Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Present Day
Palm Desert, California
Mission Day Three
“It’s this next left,” Jules instructed Sam.
They were deep in country club territory, where the McMansions abutted the rolling green hills of whichever golf course this was.
The speed limit was fifteen miles an hour with traffic calming humps built into the roadway.
“Red Sage Lane. Let’s drive past, don’t slow down. ”
Sam nodded. “What number?” he asked.
“72438,” Jules told him. “It’s up here on the right and...”
Way up ahead was the house, with its southwestern style architecture and barrel tile roof. The outside lights were blazing, lighting up not only the fancy arched front door, but the front path and the driveway, too.
Where a car was parked, backed in, nose out. The garage door was open—the interior was empty and almost ridiculously clean.
But it was the three men arguing in the driveway, right next to the trunk of that car, that took Jules by surprise.
Holy shit, it was the lawyer, Ernest Harper himself, standing there with two large men.
Jules hadn’t recognized him at first, dressed down as he was in jeans, with a sweater on to combat the nip in the air, but it absolutely was him.
“Shit,” Sam said concisely and Jules absolutely agreed. Shit, indeed.
Mick’s kicking had brought Harper and a small handful of his gunmen out into the driveway.
“You need to leave!” Harper was insistent. “Immediately. My neighbors have dogs. If they walk by, they’ll hear the noise, even from down by the street! The last thing we need is—”
“Yo.” Someone thumped on the trunk lid. “Stop that!” a gruff voice ordered. “Or I’ll fucking shoot you right now.”
“You cannot do that,” Harper said testily.
“Well, don’t tell him that!” The other voice was disgusted.
“Just go,” Harper said. “Deliver him to Clay and—”
A third voice spoke up, sharply. “Who the fuck is that?” and Mick stopped kicking so he could hear whatever was happening.
“They’re just driving past,” Harper said. “Smile and for God’s sake, keep your weapons holstered!”
Jules absolutely did not expect this.
“Still want me to drive past?” Sam asked, slowing just a little.
Because all three men—Harper plus two—were watching them.
At this point, they were little more than a car with glaring headlights.
But when they passed—if they passed—even if Jules ducked, they would see Sam behind the wheel.
And yes, he could turn away or even hold his phone up to his face, pretending to be talking to someone, but holy shit, it was clear from the brightly lit windows of the surrounding houses that plenty of other people in this neighborhood were home and still awake.
Gunshots, or any type of altercation, for that matter, would draw a crowd.
Jules hoped.
“Your order, at any time, would be apprec—”
“Slow down and pull over!” Jules ordered, even as he used his phone to dial Hobbit. “I’m gonna leave this line open so you can hear what’s happening,” he turned to tell his friend in the backseat. “Record this if you can.”
Hobbit was wide-eyed. “I will.”
“There might be more men inside,” Sam warned.
“Garage is empty,” Jules pointed out. “No SUV. Nothing’s parked on the street, either. The shorter guy, on the left, is mine.”
“Copy that,” Sam said.
“Hob, as soon as we get out, get behind the wheel. Lock and load. Be ready for anything. Above all, keep yourself safe. Do you understand?”
“Locked, loaded, and ready,” Hobbit confirmed. “And ditto please.”
“What exactly are we doing here?” Sam asked.
“Follow me.” Jules got out of the car while it was still rolling. “Hey! Mr. Harper! Thank God, you’re all right!”
Sam jerked to a stop, leaving the keys for Kevin. He swiftly followed Jules out of the rental car which he’d parked pretty damn badly, directly across the street from the driveway where Harper and two of his hired guns were standing.
Jules—whom he was following—just fucking walked right up to them, as if the sidearms that Dumb and Dumber had pulled and were waving in his direction were invisible.
So Sam just fucking walked right up to them, too, positioning himself as close as possible to Dumber, who was the man on their right.
Jules, of course, was expounding on his initial Thank God you’re all right!
which was, Sam had to admit, pretty fucking ballsy.
“We got a call from Milt. He was extremely upset. He said that Emily had been shot, and he seemed to think you were responsible, although that’s.
..” He made a WTF sound. “Is he... How do I ask this? Does Milt have mental health issues that you’re aware of? ”
Harper’s two men were looking to him for direction, but Jules had managed to surprise the lawyer by completely reframing the situation. It was no longer Harper and his men against Wig-Milt and his investigators. It was all of them, on the same side, deeply concerned for Wig-Milt’s fragile sanity.
