Line of Fire

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  Why wasn’t the van going forward to pick up the men we’d been chasing now that they’d made themselves known? I dared peek out from behind the Chrysler I was using for cover, only to be rewarded by several more shots from both directions.

  Shannon pulled me down, slapping another magazine into his Glock. “Go that way and cut over,” he said, motioning behind us. “I’ll cover you and follow.”

  “They’ll get away.”

  “They aren’t even trying. We’ve seen their faces, and since it seems no one has bothered yet to call the police, maybe they’ve decided to eliminate a few witnesses.”

  I was about to protest before I remembered the gunman’s willingness to shoot his own unconscious colleague. But risking capture this way meant something big was going on. Something more serious even than a missing young girl.

  “Drugs,” I said, remembering the imprint from the fake nurse’s needle. Moving drugs or other cargo at a price was all he cared about.

  “Probably. Now go!”

  They were shooting again. I heard a shout from somewhere else in the parking lot and a car door slamming. I hoped whoever it was stayed down. These guys didn’t care who they hurt.

  Shannon covered me as I scurried in the direction he’d indicated. Heart pounding, I made it to a row of cars. Now it was Shannon’s turn, but there was no one to cover him. For once I wished I carried a gun. But always that fear, What if I accidentally shot a bystander?

  Shannon let off a volley of shots as he ran toward me. I waited, holding my breath for him to suddenly arch and fall.

  Where were the police? Or the sheriff’s deputies? Where was that arrogant Greeley when you needed him?

  Shannon made it, but already I could see the gunmen moving, too, angling toward us. We could run again, but there was no exit in that direction and eventually we’d be trapped.

  “We need to draw them over. I don’t have much ammunition left.” Shannon handed me his spare pistol. “When they come looking for us, you’ll have to shoot.”

  I took the gun.

  “Come on. Before they get closer.” Closer meaning more accurate. I’d been shooting with Shannon enough times to know that.

  Tawnia would hate to see me now. I wondered if she was pacing her kitchen with a sick Destiny or if she’d given up and gone in to a doctor.

  Funny how the brain works when you face death.

  We ran to the next row of cars, saving our bullets. The drug dealers didn’t have such compunction. Their rounds dug into the cars around us, and idly I wondered how much damage they were causing. Another disconnect. I needed to focus.

  “Maybe we should separate,” I said, crouching close to a front bumper.

  “I’m not leaving you.” His stubbornness was showing again, but since my marital arts training wasn’t helpful against gunfire, I had to admit this time it was in my favor.

  “I shouldn’t have read that imprint or at least not acted on it. Maybe whatever he had in that needle wouldn’t have killed the guy right away.”

  “I bet it would have. He’s on the verge of death as it is. If you hadn’t read that imprint, that guy would have gotten away with killing him, and at the moment he’s our only lead.”

  “A lead who can’t talk. But what does this have to do with Jenny?”

  “I don’t know.” The bullets had stopped, and Shannon peeked out from our cover. “They’re circling around. They’ll be close enough to pick off in a moment.”

  His confidence was amazing. We were outnumbered and outgunned, and he was planning to pick them off one by one. And probably to capture at least one or two thugs relatively uninjured so he could question them. The idiot. No wonder I was so attracted to him.

  The least I could do was help him. I was a better shot than I should be for the novice I was, as I seemed to have a natural talent at the target range, but my reluctance to hit a real person could hinder my ability now. I’d be much more comfortable punching them.

  A flurry of shots slammed into the car we crouched behind. Uh-oh. They’d found us.

  I wanted to tell Shannon I was sorry for delaying things between us. I’d known how he felt about me for a long time, but I’d clung to my relationship with Jake because he was safe and a known factor. Shannon irritated me, made me crazy, but he also made the world spin.

  Now in all likelihood I was going to lose my chance with him because I’d dragged him into my past. If Cody Beckett were standing in front of me now, I’d strangle him myself.

  More shots, coming closer. A lump formed in my throat.

  Tires squealed on the pavement. Doors slamming. Shouting.

  Now what? I thought.

  Chapter 7

  The shouting grew louder, now coming from a bullhorn. “Police! Put down your weapons! I repeat, put down your weapons!”

  Daring a peek, I saw at least two police cars. “Finally.” I sagged to the ground.

  “What, you were never happy to see me, when I came rushing in to save you.” Shannon eased next to me until our arms were touching.

  “I usually wasn’t happy to see you. You were too annoying.” I was lying. Those times I’d been very happy to see him, even if I’d never let it show.

  More shots and squealing tires. We got to our knees to see what was going on.

  A huge ball of flame erupted where once there’d been a police car. The van crashed through it and skidded around the corner, heading toward the exit. Moments later we heard a similar explosion.

  Shannon shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Or rather, I should.”

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know. Something with a lot of juice. They obviously came prepared to fight their way out. They had to know the police wouldn’t have expected it.”

  “This is big, then.”

  He nodded. “Really big.”

  Of course it was. I never seemed to do anything small these days. “I need to talk to Cody, find out if he’s involved.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t.”

