Chapter 17
Radio silence was never a good sign. Shana knew if Dane had his radio off it meant they were engaged or close to it. She called the State Police headquarters next for backup. She had seen at least two men, but she knew there could be more—knew there were more men at the beach shack.
She retreated down the hall to check on the laundry room and whispered, “Sassy, it’s me. I’m turning out all the lights. I’ll get you a flashlight.” She opened the door and saw Sassy huddled on the floor in front of the dryer with Paulette nestled in a basket of assorted T-shirts and sheets.
“Don’t worry—it’s clean.”
Shana bent down to give Sassy a hug and reached over to stroke the now sleeping baby’s cheek.
“I wasn’t worried. You’re a rock-star babysitter, Sassy.” She lowered her voice and made it urgent. “I need to go now and you guys need to lay low unless I say so. I’m going to call for backup. It’ll be okay. The cavalry will be here within two minutes.”
To Shana’s surprise, Sassy stood up and said, “I’m not hiding here while you’re out there alone with who knows what—”
“That isn’t nec—”
“I knew what I signed up for when I took this job. I knew there was danger. I took lessons. I can handle a gun.”
A noise like a garbage can knocking over came from the backyard. There was no more time to argue. No more time to call for backup. She nodded at Sassy and they stepped into the hall.
Shana gave one last long look at the sleeping baby and closed the door behind her. They hurried to where she’d left their extra weapons in the living room.
Shana checked the Glock 17s for ammunition and slipped an extra magazine into her pocket.
Her Century Arms CZ sat comfortably against the small of her back.
She handed one of the two Glocks to Sassy as she moved toward the wall next to the window where she could watch for the shadowy figure. She spotted two men.
“You sure you know how to use this?”
Sassy nodded and hiccuped. Shana was about to tell Sassy to go check on Paulette so she could lock her in the room and out of the way, but two things intervened.
First, the certain knowledge that these men were after the baby, making Sassy no safer locked up in there with the baby.
Secondly, she saw the first man talking on his radio as he moved toward their backdoor.
There was no more time to consider strategy.
Slipping her own two-way from its clip on her hip, she engaged it and still found radio silence. Then she called the State Police emergency line.
“Go hang back in the hallway. If... if I go down, get in the laundry room with the baby and be ready to shoot,” she said.
Sassy hiccuped again, but nodded and retreated quietly and steadily back to the hallway. Shana watched her go and then, crouching down, she moved along the wall toward the backdoor, stopping behind a bank of cabinets.
The sound of the wooden frame of the backdoor splintering, the glass shattering and the door banging open was much louder than Shana expected.
She startled and in that second watched Sassy rush back toward the kitchen as the two men crashed into the room.
Shana took aim as the second man stopped and turned directly toward her, as if he knew she’d be there.
He had his weapon raised and pointed at her.
But her eyes were already adjusted to the dimmer light inside the kitchen and she didn’t have to take the tick of time to focus the way he did.
She pulled her trigger first, hitting the man in the chest, shoulder and legs with three shots.
He went down. But in that time, the first man, who was two steps ahead of his dead friend and who did not flinch, rushed forward with his Mp-443 Grach raised high.
He had it aimed center mass at Sassy who now stood in the mouth of the hall. He said, “Where is the baby?” Shana remembered that voice from the Garage Club. It was Spartak.
Sassy had her hands raised and she nodded toward the living room, giving Shana enough time to make a move.
But when Shana took aim, he’d already moved around the corner toward the living room, and Sassy had jumped back out of reach of the man’s gun as he swung it at her. Without thinking, Shana acted.
She rushed in behind Spartak, lunging at him. She hit the man hard across the back of his head with her Glock. After an excruciating beat during which it seemed to Shana that he hung suspended and inert, he collapsed forward, smashing his face against the floor.
*****
Battle at the Beach Shack
Dane was ready when the door crashed in.
He wasn’t waiting there in the middle of the room standing directly in front of the line of fire, but neither was he standing against either wall to the sides of the door.
Too risky. Those were the obvious places where any self-respecting gunman would spray bullets from a semi-automatic weapon to eliminate an unseen threat.
