Chapter Twenty
Should he tell her?
Olivia had handled everything else that day like a rockstar.
But he knew so little about her. People had their breaking points, and Nutsbe didn’t want to push Olivia past her capacity. Especially if this was a nothing burger.
What he had was that prickle across his scalp and Beowolf’s vigilance. With all the doggo yawns going on back there and the panting, Beowolf was stressed; Nutsbe got that.
What he hadn’t heard yet was a warning rumble.
“Right now, I’m driving with situational awareness.” That was true. “When we operate an Iniquus vehicle, we’re trained to do it tactically.” That was also true.
“What does that mean?”
“Have you heard of OODA loops?” Nutsbe asked, trying to check his mirrors without being obvious.
“OODA? No. Sounds like Udon noodles.”
“It’s a thought process they train into combat pilots. OODA: observe, orient, decide, act. It allows the pilot to make the split-second decision, overcome hesitation, and do what’s necessary: drop the bomb, evade the rocket, or pull the ejection lever.”
“You didn’t do that in Afghanistan when your plane failed, right? You said you landed it?”
“Landing is the preferred way to get down from the clouds. For about a third of pilots who attempt it, ejecting breaks their spine. It’s a doomsday scenario.”
Right now, Nutsbe was in the observational part of that OODA equation. Yup, he was pretty sure this pair of motorcycles had been following them from the courthouse.
“Hey, Olivia.” Nutsbe purposefully modulated his voice to sound casually conversational.
“Yes?” She glanced his way.
“Candace said she was hiding at that friend’s house because the perp has brothers.”
“He does. Two. And they’re every bit as menacing as Kyle Offsed. But Kyle is the only one Candace can identify as being at the crime scene. And he’s the only one I have enough evidence to bring to trial.” She looked out the side window while playing with the ring on her finger. “When they’re around, it’s almost like I can taste the latent violence.” She looked over at Nutsbe. “Even Judge Madison is concerned. That’s why I’m allowed to keep my phone on me at all times.” She paused. “I wonder what happened to cause him to leave with the family emergency. Of course, Judge Madison is an intensely private guy so unless the issue continues to interrupt court, I’ll never know.” She reached down and did something with her shoe. “It occurred to me that if we had been in court, we would have missed the whole sniper scene. Not knowing why the judge had to leave, one could start developing conspiracy theories. But I do know that his mom has been in and out of the hospital this last month. I’d lay money on something happening with his mother’s health.”
Nutsbe glanced at the red toggle and considered flipping it on as a precaution.
“What does your gut tell you?” Olivia focused on Nutsbe. “Do you think we’ll be back in court tomorrow? Oh, wait. Can you even go? I didn’t ask about your schedule. Beowolf is a last-minute dog, after all.”
Nutsbe tipped his head left and right, loosened his shoulders, and prepped his body. “Hang on to that thought. I want to focus on these Offsed brothers. Do you think that they might actually cause you harm?”
“They’re both on parole. They’d be back in jail for a very long time if they did.”
“Right. But in the meantime, you could be hurt or killed. And they’d have to be caught and tried. Do they happen to have motorcycles, do you know?”
“Yes. They do. Candace thinks she’s spotted them near her house, that’s why she’s staying at her friend’s house. Are you thinking about the last few nights of noise? It occurred to me that they were trying to intimidate me. But that’s pretty far-fetched.” Her hand shot out and gripped Nutsbe’s arm. “Do you think that’s what Mickey needed to talk to me about? Do you think that’s who beat the crap out of him the night you were arrested?”
“No idea,” Nutsbe said. Well, this wasn’t good news. It would be nice to ask Mickey, though. “Do you know if they’ve taken Mickey into custody yet?”
“My office is supposed to text me if word comes in. And there’s been nothing about it.”
For a while now, the motorcycles hung back far enough that they couldn’t be heard over the rest of the traffic. He’d catch flashes of them far back in his mirror. Now that he’d turned onto the empty road heading toward Headquarters, Nutsbe could hear them again.
