Last Shot at Justice (A Thomas Family Novel Book 1)

by Kristi Cramer

  She jerked the wheel back, sending the truck lurching away from the curb. “Don’t stop. Lose them.”

  “Listen, I don’t have license plates; they’re after me.”

  “No, Blue! If you pull over, I’m dead. You understand?” She tried to push her foot down on the accelerator.

  “Come on. They don’t shoot hookers on sight. Just let me....”

  The unmarked police car behind them bumped them lightly, and Blue gently but inexorably pushed her away from the driver’s side of the truck and pulled over under a street light. “Just sit tight,” he told her. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  “Blue!” she struggled against his restraining hand, but she could only move away from him—she couldn’t make him drive away.

  Behind them, the passenger side of the police car opened up, and a man in a raincoat stepped out. She struggled harder as she recognized the man they’d bumped into. Instead of heading to Blue’s door, he headed for her side of the truck.

  “Please,” she said, nearly frantic. “He’ll kill me!”

  Chapter Two

  Blue frowned, wondering at his passenger’s fear. She was just a hooker, and he was pretty sure the police didn’t go around shooting hookers, even in the city. But it did seem strange that they would come to her side of the truck, and now this man had his gun out.

  “Step out of the vehicle,” the man said, his voice barely carrying to Blue over the noise of the rain. He stood just outside her window with the gun out, but pointed in the air.

  “I want to see your credentials,” she said, without rolling down the window.

  “Get out,” he responded. Blue was surprised the man didn’t produce his badge.

  “Your badge!” she countered, raising her voice.

  “Get out!” he barked.

  She put her hands up, then turned in the seat to reach for the door handle, moving very slowly. Blue let out his breath in relief, glad she was cooperating. The man outside the door grinned and stepped back to allow the door to open. As she cracked the door he lowered his gun and reached for the handle.

  “You thought you could get away,” he said smugly.

  “Get ready,” Mitzi said, more to herself than to Blue, then she pushed the door open sharply with her left hand, so that the door frame struck the man’s gun hand. At the same time she cocked her right fist back and jabbed the man square in the nose. The blow rocked him backward, and he staggered away from the truck.

  Realizing she was about to jump out, Blue grabbed Mitzi’s arm and hauled her back, then slammed the truck into drive and floored it, fish-tailing sideways on the wet pavement. The door slammed shut, and they both ducked as bullets struck first the side of the truck, then the back window of the cab, passing through it to crack the glass of the windshield.

  He took the first turn he found, then the next, zigzagging away from the scene, putting as many buildings as he could between them and the pursuing car.

  “He’s not a cop, is he?” Blue shouted above the roar of the engine, then leaned into a sharp right turn.

  “No, he’s not,” she answered, hanging onto the door handle.

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. They’re still behind us.”

  “Not for long,” Blue said, gunning the motor up the hill in front of them. The engine howled in protest, and Blue thought they might catch air as they crested the hill.

  Once over the top, he jammed on the brakes and turned the wheel to a sharp left, sliding around a corner. It was a beautiful move, but he didn’t quite make it clean. They clipped the curb hard enough to jar them both, then the pickup tore off down the residential street. He took the next turn at nearly the same speed, then another. Then he found what he was searching for—an apartment complex with a large parking lot. He killed the lights and pulled in to park in the fire lane, fitting snugly between a car and another truck.

  They both crouched in the seat, the woman craning around so she could look in the side mirror for any cars passing.

  “How long should we wait?” he asked.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Mitzi glanced at him. “An hour, at least. We’ll find out soon enough if we’re hidden well.” She paused, straining her eyes at the darkness behind them. “Thank you. I was going to try to get away on foot. Why’d you do that?”

  “I dunno.” Blue shrugged. “Something about the look on his face bothered me. He didn’t look professional; he looked more like one of the brawlers from the bar back home, like someone who was spoiling for a fight.”

  She was impressed by his intuitive deduction. “Well, I’m glad you did.”