“He’s always had issues,” Harper intoned, trying to sound sad about it, and mostly just sounding like the asshole that he was.
Jules, of course, wasn’t done. “He said he was going to kill you and I’m so sorry, I didn’t have your cell phone number to call and warn you.
We were tracking his phone and we think he came here before he must’ve—I don’t know—taken the battery out?
We lost contact a few minutes ago. And of course, we recognized that this is the Devonshire property, which we knew you were checking up on this weekend, so we got here as quickly as we could.
I honestly don’t know if he’s actually armed—I don’t think he is, but sir, I’m extremely concerned for your safety. ”
As if he were searching for any sign of Wig-Milt sneaking up on them, Sam turned and scanned the street and the neighbors’ front yards, using the movement to bring his body even closer to Dumber, even as Jules shifted toward Dumb.
They all damn well knew that Mick had already been apprehended, probably by these very men. But Harper and his little team didn’t know that Jules and Sam knew.
Although it was also more than obvious that Mick was currently stashed in the trunk of that Lexus, from the way that Harper kept nervously glancing over at it.
And Sam knew from the very brief eye contact Jules shot him, that Jules knew this, too.
If Mick was in fact in there, he knew enough to stay silent—or at least Sam hoped he did.
“We should get you inside,” Jules continued oozing concern at Harper. “Do you have additional security? What I’d like to do is have Sam direct your team and set up a perimeter around this house—at least until we locate Milt.”
Yeah, Jules was pretty fucking good at this.
He clearly knew, from their past conversations with Harper, that the man was no criminal mastermind.
How had Jules put it? The lawyer was down with the fraud, but when it came to kidnapping and murder, he was in over his head.
And that combined with Jules’s charm and sincerity as he said things like I’m concerned for your safety, made Harper tell them exactly what they needed to know.
“These gentlemen are it, for now,” Harper told them, and the words weren’t even out of his mouth as Jules said, “Nah, Sam’s it.”
That was the word Sam had been waiting for.
He put his full body weight behind his elbow, which he drove hard into Dumber’s face, even as Jules skillfully knocked the weapon from Dumb’s hand.
Sam dispatched Dumber’s sidearm with a kick that sent the damn thing flying into the cactus-filled landscaping of the front yard as he used his other elbow to slam the man down to the ground.
Jules dispatched Dumb just a little less elegantly—because of their size difference, he used a full body pin to keep the larger man on the ground.
But before Sam could draw his own weapon to bring a little more order to the chaos, he realized that Harper had taken advantage of their preoccupation with the gunmen to jump behind the wheel of his car and start it with a roar.
Kevin, however, back in the rental car, was paying close attention, and he stepped on the gas and turned the wheel, aiming directly for Harper’s Lexus.
Neither car really had the chance to get up much speed, but thanks to Kevin’s quick thinking they met, nose to nose, in a metal-on-metal screech that sure as shit woke the neighbors.
And yup, there they all came, peering out of their houses to see what-the-fuck. The police wouldn’t be too far behind.
“You good?” Sam called to Jules who was still pinning Dumb.
“Very much so,” Jules called back as meanwhile Kevin, who handled his weapon with the same ease as a ten-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, got out of the rental car to point it at Harper, who was looking dazed from the sudden deployment of his car’s airbag.
“Hands up where I can see ’em,” Kevin ordered the lawyer, who immediately complied.
Or maybe it was the fact that Harper was headed for prison that had smacked him so hard in the face that he was stunned.
As Jules scrambled back to his feet, Sam saw that he’d not only taken possession of Dumb’s weapon, but he’d ziptied the man’s hands and feet. He tossed his extra zip ties to Sam—he must’ve stashed a bunch in his jacket pocket while they were driving over here—before opening Harper’s car door.
“Pop the trunk, would you, please?” Jules asked the man, although his polite words were definitely aided by the visual of Kevin holding Rod’s spare handgun with a boatload of bad-ass attitude.
Harper did as Jules requested, moving slowly and carefully, and the back trunk of his car opened and lifted.
“You didn’t stay in the car,” Jules said to Kevin.
“Hands back up there, Skippy,” Kevin ordered Harper before telling Jules, “I figured it was best for all of us not to wait to see if this douchebag had a firearm under his seat. Fool me twice, et cetera et cetera.”
Jules laughed. “Yeah, okay. Well. We’ll talk about this later.”
“Oh, I’m sure we will.”