Rounding the curve where a speed adjustment wouldn’t be as visible, Nutsbe took his foot off the gas pedal. He kept his focus on the rearview. And there they were.
Olivia heard it now. She twisted in her seat. “Oh shit. Do you think it’s them?”
“If it is, it’s hard to imagine that they’d do anything out here. We’re almost to Iniquus.” Nutsbe reassured her. “It’s a protected campus. If they’re still following us when we get near the security gate, our cameras will pick up the license plates, and we can identify the owners.” He resumed his speed. He didn’t want to spook them. Nutsbe wanted those pictures of the plates. “If these two follow us all the way to Iniquus, we’ll take steps.” Nutsbe’s focus slid to the red toggle on the instrument panel, and Olivia followed his gaze.
“What’s that red thing for?”
Nutsbe grinned. “It opens up a can of worms.”
“Helpful worms?” Her voice was equal parts curious and worried.
“This is an Iniquus vehicle. Iniquus tracks their fleet. That toggle would light me up on the board. They’d be moving assets into place. Remember how I used your phone to keep Iniquus looped in? That toggle opens up that comms line. It allows me to explain the situation and effectuate the right response. For example, if satellite is available, they’d watch from the sky and advise.”
“Movie scenarios.” Olivia exhaled.
“Real-world scenarios.”
She turned around. “They’re still following.”
“At a specific distance. If I speed up, so do they. If I slow down, so do they. It’s poor tracking craft.”
“Do you do that?” Olivia yanked her seat belt so tight Nutsbe was afraid she’d cut off her circulation. “Follow people? Track them?”
“I track them on my computer. I’m not an operator. I train like an operator, so I understand what’s possible and what’s not possible in the field. Movies are make-believe, and I can’t ever just imagine something can be done. We’re not actors. There’s no fake blood to wash off at the end of the day, as you’ve experienced earlier.”
“That’s,” Olivia pushed her hair from her face, “frightening.”
“More frightening than what you do day in and day out with criminals like Kyle Offsed?”
“This case was actually my gentle case. I have another one that makes me feel really scared for the first time. There’s a big damned dragon my office is trying to slay.”
“What can you tell me about that?”
“Nothing other than they just seated a grand jury.”
As they approached the underpass, the car that had been a good distance ahead of them swerved to the center of the road and came to a sudden stop just inside the mouth of the tunnel, effectively blocking the road.
Nutsbe braked as his hand toggled the emergency switch.
The motorcycles roared up from behind. And there was the Beowolf rumble that Nutsbe had anticipated; motorcycles equaled bad guys.
“Iniquus communications. Identify yourself.”
Four men swarmed for the car and were running toward them. “Nutsbe Crushed. Panther Force. Code red. Code red. Code red. Ambush. Possible carjacking.”
As they raised their hands and Nutsbe registered their firearms, he yelled, “Guns. Guns. Guns.” His foot moved from brake to the gas, and he managed, thanks to his ongoing vehicular evasion training, to floor it with enough finesse that he didn’t spin the wheels.
The SUV rocketed forward.
The men in his path were too busy jumping out of the way to point and pull the trigger.
The open doors were a mirage. Nutsbe only needed to calculate the side of the car body, the side of the underpass, and the width of this behemoth of an SUV. He thought maybe it was possible.
His only other out was backing up.
He could do a lot in his car with evasive driving, but he wasn’t there with his lower limb or hand control agility to whip the car around in a one-eighty to get out of Dodge.
Nutsbe didn’t bother to register what the motorcycles were doing—if they, too, had whipped out firearms.
Forward it was.
His brain flipped to its survival mode, slowing time.
The vehicle scraped along the cement, scrubbing the mirrors from the sides, sanding away the paint. The screech of metal stabbed at his eardrums in the momentary darkness of the underpass.
