Rainey took a step closer to the frightened man. She shouted, “Get on your knees! Hands on the back of your head!”
The man complied, but kept on pleading with Rainey. “Jesus, man! I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Shut up!” Rainey shouted at the man, making eye contact with the closest cop. “Cuff him and search him.”
Danny appeared at Rainey’s side. “Where’d he come from?”
Rainey holstered her weapon, and said a bit accusatorily to Danny, “Behind my car. He was waiting for me in the middle of all these cops.”
The officer finished cuffing the man and stood him up at the back of the car. Another officer pulled on latex gloves and began asking the man questions.
“Do you have anything in your pockets that might injure me? Are you carrying any weapons?”
Blue Oxford realized how much trouble he was in. He explained in earnest, “No, I don’t have any weapons. There’s a pen in my right pocket. I just wanted to talk to Agent Bell. Really guys, I’m not some creep, I’m just a writer.”
The gloved cop handed Rainey the man’s wallet. She looked at his ID. “Martin Douglas Cross,” she read aloud. “Martin, what did you want to talk to me about?” Rainey continued to go through Martin’s wallet.
Martin looked scared to death, when she glanced up at him. He apparently lost the ability to speak.
Rainey prodded him. “You wanted to talk to an armed FBI agent bad enough to spring up out of the darkness and scare the shit out of her, so talk. What’s on your mind?”
Martin sputtered, then got on a roll, “M… m… my name is Marty Cross. I write crime novels. I’m writing about the Y-Man murders. Cookie Kutter said you were in the bar on Twitter. I’ve been dying to interview you, but I can’t get around that woman in your office and your numbers are unlisted. She reads your mail, you know, that woman, Ernestine… I think that’s her name…anyway I saw you in the bar and I decided to go up to you, but first I had to go to the bathroom. Then I changed my mind halfway there, and came back to the lobby. I couldn’t find you so I found your car and waited… I wasn’t…”
Rainey waved her arms. “Stop! Just stop.
“But I…”
“Zip it, Mr. Cross,” Rainey commanded.
Martin clamped his mouth shut like a kid in trouble, sucking his lips inward.
“Let me get this straight, you came to this bar to talk to me, because Cookie tweeted about me being here.” She folded the wallet, and dropped it on the trunk of the car. “Martin Cross, this is your lucky day. Agent McNally seems to think I’m a loose cannon. Good thing I didn’t fly out of control and shoot you. Oh, and here’s my statement on the Y-Man case - you’re going to want to write this down, Marty - No comment!”
Rainey opened the door to her car, got in, and slammed it shut. The engine roared to life. She threw the Charger into gear and punched it. Rainey looked in the rear view mirror to see the gloved officer snatch the wallet off the trunk just before she sped away. One last glance behind her revealed Danny pointing and shouting while officers ran in all directions. Rainey smiled.
“Catch me if you can.”
Chapter seventeen
Rainey took the Boulevard out of Durham and around Chapel Hill. By the time she joined the 15/501 highway, she was positive no one was following her.
“You have a call from an unlisted number, please press the call button to answer, or say…”
Rainey hit the button on the mirror. “What?”
“Girlfriend, you need to chill,” Brooks’ voice enveloped the interior of the car.
“Brooks, I’m sorry. I thought it was Danny.”
“No, Agent McNally thought you might talk to me. He said you were in a ‘mood.’ I asked him which one and he said, ‘The bitchy one.’ Have we forgotten how to play well with others, Agent Bell?”
“He sent me home, Brooks.”
“That asshole, trying to protect you from yourself. How dare he?”
“Now, don’t you start on me. He didn’t have to pull me off the bust. I wasn’t going to shoot the guy in front of everybody. I’m not crazy.”
“He’s just looking out for you, Rainey.”
“I know, but it still pisses me off not to be there.”
Brooks’ voice brightened. “How about the next best thing? We can listen to the feed. James is my homeboy. Taught him everything he knows.”
“Hook it up. I want to know the second that piece of shit is in cuffs.”
“Okay, hang on and be quiet, while I talk to James. He won’t be able to hear us after I cut off my mic.”
