In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  “Yeah, well, try not to do it in a body bag. I’ve got enough enemies and worries without adding a cop network to the list.”

  Danny left him and ran down to his car.

  She wasn’t with Carmine. Where then? Where the hell had they led her? Where would they want her to go? He drove aimlessly now, riffling through the possibilities in his mind, his hands sweating on the wheel. Those names she’d given him last night, he thought—Connelly and Maguire, Evans, Neely. Did they have her in one of their homes? If they did, she’d be dead long before he could discover all their addresses and check out every one of them.

  An unseen fist clamped over his heart.

  “Where else, damn it? Where?” Then it came to him.

  The country club. She’d said it herself the other day. Sooner or later one of her suspected bad cops would lead her just where she wanted to go—to the burned-out Men’s Grill. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. He couldn’t think of anything else.

  Danny made a sweeping, tire-whining U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back toward the Lone Star Country Club.

  “Call in,” Higgins said, his voice low and tense with frustration. “There’s a cell phone in my pocket. Use it and find out what we’re supposed to do about this. She’s not going to say a word. Find out if we’re supposed to kill her, anyway, or if they want us to take her someplace else. We can’t stay here much longer. It’s damned near four-thirty in the morning.”

  Molly’s heart slugged her ribs. The pressure of the gun against her head was becoming excruciating. The arm Higgins kept twisted behind her back was on fire.

  She tried to listen while Maguire was talking on the cell phone, but she couldn’t hear him clearly. His voice was an undertone and he’d gone to the other side of the kitchen. When he came back to them and spoke again, his voice close behind her, Molly jumped a little.

  “He says to start hurting her. We’re supposed to take her to the old gun range and keep working on her. She’ll wear down eventually. Then we’ll get rid of her there.”

  “That’s wide open, right outside!”

  “He doesn’t want to take the chance of doing it here now because soon more people are going to be showing up for work.”

  Higgins grunted in response.

  No, Molly thought helplessly, they couldn’t kill her here now. At this point, the sound of gunfire in the country club would be the end of them. An hour ago they could have gotten away with it. Now, with breakfast just hours away, staff would be pouring into the kitchen areas. If they discharged a gun here now, someone was bound to come running. Higgins and Maguire might not get away cleanly. And somebody would find her body.

  She’d kept her mouth shut for once and it had kept her alive. She felt woozy with relief until she realized that they were going to try to drag her out of here now. And if they did that, she was as good as dead. She couldn’t let them take her from here. She had to keep them occupied while the clock ticked on.

  Molly started shaking hard enough that her teeth snicked together. “I know you call yourselves the Lion’s Den,” she said quickly.

  There was a long silence. She imagined them exchanging glances, though with the gun to her temple, she couldn’t move her head to see them.

  “Hey, now, that’s the spirit of cooperation,” Higgins finally said. “Keep going.”

  All her prayers, all her chances, were sliding through her fingers like sand. All she could do now was trickle information to them a little bit at a time. If enough employees arrived for work, they might not be able to drag her unobtrusively out of here.

  “You give me a monster headache and now you want me to remember? Shut up for a minute and let me think.”

  “She’s about this tall.” Danny held up his hand. “She has lots of curly brown hair.”

  “I keep telling you,” the security guard said impatiently. “No one’s come through this way for at least a couple of hours.”

  Danny wasn’t sure that mattered. He’d dropped her off at home well before midnight, so she could have arrived here as early as one o’clock. “Think harder. Go back to when you first came on shift.”

  The guy fingered a pin on his lapel nervously. Danny couldn’t quite see what it was with his finger stroking over it. The guy was definitely uptight. Then his hand dropped and hovered near his weapon.

  What the hell? For a moment, Danny’s mind went blank. Why did the guard need his gun just because someone—okay, granted, an uninvited guest—was questioning him? Touchy, he thought, then, suddenly, another image swam into his brain.

