“Hey, Tess,” she said. “Long time no see.”
18
“Anybody hit?” Dylan yelled as the van skidded out of the alley, making tracks for the freeway.
Beside him, Bran shook his head. “Tree gave me good cover.”
He glanced behind him. “Tupes?”
“No holes in me. Goddamn, what the fuck happened back there?”
“I dunno, I dunno.” Dylan just couldn’t figure it.
“I was drawing a bead on the window,” Bran said, “and all of a sudden there was somebody in the yard next door, and they was shooting.”
“Get a look at ’em?” Dylan asked.
Bran shook his head. “Too much foliage.”
“I didn’t see ’em, neither.” Tupelo hugged himself. “I was just trying to get my ass over the fence ’fore it got shot off.”
“So who was it?” Dylan pressed. “Who the fuck could it be?”
“Neighbor with a gun, maybe,” Bran offered.
“Or the cops,” Tupelo said.
Dylan knew it wasn’t the police. “Cops couldn’t get there that fast. And we ain’t seen a single cop car since we took off.”
“So it was a neighbor,” Bran said again.
“Maybe.” Dylan wasn’t sure. “What is it, a whole neighborhood full of gun nuts?”
“Old lady knows how to put up a fight, for sure,” Tupelo said.
“Yeah. Maybe somebody shoulda given us a heads-up about that.” Dylan found the freeway and took the southbound on-ramp. “Shit. Boss ain’t gonna like it.”
“Fuck the boss,” Bran murmured. “Let him take her out. See what kind of brass balls he got.”
“Boss’ll understand,” Tupelo said nervously from the rear.
“Hope so,” Dylan murmured. He fished his cell phone out of the glove compartment and pressed number one on speed-dial. “I really do.”
He had his doubts.
Ron Shanker was scared.
He sat alone in his office, staring at the telephone, which less than a minute ago had conveyed a report he had not wanted to hear. Dylan and his crew had never let him down before. This was a hell of a time for them to start.
For the moment no one knew about the debacle but him and the three men he’d hired. He wished he could keep it that way. He certainly intended to keep the news from anyone else in the club.
But there was one man who had to know.
His hand was shaking as he made the call. On the second ring, the phone was picked up.
“Is it done?” Reynolds asked without preliminaries.
Shanker shut his eyes. “No. It got messed up.”
There was a beat of awful silence before Reynolds asked tonelessly, “How?”
“The lady was armed. She fired at them. She barricaded herself a room and took shots at my crew.”
“She’s a middle-aged woman, for Christ’s sake.”
“She put up a fight, Jack. Even used some kind of goddamned grenade, they told me.”
“Bullshit.” Shanker heard Reynolds suck in a harsh breath. “You’re telling me she’s still alive? Your crew ran away?”
“They were taking fire, so they had to get out.”
Another stretch of silence on the line. Shanker couldn’t stand that silence.
“It’s bad, I know,” he said, just to hear a voice, any voice, even his own.
“It’s more than bad. I relied on you, Ron, and you let me down.”
He tightened his grip on the phone. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Damn straight you will. You get on the horn to your boys, and you send them back in.”
Shanker wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Back in?”
“Tell them to finish the job.”
“Jack, I don’t mean any disrespect here, but I don’t know how practical that’s gonna be.”
“Practical means getting the job done. They didn’t. So they go back in and get it right.”
Shanker tightened his grip on the phone. “The cops must’ve been called by now, Jack. I can’t send my guys into a neighborhood full of squad cars.”
“The police won’t be there forever. They’ll take a report, examine the crime scene, and go.”
“And probably take the lady of the house with them for questioning. Or for protection.”
“They’ll question her in the house. Hopefully she’ll be too shook up to tell them anything useful.”
“Maybe so, but you don’t think she’ll stay in the house, so you? After what happened-”
“She’ll stay.”
“Why the hell would she?”
“Because,” Reynolds said quietly, “she has no place else to go.”
19
In the adrenaline rush of battle Abby hadn’t had time for emotion. The feeling part of her had been sealed off and shut down, quarantined until the danger was passed. Even after the gunfight she’d felt nothing except a strangely distanced sense of surprise that she was still alive.
Seeing Tess McCallum had been no surprise at all. For some reason it had seemed logical, almost inevitable that Tess would be there. Abby hadn’t questioned it. She’d been uncharacteristically subdued, inclined to accept Tess’s suggestions as if they were orders. Tess’s primary suggestion had been that Abby get out of the house and out of the neighborhood, fast.
“There’ll be police coming,” Tess said, “and the Bureau will be here, too. You don’t want to be involved in that.”
“No,” Abby agreed. “I don’t.”
“So you’d better go. I’ll say Andrea fought them off alone until I showed up. I don’t know how I’ll explain the gun-”
“It’s her gun,” Abby heard herself say. “I just borrowed it.”
“You didn’t fire your own weapon?”
“Never had the chance.”
“That’ll work, then. I’ll wipe the prints off. And I’ll make sure Andrea keeps your name out of it.”
“Okay.”
“They’ll have me tied up in debriefings for a good three hours. I’ll try to get free by nine or nine thirty. We can meet at that place in Santa Monica where we met last time.”
“The Boiler Room.”
Sirens rose in the distance. “You’d better get going,” Tess said. “Not out the back. The crime scene people will be all over that area, and we don’t need any extra shoe prints. There’s a side door that opens into the carport.”
And that was it. Abby carried her gun and her purse through the carport, then walked to her Miata. She pulled away as the sirens were closing in.
No questions asked. No protests registered. She was content to let Tess take charge.
