She slept a lot heavier than she intended to, but she still was able to wake up when she heard someone messing with the back door followed by voices coming from the backyard. When she opened her eyes, she could see Ms. Oliver’s security light in the back had been tripped and was doing a good job illuminating the small backyard.
Margot was up with her gun in hand in time to make out a kid’s voice saying, “Why won’t our key work?”
An older voice replied, “The key works fine, someone messed up the door.”
“Maybe we should just be getting the hell out of here,” another voice said.
Margot figured two of the three were the Oliver kids. The other one sounded like it could be a teenager, so maybe Steve brought a friend along.
“Hey,” Margot said, “is that Steve and Sean?”
The third voice whispered, but not quiet enough that Margot didn’t hear him say, “They’re at your mom’s house, dude, we need to get out of here.”
“Listen, don’t run. I’m a friend of your mom. Do you remember the lady police officer who came to your house about a month ago? The one with the blonde hair?”
“Yeah,” said one of the older kids—Margot assumed Steven.
“I’m her. Your mom asked for my help finding Sean.”
Another loud whisper, “Is that, like, the hot cop you told me about?”
Margot smiled. Being the ‘hot cop’ didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
“I’m going to open the door and let you guys in, okay?”
“Where’s my mom?” Sean asked.
“Somewhere safe. Your dad came by and there was some trouble. I’ll get you there, but first, come inside. Okay?”
Three voices replied with an ‘okay’ back.
“Okay, give me a second,” Margot told them as she started untying the rope by the sink. “I rigged the door because the lock was broken.”
“Hey, someone’s out here,” Sean said.
Margot finished untying the rope and hurried to the door.
She opened it and saw the three kids, Sean in the front and the older two behind him. She could see Steve had an old shirt wrapped around his arm.
“Are you hurt?” she asked as she pointed at the arm.
“He got shot,” the third kid explained.
Steve nodded. “It grazed me. I think it’s fine, still hurts though.”
“I bet it does. Get inside,” she said as she peered over them.
Sean was inside when a shot rang out. The friend jerked like he’d just been shocked and then pitched forward, falling on his face. Instead of following his brother inside, Steve went to his friend.
“Get down,” Margot ordered as the next volley of shots hit the house.
Steve curled into a ball beside his dead friend as Margot pushed Sean deeper into the house.
Margot wanted to return fire, but she had no idea where the shooter was and firing blindly into a residential neighborhood seemed like a good way to create collateral damage. All she could do was get low as well.
As another volley hit the house, Margot told Sean, “Turn out the lights.”
She got on the floor and leaned out the door enough to draw a bead on the security lights and shot both of them out as a few bullets struck the house about her head.
“Stay low and get in here,” Margot said to Steve as the shots stopped. Without the lights of the house or the porch light, they were having trouble finding a target.
Steve was about to bolt for the house when Sean screamed, “They’re coming in the front.”
Margot left the back door and reached the front hall as someone blew out the lock and kicked the door open.
Margot fired three times and whoever it was stumbled back the way he came. She didn’t know if she hit him or if he decided he was an easy target and retreated on his own. She took cover by the sofa where she had a view of both the front door and the back. She had Sean get behind her.
“Where’s Steve?” Sean asked.
“He’s fine,” Margot told him, even though she had no idea if that was true or not. All she really knew was he wasn’t in the house.
She found her phone and dialed 9-1-1, just like a civilian. Unlike a civilian, she gave a badge number and told the operator “shots fired, officer in distress.”
Soon every cop not at home in bed would be descending on the Oliver residence.
Margot stayed where she was until the cavalry arrived.
Chapter 5
“There’s fresh blood on the stoop, so you definitely hit somebody,” Detective Ames said as he came into the living room, “but if you killed him, he died somewhere else.”
“Hopefully slowly and in pain,” Margot replied. “Is the other kid dead?”
“Yeah, took one right through the heart. Probably died before he hit the ground.”
“Steve?”
“No sign of him. Which might be a good thing. No kid is better than a dead kid.”
“I guess, still doesn’t feel very good. I had them all.”
“Yeah, it goes that way sometimes. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Somebody’s probably going to give you a hard time since they were potential witnesses to a murder instead of just runaways but if you went through official channels, no one would have approved of having anybody sit on the house like you did. If you hadn’t been here, they’d all be dead.”
“Looks like I wasn’t the only one sitting on the house.”
“So, you think this was about what happened at the shot house?”
“You’re the detective, you tell me.”
“I think this is about whatever happened to get someone showing up to shoot Boogie Bullfrog. I suppose Sean could tell us something, but he says he’s only going to talk to the ‘hot cop’. “I’m guessing that’s you.”
“His brother called me that. We didn’t have time for a formal introduction.”
“I’ll admit I was disappointed to find it wasn’t me.”
Margot couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She stood up to go talk to the kid.
“One more thing before you talk to him. Do I hear you right that Mal Flynn was
