be a Chinese national, he’s not our problem anymore. The DOJ can run with it, which we know they can’t be bothered with, since this doesn’t really scream ‘national security threat.’ The way the powers-that-be will see this playing out is that we caught the mass murderer. The media will call for answers on who he is and why he did this, and we’re to say that we’re looking into it but it’s possible he’s working alone.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
“I know, Abby, but if he is a Chinese national, it’s out of our jurisdiction. As far as the FBI is concerned, we did our part of the job. We caught the guy responsible for killing twenty people today and maybe more.”
Reilly was right. Also, we couldn’t be sure of why the shooter turned up at my home. Was he after Xiaolian or my family? Either way, until I saw her dead body, I wanted to believe she was still alive.
While her disappearance puzzled me, her existence perplexed me even more. How on earth could a little girl hold the answers to so many questions running through my mind? The most troubling of them all and the one that bothered me the most—why did we look so much alike? Were we meant to find each other?
Chapter Fifty
The man sat on the bed nearest the television. He had the sound level turned low, barely audible, as he watched the media coverage of the hunt. They were reporting that the police had shot the person responsible but it wasn’t official as of yet.
The water to the shower turned off, and he continued to watch, hand ready with the remote. The lock on the bathroom door clicked, and he pressed the off button, but not quick enough. It took a couple of attempts before the TV shut off.
“What’s happening?” Xiaolian asked as she exited the bathroom, her eyes locked on the television.
“It’s nothing.”
“There were a lot of police. Are they looking for me?”
“Why don’t you sit down and just rest.”
“I want to know what will happen to me now.”
“For the time being, you will remain with me.”
“But why can’t I go back to Abby’s house? I don’t understand. If you aren’t here to take me back, then why do I have to stay with you?”
“It’s for your safety.”
“You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me what you’re keeping me safe from.”
The man sighed loudly. “You’re right. You should know.”
He switched the television back on and let her watch the newscast.
“That’s Abby’s street. I recognize it,” Xiaolian said.
The news media continued to report live on the capture of a killer. He didn’t bother to prep her or fill in the details. He just allowed her to soak it all in.
After about ten minutes or so of watching, she turned to him. “The others from the boat, they’re all dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why were they killed?”
“Good question. I don’t know why.”
Just then cameras were panning across the crime scene, and Agent Kane walked by.
“There’s Abby.” She pointed at the television set. “Did she catch the killer?”
“I believe she was involved.”
“Then it’s safe.”
“It’s not confirmed.”
“Well, if they confirm it, I can go back to Abby’s house.”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t even look at her, just kept staring at the television. He wasn’t sure what his next move should be. He’d been lucky to get Xiaolian out of the house when he had. If he hadn’t, she might be dead, and then all of their work, all the planning, the risks, and the lives lost would be for naught.
And in all honesty, he wasn’t the deciding factor. He himself followed orders.
“I can’t go back to her, can I?” she asked, a bit more forcefully this time.
“I don’t know. It’s not up to me. You know that. Let me ask you something—do you know why Abby allowed you to stay with her?”
Xiaolian thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t know.”
“She needed answers, and you could provide them.”
“But maybe she likes me. Maybe she’ll want to keep me even if she has her answers.”
He leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs, and lowered his head. He didn’t know what to tell her.
“They’re speaking again,” she said, pointing at the television.
He looked up. A reporter was interviewing a man with the FBI. The screen caption read “Special Agent in Charge Scott Reilly.”
“At approximately ten after nine, I received a call from Agent Oliver Hansen. He and Agent Patrick Pratt had stopped a man to question him. This person then opened fire, and Agent Pratt was shot dead. Agent Hansen was also wounded. Despite his injury, he gave chase to the suspect. I and two other federal agents arrived to find the killer with his gun drawn and targeting Agent Hansen. We opened fire, shooting that person dead.”
“I think the questions that are on everyone’s one mind tonight is: who is this man and what prompted him to kill all these innocent people?” a reporter said.
“Those are questions we’re working to find answers to.”
The reporter continued with her line of questioning. “What about the victims? Was there any connection between them or was this all completely random and a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Again, that’s something we’re working on. We’ve yet to identify all of the victims.”
“It’s our understanding that some of the victims found at the women’s shelter were in fact women who were trafficked into this country illegally and forced to work as underage prostitutes.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not something I can yet comment on as we’re still investigating.”
“Is it not true that these women, or really, teenagers, were in fact rescued, and that’s why they were in the shelter in the first place?”
“It is.”
“So perhaps the people responsible for trafficking them came after these girls to keep them from talking.”
[Abby Kanem - SG 01.0] Suitcase Girl Page 18
