Protect (20 page)

The first gunshots came fast. There was
shouting off in the direction of the bedrooms and the automatic
gunfire cut it short. Jayce and Fritter waited at the hallway, then
when Tiny and Knuckles emerged they headed to the door to the
basement.

Before they reached it the door flew outward.
Jayce was behind the door so it bounced off his arm. The man
rushing into the kitchen had a revolver drawn, and a shot flew wide
of Fritter. It took nothing to cut him in half with one short burst
from the AK.

People were shouting in the basement. With a
bizarre, blood-curdling scream Knuckles charged headlong down the
stairs.

“Wait!” Fritter was shouting, flying after
the asshole at the same time.

The stairs were wooden, open on one side,
concrete on the other. Knuckles kept firing off short bursts as he
reached the bottom of the stairwell, then he sprayed the room.
Fritter didn’t feel another close call all the way down the stairs,
but as he came to a stop next to Fritter he had to pause and take
it all in.

“Holy shit,” he mumbled, moving further into
the room behind Knuckles.

They had to walk single-file. There were
tables filling the space with only about a foot and a half between
them. And every flat space looked like a chemistry lab.

“You believe this shit? They were cooking in
Markham?” Fritter’s voice seemed quiet when it was competing with
ringing ears.

“Or starting to anyway,” Knuckles said,
looking at the equipment with great interest. “This shit all looks
really new.”

“Fucking stinks down here, man.”

“You okay down there?” Tiny bellowed from
above.

“It’s all good,” Fritter shouted back.

“We’re gonna check the shed out back.”

“Go for it!” Fritter turned back to Knuckles.
“I gotta get out of here. I’m getting light-headed.”

“Yeah. I’m guessing I punctured a few
chemical containers.”

As he spoke there was the slightest tinkle,
the shifting of broken glass on a concrete floor, and they were
both spinning to the sound but Fritter was faster. The AK came up
just as the woman sprang to her feet, shotgun pointed their way,
face contorted from whatever she was shouting at them. The boom of
the double barrel was monstrous, but the AK was more accurate. He
got her right in the head, cutting her battle cry short.

“Fuck me,” Knuckles mumbled, following
Fritter to the corpse. He kicked her foot lightly. “That’s the end
of the horror movie right there.”

“Do we leave it or torch this place?”

Knuckles shrugged. “Let’s ask Jayce. There’s
lots of trees here and the houses aren’t very far apart.”

“Good point.”

It’d be a shit move to burn down a
neighborhood when you were just trying to do a good deed.

It was decided they’d leave the house
standing for those same reasons. In two minutes flat they were back
at the Yukon, diving into the same places as lights were coming on
in the surrounding houses. Tims had started the engine when he saw
them coming so they were off quickly, and for his part Fritter was
sure that no one had even made it to a window by the time they were
gone.

The clubhouse gates rolled open as their SUV
approached then closed behind them. The yard light was off, so as
they climbed out of the Yukon they were in pitch darkness. Music
was pounding out of the clubhouse, giving the illusion of a party
going on. As planned, they turned their weapons in first.
Ground-floor rooms of the motel were also kept dark, and once
inside a specific room they tossed their guns into the vacant space
inside the bed platforms.

When they were in the clubhouse again Fritter
took the time to see who had beat them back. Two other teams,
including Tank and Buck’s group, were taking well-deserved shots of
Jack. Their women had all been sequestered here at the motel for
the operation so they just had to stumble back to their rooms to
work off the jitters the adrenalin left behind.

A crew of Nomads were also back safe and
sound, and as Fritter downed his first shot Mickey`s crew, which
was mostly made up of Nomads, rolled through the doors. Jolene had
been waiting for her old man and she pounced the second he came
through the doors. Guido’s team came next. And then they waited for
the sixth crew. It was another smaller one, three men designated to
go out to a trailer park in the south end of Markham, not far from
the first trailer the Rebels had found out about. Richey and Red
were in that crew, along with a Nomad.

12:10 came and went. 12:20. At 12:30 everyone
was starting to get nervous, and the music got turned down.

