Rugby Shirt stood by the vehicle, quiet and intent, his lips pressed together. Beside the passenger door, his partner was equally impassive.
Lathrop saw Raul shift in his seat with apprehension, got the sense he was starting to unravel under their combined scrutiny.
The waiting silence continued about ten seconds longer, Lathrop down on his stomach in the Nav, his finger curled around the trigger of his.45. He wasn’t inclined to act before the time was right, but it would force his hand if either of the guards decided to lean in closer to the windows.
Then Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the garage, rapping the vehicle’s broad flank with his palm.
Very well, it will be to the boss’s liking.
Lathrop listened, understanding the guard’s Spanish, thinking the look in his eyes didn’t at all match his words. He’d caught on that something was up with Raul. Anybody who wasn’t blind or deaf would have caught on. And while it was possible he would attribute the kid’s twitchiness to his being strung out on rock, Lathrop was not about to stake his life on it.
Still, Rugby Shirt had decided to let the Nav through the entrance. Whatever his reasons. It moved slowly forward, both guards walking along to either side of it, escorting it into the bay.
Lathrop braced himself. The Nav’s heavily tinted glass had screened him from sight out in the darkness, but it would be another story under the garage’s bright overhead fixtures.
Now Raul pulled the Nav through the door and shifted into Reverse, leaving the engine on as he’d done out in the lot. Beside his door, Rugby Shirt nodded his head toward the rear of the garage. When Lathrop had questioned the kid back on the mesa road, he’d said that was where Armand’s private office was located, its door facing the bay entrance and work area, a large two-way mirror on the wall beside the door looking out over everything.
Lathrop glanced at the rear video screen and saw two sets of legs move into the right side of the picture, coming around from what he assumed was the next bay over. Then a third pair appeared behind the Nav on the left. All of them were in drab green mechanic’s pants, Lathrop’s view of them cut off above the knees by the camera. If these men were armed, he had no way to tell.
A few seconds went by. Then another pair of chopped-off-at-the-knees legs entered the left border of the picture and came up to join the group behind the vehicle. These were in ordinary brown chino trousers rather than grease monkey work pants.
Lathrop was guessing they belonged to a third bodyguard. He also guessed at least twice as many more were elsewhere in and around the building — the chop shop had its regulars in addition to Armand’s personal crew. And he couldn’t allow himself to forget the lookouts. They were local punks, sure. Amateurs. But amateurs that he had to believe would be carrying hardware.
He waited a second or two more.
Behind the wheel, Raul had kept the Nav in Reverse, his foot on its brake. He seemed to be hanging onto the last frayed threads of his self-control well enough to stick to the plan. Lathrop had wanted him to keep the pedal down, stay put as long as possible, figuring that some of the guards would be drawn around the vehicle. The closer they got, the better it would be. When the time came, Lathrop would prompt the kid to release the brake and start the Nav rolling backward, throwing whoever was around it off balance, and giving Lathrop a bare moment of surprise he could work to his favor.
Now Rugby Shirt turned all the way around to face the office door, stepping toward it, waving for the kid to get out of the vehicle. Lathrop was convinced he looked more suspicious than impatient.
Raul hesitated.
Lathrop tapped the kid’s backseat, his cue to release the brake.
Raul sat there, unresponsive, his foot leaden on the pedal. He took several breaths through his mouth. It was the same sort of harsh, nervous breathing Lathrop had noticed when they’d approached the chop shop, only with a shallow rapidity that made it sound like he was gasping for air.
Out in the garage Rugby Shirt paused, turned around, waved the kid out of the Nav again.
Lathrop saw the pair of chinos inch closer in the rearview video screen.
Then Raul grabbed the shifter and threw the Nav into Park, reaching for his door handle with his other hand, jerking himself toward the door, starting to push it open, getting set to bolt out into the garage.
The kid’s rope had finally snapped; he’d lost it. Lathrop wasn’t waiting to find out what he had in mind.
With a quick, fluid movement, he pushed up onto his knees, swung his.45 up above Raul’s shoulder in a two- handed grip, and fired three rounds through the windshield.
Rugby Shirt could not have been prepared for what hit him. He would have had only an instant to see Lathrop spring into a double-handed shooter’s crouch in the Navigator’s cargo section, and was unlikely to have heard the muffled pops of the sound-suppressed gunshots before his developing suspicions came together.
The bullets penetrated the windshield with a loud, sleety explosion of broken glass, meeting his flesh and muscle across the rib cage. He wobbled around on loose legs and smashed backward against a pegboard wall to his left, clawing for a handhold, groping blindly at its cluttered array of power tools in a vain attempt to stay on his feet. Several of them crashed off their hooks as he slid down to the floor of the garage, leaving the board and whatever tools remained hanging from it speckled with red.
Lathrop saw this at the outermost corner of his vision while switching his attention toward the right side of the windshield, moving his SMG around in the same direction. Flamingo Pink had drawn his own weapon from its holster, a big, long-barreled semiautomatic handgun.
The gun a dark rising blur in his fist, he took hurried aim at the Navigator and triggered off a couple of shots.
His speed and accuracy were better than Lathrop expected. The first slug punched into the Nav’s hood just below its folded wipers. The next struck the right side of the windshield a millisecond afterward, partially dissolving it, spewing glass
In the front seat Raul released a panicky scream and ducked under the steering wheel to avoid a storm of jagged, blown-out shards. He dove facedown across the seat and put his hands over his head as the broken glass showered over him, leaving his door ajar, abandoning his decision to cut and run, looking for cover inside the vehicle now.
Lathrop couldn’t afford to let the kid’s wild thrashing around become a distraction. He focused narrowly on Flamingo Pink, inhaled, and held the breath to steady his aim like a trained sniper. Then he squeezed the trigger of his.45 to take the guard out with a single clean shot to his heart.
An instant later the guard collapsed in a scattery mist of blood, the front of his shirt billowing out where he’d been hit, his pistol slipping from his fingers.
Of the gunnies Lathrop had been able to see from the Navigator’s rear section, that left the man in chinos as an immediate concern.
Raul was another. The kid was out of control. Bleeding from lacerations on his hands, bits and pieces of the shattered windshield pouring from his hair and clothes, he had frantically reached out to shut the door that he’d intended to open moments ago, still hollering at the top of his lungs, repeating a single Spanish phrase as if it were stuck on his tongue:
Lathrop had no idea whether he was screaming at him, Armand’s men, or whoever opted to listen amid the surrounding bedlam. Maybe he was apologizing to all of them, and hoping God might have some forgiveness and mercy for him, too. But it didn’t really matter. The kid was useless to anybody within earshot.
In fact he’d become a liability from Lathrop’s perspective.
His gun extended in one hand, Lathrop grabbed for the door handle to his left and hurled himself out of the Navigator, landing on the balls of his feet, hunkering there on the driver’s side. He was aware Chinos would be somewhere close, maybe still behind him—
He looked back over his shoulder just in time to see the guard jogging around from the right side of the cargo hatch, his weapon held level with his hip in one hand. Lathrop could tell at a glance it was an Uzi mini or some close knockoff.
He thrust himself toward the front end of the Nav, snatched at the outer handle of Raul’s unlatched door, and gave it a hard tug to overcome the kid’s desperate opposition from inside. Pulling the door wide open, he scuffled
