Amid the Shadows (10 page)

21

Liz Iverson stood in
her kitchen cooking dinner for her husband, who sat in the next room in a large
recliner, watching a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes.
 
She turned the steak over in the pan and turned her attention back to
the small pile of mail on the large granite countertop.
 
She spent a few minutes flipping through an
advertisement for the local supermarket.
 
As she turned and dropped it into the recycle bin, her cell phone rang.

Reaching inside her
purse, she pulled the phone out and looked at the number.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Liz!” yelled Christine
through the phone.
 
“Liz, thank god!”

“Christine?
 
What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Liz!” Christine
cried.
 
“They tried to kill us!
 
They tried to
kill us
!”

“What are you talking
about?” she asked.
 
“Who tried to kill
you?”
 
Liz looked through the doorway at
her husband who had overheard and was now staring at her.

“I don’t know!”
Christine said, still frantic.
 
“They
came to the house!
 
I think it was the
FBI!”

Liz’s brow
furrowed.
 
“The FBI?
 
Why on earth would they want to hurt
you?
 
What happened?”

“They came to the
house!
 
But when I turned the emergency
light on, they didn’t come!
 
They were
dead Liz, they were both dead in the car!”

Liz was utterly
confused.
 
“Who was in the car?
 
And what emergency light?
 
You’re losing me, I don’t understand what
you’re saying.”

“I know,” Christine
said anxiously.
 
She tried to slow her
breathing.
 
“I’m just scared and I don’t
know what’s happening.”

“Christine, take a deep
breath and tell me exactly what happened.”
 
Liz spoke slowly into the phone as her husband approached and stood
behind her.

“Okay, okay.”
 
Christine took a deep breath, and then
another. “They came to the house.
 
Someone knocked on the door and said they were the FBI.
 
I didn’t want to let them in but more of them
broke in through the back door, with rifles!
 
And then the FBI person on the porch smashed through the front
window.
 
But then they started shooting
at each other, so I don’t…I just grabbed Sarah and ran out.”
 
She took another breath.
 
“But when we got to the car, the two
policemen inside, they were supposed to be guarding the house, but they were
dead.
 
They were dead in the car.”

Dear god.
 
“Okay, take it easy.” Liz said.
 
“The first thing we need to do is call the
police.”

“No!” yelled Christine,
suddenly excited again.
 
“I mean, I
just…I just don’t know who to trust.
 
They killed the police before they could even get out of the car.
 
The ones that broke in, they all looked like
professionals, like killers or something.
 
I mean what if someone in the police is in on this?”

Christine was scared,
but she had a good point.
 
Liz’s husband
whispered something in her ear.
 
“Is
Sarah okay?”

Christine looked at
Sarah who was standing inside a McDonald’s restaurant, just inside the glass
doors, to keep warm.
 
“Yes.”

“Good.
 
Listen carefully Christine, my husband is a
retired police officer, remember?
 
Let us
come get you.
 
Until we know what’s going
on here, let us come and get you and bring you someplace safe.
 
He has friends that he can trust, they will
all help keep you safe.”

Christine thought it
over briefly before replying.
 
“Yeah,
okay, but hurry!”

“Okay,” Liz said.
 
She grabbed a pen and paper.
 
“Now where are you?”

Christine looked
around.
 
“We’re in Quakertown,” she
said.
 
“At a McDonald’s.
 
I see a road called West Broad Street.”

“Okay,” Liz said,
writing it down.
 
“We’ll find it.”
 
She quickly turned off the stove and followed
her husband down the hallway toward their garage.
 
He grabbed coats for both of them.
 
“Christine, stay right where you are.
 
You’ll be safe in a public place.”

Christine hung up and
walked toward the entrance.
 
People
walked in and out of the restaurant, barely noticing either one of them.
 
Was anyone looking at them strangely?
 
As she opened the door, Christine looked back
at the unmarked police car with a damaged right fender.
 
At the very least, she thought, someone would
be looking for that car.

Christine sat in a
brightly-colored, plastic chair while Sarah quietly sat next to her, eating
French fries.
 
The restaurant was filled with
loud and obnoxious children running up and down the aisles while their parents
appeared oblivious and went on with their conversations.

Christine tried not to
jump every time the door opened, slumping with disappointment when she saw it
was not Liz.
 
She tried to distract
herself by watching the customers, marveling at how many did not even have to
look at the menu, but instead had their order memorized in what she considered
a sad display of social repression.

She watched an
unusually large woman order several items of food and a diet soda.
 
She looked down at Sarah who was watching the
other children.
 
Sarah looked up and
smiled.

Christine smiled
back.
 
“You doing okay, honey?”

Sarah nodded.
 
“Are you scared?”

Christine frowned.
 
“Yes.”

“Me too,” said
Sarah.
 
She turned and looked at the
front door.
 
“Is your friend going to be
here soon?”

“Yes.” Christine forced
a smile and patted her leg.
 
“She should
be here any minute.”

Sarah nodded again and
looked over to a child screaming at another table.

They both turned when
they heard the sound of screeching tires.
 
Outside, Liz and her husband jumped out of their Jeep Grand Cherokee and
ran for the door.

Christine grabbed
Sarah’s hand and turned anxiously to face the door as Liz stepped inside and
scanned the large dining room.
 