At 12:37 the doors opened and all hell broke
loose. There was shouting, the sound of a man screaming in pain,
and the room jumped into action.

Richey had been hit. Fritter saw the blood
and his second dose of adrenalin hit stronger and harder.

“Board room!” he yelled at Red and the Nomad,
whose name he didn’t know, and he ran for the doors, flinging them
open. With numb hands he found the switch and flooded the room with
light, then he swept all the weapons off the table with one arm.
Red and the Nomad got Richey on the table and Fritter set to work
pulling his hoodie open.

“Fuck. Ah, fuck.”

“One of these assholes came out of nowhere,
had a gun. Richey drew on him but his clip was spent. These guys
had a ton of fucking guns, man.” Red sounded like he was minutes
from weeping.

Richey’s guts were perforated like toilet
paper. It was obvious from the smell they’d hit the bowels. How the
hell he’d lived through the drive ...

“Fuck, it hurts.”

Red grabbed his friend’s hand, bringing his
face close. When Fritter looked up Jayce was there too, holding
Richey’s other hand.

“Hold on, Richey. Just hold on, man.”

Richey looked to his President. “I got two of
them. I fucking got two of them.”

“You’re the man, Richey. You get through this
and Knuckles will hook you up with the triplets.”

Richey laughed, and the sound was wet.
Mottled. At least it took his mind off of what was happening.

Richey Tatlow died three minutes later under
the florescent lights of the board room, bleeding onto an old
office reject conference table, his grey eyes focused on stained
ceiling tiles. Twenty-four years old, and very far from his home in
Illinois.

Well, I found something more painful than
childbirth
, Sharon mused as she kicked off her heels—not high,
just high for her—the second she was through her front door. Public
debate. How fucking awful.

She was pretty sure she handled herself all
right. For every snarky comment Turnbull had, Sharon had an answer
that began with “At the police academy we learned,” and that always
managed to come off sounding like she was educating, not making fun
of.

But she was sorta making fun of his asinine
digs that were phrased to sound like questions.

Only one thing hurt her. His point about
there being plenty of criminals in town, and they all rode
motorcycles.

It wasn’t that statement that was death blow.
Sharon pointed out that motorcycles weren’t illegal, and no matter
what vehicles were being driven people were welcome to report
crimes to the Sheriff’s department and they would be
investigated.

Turnbull’s counter point was the start of an
uncomfortable exchange. “But sometimes these criminals are allowed
to carry on with the Sheriff’s blessing.”

As stupid as it was, she was shocked by that.
And so was the room; she heard the gasps of surprise and wondered
if maybe it hadn’t been a stupid move on Turnbull’s part.

She asked for an example, and he used the
example of his son being assaulted by a “biker” at a nightclub who
in turn had not served a day of jail time.

Tank had been jumped in jail and ended up in
a coma. But she wasn’t bringing that up. Instead she rebutted that
Turnbull’s son had presumed to put hands on a woman at that
nightclub, then called her a derogatory term when she refused his
attentions, of course implying his son required limited sympathy in
the matter. And, in actuality, Williams was arrested and the
charges were later dropped. So how that could be seen as a neglect
of her duty was a bit of a mystery.

He took that rebuttal but there was something
in the room that had her back up. It didn’t feel like anyone was
really on her side suddenly. She watched the crowd as Turnbull
spoke and saw the majority of people nodding in agreement.

Not that the turnout for a debate was a great
cross-section for voters. But she had her first little twinge of
doubt.

Now as she sank into her sofa with a cold
bottle of beer, still in her “fancy” clothes—just a navy pants suit
and white blouse—she looked around the living room and wondered how
the hell she’d live if she lost this job.

Those were fucking depressing thoughts.
Pushing herself back to her feet she shrugged out of the suit
jacket and headed to her bedroom to change into something
comfortable, draining the beer as she went.

