But it—the rage—came flooding back at the sound of Neil’s voice.
This time it was icy cold, as if he stood in the sand hills on a January night. He felt like he could breathe in the vapor of his rage, like his breath in frosty air. He inhaled deeply and let his breath out slowly, then looked over at Mitzi. She looked up at him, her face betraying how tired and stressed out she felt.
“I wouldn’t do anything different,” he said softly. “Except maybe hold you a little longer.”
As he watched, her eyes took on a little extra shine, and her face, which had seemed so haggard and drawn, came back to life.
“Me too,” she responded.
“Kansas sound any better to you, right about now?”
She laughed, and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. “Yes. Kansas sounds like heaven right now. A tin star and a cushy job where the worst criminals I have to track are stealing watermelons? Perfect.”
He laughed, too. “Well, maybe you want to visit first.”
They leaned against each other, and he drank in the sight of her smiling eyes. But as he watched, her expression became serious.
“You see a chance to get out of the line of fire, you take it. Do you hear me?” she commanded, her voice low and fierce.
What he heard remained unspoken: Don’t worry about me.
“I hear you,” he answered, knowing there was no way he was going to abandon her now.
“Time’s up.” Neil moved behind the two captives while Gration came around front, this time holding a gun in each hand, one leveled at each of them.
Neil stooped behind Mitzi and nudged her forward, up off her ankles so he could cut the duct tape and peel it off the legs of her sweat pants.
Then he moved behind Blue and did the same. The duct tape came off his jeans a little more easily than it did from Mitzi’s knit pants. His relief at his legs being freed was short lived as he quickly became conscious of sharp aches in his knees and legs. Aches he had successfully pushed to the back of his mind for most of the night.
Neil went back to haul Mitzi to her feet. She staggered even under his support, and almost went down again. When Neil pulled Blue up, he felt his knees protesting and he staggered too, acutely aware of Gration’s hawk-like gaze switching between them.
The idea that either he or Mitzi could attempt an escape at that moment was laughable. He had never in his life stayed in one position for so long, and every muscle and joint in his legs protested the movement.
Neil walked around in front of them and took one of the guns from Gration. The two men stood there watching for a moment as Blue and Mitzi gained their balance. Neil wore that smug smirk that Blue so desperately wanted to punch off his face.
“Right,” Neil said after a moment. “Outside, Reardon. We’re going next door.”
Mitzi turned around and took a jerky step toward the door. When Blue tried to follow, Gration lifted the gun and stepped in his way. “Not you, not yet.”
With every step Mitzi took away from him, Blue could sense the panic rising. He deliberately tamped it down, bringing back in its stead the icy cold rage he had felt just moments ago. Refusing to be blinded by fear, he nurtured a clarity of vision that allowed him to analyze the situation and calculate what his next move might be.
After both Mitzi and Neil had left the room, Gration motioned to Blue that he could follow.
When he stepped out on the landing he noted that the sky was beginning to grow light in the east. It was something of a shock to realize they had passed the entire night on their knees.
Without being able to look at a clock, he had to guess that it was going on at least 6:30. He wondered if the work crews were going to start showing up soon.
Gration nudged Blue in the back with the gun barrel, and he entered the other apartment through the open door. The first thing he noticed was that the blanket had been removed from the window and was lying on the floor. The next thing he noticed was Mitzi standing close to it, where she would be fully visible from outside.
There was no furniture in the room, but there was evidence of people’s extended stay. Several pizza boxes were stacked near the door, along with at least a dozen empty pop bottles. Also in evidence were signs of drug use, things Blue had seen only in the movies: a razor blade on a mirror smudged with powdery white residue, and short straws and baggies lying next to it.
Opposite the window he could see the kitchen through a doorway, and a hallway where—if this unit was anything like the one where they had spent the night—the bathroom and bedrooms would be found.
“Right there,” Gration said, pulling Blue to a stop a good ten feet away from Mitzi. He did a double take when he realized her hands had been cut free and she was holding her gun, and he thought for a split second that he’d been had. Then he saw that the clip had been removed, and he thought he finally understood what was going on.
Neil was standing in the corner by the window, peeking around the frame to look out across the construction site. Gration backed off to stand in the entrance to the hallway. Both had drawn their weapons. Neil held his pointed at the floor with his finger resting along the trigger guard, but Gration pointed his gun directly at Blue, his finger on the trigger. Blue stilled himself and resolved to watch Gration closely for any lapse in attention.
While he watched, a third man—the unknown bringer of pizza, the man who must have been the only one in contact with Leigh Ann—emerged from the hallway and without a word left the apartment, clattering down the stairs.
As the sound of his footsteps faded into the distance, a kind of surreal stillness took hold of the room, in startling contrast to the joyous birdsong coming through the open door or window in the back.
Blue could feel his heart pounding, and he deliberately slowed his breathing, kept his focus on Gration, and thought of the little girl in one of the rooms down the hall. An innocent life that was relying on him for survival.
“What now?” Mitzi asked from her position in front of the window.
