Shane stepped forward and clocked him hard with the broad side of the Double Eagle. The man's head chimed loudly against the steel breach. He fell onto his back and began snoring. Shane heaved the G's auto-mag into the dark.
The first g'ster was shrieking in pain as Shane grabbed his Tec-Nine and ran into the house.
Almost immediately, he saw a light-complexioned g'ster with a long tenza braid standing naked in the kitchen, a bad-looking, cut-down ArmaLite AR-10 machine gun in his right hand. He was swinging it toward Shane, who was off balance, skidding to a halt. He instantly knew that by the time he squared up and completed his pivot, he'd be dead, so he threw the Tec-Nine back-handed across the room toward the G.
'Catch!' he yelled. The light-skinned man attempted to catch the gun or dodge out of the way. In either case, he lost his grip on the AR-10. As he struggled to control the weapon, Shane finished his pivot, pulled the Double E, and fired. The automatic reared up in his outstretched hands and blew a hole in the G's chest.
The naked man flew backward spouting blood, then hit the wall and fell in a sprawl of arms and legs.
Shane stepped over his lifeless body and moved through the house, slower now, alert for more G's.
There were no more Crips in the house.
He found Delfina duct-taped to the bed in a guest bedroom. She was bruised and naked, with a sock stuffed in her mouth. A look of mindless terror filled her vacant eyes.
Shane pulled the sock out of her mouth and she immediately started screaming. Blood-curdling, insane screeches. God only knew what they had been doing to her.
Shane opened his pocket knife and cut the duct tape from her hands and feet, then grabbed the terrified girl, threw her over his shoulder, and ran from the house.
She never stopped screaming.
When he got outside, Chooch appeared next to him. They made the run across the yard, accompanied by Delfina's screeches and the whooping alarm sirens. Shane figured since this was Stone's house, the alarm probably didn't have a direct-dial to the police. It would just clatter and howl until the angry neighbors finally called 911.
As they reached the spillway, Shane pulled Delfina off his shoulder. Chooch stripped off his grass-stained Pendleton overshirt and put it on his naked, crazed girlfriend.
'Delfina, it's me! It's Chooch!' he pleaded, but her eyes were wild, nothing registered. 'Please, Delfina, I'm here! You're safe now,' Chooch begged, but the girl was delusional with terror.
Shane squeezed through the spillway and yelled for Chooch to wedge Delfina into the narrow opening. He crawled halfway back, then grabbed her wrists, pulling as hard as he could.
She was scratching and clawing. One of her fingernails cut a gouge in his face under his eye.
Finally Shane pulled her out of the narrow aqueduct and held her until Chooch scrambled through the opening.
They ran to the Acura, helped Delfina into the backseat, and pulled out. She never stopped screaming. It was as if her mind had snapped.
She screamed all the way out of Westlake Village, to the freeway, and all the way down the freeway to the emergency room at Sherman oaks Community Hospital.
Chapter 34
It was four A. M. and Alexa had just arrived from Parker Center, where she had been sleeping on a cot when Shane called. 'Why didn't you stay there at Stone's and wait for the police to arrive?' she said as she stood before him in the hospital waiting room. 'According to Westlake P. D., you left one dead and two down at the scene.'
Shane had come crashing down from his adrenaline rush of an hour ago. He felt irritable, tired, and wanted to change the subject even more than he wanted to change his moss-stained clothes. Chooch had lied, saying he was Delfina's brother, and was now upstairs with her in the psychiatric trauma ward.
'I didn't wait because Chooch was with me.'
'You mean in spirit or something? 'Cause I'm sure you're not trying to tell me you took our son to a shootout.'
'He was in there with me. He helped me get her out. I didn't want the police to find him there. If this gets goofy, and we get some kind of backfire prosecution, I don't want Chooch named in it.'
'How the hell could that happen? They were all armed, holding a sixteen-year-old girl at gunpoint.'
'I just don't want him involved.'
'How could he not be involved? You took him with you!' She seemed floored by all this.
'Well, theoretically, that's one way of looking at it.'
'What's the other?'
'He took me with him. Matter of fact, honey, he was the one who found where they were holding her. He came to me for help. There was no way to stop him. He loves her. He was going whether I said so or not.'
'That's absurd.'
'You think?' He held her gaze and finally she sat on one of the vinyl-upholstered chairs. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep.
'I did the shooting,' he continued. 'All he did was handle the diversion and help me carry her out of there. So how 'bout we just pretend he was never there. Can we do that?'
'Now I'm supposed to lie.' Her anger was escalating. 'It would have been better if I didn't know. Why did you have to tell me?'
'I never lie to you.'
'Bullshit.'
'I trust your judgment then. It would mean a great deal to me if you would keep our son out of it,' he said softly.
Suddenly her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her purse and opened it. 'Yeah… okay… Just gimme the headlines.' She listened. 'Okay… okay… sure. You can reach me on this phone.' She hung up, looked up at Shane. 'The Westlake P. D. is policing the crime scene. The paramedics have the two wounded Crips at USC on the lock- down floor.'
'Who was the D. B.?'
'They're printing him, but one of the Westlake blues on the scene said he wrote him for a taillight infraction a few days ago when he was out at Stone's place-a gangster named Darnel Sweet. I know him. I've been studying Crip arrest sheets and F. I. cards all damn week. His street name is J Rock. His gang profile says he's Russell Hayes's first cousin.'
'He's the one Amac thinks killed Stone.'
'A lot of people killed Cordell. He had so much lead in him, we almost called a crane to lift him onto the coroner's gurney. Stone got it from so many directions, it's a miracle they didn't waste each other in the crossfire.'
A half-hour later Chooch called from upstairs and asked Shane and Alexa to come up to the psych ward on the second floor. They rode up in the elevator, then sat on worn-out sofas behind a screened-off lounge. A few minutes after they arrived Chooch came out of the ward and joined them. Like Shane, he was filthy, tired, and drawn.
'They made me leave. Every time Delfina looked at me, she started crying.' Then he faced Alexa. 'Thanks for coming, Mom.'
'Thank God you're all right. But what you two did was harebrained.' Alexa took Chooch into her arms and hugged him. Shane thought he saw tears in his son's eyes.
Then Chooch pulled back. 'Mom, don't be mad at Dad, okay? I made him do it.'
'I'm not mad at him,' Alexa said. 'I'm just frustrated.' She heaved a sigh. 'But I guess if I ever really got him rewired, he'd be too normal to hang with.'
Chooch said, 'If SWAT had been called in, they would have-'
'Spare me your SWAT evaluations, okay?' Alexa interrupted. 'You guys don't know what SWAT would have