Rainey enjoyed the feeling of conspiracy. She listened as Brooks talked to James, scanning the road out of habit while she waited. The lightning flashes were growing closer and more frequent. Rainey heard the feed go live and then Brooks was back.
“Okay, Rainey Bell, you have a front row ear to the action.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
Rainey heard Danny’s voice in the speakers, giving instructions as to who was going where. The SWAT team would do the knock. The BAU team would follow with the warrants for Jared Howard’s arrest and the search of his property and vehicles. His instructions were followed by silence. Then one by one each group of officers called in their ready positions. Rainey’s heart rate quickened, even though she was miles away. She turned on her signal light and pulled onto the road, leading to the cottage. She heard the blam, blam, blam of an officer banging on a door with his fist.
“Jared Howard, this is the police. We have a warrant for your arrest.”
Blam, blam, blam.
“This is the police, open the door and come out with your hands in the air.”
Danny’s voice came out strong. “Go, go, go!”
A door splintered in the air around Rainey. She heard voices shouting.
“Clear, right.”
“Clear, left.”
“Clear, upstairs.”
“All clear, nobody’s home.”
Rainey slammed on brakes, loudly screeching to a halt. It wasn’t because of what she was hearing; it was what she saw in her headlights in front of her car.
Brooks heard the brakes lock up. She shouted excitedly, “Rainey, are you okay?”
The feed from Howard’s house mingled with their conversation.
“Agent McNally, there’s no one in the house.”
Rainey, staring straight ahead, said softly, “There’s a cat run over in the road. It looks like my cat.”
Danny said, “Dammit. Somebody get me Rainey on the phone.”
Rainey told herself Freddie never came this far up the road, but she really didn’t know where he went.
Brooks echoed Rainey’s next thought, “You know that’s a trap, don’t you?”
“Agent McNally, can you come to the basement?”
“Be right there,” Danny answered.
“Let me shut this feed off.” The white-noise from the audio disappeared from the speakers. Brooks continued, “I’ll say again, you do know that’s a setup, right? This is when you scream at the hero, ‘It’s a trap! Don’t do it.’ Listen to your gut, Rainey.”
Clouds moved in, shutting out the moonlight. A flash from a far off lightning strike announced the rain as it began to fall in sheets around the car. Rainey peered into the darkness. The rain forced her to turn on the windshield wipers.
She shouted over the rain drumming on the roof of the car, “Yeah, Brooks, I know it’s probably a setup, but if that’s my cat, I can’t let him lie out there in the rain.”
The sky lit up again. Rainey could clearly see it was a black cat. She couldn’t see its tail the way it was positioned. She spoke to Brooks as she slowly began to pull the car forward.
“I’m going to pull up beside it and open my door. If it’s not him, I’ll know very quickly. Freddie doesn’t have a tail.”
The drumming became a roar, as the wind buffeted the car, blowing the rain sideways. The noise was deafening. Rainey heard the cal
l waiting tone and knew Danny was calling her. She ignored him.
Brooks shouted over the din, “Sounds like the skies opened up on you. There’s a big storm on the radar down there.”
Lightning struck nearby, followed by a loud clap of thunder. Rainey kept her eyes on the cat in the road, careful to pull just to the side of it. She stopped the car and sat still for a minute. Checking the mirrors and looking in the woods on both sides of the road, she realized she was perpendicular to a one-lane dirt road on her left. A metal gate across the entrance denied access. Rainey couldn’t see anything out of place, but it was pouring down rain. She dug out a flashlight from the console and shined the beam down the dirt road. The rain was coming down so hard it reflected the light back at her.
“Okay, Brooks, I’m going to open this door now. Let’s hope for the best.”
“I’m with you. You just keep talking to me.”
Rainey pulled the door handle and pushed the door open a few inches. Rain blasted her in the face. The wind roared amid the torrent of water, while thunder rumbled through the trees. She put the flashlight in her left hand, pointing it down at the road. Holding the door open, she slowly pulled the car forward. The body of the cat came into view headfirst. It looked like Freddie, but so many black cats looked like him, she wasn’t sure. Lightning flashed. A loud slap and deafening rumble followed. Her heart began to break, but stopped abruptly when a long tail came into view.