  “What did I just get myself into?” It sounded like he was beginning to regret helping her. “Was that man your boss, or one of your, ah, customers?”

  “I told you, I don’t know who he is, but I know who he was with when Babs was killed.”

  “Killed!?” Blue jerked himself upright, and Mitzi dragged him back down. “You didn’t say anything about dead people.”

  She didn’t want to try and explain. “I don’t know what all is going on. I need time to figure it out. But just so you know, I’m not a whore.”

  He was silent, and Mitzi hoped he would just stay that way. Everything had happened so quickly, she didn’t know what to make of it. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay quiet.

  “You dress like a whore,” he said at last. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”

  “It’s all right. Look, the less you know about me, the better off you’ll be. I really should leave now, and let you get on with your life.”

  His laugh was not at all humorous. “No, you look. Whoever you’re running from knows what I look like. I run into them with or without you, and I’m in trouble. Our best bet is to stick together, and go to the police before this gets any further out of hand.”

  “It’s already well out of hand, and we can’t go to the police. At least I can’t.”

  “You said someone is dead. We have to go to the police.”

  Mitzi twisted herself around to glare at him, and found herself face to face with him. “Listen, Blue. There’s a lot more going on here than one woman’s death. They’re trying to kill me too, and I don’t know why. Babs’ death was an accident. They were aiming at me, and until I know why, everyone is suspect. That’s more than you should know, more than is safe for you to know. Now shut up while we wait.”

  But it was Mitzi who broke the silence a couple minutes later as she fished her cell phone out of her purse, realizing she hadn’t turned it off. That meant they could conceivably track her. That may have been how they found her in Blue’s truck. She had wanted to use her GPS app to find out where they were, but realized she couldn’t risk it. She powered the phone off and took the battery out.

  “Do you have a smart phone, Blue?”

  “A what?”

  “A smart phone, like an iPhone or an Android? Even a BlackBerry? You know, a cell phone?”

  “Couldn’t say,” he answered. “My daddy gave me a cell phone, but I don’t really know much about it.”

  “Is it here?”

  “Glove box.”

  Mitzi reached out and opened the glove box in the dash and felt around in the papers for a phone. What she came up with was disappointing. “A TracFone?” she exclaimed. “Really?”

  “I guess. Can’t say I’ve used it more than once or twice. Daddy wanted me to have it in case of an emergency, but I’ve never seen the appeal of having one of those things growing out of my hand.”

  Not expecting much, Mitzi turned it on, pretty sure the battery would be dead. The battery icon showed only one bar after the phone had gone through its startup, and Mitzi quickly reviewed the menu options. The Nokia flip-phone was several generations removed from a true smart phone, and while it did have a web browser, it didn’t have anything like a GPS. She sighed.

  “We’re going to have to risk moving, Blue,” she said. “I’m afraid they found me earlier by tracking my phone, and I forgot
to turn it off. They may know we’re here.”

  “But do you know where ‘here’ is?”

  “Get me to an intersection and I will.”

  Blue sat up carefully, checking the mirrors before starting the truck and backing out of the spot and onto the street. At the corner he paused, and Mitzi peered out the window at the street sign. “29th and Ingalls. Wheat Ridge. Where do you live?”

  “I’m renting a space in a trailer park just off I-76 at Highway 287.”

  “Not the Rustic Ranch?” she asked with a laugh. Blue’s silence made her turn to look at him.

  “What’s wrong with the Rustic Ranch?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It just...stands out. Turn left here then. We’re not too far away. Drive slow, try not to attract any attention.”

  “So you live around here?”

  “No.” Mitzi wasn’t going to tell him that she had spent a lot of time during the three years between high school and the Academy learning all the streets and neighborhoods in the greater Denver area.

  As part of her mental and physical training regimen, she planned routes through the different neighborhoods and ran them on her way to the boxing club. By the time she turned twenty-one—old enough to apply to the Academy—she had effectively run every single street in the city.

