Shooting Star

by Bradley Wright

  Frank spoke up. “One more turn and she’s in the house three doors down. Two lights on above the garage.”

  Cassie went back to her figuring. “So anyway, that’s Clint’s story, but we’re talking about Jenny. What made you think she was still working for Sloan? Enough to throw her this far off the scent?”

  “Simple really. I just listened.”

  This time Lawson’s glance in the rearview found Cassie rolling her eyes.

  It didn’t stop him from going on. “Jenny said she was going to kill the person responsible for Clint’s death. Two seconds later she pushed you and told you he died because of you. It could have just been metaphorical, but I think she truly thought it was your fault. From the moment he died she blamed you for putting him in that situation. I think she probably called Sloan and told him in that parking lot that she was going to stay with us and help take us down.”

  Cassie rubbed her hand across her forehead. “That’s an awful lot of leaps you’re taking there.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Would you feel better if I just said it wasn’t worth taking the chance of letting Jenny hear the real plan just in case she was going to relay it to Sloan?”

  “Yeah, it kinda does.”

  “Well, there you go.” Lawson pulled into an open spot on the side of the road, a couple doors down from the house with the two lights over the garage. “Feel better about it now?”

  “Whatever,” Cassie said and got out of the car. Lawson and Frank followed. Cassie gestured toward Frank. “Let’s just get Victoria so we can get this asshole started on his prison sentence.”

  Lawson walked over to Frank. “What are we walking into?”

  “I led you here. She’s in there. The rest is up to you.”

  Lawson hit Frank so hard in the stomach that he immediately vomited all the free popcorn he’d had back at the bar. “That’s not how this works, Frank. I’ll ask one more time, what are we walking into?”

  Frank tried to speak, but he couldn’t manage any words.

  Cassie walked over and found Lawson’s face in the streetlight. “For a smart guy, you’re awfully stupid. You hit the guy with your lunch box of a fist right in the gut, knowing it will take his breath, then you want him to talk to you.”

  “Are you on my case because I didn’t tell you the plan? Is that what this attitude is about?”

  Lawson was having a lot more fun with his partner than he’d had in a long time. It reminded him of the days they were a team in the FBI. It was always easier to joke when it wasn’t your daughter’s life hanging in the balance. Somewhere in his head he had the thought that he might be able to work with her again. Maybe he should get the private investigation business going with her.

  “Yeah, it’s me with the attitude,” Cassie quipped back. “Frank, I know he hits hard, but don’t be a pussy. Take a deep breath and tell us who is in the house and where they are. Otherwise, we’ll just shoot you right here and go in blind. No one, and I do mean no one, will give a parrot’s pecker if you’re dead.”

  Lawson smiled and let Cassie’s line slide. It was good to be back. Even if there was a house full of dirty cops waiting for them and a crime boss on the way.

  45

  Lawson and Cassie walked Frank up the porch steps toward the front door. That’s right, porch steps. The house was a Cape Cod, complete with the gabled dormers and shingle siding. Right there in LA. It occurred to Lawson for about the thousandth time since they’d moved there that a lot of people in Hollywood seemed awfully confused.

  Lawson had a grip on Frank’s left arm. “Okay, Frank. Call your man in charge and tell him to gather everyone in the kitchen. All of them. And put their guns on the countertop.”

  Frank was still recovering from the gut punch, but with labored movement he did as he was told.

  “They’re moving to the kitchen,” Frank said. “Key’s in my back pocket.”

  “You think I’m going to reach in your back pocket?”

  Frank gave him a look, then dug in his pocket with his right hand and took out the keys. He extended them in his hand, and as Lawson went to take them, in an attempt to escape Frank balled the keys up into his fist with a key sticking out of his fingers. He jabbed up at Lawson’s face, and the key sliced a gash in Lawson’s left cheek. It took Lawson by surprise, and he faltered back a step. Frank had dropped the keys upon impact with Lawson’s face, but he still was able to deliver a solid right hand to Cassie’s forehead as she scrambled for her gun. It didn’t knock her out, but it did knock her on her ass.

