Easy Shot

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Charles flipped off the television and moved back to his desk. He was feeling even more numb than he had earlier, but he was sure a good night’s sleep would solve that problem. And now that his companies were out of immediate danger from the good Senator, he just might get some sleep.

  He dropped down into his chair and clicked on his computer screen. He had the money set up to transfer to the man’s account after it was confirmed about the Senator. But it wasn’t as much as the man had demanded. In fact, it was nowhere near as much.

  Charles glanced at the total, then laughed. “You think you can blackmail me, do you?” With a click the funds were transferred to the man’s account. “I can change the rules just as easily as you can,” Charles said to the man, as if he could hear, “and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Not with the security I’ve got around here. You work for me, remember?”

  With a laugh Charles shut down his computer and stood. “A good brandy and a steak for dinner is just what the doctor ordered.”

  Charles laughed again, starting to feel a lot better. “Probably not the Senator’s doctor.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sunday, April 9th

  5:47 p.m.

  TO CRAIG THE first fifteen minutes of waiting seemed to drag on and on as they stood just inside Danny’s bedroom door.

  Bonnie paced silently while he leaned against the door frame. Every thirty seconds or so he peeked through the slightly open door to make sure Danny was still sitting on the couch. The young golf pro was, watching television and doing his best to remain still, mostly without success.

  But his orders from Maxwell were to stay on the couch, without moving around, until the man showed up, and that was exactly what Danny was doing.

  Craig couldn’t blame the kid for squirming and worrying. He was in a situation different from anything he had ever seen outside a movie. And his wife had been taken hostage all because of someone’s desire to get to a United States Senator. How completely unfair was that?

  If that was what had really happened.

  At first Craig hadn’t believed the kid, but over the last hour he had started to. Craig’s biggest worry now was that Danny’s wife was already dead. There was no doubt that the Senator would be injured or dead and Danny might be facing a death sentence shortly if he and Bonnie hadn’t accidentally overheard that conversation the first night. But finding Danny’s wife was another matter.

  Right now Maxwell and his people were scrambling to triangulate cell calls and track down any lead that might give them a clue to Steph Baines’s location.

  Bonnie found a hotel note pad on the nightstand beside the phone and scribbled a quick note, holding it up to him to see.

  This waiting is driving me nuts!

  Craig smiled at her and nodded his agreement. They still had almost thirty minutes before the man Danny was supposed to meet was even scheduled to show.

  Craig took the pen and pad and wrote a note back to her.

  Me too. Wish we had turned the television on in here as well.

  She read his note and nodded. Then took the pad and wrote: That would have helped.

  They wrote a few notes back and forth for the next ten minutes until suddenly there was a knock on the hall door into Danny’s room.

  Craig checked on Danny through the crack in the open door. The young pro was staring his way, a very frightened look on his face.

  Craig silently opened the bedroom door enough for Danny to see him and motioned for Danny to go ahead and let his contact into the suite.

  Danny took a deep breath and went for the door as Craig eased the bedroom door closed and pulled his gun, quickly checking it to make sure it was loaded and ready to fire.

  Bonnie had her gun in her hand as well. Her face was flushed and she was fighting to control her breathing. That knock must have really startled her.

  It startled him, that was for sure, even though that was what they had been waiting for.

  He motioned for her to take a position on the far side of the dresser behind where the door would open.

  Craig then moved over against the wall by the closet so he would have a clear angle at the doorway. If the guy checked in here before Maxwell and Hagar came in, Craig planned on greeting the guy with a loaded gun, and he wanted Bonnie flanking the man, but not in his line of fire.

  Also he and Bonnie had worked out that if they had to go through the door, he would go first and to his left, she second and to the right. These starting positions would make it easier for that to happen.

  Bonnie got into position and nodded she was ready.

  “Yeah,” Danny said as he opened the doorway into the hall.

  A very long pause.

  Craig glanced at Bonnie and motioned that she should take a deep breath. She did, silently, then mouthed to him to be careful.

  “I see our Senator had himself a little accident, as planned,” a man’s voice said as the door to the hall closed.

  Craig glanced at Bonnie, whose eyes were wide. She recognized the voice as well as he did. It was one of the guys they had overheard on Friday night.

  “My wife?” Danny asked. “Is she all right?”

  “Ahh, sure thing, kid,” the man said. “Right as rain. You and her can be doing the humpy-bumpy tonight.”

  “So when can I talk to her?” Danny demanded.

  Craig glanced at his watch. Thirteen seconds had gone by. Maxwell and Hagar should be coming through the door at any instant.

  “I’m goin’ to take you to a place where you can talk to her,” the man said.

  Craig knew that the place the man wanted to take Danny to was where Danny would be killed.

  “No!” Danny said. “I want to talk to her now!”

  Craig glanced at Bonnie, whose eyes were round. That wasn’t in Danny’s script.

  “Sure, kid,” the man said. “No skin off my nose.”