  Her program provided excellent benefits for both her interim boxing career and her future plans. She entered the police force super fit, knowing she would never get lost and embarrassed in front of her co-workers.

  ⋘⋆⋙

  Blue turned the corner and drove down the street, watching for more cars coming out of the woodwork to shoot at them. He’d never expected to need in earnest the skills he’d learned as a kid, racing his friends around the country roads outside Syracuse. Turning corners on city streets was different than driving the dirt roads around property lines, but the experience he gained in Kansas had translated well enough.

  “I think I bent a tie rod,” he said ruefully as the truck wobbled uncertainly down the street. “I’m not used to worrying about curbs.”

  “You drive like that a lot?”

  “Syracuse is a small town. Not much to do after dark that’s productive. My friends and I get a little wild sometimes.”

  “Hmm.”

  Blue frowned at the slightly disapproving tone in her voice. It seemed funny that a prostitute would judge someone for racing on country roads.

  “I don’t mean to pry or anything, but how does someone in your line of work deal with the stress?” he asked. “I mean, I can’t think of many other jobs where you risk getting shot at by your customers.”

  He saw her turn to look at him quickly, and he immediately regretted the jab.

  “I told you, I’m not a whore,” she replied in a sharp voice.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “You haven’t told me what you are, so I’m just going with what I’ve got.”

  She kept silent, and Blue plowed on, trying to dig himself out of a hole he could sense but couldn’t really see. “I guess now is as good a time as any to change professions. I’m glad I can help. A pretty filly like you shouldn’t have to work a job like that. You should have someone to protect you and take care of you.”

  Glancing over at her, he saw her glaring at him as they passed beneath a street light. “What?”

  “Nothing. Turn left up ahead.”

  As they turned the corner he recognized Highway 287. “There we go. Familiar territory. Look. I’ve never been shot at before. I’ve never run from the police before. And I have never been kissed like that, especially not by a prostitute.” He tipped his head to the side, considering. “Actually, I ain’t ever been kissed by a prostitute, period. I’d like to help you, but I really think I need to know what’s going on.”

  She didn’t answer, and Blue shook his head and sighed. They rode in silence for the last mile or so to his trailer park.

  Blue smiled when he saw the giant cowboy statue looming out of the darkness at them. His passenger was right, the Rustic Ranch stood out. That twenty-foot-tall cowboy was the main reason he had chosen this place to park. It reminded him that just because Denver grew up into a big city, it still had the same heritage as him, in a saddle.

  “Can you park out of sight?” she asked. “Somewhere that can’t be seen from the street?”

  “My place is in the middle. After we pull into the driveway, no one will see the truck from out on the road.” He drove in past the mobile homes that made up the bulk of his neighbors to the center of the park and continued on to where the RV sites for visitors were located. His camper was probably the smallest in the whole park and sure didn’t look like much, but it was good enough to call home.

  Chapter Three

  Mitzi looked around at the mostly 1960s era mobile homes in the park and tried to recall the stories her co-workers had passed along about the Rustic Ranch. If she remembered correctly, it was a mostly harmless place, if just a little odd.

  Incidents like a visiting RVer siccing a pit bull on what he called “nosey passerbys,” kids shooting stray dogs and cats with paintballs, and one resident who kept the rats and other pests he trapped hanging on the fence until the neighbors made him take them down. A domestic or two, and once a party that got seriously out of hand to the tune of several thousand dollars in damages. But the impression Mitzi had gotten of the Rustic Ranch was of a tiny community that stayed pretty quiet, and mostly kept their odd ways to themselves. Not a bad place to hide, she decided.

  That is, until she caught sight of the tiny cabover camper Blue pulled up next to. What she saw in the headlights looked like something out of the 1960s too. A relic almost half a century old that couldn’t be much more than ten or eleven feet from end to end. This was not what she had expected.

