Diner Knock Out (A Rose Strickland Mystery Book 4) (23 page)

“Why?”

“That place means something to Al. He and Carlucci were partners. After the state started building the highway, the roads were closed, effectively cutting off a direct route to Al’s business. If he’s not there, I’m out of ideas.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Andre said. “He wouldn’t keep her at his own home. Too risky. Neighbors might see or hear something. He wouldn’t keep her at the dealership for the same reason. Your plan is a sound one, Miss Strickland. I’ll call the police, then I’m on my way.”

I sat back and tried to calm down.

Henry’s gaze slid to me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just scared for her.”

“When we get to this place, I want you to stay in the car. I’ll check it out.”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone, Henry. End of.”

He didn’t argue, but I could tell he wasn’t done fighting me. His large knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel. “You mean everything to him.”

“Who?”

“Sullivan.”

“You do too, H. You’re the only person he trusts.”

“He’s learning to trust you. When you pull shit like this, though, it doesn’t help.”

We stopped talking and my gut clenched tight, hoping we weren’t too late. If Al had taken Candi, he was finally off the chain. He
wanted
Carlucci to know he was the mastermind behind it all. Yet I still didn’t understand why Buster had been killed. Did he know something about Al? Some dark secret?

“What’s our plan?” I asked. “We can’t just pull up and announce ourselves.”

“We’ll get a lay of the land and figure it out once we get there.”

Although we only drove for another ten or twelve minutes, nervous tension kept my muscles locked down.

When Henry pulled off Route 22 and Junction Road, he drove past the old car lot, its blacktop empty and faded, framed by rusted chains. A boarded-up shack sat near the back of the property. Though Henry never turned his head, I did, my eyes darting back and forth.

Andre’s words came back to me.
Tell me what you see, Miss Strickland.
“It’s an old lot, no cars, not even Al’s, unless he parked behind the building, and I can’t see back that far. The shed is a great place to stash a hostage. The front windows and door are boarded up. It’s so tiny, I wonder if there’s a back exit.”

Henry didn’t slow down, but drove right past it. “Anything else?”

“We’re passing three abandoned buildings, two restaurants, and what used to be a TV repair business.” Their signs had faded in the sun. The neon letters at the drive-in were broken. “There’s an empty strip mall. So far, I haven’t seen another car or any sign of movement.” After another mile, we hit on a handful of shotgun houses. With sagging porches, missing doors, and broken windows, it was safe to say these homes had been left years ago. Behind the houses, tall, thin trees fought each other for sunlight. “Six empty homes edged by a small wooded area.”

“Let’s park near the trees and cut back through the woods. That way, I can see what’s going on behind the car lot. Rose, I want you to listen to me.” He did a U-turn and doubled back. “I have a gun. I know what I’m doing. You’ll only be in the way.”

“I promise I won’t.” I texted our location to Sullivan. “I’ll follow your directions, but I can’t sit on my hands.”

He pulled into the dirt driveway, next to the last shotgun house. Driving to the edge of the trees, he parked the SUV and glanced over at me. “Okay then. Stay behind me. Do exactly what I tell you to do.”

We climbed out of the car and Henry removed his jacket and tie, throwing them in the front seat. Then he pulled his gun from the holster and held it against his leg. “Right now, you need to calm your nerves and watch out for snakes.”

Snakes. Of course.

Chapter 23

I’d grabbed the stun gun from my purse. As we moved through the woods, I tightened my fingers around it. I followed Henry’s trail, but I was paying such close attention to my feet—checking for dreaded snakes—that I smacked my forehead into low-hanging tree branches more than once. Finally, I stopped looking down. I was more worried about poking myself in the eye at this point.

It was close to noon and the leaf canopy offered little protection from the bright sun. Nor did we get any relief from the high humidity.

We’d been jogging for about fifteen minutes when Henry stopped. Brushing my arm across my wet brow, I drew to a halt and peered around him.

“We’re close,” he whispered. “When we reach the edge of the tree line, stay down.”

We worked our way over fallen limbs and dead leaves. Climbing up a small rise, Henry ducked down, hunching his shoulders forward in an attempt to keep low. It didn’t work. He was simply too tall. Halfway up, he fell onto his belly, barely lifting his head as he studied the layout. I did the same, peeking up over the ridge, and fought the urge to swat at a bug that landed on the back of my hand.

The shack didn’t have a back door, but there was a boarded-up window. The slats of wood didn’t touch, leaving enough space between them that Henry could peek inside.

Flattening himself, he dropped his head and placed his left hand on my back, pressing me into the ground. “Shhh.” Then I heard it. A car in the distance. It was headed this way.

I barely lifted my head once more. A faded gray Ford came into view, pulling around to the back of the building. Al Bosworth cautiously exited, glancing left and right, taking in his surroundings. No expensive, flashy suit today. Instead he wore a black t-shirt. For once, his perfect helmet hair was disheveled. Removing a gun from the back waistband of his jeans, he walked toward the front of the shack.

“We have to do something before he shoots Candi,” I whispered.