  Craig could hear the beeping of a cell phone as the man dialed a number. If he was actually dialing the location of Danny’s wife, Craig hoped Maxwell and the others were listening and would give the call time to happen. That way they had something to triangulate to find the location.

  “Put the kid’s wife on the phone again,” the man said.

  Then Danny said, “Steph? Are you all right?”

  There was a pause.

  “I love you,” Danny said.

  “That’s enough, kid,” the man said. “You’ll see her soon enough.

  There was a clear sound of the cell phone cover being snapped shut. “Now, let’s go.”

  At that instant the door from the hall burst open and Maxwell’s voice shouted “FBI!”

  Craig took one step toward the bedroom door and yanked it open, moving left, his gun aimed at the man standing near the television. The guy looked to be no more than thirty and couldn’t have been taller than five-foot-five.

  Danny dove away from the man for the couch, rolling over a coffee table as he went.

  The man drew a revolver from under his coat jacket, spinning at Maxwell coming through the hallway door.

  “Don’t!” Craig shouted.

  “Drop the gun!” Maxwell shouted.

  The guy didn’t listen.

  It was a very stupid thing not to do.

  The guy had his gun out and was turning on Maxwell when both Craig and Maxwell fired.

  The two shots slammed the room in sound.

  Craig was aiming at the man’s shoulder and arm. From fifteen feet, he knew he didn’t miss.

  Maxwell was even closer and clearly didn’t miss either.

  The man spun around like someone had put a boogie-board under his feet and yanked on him. His gun banged against the wall from the force of the impacts and ended up near the small bar.

  The man did a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn and smashed to the floor, face up, staring at the ceiling, his legs twisted under him.

  The noise inside the small room was deafening from the two shots and the air stank of gunp
owder. Craig had had to fire his gun in a few enclosed areas before, and the intensity of the explosion and smell always caught him by surprise.

  Both Craig and Maxwell were over the man before he even stopped falling. Craig could see that the guy had been hit twice. Once in the right shoulder, which was Craig’s shot, and once in the stomach, which had to be Maxwell’s. The guy clearly wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to be lucky to live.

  Now the copperish odor of blood filled the air, mixing with the gunpowder smell as blood stained the carpet black below the guy.

  Maxwell bent down over the man, whose eyes were fluttering like he had sand in them.

  Craig glanced around at Bonnie, who was standing over Danny, her hand on his shoulder as he sobbed into the couch. Two other agents and Hagar were also in the room.

  “Ambulance,” Craig said and Hagar grabbed the phone off the stand beside him.

  “And get the number of that last call and its location,” Maxwell said, picking the cell phone out of the man’s front pocket and tossing it to one of the agents. “Stat!”

  The agent with the phone grabbed it out of the air, jumped toward the door, and disappeared into the hall.

  “Who hired you?” Maxwell asked, turning back to the man on the floor.

  The guy stopped blinking long enough to look at Maxwell, then at Craig.

  Craig knew the look. It was an awareness of death coming, as if suddenly a person knew death now and accepted it all in one instant. Craig had seen it on every death he had witnessed. The guy had the look now.

  “Come on,” Maxwell said, urgency in his voice. “Who hired you?”

  The guy looked like he wanted to say something.

  The silence as they tried to listen for what the man would say seemed extra intense in the room after the sound of shots.

  But there was going to be nothing but silence.

  All that came out of the guy’s mouth were a few bloody bubbles before he died.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Sunday, April 9th

  7:01 p.m.

  BONNIE HAD BEEN a cop long enough to see her share of death. And every time she hoped she would never have to see more.

  This time was no different.

  Just easier.

  The deaths of children and teenagers were the ones that bothered her the most, but every death seemed to carve a small chunk out of her soul, leaving her feeling just a little more empty and a little more jaded toward life and people.

  Having the guy die in the fight in the hotel room was startling, and disturbing, but for some reason she didn’t find herself that upset about it. He had tried to kill Senator Knight, had kidnapped Danny’s wife, and was more than likely going to kill Danny and his wife if they had given him time.

  Having him die wasn’t a great loss to the world, the way she figured it. She knew that was cold, but sometimes being a cop made you cold when it came to scum.

  Craig clearly felt the same way. Craig seemed more upset that he was going to have to do massive paperwork and attend post-shooting hearings after all this was over. Hagar had promised him he would help speed the process. And if he did have to come back for a hearing, just think of the golf he could play. That comment had cheered Craig up some.

  Right now she and Craig and the rest were much more worried about getting Danny’s wife recovered safely. The cell phone they had gotten off the dead guy was stolen, and the number called had been to another stolen cell phone.

  No surprise there.

  Maxwell and his team had managed to get the area the cell call went into narrowed down to a ten-block radius in a Phoenix suburb. But the only way to pinpoint the call exactly to one location was to call the number again.

  And somehow keep the line open long enough to get a fix on the location.

