Under the Surface (31 page)

Steadying his breathing, Matt waited with Hawthorn for Sorenson's voice over the radio.

“I'm in position,” she said, low and calm. “Looks like just Jenkins and Murphy. Pastor Webber's on the floor, Eve's about ten feet away from him, possibly unconscious.”

“Weapons?”

Matt heard the click as Sorenson scanned the building through the high-powered scope. “Jenkins has a gun in his waistband. Murphy's holding a semiautomatic. No sign of anyone else.”

“Confirmed,” McCormick said.

“Do either of you have a shot?”

Through the connection to Eve's phone, Matt could hear footsteps. “No,” Sorenson said, frustration obvious in her voice. “They just shifted position.”

“Affirmative. I have the shot on Jenkins,” McCormick said. “Murphy's pacing in and out of sight behind one of the big cement pillars in the middle of the floor.”

Through the phone Matt heard Eve's sob as she achieved consciousness. Hawthorn pointed at himself and Matt, then at the front tires of the Escalade.

“You
bitch
! You were fucking a cop and lying to me!”

Anguish ate like acid at Matt's chest, but he used Lyle's raised voice as cover to dash behind the Escalade, Hawthorn close on his heels. They skidded to a halt on their knees in the dirt by the passenger-side wheel. The scent of heated rubber and grease seared into Matt's nostrils, the hot wheel burning his arm as he pressed against it.

“He's a cop?” Eve said in a dazed voice. “Wow. I didn't know. Good thing you found out when you did.”

Matt had spent a fair share of his professional life crouching in the dust and dirt behind various impenetrable objects—vehicles, walls and berms, sandbag barricades—his mind usually empty except for awareness of the progress of sweat down the length of his spine and whatever snippet of song he had stuck in his head. In this moment, behind this particular tire, one completely out of context phrase from of all things, the Bible, floated to the top of his brain.

You reap what you sow.
And he'd sowed nothing but dispassionate deception. He'd doomed any possibility of a real relationship with Eve Webber the moment he walked through the door to Eye Candy as Chad Henderson. For the first time since he met her, the right thing to do was clear.

Save her, then let her go.

“What?” Lyle yelled.

“I'd never work with a cop, Lyle. The Eastern Precinct's as dirty as the men's room floor. We all know that.” Matt heard her gasp in pain. She must have sat up, moved her head, all while still trying to find a way to save their operation. They'd underestimated her from the very beginning. “The bastards. They didn't even ask. Just put someone in undercover. I can't believe it. Good thing I didn't let him come upstairs,” she said, delaying, giving Matt time to get to her. Smart, tough woman.

“East Side girl like you? You should have known!”

“I'm new at this, Lyle,” she said, bone-tired. “Cut me some slack, okay?”

Lyle laughed, the noise almost relieved, and for a second Matt thought she'd managed to talk her way out clear. Then his phone went silent for a second, leaving only the echoing noise of the laugh inside the warehouse.

“What happened?” Sorenson's low voice over the radio.

“McCormick, report,” Hawthorn said soundlessly. “You have line of sight.”

“What's that noise, Eve?” The audio was back, and Lyle's voice was menacing again. “Show me your—”

The audio went dead again, and with a sickening flash of clarity, Matt knew what was happening. The battery on Eve's phone, left uncharged the night before, was beeping the low battery signal. Each time it beeped, he lost audio for a second. Lyle heard the beeps.

“Her phone's dying,” Matt murmured.

He got one foot under him to start around the end of the Escalade, but Hawthorn gripped his vest and held him back. “Not without the back door cleared!”

“Show me your hands, Eve.”

“Why?”

“He's aiming at her,” McCormick said urgently. “LT!”

“Where the fuck are they?” Matt growled at Hawthorn, referring to the uniformed officers they needed to secure the back alley, to make sure they didn't get caught in the crossfire.

“Show me your fucking
hands
!” A slap, then a cry from Eve, cut off as the audio went dead again.

Fuck this.
Matt twisted, trying to shake off Hawthorn's grip on his flak vest.

“Are you in position?” Hawthorn snapped into the radio.