  Lawson stepped forward, rage sparking from seeing Cassie get punched. This time it was Frank who took a step back. Then he turned to run.

  He almost got away, but Lawson reached out, his fingertips just able to snatch the back of Frank’s collar. He couldn’t hold on, but it was enough to turn him. Lawson was on him in a blur, and he was able to step toward Frank with his left leg, then engage his hips to throw a punch with his right. The impact of Lawson’s knuckles against Frank’s chin sounded like a dry tree branch being broken in half. Frank was out instantly, and his body folded as it sailed backward toward the ground, then stiffened as he lay there unconscious. His neck strained and his arms were involuntarily held out in front of him as his brain tried to reboot.

  “You okay?” Lawson rushed over to Cassie and helped her to her feet.

  “He hits like a girl. Only reason it knocked me down was because I was already hit in the head once today.”

  “It might actually make you smarter.”

  Cassie looked up at him. Half of her disgusted, and the other half of her, Lawson could tell, was glad to have a piece of her old friend back. But she played it like that wasn’t amusing at all. “Who are you?”

  Lawson got serious. “Listen, we don’t have long. We need to get in there and get Victoria. Then get the hell out.”

  “Why don’t we have long? No one else knows Victoria’s here.”

  “We drove Clint’s car here.”

  Cassie might have just been hit again in the head, but she was quick on the uptake. “You son of a bitch. You knew tracker-happy Jenny would have a device on Clint’s car . . . You thought this all the way through. You never intended on a meeting of Sloan and Frank at the fake kidnapping location, you always knew it would be where Victoria was being held.”

  Lawson smiled. “Insurance.”

  He pointed to the phone Claudia gave him that was sticking up out of the lapel pocket on the outside of his suit jacket. Just high enough so the camera lens could capture everything.

  “You’ve been recording everything?”

  “Even better, we’re live streaming video. Say hi to Claudia. She’s recording this from FBI headquarters.”

  Cassie laughed. “It’s 2019, live video streaming on an iPhone is called FaceTime . . . Anyway, when did you manage that?”

  “I texted Claudia earlier and told her to be waiting with a way to record a FaceTime call. After I disabled the douchebag in the bathroom at the bar and before I walked out, I connected with her on FaceTime, then put it right here.” Lawson patted the pocket on his suit jacket. Proud that technology hadn’t got the best of him that time.

  Cassie looked impressed; then her expression changed to a squint. “Now I remember why I hated being your partner.”

  “You hated solving cases?” Lawson was really feeling his oats.

  “No, I hated how you never told me everything. Déjà vu tonight, I guess. Can we go get this over with? Looks like Frank is waking up.”

  Right on cue, in the light shining from the porch, Lawson could see Frank stirring—a weary moan the accompanying tune. Lawson didn’t so much as help him up, but pulled him up, and after Frank’s legs buckled, Cassie and Lawson helped him up the stairs. Lawson picked up the keys with his free hand, and Cassie pulled her pistol with hers.

  They walked into the home and could hear commotion at the back. Lawson assumed it was the kitchen and steered their walk that way, exchanging the keys for his Sig.<
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  “You’re not going to get away with this, Lawson,” Frank said, slurring the words from his broken jaw.

  Cassie spoke for Lawson. “What is this, an episode of Scooby-Doo? Who talks like that, Frank?”

  Frank didn’t have the energy to respond. He was all but broken at this point. Lawson and Cassie tried to pick up the pace, both understanding that time was running out. But they had also underestimated how quickly Sloan would have his men ready to respond, because just as they stepped into the kitchen, the sound of tires screeching to a halt just out front warned of ensuing chaos.

  Lawson turned Frank and pinned him against the wall in the kitchen. The four men Frank had standing guard instinctively reached for their weapons on the kitchen counter. Lawson didn’t have time to acknowledge them.

  He grabbed Frank by the throat and punched the end of his Sig Sauer into his gut.

  “Tell me where Victoria is, right now, or I will shoot you.”