“We wait,” Neil replied.
“And then?”
“You’ll figure it out as we go.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mitzi stared out the window, intensely aware of Neil off to her right, Blue behind her against the left wall, and Gration on guard by the hallway behind and to her right.
Upon entering the room, she had noticed her purse upside down in a corner, where it had apparently been tossed after their capture last night. She wondered what had become of the extra magazine for the Mosquito, but expected that Neil was too thorough to have missed it. At any rate, there was no way she could reach the purse to check before Neil or Gration shot her.
She had to give credit to whoever had masterminded this little scene that was about to play out. Their capture and overnight imprisonment had been heartbreakingly effective, and Neil made the perfect bulldog to play the part of prison guard.
The setup now was flawless, and she had a crystal-clear vision of “the plan.”
With her in full view of the window, the strike team, who were surely moving into place even as she watched, would see her and, thinking she was the kidnapper, take the kill shot. She had no doubt that at least one member of the strike team would be in on the plan to make sure that happened. The rest would at least be over eager, trigger happy, and easy to direct.
Neil was in place to take a shot or two out the window to ensure chaos ensued when the strike team fired back at her.
Gration was in place to make sure Leigh Ann was struck—either by friendly fire or by a weapon that would be placed in Blue’s hands, surely after Blue was dead.
Mitzi was fairly certain the man who had left in such a hurry was a forensics technician. She had seen him around the precinct and at a few crime scenes, but not on the streets, meaning he wasn’t a field officer. She was sure he would be first through the door on the CSI crew.
The one bullet she had been allowed in the chamber of her weapon would provide the necessa
ry blowback on her hands for that CSI crew. She would have to choose carefully who to fire at.
Neil probably had a vest on beneath his hoodie, but that wouldn’t protect him from the head shot she knew she could make at this close range. But Gration, while he obviously wasn’t wearing a vest, was armed with a Glock 9mm that she suspected was fully automatic. If she chose to shoot Neil, Gration would surely fill her with enough bullets to kill her.
However, if she chose to shoot Gration, not only would she be shooting while she turned—a technical shot with a high probability for a miss—there was a good chance Neil would take her out before she even got the shot off.
What Mitzi hadn’t figured out was how Neil planned to escape the carnage.
Gration, she was sure, was a marked man and didn’t even know it. He was a shoo-in for the part of accomplice, the one the Chief could say held Leigh Ann hostage while she and Blue were running around town. She considered voicing that thought, to see if she could distract Gration enough that she could make a move.
But before she could open her mouth, she saw a silver, late-model Mercedes-Benz Roadster pull up in the parking lot off to the left of the entrance to their unit.
A woman stepped out, and Mitzi thought she recognized the Mayor. Unbelievable, she thought. The FBI is letting her make the drop?
The woman walked around to the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and lugged out a suitcase—one of those expensive leather bags that was about the size of a small steamer trunk with wheels. She pulled out the handle of the suitcase and with tentative steps started walking. Her eyes searched the windows of the units, looking for something or someone to tell her where she needed to go.
Mitzi scanned the construction site, looking for the strike team she knew must be maneuvering into place. She felt like Butch Cassidy, about to run around that door frame and into the guns of the entire Bolivian army. What she needed to do was pull out Butch Coolidge from Pulp Fiction and un-fix this fight.
There! A figure dressed in a black tactical uniform crossed between trees on the other side of the park—the direction they had arrived from last night. Then she saw a shadow moving in the shell of a building across from them.
Below, the woman was advancing toward their apartment. Something about the way she walked spoke of tactical training, and Mitzi realized she was a decoy. More shadows fluttered in the corner of her vision, creeping below toward the stairs of the unit. She knew all she had to do was lift one hand, and bloodshed would start.
Beside her, Neil lifted his arm, letting the barrel of his gun show in the window. He was aiming at the “Mayor.”
“Gun!” She heard the shout from outside, just as Neil fired a double tap. The report from the weapon shattered both the silence inside and the window as the bullets passed through.
Mitzi’s training—and wild instinct—took over. As Neil squeezed off the second round, Mitzi dropped her .22 and dove at his gun hand, grabbing it in both of hers and raising it toward the ceiling before he could get off any more rounds. With her full weight behind the move, her follow-through wrenched his arm around and slammed his fist into the wall.
The sheer and unexpected ferocity of her attack shocked Neil into dropping his weapon. It bounced off her shoulder and hit the floor as she assumed her fighting stance. He was still trying to recover as she cocked back her right fist and hit him hard in the nose.
Pain exploded in her fist, but she felt and heard the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking. She followed up with a left hook that caught him under the chin, closer to his windpipe than she intended. It had the desired effect of dropping him to his knees, gasping for air.
She didn’t waste any time but dove for the floor, only slightly surprised to find that bullets were already flying. Her audio exclusion faded, and the sounds of weapons discharging in rapid succession filled her ears.
The real surprise was that she was still alive. Gration hadn’t taken her out, and none of the shots fired from outside had hit her. She looked up to see that Blue had disappeared and Gration was gone from his post too.
