Shadows on the Sand (37 page)

W
hen Oreo went blasting past him, Greg knew he had just a few seconds to get deep into the shadows and assess the situation. Someone would be back to check the door to see how the cat had gotten in. He left the door open a few inches as if Oreo had pushed it, then stepped into the storage closet.

He heard Chaz’s less-than-manly reaction to Oreo, not that Greg had room to criticize. He’d had his own “less than” performance just a couple of nights ago. Tonight would not be a repeat even if it literally killed him.

He heard Carrie and Lindsay explain Oreo’s presence and defend the cat’s honor with their lives.

Carrie, it’s a cat! I can live without it but not without you
.

When Michael ordered Fred—how had Fred gotten involved in this?—to stand down, Greg let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Go check that back door. Make sure it’s closed and locked.”

Who was Michael sending? Chaz? Fred? One of the girls?

He slid deeper into the closet and waited. Through the crack of the partially opened door he watched Chaz come, twitching and muttering to himself.

“I shoulda just left town.” He ran a hand through his stringy hair. “I shoulda said, ‘Pay me and I’ll
tell
you where she is,’ not ‘I’ll
show
you.’ Demon cat. I shoulda just left town.”

Chaz passed the storage closet, then reached for the back door. Quickly, silently, Greg moved behind him and pulled the Taser’s trigger. Chaz gave an inarticulate gasp and went limp. Greg pulled him into the storage closet,
laid him on the floor, and put him in the plastic restraints, hands behind his back, one foot attached to the leg of a large storage rack full of dishes and paper products. The last thing he wanted was a groggy Chaz stumbling out at the wrong moment.

Moving with stealth, Greg slid along the café’s inside wall until he came to the counter. He dropped to a crouch and moved past the stools to the break between the pink counter and the register counter. He stuck his head forward for a quick glimpse to gauge what was happening in the kitchen.

And it was bad.

R
elief coursed through me when I realized Oreo wasn’t about to be shot. Of course Lindsay, Andi, and I were still likely to face that fate, but somehow knowing the cat was safe was satisfying.

But before I died, I could at least do half of something right. I turned to my sister who leaned against her pastry table beside me.

“Mom’s here,” I blurted.

“Shut up,” Harl ordered.

“Mom? Here where?” Lindsay looked confused.

“In Seaside.”

“Yo!” Harl yelled.

I hurried on before I lost my nerve. “And she came into the café.”

“What? When?”

“I said shut up!” Harl let go of Andi and grabbed for me. I dodged. “Wednesday and today.”

Lindsay blinked. “And you didn’t tell me?” She looked from Harl to Michael, then back at me. I knew she was thinking that there was a very good chance she’d never see Mom now.

“She looks good, Linds. And she’s got this handsome, nice husband. At least he seems nice.”

“Mom’s married.” She said it with wonder. Given our experience with her, sticking with one man didn’t seem something she’d be capable of.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet her.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“She wants to meet you. Her husband said.”

“Are you deaf or something?” Harl snarled. “Shut up.”

“Let them alone.” Michael indicated Andi. “She’s who’s important. Get what we need from her and fast.”

“It was my bitterness.” I held out my hand palm up because I was without excuse. “I made your decision for you. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

Lindsay got a dreamy expression in her eyes. “You know, I’ve wanted to see her for years. Just see her.”

I shriveled a bit inside as I realized what my pettiness had cost my sister. “You can see her. It’s okay with me. Get to know her. Love her.” But as I looked at the guns focused on Linds and me, the chances seemed terrifyingly small.

Andi cried out in pain as Harl grabbed her again by the hair, and I temporarily forgot Mom.

“Leave her alone!” I cried.

“Don’t hurt her,” Lindsay cried. “She’s a kid!”

We might as well not have spoken.

“No more lying, or I’ll hurt you bad,” Michael told her, a desperation I hadn’t heard before creeping into his voice. “Maybe a bullet in some vulnerable spot or maybe I’ll use one of those knives over there.”

Andi started to cry.

I looked at the knives, blades sharp as Ricky could make them, and shuddered.

“Or maybe I’ll hurt her.” Michael grabbed me, his arm wrapping around my neck. I’d been so transfixed by the knives I hadn’t seen him coming. He stroked the barrel of his gun down my cheek. “It’d be a shame if one of those knives damaged this lovely face.”

“She doesn’t know anything!” Andi cried.

“Get me that DVD.”

“It’s in the café.”

“We’re in the café.”

“I mean in the dining area.”

Harl put his face mere inches from hers. “You’d better be telling the truth this time.”

“I am. I swear. It’s under the pink counter.”

The defeated way in which she spoke told me she was telling the truth. Lindsay opened her arms, and Andi ran to her, holding tight as her tears wet Linds’s shoulder.

Harl almost danced out of the kitchen.

“Go.” Michael pointed to the dining area, and Andi and Lindsay went. He pushed me ahead of him, walking in time with my steps as he kept the pressure about my neck steady. I tried to pull away, and he tightened his grip. Immediately I had difficulty breathing. I stopped fighting him.