  “I said he didn’t stab the man. That’s all. He’s guilty over something, and maybe it’s not just about my birth mother. He’s hiding something.”

  “The Salem police will handle this. We’re here only to see if he’s involved with Jenny.”

  I shook my head, dusting off my hands on my now dirty black pants. “I need to know if he’s involved in anything else. We follow any leads we find.”

  Shannon climbed to his feet, regarding me intently. “Okay,” he conceded.

  “Put down your weapons and put your hands up!” came a shout from a police officer heading our way.

  It took us a full thirty seconds to realize he was talking to us. He had his gun drawn, and two more officers, using cars as cover, had their weapons trained on us as well.

  Shannon bent over and put his gun on the ground. “I’m a police officer,” he called. “I was chasing those guys.”

  “More like you were about to become their fish bait,” the officer said. “You, too, miss. Put it down.”

  I sighed and laid down the gun. Here we went again, from being the good guys to suspects.

  “They’re okay,” came another voice from farther away. “They’re with us.” I looked up to see Detective Sergeant Greeley striding our way. He had his ID out to show the officers, though he was still wearing his sheriff’s deputy uniform. “We’re working on a case together.”

  We were making progress if he was vouching for us with the local police instead of letting them cuff us just for the joy of watching us squirm. I smiled at him.

  He didn’t return the gesture, but his partner, Levine, did. It was a flirty, shy kind of smile that for some reason reminded me of Deputy Barney Fife in the black-and-white reruns of the Andy Griffith Show, though his face, for all its plainness, was more appealing.

  “Do you want to tell us what’s going on?” Greeley asked.

  “We came to see the stabbing victim and found one of those guys trying to give him a drug,” I s
aid. “We didn’t know they had backup down here.”

  “You think you can ID any of them?” Greeley’s tone doubted that we had enough intelligence.

  “Oh, yeah. At least two of them.” I glanced at Shannon, who nodded.

  “I hit one,” Shannon added.

  Greeley picked up the Glock, sniffing it. “With this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll have to confiscate it until the scene’s been processed.”

  Shannon sighed. “I know.”

  Greeley sniffed the other gun. “This one hasn’t been fired.”

  “That’s hers,” Shannon said. “If you’re taking mine, I’ll need a loaner.”

  “Trouble does seems to follow you.” Greeley handed me the gun.

  I put it in my pocket.

  “You have a permit for a concealed weapon, I expect.” Greeley sounded almost hopeful at the idea of arresting me.

  “Of course.”

  He gave me a smile without any real warmth. “Good.”

  Levine looked at Greeley. “I’d better go make sure the victim is secure. Don’t want them trying anything else.”

  “I have two of my men there already,” said the police officer in charge.

  Levine shrugged. “Probably not necessary, but thanks.”

  “It is necessary,” I said. “They tried to kill him so he wouldn’t tell about the drugs. If it’s that important, they’ll probably try again.”

  All the men stared at me.

  “Did you get that from ah—what did the commander call it—an imprint?” Greeley asked, his lip curling.

  “Yes.” I lifted my chin, daring him to challenge me. “From the needle they were going to inject him with.”

  “That’s great!” Levine shifted from foot to foot, apparently having no idea it made him look like an excited little boy. “Did you get anything more?”

  I shook my head.

  “But couldn’t you touch our John Doe?” Levine’s brow creased. “You know, to see who stabbed him?”

  “It doesn’t work with people. Only with objects.”

  He looked disappointed. “Well, that’s tough. But it’s sure good to have your insight anyway. We’ll have to follow up on it.”

  Did he just wink at me? I glanced at Shannon, whose face showed annoyance. Yep, Barney Fife, AKA Detective Levine, had winked at me. I would have laughed, but he was too nice. You didn’t hurt the awkward, shy boy next door.

  Levine leaned toward the lead police officer. “She’s sort of a psychic.”

  “You’d better get going,” Greeley told Levine pointedly. “Make sure you talk to hospital security. I’ll go to the office with these two and see if they can identify the suspects.”

  “Okay, sergeant. I’ll hurry back as soon as I have our John Doe secure.”

  “Make sure to bring back his clothes.”

  Levine snapped his fingers and pointed at Greeley. “Right. That’s why we came.” He strode away, swaggering slightly.

  Greeley frowned as he watched his partner leave. As the detective sergeant over the criminal investigations unit, I wondered if he’d assigned himself Levine because no one else liked him. For my part, I’d rather deal with Levine’s awkward eagerness than with the irritable Greeley.

  “We’ll need our own detectives to take their statements,” the police officer told Greeley, motioning to us.

  “Of course. Send them over. Oh, and we’d appreciate it if you’d keep officers outside our John Doe’s room until I can send more deputies here. Tell them not to let anyone in the room with him except those cleared by hospital security. My partner will talk to them, but I’m sure they’d rather hear it from you.”

  He nodded. “Will do.”

  I barely paid attention, my thoughts now on the stabbing victim’s clothes. Where had I dropped the bag? I remembered letting go of it in the room when I’d kicked free of the gunman and picking it up again, thinking I had to protect the evidence, but I didn’t have it now.