Staying low and scrambling to pick up both her gun and Neil’s, Mitzi checked to make sure Neil was disabled, then crawled away from the window toward the hallway, afraid of what she might find.
As she rounded the end of the hallway, she spotted a pair of booted feet sticking through the bathroom doorway. For a brief moment she thought they were Blue’s, but she realized the fine, pink-tinged alligator boots belonged to Gration. As she neared the bathroom, she saw Gration flat on his back with Blue, still bound, jamming one knee against the wrist of Gration’s gun hand. Blue’s other knee was pressed on the pimp’s chest close to his throat, pressing the wind out of his body while Gration’s left hand beat feebly against Blue’s leg.
The bathroom door was shattered off its hinges, giving Mitzi the vision of Blue rushing Gration and pushing him bodily through the door.
Blue looked up at her as she skidded to a stop, and the look of relief on his face must have mirrored her own.
“Stay put,” she said, realizing with a sort of dread that the gunfire had stopped, which could only mean the team was advancing on the unit to make sure their work was done.
She spun toward the apartment door, dropping to one knee, but keeping the pistol at low ready. She didn’t know what or who might come through that door. There was no way she was going to let anyone get past her and into the bedroom where, she hoped, Leigh Ann was still alive and hiding, safe and sound.
The sound of booted feet on the stair drew nearer and she tensed, ready to make a snap assessment of whoever was first through that open door. She hoped she wouldn’t have to shoot anyone. Other than Neil, it was impossible to know which of her fellow officers were in on the setup, and which ones were just along to make the strike team legit.
To her surprise, the first officer she saw through the open door was Mack, in full tactical gear. She froze while he peeked in low around the door frame, first taking note of Neil in the corner—apparently still gasping for air—and then turning to see her in the hallway.
“Mitz!” he exclaimed, pleasant surprise coloring his tone. He stood up straight and held up his hand to signal the officers behind him to stop. “Is it all clear?” he asked her, as if she was point on his team.
She hesitated, unsure if she could trust him. He stepped farther in and waved one of the men through. That officer kept his weapon trained on Neil as he advanced out of her line of sight.
Going with her gut, she lowered her weapon a fraction more. “I think so. The girl is in one of these bedrooms. I’m pretty sure she’s alone. I hope she’s still alive.”
Mack came toward her and held out his hand. “You’ll want to give me that weapon,” he remarked casually. He had holstered his weapon, but after everything that had happened, Mitzi was loathe to just hand hers over on faith.
Then she noticed the slight modification to the tactical uniform he and the men behind him wore. White athletic tape wrapped around the brims of their standard black helmets.
She smiled and turned the Glock around in her hand so she could hand it to him butt first. Then the Mosquito, which she had tucked under her arm, followed.
“Nice touch,” she said.
Mack waved another “white hat” officer to go down the hall. That man skirted past her and the bathroom and carefully turned the doorknob of the bedroom at the front of the apartment. The handle turned freely, and Mack leaned against the opposite wall as the point officer pushed the door open briskly.
The door crashed against the wall, and the point officer entered the room low, while Mack rushed behind him with his weapon held high. The bedroom light switched on, and Mitzi heard Mack chuckle. She climbed to her feet and crept up to the door to peek inside.
There, on a thin mattress that lay directly on the floor, Leigh Ann nestled in a pile of blankets, sound asleep with headphones on her ears and her MP3 player beside her on the pillow. The light from a TV revealed a gaming box plugged i
n and some war game on the screen, characters paused in the act of shooting each other up.
There was no sign that any of the bullets had pierced the girl’s haven. She appeared to have slept through the whole thing.
The other tactical officer took off his helmet, knelt next to the mattress, and gently laid a hand on Leigh Ann’s shoulder.
“Hey honey, time to wake up,” he said gently, as her eyelids fluttered.
Mitzi suspected the girl had been given something to make her sleep, a small mercy from her captors, so she wouldn’t be awake when they killed her.
Mitzi exhaled and backed away from the door as Mack moved to check the other bedroom. Blue was standing, poking his head out of the bathroom. “She’s fine,” Mitzi reassured him.
From the hall Mitzi saw that yet another officer with white tape on his helmet was trussing Gration up with the same type of cuffs that still bound Blue.
Mack walked up behind her and continued as if there had been no interruption of their conversation. “We needed some way to tell our team from the team Hatfield sent,” he said. “I thought your cowboy might appreciate the ‘good guys in the white hats.’”
“Nice,” Mitzi responded.
“I could appreciate it better if someone would cut these things off of me,” Blue said, turning slightly to show them his bound hands.
Mack reached for his pocket knife. “Sure thing, big guy,” he answered. “But you know you need to stick around until we get this mess sorted out, right?”
Blue awkwardly lifted his hands toward Mack. “Whatever you need, just get me out of these. I’m kinda starting to freak out.”
Mack laughed and cut him loose. The first thing Blue did when his hands were free was pull Mitzi into a hug.
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