  “Here’s home,” Blue said, shutting off the headlights, shifting the truck into park, and opening the door. Mitzi was still staring out the window at the camper—perched on jack poles and blocks—when Blue came around and opened her door for her. The rain had let up only slightly, and she felt bad leaving him standing there, but she couldn’t imagine there would be any room for two inside.

  “I’m not putting you out too much, am I?” she asked.

  “Fine time to ask that,” he said, giving a wry smile with a small gesture to invite her in. “It’s small, but I don’t have a lot of stuff. Come inside before you decide.”

  Mitzi slid off the seat to the wet ground, and once again Blue sheltered her with his coat as they walked to the door. He fumbled with a key in the darkness and mumbled what might have been a curse before the latch turned and he pulled the door open.

  She climbed the steps into the dark interior, sensing only shadows but reassured by the absence of any scent other than old vinyl and citrus-scented cleaning products.

  Blue came up behind her, and she gave an involuntary shiver as he reached above her for the switch on the light fixture. As the room lit up, she looked around and saw he had told the truth about the amount of stuff—or lack of it.

  The first thing she saw was a heavy white curtain, trimmed with images of canoes, fish, and fishing gear, pulled across the entrance to the sleeping loft, situated above a small step.

  To the left of the loft was an empty countertop with two small empty sinks, and a drain board where a nearly empty dish drainer had a coffee mug and a spoon in it. The three-burner cooktop had a clean cast-iron pan and coffee percolator on it, a tiny oven below, a basic spice rack on the wall behind it, and a cupboard above. On her immediate left were more cupboards and a tiny closet she both hoped and dreaded was a bathroom. All the cupboard doors were closed.

  On the right from the loft were another closet and a wall with an inset square refrigerator below a cupboard with a mirror hanging on its door. A thirteen-inch tube TV sat on a makeshift shelf cut into the wall facing a single-leg table, and she wondered if the TV was even hooked up. An L-shaped bench curved behind the table, completing the rest of the wall.

  Mitzi found herself stand
ing in the dining room/kitchen, her leg brushing the empty table, just a few short feet from the bedroom.

  Nothing hung on the walls but a crooked electric clock. Simple linen curtains sporting the same fishing motif lent a splash of faded color over the closed white window shades. The linoleum floor sported a small rug just inside the door.

  She looked up to see Blue watching her with a small smile. Although he had removed his hat, he still couldn’t stand up straight without bumping the ceiling. The hat rotated in his shifting grip, the motion a small betrayal that he wasn’t as relaxed as he looked.

  “It’s not much, I know,” he commented, “but the table drops down to make a sleeping bench. It will be a tight fit for me, but there’s no way I’ll let you sleep out here.”

  “Oh, the bench is fine,” she said hastily. “I probably won’t sleep much anyway.”

  Blue paused, then moved on. “The bathroom is a close fit, but it is clean. Privacy might be an issue. I have to leave the door open when I....” He stopped, apparently realizing that was too much information.

  An awkward silence fell.

  “Please, come on in.” He started to move past her, but would have had to push her out of the way, so he just waved his hat toward the other side of the room.

  Mitzi moved farther inside and sat down on the seat, sliding awkwardly to dodge the protruding edge of the TV shelf.

  Blue turned to hang his coat on a hook on the door, but he still held his hat and was fiddling with the conches of his hatband as he moved into the kitchen area.

  “Can I get you anything to drink?” he asked suddenly, and opened the small refrigerator. “I have beer and iced tea....”

  “Would coffee be too much trouble?” she asked, wishing she could ask for a cigarette too, but it was apparent Blue didn’t smoke. Not for the first time she cursed the boring stakeouts that led to her taking up smoking as something to do besides eating. She had thought she was strong-willed enough not to get hooked.

  “But it’s after ten....”

  “After ten?” She looked at her watch and saw it was 10:25. So much for catching the news at the top of the hour. Maybe she could catch the eleven o’clock news to see if they reported anything about her. Her lip twitched with a scowl at that thought. “I don’t suppose your TV works?”