“It’s not him,” she exclaimed, shutting the door, one second before the truck slammed into the driver’s side of her car.
#
“Rainey, Rainey Bell, answer me!” Brooks’ voice rang in Rainey’s ears.
The airbags had deployed and smoke filled the air. Rainey was disoriented. The rancid smell from the airbag propellant burned her nose.
“Rainey, I’m starting people to you, hang…”
Brooks was cut off by, “OnStar emergency, this is Nancy. I have your airbags deployed. Can you respond?”
Rainey tried to breathe but a sharp pain on her left side restricted her intake. She gasped out, “Send… help.”
Brooks’ voice broke back in, “Oh no you don’t, OnStar bitch. Rainey, I’m back. Can you hear me? Help is on the way.”
Rainey’s senses began to come back. The howling wind and rain continued. The storm was directly overhead now. Lightning strobes lit up the sky repeatedly, one thunderclap overlapping the next. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the grill of a truck through the spider-webbed driver’s window. Her circumstances rushed at her and the flight or fight instinct registered the alarm. A jolt of adrenaline jump-started her heart into a racing rhythm.
Rainey could hear the truck engine roaring as the driver tried to crush the Charger. The passenger side was smashed into the embankment of the ditch she’d been slammed into. The truck pinned her door shut. She had to get out of the car. Rainey released her seatbelt. Holding her left arm close to her side, where she thought her ribs might have been broken, Rainey climbed over the console and into the backseat. She pulled the Glock from the holster on her waistband and took the Beretta from the console. She laid the pistols on the seat and pulled the shotgun from the floor. All the while, she managed to grit her teeth against the pain and take a breath, so she could talk.
“Brooks, it’s him. Send everybody. I have to get out of this car. I’m a sitting duck in here.”
Rainey saw the light in the cab of the truck come on and go back off. He was out of the truck. A bolt of lightening illuminated his silhouette in front of the car, aiming a pistol directly at her. He fired three times. Luckily he never hit the same place twice and the armored glass did its job.
Brooks screamed through the speakers, “Oh my God! Help her. Help her.”
The pain in her ribs had to be ignored. He was out there and she couldn’t see him. Rainey pulled herself across the seat and reached for her keys. She yanked the remote off the chain. She dug into the console, pulling out a pocket knife.
“I’m getting the hell out, now!”
Brooks yelled, “But he’s out there.”
Suddenly, shots exploded above Rainey’s head in the rear windshield. Again, the glass held.
Rainey shouted back, “It won’t be long before he’s in here with me.”
Brooks was talking again, but not to her. “I repeat shots fired! Shots fired! Agent in distress. Move your asses! McNally! James! Anybody! Rainey’s in trouble!”
Rainey dug the knife into the center of the seat back. She installed the computer equipment in the car. Rainey knew what was behind the seat, access to the trunk. She smelled something burning and looked up to see the man standing behind the flames that were now engulfing the front of her car. She tore at the fabric and foam with the knife, as he put one shot after another in the windshield, chipping away at the high security glass. Thank God he had not realized the roof was unprotected.
Once she had a hole in the seat large enough for her body, Rainey lifted the shotgun and used the butt end to break away the fiber board blocking her exit. She shoved the shotgun in before her, put the remote in her teeth, and lifted the two pistols from the seat, putting them in her waistband. She laid on her back, kicked off the console and pulled herself into the trunk. Rainey located the shotgun and grasped the remote with two fingers. She hit the trunk release and came up out of the trunk like Rambo, firing over the lid at the front of the car.
She turned and jumped out of the trunk, blindly firing the shotgun behind her, as she landed on the ground. She lost her breath with the pain of the jolt, but kept moving. Rainey fired the shotgun again and scrambled over the embankment, into the cover of the woods. Brooks was screaming her name, her cries faded as Rainey ran for cover, while her car went up in flames.
