“ Hey, lady, what’cha doin’?” It was a girl, maybe eight, maybe nine.
“ Minding my own business, honey,” Lila said.
“ Leave the woman alone, Jane,” a young woman said, her mother probably.
Lila reached into the can, pulled out the coat and her holstered Glock.
“ Is that a gun?” Mom said.
“ Not a real one.” What a stupid thing to say. Of course she knew it was real.
“ What are you going to do with it?” The woman grabbed her child by the arm, pulled the girl close.
“ Ma’am, you should forget about this. It’s police business.” Lila stuffed the gun and duster into the paper bag, realizing she’d just contradicted herself, by saying something equally as stupid.
“ Whatever you say.” The woman, holding her child by the hand now, turned and left. Damn, if she had a cell, and who didn’t, she was going to be calling the cops, sure as shit. She needed to get back to the Fred Meyer store, needed to meet up with Black and hopefully Isadora Eisenhower and then they needed to get out of this town.
“ Keys.” Black held out his hand as they approached Lila Booth’s Ford. She handed them over and he unlocked the passenger door. She opened it and Hunter bounded into the car, jumped the seat and settled in the back. She got in as Black was opening the driver’s door.
“ Ready?” He started the car.
“ Yeah, where are we going?”
“ Not far, don’t know for sure after that.” He backed up like a man who was confident behind the wheel, shifted into drive and in about a minute pulled into the Fred Meyer parking lot, pulled into a parking space and shut off the engine.
“ We’re going shopping?” Izzy said.
“ No, I gotta go in and pick up Lila. I shoulda told her to wait near the front, but I didn’t. She’s at the deli.” He started to get out of the car.
“ I’m going with you.”
“ Not a good idea.”
“ I’m not waiting here.”
“ What about the dog?”
“ He’ll be fine.” She turned to the back, “Be good.”
The dog met her with his odd colored eyes, answered with a low growl.
“ See, he’s good with it. Let’s go.” Izzy pulled the door handle, stopped herself. “Start the car, I’ve got to lower the window some.” He did as she asked and Izzy lowered the window all the way.
“ You’re sure you want it like that?”
“ This dog doesn’t get locked up. If he wants to be here when we get back, he’ll be here.” She got out of the car, started for the front entrance with Black following. She’d eaten at that deli more times than she could count, liked the fried burritos she could get for a buck. All of a sudden she realized how hungry she was.
“ Slow down, we don’t want to attract attention,” Black said.
“ Right,” she said, as if a seven foot black man who looked like King Kong wouldn’t attract attention, even if he was moving at a snail’s pace.
“ Damn,” he said when they got to the deli section. “She’s not here.”
Izzy went straight to the glass counter, counted eleven beef and bean burritos. Two for her, nine for Hunter.
“ I’ll take those,” she told a kid whose name badge called him Ted.
“ All of ’em?”
“ Yeah, I got a hungry dog in the car.”
“ Got’cha.”
“ We’re in a hurry here,” Black said.
“ To do what?” Izzy said. “Besides, I thought we were waiting for Lila Booth.” Though exactly why she’d want to be seeing Lila wasn’t exactly clear. Still, this guy seemed to be on her side and so far he seemed to be the only one out there who was.
“ Yeah, that’s a problem.” Black looked around, seemed to be thinking. “We’ll give her a couple minutes, then we go.” He seemed pained.
“ But you don’t want to go without her, do you?”
“ No.”
“ Then you’re in luck, because there she is.” Izzy nodded toward the south side of the store, turned back to the counter and handed the kid a twenty.
“ You were supposed to be waiting here,” Black said when Lila approached with a shopping back tucked under her arm.
“ Yeah, well I got hung up.” The words said attitude, but the tone did not. “Dr. Eisenhower,” Lila smiled at Izzy, “we meet again.” To Black, “We gotta go, where’s the car?”
“ Just out front.”
“ Good.” Lila turned toward the kid cashier, “Told you I’d be back.” She favored him with a smile. The kid blushed and Izzy decided maybe Lila wasn’t so bad, after all.
“ FBI,” someone shouted.
Izzy turned to the sound of the voice as Lila pulled a gun from her shopping bag.
“ Whoa!” Izzy said as Lila started shooting.
Chapter Fifteen
Mississippi Bob Mouledoux dove to his right as the young FBI agent in front of him took several rounds. The fed, a kid right out of Quantico named Girard, had been running full force, gun in the air as he shouted out, identifying himself. The woman he’d seen from the backseat of the SUV, who’d obviously misdirected them, shot without hesitation, her gunshots ringing throughout the store. If he’d’ve been a flash of a second slower diving into an aisle of garden supplies, Mississippi Bob would’ve suffered the same fate as the dead fed.
“ You okay, Peeps?” Mouledoux shouted. Hoping his partner hadn’t been hit.
“ Yeah, Bobby, I see you.”
Mouledoux pulled his face from the floor, turned, saw that Peeps had made it to the aisle opposite, had apparently charged into a garden hose display in his dash for cover. He was on top of pile of green and black hoses, but safely out of the line of fire.
“ We got two down, both feds bought it!” Peeps shouted.
Jesus Christ, Mouledoux grabbed for his thirty-eight. The other agent, one with years of experience named Cornwall, was a nice guy. Mouledoux had instinctively liked him. How could this have happened?
Someone was shouting.
A woman.
“ Get out, get out, get out!” she wailed, then three kids and the woman, still shrieking, ran past, scurrying between the aisles he and Peeps were seeking cover in. They were dashing down the center aisle toward the garden exit. They must have jumped over the dead FBI agents.
More shouts, then all of a sudden the cacophony in the store sounded like the aviary at the San Diego Zoo during feeding time. Surround sound screaming.
“ They’ve got guns!” someone shouted.
“ Get down!” someone else shouted.
Mouledoux, on the ground, crept along the aisle, moving toward the center aisle that led from the garden section toward the middle of the store. Before he reached the end of it, he stopped. He was breathing like he’d run a marathon, in and out, like a steam engine out of control on a downhill run, sucking air, hyperventilating. If he didn’t watch it, he was going to pass out.
He looked up at a plethora of weed killers, everything from Round Up to Ortho. And above the rack of weed killers, on the overhead ceiling, he saw a video monitor with a sign under it stating that for the store’s customer’s protection, “Closed circuit video is used in this location. These videos enable us to prosecute criminal offenses which may occur.”
Criminal offenses were occurring right now and Mouledoux hoped they were being captured. Then he thought of his own cowardly self, cringing on the floor. Was he being captured, too? Probably.
Shit, shit, shit, motherfuck. Much as he wanted to lay here, not move till help arrived, he couldn’t. He’d be branded a chicken shit. Which is exactly what he felt like. Hero or coward, however he wanted to be thought of, his choice was now. He had to choose.
He chose hero.
He got up, shouted out at the top of his lungs.
“ Quiet down! You are in no danger.” He felt that was true, but didn’t know for sure.
The shouting, crying, confusion didn’t abate.
“ Listen up! Nobody wants to hurt you!” He shouted loud, booming the words from deep in his belly.
“ Everybody leave the store. Move to the exits now. You are in no danger. The woman with the gun will let you go.” He hoped to fuck he knew what he was doing. “Move out now. Do not panic. Do not run.”