  The day he had come here to meet Ricky. The goons who had confronted him back at the bombed-out grill area had been playing touchy-feely with their weapons, too. Something was going on here—and Molly’s car was outside in the lot. Unless she had sneaked in for some reason, unless someone had carried her in through some other entrance, this guy who was getting off on his gun should have seen her.

  “You security boys are pretty attached to those things, aren’t you?” he asked, nodding at the guard’s holster.

  “What?” But something happened to the guy’s gaze. It slid to his weapon almost furtively.

  “Are you under orders to take out anybody not wearing a tux?”

  At the word orders, the guy developed a tic below his left eye.

  Yeah, Danny thought, something was definitely going on here. Goodbye, parole.

  Even if Molly wasn’t in danger, even if he ended up coming out of this looking like a fool—could he take the chance? He wasn’t leaving here without combing every square inch of the country club property. And this guy sure wasn’t going to let him pass nicely. “Nighty-night, tough guy.”

  Danny took one more quick glance around the lobby. They were alone. He brought the side of his hand around and chopped the guy hard in the windpipe. The guard went down like a sack of potatoes, gurgling.

  “Amateur,” Danny muttered. He reached down and freed the man’s revolver from its holster. Then he rolled him over, studying the back of his head for a moment. “Gee, I hope I remember how to do this. If not, tough luck. You should have told me where she was when you had the opportunity. I’m not going to let you follow me or call for more of your goon friends.”

  He brought the butt of the revolver down on the back of the man’s head. The guard went limp and flat on the floor. Danny felt for his pulse. It was still strong and regular. All those years of figuring out ways not to kill a man had finally paid off.

  He grabbed the guard under the armpits and dragged him around to the back of the abandoned reception desk. There was nothing to tie him up with. He’d have to leave him. Unless Danny had lost his touch, he’d be out cold for a while, anyway. Danny straightened and looked around the lobby again. It was still deserted.

  He headed for the old Men’s Grill area. Halfway there, he heard her scream.

  Higgins grabbed Molly’s ponytail and yanked back on her head. Tears stung at her eyes. She would not whimper.

  “Honest, that’s it,” she said hoarsely. “That’s all I know.”

  “That there’s a Lion’s Den,” Higgins clarified.

  “Right.”

  “And how did you find that out?”

  She was going to take at least one of them down with her, Molly thought. “Bryce Evans slipped and told me.”

  “Like hell he did. He said he figured out who you were when you called him. You’re lying.”

  “Do you want to take that chance? I’d give him a good talking-to if I were you.”

  Higgins jerked her arm up higher. Molly screamed at the pain.

  She heard the pop. She felt it, everything coming loose in her shoulder, pain screaming down her arm. He’d dislocated it. Darkness swam in front of her eyes. She fought to hold on to consciousness with everything she had left.

  “Tell me who else you think is involved.”

  “You and Evans.”

  He jerked her around, shoving her back against the wall now. “Keep going.”


  “Oh, yeah. Your sidekick over there.” She inclined her head toward Maguire. “You know, I think he needs one of those little monkey vests and a tambourine.”

  He brought back his fist to hit her again. Then Maguire shouted.

  Higgins jerked around before he completed the blow. He looked at Maguire. Maguire brought his gun hand up and aimed at the door. He had her gun. Molly slumped against the wall and followed Maguire’s gaze.

  Then she saw Danny. “They’re both armed!” she screamed.

  Two of them. Danny assessed the situation in the heartbeat it took him to crash past the plywood door. There was Maguire and another guy—one he didn’t know. He leaped for the first guy because he was closer, hitting him from behind as the man tried to keep pivoting in the direction of the door.

  They slid together on the floor, coming up hard against the wall. The guy’s gun was knocked clear of his hand. It slid across the floor, spinning. Danny crashed his fist down into the man’s face. Again. Again. Again. The bastard had been planning on killing her.

