Blue Steele - Box Set - Captures 1-6 (8 page)

“That’s true.” Ramón said. “He had just shoved the other man away from her when you blew the horn.”

“Where the hell are we?” I asked Toby.

“Just south of Lubbock, off of route 87,” He said.

A moan came from behind us; it was Mike. I told Toby to get to his feet and to load Mike into the back of the van. He did as I said, and afterward, Ramón secured both of them with plastic restraints discovered in the glove box.

Then, I found a cell phone in a cup holder.

“Hello?” She sounded lost.

“It’s me Becca, but hold on, someone wants to talk to you.”

I passed the phone to Amy and a few moments later, heard her say, “Don’t cry mama, I’m fine, Aunt Blue saved me.”

When Amy passed the phone back, Becca still sounded tearful.

“Thank you, Blue, oh God, thank you,”

“You’re welcome, but I didn’t do it alone, I had help from a mysterious stranger.” I said, and then sent Ramón a wink with my one good eye.

Then the police came on the line and I explained what had happened and told them our approximate location. They said that they would send a cruiser and an ambulance to find us.

Ramón opened the satchel and looked inside.

“I don’t suppose you would let me slip away with this, huh Chica?”

I smiled. “Chico, you do whatever you want.”

He closed the bag up and sat it on the floor.

“Hey Blue?”

“Yes?”

“You are one tough mama, you know that?”

I hugged Amy tighter and kissed the top of her head.

“I do what I have to do.”

“We all do Chica, we all do,” Ramón said, and then he leaned back against the seat and went to sleep.

I
was wearing a red dress and looking quite hot, if I do say so myself,

It was the kind of dress my mother would call haughty naughty and my father would have never let me leave the house in.

The dress made me feel like a tart and the high heels were killing my feet, but if I wanted to blend in with my surroundings, I couldn’t wear my usual jeans and boots.

I was at the premiere for an art exhibit in the richest part of Fort Worth, and I was playing bodyguard to a real estate investor named Ernesto Roberts. Ernesto had recently had a dispute with a land developer named Chaney who turned out to be mob connected and the man was not happy how things had turned out. Words were exchanged, threats made, and three days ago, Ernesto’s car had been destroyed by a homemade bomb that detonated when Ernesto started his car remotely. Had Ernesto started the car while inside it, he would have been killed instantly.

Ernesto went to the police and they told him that there was nothing they could do, because there was no way to prove that the car had been bombed by Chaney. They also pointed out that had Chaney actually been the one who wanted him dead, then maybe he should count himself lucky that Chaney had failed. The thinking being that the failed attempt would make Chaney less likely to go after him a second time, now that the cops were looking at him.

Ernesto doubted that scenario, because the land deal that he had bested Chaney on was worth over three million, and the destruction of an eighty thousand dollar car hardly seemed even.

Despite the fact that Chaney vehemently denied having anything to do with trying to kill him, Ernesto expected trouble, and that’s why I was by his side.

Ernesto Roberts was wearing a two thousand dollar tux. He was fifty-four, divorced, with hair dyed dark and a face taut from strategic nips and tucks. I was twenty-eight, wearing a sexy dress and heels while walking at his side. We looked like nearly every other couple in the place, older man, younger woman.

While playing bodyguard was not my favorite work, I did take it on occasionally if the money was right. The money was very right this time and, as the evening wore on and nothing happened, I began to think of it as easy money.

I should have known better.

When the trouble came, it had nothing to do with Ernesto. It came in the form of three armed, masked men dressed in black.

The first one to enter fired a shot into the ceiling, while shouting, “Get down on the floor, now!”

When no one moved, he shot the event’s lone security guard in the chest.

A second later, everyone was on the floor, and a great many of them were whimpering.

The shooter’s black T-shirt had a white number one on the front, while the other men wore the numbers two and three on theirs.