  With the help of the Scottsdale police, the Phoenix police, and other agencies nearby, they had quietly blocked off the entire ten-block area and were standing ready to swarm in on the location as soon as they had it pinpointed. There was going to be no talking with whoever was holding Danny’s wife. They were going to swarm in and take her back without warning.

  Danny seemed ready as well to help in getting his wife to safety. They had all gone back up to the FBI’s room on the top floor of the hotel, leaving Danny’s room for the crime scene people and FBI to go over. Maxwell had figured if Danny made the phone call, there might be more of a chance of it staying connected long enough to get an exact location pinpointed.

  Bonnie agreed and was standing beside Danny, with Craig on the other side, when Maxwell said, “Ready.”

  Danny nodded and pressed redial on the dead man’s cell phone. Then he carefully put it to his ear as if he was afraid it might explode on him.

  Bonnie forced herself to let out the breath she was holding and put her hand gently on Danny’s shoulder to let him know they were there for him.

  After a short moment Danny said, “The guy said I could talk to my wife again.”

  A slight pause.

  Danny looked panicked.

  “He’s right here,” Danny said. “Just put my wife on.”

  Behind Danny, Maxwell signaled thumbs up.

  They had the location and were closing in. But he wanted Danny to keep talking if he could. It would be better for those moving in to keep the guy on the line and busy somehow.

  “All right, all right,” Danny said. “You can talk to him. Then let me talk to my wife again will ya?”

  Bonnie was impressed at the young pro. He had played it perfectly.

  Danny glanced at Bonnie with the phone held out in front of him. He had the questioning look of what was he supposed to do now? He had gone through all his lines they had worked on and he clearly wasn’t capable of making something up in his state of mind.

  Craig motioned for Danny to talk into the phone again, but Bonnie could tell Danny was clearly about to lose it. This was all far, far beyond his depth.

  Bonnie shook her head at her husband, signaling him to not push the young pro any more.

  Craig glanced at Maxwell, then took the phone. He smiled at her and gave her his nothing-to-lose-shrug.

  She agreed. They had pinpointed the location and at this point they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by keeping whoever was on the other end of the line busy for just a few more seconds.

  “Let him talk to his wife, fer cryin’ out loud,” Craig said.

  Bonnie was impressed. Craig’s voice sounded like a passable imitation of the dead-man’s voice. Sometimes her husband’s hidden skills were just amazing.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Craig said after a short moment, “but the kid wouldn’t budge without another call.”

  Suddenly Craig held the phone away from his ear. Bonnie could hear the sounds of gunfire coming from the phone. One shot, another two quick ones, then nothing.

  Craig carefully put the cell phone back up to his ear and listened for a moment, then shook his head that there was nothing on the other end.

  They all looked at Maxwell.

  “Is Steph all right?” Danny asked Maxwell.

  He said nothing.

  Bonnie could feel her stomach clamping down hard as she waited. Beside her Danny seemed as if he might just faint from the fear and worry and waiting.

  Maxwell was listening to reports from his people on headphones. Suddenly he broke into a big smile at Danny. “They have her.”

  “She’s all right?” Danny asked, his voice weak and shaking.

  “She’s all right,” Maxwell said, smiling the broadest grin Bonnie could have imagined the man smiling. “They’re taking her to the hospital. You can meet her there.”

  At that Danny just slumped into a chair and broke down and started crying.

  For a moment the hardened cops and agents in the room looked at the young golf pro with stunned looks.

  Then Bonnie sat down beside him and put her arm on his shoulder for comfort. He deserved a good cry.

  Around her a lot of men were smili
ng, including her husband. It looked like this was over for the moment.

  And for a change, real life had a happy ending, even if the guy was crying.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sunday, April 9th

  8:37 p.m.

  THE MAN CHARLES Robins called Bill signaled for the limo driver to stop in a parking lot as he checked the account balance on his laptop computer screen one more time just to make sure.

  It came up the same.

  Charles Robins had shorted him exactly a half million dollars on the final payment.

  “Stupid idiot,” the man said.

  He snapped the computer closed and put it back in his case.

  Then as he was looking out the window of the limo, he started to laugh. “Stupid men always make stupid mistakes.”

  He had always known that Charles Robins was a stupid man, so this final act of greed was no surprise. It was mostly luck and underhanded dealings that had allowed Robins to build his house-of-cards fortune. The man had known that before he went to work for Robins. For years he had waited for this exact moment, the exact right opportunity to strike at Robins, take as much of Robins’s money as he could, and move on.

  He had gotten a half million out of the idiot. And now Robins had made the fatal mistake of not paying the rest. It was time to show Robins that there were some things not even an idiot could buy his way out of.

  The man signaled for the driver to start up again, then reached into a briefcase and pulled out a cell phone. It was one of ten stolen for this operation that he hadn’t used yet.

  He punched in the number for the man he called Benny. The guy was all New York and proud of it. Benny didn’t know the man’s real name and he didn’t know Benny’s. They simply helped each other out when help was needed.

  The phone rang three times too many without being picked up.