Cold Blooded (21 page)

“Nope,” Grace chuckled. “Tim and I know better than to speak about this crap to anyone. We have access way beyond our pay grades and can call in help from anywhere we need it. We answer only to the Attorney General.”

“Here’s the deal then. There may be a dust-up where the safety deposit box is.”

“Meaning the bad guys know where the box is. You and Rachel know where the box is. The authorities, in the form of Tim and I, know nothing.”

“You have a talent for summarization, Grace.”

“I can round up enough people I trust to escort you and Rachel into the bank to get the drives, Nick,” Grace replied, anger creeping into her voice.

“But then you’ll have our hole card. Think about it logically, Grace. What happens when we hand over the drives without leverage? I can make copies. You won’t be allowed to. If you get leaned on too hard, those drives can keep you and Tim in business. I’ll be like the Oracle. When you have questions about the way our justice system is progressing on the case, I can fill in details for you about what they may be covering up.”

“And if we don’t take the deal?”

“I’ll find a way to get those flash drives. Then it will be a hot time in the old town tonight, baby.”

“We’re in,” Grace agreed. “It’s getting late. You’ve worn me out. When can you get those drives?”

“You’ll know when I have them in my hands or close to it.”

“I’ll bet you’re writing this all into a Diego best seller, aren’t you, you prick?”

“I may be able to dish this heroic episode of reality into a treasure chest’s worth of fiction.”

“I’m thinking Tim and I need to go down to Pacific Grove. I’ll talk to some of your friends down there. We might need a hole card against you, big shot.”

“Listen closely, Grace.” Nick’s voice became nearly unrecognizable in its sheer menace. “It would be very dangerous for you or Tim to approach anyone I know. Are we clear?”

“Sure Nick, sorry.”

“You will be, if you ever forget what I just said.” He ended the call. Only the thought of Rachel in his bedroom enabled him to set the satellite phone down without smashing it into the cement.

“How’d it go?” Rachel asked, as the bedroom door swung open, and she propped herself up on the bedcover.

“It’s a work in progress.” His mind went blank at the sight of her in a sheer black-silk teddy.

She turned onto her stomach, looking up at him over her shoulder. “I bought this while Jean and I were out shopping. Still want to do my back?”

“Come on, Mom,” Nick whispered, guiding a very groggy Rachel toward her own bedroom. “You know you’d blame it on me if Jean wakes up and checks your room.”

“Damn, Nick, can I sleep in tomorrow?” She turned in his arms, hugging him to a stop midway down the hall.

“You sleep in every morning.” Nick held her, kissing the top of her head. “What would be different about tomorrow?”

“Brat! Everyone sleeps in compared to you. What time is it anyway?”

“Nearly one-thirty.”

“That was a wonderful few hours.” Rachel pressed tightly into him, moving her lips to his bare neck. He knew she could feel the desired affect her movements had on him. She twisted away toward her bedroom. “Goodnight, Nick.”

“I am so going to wake you at five, you little tart.”

Rachel gave him the wave off, continued into her bedroom, and closed the door. Nick walked by and quietly opened Jean’s bedroom door. Deke streaked by him toward the stairs. Nick followed quickly, finding Deke panting at the locked glass patio door. He barely had time to slide the door back far enough before Deke jammed through the opening and over to the nearest desert plant.

“Sorry about that, Deke. I should have let you out earlier. That’ll teach you to stick your cold nose into my business.” Nick waited, but Deke ignored him and walked over to his gnawed soup bone. Ignoring Nick’s urging to bring the bone inside, Deke laid down with the bone between his front paws and went to work on it. “Okay, but you’ll be out for the night. I have to lock up buddy.”

He closed the door, waiting a few more moments, hoping Deke would change his mind. When the dog stayed where he was, Nick locked the door and reset his security system. He returned to the bedroom and his bed. He found it difficult to sleep with Rachel’s scent everywhere, but started to drift off after fifteen minutes. No sooner did the first stage of sleep overcome him than the phone rang on the night stand next to his head. He grabbed it up before it could complete the ring, hoping the sound had not disturbed Rachel and Jean.

“Hello.”

“Ross? You have to come over here,” Suzan’s voice sobbed into his ear.

