Chapter 11 #2
“It looks like it’s stopped bleeding.” She placed a small gauze pad over the wound and taped it on. “ There almost good as new.”
“Thanks.” He looked at his gun and then the shattered window. “This pistol won’t do us any good against his high-powered rifle.”
“Do you have your phone? We can call the police.”
“No. It’s on the end table.”
“My purse is by the front door, if I can make it to the foyer—“
“No, you’d be too exposed for too long. I’ll go.”
She snapped her fingers. “Wait, I have a landline in the spare bedroom.”
“Good. We can crawl there and not be in his sight. Ready?”
“Let’s go.”
She got to her hands and knees and crawled out of the kitchen to the guest bedroom, which was on the opposite side of the living room from the master. She noticed Chase crawled beside her, keeping his body toward the window. Another bullet zinged into the kitchen’s wall above them.
She stopped and screamed. “Dang. I don’t know if I can take much more of this.”
“You’re doing great. Just keep going.”
When she entered, she realized the blinds were open. These windows weren’t floor to ceiling, but were just normal windows. “I have to close those or he’ll see us.”
“You get the phone, I’ll get the blinds.”
She headed to the nightstand on her right. The blinds were on her left and across the room. She reached the nightstand.
Chase rose from a crouch and closed one blind.
Another bullet came through one of the windows.
She pulled the cordless phone down to the floor and dialed 911.
“Hello, operator. We’re being shot at. Send the police.” She gave them her address.
“Tell them he is shooting from one of the dorm rooms in the old Regency Hotel.”
‘Yes, I’ll hold on. No, I won’t hang up.
But the person shooting is doing so from far away, from one of the dorm rooms in the old Regency Hotel.
So they won’t find him at my address.” It sits on a hill just a little northwest of me and across I-25.
That’s the only place tall enough to give him an angle on the building and to shoot into my apartment.
“Okay, I’ll continue to hold.” She rolled her eyes. What does she think I’ll do? Hang up? Someone is shooting at me. Frustration raged through her body.
Once Chase closed the other blind, the room was plunged into semi-darkness.
As she held the phone, she saw her hands were shaking. “Chase, what can we do? The police won’t find him. You know they won’t.”
“We’ll have to leave the blinds down. It’s dark out if we can make it to the living room and turn out the lights as we go.
We can stay in your bedroom since the window doesn’t face west, but south.
Even with a high-powered rifle, he’d have a hard time finding somewhere to shoot from.
I hope you don’t mind my staying in your bedroom.
I won’t leave you alone. It’s more dangerous than we thought because we didn’t know he was proficient with a rifle.
My contacts have gotten very little information about him so far.
It’s like he’s a ghost. I know he deals drugs for the cartels, but I’m not sure which one.
The police don’t seem to know, either. I’ve given them the copies from Paige’s diary, so they have more than only my word to go on.
But after this, they won’t have any choice but to believe me. ”
She raised her right index finger and moved the phone up to her mouth.
“Yes, operator, I’m still here. I can hear sirens now.
The police have arrived. Thank you. I’m hanging up now.
Goodbye.” She pressed the end button and set the phone on the bed, but didn’t get up.
Not yet, not until she was sure the shooter was gone.
Her doorbell rang.
She looked at Chase, eyes wide.
“We’ll crawl. He had to have seen the police pull up, and once we’re in the foyer, it’s sheltered from the windows so we can go to the door and open it.”
The doorbell rang again.
“Coming!” shouted Meri.
She and Chase crawled through the kitchen to the front door.
Chase stood and looked through the peephole. Then he opened the door.
A Denver police officer stood in the hallway, along with Josh and Zed.
“Ms. Anderson?” asked the police officer.
Chase talked to his employees. “Why didn’t you come in? Didn’t you hear the shots
?”
“We didn’t have any inkling anything might be wrong until we heard Ms. Anderson scream and when there wasn’t another, we thought—that we shouldn’t interrupt.”
Chase let out a breath and rubbed his hand behind his neck. “Next time, if you hear someone scream, you assume they need assistance and not that they are having kinky sex. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” said the men together.
“Go back to your posts.”
They both nodded.
Josh left the foyer.
Zed followed.
Meri couldn’t blame Josh and Zed. They didn’t know her or what she was like, but did she really seem like the kind of person who would have screamed for no reason?