  Molly watched the gun spiral past her. Then she saw Maguire move again out of the corner of her eye. He was taking aim again at Danny and Higgins. “Not as long as I’m breathing.”

  She would never know where she found the strength. Her shoulder screamed. She heaved her weight forward and threw herself against Maguire’s legs. He staggered and fell, bellowing. Molly rolled with him and managed to wrench her gun from his hand.

  Her left arm was useless, and she was left-handed. It didn’t matter. She didn’t have to aim. She pointed the gun at the ceiling with her right hand and prayed like hell that no one was standing a floor above. She found the trigger just as Maguire started coming after her again. She pulled it once, twice, three times, then four, stopping only two bullets away from emptying the chamber.

  She’d leave one for Maguire, one for Higgins, if it came to that. But it wouldn’t. She heard shouting from other areas of the Country Club almost immediately.

  She kept the gun trained on Maguire. “Don’t move. Don’t even think about it,” she said hoarsely. “I want to hurt you, so don’t put me to the test. We don’t want to find out how crazy I really am.”

  Maguire went still, wild-eyed.

  She couldn’t look at Danny, didn’t dare take her gaze off Maguire. But she heard the dull sound of his fist as it kept connecting with flesh. “Danny! Don’t do it! Don’t kill him! Don’t do it to yourself. We’re okay now. Someone’s coming.”

  A blond woman with too much hair was the first to race into the room. She started screaming. A second after that, two burly men in chef’s whites followed her.

  Good enough, Molly thought. Then the pain clawed its way into her brain and she passed out.

  The next time she came around, Molly was on a sofa in the lobby. There were faces pressed around her, people staring at her. One of them was the blond woman who had first rushed into the kitchen. She was trying to hold a wet cloth to Molly’s forehead. Molly batted her hand away. “It’s not my head, it’s my arm.”

  “What? Oh, dear, be quiet now. Don’t try to talk. I’ll just keep you nice and soothed here.”

  This, Molly thought, was the kind of woman who gave blondes a bad name. She wore an expensive crimson suit and a name tag that said B. Branigan, General Manager.

  “Ms. Branigan.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “I don’t need soothing. My arm is dislocated. I need a towel. A big, dry one. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes! Yes, of course. Horace!” she shrilled to a man Molly couldn’t see. “Bring me a towel!”

  While the woman was turned away from her, Molly managed to sit up and take stock of the scene. Everyone had spilled out of the Men’s Grill. Most of the crowd was gathered around Beau Maguire. Higgins, almost bloodied beyond recognition, was lying on another one of the sofas. They’d have to throw that one out, Molly thought inanely. She doubted if there was another security guard in any other part of the building because they were all here. And they were all gathered around Maguire.

  Something about that made her blood chill.

  When the unknown Horace didn’t respond, B. Branigan hustled off on horrifyingly high heels to get the towel herself. Molly pushed unsteadily to her feet and went toward Maguire.

  “She was planting evidence,” she heard him say as she approached. “I saw her. She’d do anything to get her detective’s shield. We tried to stop her. Then that crazed ex-con boyfriend of hers—hey!” He broke off when he saw Molly.

  “He’s lying,” she hissed.

  “Call this in. Will somebody call this in on 911?” Maguire demanded.

  Molly knew someone already had. There were too many sympathetic people girding Maguire.

  “I saw her planting bomb fragments,” he said to one of them.

  “And for that you had to shoot her?” B. Branigan demanded, scurrying up with a towel. The others looked at her bemusedly.

  “Who are you?” someone asked.

  “I’m Bonnie Branigan.” She drew herself up. “I’m in charge here.”

  “She shot the gun!” Maguire argued. “Her prints are all over the damned thing!”

  Of course they were, Molly thought, feeling a wave of nausea sweep over her. It had been her own gun.

  Maguire’s fingerprints would be on there, too. It was proof of…something. She had to cling to that.

  “Well, then, did you have to do that to her arm?” Bonnie Branigan cried, finally noticing its awkward, drooping angle.