  “We’ll meet you at your office,” I told Greeley. I couldn’t leave the clothes behind, and I wasn’t in the mood to listen to a tirade about losing evidence. In the line of fire, it could happen to anyone. Besides, I wanted a look at those clothes before I handed them over.

  “It has to be now,” Greeley said. “The commander has the Vandykes there. He wants to talk to you about them. He wants your input.”

  “We’ll be there,” Shannon said.

  I started out in front of him, retracing our wild flight. Shannon jogged to keep up with me. “The truck’s that way. I think.” He jerked his head to the right.

  By now I was so turned around I had no idea where the truck was parked, but it really made no difference. I had to find the bag. “I dropped something.”

  Shannon followed me without asking questions. Another thing I liked about the man. When we reached the cars where we’d first taken cover, I found the bag of clothes, the blood stains clearly visible through the clear plastic. No wonder the young mother had looked so frightened when she’d glanced at me.

  “You managed to bring these?” Shannon picked up the bag.

  “We’ll turn them in, but first I need to see if there’s an imprint.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “Just don’t leave fingerprints.”

  “I won’t.”

  We made our way back to the truck, casting uneasy glances around to see if we were being watched. I told myself we weren’t doing anything wrong with the clothes, but I wondered if we were breaking the chain of evidence that would prevent the man’s attacker from being prosecuted. Yet Cody was on the run, and if he was somehow connected, I needed to know. There was a chance he was involved in something besides Jenny’s abduction, and if I discovered what, it might give us a lead to her as well.

  If we weren’t already too late.

  Miraculously, no bullets had hit Shannon’s blue truck. It was some distance away from the shooting scene, but many of the cars around his hadn’t been as lucky.

  That reminded me of the gun in my pocket. “Here, take this. Why did you tell them it was mine?”

  He bent to replace it in his ankle holster, where he always kept his backup. “So they’d lend me a gun to replace my other one while we’re here. With all that’s been going on today, I don’t want to be caught without a backup.”

  That I could understand. We’d come to start one investigation and had stumbled onto a completely different one.

  Shannon opened my door before going around to his side. But he didn’t start the engine. “Better do that now,” he said. “That way we’re close to the hospital in case anything happens.” He smiled but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Opening the drawstrings on the bag, I contemplated the clothing. What to touch first? Having been involved in a crime didn’t mean for sure anything here would hold an imprint. Even people being stabbed didn’t necessarily imprint emotions on their clothing. Now, if they’d been holding something in their hands at the time, or fingering something as they lay dying, they would most certainly imprint on the object.

  I shivered, not appreciating the scenes in my head. Gingerly, I put my hand inside and hovered over the coat. No tingling, so there wasn’t a significant imprint. Next, the man’s dress pants. Those emitted the faintest tingle, so I touched them with the knuckle of my finger, avoiding the blood. Nothing but a weak impression of satisfaction at the fit. The imprint was so faint I might be imagining it.

  The blue button-down dress shirt was next, and already I could feel my fingers buzzing. Too bad I couldn’t tell if the imprint would be bad or good. Not that it really mattered. I had to know.

  Fear fell heavy on my shoulders. Did he stab me? Why didn’t I feel pain? My hands groping at my shirt, coming away wet. Then the pain. Oh, the pain! I shook with the onslaught.

  Not my pain, the part of me who was Autumn reminded. John Doe’s. But the imprint was so powerful the distinction made little difference.
<
br />   “Where?” the man screamed in my face. “Where? Tell me, or I’ll gut you.”

  I’d known he was capable of violence. You had to be in this business. I was. The people I worked with were.

  Not me. John Doe worked with those kind of people. I clung to that thought, trying to keep us separate. It was the only guard against the pain in my chest.

  Oh, the pain.

  “Where?” the man repeated. His knife came closer. The Autumn me knew him, even without his baseball cap.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” I sobbed, my voice unrecognizable. “I swear I’m telling the truth. If they did it, they didn’t tell me. I tried to talk them out of it.”

  “Not hard enough. Where can I find them?”

  “They’ll kill me,” I moaned.

  “So will I.”

  Even with the knife in his hand, my attacker was less frightening than they were. There was too much money involved, and money was all they lived for. “I can’t.”

  The man screamed in frustration. “You will!” Pain shuddered through me as he jabbed his knife at me again. Intense pain. Blackness eating at my vision. I was falling. Falling. I never seemed to hit the ground.

  “I will find out,” the man grated, his face blurring in my vision. “I know about your cousin. Maybe he’ll tell me what I want to know.”

  What had I done? Why had I ever gotten involved? I should have known so much money would have a price. Yet even if I got out of this alive, I didn’t know if I would stop. Money was an addiction. I needed it as much as those pills I took to stay on top of things.

  Welcome blackness.

  “Autumn?” Shannon was holding my hand, rubbing his thumb gently in my palm.

  I took a breath, expecting agony in my chest, but the pain was gone. Not my pain. John Doe’s. I could make the distinction better now that I was no longer in contact with the shirt. With great effort, I forced open my eyes.

  “You were jerking,” Shannon said. “Then I think you blacked out for a second. Are you feeling okay now?”