The policeman waited.
“Yes, I’m Meridith Anderson. I’m so glad you came. Please, come in.”
“I’m Officer Donnelly.”
Chase held out his right hand to the officer. “Chase Harper, Harper Security.”
“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Harper. I’ve heard a lot about your services. Apparently, your firm has been instrumental in helping to close some of our cases.”
“We help whenever we can.”
The officer stepped into the apartment.
Meri peeked around the foyer wall into the living room. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“As safe as it’s going to get, for now.” Chase turned to the officer. “Did you catch the shooter?”
“Not yet. We’re going door-to-door in the dorm. It’s going to take a while. We’re only checking the ones that face the lofts here. So it won’t be too bad, we hope.”
The officer’s radio squawked. “No one in the dormitory. All the rooms have now been checked. We found where he was. He left in a hurry and didn’t police his casings. They’ve been bagged as evidence.”
“You heard?” asked the officer.
“Yes. Please come in, where we can at least sit at the table. I need to make sure there is no glass in the couch before we sit there.” She headed toward the kitchen. On the way through, she shoved the meatloaf into the refrigerator.
“Certainly.” The officer followed them in.
Meri sat at the head of the table.
Chase sat to her right.
The officer chose the chair to her left. He took out a notepad and pen from his pocket. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
Meri and Chase recounted all the events from the first bullet to the last and described how they had to crawl around to prevent getting shot.
“It’s a good thing he wasn’t a better shot, or I’d be,” she swallowed past the giant lump in her throat.
“Dead.” Meri’s voice cracked on the last word.
She was hanging on by a thread. She never wanted to be shot again as long as she lived and had hoped Chase and his men could capture Marco without shooting.
But she knew now that would never happen.
Marco would continue to try to kill her, just for witnessing a murder and maybe for being associated with the fiancé of his former lover.
Someone must stop him and it had to be them. “What do we do now?”
“Now, you let us handle it,” said Officer Donnelly. “You could be hurt, even killed next time.”
“I’ve already been shot, short of dying what else can he do to me?” She was being sarcastic and didn’t expect an answer.
“Ms. Anderson, you’re quite right. Next time he might kill you. Again, let the police handle it. It’s our job. The detectives will be here shortly.” The man stood and shoved the notebook and pen back into his shirt pocket.
“We’ll be waiting,” said Chase.
Meri and Chase showed him out.
She walked into the kitchen. “What now? Are you still hungry? The meatloaf is ready.”
“I don’t know. I want a drink before anything. We’ll clean up the glass after dinner.” He grabbed his phone off the living room table. “I’ll get someone over here to either replace the window or board it up until it can be repaired.”
“Thanks. Let’s get a glass of wine. The bottle is still on the counter and I’ll get us more glasses.
I don’t want to use the ones in the living room, just in case there is glass in them from the windows.
” In the kitchen, she clutched the counter, closing her eyes for just a moment.
She grabbed two glasses. They were the kind without a stem.
She had both but didn’t want to use the crystal stems again lest the last two get broken and they were expensive to replace.
Even without the stem, she saw her hand shake.
Or maybe it was her whole body shaking and she could only see her hand.
Oh, God, how did I get into this situation?
Her body shook, and nausea roiled in her stomach.
“Meri?”
She turned toward him, tears in her eyes. “I was so scared, and now that it’s over, all the adrenaline is gone and I’m a wreck.” She swiped at her eyes.
Chase held his arms wide.
She moved into them, wrapping her arms around his waist.
He lowered his arms and held her close, resting his head on top of hers. “It’s okay to be scared. Heck, I thought I was going to wet myself when that first shot came through.”
She laughed. “You did not.”
He chuckled. “No. But you laughed and so it worked. Seriously, when I realized how close I came to losing you again, it scared me. He tilted her face up. “I don’t want to lose you, Meri. Not now. Not ever.” His lips teased hers with gentle kisses.
She responded, but Meri didn’t want a gentle kiss. She wanted to feel alive, wanted hard, insistent kisses that blew her socks off.
Chase met her kiss for kiss, and then he took over, replacing the gentleness with hunger. He pressed her hips closer, holding her still and letting her feel how much he wanted her. Then he broke off the kiss. “If I don’t stop now, I won’t be held accountable.”
She liked the fact that she had such an effect on him. But what would she do about the effect he had on her?