Lucas (The K9 Files Book 5)

by Dale Mayer

  Suddenly gunfire erupted on the far side of the property, the sounds distant but disruptive. Using the disturbance, the two men stood and started shooting in his direction. Lucas let out one warning shot, and, as they fired a second time, he took them both out.

  “Well, that’s three,” Lucas said and slipped down the hillside to where the two men lay dead.

  He relieved them of their weapons and left them lying where they were.

  He sent Nathan a text. Two down.

  He replied, Two here too.

  Lucas sent back One walking driveway, bleeding wrist. Leaves three.

  Another shot was fired from the house, and a man toppled from a tree down to the property.

  He sent Nathan another text. Another one down. Two more to go.

  He crouched down low, waiting in the stillness—definitely a game of patience. He knew the cops would be here soon, and they would need meat wagons for the bodies.

  With six down, two left, Lucas knew one of them would be the asshole Joe from the restaurant last night. Lucas skulked around the house to see one man slinking to the front, peering in through the window. As soon as he felt his presence, he spun around, aiming his gun at Lucas, but Lucas already had a rifle on him.

  “Drop it,” Lucas said in a low, menacing tone. “I’m not giving you the benefit of the doubt. You drop that right now, or I will kill you.”

  The man lowered his weapon.

  Lucas knocked him under the chin with the butt of his rifle, stunning him, and the guy dropped to the ground. Bending down, Lucas pulled out his victim’s phone and wallet. He walked over to the basket of crap Meg had on the veranda and pulled out strips of old shirts and used that to tie him up. He rolled the man over, gave him a nudge and said, “Joe’s the last one, isn’t he?”

  “For the moment, yes.”

  “He chose the wrong person to bring the war home to. This is what I do for a living,” Lucas said. “And I’m more than happy to take Joe out.” He left the man trussed up in the front yard for the police to find. Seven down, one bastard to go.

  He took off around the house. Top Hat kept up with him. He zigzagged around the trees and stopped in his tracks when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Think you’re so goddamn smart, don’t you? Right now, you don’t have a hope in hell,” Joe said. And he cocked his rifle.

  Top Hat exploded with snarling and barking and baring his teeth. Lucas dropped to a crouch, spun and took aim. Only Joe was already down with Top Hat at his throat.

  Lucas called off Top Hat. But he wasn’t listening to the order. “Stop,” Lucas ordered, louder this time. “Top Hat, guard.”

  Top Hat growled and changed his grip to Joe’s shoulder and clamped down tight and hard.

  Joe screamed.

  Lucas sighed. “Joe, Joe, Joe. Stop your whining. Did you really think you would get away with this?”

  “Call him off me,” Joe screamed again.

  Lucas looked at Top Hat and with a hand command, he had Top Hat backing off.

  The shepherd sauntered beside Lucas unwillingly, whimpering.

  Lucas rubbed his head. “Good boy,” he said. “Good boy.”

  Joe reared up, pulling a knife from his belt and tried to stab Top Hat. Lucas didn’t waste any time. He fired. And took out Joe’s knife arm at the shoulder joint. The same place Top Hat had bit him. The same place where Top Hat had been shot.

  Joe collapsed, screaming in agony.

  Lucas smiled. Eight shitheads taken out. “Now we’re even, you asshole.”

  Chapter 12

  Tanya raced outside, having seen Lucas take down a man who looked like Joe.

  Lucas raised his head with his rifle, and she stopped abruptly, saying, “It’s me.”

  He lowered his gun and said, “I could have shot you, Tanya. Don’t rush up to a guy holding a gun, when he’s not sure he’s taken out the last of the bad guys.”

  “I should have let you know I was coming,” she admitted. “I’m sorry.” She approached a little more cautiously. “That’s the asshole from the restaurant, isn’t it?”

  “It so is.” In the distance, they heard sirens approaching.

  “Good timing on their part,” she said drily. “Now they get to ride into the rescue with everything already taken care of.”