Olivia screamed, throwing her hand over her face as they crashed through the back door of the white car. With the first impact, their SUV bucked and juddered. Nutsbe was afraid that he wouldn’t make it through the front door without momentum.
But he should not have doubted the power of an Iniquus vehicle.
The front door of the ambush car peeled back and popped, dropping to the ground. Nutsbe’s back tires lifted and rolled over it, dropping them back down with a bounce.
“Impact,” Nutsbe said in the rock steady voice he used when Panther Force was in a hot situation—calm was survival.
He kept the pedal down so the abrasion was damaging, but they didn’t get stuck.
They popped out the other side of the underpass.
It felt like it had been going on for long minutes, but mere seconds had passed from observation to action to outcome, and he didn’t see anyone standing in the road, trying to get a bead.
Nutsbe’s next observation was that the motorcycles didn’t follow them past the damaged vehicle.
He’d been narrating this for the communications officer. “We’re through the underpass heading to the campus. Over.”
Yeah, that had been almost impossibly tight. Nutsbe wouldn’t have made it through if the guy had been inches closer to the center. He would have had to crash into the back, hoping to pop the criminals” car out of there like a cork. Had it twisted, Nutsbe would have trapped their SUV, and what came next wouldn’t have been pretty.
He reached out and rubbed Olivia’s knee. “Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.”
She had her hands knotted into her hair, her eyes wide.
He was going to give her system a second to reset.
The criminals had that strategy down. It looked planned and rehearsed for grace and flow. Ex-military? Ex-FBI? Those men had made tactical shapes in the way they advanced, sitting into their hips, whipping guns to their chests, acquiring a target, and punching their weapons out as they extended their arms. Yeah. Tactical.
He went through it again in his mind’s eye.
Men swarmed from three car doors in a cadence. The front door popped open, and the front passenger ran back. Once he cleared, the back doors opened, and three more men piled out. Foot on the ground, pivot, run.
That left the doors open for a quick exit and the driver ready to peel out. What was the operational goal?
“You’re okay,” he sing-songed, as much for him as for Olivia.
Stealing this vehicle would be a coup. It was worth about eighty-five thousand dollars. If they were coming for the car, would they need to leave the driver in the getaway car? He’d have to think about that strategy and talk it out with his team.
If that crew was coming for either him or Olivia, they’d be pissed that they didn’t catch their mouse in the trap. And possibly more importantly, they’d have to report back. And someone was gonna be enraged that there was a failure because failure gave everyone a heads up, and surprise was now going to be that much harder.
Anger begat pain and violence.
Nutsbe’s foot was still heavy on the gas.
Yes, Iniquus vehicles had bullet-resistant glass. But did he want to test it?
Hell to the no.
“Nutsbe. I am two clicks from the gate. Coming in hot. Over.”
“Received. We will continue to monitor. Over.”
Nutsbe drove aggressively for the Iniquus campus. And they were ready for him as he squealed around the corner.
Roaring through the open gate, Nutsbe finally lifted his foot from the gas and let the vehicle coast to the guest parking lot.
“Hey, Olivia. We’re here. Are you okay?”
“OODA loops,” Olivia whispered.
Nutsbe pulled calmly into a parking space right in front of the atrium door. “I’ve concluded, Olivia, that you’re a dangerous woman to be around. I can honestly say that being your neighbor is more dangerous than anything I’ve done as a member of an Iniquus tactical force.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She was white as a sheet and shaking with good reason. He was a little shaky, too. Today had been a lot for a nervous system to process.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. Are things coming at you? Are they directed at me? We both have jobs that can put a crazy’s target on our backs. Heck, it could be happenstance, just a run of wrong place, wrong times.” He repeated his earlier thought, but it tasted wrong on his tongue.
“It doesn’t feel like that.” She didn’t raise her voice above that whisper.
“You okay?” Nutsbe asked, turning off the engine. “Anything I can do?”
“Honestly, I could really use that bathroom now.”