“Stay here.” Before I could grab hold of his arm, Henry bolted off, silently, swiftly. He lifted his own gun as he neared the building. Then he eased around the corner and disappeared from view.

Saying a quick prayer, I gripped the Taser in my sweaty palm. I had told Henry I’d obey his every order, but patience wasn’t one of my strengths.

Taking a deep breath, I stood and ran toward the building on quiet feet and peeked around the corner. The coast was clear, so I sprinted along the side of the shack. Tiny purple feathers were scattered like confetti along the cracked blacktop. Candi was definitely here.

When I heard two shots pop off in quick succession, my head snapped up.

Oh no.
Please not Henry. Please not Henry.

He’d tell me to stay put, keep myself out of harm’s way. Screw that. I ran to the front of the shack. The wood had been pried off the entrance and propped against the rotted siding. A gaping hole stood where the door should be.

I’d been a fool to let Henry go in there alone. I thought about calling out, asking if he was all right. It could have been his gun firing. But if that were the case, I’d have heard his voice by now.

Squatting low to the ground, I tipped my head around the doorframe and peered inside. Henry lay sprawled on his stomach. A flow of blood seeped out from under his chest and slipped into the seams of the dirty tiled floor.
Fuck
. How badly had he been shot? Was he still alive?

I duck-stepped forward and craned my head to get a better view. There was no sign of Henry’s gun. I heard sounds coming from an inner office. Footsteps shuffling back and forth. Al pacing?

Keeping the office door in view, my eyes darted to Henry. His back slowly rose, but his breath rattled. Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked them back. I couldn’t sit here and cry while the life bled out of Henry. Not happening. And Candi was probably in that back office. Dead? Alive? I didn’t know. She hadn’t made a peep. I hoped to hell the police were on their way, but I couldn’t wait. If Candi was still alive, I had to neutralize Al.

As if my thought magically summoned him, Al Bosworth came into view. With wrists crossed on top of his head, a gun in his right hand, he paced to the door and closed his eyes. His face went slack, his shoulders slouched downward. That spidey sense that I sometimes get, the gut deep, bone-chilling certainty—I had it now. Al planned on killing himself. There was no way out. He’d taken Carlucci’s daughter, killed three people, and shot a fourth. He had nothing left to lose. What I didn’t know was if he planned on killing Henry and Candi before turning the gun on himself.

I couldn’t wait to find out. I needed to strike now. While Henry was still breathing.

In one fluid motion, I sprinted toward Al. He stood only six or seven feet away. If I could zap him before he trained the gun on me, I might have a chance.

Only two feet into the room, he opened his eyes and saw me.

Then everything happened in slow motion.

Al’s expression was one of shock as he lowered the gun, aimed it at my chest. At the same time, I ducked and leapt forward, hoping to ram my head into his midsection.

The bullet grazed the left side of my neck near my ear, but I barely felt it as I careened into him, tackling him to the ground. Upon impact, I lost the stun gun, so I started scraping at Al’s arm, using my short nails to dig into his skin as I scrambled to take the gun from him.

Al raised his left hand and swung, smacking the side of my head so hard my ears rang. While I lay on top of him, too stunned to move, he rolled over and pinned me beneath his body. His large hand clamped over my right wrist, squeezing as he slammed my arm into the floor.

I was pretty sure he’d broken something. I screamed in agony. Pain, sharp and immediate, shot from my hand to my shoulder. Bile rushed to my throat and black spots appeared before my eyes. 

As he held me with his left hand, I batted at his right arm. Despite my resistance, he attempted to point the gun at my temple. As I stared into his crazed brown-gray eyes, I raised my head off the ground and butted my forehead into his nose. It wasn’t as hard as I’d hoped it would be, but as he rained cuss words down on me, he reared back a few inches. A few precious inches.

It was all the room I needed to work my left arm upward. Kai’s words came back to me.
Aim for the soft tissue.
And so I did.

I stabbed my thumb into Al’s eye as hard as I could, until it burst like a rotten grape. He yelled, long and loud, as blood and fluid gushed onto my chin.

Al dropped the gun and rolled off me, covering his eye with both hands.

“You bitch,” he screamed over and over. “I’m going to kill you. You bitch.”

I hopped up, and that’s when I saw Candi sitting huddled in a corner, not moving, her eyes closed.

I grabbed the gun in my left hand—my right hand didn’t seem to be working at all—and keeping my gaze on Al, walked backward toward her. I nudged her leg with my foot and she moaned. She was alive. I couldn’t say the same about Henry.

Al continued to roll around on the floor, but he lay right in front of the door, blocking my path to freedom.

I cocked the revolver, my left arm trembling so hard I almost lost my grip. “Move away from the door.”

Blood covered his face. His good eye rolled in its socket and locked onto me. “You’ll have to kill me to get out of here. I had it all planned, every detail. And then you came along, asking questions. I killed Buster because of you.” He tried to stumble to his feet, and I kicked out at him, then danced away. I didn’t want to get too close. Even injured, he was more powerful than I was.

“Why
did
you kill him?”