Not now, girl. Relax. Wait
.

Harl gave a happy cry. “Got it!” He held a jewel case high overhead.

And the world exploded.

E
verything happened at once, or so it seemed to me.

The back door flew open, and Clooney came rushing in, armed to the teeth, Rambo in the flesh. I had no idea what the various guns dangling from his body were called, but they were big and ugly.

“Andi!” he screamed.

“Clooney!” She was looking at her greatest fear come true. “Run!”

Michael brought his gun up even as he kept his choke hold on me.

Clooney tripped over something and fell flat on his face.

Michael’s bullet smacked into the back wall. The noise was deafening in the enclosed space.

I gave a brief thought to Chaz, who was supposed to have locked the back door. Had he been smart enough to run instead? He’d certainly been smart enough to stay out of Clooney’s way.

“Get up!” Michael waved his gun in Clooney’s direction, then at Andi. “Or I shoot her. I don’t need her anymore.”

“We don’t need any of them anymore.” Harl wiped nervous sweat off his top lip. He was as twitchy as Chaz, not with withdrawal but with the need to kill. And he’d just gotten another hostage.

“Patience, Harl,” Michael said. “In time. I make those decisions. I am, after all, God’s archangel.”

The look of disbelief on Harl’s face would have been funny in other situations. “Get a grip, Mike.”

A loud voice amplified by a bullhorn called from outside, “Hello, the café. This is the police.”

As relief surged through me, Michael whirled to face the window, moving so fast my feet left the ground as he spun me with him. I made a gagging sound as I struggled to gain my footing and relieve the pressure on my throat.

Harl snarled and swore. “Where did they come from?”

No one answered, but I knew. The coded message on the alarm system had worked. We would be saved!

Harl grabbed Andi and pulled her in front of him.

“Let go of me!” she screamed as she beat at his hands.

Clooney made an inarticulate growl as he struggled to his feet, his weaponry clinking and clanging.

Bright light poured into the café from outside, blinding all of us after so long in the dim illumination of the emergency lights. I squinted and could make out people and cars in the street. Or rather their silhouettes.

“This is Chief Gordon of the Seaside Police Department. Release your hostages and surrender.”

“Never!” Michael yelled.

I could feel him trembling. What I didn’t know was whether he was quivering with fear or fury. I suspected fury. Harl, on the other hand, stank with fear as he cowered behind Andi, quite a trick given her diminutive size.

Michael raised his gun to my temple, and I quickly rethought the I’m-saved concept.

I was afraid to move. My pepper spray was inches away, but Michael was on the edge. Even reaching for it might cause his finger to tighten on the trigger.

As I prayed feverishly, Lindsay raised her arm and brought it down with a rebel yell that would have made the Confederacy proud. It turned my blood to ice.

Harl screamed and let go of Andi, who fell to her knees. He grabbed his
bicep where a paring knife was buried to the hilt. He turned green when he saw it. A single drop of blood slid down his arm. He raised disbelieving eyes to Lindsay, who was pressed back against her pastry table. The little knife she used to trim piecrusts was missing from its slot at the rear of the table.

Harl whimpered and his gun tumbled to the floor. “Mike?”

Andi grabbed the weapon and threw it beneath the stove.

Michael’s gun lowered as he too stared at the knife. The choke hold eased.

My turn. I pulled my tear gas canister from my waistband and aimed it over my shoulder. I squeezed, praying I had the nozzle aimed where I wanted it. At the same moment Greg materialized out of the dimness and shot Michael with a Taser.

Michael let out a roar and collapsed. I stumbled toward Greg, who wrapped me in his arms, a spent Taser in one hand, a gun in the other, my own superhero. Clooney stood behind him, finally untangled from his personal armory.

And just like that, it was over.

T
he EMTs took Michael to the ambulance, his eyes red and watery, his muscles twitchy. As the effects of the Taser began to wear off, his arrogance slowly returned. He remained haughty even when Maureen Trevelyan started reciting, “You have the right to remain silent …”

He lay strapped to a gurney, staring over her head, as if she were beneath his notice, until she finished.

“Do you understand?” she asked.

“Do you understand?” he shot back, finally deigning to look at her. “I am Michael, God’s archangel.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m Maureen, Seaside’s cop. I need to know if you understand what I just said.”

“Of course I understand. I am Michael, Go—”

“Good,” she interrupted. “Just what I needed to hear.”

He looked at the ambulance, at the straps holding him down, and at Maureen who smiled at him without humor. Reality made a brief appearance. He looked around with panic in his eyes, his fingers splayed wide. Then Maureen nodded, the EMTs loaded him into the ambulance, and the door slammed shut, the first of many doors that would crash closed and lock behind him in the coming years.

Mac88 recorded the exchange between Michael and Maureen on his cell. As Maureen climbed into the passenger seat of the ambulance, he sent the Miranda episode around the world. This appearance by Michael on YouTube would be dramatically different from his previous ones.