The excited voice of the young uniformed officer came over the radio in a high-pitched whisper. “We're by the side door at the back of the building. It's clear!”

“Where's your goddamn phone? That fucking thing you've always got with you! Where—do you have it?” The sound of scuffling, cries of pain from Pastor Webber and screams of sheer terror from Eve, then, “You stupid fucking cunt!” rang cold and bitter into Matt's ear as clear as if Murphy stood right next to him. A single gunshot rang out as Hawthorn shouted into the radio.

“Go!”

*   *   *

Sprawled on her back in the dirt, Eve saw a red mist balloon around Travis as he jerked a hundred and eighty degrees in place, then dropped to the floor. Then Matt and Hawthorn sprinted from around the Escalade's front end, shouting “Down! Down on the floor! Now! Get down!” at what must have been the top of their lungs but sounded like it was coming from across a crowded, noisy club. The back door flew open and two police officers swarmed down the stairs to the loading dock, onto the open floor, adding their voices to the increasingly distant cacophony.

She crawled to her father's side and rolled him onto his back. He was paper white, eyes closed, mouth lax. “Dad?” she asked, but the question transformed into a scream of pain as she was hauled to her feet by a fist in her hair. She twisted her ankle trying to get her footing in the heels.

“Looking for this?” he snarled, spinning her in a stumbling circle to face Matt and Hawthorn. He shook her by her hair like a dog shook a toy, sending pain spearing through her cheek and behind her eye before he pulled her tight against his body. “Back the fuck up.”

“Let her go,” Matt said, steely command in his voice.

“Fuck you,” Lyle spat.

Matt and Hawthorn were slowly separating, flanking Lyle, giving him two targets, dividing his attention. He stepped back and jammed steel into her throat. Eve fought back a cry as her teeth clunked together and thick, hot waves of pain burst through her injured cheek.

“Let her go. Drop your weapon. Get down on the ground.” This from Hawthorn, to her right. On her left Matt had gone silent, his face eerily calm.

Lyle jerked her around to face Matt. “Was she good? So smooth and pretty. A nice little bonus after a long day's work?”

A professional career in bars taught Eve the basics of getting out of a man's grip. She rammed her elbow into his gut and stomped on his instep with all the power she could put into the four-inch spike heel. It was amateurish but efficient; he yelped and released her hair, inadvertently sweeping her feet out from under her as he doubled over and lifted his injured foot. Eve thudded down hard on her bottom and hands, but she was free.

“Down! Get
down
!”

Male voices shouted, but not Matt's. Eve looked at him, but he was focused on Lyle, silent and deadly, gaze and aim never faltering. Eve scuttled away as Lyle swung around and pointed the gun at her, the face she knew completely disfigured by a twisted snarl. She kept moving but the gun tracked her as she scrambled backward, up against her father's body.

Then, as his finger tightened around the trigger, a sound ricocheted around the vast warehouse. The back of Lyle's head disappeared in a spray of brain, scalp, blood, and bone. He slumped to the ground in front of her.

A scream formed in her lungs, clawing at her throat, but emerged as the strangled whimper of a nightmare. Matt darted forward, his weapon trained on Lyle, while he kicked Lyle's gun to the corner of the warehouse. Then he dropped to his knees by Eve and holstered his weapon.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Matt. Oh my God.”

“Shhhh,” he said. “It's okay.” He was turning her father over as he said it, his fingers feeling for his pulse. “We need an ambulance!” he shouted.

“They're en route,” Sorenson said. She knelt over Travis, fingers to his throat, holding his jacket over the bullet wound in his shoulder. Officer McCormick was directing the uniforms to kick open every door in the warehouse, searching for anyone hiding from the police.

“Dad.” Her father's eyes were closed, his skin clammy and paste white against the dirty floor. Eve gripped his hand in both of hers and gave it a little shake. “Dad, it's over. Matt's here, with other police officers. You're safe. Just hold on a little longer.”

He squeezed her hands. The ambulance lumbered down the alley behind yet another cruiser and braked to a halt next to the Escalade. Two EMTs leapt out of the cab and sprinted into the warehouse. Sorenson pointed to each body in turn. “Heart attack. Gunshot wound to the shoulder. Dead.”

