Chapter 10 #4
Sassy’s house sat in the middle of a small grassy yard which was surrounded by a row of low hedges.
Good enough cover for midnight in the quiet neighborhood.
Joe sat to his left and Ronnie to his right.
They were all hunched in between the bushes.
It was thirty yards to the basement window and a bulkhead at the back of the house.
Thirty-five yards to another window on the side of the house in a shallow well.
Lifting his hand, he raised three fingers, then two, then one. Then he tossed some rocks into the yard to check for sensors.
“No pressure sensors. Guess Nash is a low-tech kind of guy. Look for trip wires.” He gave Ronnie a look.
“Low tech unless you count the explosion at the beach shack,” Ronnie reminded him.
“I’m going in. Watch my back,” he said to Joe. “Cover the bulkhead, kid”
He got close to the window and looked into the basement.
Sassy was there, tied with her hands in front of her and her mouth taped.
She lie on a filthy mattress. There was blood on her forehead.
It was fresh. The good news was that meant she was alive.
The bad news was that she was probably unconscious.
That would make an extraction doubly difficult.
Then he noticed a wire attached to the binding around her hands.
Shit. That would make an extraction nearly impossible without some planning.
The two men were laughing and appeared to be drinking.
He wanted to go in and take her now, but he was well aware of Whitey’s MO.
The booby trap and the bomb. He moved low and slow to look in a different window with a different angle to find where that wire led.
That was when he spotted what he did not want to see.
A bomb-pack all wired up to the cable that ran to Sassy’s binding.
With the control at Whitey’s right hand.
Shit. F—ck. Damn.
Dane made his way back to the periphery to report his findings, but there was no way he would tell Ronnie that she was unconscious. Breaking his rule not to lie to the kid, he only told them that she was bound and hooked up to a bomb. That was bad enough.
“The good news is that she’s alive,” he said.
“One more night and it’s over,” Dane said to the kid as they jogged back to the Lucky Parrot one more time in the dark.
Before they arrived, Dane recognized Cap’s street car parked a block away.
So he wasn’t surprised when they climbed down the bulkhead steps into the basement to find Cap there.
But tension had seized him and he had to work at relaxing himself.
Breathing deep and controlled, he scanned the room.
Cap stood at the table with three pizza boxes, a case of beer and a bottle of Patron Silver.
“A sight for sore eyes,” Dane said in a normal voice. “Not you—the pizza.”
“You’re welcome you SOB. What’s Sassy’s status?” Cap smiled, but it looked tentative. Dane darted a glance at Shana. Her expression spoke volumes of blank pages.
“She’s alive. They have her tied up with a wire to an explosive.”
“God dammit,” Shana said, her expression jumping to life with anger. “No way to get her out or get Whitey?”
“Not considering he was holding the detonator.” Dane would need to let them know she’d been unconscious, without Ronnie knowing.
“Shana tells me you didn’t like my surprise announcement at the press conference.”
Dane shrugged as he dropped his gear and grabbed a slice of pizza.
“It was hard to tell if your announcement had any impact one way or another. But the important thing is Sassy is still alive.” For the moment. Dane felt confident they all heard the unspoken words.
“Let’s talk about how we’re handling the funeral tomorrow,” Shana said.
Cap said, “We’ll have it covered with ninety percent of those in attendance in law enforcement, uniformed and undercover. Everyone is well briefed on the targets. I made up that shit about Australia CIC sending me the intel so we have an official reason to suspect him. I went out on a limb—”
“Temporarily, Cap. Once everyone knows Shana and I are alive you’re off the hook. We’ll have plenty of evidence of Nash’s guilt for you then.”
“As for that—Peter and I think it would be best if you let us take care of this officially from here on in. Neither of you needs to be at the funeral.”
Dane went still. He’d gone to Peter to run interference.
“How about at the house?” Joe said.
Cap was silent on that. Dane stared at him. They’d already discussed this. He knew well the peril of the hostage situation.
“Fine, you handle the house. If we’re lucky. No one will be there except Sassy.”
“Wired to a bomb,” Ronnie said. His voice simmered with stifled rage.
“I don’t like it, Shana said. “I need to be at the funeral to ID Nash positively. He’ll be disguised for sure now that he knows you’re onto him.”
“No.” Both Dane and Cap spoke at once.
“I agree with them,” Joe said. “You’ll only make it that much more difficult to catch him. We’ll be too worried about your safety.”
“I say let her go,” Ronnie said.
“Thanks, Ronnie, but these stooges are all forgetting that it’s a free country and short of tying me up and putting me in a closet, they can’t stop me from going.”
Dane was afraid she was right. And he wasn’t past doing exactly that.
“You show up at the funeral you better not be dressed as a biker chick,” Cap said.
“Fine. What do you have in mind? I don’t exactly have a wardrobe available here.”
“I bet Cap has some clothes he can lend you back at his house. You can dress as a man.” He’d almost tripped on the words, but he was talking and planning on the fly now.
“We’ll swing by there before we head to the funeral.
You and me. Joe will give us a ride and then swing back to cover the house with Ronnie. ”
No one blinked at his outrageous suggestion.
“What about me?” Ronnie said.
“You cover Sassy’s house with Joe. You wait for him to pick you up.
When you get there, call in the bomb squad or whoever else you need if Sassy is alone and can’t be extricated without risking a booby trap or explosive detonation,” Dane said.
He felt Cap’s eyes on him as he issued commands.
It was no more than he’d always done, but this time Cap’s tension was palpable.
It was as if the man’s tolerance for his leadership had dissipated into thin air.
Ronnie nodded.
Dane felt lucky that Cap hadn’t raised a question about his suggestion that they go to his house for Shana’s disguise. If he knew Dane had something up his sleeve, he was playing it cool.
“Then it’s all settled.” With a satisfied smile, Shana folded her arms across her chest. “I’m kind of looking forward to my funeral. I only hope my mum hasn’t gotten wind of it back in Australia.”
“I haven’t seen any international news outlets at the press conferences or around the station,” Cap said, “But news travels fast in the world of social media, so brace yourself.”
“Maybe you ought to brace yourself, Cap, once her mum finds out you held the funeral without her.” He smiled and went to Shana, wrapping his arm around her whether she liked it or not.
They were still engaged to be married. Until—well, until they got married if Dane had any say in it.
He wasn’t going to let her back out without a fight.
No matter how angry she was now, he had to believe they could overcome the issue of his heavy-handed protectiveness.
To his surprise, she didn’t pull away from him.
But she didn’t look at him either. In fact, she felt as cold and hard as steel under his arms. There was no yield to her.
She looked at him and said, “Maybe you ought to go with Ronnie to Sassy’s house.”
“Not happening. I’m with you.” He met her eyes, met the edgy glint there, but couldn’t help softening his look. His heart raced with fear thinking about her facing Nash without him. She stepped from his hold.
“You think you’re better protection that a dozen trained cops?” she said, hands on hips. She must have known what his answer would be, but he said it aloud anyway.
“None of them loves you the way I do.”