The shooter’s companions carried two duffle bags each, a red one and a blue one. As thug number two went right and number three left, we were instructed to throw our wallets and jewelry in the blue duffle and our phones in the red.

I was down on the floor when thug number two approached Ernesto and me.

As I said, my dress was haughty naughty and my girls were practically spilling out of it as I lay on the floor. Even as he gathered the belongings of the people near us, I could see the bandit’s eyes leering at my breasts, meanwhile, my eyes were coveting the gun on his hip, even from the small amount of it that I could see protruding from its holster, I could tell that it was a semi-automatic
Glock
.

When it was our turn to hand over our belongings, I tossed my phone in the red bag and then sat up on my knees. The movement not only made my breasts jiggle, but now my face was also level with the thief’s crotch. As he gazed at me with a look of longing on his face, I reached into my purse as if to retrieve my wallet, took out my .38, and shot him in the right leg.

The wounded man fell beside me and I used him as a shield as I yanked the gun from his holster and fired at the man who had shot the security guard. My second shot just missed hitting him in the head and he backed out into the hall.

As I ducked behind the man I had shot, I felt him tremble, even as a cry escaped him.

He had been hit by friendly fire, as the third man closed in steadily. I stuck my gun under the wounded man’s chin and backed up toward the rear hallway, where the rest of the guests were already fleeing in panic.

The third man seemed to have no regard for his partner, as he kept firing in our direction. My human shield was struck at least three times and as his knees began to buckle, I struggled to hold him in front of me.

It was a losing battle. The man outweighed me by eighty pounds and I was still holding a gun in each hand. I let go of the man, fired off a shot, and dived behind a statue. When I peeked out to see where my assailant was, I saw him running away with the two blue bags in his hand and the red bags with the phones were sitting abandoned on the floor.

Next, I heard the ping of the elevator, but when I reached the hallway, the elevator car was already at the basement level, where the cars were parked.

I rushed back inside and stared down at the dying bandit. He was lying in a spreading puddle of blood. I reached down and pulled the hood off his head and he gasped in pain. He was white and average looking, but his teeth were yellow.

“Who are your partners? Where can I find them?”

“The bastard who shot me; his name is Joe Cordell.”

I saw movement from the right. It was Ernesto, creeping toward me with a fascinated, but frightened look on his face, behind him, men and women peeked in from the hallway, and outside, came the sound of sirens.

“And what about the other man, the one who shot the guard?”

“He... he goes by the name Jones and you can find them at—”

The man went rigid as pain shot throughout his midsection. I counted four separate holes in his shirt and a large tear on his left side, where an exiting bullet caused most of his blood loss. As the light faded in his eyes, he got out his final words.

“The money’s hidden... in car... three... near... the... brakes.”

And then, he died.

***

T
he cops arrested two men who were leaving the building via the garage’s exit ramp. Neither man was carrying a weapon or wearing a shirt with a number on it, but one of them turned out to be Joe Cordell, who the dead crook had named as an accomplice.

Deke Thomas, a Texas Ranger, and family friend, arrived on the scene and laid one of his massive hands on my shoulder.

“Hey Blue, how you doing, girl?”

“I’m good Deke, but the guard that got shot, how is he?”

“He’s hanging in there; the paramedic says he thinks he’ll make it.”

He then gave me a good look and stared down his nose at me.

“That’s some dress, Blue,”

“I was just trying to blend in while I was playing bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

I explained to Deke why I was there and how the robbery went down. When I was done, he told me something that shocked me.

“Missing? How could the bags be missing?”

“Not the bags, we found two blue duffle bags down in the garage. What we can’t locate is the wallets and jewelry that was in them.”

It was then that I remembered the dying man’s last words.

“The one that I shot in the leg, he said that the money was hidden in car three, near the brakes.”

“Yeah, that feller you were guarding, Ernesto Roberts, he said the same thing. We figured car number three must belong to the one that had the number three on his chest. We found nothing, but the car they were using to get away is headed to the police lab. If the goods are stowed away in that car somewhere, they’ll find it; we’re also searching every inch of that parking garage.”

