kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) (22 page)

“Lance, Dave—stop! Someone’s at the door.” She had to repeat herself before the men separated. By the time they looked over at the door they could see no one.

Then a loud knock made them all jump.

A voice from outside said, “UPS, package.” Another knock.

Dave straightened out his clothes and, with a glare at Lance, went to the door. Lance looked at his sister and said he was going to the bathroom.

“I need to talk to you Lance, right now, in private.”

“I just said I gotta use the bathroom. I’ll be right back out.”

She stalked after him. “No. I want a word with you, now.” She followed Dave into the laundry room, but Lance made a right into the small bathroom—Kristen barging in behind him—while Dave made a left to the house door. Tara stayed in the kitchen, listening.

In the bathroom, Kristen closed the door behind her. She spun Lance around so that he faced the mirror, his still bruised and swollen eye winking back at him over a beer-soaked T-shirt with one sleeve ripped apart from his tousle with Dave.

“Look at yourself. Don’t say anything. I just want you to look at the sorry state you’re in and tell me if you see what I see.”

“I see a guy who needs a beer right about now.”

“Damn you, Lance! You just don’t get it, do you!” Kristen then launched into a one-person intervention, telling her brother that he had gone so far beyond any semblance of self-control that she needed to know if he was in possession of his full mental faculties. “Where is my brother?” she finished, shaking him by the shoulders. “What happened to the kid I used to know who would program our home network with a message telling me my computer was going to explode in ten seconds? Do you remember those days, when we were a family? That family still loves you, and needs you, Lance.”

Dave, meanwhile, was greeted at the door by a delivery man in the recognizable brown uniform. A large square box sat on the ground just outside the door.

“I didn’t order any packages,” she heard Dave say as she slipped into the living room. The hairs on Tara's arms bristled with a kind of sixth sense.
I've got a situation here.
Then a human form quietly entered the house, limned against the tropical day outside. She didn't want to pull her gun just yet—after all, this was a collegiate residence shared by several roommates—but she recognized that she felt less than safe.

Tara took out her cell-phone and was about to hit speed dial for the field office when a bullet smacked into the phone, which careened out of her hand somewhere unseen. Tara ducked behind the ratty couch and instantly replaced the phone with her Glock. She recognized that something was odd about the shot that took her phone. It had not been accompanied with the typical report.
Sound suppressor
, she thought with a chill.
These guys are the kidnappers coming to kill Dave.

At the back door, the UPS guy shrugged. “It’s for you, man. You want it or not?” He held out the signing machine.

Dave took one more look at the package and grabbed the signature device. As he dragged the stylus across the instrument’s display, the UPS guy raised his right leg in a fluid move born of repetition and delivered a high kick directly to Dave’s chest. The blow sent Dave reeling backwards while the signing machine gyrated up into the cheap ceiling-mounted light fixture, shattering it. Were it not for the counter, Dave would have been on his back on the floor. The pain as his back slammed into the sharp edge caused Dave’s eyes to close a second before the first of the glass shards from the shattered light rained down on his face.

Utterly caught off guard, Dave held his left arm out in front of him while he plucked the glass from his eyes. When he could see again, the impersonator had stepped into the laundry room, closing the door behind him.

He had a pistol leveled at Dave’s chest.

Fitted with a silencer.

Bracing against the couch, Glock in a two-handed grip, Tara listened for the presence of the gun-wielding intruder while simultaneously searching for anything on the walls that might give a reflection. A couple of unframed concert posters offered no help on the wall nearest her, but on the far wall hung a framed Escher print, its elaborate stairs going to nowhere behind dusty glass. But it was enough to show her attacker swing wide of the couch and raise his weapon as he pointed it in the general direction he correctly guessed Tara to be in.

Dave could see that his attacker was Caucasian, medium height and build, in good shape. He wore close-cropped black hair, almost a buzz cut. Dave had never seen the man before.

“What the hell do you want?” Dave said, eyes full of fear.

“Tell me how you found the yacht,” the attacker commanded.

Dave said nothing. He wanted to shout for Tara, but didn't want to tip off the thug to the special agent's presence. He thought of her as his best hope. His mind reeled, weighing outcomes of various replies. He could get even with Lance by saying it was Kristen’s brother who had somehow led them to the boat. He could tell the truth; he could say—

“Maybe you’ll be more frank with me after I take out one of your knee-caps.” The attacker lowered the silenced handgun, pointing it at Dave’s right knee.

Dave reflexively moved his leg way from the pistol’s sights, but the gunman followed him easily. Then Dave saw a form materialize behind the gunman.

Lance, having emerged from the bathroom with a surprising degree of stealth, held a finger to his lips as soon as he saw Dave register his presence. Dave made a conscious effort not to acknowledge Lance’s being there. Kristen was nowhere to be seen. He wondered where Tara was.

“If you think I won’t shoot because the neighbors’ll come running, you’re dead wrong,” the gunman said, waving the weapon’s elongated barrel at Dave’s face, causing him to duck instinctively. “Silencer.”

Lance took two quiet steps toward the assailant. His right hand came out from behind his back, brandishing some kind of heavy object. Dave wouldn’t allow himself to focus on it long enough to tell what is was. He looked his attacker straight in the eyes, Lance’s blurry form creeping closer in the background.

Dave provided a final distraction by engaging the gunman in conversation that would require the man to think. “If I tell you how we found the boat, you’ll just kill me anyway. So I might as well die with my secret.”

And then, before the gunman had a chance to say anything, Lance Archer made his move.

…CGTG
41
GAAA...

