B00CCYP714 EBOK (32 page)

“I’m down here,” she screamed, as she began to pound the door with the large piece of wood. “I’m here! Down here…”

#

Rainey heard muffled thuds that appeared to be coming from under the truck. She fired two more shots at the doorway and sprinted for the steps leading down into the pit. Her shots were answered by a shotgun blast. She felt the sting of shrapnel hit her thigh and heard it pelt her jacket, but she did not stop. She slid under the rear of the truck and scrambled down the steps of the pit.

Flipping on her flashlight, she searched the oil stained walls for an access point. She could hear the faint sounds of a woman’s screams and the steady thump-thump of something crashing into the wall in front of her. The stains on a portion of the wall looked newer and intentionally applied. Rainey started knocking on the wall with the butt of her flashlight, listening for a sound difference. That’s when she saw the seam in the concrete and heard the hollow return of her tapping. She clawed at the seam to no avail. There had to be a release mechanism somewhere.

She jumped at the sound of the colonel coming down the steps. He joined her in trying to pry the seam open. “There’s more than one device. We don’t have time to defuse them all,” he said. “Get out, Rainey, while you still can.”

“We’re all going out together,” she said. “There has to be a way to open it.”

Rainey stopped scratching at the seam and moved the flashlight beam around the pit. Old oil rags were piled in the corner. She kicked them out of the way, revealing a small metal door about the size of a light switch cover with a hasp and lock. Shooting at the lock could disable the mechanism, or ricochet a fragment back at her. Rainey de-cocked the weapon and crashed the butt of it into the lock until it fell open. She flipped open the cover to find a hydraulic control box, with a red and green button.

“Green means go,” she said and pushed the appropriate control.

The colonel jumped back as the seam separated, revealing a thick concrete door panel slowly creeping open. Rainey ran back to join him as he pulled on the door, encouraging the hydraulics to work faster. As soon as the opening was large enough for Rainey to pass through, she slipped behind the still moving panel into a small empty room. She found a light switch on the wall and flipped it on.

This was his staging area. A black mask lay on a small table in the corner, with a bottle of contact solution and a contact case. Hospital scrubs and other clothes hung from a hook on the wall. Opposite the panel the colonel was now squeezing through, Rainey saw a heavy metal door and heard the screaming and pounding from the other side.

The colonel began to shout. “Hang on, Bladen. I’m coming.” He frantically pawed at the two deadbolts that required a key.

Rainey’s mental clock was counting down the seconds they had left before the garage exploded. She realized their time had grown too short for escape. Seeing an identical hydraulic control box on the wall by the now opened concrete panel, she hit the red button. The panel began to close again. She watched the painfully slow process and hoped the bunker she was sealing them into would hold against the blast.

Before the door could close all the way, she shoved the pistol into her jacket pocket, yelling out to anyone that could still hear her on the phone. “Stay back! There’s no time left.” She hoped they heard her next words. “Remind Katie, I loved her.”  

The door closed with a final hiss of releasing air. Then everything went black.

The concussion from the explosion sent Rainey crashing to the floor. She was disoriented by the cloud of dust from the crumbling concrete and the ringing in her ears. Blinking, she shook her head, attempting to clear the concussion fog from her brain. A slab of the ceiling had fallen in on them. She was tucked next to the wall in a tent shaped space created by falling debris. All around her, she could hear parts of the garage returning to earth after the force of the blast sent it skyward.

Rainey called out, “Colonel, are you all right?”

The returning moan indicated that he was not.

“Hang on. Help is coming.”

Rainey could move, but she was constricted to the small space. Debris would have to be removed to open an escape route from her little concrete tent. Shining out from under the edge of a huge slab of ceiling, she could see the beam of her flashlight illuminating the dust particles dancing in the air. The beam also revealed the butt of the pistol pinned under a ton of concrete. It must have jettisoned from her pocket when she hit the ground. The sound of movement drew her attention. A beam of light began to search the debris.

She was about to call out, when she heard Vance Wayne’s voice. “I heard you talking, so I know you’re still alive, Agent Sexy.”

Rainey clawed at the butt of the pistol. She could hear him coming closer, picking his way through the rubble. A beam of light hit her face, blinding her.

“There you are,” he said, squatting down outside Rainey’s tomb.

That was the perfect name for it, because Rainey Bell was about to take her last breath. He lowered the flashlight from her eyes, and when they adjusted, Rainey could see the barrel of a shotgun pointed squarely at her face. The beam of his flashlight bounced back from Rainey’s little tent-shaped prison, illuminating Vance Wayne’s face.

“You!” Rainey said, staring into the eyes of the nurse from Mackie’s trauma room, the one that warned her of Cookie’s presence.

“We only have a moment. They’ll be coming soon, but I couldn’t leave without knowing for sure that I had defeated the great Rainey Bell. I knew you would come. I knew your arrogance would lead you right into my trap. I’ll be going to get your little Katie Meyers next. So don’t worry, she’ll be joining you soon.”

Rainey closed her eyes. Katie’s face came into view, surrounded by laughing babies. She heard the hammer being pulled back on the shotgun. She whispered, “I’m sorry, honey,” and prepared to die.

 The instant Rainey believed would be her last on earth, a high-pitched screech, she could only describe as a banshee shriek, pierced the air around her. Her eyes flew open in time to catch a flash of blue behind Vance Wayne. His attention diverted to the noise, Rainey grabbed the barrel of the gun, pinned it against the wall, and ducked out of the way of the blast she expected to follow. It did not come. Instead, she felt the shotgun fall away from his hands.

