“Damn, Nick, can I sleep in tomorrow?” She turned in his arms, hugging him to a stop midway down the hall.
“You sleep in every morning.” Nick held her, kissing the top of her head. “What would be different about tomorrow?”
“Brat! Everyone sleeps in compared to you. What time is it anyway?”
“Nearly one-thirty.”
“That was a wonderful few hours.” Rachel pressed tightly into him, moving her lips to his bare neck. He knew she could feel the desired affect her movements had on him. She twisted away toward her bedroom. “Goodnight, Nick.”
“I am so going to wake you at five, you little tart.”
Rachel gave him the wave off, continued into her bedroom, and closed the door. Nick walked by and quietly opened Jean’s bedroom door. Deke streaked by him toward the stairs. Nick followed quickly, finding Deke panting at the locked glass patio door. He barely had time to slide the door back far enough before Deke jammed through the opening and over to the nearest desert plant.
“Sorry about that, Deke. I should have let you out earlier. That’ll teach you to stick your cold nose into my business.” Nick waited, but Deke ignored him and walked over to his gnawed soup bone. Ignoring Nick’s urging to bring the bone inside, Deke laid down with the bone between his front paws and went to work on it. “Okay, but you’ll be out for the night. I have to lock up buddy.”
He closed the door, waiting a few more moments, hoping Deke would change his mind. When the dog stayed where he was, Nick locked the door and reset his security system. He returned to the bedroom and his bed. He found it difficult to sleep with Rachel’s scent everywhere, but started to drift off after fifteen minutes. No sooner did the first stage of sleep overcome him than the phone rang on the night stand next to his head. He grabbed it up before it could complete the ring, hoping the sound had not disturbed Rachel and Jean.
“Hello.”
“Ross? You have to come over here,” Suzan’s voice sobbed into his ear.
“Calm down, Suzan,” he urged, moving from the bed, and pulling on his jeans with one hand. “Tell me what’s happening, one step at a time.”
“We had a bunch of hang up calls, and then a van parked across the street at around midnight. No one is getting out of it. I…I waited for them to go away, but they’re still here. Should I -”
“No, you were right to call. I’ll come by and check the van out. Does it look like a delivery van or one of those minivan types.”
“It’s a big one. I mean…it’s not one of those little ones.”
“What color?”
“Dark Blue.”
“Okay, stay in the house with the kids and don’t come out. I’ll jog over so it’ll take me a couple minutes. I’ll come to the door if everything is okay.”
“Thanks Ross.”
Nick hung up and hurriedly put on his socks and tennis shoes. He took a black t-shirt from his drawer and put it on before taking the silenced Heckler & Koch.45 caliber handgun from his vault. Nick grabbed the light jacket he had fitted to carry the H &K, and jogged down the stairs. Five minutes later he slowed, checking out the cars near the Benoit residence on the street. No van was in sight when he went up to the Benoit house and tapped on the door, his hand on the H &K grip. Suzan answered the door. She began crying the moment she saw him. What the hell?
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…” Suzan sobbed, retreating from the door. “I’m supposed to tell you everything’s okay. I…I can’t. They were going to kill us.”
“How many?” He went through the door and grabbed Suzan. “Think. How many guys came in the house?”
“Three…but I think there was a fourth, because someone started the van when the three men left.”
“Is the van they drove a dark-blue full-size like you said, and when did they leave?”
“Yes, the minute you told me you’d be over.”
“They’re hitting my house. Shit! Keep the throwaway cell on you. Pack up your kids. Go stay at a motel until I contact you.” Nick left the house at a run, cutting down the street in back of his house. He saw the security lights and heard Deke barking at the back of his place. He knew the neighbor at the rear of his property did not have a dog so he leaped their fence at a run and moved to the next fence bordering their properties. He pulled himself up to look into his backyard. Deke heard him. The dog left the patio door to investigate the fence. Nick went over quietly, slipping down next to Deke. Staying along the border of his fence, he rounded his backyard. He crossed to the patio inside the security light’s glare, with the dog shadowing his moves.
Inside the living room, he saw two men waiting, their eyes on the front entrance, with silenced handguns. Knowing he had locked the sliding glass door, and the men inside would not have opened it with Deke in the backyard, Nick moved to the sturdy lounger Rachel had lain in earlier. He took off his belt, and looped one end around Deke’s neck, and the other he cinched around a table leg.
Gripping the middle sides of the lounger, Nick used it as a battering ram and plowed through the patio door glass. Once through, he tossed the lounger left, while he dove to the right, drawing his H &K. The two men fired wildly at the lounger. One went down immediately with a.45 caliber slug through his head. Nick shot the shoulder of the second man, the.45 slug potent enough to knock the man down flat. Nick covered the distance between himself and the wounded man in seconds. The man was feebly trying to roll toward him. Before he could turn, Nick slammed the butt of his weapon against the man’s temple, stunning him. He quickly disarmed him, and dragged the man into the kitchen to the cupboard where he kept his duct tape.
Keeping his eyes on the downed man in the living room, He duct-taped the wounded man’s wrists and feet behind him, and together. Then he made sure of his kill. He quickly frisked the dead man for ID and weapons. With those items, he returned to the kitchen and repeated the process, evoking a groan from the trussed man. Deke started barking again, so he hurriedly dragged the wounded man onto a kitchen chair, and duct-taped him to it securely. With the confiscated weapons on the kitchen counter, he carried Deke over the broken glass and into the garage.
“Stay here for a moment. This may get a little messy,” Nick told the dog while pulling a stun gun out of the Escalade’s glove compartment. Leaving Deke out in the garage, he returned to the kitchen.
After checking to see how much blood was flowing from his captive’s shoulder wound, he stuffed some towels inside the man’s shirt, and duct taped them in place. He unfastened the man’s pants, and yanked them down with his underwear. Filling a glass of water next, he flung it in the man’s face. The man regained consciousness, groaning for help, only to be slapped in the face with hard, flat hand swipes.
“Can you hear me now?” Nick shook the man’s chin.
“Oh shit!” The man’s eyes widened when he recognized who had his jaw in a vice-like grip.
“I see Suzan must have told you what happened to the other guys who tried this crap on me.” Nick fired off an arc. “I’d advise you to start talking, beginning with what route your partners took the woman and girl.”
“Route 93 out of the city, then hit Interstate 40 all the way to Georgia, then…”
“I get the picture. They left you and the dead man to kill me. What then?”
“Follow in your vehicle with the body. Please, man…that’s the honest to God’s truth. Don’t -”
“Shut up. Who connected you to us?”
“Craig and Joe. They…they were supposed to kill everyone but the woman.”
“Including Brewster?” Nick interrupted, pissed off Joe held out on him.
“Yes.”
“Then you guys are independents?”
“We had a buyer for the drives.”
“Who?”
“Tanus’s rivals, ah, Fletcher Exports.”