  46

  Frank Shaw must have seen in Lawson’s eyes that he would in fact shoot him, so he told them Victoria was in the basement. As Lawson and Cassie raced downstairs to get her and avoid the oncoming shootout, they heard the men they’d left in the kitchen readying their weapons, and they heard at least two more cars pull up outside. Lawson hadn’t meant to still be there when Sloan and Frank had it out, but it didn’t look like there was going to be any way around it.

  When Lawson and Cassie turned the corner in the basement, the bullet from the gun of one of Frank’s men, who’d stayed behind with Victoria, came less than an inch from Lawson’s nose before boring into the drywall beside him. He dove backward, taking Cassie down with him, and the stairwell kept them from eating any of the next three bullets the man fired at them.

  “Any closer and I’ll shoot her. Don’t try me.”

  Lawson only got a glimpse of the skinny bald man standing behind Victoria, who was seated in a folding chair. He quickly scanned his view for a way to distract him. It was an unfinished basement. Smooth poured concrete floor, only studs and beams, no drywall. It was a fairly big open room, and Victoria and the guard were right in the middle. Lawson heard commotion and several footfalls above them. Lawson assumed the men were getting into a defensive position. He knew Claudia was watching, so he knew the police would be there any minute. But he had to make sure Victoria, Cassie, and he managed to survive until then.

  Lawson and Cassie were huddled behind the steps, Cassie keeping watch up the stairwell to make sure they weren’t surprised from behind. The outside wall, the only finished wall down there, stretched to his left. It wasn’t a walk out basement like you see a lot of times in the rolling hills of Kentucky where he grew up. He was surprised there was a basement at all. He’d heard they weren’t that common in Los Angeles. This was disheartening because even if Lawson was able to get Victoria away from this guy, they were going to have to go through whatever madness was going on above them to get out of there.

  First things first, he had to get Victoria free. The only other thing Lawson noticed before he nearly lost his nose to the bullet in the drywall was a full-length mirror propped against a beam.

  “I’m telling you, man, throw your gun out here and walk out with your hands up, or she’s dead!”

  That gave Lawson an idea.

  “Okay,” he said. “All right. Just don’t hurt her.”

  As he spoke, he was working fast to remove his black oxford dress shoe.

  “I’m just going to throw my gun out. Don’t shoot.”

  He looked at Cassie, put two fingers to his eyes and pointed up the stairs. She nodded, letting him know she would focus on getting their backs.

  “Here I go, don’t shoot.”

  Lawson stood up, still hidden behind the stairs, and he could see the mirror directly across from him, maybe ten feet away.

  “No sudden moves or she dies.”

  Lawson took his pistol in his left hand, getting it ready, and held the shoe in his right. He cocked his arm back, prayed that he could channel his inner Nolan Ryan, and heaved it sidearm as hard as he could toward the mirror. As soon as the shoe left his hand, he held the pistol with both hands and raised it to his eye level. He got lucky with the shoe. The wooden heel hit near the middle on the left side of the mirror and broke it just enough to where a few pieces shattered loudly on the floor.

  It was the distraction he had hoped for. As the man instinctively turned his head to the crashing mirror, Lawson walked out from behind the stairs and aimed for the man’s turned head, squeezing the trigger repeatedly until he saw one hit, making sure to aim plenty high enough so there was no chance Victoria could be shot. He was either going to miss the man’s head, and deal with the consequences, or hit his mark and end the threat.

  He squeezed them off so fast it was hard to tell which had done the trick, but he thought it was the third bullet of the six he shot that clipped the man’s forehead, causing his collapse to the floor. Victoria’s scream was almost as loud as the gunshots, and only a second later shots back and forth upstairs between Sloan and Frank’s men made it to his ringing ears. It sounded like a small war above him.

  “Suspect down,” he shouted back to Cassie. It was an old reflex from their days working cases. It sounded weird coming out of his mouth.

  “Stairs still clear,” she reported. “But I don’t think we have much time.”

  Lawson rushed over to Victoria and started to work on getting her free. Her face was wet with tears, and her normally well-kept hair was a mess.

  “Oh, thank God.” She was short of breath. “I thought for sure we were dead.”