#
Rainey lay on the ground behind a fallen tree. She tried to calm her breathing, so she could reduce the pain in her ribs and listen, but the rain and thunder were too much to overcome. All she could do was wait for the next lightning flash and hope she saw him. Rainey raised her head slowly, peering into the blackness. He could be right on top of her and she wouldn’t have seen him. The rain soaked her, running into her eyes, making it even harder to see. Still, she focused on the abyss in front of her. Three strobes of lightning lit up the area. A tree exploded about a hundred yards away. Rainey had to fight the instinct to duck and took the opportunity to see where she was. Rainey had one advantage. She knew these woods.
Another lightning strike revealed the silhouette of a man running to her left. Rainey stood up and fired one of the pistols in his direction. She immediately moved from that position, because the muzzle flashes would have given her away. She ran further from the road, heading for the lake. With the water at her back, she could lie in wait for him. The rain slowed. Rainey dropped down behind a tree, listening. This guy was military trained. He would be moving with her, stopping when she stopped, listening, as Rainey was, to every sound.
Rainey knew she had to keep moving. If he had night vision, he couldn’t use it now. The lightning would blind him, but the storm was moving fast. She couldn’t count on the lightning hanging around and he struck her as the kind of guy that probably owned night vision goggles. The thought kept her head down, as she crept closer to the lake. A streak of lightning revealed the lake just a few yards away. It also revealed Rainey to the man chasing her. She heard the pistol fire behind her and she hit the ground. Two more shots whizzed over her head. Rainey began to crawl.
The ground started getting soggier, as she inched through stumps and brambles to the water’s edge. She slid on her stomach down the muddy bank, disappearing into cypress knees and the blackness of the water. Behind a large tree stump, Rainey put the shotgun down in the water. She pulled out the pistols, taking the bullets from the Beretta magazine and filling up the one for the Glock. She now had fifteen chances to take Jared Howard down. Leaving the shotgun behind, Rainey slithered between the stumps and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long. Jared emer
ged from the trees, just as a flash lit up the woods around him. Rainey fired three times, hitting him in the shoulder with one. He stumbled back into the cover of the trees. He was wounded, but not dead. Rainey ducked behind a stump and waited, again. The rain subsided and then abruptly stopped. Rainey listened to the sudden quiet. For the first time, she heard sirens, lots of them.
Jared heard them, too. He called out to her from the darkness. “I’m hit. Help me.”
Rainey didn’t answer. He was trying to get her to give away her position. The sirens were very close now. She heard movement near the shore to her left and fired. She heard him scream in pain and her car blow up, just before her head went under water. Rainey emerged about ten feet away. Jared had fallen back behind the curtain of bushes lining the bank.
She heard him moaning. He cried out, “Fuck, my knee is shattered.”
Rainey thought he could have been bluffing, to get her out of the water, but he sounded truly hurt. The cold of the water caused Rainey to shake uncontrollably. She couldn’t stay in the water much longer and still be able to shoot her gun accurately. The sound of tires screeching and sirens abruptly shutting off alerted Rainey that help was near. She needed to let them know where she was. Thinking quickly, she turned away from shore to help cover the muzzle flash, aimed the gun at an angle so the bullet would fall harmlessly to the bottom of the lake, and fired. Quickly she slipped under the surface, hearing what sounded like an echo of her shot, just before her ears filled with water.
Rainey skimmed under the surface of the shallows, until she could no longer hold her breath. When she raised her head, she saw flashlights and heard her name being shouted from the shore. Still she remained quiet. Calling out now might get her killed. The lights grew closer and the shouts louder. Jared could be lying there waiting to take her rescuers down when they emerged from the woods. Rainey weighed her options, deciding to take a chance on getting shot, rather than watch someone else walk into a trap.
“Watch out! He’s on the bank. He’s hit,” she shouted toward the shore. Rainey waited for the shots to come her way, but none came. The flashlight beams stopped coming forward and began to search more slowly, moving toward the shoreline. Her teeth were chattering loudly now, she called out again. “I’m here, in the water. He’s on the bank to your right.”
Rainey Nights Page 28