Dane was half surprised the shooting didn’t start before the door was opened. Amateurs.
The two options Dane had considered in the time he and Cap had to prepare for this scenario were either the closet or—and this was Dane’s favorite—standing on top of the large chest of drawers to the left of the door along a perpendicular wall.
The closet was too likely to be in the line of fire and the flimsy doors wouldn’t give much protection against the rapid fire at forty-five rounds per minute of the Makarov Mp-443 Grach’s 9x19mm Parabellum rounds.
So he chose the high ground with its tactical advantage of the sight angle and, he hoped, the advantage of surprise.
Halfway through the man’s burst of fire as he stepped into the doorway, Dane shot him three times.
First in his gun hand to stop the shooting, second in his chest, and lastly in the head.
He’d barely made the final shot before the man fell backwards onto the hallway floor.
As soon as the man fell, Dane leapt from the bureau, bounded one step and then over the man to catch the second shooter in the adjacent bedroom.
He’d had a momentary sight line when he was up high, out of his peripheral vision.
He shot the man twice center mass as he ran by on his way to the third man, who had smashed through the bathroom door and was currently shooting the room to smithereens.
Dane’s heart pumped furiously with the need to get himself there to stop the shooting in case Cap was still in the room. The only place he’d be was hunkered down in the lower part of the linen closet and it wouldn’t be long before the shooter’s gun got around to finding that spot.
Unless Cap used the exit plan and jumped out the window.
He hoped to hell Cap decided on the window, their plan B.
The shattering and splintering sounds of the bullets against tile and wood and glass mixed with the explosive sounds of the weapon itself to create a deafening and terrifying hell.
Throwing himself down the hall as if Hades, the king of the underworld, were after him, Dane reached the door opening and aimed at the back of the man’s head, taking three shots.
The man fell forward and Dane saw what was left of the bathroom of his beach shack.
The window was open, but before he took a single breath of relief, Dane pulled open the closet door and looked inside. Empty.
“God almighty,” he said to no one. Everyone inside the house was dead.
The backdoor swung open, sounding loose on its frame. Dane almost sank to his knees when he heard Cap’s voice.
“Dane?” Cap shouted into the sudden silence.
“Here. Saving your ass.” Dane leaned against the wall waiting for the buzzing in his ears to stop, waiting for the mad pumping of his heart to slow, and breathing slowly, steadily. He closed his eyes, but he heard Cap round the corner from the kitchen to the hallway in a rush.
“Jesus H. Christ. Damn it to hell.”
Dane opened his eyes and saw Cap surveying the damage. They looked at each other.
Dane said, “Never mind the beach shack. None of these guys was Spartak.”
Cap went white at that, understanding the implication. Dane pushed himself off the wall, hefted his weapon, and took stock of his ammunition.
“You good to go?” he said to Cap.
Cap looked grim, but steady in spite of his heaving chest. Dane wasn’t sure if it was anxiety or the fact that the man had jumped out a window, run for his life and had then run back inside to help him that caused the heavy breathing. But either way, he was entitled.
Dane led the way out the backdoor—or what was left of it—in a hurry to his Jeep. Then stopped short when he saw the tires all flattened. These guys weren’t taking any chances. Spartak had done some training of his men. Not enough.
“These guys weren’t fooling around,” Cap observed.
“Was it the MP-443 Grachs going off the second they crashed inside that clued you in—or was it the slashed tires?”
Cap gave him a tight look. They both knew they needed to get to his place—fast.
Dane was about to suggest they haul ass on foot when the cavalry finally arrived.
Two State Police cars filled to the brim with FBI special agents skidded into the crushed shell drive, spitting up debris and screeching to a halt half sideways and not bothering to stay off his lawn.
That pissed Dane off more than the shot-up bathroom for some reason.
Cap started shouting orders at the two drivers who were his men as the feds jumped from three doors of each car almost in unison.
Dane ran for the second car still half in the street with the engine running—past the men who’d just got out—and jumped into the driver seat.