“Calm down, Suzan,” he urged, moving from the bed, and pulling on his jeans with one hand. “Tell me what’s happening, one step at a time.”

“We had a bunch of hang up calls, and then a van parked across the street at around midnight. No one is getting out of it. I…I waited for them to go away, but they’re still here. Should I -”

“No, you were right to call. I’ll come by and check the van out. Does it look like a delivery van or one of those minivan types.”

“It’s a big one. I mean…it’s not one of those little ones.”

“What color?”

“Dark Blue.”

“Okay, stay in the house with the kids and don’t come out. I’ll jog over so it’ll take me a couple minutes. I’ll come to the door if everything is okay.”

“Thanks Ross.”

Nick hung up and hurriedly put on his socks and tennis shoes. He took a black t-shirt from his drawer and put it on before taking the silenced Heckler & Koch.45 caliber handgun from his vault. Nick grabbed the light jacket he had fitted to carry the H &K, and jogged down the stairs. Five minutes later he slowed, checking out the cars near the Benoit residence on the street. No van was in sight when he went up to the Benoit house and tapped on the door, his hand on the H &K grip. Suzan answered the door. She began crying the moment she saw him.
What the hell?

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…” Suzan sobbed, retreating from the door. “I’m supposed to tell you everything’s okay. I…I can’t. They were going to kill us.”

“How many?” He went through the door and grabbed Suzan. “Think. How many guys came in the house?”

“Three…but I think there was a fourth, because someone started the van when the three men left.”

“Is the van they drove a dark-blue full-size like you said, and when did they leave?”

“Yes, the minute you told me you’d be over.”

“They’re hitting my house. Shit! Keep the throwaway cell on you. Pack up your kids. Go stay at a motel until I contact you.” Nick left the house at a run, cutting down the street in back of his house. He saw the security lights and heard Deke barking at the back of his place. He knew the neighbor at the rear of his property did not have a dog so he leaped their fence at a run and moved to the next fence bordering their properties. He pulled himself up to look into his backyard. Deke heard him. The dog left the patio door to investigate the fence. Nick went over quietly, slipping down next to Deke. Staying along the border of his fence, he rounded his backyard. He crossed to the patio inside the security light’s glare, with the dog shadowing his moves.

Inside the living room, he saw two men waiting, their eyes on the front entrance, with silenced handguns. Knowing he had locked the sliding glass door, and the men inside would not have opened it with Deke in the backyard, Nick moved to the sturdy lounger Rachel had lain in earlier. He took off his belt, and looped one end around Deke’s neck, and the other he cinched around a table leg.

Gripping the middle sides of the lounger, Nick used it as a battering ram and plowed through the patio door glass. Once through, he tossed the lounger left, while he dove to the right, drawing his H &K. The two men fired wildly at the lounger. One went down immediately with a.45 caliber slug through his head. Nick shot the shoulder of the second man, the.45 slug potent enough to knock the man down flat. Nick covered the distance between himself and the wounded man in seconds. The man was feebly trying to roll toward him. Before he could turn, Nick slammed the butt of his weapon against the man’s temple, stunning him. He quickly disarmed him, and dragged the man into the kitchen to the cupboard where he kept his duct tape.

Keeping his eyes on the downed man in the living room, He duct-taped the wounded man’s wrists and feet behind him, and together. Then he made sure of his kill. He quickly frisked the dead man for ID and weapons. With those items, he returned to the kitchen and repeated the process, evoking a groan from the trussed man. Deke started barking again, so he hurriedly dragged the wounded man onto a kitchen chair, and duct-taped him to it securely. With the confiscated weapons on the kitchen counter, he carried Deke over the broken glass and into the garage.

“Stay here for a moment. This may get a little messy,” Nick told the dog while pulling a stun gun out of the Escalade’s glove compartment. Leaving Deke out in the garage, he returned to the kitchen.

After checking to see how much blood was flowing from his captive’s shoulder wound, he stuffed some towels inside the man’s shirt, and duct taped them in place. He unfastened the man’s pants, and yanked them down with his underwear. Filling a glass of water next, he flung it in the man’s face. The man regained consciousness, groaning for help, only to be slapped in the face with hard, flat hand swipes.