Hawaiian waters are home to a species of conch—the large, edible mollusk of fritter fame—known as a helmet conch, so named for their superficial appearance. Hawaiian legend also has it that hundreds of years ago Polynesian warriors utilized the shells for that very purpose. The flared lip of the shell flows outward from the closed, hard surface, which is studded with knobby spires.

It so happened that Dave had chosen to decorate his bathroom with a most impressive specimen of the species—a shell that Lance had managed to insert his entire right hand into. The commanding shell now sat atop Lance’s fist, its horn-like protuberances facing outward—a melee weapon if there ever was one. Lance took a final step as he brought his right hand all the way back...

...and sprung forward, swinging his shell-topped hand into the back of the unsuspecting gunman’s head with all of the force he could muster.

It was Lance who screamed the loudest with the impact, his pointer finger breaking inside the shell. But the gunman had time only to utter a monosyllabic grunt before he blacked out. Thick gobs of blood from his fractured skull hit the floor after his body had already landed there in an uncontrolled heap.

Dave walked over to Lance, who was gingerly testing the range of motion of his broken finger. “I see you found the crown jewel of my shell collection. Thanks, Lance. I owe you one for that.” Then he added, “Even though that’s kind of like thanking the guy who set fire to my house for also pulling me out, but still...”

Lance looked him in the eyes. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt, I’ll do everything I can to stop it.”

In the living room, Tara's attacker made the mistake of calling out to his partner in the kitchen. From her cover behind the couch, Tara homed in on the source of the voice and stood up shooting. Her gun was not silenced, and the four successive blasts were deafening in the small house. Her opponent was quick to roll to the ground, but not before he'd taken a debilitating shot to the left elbow. He hissed in pain, but returned fire as he back-peddled to the front door.

Lance and Dave both stood in the kitchen staring at their unmoving assailant. Lance recovered first and picked up the attacker’s gun. Then he called back to his sister, “Kristen, come out now.”

Lance's sister emerged cautiously from the bathroom, peeking her head around the corner. Seeing Lance and Dave standing over the unconscious man on the floor, she entered the kitchen, where she bumped into Tara who was running in from the living room.

Tara was hyper-alert, alternately swinging her pistol, held in two hands, from the front door to the rear laundry room entrance. “Dave, any other ways to get into the house?”

Then they heard a
spat
come from the rear door, and Tara knew the silenced pistol had been fired again. A puff of plaster drifted away from the kitchen wall a few inches over Tara's head.

“My car—out the front, c'mon!” Tara said, waving them toward the living room.

Dave nodded, still staring at the man lying on his floor in a smear of blood. “What the hell am I gonna tell my roommates?” he pondered aloud. Then he and Kristen fled through the living room, Kristen swiping her laptop from the table on the way. But Lance was still on the floor next to the kidnapper, threatening him.

“Where's my father?” Tara heard him say. The kidnapper was unresponsive. “Where is he you piece of crap!” Lance shook him, leaving a fat track of blood on the linoleum from the back of his head where the shell had crushed it.

Tara watched as Lance raised his right hand, holding the dispatched kidnapper's own gun. “If you can't tell me, you're dead,” Lance was saying, and then Tara grabbed the pistol out of his hand. She put two fingers on the prostrate man's carotid artery while keeping her Glock at the ready. “He's already dead.”

Tara recognized signs of shock in Lance. “Go,” she told him, pointing to the living room.

Tara heard the back door creak open. Not wanting another confined space shootout, she bolted through the living room. Dave and Kristen peered fearfully out the front door. Dave looked at Tara and shook his head.

…TTAT
42
TTTT...

Outside, Tara saw they were confronted with two problems. Although Dave’s pickup was parked such that the front faced the street, a full-size UPS van had been deliberately parked in front of it, blocking it from rolling forward while the house boxed it in from behind.

Worse, the van's driver side was occupied by another kidnapper who’d been on standby, ready to make a quick getaway after Dave had been dispatched.
How many people are involved in this?
Tara couldn't help but wonder.
A consortium...

But there was no time to dwell on it now.

Seeing their intended target plus three other people come barreling out the front door, the bogus UPS driver reached down in a panic. Tara didn’t wait to see if he was just reaching for his keys. She leveled her Glock at the driver’s shoulder and fired. In so doing she solved one of their problems, because as the driver ducked the shot, he floored the accelerator to move away from Tara's gun, which left Dave with space to leave.

Dave ran to his truck, getting a kick out of yelling “Cover me!” to an FBI agent. Tara did, in fact, provide cover fire. She shot her Glock in the direction of the house while simultaneously firing the deceased kidnapper’s pistol—one Tara recognized as a Chinese M20—toward the front door, behind which the other kidnapper took cover just inside the living room.

Dave jumped in his truck and started it.

“Get in, get in!” he yelled back at them. Kristen was already throwing the passenger-side door open and bouncing into the truck. Lance was sprinting for the vehicle when he tripped and went sprawling onto the concrete.

Then, when Tara was forced to return fire to the kidnapper inside, the van driver reached his gun out the window, aiming for Dave, who threw his truck into gear and rammed into the UPS van. He impacted the driver’s side in the middle, denting it severely. He then backed up to the house and angled the wheel all the way left. He rammed the truck forward once more, hitting the van again.

Lance reached the cover of Dave’s truck as the gunman let loose a trio of silenced rounds. Each of them ricocheted off the pickup in a melodic series of percussive impacts as the projectiles hit different parts of the vehicle’s bodywork.

Then Dave was pulling his truck out into the middle of the small grass yard, honking the horn, hoping to attract the attention of neighbors who would call the police. Kristen waved an arm out the window, beckoning him and Tara to hurry up. Dave crossed the driveway and rumbled over a hedge separating his yard from the next.