by Macy Largo
Please, Jesus, please let her remember the code!
The basement door couldn’t be locked from inside, so if she couldn’t get into the bunker room, she was trapped.
Tom swore and jumped over him, racing for the door. John lay still and played dead despite the agony in his leg. He just prayed he didn’t bleed to death before someone found them.
* * * *
In the dark, Sarah scampered down the stairs, ignoring the splinter she picked up in her bare foot from the wooden steps. She tripped and scrabbled back to her feet as she heard the basement door open above her.
Her fingers trembled so bad she could barely punch the code in, but she heard the click and pulled the door shut behind her just as she heard Tom Davies hit it on the other side. Several more shots rang out, muffled by the thick walls and steel door, but she heard the dull thud of impact as he kept shooting.
She stood there in the dark for a moment before blindly groping for the light switch cord. When she found it, she let out a grateful sob and sank to the floor to pull the splinter out of her foot.
After a moment, she heard a beep and saw the red light come on.
Crying, she backed away from the door, until she ran into the fireproof safe.
Beep. The red light flashed again.
Beep.
Beep.
The crazy fucker must have tried for at least ten minutes before everything went silent again.
She listened. Then she heard her name being screamed through the thick bunker door, and not by John.
“Sarah! Listen to me, you open this fucking door or I go up there and blow John’s fucking head off!”
With a cry she fumbled the safe’s combination dial three times until she finally got it open. She didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t familiar with guns, only knew what little the men had taught her so far.
Finally, she grabbed a shotgun, looked for a safety on it and found one, released it, and prayed it would fire when she pulled the trigger.
“Sarah! Open this goddamned door!”
He sounded too much like he had on the phone, muffled that way.
“Are you going to kill me?” she screamed at him through the bunker door.
After a moment, he finally replied. “I can kill you fast or slow. And I can take your asshole buddy out, too. You want to go fast and save his life, then you open this goddamned door or I’ll go shoot him right now and then set this fucking house on fire and broil you alive!”
“Just…give me a minute. Please!”
“One minute.”
Her mind raced. She could do this.
The door swung out, not in. She was no expert on guns, but a shotgun was big and loud, and at close range it could kill if she managed to hit him in the right area.
She decided where to stand and pulled the light switch cord, throwing her into total darkness again.
Praying this worked, she eased her right finger over the trigger, and with her left hand, she groped for the door’s release latch. When she found it, she heard the click and a small sliver of dim light emerged around the opening.
“Come on out, little night owl,” he growled.
“I can’t. My ankle’s broke. I tripped when I ran in.”
The door swung open. “That’s the least of your con—”
She fired, the blast deafening her as the muzzle flash temporarily blinded her. Belatedly, she realized someone else had fired from the basement stairs. As Tom fell forward toward her, she screamed and tried to fire again, but it was jammed or something, and it wouldn’t fire.
She scrambled back, screaming and racing for the gun locker as he tried to crawl through the door while making a horrible gurgling noise.
There was another flash, and she turned, realizing it was another gunshot, but she couldn’t hear it because of the ringing in her ears.
A dark figure stood in the doorway, a gun pointed down at Tom. When he stepped forward, she screamed until he grabbed the light cord and snapped it on.
Del.
Screaming, now with relief, she fell into his arms and knew he was trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t understand him.
He let go of her, rolled Tom’s lifeless body over and grabbed his guns, then led her into the basement where he sat her on the dryer and examined her.
She thought he was yelling, “Are you okay?” at her, but her hearing was still too fucked up to be sure.
“John! Is he okay?” she asked.
He nodded, then grabbed her and kissed her, deeply, fiercely. As the ringing in her ears started to fade a little, he pressed his lips to her ear.
“You are sooo fucking getting spanked, baby.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah watched as Del stopped the EMTs before they rolled John’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance. He leaned in and kissed him. “We’ll be there soon.”
Sarah also leaned in and kissed him. “Real soon.”
“Hurry up,” he said, his voice choked with pain. “I hate hospital food, Del. Don’t forget. And Sar?”
“Yeah?”
He pointed at her. “You stay with him, got it? I hear you left his sight, I’ll beat you with my cane when I’m up and around.” He offered up a pained smile.
“I promise, I’ll stay with him.”
“Good.”
The EMTs had already started an IV. The bullet had hit his left thigh, probably shattered the bone, but missed his femoral artery. She didn’t care who saw them together as she let Del pull her tightly against his side and they watched the ambulance roll out, lights flashing and siren blaring.
Her hearing had mostly returned, although she suspected the ringing buzz would be there for a few more hours yet. He kissed the top of her head. “You want that spanking right now or later?”
She smiled. “Not at all.”
“You’ll have to convince me why I shouldn’t.”
They returned to the house where they faced more questioning, and Del had to file a report. The Medical Examiner was there, but he couldn’t tell whether it was Del’s bullet to the back of Tom’s head, to his back, or Sarah’s point-blank shotgun blast to his chest that actually killed him.
