Miami Fire

by Rick Murcer

  “Good. That’d how I see it too.”

  Josh got up and moved into the chair directly in front of her, leaning forward as he spoke.

  “Listen. I know this will be tough for you. I also suspect you knew this was coming the second you shared your experience on Saint Kitts. But, as I’ve learned working with one Special Agent Manny Williams for a few years, there are times to face and slay the dragon. We just have to remember we aren’t doing it alone.”

  “Some dragons are meaner than others.”

  “Yeah, still only a dragon, though. I’ll be right there, and I know you. You’re a tough woman, even though you like jazz.”

  Even she enjoyed the laugh that escaped from not just her lips, but her heart.

  “Jazz is God’s music and don’t forget it.”

  Josh bowed his head reverently, smiling.

  “Yes ma’am. I’ll remember that.”

  Belle felt her load lighten some.

  Kids carry burdens well into their adult lives, even to their graves, most of the time not understanding why. She’d understood this one perfectly. In fact, it had been a driving force for her to become a cop.

  Yet, to hear Josh talk about facing this stress alongside her had been far more comforting than any pep talk or determined rationale she’d bestowed upon herself over the last twenty years.

  Safety in numbers, she supposed. And the man was good looking, for what that was worth. Good looking—and married.

  She shook off where her mind was heading with that line of thinking and stood.

  “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, and we can talk more about how we want to handle this meeting.”

  “That’s a good idea. These two are going to be defensive, I’d guess, but we have to get through all of that and find out what they know.”

  Balancing two cups of hazelnut cream coffee, she returned to her seat and handed one to Josh.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said. “About our approach.”

  “And?”

  “We have to start slowly, small talk, then tell them about the murders in South Florida. Then talk about Cammy’s murder and how they might be related. When they begin the stonewalling of information we know they have, we drop the bomb on them that I’m the American girl who saw the killer. When we do that, we’ll have to watch them closely.”

  “What will I be watching for?” asked Josh, a gleam in those blue eyes.

  “Their eyes and expressions will take up the next part of this interview,” she said.

  “Which will be what?”

  Sipping her coffee, Belle looked at her knee. Without raising her eyes to Josh, she told him.

  “The identity of Cammy’s killer.”

  CHAPTER-25

  “Sophie and Dean, stay here and guard the front door, I’m heading toward the back.”

  “Why?” said Sophie, dropping Dean’s hand.

  “There’s someone inside, and I don’t think it’s the cleaning lady.”

  “It could be an employee,” said Dean.

  “No cars in the lot and the Graysons said they’d meet us here because they were closed for the day,” said Manny.

  “Watch your ass, Williams. We’ve got this,” said Sophie, pulling her weapon with one hand, two pink throwing stars with the other.

  Manny sprinted around the side of the building, making a mental note of the two shipping docks equipped with fifteen-foot doors on the side of the building. They could be escape routes, but the dim red lights above them indicated they were locked and would be far too noisy and cumbersome to use for an escape.

  Steps later, he turned the corner of the building and came to rest in front of the rust-streaked metal double doors that should have been locked.

  The left one was slightly ajar, showing only darkness as he strained for any semblance of light.

  He switched his Glock to his right hand and slowly climbed the pitted cement steps.

  Once he reached the doors, he stopped, trying to get a glimpse of light through the pitch black of the slivered opening.

  Reaching for the door with his left hand, he pushed it open an inch at a time, his bundled nerves on complete alert as the perspiration formed in uniform dots across his forehead. And it wasn’t because of the heat.

  The warm, dusty warehouse odor invaded his heightened sense of smell, causing him to pause yet again until he detected nothing out of the ordinary. He felt no need to run into a burning warehouse trap.

  After making sure that he was not, he moved forward.

  He hated this part of police work. Walking into the devil’s dark playhouse was the one thing that made him take pause. Many a good cop had been sent to their funerals in situations like this, and he had no intentions of adding to that number.

  I’m getting too old for this shit.

  With that thought vivid in his mind, he moved cautiously, opening the door even further.

  Sophie and Dean were good—they had each other up front—but maybe he should call for backup. It was the safest thing and was in line with proper police procedure. But what he didn’t know was how many ways there were to leave this building undetected. Backup would probably be too late to help cover that anyway.

  If this man inside was Valentino, and they had timed their arrival just right, who was he to fly in the face of providence?

  His hyper-sense went into overdrive, without the trance state Sophie and Alex often chided him about.

  The man who had ducked out of sight in the front of the building was Valentino. There was no question in his mind. They had done good police work and solved his puzzle, intentional or subconscious as it was, and maybe now they could reap those rewards.

  Taking one step closer to the completely opened, but still dark doorway, Manny saw a dim aura of light to the right of the door’s breach radiating from safety lights somewhere near the west end of the building. They revealed a flight of four concrete steps leading to the main floor of the building.

  His gun held ready, he slid through the door, crouching low, then quickly reached against the wall, his fingers desperately seeking a light switch.

  Just as his hand touched the cool metal plate leading to the light switches, he heard a familiar sound. The plate exploded.