  “Give it some time, we aren’t out of here yet—” The word we registered late in his brain.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. I’m so sorry. Frank made me—”

  She stopped abruptly.

  “You got my daughter already, right? That’s why you’re down here. Because you already got my daughter? Please tell me Erin is safe!”

  “Frank has your daughter?”

  Cassie would hate it, but the word insurance immediately came to mind. Of course taking Victoria’s daughter, Erin, was the way he made her cooperate. It had been the very same way he tried to make Lawson cooperate. Lawson felt for Victoria. He knew all too well how she felt. And it just took the stakes of the entire situation to a whole other level.

  “Oh God, he still has my baby? Please, you have to get her!”

  Lawson already knew of course that she was right. He couldn’t let something happen to Erin.

  Lawson started unraveling the duct tape from her wrists and ankles. The gunshots upstairs continued.

  “I’ll get her.”

  The look in Victoria’s eyes was enough to light a fire in Lawson. She was on another level of terrified. The worry in a situation like this can be crippling.

  He felt he needed to say more. “I promise, I won’t let Frank hurt her.”

  Lawson took the phone from his lapel pocket and stared into it.

  “Claudia, how long till the police get here? It’s a shoot-out upstairs.”

  Claudia came into view. “Two minutes, maybe less. Is everyone all right?”

  “We’re alive. Did you get all of that?”

  “All of it.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Just stay put. If they are shooting at each other upstairs, don’t get in the middle of it.”

  Claudia was right. It would be easier to wait for the police to clear things above them, then come out. But he couldn’t just sit down there with an innocent girl in danger. It wasn’t how he was wired.

  “Tell Lexi I’ll be home soon.”

  He put the phone back in his pocket and helped Victoria out of her chair.

  “Get under the stairs over there and don’t move.”

  Immediately Victoria hurried over and huddled under the stairs, stacking nearby pieces of wood and drywall to give her something to hide behind. Lawson moved over to the stairs.

  “Did I hear tha
t correctly? Frank has her daughter?” Cassie said.

  “He must have gone back for her when Victoria initially wouldn’t help him.”

  “Damn it. I knew Frank was an asshole. Always was. But how did he slide this low?”

  Lawson readied his gun.

  “Not sure, but let’s help him slide the rest of the way down.”

  47

  The gunfire was still active as Lawson moved up the stairs. He would hear a few rounds from inside, then a few rounds outside. A couple windows would break, then he would hear some bullets thudding into the shingle siding. It wasn’t that he didn’t hear Claudia when she suggested they wait in the basement until the cops could clean things up. He just couldn’t let Frank hurt Erin; plus, when the police pulled up in front of the house, he didn’t want Frank to be able to escape out the back before they cornered him.

  Though he was technically not in the FBI, or a detective, Lawson was no average citizen either. And neither was Cassie. This is what they did, it’s who they were, even if it had been a while. Last year in Vegas they made a damn good team again, and he hadn’t held a gun in ten years. This time he’d only had a year off, and he’d been several times to the gun range to keep his skills sharp. With the two of them in there, it was like the police had experts planted inside. He couldn’t just sit around. He knew the cops would be patient because technically there were four hostages and they wouldn’t just come shooting their way in.

  He crept up to the door at the top of the basement stairs, just to take a look. Cassie moved right in behind him. He knew she would have the same thoughts about their situation as he did. And she definitely didn’t want Frank getting away either. He strained his ears and heard sirens. There had been a lot of hearing sirens all day it seemed. If Frank was going to run, he would do it as soon as he heard them too. Frank was an arrogant man, so it was possible he thought he could talk his way out of this one. But two kidnappings was enough to put you away for good. Somewhere along the line, Frank had completely lost his mind over Martin Sloan. So much so that he buried himself in the very crime he’d always fought against. The other thing burning in Lawson’s subconscious, though, was that he knew firsthand the judicial system didn’t always get it right, so there was a chance Frank actually could go free. Good lawyers find a lot of technicalities to get obvious criminals acquitted. So there was a part of Lawson that hoped Frank would run. It could give Lawson an excuse to make sure he never had a chance to do anything like this ever again.