An EMT dropped to his heels by her father and snapped on gloves, then did a double take when he saw Eve. “I've got her,” Matt said. He slid his arm under hers and helped her to her feet, guiding her out the warehouse door into the sun.

“But Dad—” she started.

“They've got him. They need space to work.”

He gently helped her sit at the edge of the open ambulance door, then pulled a blanket off a shelf and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“I don't need a blanket. It's a hundred and five degrees,” she said. The sun beat down on the alley and on her head. Maybe that was causing the blurry vision, the shimmering sense of unreality.

“When the adrenaline wears off you're going to be shivering,” Matt explained.

“I remember,” she said, fumbling at the blanket with shaking hands, then pulling it tight. “But I don't feel anything. For the first time in my life, I don't feel anything at all. Is that shock? I felt something after the first shooting. I was angry and scared. I felt
something
.” She looked at him, heard her voice rising. “Do you live like this? How do you live with nothing inside you?”

Matt put his hands on her shoulders, his warm fingers curving around to squeeze gently as he peered into her eyes. “You're alive. Your father's alive. Murphy's dead. It's okay now.”

With a shuddering sigh she subsided. Matt reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. He laid gentle fingers along her jaw and exerted just enough pressure to turn her head so he could look at her face. The impact site throbbed, and in her peripheral vision Eve could see the reddened swelling skin. Matt pressed gentle thumbs to the edges of her swelling cheek, testing the bone, then found an ice pack and cracked it to activate it.

“Hold this,” he said, his voice eerily quiet and calm.

“Okay,” she said, and put the pack to her cheek.

“You'll need X-rays,” he added as he dug through a kit and extracted a pair of tweezers. With gentle fingers he began to dislodge the bits of concrete embedded in her right knee.

“Okay,” she said again, because what else could she say when he wasn't saying anything? “How are you?”

“That's my line,” he said, but Eve couldn't laugh.

“You just killed someone,” she said. His gaze flicked up, and she filled in the rest of the black, black comedy. “Not your first time at that rodeo either, is it?”

Oh, Matt. What do you do with it all, with the horror and terror and exhaustion, with the daily grind, with Iraq and Luke and undercover police work? Where does it go?

“What happened?” he asked.

“I was expecting a package. The UPS guy always drops it, knocks, then takes off. I heard the knock and opened the door. Lyle must have told the delivery driver he'd bring it up for him.”

“So you went with him?”

“He had a gun! You were in the shower! You were
naked,
” she said, as if this was obvious.

He gave her a look, just a look.

“This is where you tell me you have a black belt in karate and are expert in hand-to-hand combat.”

“I would have stopped him from taking you.”

“Or died trying,” she finished for him.

“Better me than you.”
Because I'm already half dead.

“That's not how I see it.” Because half dead is half alive. “Half” meant room for hope, room for a second chance.

No response. She looked around the increasingly crowded open space between the alley and the warehouse as more police cruisers, unmarked cars, and a fire truck pulled up. Sorenson trotted over and gave Eve what was left of her iPhone. She clasped the pieces with shaking hands and watched Travis get loaded into the second ambulance. “You didn't…?”

“Kill him? No. When Lyle aimed at you, Travis stepped toward you and McCormick got him in the shoulder, not the chest. I think he was trying to stop Lyle, and it saved his life.”

Sorenson moved away to supervise Travis's trip to the hospital. Eve considered her ruined iPhone. “He shot my phone. I run my entire life through this phone and now it's got a bullet hole in it.”

“I thought he shot you.”

“I thought he was going to shoot me.” She stared at the phone for a moment, then felt the hair on the nape of her neck lift. “You got my call.” Obviously.

“Yes.”

“That's how you knew where I was.”

“Yes.”

Keep going, as painful as it is …
“You heard me tell Lyle I love you.”

He bent over a particularly stubborn piece of grit. “You were under duress,” he said evenly.

“Yes,” she said. “That's happened to me quite a bit lately. But I know how I feel.”