The Shack series

Chapter 19

"s**t, even if you did there isn't much you could have done about it."

"He had a g*n. He's licensed as a personal security guard. With everything that's happened, I thought you should know."

"Any idea who he is working for?"

"He didn't seem like any kind of security guard I'd ever met. Had the whole hoody and baggy jeans thing going on, and I got the impression he's had a lot of run-ins with police. He seemed to find the whole thing kind of funny in a nasty way. The license said Gold Shield Security. I've never heard of them. But it ran okay when I checked it."

"Did you get his name?"

"John Ellis. I ran him and he doesn't have any wants or felonies, but he has a string of misdemeanor battery and assault charges."

Delaney stared at her steadily. "Did you see him taking pictures of me?"

Hyatt shook her head. "I didn't, but the missing SD card is a pretty good indicator. Nothing I could hold him on, and it wouldn't stand up for probable cause. It was called in by Burton Merkowski. He drove past on a taco delivery to Friendship Village. They seem to eat a lot of tacos out there. He thought the guy was some kind of pervert."

"Mooky?" Delaney half smiled. "Delivering tacos to Friendship Village?"

Hyatt smiled and shook her head. "Mooky. Lord knows, he's a goofball, but he usually means well. They eat a lot of tacos out at the Village." From her expression, she knew damn good and well why they did. She confirmed it a second later. "If Mrs. Ramirez offers you a brownie, you should probably decline it."

"So we've heard. Glad he called it in. And thanks for running the goon off."

She nodded. "Be careful, I have a bad feeling about that guy."

Delaney gave her a grin. "You up for a few more rounds of poker?"

Hyatt shook her head laughing. "No way. I don't think you play fair."

"A fair is a place you buy corndogs and funnels cakes..." Delaney paused. "Oooh Funnel cakes..."

*****

I could tell by her expression Delaney was thinking about the same thing I was. Maybe Mooky knew more. He was afraid of the cops. Probably afraid of us, too, but that would work in our favor.

"We should drop by and see Mooky, thank him for calling that in, you think?"

Delaney nodded. "Maybe he saw something else."

Mooky's shift at Taco Grande had ended by the time we go there, so we decided to drop by his trailer. It was kind of on the way home, anyway, and Sheree was getting off a bit late.

We grabbed the piebald Mustang Cobra, my "Sally," out of her garage for a change. It'd been a while and I needed to run her a bit.

It wasn't hard to find the spur that ran to his trailer, I was pretty sure I'd picked up a couple abandoned cars for the county there about six years before, long before Mooky was able to set up his grow house.

A black car shot past us as we rounded a long wooded bend. It wasn't a good angle, but l I got a look at the two men in it. Tactical 501 shirts. They might as well have had a huge sign that said "expensive corporate security." This sure as hell wasn't the hoody-and-baggy-pants goons. I caught just an impression of the driver's face, but his obvious annoyance was enough to tell me we might be about to run into a problem.

That was little more clear a fraction of a second later when we burst into a small clearing and saw the glow of flames at the end of Mooky's trailer.

"He's in there!" Delaney pointed at Mooky's patchwork Pinto parked a yard or two from the trailer.

I stomped Sally to a stop far enough to the side of the trailer to makes sure she wouldn't be scorched, jumped out and sprinted for the front door. I yanked on it, but the lock held. Mooky's special door to keep the thieves out of his grow house was going to get him killed.

I started to turn toward Sally, but Delaney was already shoving the crowbar from Sally's trunk into my hands with a smug grin.

I jammed the edge into the jamb right at the lock and heaved back on it until the door popped open. Mooky was right, it was a damn good door, but it was still mounted on a cut rate thirty year old single-wide.

The wave of heat from the flames consuming the end of the trailer was staggering, but I gritted my teeth and pushed in.

Roiling black smoke filled the place, I dropped straight down into the clear space below the smoke, crawled in and found myself staring right at Mooky's skinny a*s. As in his butt was less than a foot in front of my nose. I grabbed his belt and started dragging him backwards, searching for the door frame with my foot until a hand grabbed my ankle and began tugging on me. Delaney, half in and half out the doorway guided me back.

We tumbled in a heap down the cheap aluminum steps.

"Is he alive?" Delaney, tears from the smoke tracking down her face, tried to shake Mooky awake. I sat up and reached over just as he gave a weak cough.

"Thank God."

Delaney gave me a crooked grin. "I knew you liked him! How can you not like somebody named 'Mooky'?"

"Damn no, I was just afraid I'd have to try to resuscitate him. Be like giving mouth to mouth to a Damning bong. End up coming to, in Cleveland, with no shoes, no shirt and 24 cents in bent pennies in my pocket."

"What'd the Sheriff say? 'That's oddly specific'?" She snickered and we managed to sit him up. Half his hair was curled by the heat, he was lucky it hadn't caught fire. Angry, livid bruises were starting to form on the whole left side of his face.

Delaney looked sharply back down the road. "I think they're coming back."

I listened and made out the distinctive sound of the Audi's engine getting louder. They must have reached the main road then decided to come back to finish the job and get rid of the witnesses.