She
spotted Christine and immediately crossed the room, barely avoiding a customer
with a large tray of food.

“There you are!” she
said, approaching.
 
She looked from
Christine to Sarah and then back again.
 
“Are you two okay?”

Christine took a deep
breath and nodded.
 
She smiled quickly at
Liz’s husband who walked up behind her.

Liz sat down across
from Christine.
 
She reached out and held
her hand.
 
“Okay, we’re just going to
wait here for a few minutes until Tim’s old partner shows up.
 
And then we’ll get you someplace safe.”

Christine nodded.

Liz then looked at
Sarah.
 
“How are you, dear?”

“I’m okay,” Sarah
said.
 
She finished the rest of her
orange juice through the straw and sat back in her chair.
 
With a timid look, she peered up at Liz’s
husband standing behind her.
 
She noted
his large belly sticking out beyond his jacket and the slight bulge of his gun
underneath, on his hip.

“Have you eaten
anything?” Liz asked Christine.

Christine shook her
head.
 
“Not really hungry.”

“When
is
the
last time you ate?”

“A while,” she said
with a shrug.

“Okay well-”
 
Liz was interrupted when her husband Tim
looked outside at a pair of headlights screeching into a parking space on the
other side of the large dining room.

“Steve’s here,” he
said, patting Liz’s shoulder lightly.
 
He
watched the large man pass along the windows outside and enter through the far
doors.
 
He waved Steve over.

“Christine,” he
said.
 
“This is my old partner, Steve
McCaullah.
 
We’ve been friends for more
than twenty years.”

McCaullah nodded and
looked at them. He then looked carefully around the dining room.
 
“We’d better get you girls out of here.”

Liz smiled and stood up
next to her husband.
 
“You two
ready?”
 
As Christine began to stand, Liz
turned to lead them out.
 

Christine was suddenly
stopped by Sarah’s hand on her arm.
 
She
glanced at Liz who was already starting to walk away and then looked back down
at Sarah.

Sarah was leaning in
close to her with a scared look on her face. “He’s a bad man,” she whispered.

Christine froze halfway
off the chair.
 
“Who?”

Sarah whispered again,
quieter.
 
“Him.”
 
She motioned to McCaullah who was watching
the Iversons walk away from him.
 
He
turned his attention to the glass doors as three darkly dressed men walked in.

Sarah gasped. Peering
back at Liz and her husband, she watched both of their shadows change from
orange to black.

“What is it?” Christine
said, and then followed Sarah’s fearful gaze to Liz.
 
“LIZ WAIT!”

It was too late. When
Liz and her husband turned back around, they found McCaullah pointing his gun
at them.
 
A confused look on their faces
were just forming when McCaullah pulled the trigger repeatedly, firing two
bullets into each of them.
 

Dozens of customers
screamed and ran for the doors in a panic.
 
Some made it out while others tried to hide behind something or searched
for their children, screaming at them to get down or out of the way.
 
Liz was killed instantly, but her husband
desperately ran his hand underneath his coat as he fell.
  
He barely managed to withdraw his weapon but
fumbled it onto the floor.
 
The gun was
quickly kicked out of the way by one of the three men approaching behind him.

Tim Iverson struggled
on the floor and turned onto his back.
 
A
thin line of blood began seeping through his lips.
 
As he was trying to speak, McCaullah leaned
down over him and pushed his gun into his chest.
 
“Sorry Timmy,” he whispered with a
disappointed look.
 
“This is bigger than
both of us.”

Iverson was still
trying to move as McCaullah fired two more bullets into his heart.

Everyone was still
screaming.
 
Some parents had managed to
get to their children and were now trying to force one of the emergency doors
open to get out.
 
Christine grabbed Sarah
and looked around the restaurant, but there was no way to get past them, much
less to an exit.
   
She squeezed Sarah
tighter and tried to think of something to do, anything, but she was stopped
when McCaullah stepped in front of her and reloaded his gun.

“A lot of people have
been looking for you two,” he said, putting the used magazine into his jacket
pocket.
 
“We couldn’t find you, and then,
imagine that, Tim calls me from out of the blue.”
 
He smiled at the other three standing to the
side.
 
“With that kind of luck, I should
be playing the lottery.”

He looked curiously at
Christine.
 
She didn’t seem as frightened
as he would have expected.
 
She was
obviously afraid, but there was also a hint of determination as she kept Sarah
behind her.
 
Pity
.
 
He pulled the slide back on his gun to verify
the chamber was loaded.
 
He then released
it and held the gun in his right hand with a relaxed grip.
 
“So the question for you is…do you want to
come with us, or not?
 
I have to warn
you,” he said with a smile, “the second option may have some bad results.”

McCaullah gripped the
gun and began to raise it when the wall of glass suddenly exploded and a large
car drove through it.
 
One of the few
areas of empty seats ripped from the floor and tumbled forward in front of the
car’s bumper, and a giant wave of glass slid down, and then off of the
hood.
 
Just before it stopped, the front
of the car struck McCaullah hard, and his body disappeared from where he was
standing.
 

The man that Christine
saw at the safe house, who identified himself as Glen Smith, stepped quickly
and calmly out of the driver’s side as McCaullah’s three friends took a few
steps back and pulled out their own guns.