Command Indecision (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (28 page)

"Sure," I said, the pain overwhelming, my voice coming out garbled.
I couldn’t seem to move from the floor. Even Kevin appeared to realize that, his grip softening slightly as he rocked back on his heels.
"Text him. He loves getting messages.
Remember to add kisses.
"

"Maybe it will be more fun to leave him wondering." Somper dropped my cell phone on the floor and stomped on it. It crunched under his heavy boot and a slivery shard of silver shot past me.

Something else flashed into my mind. Something silvery and sharp. The pain seemed to have heightened everything. I could smell oil and sawdust, and hear soft footfalls in the dark. Behind Somper, I could see the office door start to open
, just a few inches
. Somper seemed oblivious as he dropped to one knee next to me. He poked my shattered arm and I cried out.

As he smiled down at me,
his mouth stretched into a sick grin.
With my free, uninjured hand, I drew open the zip of my
pants
pocket and reached inside, grabbing the Swiss Army knife
, my fingers easing
the knife
into my palm
. "I've killed a lot of people," said Somper, a flash of black in his hand. A gun.

"Not me," I whispered. With a grunt, I lurched at him, swinging my knife to connect with the thick flesh of his leg. His scream pierced the air as I dug it in, twisted, then ripped it wildly back, a spray of blood shooting
out
when I swung my arm away.
I kept the backwards momentum and my knife landed in Kevin, not caring which bit of him I slashed as he fell backwards.

"My leg!"
Somper
screamed,
the noise and his dismay strangely satisfying. L
urching to his full height and hopping on one foot
, Somper
reeled backwards. Through the haze of pain, I saw blood spurting from between his fingers
, like little pops from a squeezy ketchup bottle
. "I think you cut my fucking artery, you fucking bitch!" His face paled.

Behind him, Kevin howled in pain.

"Good," I mumbled weakly, an agonized whimper escaping me as I cradled my broken arm to my body, scooting backwards on the seat of my pants through the decades old dirt. It might not have been very charitable of me, but I hoped he would die. In the small world of him versus me, I rooted for me.
Every. Single. Time.

I continued to scoot until I hit a wall. Looking up, my eyes rolling from the effort, I realized it wasn't a wall, but a man clad in black, his f
ace covered, but the eyes... those dark brown
eyes I knew. He moved into a crouch in front of me,
protecting me with his body,
as a team streaked past. I saw Somper grunt and go down
, with barely any effort from the two men crowding him
. Shots were fired.
And returned.

"Hurt?" Solomon asked, brushing his hand over my hair as he shielded me
, w
orry staining his eyes.

"Broken arm. Few bruises." I would have shrugged, but I probably would have passed out. "Roxanne?" I murmured, looking around for her.
“She was back there. She was alive. I think she got out.”

For a few sick seconds, I panicked that they’d arrived too late. That Kevin, or Ritchie, or Hoag had gotten to her already.

"We got her."

"Good."
My eyes flickered. I wasn’t sure I could stay conscious for much longer, but I didn’t dare black out.

"Time to go." Solomon holstered the twin guns he carried. Scooping me into his arms, my uninjured side resting against his chest, he barked an orde
r. Someone replied. Another gun
shot sounded.

"Don't wanna
stay and
shoot the bad guys?" I asked.

"I think the Army has
it covered," he replied, whipping around. With me in his arms, he raced towards the door as more people crowded past us, weapons drawn, shouting, radios blaring. I curled my fingers into his collar and hung on as the scene and sounds blended into one.

I swam in and out of consciousness
while we blasted through the doors into the cool night. My mind jerked
awake, registering the moment I was eased from Solomon's arms into a w
aiting stretcher... Someone pri
ed my fingers from his collar
... His eyes locked on mine
... The lights flashing... Roxanne crying... A man asking about me... A curt answer...
Blackness again, then silvery moonlight.

"Solomon." I struggled to make my voice heard
over the cacophony
.

"Here."

"The drugs are coming in
. It's going to be on the return flight. The one bringing the troops home," I told him, my head lolling backwards. I wanted to escape the pain, the noise. I desperately didn't want to throw up on Solomon's boots.
That was something a girl tried not to do until the relationship was solid, after all.
"It'll be gone by tomorrow. And someone needs to get Gretchen. I think she's been helping
Hoag
.
He’s in on this.
"

"We'll pick her up."

"She's stupid," I told him weakly as a burst of pain shot through my arm. "Not bad."

There was a shout, and Solomon was shoved aside by two paramedics.

"Solomon!" It came out like a whimper, all my strength having left me. An oxygen mask went over my face. Something pricked my
good
arm and then there was
, blessedly,
nothing at all.

Chapter Twenty

I woke, warm but not particularly clean, in a hospital bed, the smell of antiseptic hanging in the air. The journey there was a vague memory interrupted by dreams, concerned voices and flashes of brightness as I drifted in and out of consciousness. The flashing lights, the speed of the ambulance, doctors peering at me, apparently not too concerned, seeing as I wasn't at death's door, all tripped into one long nightmare.