  He fell back against the side of the steps, hidden from the source of the shot, the passing pain in his fingers and the thumping in his chest reminding him that he wasn’t bulletproof.

  The unsub had shot out the light plate with a weapon fitted with a suppresser. He had to be fairly close for Manny to hear the muffled report and for the shooter to be fairly accurate—unless, of course, he was also an expert marksman. In that case, Manny’s ass was grass and the shooter was the lawn mower.

  “This is the FBI, asshole, drop your weapon and you might get out of here alive,” he yelled.

  The response was so quick it surprised Manny.

  “Asshole? Is that any way to speak to greatness, Agent Williams?”

  There was no ignoring the bone-shaking chill that touched every corner of his being. This man was supremely confident and had somehow been expecting them.

  Regaining his composure, no small feat this time, he answered back, hoping to piss off his adversary.

  “You’re a killer, Valentino. That’s not greatness; that’s being a coward.”

  “You are a charmer, aren’t you? You also have no concept of what I’ve done.”

  His voice wasn’t far away, but the echo from within the warehouse proved too muddled to get a true bead on his location. Touching his phone, he wanted to text Sophie, but then stopped; the light from the face of the cell could alert Valentino of his intention. He stuck with trying to get the lunatic off his game.

  “You murdering six people isn’t a concept, you sick bitch. It’s a crime.”

  “Not a crime for me, Agent. I did them a favor because I loved them. I gave them what everyone secretly desires.”

  The location of Valentino’s voice told Manny that he was in the same ge
neral position or close to it.

  “An early funeral after you tortured them? You didn’t have that right.”

  “No, not an early funeral, Agent, and certainly not torture. In the end, they all understood. I gave them something far more eternal, more tangible than a few more years of life.”

  “Yeah, what was that?”

  The killer was so calm, so sure of himself. Manny’s uneasiness grew with his awareness that there had to be something else happening with this man . . . and this meeting.

  “Are you going to answer me, dickhead?”

  “Yes, even though you are acting like a ten-year-old with the name calling. That’s okay, however. I forgive you.”

  His location had changed slightly, but Manny was still in the lurch as to where. Damn it.

  He’d been gone longer than he should have. Sophie would know what that meant and had probably called for backup by now.

  Keep him talking, Williams.

  “Spare me your indignation and forgiveness. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “Suit yourself. But let me answer your question before I go. I gave them fame, Agent. I gave them a true immortality. They will forever be remembered because my talent and love made it so. No one else could give them what I have. No one.”

  This time the voice was farther away.

  Shit.

  “Where are you going? We have more to discuss. Like how your new boyfriend likes it when you get to prison.”

  “Goodbye, Agent. I only wanted to introduce myself to the best of the best at what you do so you could know that I am the best at what I do. I—”

  The large overhead lights suddenly flooded the building, causing him to squint with purpose.

  “Just shut the hell up and drop your weapon.”

  Sophie.

  There was another muffled shot, then a second, followed by two quick shots as Sophie fired back.

  Rising from his spot, his eyes almost focused, Manny ran up the three steps then hit the floor, rolling toward a pallet of boxes, as more gunfire echoed through the building.

  “Sophie! You okay?”

  The silence that followed caused his stomach to drop to his feet.

  Maybe she didn’t want to give her position away.

  “Yeah. It’ll take more than this creep to send me packing,” she finally answered.

  He’d never heard anything so sweet in his life.

  Another bullet ripped into the boxes directly above his head and he went closer to the floor.

  A second later, he heard Sophie swear.

  She fired off three more quick shots from his left. He then reached around the corner of the pallet, sure of Sophie’s location, and fired twice in the general direction from where Valentino last fired.

  Immediately after, he thought he heard a groan of pain, then the boxes above him rained porcelain and cardboard on his head and back.

  “Williams?” yelled Sophie.

  “Still breathing.”

  “I think he’s hit,” she said. “Maybe he’s dead.”

  Manny prayed she was right as the silent lull in the clamor of gunfire stole over the building. It only lasted for an instant.

  The next sound that rattled throughout the warehouse was the slamming of a heavy door.

  Valentino had left the building.

  CHAPTER-26

  Scrambling to his feet, Manny met Sophie in the middle of the warehouse floor.

  “Did you see which way he went?” asked Sophie.

  “No. But it had to be in that corner,” he said, pointing toward the area of the building where he’d fired.

  They hurried in that direction reaching a slight bend where a stack of pallets stuck out over the yellow walking path.

  Holding up his hand, Manny motioned for Sophie to stop. They then moved slowly, finally peeking around the corner, Sophie low, Manny high.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Down another flight of stairs, angled away from them, the side emergency exit door stood wide open.

  They could see the last embers of the Florida sunset blending with the now fully lit security lights through the opening, but no Valentino.

  Sophie hurried to get in front of Manny and then abruptly stopped, squatting on her haunches, staring at the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “Blood, Big Boy. One of us hit him, and there is more of it through the door.”

  She stood and then hopped down the steps, halfway out into the warm Miami night.