  “But they get to mop up the mess,” Lucas said cheerfully. He straightened up as Joe tried to roll over, but he dropped down hard on his back. “Stay there,” Lucas ordered, “or my next bullet will be between your eyes.”

  Four cop cars came up the driveway to Meg’s house. Lucas glanced at Tanya. “Everybody okay inside?”

  She nodded. “And, believe it or not, the boys are still asleep.”

  He chuckled. “At that age, I slept through bombs too. What about Nathan and Meg?”

  “I don’t know,” she said worriedly, turning to look toward the pens. “I came out here, and Meg was heading to the pens.”

  “We’ll check on them in a second, as soon as I know this guy’s not going anywhere.”

  The cops swarmed around them. Lucas held up his hands, his weapon on the ground. Tanya lay hers down on the ground and held up her hands as well.

  One of the officers got out of his vehicle. “Are you Lucas?” he asked.

  “I am,” he said. “I want to make sure this asshole doesn’t get loose. He’s one of the ringleaders who brought the attack to my sister’s place.”

  Two cops came forward and pulled Joe up and handcuffed him. He screamed, “My shoulder.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about your shoulder,” Lucas said. “You had no business coming here. You brought the war to us. So, as far as I’m concerned, everything you get from here on out, you deserve that and so much more.”

  “If you hadn’t stuck your nose in our business …” Joe snapped, his face turning red. “We wouldn’t have needed this talk.”

  The cops stared at Joe like he had sprouted two heads. “The law doesn’t work that way,” one said.

  “He’s a suspect in the dogfighting raids,” Lucas said. “I’ve got the rest of Joe’s men all over the place here. Most are dead.”

  Dead? Tanya paled. She wanted to find Meg and Nathan. She turned and walked away from the chaos and headed for the pens. Halfway there she saw Meg and Nathan walking to the house. Meg took one look at her. “Is it over?”

  Tanya nodded. “It is. They will start collecting the bodies. The boys are still asleep.”

  “Thank God for that,” Nathan said. “Please tell me that you at least checked that they were still breathing.”

  Tanya smiled. “I did, indeed.”

  With the two heading inside and looking no worse for wear, Tanya headed back toward Lucas. The men looked up as she approached. Only two cops were left in front, and they were talking on their phones. Lucas sat on the front step.

  She sat beside him. “Nathan and Meg are fine and are going inside to the boys,” she said.

  “Good,” he said and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his body.

  “Where’s Top Hat?”

  He nodded toward his truck, then he kissed the top of her head softly and said, “You did real good out there. Thanks for having my six.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to remember all your lessons?” she asked with a smirk. “It’s generally a quiet community, and we don’t need to defend ourselves against asshats like these guys.”

  “Hopefully this will be the end of it.”

  One of the cops finished his phone call, walked over and said, “So, you guys want to fill us in on what the hell happened up here?” He held up his phone and said, “I’ll record this.”

  Lucas nodded. “Record away.” He started at the beginning with Top Hat and told the whole story.

  Tanya nodded. “Speaking of Top Hat, I’ll go check on him.” She had a way to go to be completely comfortable with this dog, but he’d been through so much—and so had she—that she couldn’t help but feel an affinity for hi
m. The rescue center had said he was aggressive, but she hadn’t seen any sign of it—at least not directed at her.

  She walked to Lucas’s truck. Sure enough, Top Hat was on the back seat. His eyes were wide, and his fur was sticking up. When he saw her, he whined.

  She smiled. “Hey, Top Hat. It’s been a tough day. It’ll get much better now though.”

  Lucas walked over to her. He wrapped his hand around the leash and urged Top Hat out of the truck. “This guy needs to go to the bathroom.”

  He walked him over to a grassy spot to allow Top Hat to relieve himself. As soon as he was done, Top Hat walked a few steps to a puddle and had a drink.

  “He’s doing much better,” Tanya said.

  “But still has a way to go.”

  “When did you put him in the truck?” she asked.

