“You’re not tripping,” he whispered after Des had finally agreed to remove her slender, clammy hand from his mouth. But, strangely enough, he was. Just being near to her, even in this darkness, Mitch could feel his skin tingling all over. Insane. It was totally insane.
“But what about… I mean, you and me. We’re not…” Des shook her head, unable to string the words together.
No maybe about that concussion. She definitely needed to get looked at by a doctor right away.
“Listen, if Cary Grant can come to Ingrid Bergman’s rescue in Notorious even after she’s been schtupping Claude Rains left and right for months, then I’m man enough to come through for you.”
Actually, Mitch was pretty proud of how adroitly he was handling himself. This was the first time he’d been face-to-face with the green-eyed monster since she’d stomped on his heart. And yet here he was being nothing but gallant. “The truth is that I still have feelings for you,” he went on, determined to say what needed saying. “I guess I always will. You can’t turn it on and off like a faucet. Besides, I figured I owed you one.”
“For what?”
“All of the times you’ve saved my life. So now we’re even. And everything’s good between us, okay? Ready to get the hell out of here?”
“No need to stick around on my account.”
Together, they crawled their way toward the air vent. Mitch locked his fingers together to form a step and gave her a boost up and out with ease. She reached for Molly and embraced her. The girl buried her face in Des’s collarbone, sobbing with relief.
Next it was his turn. He was able to hoist himself up to the air vent on his own, no problem. But getting out was a whole other plot. Des had to grab him under the armpits and pull and pull with all of her might. He’d forgotten how strong she was, concussion or not. Strong enough to yank him right through that opening.
And now all three of them lay there in the mud and broken glass under the deck, Molly wiping the tears from her eyes.
Mitch dug the wire cutters and Baby Terrier from his jeans and jammed them into Des’s back pockets. “You found these down there,” he whispered. “Got loose on your own. We were never here, okay?”
“Why?”
“Better this way. Much cleaner. Got it?”
She nodded that she did.
Now the three of them slithered out from the under the deck and back across the wet grass to the big maple. It was still raining out, though not with quite as much intensity as before. The thunder and lightning had passed over.
Once they were safely behind the barn Mitch pointed Des in the direction of those two state troopers in the driveway and gave her a quick shove. Then he and Molly dove back into the thorny thicket beyond the chicken wire fence and started their slow, hard journey back to Big Sister.
He could hear Des call out her name to the troopers. Hear them bark in response. Then came the urgent voices into walkie-talkies. Soon somebody with a bullhorn was ordering Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva to come out with their hands up. Mitch and Molly had made it as far as the woods when all hell broke loose. A lot of shooting. An insane amount of shooting. So much that it sounded to Mitch’s ears like the bloody finale of Bonnie and Clyde.
The shooting was still going on back there when he and Molly cleared the woods and, hand-in-hand, dashed their way across the meadow for home.
CHAPTER 17
The gloves game off once they found out she’d managed to free herself from the root cellar. With Des safely out of harm’s way they gave Clay and Hector one last chance to come out with their hands up. Repeated it three times through a bullhorn, loud and clear. Clay and Hector refused to comply.
And then the shooting started.
No one was certain which of the two suspects was responsible for firing those first shots. Although Des thought she had a pretty fair idea. Didn’t really matter though. The important thing was that the opening salvo absolutely, positively came from the house. The SWAT teams returned fire. Had no choice. Then they stormed the Procter cottage with overwhelming force. Clay Mundy and Hector Villanueva were given every opportunity to surrender. They would not.
When it was over, both men were pronounced dead at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds. There were no casualties suffered by any sworn personnel at the scene.
An internal State Police investigation into the raid on Sour Cherry Lane was launched the following morning. But there was very little heat behind the after-action inquiry. No bereaved loved ones coming forward to express outrage over Clay and Hector’s violent deaths. No friends or business associates demanding answers. No one asking why they’d chosen to shoot it out like they had.
If anyone has asked her, Des would have told them: Clay had simply made good on his promise. He’d vowed to her that he would never, ever spend a single night in jail for as long as he lived. That night on Sour Cherry Lane, he made sure of it.
Grisky’s team found the stash of ice down in the root cellar. Some 187 pounds of crystal meth buried in one- gallon plastic freezer bags under fresh dirt not four feet from where Des had lain bound and gagged. Also another twenty pounds of heroin. This information was not made public. The joint task force wasn’t giving up on its quest to crush the Vargas drug cartel just because Clay and Hector were gone. Operation Burrito King lived on. So there was no mention in the media about the raid having anything to do with illegal drugs. Instead, the coverage focused entirely on the so-called “Triangle of Death”-Richard Procter, his estranged wife, Carolyn, and her lover, Clay Mundy. The official story line coming from the Major Crime Squad’s homicide investigators was that Clay had knifed the professor in a fight over Carolyn. Hector had helped Clay dispose of the body. And when the state police closed in on them the desperate pair had set off a crisis by taking Dorset’s resident trooper hostage.
For now, an FBI agent would remain stationed in the woods just in case someone associated with Clay and Hector moseyed along and tried to dig up their stash.
Brandon had been standing out in the middle of the lane looking utterly distraught when Des came staggering through the rain toward him, a big, strong trooper helping her along. Brandon ran to her and hugged her tight, kissing her, kissing her. And then here came Soave and Yolie, beaming with delight. All of them wanted to know how she got out. Des’s ears were ringing. And her memory of the previous few minutes was a feverish stew of fantasy and reality. But somehow, she gave them what Mitch had fed her to say. That she’d managed to work the ropes loose. Found wire cutters and a pry bar down there. Jimmied open an air vent. Grabbed the nearest trooper. End of story.
It didn’t fly for long, because when they searched the root cellar in the morning they found that her ropes had been cut with a knife, not loosened. And the vent cover pried open from the outside, not within. But for now no one showed any interest in pressing Des over this apparent discrepancy.
“It’s all over.”
That’s what a relieved Brandon kept saying to her as the Jewett sisters were getting her settled in the back of the ambulance. The media people were shouting questions her way. She wasn’t answering them. Wasn’t up for any questions.
“It’s all over.”
He said it as they were being whisked away to the Shoreline Clinic together, his arm wrapped around her, making her feel safe and loved. He said it as she sat there on the examining table, an eleven-year-old doctor shining a bright light in her eyes and asking her to look up, down and sideways. The doctor told her what she already knew-that she had a concussion and needed it to take it slow for a few days.
“She’ll take it slow,” Brandon promised.
Otherwise, Des was fine. Shockingly so. Her blood pressure was a textbook 126 over 78, her resting pulse rate a steady 74. Des knew why. Hell, yes, she knew-because Mitch had come through for her. Risked his life to save hers. He cared. He still cared… “You can’t turn it on and off like a faucet.”… As simple as that.