Sometime after my arrival, I'd been sent down to surgery and my arm set in plaster. Now it lay heavily at my side on top of serviceable, stiff white sheets. I blinked at the pale green robe someone dressed me in.
Yuck.
I ran my tongue over my teeth. Double yuck. And blinked again when a friendly face came into view.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I were dreaming again.

"Hey. You're awake. How do you feel?" Maddox leaned forward. His suit was rump
l
ed and a flak jacket lay
discarded
over my feet. He looked like he'd slept in the chair.
He’d definitely slept in his clothes.
His hands wrapped around the coffee cup he held, his knuckles white.

"My arm throbs. My head hurts."

"You took a beating."

"What happened?" I shook my head. "Not that. I remember that... How did you guys get there so fast?"

"Your guy at the agency raised the alert."

I
yawned, the expression morphing into a
frown.
I probably looked like I was trying to eat my own head.
"
Lucas
? I thought he went home?"

"He said he was working on something when he received your photo message. After he
got to running
the plates, he contacted Solomon
,
and Solomon called me.
That was when one of your guys tailing Somper followed him to the yard and saw Solomon’s vehicle. You were lucky, Lexi. Really lucky.
"
He stopped, his voice throaty.

"Oh. There seemed a lot of you." I remembered lots of people. Uniforms, shouting. Lots and lots of shouting.

"MPD, a unit from F
ort Charles and your colleagues,” said Maddox, his voice oddly proud. “How Solomon got the A
rmy mobilized, I'm not so sure, but I'll have the details soon."

Personally, I thought it was pretty c
ool that Solomon could get the A
rmy to save me. Not that I'd be writing
a
Facebook post about it, of course. Well, come to think of it, with the drug bust and Roxanne, I was probably fairly low down the list for rescue, but it was cool all the same.
Maybe I would write a really cryptic post.

"Roxanne?" I asked.

"She's fine. A few cuts and bruises. Dehydration. Other than that, she'll be fine. She's been sent home
already
."

"Good."
I hated to ask. "The guy I stabbed? Captain Somper?"

"You got his artery.
And you got Kevin Zabriskie in the stomach.
Jesus, there was so much blood, I wasn't sure if you'd been stabbed too. It looked like someone went crazy in a ketchup factory. One of my guys fainted."

I grinned. "Awesome."

"Anyway, Somper went into surgery and now he's under a guard. We got the whole gang, thanks to you. Somper and
three
other guys
,
Ritchie, Hoag and Zabriskie,
plus a woman from the office you temped i
n and four more guys from their unit. Not only that, but we were ready when the plane
land
ed
and got five million bucks worth of heroin. They were all ready to get it off base.
It had been turned into liquid, then soaked into blankets, and they were going to take it to the warehouse to dry out until ready for sale.
If we were even thirty minutes later, it would have been gone.
They’d have sent it somewhere else.
"

"Hold up. I'm still processing one of your guys fainting at the blood."
Although that did explain the portable heater Somper and Ritchie were purchasing at Home and Tool.

"You would have, too!"

"Would not. I was there. Didn't faint."
No, I passed out properly.

Maddox laughed and sat back, stretching his long legs in front of him. "Want to know what's been going on at the station?"

That grabbed my attention. "Always!"

"Ritchie and Hoag
squealed before we could even start talking plea bargains.
Zabriskie was too late to plea bargain, once his friends opened up. They all
implicated Somper
,
then each other
,
and Somper turned real chatty, once he woke up. Talk about command decision. It's more like command
indecision
with
that bunch
." Maddox grinned
again, his eyes crinkling at the corners
. "Fortunately, it does mean we have enough to implicate almost all of them."

"Almost all?"

"Gretchen isn't talking. She got a lawyer and clammed up."

"You arrested Gretchen!" Heads turned in the neighboring beds at the sound of my shriek. You'd have thought the nation would have sprung for a private room given that I helped
take down drug smugglers and
murderers, but apparently, not.
I somehow drifted past the point where Maddox said a woman had been arrested. I blamed it on the painkillers as
I sank back on the pillows.

"Yes, I said that already. We picked her up this morning after Roxanne told us about her.
She said you told her about her connection to Hoag.
"

"Why arrest her?" I asked, ignoring the “Young people, now” complaints from the broken hip in bed six.

"She was part of the whole thing. She helped move the drugs off base."

"No, she wasn't," I protested, sitting up again. My arm throbbed and Maddox helped me lie back. He even plumped the pillows for me this time. "Okay, she was, but not because she was in on it. That creep
Sergeant Hoag
got her to help him. As far as she knew, she was helping her secret boyfriend out.
I don’t know what she thought but
I'm sure she didn't know drugs were involved
or that he might have killed Jillian
."

Maddox nodded. "We kind of came to the same conclusion."

"So she won't be prosecuted?"