“He saw my text to Rob, knew I was the one who lured him to the lake. Buster wasn’t smart, but he put two and two together. You’re going to pay for my eye. I’m going to pluck out both of yours. See how you like it.”

Gritting his teeth, he groaned and tried to climb to his feet once more. Again, I kicked out at him, but he didn’t go down as hard this time. He covered his injured eye with one hand.

“You overheard my conversation with Buster at the Rutherfords’,” I said.

“He was going to tell you what I did. I couldn’t let that happen. Buster’s dead because of you.”

“No, he’s dead because of you. Don’t make me shoot you, Al. Just get the hell out of here. Leave while you still have the chance.”

When he smiled, his teeth were stained pink. “You can’t shoot me. Look at your hand. It’s shaking like a leaf. You’ll shoot, you’ll miss. I’ll grab that gun and kill us all.”

I had a choice to make. One I’d made before. Taking someone’s life stays with you. Weighs on you. You can’t erase that moment. No matter how justified I was in doing it the first time, I didn’t want to kill again.

I lowered the gun, my hand wavering. “We don’t have to do this. We can all walk away.”

“Not your friend in there. He’s as good as dead. Besides, there’s nowhere for me to run. When Carlucci finds me, he won’t kill me quick. He’ll drag it out. But I made him suffer too. For months.” Then he jumped to his feet and lunged toward me.

I brought the gun up halfway and fired off a shot, hitting him in the thigh.

“Shit,” he yelled, his teeth clenched in pain. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, you dumb little bitch.” Less than three feet from me, he dragged his leg and kept coming.

As I pointed the gun toward his head, my hand wobbling, tears rolled down my cheeks. “I don’t want to do this.”

A shot sounded, reverberating through the tiny shack. But it wasn’t my gun, not this time.

Al abruptly stopped moving. A wet stain appeared on the front of his black t-shirt. He glanced down at it, confusion distorting his bloody face. The stain grew bigger, saturating the dark material. A red trickle oozed from the side of his mouth as he fell to his knees. When he keeled onto his side, I knew Al was dead.

“Are you all right, Rose?”

I swung toward the window where Andre gazed through the slats, a smoking gun in his hand. “Henry.” I hurdled Al’s body and ran to the front of the building, praying Henry was still alive. Still breathing.

Dropping to the floor, I let the gun clatter next to me.

Andre came through the front entrance, his face ashen and sweaty. He hunched down on Henry’s right side. “I called 911 on my way over, but they may not make it in time. He sounds bad.”

“Henry’s not going to die. He can’t,” I said, sobbing on the words. “He’s tough. We have to stop the bleeding. How do we stop it?”

Andre shook his head. “We can’t.”

Ignoring the pain in my wrist, I lay down next to Henry. So much color had drained from his face, he was nearly blue. With my left hand, I stroked back his hair. “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me? You’re going to be fine.”

Sullivan and Carlucci arrived right before the first responders.

Sullivan’s golden skin paled as he hunched down next to Henry. He narrowed his eyes in grief and anger. “Damn it, Henry. Don’t you die on me, you bastard.”

Carlucci’s panicked gaze darted around the small room. “Where is she? Where’s my baby?”

Andre stood. “The back room. She’s alive.”

Carlucci tripped over me to get to his daughter.

I reached out and grabbed Sullivan’s hand. “He’s going to make it.”

He nodded once.

In the next minute, the building was flooded with cops and paramedics. I scooted out of the way as they quickly went to work on Henry. Within minutes, they carted him onto the ambulance, unconscious and barely breathing. I wanted to go too, but the police made me stay and answer questions.

Sullivan was torn. I watched it play out across his features—anguish for Henry, anxiety over me.

“Go with him,” I said. “Call me the second you find out anything.”

He nodded and threw himself in the back of the ambulance before it tore out of the lot, sirens blaring.

Carlucci rode to the hospital with his daughter. She’d been drugged, but was stable.

A fireman wrapped my arm, surmising that my wrist was probably broken. Since I couldn’t move it without excruciating pain, I figured his diagnosis was correct.

The gunshot I’d taken to the neck was a flesh wound. I was covered in blood. My own and Al’s.

Through it all, Andre stayed by my side. As I answered the uniformed officers’ questions, I could barely concentrate. My mind was on Henry.

When a plainclothes cop asked me to go over my story again, Andre took charge. “You can ask her at the hospital. She needs medical attention.”

An officer stood in his way, but Andre gently took my arm and steered me to the police car. “We need to get her to the hospital. Now.”

The detective nodded, and a uniform escorted us to the Huntingford Memorial ER. In the back of the car, I called Sullivan.

“Any word?”

“No. He’s in surgery now.”

It took forever to get an x-ray. The cops and nurses hounded me with a million questions about what happened in the shack and my medical history, respectively. The cops finally left and the doctor put my arm in a temporary splint until the swelling went down.

The minute he released me, I raced out of the ER. On the third-floor waiting room, Sullivan sat with his elbows planted on his knees. His steepled fingers rested against his mouth as he stared into space.

“Any news?” I asked.