  “When you went looking for Meg and Nathan. I needed him to calm down, so I put him in the truck for his safety.”

  She nodded. “That was smart.”

  “That’s why Joe over there was screaming about his shoulder. I shot him, hitting the same place Top Hat had latched onto and wouldn’t let go.”

  “Also smart,” she said. “Joe’s nothing but scum. He deserves to be ripped to pieces by a dog.”

  After that, the cops had a lot of questions for her. She did her best to answer everything. She also told them about Claire’s death, then Alice’s accident and her firing.

  “Do you really think they are connected?” a cop asked.

  “Maybe,” she said. “You guys should know more than we do. There’s a lot we don’t know.”

  “And none of these guys were kind enough to enlighten us before they were eliminated. Joe and Jake aren’t talking,” Lucas added.

  Tanya moved in closer. Lucas wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight.

  The cop looked up from his note taking. “Do you know of anybody at your previous company who would be connected to this ring?”

  “No,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean someone—Alice possibly—wasn’t handling one of the group’s accounts. She handled very different accounts than I did so it’s possible.”

  “Maybe,” the cop said, but he didn’t look convinced. She just wanted it all to go away.

  “Too bad we can’t ask Alice questions,” she said suddenly. As much as she wanted this to go away, Alice was a constant reminder. “She’s still not conscious.”

  “She was the victim of the hit-and-run, correct?”

  Tanya nodded.

  The cop thanked her for her statement and walked off, still writing down notes.

  Lucas snapped a picture of Joe, then Jake. He nodded toward the bodies being carted over to the vans for transport and asked the technicians to open the body bags to snap pics of their faces too, avoiding anything gruesome. He needed his own record as they still didn’t know which cops were involved in this fiasco.

  Tanya waited with Top Hat, who now rested on the grass.

  Meg and Nathan stepped out on the porch to give their statements.

  “So, can we leave?” Tanya asked.

  “There’ll be many more hours of evidence gathering,” Lucas said.

  They headed over to Meg and Nathan after the police walked away from them.

  “Not exactly the calm morning we had expected, is it?”

  Meg snorted. “No, but sometimes you have to stand up for what is right. Coffee’s fresh if you want a cup.”

  Lucas walked inside and was soon back with two cups. “Listen, Meg, Nathan. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to come to your front door.”

  “We know,” Nathan said. “Hopefully it’s over.”

  “True enough,” Lucas said. “Maybe they will find a connection with Claire’s death, Alice’s accident and Tanya’s firing.”

  “Oh,” Meg said. “Seriously?”

  Nathan stared in disbelief. “Is that what they’re thinking?”

  “We don’t know all the details, but they are leaning in that direction. Tanya’s situation will be harder to prove. It seems, over the last couple days, we took out of commission quite a few of the men involved in the local dogfighting rings. Several are dead. The few remaining will be charged and won’t be seeing daylight anytime soon.”

  “The question is whether they have the boss or the ringleaders of this ring,” Meg said. “They also caught a lot of people in Red Deer, right?”

  “Yes,” Lucas said with a hard nod. “And the authorities are still working on it.”

  “I don’t think any of the men involved have been as violent as Joe and the others here though,” Tanya said. “Apparently we set off a domino effect.”

  “That’s because of us,” Lucas said. “More specifically me. Maybe you should go home and stay there where you’re safe.”

  “Now you’re telling me to stay home where it’s safe?” she asked in outrage. “I don’t know. I’d say, if there is a ringleader still out there, I’m not safe away from you. Whether you like it or not, I am involved.”

  Nathan said, “I told everything I know to the cops, and they collected all the cell phones from these eight men. It will take the police time to sift through that, but we have to trust they have this well in hand.”

  “They do,” Lucas said. “They were already sorting through Joe’s buddies’ phones and comparing details.”

  Lucas stood, nodded to the two cops he’d spoken to earlier.

  “We could use you downtown. We have a few more questions.”

  “I can do that,” he said. He glanced back at the others. “Can everyone else stay here?”