Brayden was out. How he made friends in less
than two weeks she had no idea, but when he wasn’t working he was
off with kids he’d met working at the garage. They didn’t work
there, weren’t affiliated with the club thank God, but they were
kids that hung out downtown in the summer working at the hardware
store, shoe store, and greasy spoon diner. She was glad. Her
schedule normally would have made her feel guilty leaving him alone
as much as she did, but he found his own life for the next couple
months.

Still wasn’t doing his damn laundry,
though.

She pulled on flannel pants and a T-shirt,
washed the make-up off her face, then the phone rang. A special
ring she’d programmed when it was work. Come to think of it, that
was unnecessary. No one else called her.

“Hello?” she said into the bedroom
receiver.

When Martin spoke she knew immediately
something big had happened. “Sheriff?” There were voices in the
background, ringing phones, so much activity she doubted where he
was calling from for a minute.

“What’s going on?”

“Fuck. I don’t ... I can’t even tell you.
I’ve called in everyone else to block off crime scenes. We need
more people.”

“Wait, what happened?”

He took a deep breath. “Six break and enters.
Twenty-seven homicides. I got a gun storage house, a meth lab, and
what might have been another trafficking depot that have been hit.
Everyone’s dead. Fuck, there’s not a survivor in any location.”

She sat on the edge of her bed. “Jesus.”

“What do I do?”

“You called the coroner?”

“Yeah, he’s on his way to the first place
closest to his house.”

“All the scenes are being processed?”

“Yeah. Is it ... is it okay if I call ATF and
DEA? I mean, one place had a huge gun drop in the basement. They
even had a Browning machine gun. M16s. I mean, Jesus. We’re not
talking a few handguns with the numbers filed off. And one basement
was definitely a meth lab.”

Sharon was already nodding. “Yeah, definitely
call in the big boys. You call ATF, I got the DEA.”

“Okay. Are you ... can you come in?”

Shit. One beer did not make her drunk but ...
well, fuck it. She had to. “Yeah. I’ll change and be right in.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry, I know it’s your night
off.”

Sharon laughed at that. “What’s a night off
again?”

Martin laughed with her. “Yeah, tell me about
it. Life got fucking crazy the last little while.”

“Yes, it did. I’ll be in as soon as I
can.”

She didn’t bother with her full uniform.
Jeans, sweatshirt, gun in a shoulder holster under her Markham
County Sheriff’s Department windbreaker. Before leaving the house
she called up the number she’d entered in her phone the day she’d
received Agent Terrance Hogan’s card.

When he answered she tried to keep her voice
light. “Hey, it’s Downey in Markham County.”

“Sheriff,” his voice sounded warm, like he
was happy she’d called. Well, she’d fix that.

“I think I know why you want to take me for
dinner.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I always call you with the most
interesting stories to tell.”

He chuckled, and it was a good, masculine
sound. “Okay, sock it to me, Sheriff.”

“Tonight we had six residences broken into,
and we currently have twenty-seven very dead bodies to sort
out.”

His pause almost made her laugh as she
unlocked the doors to her Focus.

“One of the sites was housing a weapon store
with some pretty illegal models. But specifically for your
enjoyment, another house had a meth lab in the basement.”

“Jesus.”

“This is too big for my department. I’m
barely able to tape off and process all these scenes.”

“Were all the victims connected?”

Sharon started her car. “I’m assuming they
were. We
are
processing the scenes. I just need help on this
one, too. It’s too big.”

“I understand. We find an organized crime
link and that’ll ease some of the load.”

She sighed. “Thank you so much.”

“I’ll get some guys together. You calling
ATF?”

“My deputy is.”

“We’ll take the meth lab. This sounds like a
turf war.”

She nodded, then remembered she was on the
phone. “Yeah. It does. But every time I turn around there’s more
players in this bullshit game.”

“I’ll be there in a few hours. Maybe I’ll
have to take you for brunch instead of dinner.”

She laughed at that. “Sure. We’ll see. Might
have to be lunch.”

“Take care. See you soon.”

She hung up the phone, her stomach feeling
warm.
See you soon.
That was said so nice, so reassuring.
Professional courtesy, but a little bit more.

What the hell was she doing? She had
twenty-seven homicides to sort out.