“He wouldn’t have been too healthy after any of them, that’s for damn sure,” the grizzled doctor quipped.
Mark walked in and tipped his head at Del and Sarah, wanting them out on the porch. He led them to the far corner, out of earshot of the others. “Del, you know that…incident we talked about, about John’s wreck?”
“She knows, Mark. We told her.”
He glanced at her. “Tom was the wrecker driver on duty that night. He’s the one who retrieved John’s cruiser. He was also there when I pulled the dash cam video, but I told him it wasn’t working. I didn’t get that pulled until after it was already at his storage lot.” His face turned grim. “He had copies of the newspaper articles I showed you in a briefcase in his car. There were notes about Robbie’s murder, too. And John’s accident.”
“He might have seen John’s dash cam video?”
“Maybe. I’ve seen evidence of far more outlandish possibilities over the past few hours. You want to place bets against it?”
“No.”
Mark nodded, then let out a sigh. “You sure you don’t want to be transported to the hospital to get checked out?” he asked her.
She shook her head. John had insisted she stay with Del, and that’s exactly what she’d do even though she wished she could be at the hospital for him. She was done defying her men. “I’m okay.”
“Can we go? We want to be with him,” Del said.
“Yeah. I’ll stay here and make sure it’s locked up once they’re done and finished cleaning up and the crime scene techs get his brain matter out of your basement. I’ll need your statement today, though. But it can wait a little while. I’ve already got your sidearm. You’ll be on desk duty until the internal investigation is complete, you know that. I don’t foresee any problems exonerating you. It was a clean shoot.” He
clapped him on the arm. “Enjoy a week off, on me. Focus on him. Again. Tell him he needs to quit goldbricking.” He smiled.
Del nodded. Sarah and Del quickly changed clothes, and Del drove them to the hospital. They let them in to see John before they took him back for surgery.
John smiled at her, painkillers already making him loopy. “Did he spank you yet?”
“Not yet. He’s threatened though.”
“Good. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
John looked at Del. “Give her hell, buddy. Love you.”
“Love you, too. See you in a while.”
Before they went to the waiting room, she stopped by the bathroom. She had it to herself, and when she looked up into the mirror, Robbie smiled at her before disappearing.
She had a feeling he’d always be around, and she was just fine with that.
Worried, but knowing John would be okay, she took a deep, relieved breath and rejoined Del.
* * * *
They’d already gotten a search warrant for Cindy’s house. Still in shock over the circumstances of her brother’s death, she cooperated. They immediately found evidence in his bedroom and in the basement linking him with the cyber-stalking. They had found copies of keys to Del and John’s house in Tom’s pocket, and at his home, they found other copies of keys to many homes, as of yet unidentified. Investigators were already comparing a list of local customers with the keys and linking them to several unsolved robberies, as well as two previously unsolved murders.
They found copies of Sarah’s address book in his room, hidden under his mattress. Cindy acted confused when investigators asked her about her brother’s computer skills, and she informed them that before he quit school he’d been on his way to earning a computer programming degree.
Apparently, she didn’t realize he never told anyone else that.
Later that night, after John was out of surgery and in a private room, Del and Sarah flanked his bed, holding his hands and waiting for him to wake up. No one would dare kick them out, and the large law enforcement presence outside his room ensured the staff knew how important he was to them. It was after midnight when he finally opened his eyes.
He looked at Del first. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Del brushed the hair from his forehead. “We’ve gotta quit meeting like this, dude. People will talk.”
“Yeah, seems we did this once before, didn’t we.”
“Starting without me?” Sarah joked.
He squeezed her hand. “Hi, babe. You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Naw, she blew the fucker’s head off,” Del said.
“I didn’t blow his head off. I blew his heart out.”
“Fucker had to have a heart first, babe, and I doubt he did,” Del snarked.
John squeezed both their hands, brought them up to his lips, and kissed them. “I know you guys are okay to joke around like that. Must mean I’m gonna make it.”
“Oh, hell yeah you are,” Del assured him. “Just one problem.”
John looked at him. “What?”
“When they fixed your leg, I asked them to put one of those penis implants in too, since they were in the neighborhood. You’ll go up and down like a garage door.” He mimed pressing a button on a remote control.
Sarah clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her squeal of laughter. John looked at her. “See what I have to put up with? See why we need you? He picks on me.”
“My poor baby. I’ll protect you from the big, bad highway patrolman.”
Del snorted, amused. “Fuck, now that I know she can handle a shotgun, I’ll watch myself around her. She’s dangerous.”
John sighed. “Okay, now that the floorshow portion of the evening is out of the way, can we get serious? What do we know?”
Del ran down everything they’d found, and Sarah added her suppositions. “He wasn’t just sending me emails. We now know he used my passwords to hack my accounts. That’s how he got my new email. He just logged into my Yahoo! Groups account, saw I’d changed my address, and duh me, I used the same freaking password. I should know better, but I didn’t realize he was in my account, just thought he had my email address. He was able to track my sent and received messages, and he had full access to my contacts list. Not that he needed it, because he had Uncle Eddie’s info from my address book.”