  The cops nodded. “We have a conference with some of our cohorts in Red Deer. We’ve got the net widening even as we speak. We found several other suspects in the contacts list in the phones. We have teams heading out to round up more people. This is one of the biggest cases we’ve ever had, and, hopefully, by the end of the day, we’ll have everybody.”

  Lucas smiled. “Now that would be a good thing.”

  “Meet you downtown in thirty minutes?” the cop asked, checking his watch.

  Lucas nodded. “Sure. Tanya and I are gonna grab a bite to eat, and we’ll head over afterward. She stays with me.”

  The officers nodded. “Want us to drive you?”

  Lucas shook his head. “No, I’ll take my own wheels. Thanks. See you there.”

  They shook hands and walked away. Lucas turned back to Tanya, Meg and Nathan and rolled his eyes. Meg and Nathan headed inside while Lucas pulled out his phone.

  He hated the suspicion, but it was always there in the back of his head. He contacted Detective Madison in Red Deer. “I’ve already had to deal with one cop on the wrong side of this case. Now I’m a little hesitant about the two just here asking me to go down to the station. They even offered to drive me there.”

  “What were their names?” Detective Madison asked.

  Lucas gave the names and the license plate of the cruiser as it pulled away. “They’re leaving now.”

  “Hang on. I’ll call the station and see who is asking for you to go in. I’ll call you back.”

  The call ended, and Lucas pocketed his phone. Turning to Tanya, he said, “We’ll grab a bite to eat and head to the station, if it’s cleared by Madison.”

  “Do we have to go?”

  “Depends if it’s a legal and official request,” he said. “In which case, not going could lead to trouble.” He eyed her. “I was actually thinking I should follow them and see if I can push them into doing something that would show if they’re involved. One cop who showed up at Andy’s place is definitely no good, so what’s the chance he’s the only one that is?”

  “There will be more,” she said. “Rarely is it just one. They come in pairs.”

  He chuckled. “And why is that?”

  “Because they often work as partners, and it’s pretty hard to pull something like that on your partner.”

  “Good point,” Lucas said. “If I get to the station, and they’re not there, and nobody has q
uestions for me, then I’ll leave my name and number, and they can call me back in again.”

  She nodded. “I’m starving. Let’s get food.”

  Top Hat decided to chime in and let out a bark. He was trying to jump up in the truck.

  “You’re too injured, buddy. You should stay behind.” But Top Hat wasn’t having anything to do with that.

  As soon as Lucas opened the driver’s side door to get in, Top Hat hopped up. And when Lucas tried to get him to come back out again, Top Hat jumped over the seat onto the back bench.

  Tanya laughed. “I think he has made up his mind. The whole family is going.”

  Lucas shook his head but grinned, hopped in the truck, more pleased than he expected at her wording.

  As soon as he turned on the engine, he said, “Send Meg a text, won’t you? Tell her what we’re doing, so she doesn’t worry.”

  “I can do that,” Tanya said, pulling out her phone.

  As they drove away, he asked, “Did you mean it?”

  “Did I mean what?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “Family,” he said, “That’s what you said. The whole family was going with me.”

  “Oh.” She stared at him for a moment. “Of course I meant it.”

  “Well, family is a touchy topic for you,” he said.

  “Always has been, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll enjoy the process of working my way through the hows and the whys, but I am willing to try.”

  “Try what?” he asked, needing clarity.

  “To see why it is I am so against motherhood and deal with these roadblocks. And, once we’re done with the cops, maybe we could stop in at my mom’s?”

  “We can do that,” he said. As they drove along, he asked, “Does this mean we’re not broken up?”

  She laughed. “Honestly, we never were broken up, were we?”

  He half grinned at her. “I was just giving you space. Time and space to figure out what you wanted.”

  “Thank you for that,” she said. “I never stopped loving you.”

  “Ditto,” he said gently. “But it’s been very lonely. I do still want a family too, but we’ll have to work out that issue.”

  “I might not be able to have any,” she warned.