Cutter was not a small man, but Pringle had him by at least a hundred pounds and, teetering on the stairs above him, nearly a foot of height. Prudently, Cutter took a step back, knowing from experience what Lola was about to do. The vast majority of fights Cutter had been in over the course of his law enforcement career hadn’t really been fights at all, but someone trying to get away while Cutter attempted to stop them. The trouble was, Pringle was running toward a gun.
It was dangerous to deploy a Taser on someone on the stairs, but more dangerous still to let them get to a firearm. Cutter saw the red laser dots settle, one between Pringle’s hairy shoulder blades, the other in the geographic center of his buttocks.
“Jarome Pring—” Lola said. He started to run again. “Tase, Tase, Tase!” Lola barked.
There was an audible snap as the nitrogen canisters popped the plastic gates off the front of the cartridge, propelling twin barbed darts on gossamer wires, angling slightly to give a greater coverage, meaning more muscles for the electrical current to disrupt. The barbs followed the red laser dots. Pringle went rigid, the banister post at the base of the stairs arresting his fall and sending him sideways onto the landing. Onlookers might think Cutter stuck out his boot to give Pringle a kick, but in reality, he was making sure the man’s head didn’t smack the tile floor as he fell.
“Hands!” Lola snapped. She was the one holding the Taser, so she gave the commands.
Pringle moaned. He’d knocked a tooth out on the pillar at the bottom of the stairs and it lay on the ground beside his face.
“You bitch…”
“More where that came from,” Lola said. “Hands behind your back.”
Teetering on his belly, the outlaw complied, hesitantly lifting his flabby arms so she didn’t shock him again.
Cutter was closer, so he moved in to apply the handcuffs. Pringle’s back was as wide as a barn door, and Cutter had to use two linked sets in order to pull both wrists close enough together.
A heavy clunk thudded from somewhere on the upper floor at the same moment the radio on Cutter’s belt squawked. He ratcheted on the cuffs and drew his Colt.
Sean Blodgett’s voice poured into the room. “White female and white male looking out the top-floor window, boss. Might be Shiloh Watts. Pretty sure the male is Corbin McGrone. Both are 10-99.”
10-99 meant the warrant gods were smiling. Bycatch, or scooping up unintended targets when rounding up a fugitive, was common enough. Like fell in with like – and fugitives running from the law tended to do their running in groups.
Another thud came from upstairs, then a woman’s scream – long and piercing.
“Bronnnnncooooo!” It was a cry of anger, not ecstasy.
Lola mouthed the name. “Bronco?”
“That’s what it sounded like,” Cutter said.
“Go ahead,” Alvarez whispered. “I’ve got this one.”
Pringle’s body effectively dammed the bottom of the steps, forcing Lola and Cutter both to jump over top of him.
Few things compelled Arliss Cutter to run faster than a scream. He forced himself to move methodically but quickly. Colt Python moving in concert with his eyes as he took each step, he brought the second floor into view bit by bit. Lola stayed two steps back, giving herself room to maneuver if things went south.
The woman wailed again, long and trailing – desperate.
The condo wasn’t big, allowing Cutter and Lola to clear the single bathroom and another empty bedroom quickly before slowing outside the room with the screaming woman. It was the only door left, so Corbin McGrone – or someone who looked like him – had to be inside. He glanced at Lola just long enough to make sure they were both on the same sheet of music. A quick nod told him she intended to buttonhook to the right around the doorframe while he went left. McGrone was a wiry tweaker who’d run track at Dimond High School. In addition to being fast, he was known to have a propensity to fight that Cutter had read about but never experienced firsthand.
There was no good position of cover in a thin-walled condo, so Cutter rolled in without announcing, preferring not to get shot through the Sheetrock.
He expected to find Watts and McGrone, but instead found a woman he didn’t recognize sitting on the edge of a rumpled bed in a pair of gym shorts and a stained white wife-beater shirt. She clutched her greasy red bangs and rocked back and forth, sobbing hysterically. Shiloh Watts was a head taller and had short bottle-blond hair. Neither she nor Corbin McGrone were anywhere to be found.
“Hands!” Cutter barked as Lola did a quick peek through the open closet doorway.
The woman raised her hands, but ratcheted up her screaming as soon as she saw the marshals. She spewed saliva with every curse, ordering them out of her room.
If she was a victim, she wasn’t looking for help from law enforcement.
The bedroom was cramped and hot, heaped with dirty laundry and old Chinese takeout boxes. A cloying barnyard stench, ten times worse than downstairs, hung heavy in the stifling space, made worse by the piercing screams. There were few places to hide. The window was closed, which left under the bed and inside a heavy oak armoire against the wall. A pile of clothing and coat hangers lay on the floor in front of the armoire. One or even both of them had to be in there. It would be tight, but Cutter had seen full-grown men contort themselves to hide under bathroom sinks.
Cutter pointed toward the bed while he covered the armoire.
He wasn’t just clearing a room; he was instilling in Lola the correct way to clear a room.
The redhead continued her spit-slinging tirade, glaring at Cutter as if she wanted him to catch fire. Lola kicked a leather boot that was on