  “She was contaminating the crime scene! I had to stop her.”

  “Oh, dear heavens,” Bonnie gasped. “This is—what do they call it?—excessive force. Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Molly murmured, taking the towel from her. “It definitely qualifies.”

  She had to get out of here. She had to find Danny.

  She gripped Ms. Branigan’s arm, pulling her away from Maguire. “Where’s the other guy?” she asked in an undertone.

  “The man who was struggling with that one?” The woman looked in the direction of the unconscious Higgins. “Why, he’s…” Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know.”

  There was another shout from the area of the reception desk. Molly looked that way quickly enough to make her head spin again. One of the cooks was dragging an unconscious security guard out from behind it.

  “He’s alive, he’s alive!” the man called. “He’s got a pulse.”

  Then it hit her. Molly understood.

  Danny had broken his parole in the worst way possible. Assault and battery. He’d made a choice again. And this time he’d done it for her.

  He was going back to jail after all.

  A fist seemed to wrap itself around her windpipe. Molly left everyone and ran back to the grill kitchen. She found Higgins’s cell phone on the floor there. She used her good hand to dig Josh Gannon’s phone number out of her pocket. Shaking, she punched it in with her thumb.

  Someone had called 911, she thought again. Whether the arriving officers turned out to be good cops or Lion’s Den guys, it wouldn’t matter. Danny had damned near killed a man—two men if the guard behind the desk was any indication. And someone would make him pay for it.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered aloud, waiting as the phone on the other end of the line rang.

  Both factions of cops would arrive, Molly decided. They’d turn out in record numbers again, just as they had on the day of the bombing. This place was their hub. If the Lions had a Den, then it was here in this building. There would be chaos when everyone arrived, and the Den guys would see to it that she was hauled off ignominiously for planting evidence. They’d settle for destroying her now, tonight. Maybe they would still try to kill her later.

  She had to get out of here.

  Josh Gannon finally answered the phone groggily.

  “It’s Molly French,” she said quickly, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed her. She was still alone. She slid out of the kitchen
again and started for the back of the clubhouse, in the opposite direction from the confusion. “I’m in trouble, Josh. I need your brother. Tell him to come to the country club. Tell him it hit the fan. Tell him that Larry Higgins and Beau Maguire brought me here to kill me. Do you have those names?”

  Josh made a coming-awake sound. “Yeah. Yeah, I have them.”

  “Higgins is half-dead and Maguire is trying to say he caught me contaminating the crime scene. I need Joe to take over here, to protect our interests on this end. I can’t stay here.”

  “Where are you going?” Josh asked. “Where can he find you?”

  “Tell him I’m going to find the district attorney.” It was the only chance she had, Molly thought. She disconnected again and tucked the phone into the waistband of her jeans. Maguire had called somebody on it. The call would be traceable.

  She would go find Spence Harrison, Molly thought. Later. After she found Danny.

  When Molly stepped outside onto the patio behind the clubhouse, she heard sirens wailing all over the city. From the sound of it, Al Capone was coming down tonight. Either that, or one troublesome good cop who just wouldn’t go away, she thought, feeling a little giddy. Yes, they were going to want her badge. This was going to be an IAD skirmish that would make Tripician’s head spin…assuming Spence Harrison couldn’t help her.

  She was about to find out just whose side the D.A. was on.

  Her face pulled tight with pain as she paused in the darkness just long enough to fashion the towel into a sling for her arm. Then she headed for the parking lot, keeping to the gardens, praying she could get there before too many patrol cars descended. With any amount of luck, Maguire had left her keys in it.

  Her luck seemed to be running all right so far. She was alive. But where was Danny?

  Molly found her old Camaro. It was unlocked, but her keys weren’t there. She grinned suddenly, a little ferally, in the night. If Maguire still had them on him, if he had dropped them into his pocket after he’d brought her here to the country club, that was going to leave him with a bit of explaining to do.