Cap had told his man, hastily getting out of Dane’s way, to leave the keys and went around to the passenger side, barely making it inside the door before Dane burnt rubber with his back tires on the street.
The ASAC Mark Richards, held up his badge and yelled at them. Cap yelled back out the window that they’d be back, gave him his address and told him there were intruders—associates of the dead guys inside.
The mention of dead guys inside the house stopped all the FBI agents in their tracks.
They were no longer interested in chasing Dane down the street.
Dane took off for Cap’s house and counted every one of the seconds in his head.
It was a short drive on a bad day, but today it may as well have been a universe away.
Now that the gunfire had stopped he couldn’t get rid of that gripping fear that Shana was in mortal danger.
He hadn’t even thought about the baby until Cap spoke.
“I’m sure Shana has the baby somewhere safe—I have a basement—”
“It’s Shana I’m goddamned worried about.” He ground the words out and felt guilt and fear and relief and more fear gnawing at him, making his insides feel like they were twisted by a tourniquet.
He pulled out his two-way and punched the call button.
*****
Shana heard a car screech to a halt in the drive and figured it was the police—though she hadn’t heard any siren. Sassy rushed to the window—throwing caution to the wind—and looked out.
She said, “It’s a police car.”
Shana had been hoping it was Dane. She yanked the plastic tie binding Spartak’s hands behind his back as tight as her strength would allow—pretty damn tight. If the man woke up he’d feel the strain on his arms and shoulders—on top of the pain in his head.
Sassy rushed past her down the hall to retrieve the baby from the laundry room. Shana let her go. The immediate danger was over, but she still felt tense. She needed to know Dane was okay—and Cap too.
The door flew open and two Staties rushed in. She recognized them and they lowered their guns after a tense survey of the room. Shana straightened and the two men approached, one asking her if she and Sassy were okay. His radio chirped and he picked it up.
Shana heard his voice and her heart jumped. She grabbed at the radio before the man handed it to her. Dane spoke in a tight voice.
“Shana—”
“The baby is fine. Untouched.”
“What about you?” The raspy tension filled his words. She felt her heart float up like a bubble.
“I’m no baby.”
The sound of Dane’s laugh caused a sensation in her gut as if a bottle of champagne had been popped open inside her. The tension in Dane’s voice had lightened and released the knots of anxiety that had been driving her.
“Sure you aren’t, girlie? Aren’t you my beachcomber baby?”
The edge remained under his too casual comment and she was sure he had not returned to normal-for-Dane. But he was alive. She gripped the radio tightly in the beat of silence that followed.
He said. “I’m coming over. I’m bringing Cap. Maybe he’ll get some credit. The feds should be on their way—not too far behind us. Once they’re finished at the beach shack.” He paused and she heard Cap in the background.
“Okay.” She wanted to tell him she couldn’t wait to see him.
“I’m stopping in quick. I’d rather not be there when the feds arrive.”
She stood with one foot on Spartak’s back. He hadn’t bothered asking about casualties on the other side.
“Spartak is alive,” she said.
He paused before responding.
“Shit.” The next thing she heard was static.
Shana handed the two-way back to the Statie and they got busy rounding up the two men and calling for ambulances. They’d decided the men were too injured to throw into the police car. She glanced at Sassy holding the baby.
Paulette was awake and if she’d cried during all the commotion they wouldn’t have known—but she looked happy now. Shana wanted to hold her and reached for her, but stopped herself. They would be returning Paulette to her mother. Soon. The tightening of her uterus was not her imagination.
Within thirty seconds of ending their call, Shana heard another car screech to a halt in front of the house and then car doors slamming.
She rushed to the door, pushed through, and went outside.
Without thinking she ran down the front steps and cut across the lawn to meet Dane halfway as he ran toward her.
There was nothing else except his face in her sights as she ran straight into his arms. The solid thud of his chest against hers and the feel of his arms wrapping around her body, his hands running along her back seeped into her, calming the nerves that had tightened.
The tears came and she couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t stop the gulping sobs. No matter what the tender words she heard from him, she wanted to be the one consoling him, the one reassuring him that everything was all right, that the danger was over.