Ernesto was driven home by an officer while I went to the station to make out a statement. By the time I got home, I was so drained that I took a quick shower and went right to bed.

***

W
hen I awoke the next morning, I got dressed and met my boyfriend Gary for breakfast at a local bistro. It was Saturday, and the weather was beautiful, so we sat outside and ate.

Although Gary was twelve years older than I was, we still meshed well and were seeing more of each other. Besides being a lawyer, Gary was also a pilot, and last month he had flown us out to the ranch he owned along with his brother and sister. I got along well with the family and his ranch was beautiful, just the kind of spread I hoped to own one day. The one point of contention between us was my work.

“So, once again you were shot at. There’s got to be a safer way to make a living Blue, no?”

“The last time I was shot at it had nothing to do with my work as a bounty hunter and neither did this robbery. I can take care of myself Gary, believe me.”

The last time I’d been fired at, I was attempting to get my best friend Becca’s young daughter back from a gang of bank robbers that had taken her as a hostage. With the help of a man named Ramón, I not only got little Amy back, but also captured the bank robbers.

Gary reached across the table and took my hand.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but I still worry.”

I smiled.

“It’s nice to know you care so much.”

My phone rang; it was Deke.

“We still haven’t found the loot and the lab boys stripped that car down to its frame. We’ve also gone over the parking garage three times and come up empty.”

“That’s weird Deke, where could they have hidden it?”

“We’re still questioning them, but they’re both playing dumb, which they’re not. They both came back positive as having gunshot residue on them, and they claimed it was because they went target shooting yesterday. Get this, they weren’t lying, the guys at the gun club confirmed that they were there yesterday afternoon.”

“They thought of everything, but if they hid that money then you’ll find it eventually.”

“We’re beginning to think that there was a fourth man, one that got away.”

“I never saw a fourth man.”

“One of the robbers, the one that died, has a younger brother with a record. We’ve brought him in for questioning and his apartment is being searched right now.”

“Where does he say he was last night?”

“At home, with his girlfriend, she confirms it, but then, she’s his girlfriend and six months pregnant. I’d think she’d say anything to keep him out of prison.”

“What do you think; does he look good for it?”

“He looks like a scared kid to me. He’s only twenty, got out of jail a year ago and has been working a straight job ever since, elevator repairman, same job his brother had before he started doing robberies.”

“Elevator repairman to armed robber, that’s some career change.”

“Chalk it up to drugs, the kid says his brother got hooked on meth and screwed up so much at work that they fired him, and then turned to crime to support his habit.”

“That’s messed up Deke, but let me know if you learn anything from the brother.”

“I will, and oh yeah, there’s a five thousand dollar reward being offered now. It seems one of the pieces of jewelry, a necklace, was worth big money. If we don’t locate it all soon, these fellers are gonna walk out of here with smiles on their faces.”

I hung up with Deke and finished having breakfast with Gary. When we were done eating, we were going to the mall. My old laptop had died and I was thinking about switching to a tablet. I’m not much of a shopper, but I love gadgets.

As he paid the check, Gary told me that he had to stop in at his office because he had left some papers behind that he needed to work on over the weekend. As we stood in the lobby of his office building, waiting to ride up, I had an epiphany, and I suddenly realized where the robbers had stashed the loot.

***

D
eke, along with two police department tech guys, met us at the scene of the crime.

It was the first time that Deke and Gary had met, and Deke grilled Gary as if he were my father. After my daddy went missing years ago, Deke looked out for me, my mama and my sister as if we were his own flesh and blood.

For his part, Gary took the interrogation well and apparently passed muster, because Deke gave him a friendly slap on the back when they finished talking.

Yellow tape still stretched across the ballroom’s doorway, warning all not to enter. We had no intention of entering, what we wanted was in the hallway, or so I hoped.