"Shit." I looked around. A second later, the sound of a siren wailed up from the same direction. The distinctive pops of a handgun drifted up. I caught Delaney's eyes. "We need to get him back behind Sally, this is about to turn into a Damning circus."

Just as we reached the back of the Mustang, the Audi erupted from the trees and slid to a stop next to the Pinto. Before it was even completely still, a deputy's cruiser powered in, pulling sideways, blocking most of the road. Two men in suits were out of the Audi almost simultaneously, firing what looked to be Glocks at the police cruiser. A second later, shots started answering from near the front bumper of the cruiser.

"Damn this." I stepped past Delaney and Mooky, reached under the dash and pulled out my .45. "Stay down."

Delaney flattened herself to look under the car. Not exactly what I intended, but I didn't have time to argue.

I walked forward until I had a clear line of sight on both gunmen. Blinded by the blazing trailer, they couldn't see me. I was hoping the deputy would realize we were on the same side and not shoot me.

The driver spun as the first two rounds from the 1911 caught him in through the chest. The second shooter, too focused on the deputy, took too long to react, and the next double tap caught him easily. It was a little sloppy, the first round was center mass, but the second punched up through his collarbone into his neck. Neither one of those Damners was getting back up.

Hoping the deputy was watching, I held the 1911 up and ejected the magazine, then locked slide back, sending the chambered round flying into the darkness. "Clear"

A hand tapped weakly at the ground near the front tire.

"Shit." I sprinted for the fallen deputy, shoving the g*n into my belt.

Deputy Hyatt, all four foot ten inches of her was staring up at me, gasping in pain. "Hit..twice. knee...and...and..." She shook violently for a second. "Arm."

"Delaney! Trauma kit! Now!"

She must have already been on her way, she slid to a stop on her knees shoving the kit into my hands. "Work fast. I'm getting Sally now."

"We need to call..."

Delaney grabbed my shoulder. "I don't think we have time. Remember how you told me 'most' cars don't explode?"

The way she said, "most" caught my attention. "The Pinto?"

"The Pinto. It's on fire."

"Damn." With the cars packed in the way they were, the small clearing was about to become an inferno. The Pinto probably wouldn't actually explode, but in an area as small as this, it wouldn't really matter.

I could hear Sally roar to life as I struggled to get Hyatt's vest off and get a look at the wound. She wasn't bleeding out, so at least that was a good sign. I took a quick look at her knee. Plenty of blood, looked like a tib fib injury, both bones in the lower leg had been smashed near the knee. Had to hurt like hell, but she had a little time.

Delaney pulled up next to me, she had the passenger seat all the way back and laid down so I could just pull Hyatt in on top of me and slammed the door. She screamed as her leg bounced.

"Go!"

As Sally tore past the cruiser, I heard a crunching sound, but the thump of the Pinto's gas tank immediately overwhelmed it as the whole clearing filled with flame.

"I'm sorry. God. I'm sorry." Delaney looked horrified.

"We made it." I managed to get the pressure dressing on her arm, then pulled a roll splint out and began to stabilize her knee.

"Your mirror. There wasn't enough room and the mirror on this side..."

I couldn't help it. I started laughing. "I can get another. It's just a mirror, Princess. I'll trade that for third degree burns any day.

She started to slow. "I can stop here if you want."

"Keep going, there's a propane tank by the trailer."

I was still working on Hyatt, nearly another mile down the road when I saw the flames shoot up into the sky behind us. "Sheriff better have his insurance paid up on that cruiser."

Delaney suddenly slowed and began flashing the brights. "We better get out really slow. They look pissed."

Every deputy available must have been standing at the road block, shotguns out.

Delaney shut Sally off and stepped out slowly with her hands up. "Hyatt's been shot. Needles is trying to help her. He's getting out now."

I managed to get Hyatt on the ground, and two EMTs were at my side almost instantly. The one with the blonde crew cut looked her over rapidly as I described the injuries. "This is pretty good work, you do this in a moving car?"

"Didn't have a lot of choice. Done it in Humvees a few times, anyway. How the hell did you get here this fast?"

"When the deputy called in 'shots fired,' the Sheriff gave an all call. He figured somebody was going down."

Delaney had raced over to the Sheriff and was talking animatedly.

We started to load Hyatt up and Delaney raced over and leaned over her. "You still owe me some candy bars. You're not getting out of it this way."

Hyatt blinked her eyes open and tried not to laugh. "I'll pay up. I still think you cheated somehow."

Delaney grinned. "We didn't have electricity for four months when we first moved to the cabin, so we played poker every night."

Hyatt narrowed her eyes at me the best she could. "You turned her into a card shark?"

"What? I was teaching her math. It was homeschooling."

Hyatt was still chuckling weakly as we watched them load her up into the ambulance and head out.

The Sheriff walked up beside us. "Delaney explained it. Two perps down, maybe Hyatt..." He stared at me from under lowered brows. "Maybe you. That's fine, they shot at one of my deputies, so they're bought and paid for. We'll fill in the details later. I'll need your g*n though, to check ballistics." He looked up the road at the blazing clearing. "It'll be morning before we can even recover the bodies."