  Manny called to her. “Wait.”

  She turned toward him. “What? The prick’s not out there waiting for us. Especially since backup will be here any second. He’s running his nuts off, if he has any. We have to track his ugly ass down.”

  Manny scanned the warehouse. “How did you get in here? I told you stay put.”

  “Hey, I have a skill or two. That front door lock was nothing. We can talk about how I saved your ass later. Let’s go.”

  “I said hold up. Where’s Dean?” he asked.

  “He’s out front in the SUV waiting for backup . . . oh no.”

  Manny’s and Sophie’s relationship stretched back almost fifteen years together, and he thought he’d seen every imaginable expression from her, but the absolute panic etched on her pretty face at that moment was a first.

  For the umpteenth time this trip, his worry meter hit the roof. His heart felt as if it was on a proverbial yoyo.

  Reacting like a scared cat, Sophie tore up the steps and past him, sprinting with the determination of an Olympian.

  He fell in line behind her, trying to keep up as she wound her way through the aisles and toward the front door she’d managed, somehow, to open.

  It was impossible to not link their mad dash with so many others they’d taken part in over the years, including the one where he caught the man who had threatened Ian and Chloe. He hoped this would turn out better than most of the rest of them.

  Reaching the front door, Sophie burst through, flew down the steps, and turned to the side parking lot where they’d parked the SUV.

  Manny reached her side just as the high beams, accompanied by the roaring engine, told them the SUV was intent on making road kill out of both of them.

  Reacting on instinct alone, he grasped her shoulder, pulling her tight, and yanked her away from the oncoming vehicle, hitting the hard surface with far more impact than he’d intended.

  They rolled over on the uneven concrete two times, barely avoiding the SUV’s reckless charge. Sophie yelped once, and Manny fought to capture lost breath. But they were alive, at least for the moment.

  Sophie broke free from him, dazed but determined, as they both scrambled to their feet just in time to see the taillights of the SUV disappear away from the driveway, motoring left on the side street.

  “You son of a bitch,” screamed Sophie.

  “We need to look for him, Sophie. Maybe he’s not in the vehicle,” said Manny.

  They went up and down the exterior of the building and then searched through the row of palms bordering the property. After one more desperate sweep of the building, Manny met Sophie where Valentino had almost taken them out.

  The look on Sophie’s face at the moment was far worse than the one in the warehouse a few minutes earlier.

  There was no Dean Mikus in sight.

  CHAPTER-27

  “You’re so beautiful. You look like an angel. You are one, aren’t you?”

  Barb smiled, despite the turmoil running rampant in her soul.

  “No, Alex. We’ve been through this twice. I’m your wife Barbara, and we’re in the hospital after surgery to give you a new hand, remember? You’re still under the effects of the anesthetic and pain medication.”

  His eyes grew wide. “What? A new hand? What was wrong with the other one?”

  “You didn’t have one. You lost it in San Juan almost two years ago.”

  “Well, I’m no expert, but how in God’s name does one lose a hand? I mean, they’re on pretty tight, a
ren’t they?”

  She laughed out loud.

  “Yes, Alex, they are on pretty tight. There was sword play involved and—”

  “That crazy bastard Caleb Corner whacked it off. Yeah, I remember, vividly,” he finished.

  Barb rose from her chair and kissed him on the lips, then pinched his cheek hard enough for him to squint with pain.

  “You are a bad boy for tricking mama. I’m going to have to punish you,” she said, adding a touch of sexy to her voice.

  “Oh boy. But I think you’re going to have to wait for a few days. They said no sudden movements or thrashing around for a while. And that hurt.”

  “It was supposed to. That’s what you get for being deceitful. And I have other ways, Alexander Downs, of inflicting a little damage. You won’t see me coming until it’s too late.”

  “That would be too bad. I like to see you coming,” he said, grinning.

  “Why, yes you do, so you won’t get to see it.”

  “I lose.”

  Taking a step back, she looked at his left arm again. It was fully immobilized by a series of straps and metal belts that ran all of the way up to his shoulder. They were intended to keep the thinly spiked contraption that looked like it had escaped from a Gene Roddenberry movie from moving even a millimeter.

  Over one hundred pins stuck into the surface of Alex’s flesh just around where the prosthetic had been surgical fused with his lower arm. There must have been twice that many spiraling up to his shoulder.

  She thought this contrivance represented the full range of what was good and bad in the marriage of contemporary technology and medicine. If it did the trick, great. If it didn’t; what was the price for failure? On top of all of that, her husband was going to be laid up for far more than a few days.

  That little tidbit was going to prove to be a problem and a relief simultaneously when the time came, but she’d handle it like always.

  “Quite a contraption, isn’t it? Some of it is overkill to ensure nothing moves, but better to be safe than sorry.”

  “That’s true. Are you in any pain, Alex?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t feel anything with the arm. The pins are to help keep the impulse connectors in place, but they also act a little like needles from an acupuncture treatment by shutting down certain other nerve endings. I understand the science in principle, but not the specifics in the process,” he said, that geek expression that he and Dean held dear coming into play.