Del picked up the narrative. “He used Google Earth to figure out where the condo was, saw it was a tall one, figured out what floor Eddie lived on, not difficult considering how they number the units. Could see it had a view of the ocean.”
“Better living through technology,” John said, sounding very tired. “Fucker baited me when I got the oil changed in your truck. He told me he was studying computers before he quit school to work with his dad. Probably wanted to see if I’d react.” He groaned. “And he overheard my conversation with you, when you told me Sarah disappeared. He knew she was on the way back.”
Del chewed on his lip for a minute. “He baited me, too. Fuck.” He slammed his fist into the wall. “I told the fucker she was living with us!” He recounted his exchange with Tom at the convenience store. “He even pulled a pair of those fucking gloves out of his pocket. He knew we didn’t suspect him, and we fucking told him shit. He was there the whole time.” He shook his head. “And if we’d found evidence linking to him in any of the victims’ vehicles, it would simply be explained away as scene contamination. SOP to rule him out, like any other responding officer.”
“Listen, go home, you two,” John said. “Get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Sarah protested.
“The Boogeyman is gone, babe. We have more talking to do later, when I’m not hopped up on morphine and hurting like hell. And oh, yeah, by the way, you are sooo getting spanked for lying to us and putting yourself in danger like that.”
Del laughed. “Already threatened. I think she’s trying to weasel out of it.”
She stuck her tongue out at both of them. “How do you know I won’t like getting spanked?”
The men grinned. “Oh, honey,” Del said, “please don’t tempt us.”
* * * *
At least one officer would stand guard outside John’s room until morning, just as a precaution, although they were almost one hundred percent sure Tom had worked alone. Back at the house, Del wouldn’t let her go down to the basement. He went down, checked everything out, and returned a few minutes later looking grim.
“Not as bad as I thought. Damn glad for that bunker room. Lucky for John, Tom didn’t shoot him with his own gun. John loads hollow-points. It would have blown his fucking leg clean off. He shot him with a .38, not great, but not as bad. He shot the bunker door with John’s gun, looks like he emptied the magazine into the fucker. Holes the size of grapefruits in the cabinet.”
She shivered. “Did they get him…cleaned up?”
He forced a smile. “Yeah, no blood, but I don’t want you going down there until I go over everything again and get that cabinet fixed. I don’t want you seeing that.” He led her to the bathroom where he started the shower before slowly stripping her. They stepped under the spray.
His hands roamed her body as he kissed her. “I’m so glad you’re okay. It would have killed me if he’d hurt you.”
She closed her eyes and relaxed in his arms. “Will I ever feel safe again?”
“Yeah, I promise. Me and John, we’ll love every bit of fear right out of you.”
She’d missed this, missed him. Both of them. “I’m sorry I lied to you guys.”
A wet smack on her right ass cheek made her jump. “That’s right, I owe you a spanking, don’t I?” He swatted her again, not hard, just loud, with the flat of his palm against her left ass cheek. “Maybe I should tie you up in bed and not let you come all day.”
If he was trying to punish her, that wasn’t working. His words and tone made her even hornier. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
He laughed as his hand smoo
thed over her flesh. “No.” He looked down into her eyes, his face serious. “No more lies. Ever. I hope to god we never have to go through anything like that ever again, but I mean it. We’re easy men to get along with, but you could have been killed. John could have died if…” He didn’t finish.
“What? If what?”
He pulled her tightly to her. “Robbie. He told me to come back. Said you guys needed me.”
She laughed, relieved. “Oh, thank god! You saw him too. I’m not crazy.” She told him about the marbles. “Can we go look for them?”
“Tonight?”
“No, duh. I mean after John’s home.”
He looked thoughtful. “I doubt we’ll find them. And I’m sure it’s private property. If it’s even there.”
“But can we try?”
He slowly nodded. “Don’t get your hopes up. You don’t need to look for them to believe Robbie’s real. I saw him. John saw him.”
“But…” She tried to put her feelings into words. “I want tangible proof. I don’t want someone to say, ‘Oh, it was just your subconscious.’”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Babe, I don’t want you telling anyone else about Robbie. Please. Mark was right that if someone wants to stir stuff up, it doesn’t need to be us. John will come home, and the three of us get our happily ever after, okay? That’s all we want. You and peace and quiet.”
She nodded. “I know. I won’t. I meant it could be my dash cam DVD.”
He smiled, relieved. “Okay.” He pulled her close again. “I can understand that.”
* * * *
Three weeks after the shooting, Del had fixed the basement and John came home. Del helped him slowly limp up the front steps with the help of his crutches. He ended up on the couch as Sarah fussed around him, trying to make him comfortable. He’d have several months of physical rehab ahead of him, but with Sarah to take care of him, Del felt confident they could care for him at home.
“Come here, you two,” John told them. They stood before him and he grabbed their hands. “Have I told you two how much I love you?”