“Can you hear me now?” Nick shook the man’s chin.

“Oh shit!” The man’s eyes widened when he recognized who had his jaw in a vice-like grip.

“I see Suzan must have told you what happened to the other guys who tried this crap on me.” Nick fired off an arc. “I’d advise you to start talking, beginning with what route your partners took the woman and girl.”

“Route 93 out of the city, then hit Interstate 40 all the way to Georgia, then…”

“I get the picture. They left you and the dead man to kill me. What then?”

“Follow in your vehicle with the body. Please, man…that’s the honest to God’s truth. Don’t -”

“Shut up. Who connected you to us?”

“Craig and Joe. They…they were supposed to kill everyone but the woman.”

“Including Brewster?” Nick interrupted, pissed off Joe held out on him.

“Yes.”

“Then you guys are independents?”

“We had a buyer for the drives.”

“Who?”

“Tanus’s rivals, ah, Fletcher Exports.”

“Then what?”

“When Joe and Craig didn’t show, we came looking for them. Please, that’s all of it…I don’t know anything else.”

“That’s what they all say.”

With Deke in the back of his Escalade, Nick raced after the dark blue van. Attaining speeds in excess of a hundred and ten miles per hour, he crossed the Arizona border in minutes. After the slight slowdown crossing over, Nick again drove all-out on the long stretch of US 93 toward Interstate

40. A three-quarter moon cast some light over the nearly deserted highway. Whenever Nick saw taillights ahead, he turned off the Escalade’s headlights.

Fifteen miles before the Interstate, he spotted taillights mounted far enough off the road to be a van. He shut off his headlights, and floored it. Once he confirmed that the license matched what the man at his house had told him, he paced the vehicle three car lengths back, and switched to cruise control. With the window down, Nick kept the steering wheel controlled in his right hand. He leaned out the driver’s side window, aiming the H &K.45 at the van’s left rear tire. He hit it on the third shot, immediately braking while waiting for the van to pull over.

When the van drove onto the roadside, kicking up dust and dirt, Nick turned off the road with it, keeping a fifty-yard distance between the vehicles. Having already pulled the fuse on his interior lights, he opened the door, exiting quickly with his weapon in hand. He kept to the blind side of the van, working his way quickly and quietly toward it. Two men, swearing and slamming the doors as they emerged, approached the damaged tire from both sides. They stood assessing the damage at the left rear tire with a flashlight in the driver’s hand. Nick shot four times with deadly accuracy, two.45 caliber slugs through the head of each man, running up on them to fire once more from point blank range. Continuing around to the driver’s side, he opened the door and got in, ready to fire. The cargo area was sealed off from the van’s front seating.

Nick quickly dragged the bodies around to the van’s passenger side, confiscating the keys and paraphernalia the two men carried. He opened up the rear compartment, his heart pounding. Rachel and Jean lay bound and gagged on their sides. The mind numbing tension of his race across the desert slowly seeped from Nick, leaving him drained, momentarily, of all thought and energy. He took his knife out and carefully cut Jean free first, gently helping her take the gag off. Jean’s lip trembled and her eyes misted as she worked Rachel’s gag off while Nick cut away the bonds.

“Oh Nick, thank God!” Rachel cried out, hugging Jean tightly.

“The Cad’s back about fifty yards. We have to get out of here. Our luck’s run out. I’ll follow you back to the house.”

“Is…is Deke okay?” Jean asked.

“He’s in the Cad. There’s broken glass, so I didn’t want to leave him. Take him upstairs when we get home. Start packing. I have to do some clean up. Then we need to go.”

Nick helped Rachel from the van with Jean still in her arms. He walked with them to the Cad. With a cry of pure joy, Jean dived into the backseat with a wild Deke. Rachel let Nick guide her into the driver’s seat and shut the door.

“Drive the speed limit. Don’t pick up any hitchhikers.”

Rachel barked out a quick laugh, which turned into a sob as she covered her face. Nick reached in and took her hands.

“Training or no training we’ll get ahead of this thing, Rach. No more chances-no more playing house. I really screwed the pooch last night. You go on now. I’ll follow shortly in their van after I change the tire.”