Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (37 page)

“It looks like law enforcement.”

“Roger . . . do you guys have anything going on tonight?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

Chris joined them at the window. Men dressed in dark clothes began tumbling out of a large truck. They were carrying rifles and wearing ballistic armor. “It's either the sheriff's office or the state police. Look at that! They've got a ram.”

“We need to intercept them!” Kit said. “Jason! Do we have a common frequency with local law enforcement?” Before he could answer, they heard the boom-boom-boom of flashbangs.

“Too late!” Chris said.

When David and the two men heard the flashbangs, they all reacted, turning toward the noise. “
Andele
!” Cienfuegos said, cursing, and he headed for a nearby door.

David followed. He didn't have a choice. He knew that if he didn't, Hector would simply shoot him . . . and enjoy doing it.

As a door opened at the end of the room, Hector opened fire.

“ERT—that's the sheriff's office,” Steve shouted, looking through binoculars.

“Roger, call local dispatch. Tell them to stop the raid at C&R!” Kit shouted.

“They're coming out!” Steve said as a back door to the processing plant flew open and Cienfuegos ran out, followed by David and Lopez. The three men began sprinting across the parking lot, taking fire from men who had appeared at the door of the processing plant.

Kit grabbed a shotgun. “Let's go!”

Chris stopped her. “No! You'll be right in the line of fire!”

“We have to help him!”

“Let him run with them. We'll follow.”

“He's right,” Steve said. “Stay here.”

David ran out into the night, following Cienfuegos toward the woods. Hector ran right behind him. Once in the dark woods, David figured, he could lose them.

But about one hundred feet from the building, David felt a burning blow to the back of his leg, the rush of red-hot lead tearing into his flesh. His whole body jerked and he cried out, fell to the ground and grabbed his leg. The night seemed to
explode in a thousand orange and yellow shooting stars and the moon above turned blood red. Lost in pain, he felt himself being jerked to his feet, supported between Cienfuegos and Lopez, and thrust forward, into the forest.

Watching from the house, the agents saw David fall.

“He's shot!” Chris said.

Kit's heart nearly exploded, and before either man could stop her, she was gone.

Kit left the house just as Lopez and Cienfuegos picked up David and disappeared into the woods. She focused on that spot. Bullets whizzed from behind her, and somewhere in her mind, she heard Steve and Chris shouting, “FBI! FBI!” Still, she ran, her feet trying to find traction on the uneven ground. She jumped over a log and a branch whipped her face. She dodged tree trunks as underbrush snagged her legs. She thought she saw movement ahead, and then she didn't. She raced on. Then her eyes saw a light—the dome light of a car. She ran faster, desperately, her breath jagged and sharp, and then, just as headlights split the night, she tripped. Fell. Her gun flew out of her hands and her face hit the dirt. She looked up just as a white Escalade spun gravel and tore off into the night. She clenched her fists, gripping dirt and leaves and twigs, and dropped her forehead to the ground. “Oh, God!” she cried out. “Oh, God!”

Moments later, in shock and disbelief, Kit pushed up off the ground. She found her gun, and began retracing her steps back to the tomato processing plant, numb with fear. Pressing the button on her communicator, she said, “Chris, it was a white Escalade, late model. It was a backup! He had it stashed in the woods.”

She heard no response. She broke into a half-run, tears blurring her vision.

Steve Gould met her. “That was stupid! The dumbest move ever. You could have been shot! It's bad enough to lose an informant, but you could have been killed!”

Kit gritted her teeth.

“Poor judgment! Very poor judgment.” Steve's tongue-lashing continued as they jogged back to the clearing. His words fell on her shoulders like a whip. She was impulsive. Reckless. She'd put herself and ultimately Chris and him at risk, because they had to run out and get the ERT to stop firing in her direction. What was she thinking?

Kit took his anger, absorbing it like a sponge. He didn't understand. How could he understand?

Chris met them at the clearing along with a sheriff's deputy. “The sheriff's office had a warrant for Lopez. He's a major meth distributor.”

Kit spoke. “So, let's go. Who's chasing the Escalade?” she asked.

The deputy looked blank. “No one. We were told to stop the operation.”

Kit's temper flared. “Are you kidding?”

“No ma'am.”

“Did you establish a perimeter?”

“Not in that direction,” the deputy responded.

She fought for control. “All right, we have the GPS.” She grabbed her mike. “Jason, what's David's position?”

There was a moment's hesitation. “I don't know. One GPS transmitter is in the parking lot . . . that's the one in his truck, I guess, and the other one . . . the other one is about thirty yards from you, due north. Away from the building.”

“Right where David fell,” Kit said, peering into the dark.

“Hold on,” Chris said. He jogged across the grass and came back a minute later with David's cell phone and a transmitter in his hand. “The cell phone must have pulled the transmitter off when he fell.”

“So there's no backup?” Steve Gould said.

“We had a backup—two GPS trackers!”

“That aren't any good now!”

Kit felt her face grow hot. She was a heartbeat away from saying something she'd regret later when Gould interjected, “Chris, you take over.”

A flash of indignation poured through her. “Why?”

“Impulsivity won't cut it.”

Kit narrowed her eyes. “I'm not impulsive. I object to your decision.”

“You foolishly endangered your own life—and mine.”

“You made the decision to run toward the ERT.”

“Because you were running into their field of fire!”

“He'd been shot!”

“And you could have been killed.”

“So no
man
has ever risked his life to save another?” Kit glared at him, her anger pounding in her head.

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

“She's right, boss,” Chris said. “She really isn't impulsive.”

Kit's throat tightened. She and Gould stood toe to toe, the air between them thick.

“Every minute we spend arguing about it puts David's life in greater danger,” Chris said. “I think she should keep the lead.”

Steve shook his head and kicked a stone on the ground.

“Sir, if I blow this, I'll give you my creds and my badge,” Kit said.

Steve looked at her as if calculating her worth. He shifted his jaw. “Fair enough.”

“Thank you, sir.” And she shot a look of gratitude at Chris.

David fought panic in the back of Cienfuegos's Escalade. His leg felt warm with blood, his jeans were soaked. In the darkness, he could not see much, but from feeling his wound, he couldn't detect any arterial bleeding. But it was like a fireball was burning under his skin. Had the bullet hit a nerve? It remained in his leg—he couldn't find an exit wound. When he'd been shot in the shoulder it hadn't hurt this much. What was going on?

Stop the bleeding, David told himself. Don't go into shock. Fight it.

He saw an old T-shirt on the floor, ripped it into strips, and tightened the material around his leg. Meanwhile Cienfuegos and Lopez were arguing in Spanish, their words flying too fast for him to understand. He saw Cienfuegos take out his cell phone. He called someone, someone named Consuela. And Cienfuegos was giving her a list of things to bring, and David realized they were going to be meeting her somewhere, sometime. Maybe he could talk them into letting her take him to a hospital. The minute that thought entered his mind he rejected it. No way. They didn't care about him that much and it would blow their position.