"So long as she agrees to be a witness, we won't prosecute. We have bigger fish.
The money laundering angle is only just starting to make sense. We’ll be on this case for weeks. Zabriskie has got prior for this sort of thing.
"

"Good
, I guess, for Gretchen
."

"What can you tell me about Roxanne?"

I rolled my eyes. "I knew this wasn't a social call."

"I brought grapes!"

I glanced at the table. There was indeed a small bunch of grapes.

"Best I could do," Maddox continued. "I would have gotten you a balloon, but they only had 'Congratulations! It's a boy!' left."

Yeah, well, that wouldn't be happening any time soon.

“So?” he prompted.

Where to begin? "Roxanne," I started, "is Nathaniel Tate's girlfriend." I filled him in on what she told me about Jillian getting mixed up
in the drug smuggling, and how she’d stolen the heroin and money as a sample,
as well as her
ensuing
fears. "She didn't know who to turn to," I continued as Maddox leaned in. "They had her running around helping them because if she didn't, they
told her they
would
hurt
her parents. I don't know if
Kevin or Somper or Ritchie or Hoag
meant to kill Jillian, or which one of them did. Maybe they panicked. They had to get the drugs out and there was no way to do it without someone in Jillian's office
to approve the manifests
,
and she wanted out
. Jillian kept the drugs and money as insurance, evidence if anything happened to her."
Some of that was guess work, but Maddox nodded along, like he already knew all this.

"They knew the heroin
was missing and wanted it back," said Maddox. "Our boy, Ritchie told us that."

"Neither of the Connors were part of the smuggling
voluntarily. Roxanne already lost her sister; she didn't want to lose
her boyfriend too. I think the gang
panicked when they grabbed her. I figure they paid someone to stab Tate."

"They paid off another inmate. A real vicious guy," confirmed Maddox. "He's offering testimony for a plea deal.
He’ll get it too.
"

"What happens to Tate now?" I asked.

"He was released this morning. We co
nsidering charging him for obstruction of justice and with
holding information in relati
on to a crime, but he'll be
worth
more
as a witness."

"Yeah?"

Maddox nodded. He told me, "Once he knew it was over and Roxanne was safe, he didn't stop talking. He
told us how he
found Jillian and also saw her murderer. You want to take a guess?"

"No."

"Hoag. Tate
saw him leaving Jillian's office right before he found her.
Hoag
turned around, walked straight back in and threatened him
as he was checking to see if she was still alive
. Tate did the only thing he could do. He grabbed the murder weapon
, a baseball bat that was in the lost property box,
and hid it before
Hoag
could get to it. We found it under the floorboards of his closet. Not very original, but the fingerprints
on it
were."

"I'm glad
you got him
."

"Me too. You know all this already, right?"

"Yeah, I knew
most of
that stuff about Tate.
Not that he had the weapon, but I figured he might have known. I didn’t know it was Hoag, but I figured it was one of the four.
"

Maddox leaned in, resting his chin on his interlaced fists.
"When were you planning on sharing
your information
with me?"

"Um, now?"
A movement caught my eye and I glanced up, noticing Maddox did the same. Detective Blake hovered in the doorway. She wore a neat, black skirt suit and a nice, green blouse. Her hair was smoothly pulled into a ponytail. She raised a hand and nodded towards us.

"Listen, I have to head back,” said Maddox. “There are
some juicy interviews scheduled for this afternoon."

"Wouldn't want you to miss that."

Maddox rose. He looked down at me for a moment, but I couldn't decipher his expression. "I'll check in with you soon," he said. His tone was warm and he kissed me on the cheek. Then, he said, "Solomon supplied most of your case notes, but let me know when you get a chance to finish the rest."

Work. I should have guessed. Was that really all it came down to?

He added in a low voice,
"We still have some talking to do. I love you, Lexi. I really do."

My heart gave a little leap, but all I could was nod and bite my lip. He was right about the talking. We did need to do that, but right now, my arm ached and I felt sore and a little dizzy. On the plus side, it was probably best if it were soon, while I was relatively incapacitated. Just in case.

As I watched Maddox walk away, I realized he hadn't told me a thing about Solomon. From his silence, I could assume that Solomon was fine, so where was he?

~

"I can't believe Solomon rescued you again." Lily raised her hands to her heart and sighed. We were sitting in my living room, my soon to be ex-living room. We both had our feet on the coffee table, something I never normally allowed. But I was in pain and she was pregnant. It seemed reasonable to slack. "How many times is that now?" she asked.

"Twice." Well, Maddox technically saved me the first time I went up against an armed man, but it was Solomon who saved both our asses ultimately, so Solomon scored that one. The second time, I found myself facing the wrong end of a
barrel, and Maddox saved me then
.
And this time, it was Solomon who came for me.
I was having a hard time deciding if this was becoming a habit.

"Next time, I'm going to save myself," I decided. I thought about the moment Solomon pulled me into his arms, the gentleness of his touch... and the moment I woke up to find Maddox, ashen-faced, at my bedside. Both of them were looking out for me. There was one thing that couldn't be decided though.