Rainey looked back at Vance. He wore a surprised expression, just before he toppled over with a small crazed woman on his back. A soul-shattering scream from the depths of Bladen Asher’s misery reverberated off the walls of Rainey’s tight quarters. She watched as the young woman raised both hands in the air and plunged a bloodied wooden stake it into Vance Wayne’s body again. Beyond the point of hearing Rainey call out to her, “Stop, he’s dead,” Bladen Asher repeatedly plunged the homemade weapon into her tormenter’s back, her anguished cries punctuating each strike.

Rainey laid the shotgun down on the floor, careful to release the hammer, and then crawled as far forward as she could. She reached through the opening, where Vance’s head had fallen, and grabbed Bladen’s wrists on her next downward arc. She gripped the young woman’s arms tightly, trying to get her attention.

“Bladen, Bladen, it’s okay. He’s gone.”

Lost in her murderous frenzy, Bladen tried to wrestle her hands loose.

“Bladen, he’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Bladen Asher looked like a child reared by wolves. Her hair hung down over her blood-spattered face, partially obscuring eyes wild with rage. The crimson drops falling from her chin added to the animalistic illusion. She stared at Rainey, appearing to grasp at reality, attempting to regain her humanity. Rainey saw that Bladen was dressed only in a scrub top, with scissors and handcuffs dangling from some kind of makeshift rope belt around her waist. The colonel’s little soldier had survived on her wits.

“Your father needs help, Bladen.”

Bladen blinked, let the bloody stake fall from her hands, and began to weep.

“Where’s my dad?”

#

After Rainey and the colonel were extricated from the rubble, the three injured victims were taken to the hospital. Vance Wayne’s blood soaked corpse was taken to the morgue.

Danny stood by Rainey’s emergency room bed now, a familiar scene for both of them. He was explaining that a Cookie Kutter live broadcast from Vance Wayne’s body farm had triggered a cascading set of events.

“Somehow, Cookie found out about the red truck we were looking for and blabbed. Maureen Elliot—she dropped her married name in a further attempt to distance herself from the years she spent as Vance Wayne’s battered wife—was watching that broadcast. When she saw the bodies being recovered and heard about the red truck, she knew her ex-husband was the one we were looking for.”

“She called it in, right?” Rainey asked, adjusting the sheet over her exposed thigh.

Once again, she was stuck in a hospital gown. Her pants and shirt were taken, because she was pulled out of the rubble through a puddle of Vance Wayne’s blood. The leather jacket had been spared because her rescuers made her take it off, before trying to squeeze her out of the would-be tomb. Rainey had a slight concussion, hence the ringing still in her ears, and a white-gauze bandage on her thigh where a piece of shrapnel was removed. It only required a few stitches. The rest of her wounds were covered in brightly colored children’s adhesive bandages. She told the nurse the triplets would enjoy them more than the plain tan ones. All in all, Rainey felt pretty good about having survived a building exploding above her.

Danny pointed at Rainey. “You know, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously with a Winnie the Pooh bandage over your eye.”

Rainey reached up and pulled the bandage off. “Now, finish your story.”

“You were a petulant child, weren’t you?” Danny said with a chuckle. “Anyway, Maureen did call the hotline. The message had just passed to the appropriate personnel, when the 911 call came in from her seven-year-old child. When Vance placed his one allowed phone call per week to his son this evening, Maureen would not let him speak to the boy. Instead, she told him she had called the police.”

“So he went over there and finally killed the object of his rage.” Rainey finished Danny’s thought, as they so often did for each other.

The partitioning curtain at one side of Rainey’s bed was flung back suddenly, revealing Katie clutching a change of clothing for Rainey to her chest. She walked over and gave Rainey a nonchalant peck on the cheek.

“This scene is getting old, don’t you think? Me showing up in the emergency room to find you and Danny huddled together after another harrowing escape from the clutches of a madman.”

Rainey grinned at Katie. She knew this was an act. If she had not taken one already, Katie would need a moment to process the reality of the situation. At some point, she would show her fear of what could have been, and what might be her future.

“Trouble finds you, Rainey,” people commented time and again. No matter how Rainey tried to stay out of trouble’s path, it crept in under the doors and through the cracks in the walls. It followed her on the street, peeked in through her windows, posted pictures on the Net, tried to frame her for murder, or make her the murdered victim. Short of a new name and face, Rainey was pretty sure she was doomed to have trouble as a companion the remainder of her days. The life she built with Katie made facing that prospect a lot less daunting.

Rainey slid an arm around her wife’s waist. “I thought you were under armed guard at home, but I am very glad to see you.”

“You’re just happy I brought your clothes,” Katie said with a wink, “and the armed guard is in the hall.”

They would hold each other close later, say all the appropriate thank you prayers, and always remember each moment was precious, but for now an arm around a waist, a nonchalant peck on the cheek, and a wink said all that needed saying.

The crowd around Rainey continued to grow, as a nurse came in with her release papers, followed by Brooks who announced loudly, “Rainey Bell, you are one hard ass woman to kill. There, I said it. It’s what everybody else was thinking.”

Rainey signed documents for the nurse, and smiled at Brooks. “I think that’s a good thing, don’t you?”

“You have an angel on your shoulder, that’s for damned sure.”

“Hey,” Rainey said, playfully wagging a SpongeBob bandaged finger. “You need to clean up your vocabulary or Katie won’t let you near the kids.”

“She’s right,” Katie interjected. “Rainey is only allowed short supervised visits.”

“Speaking of visits,” Danny said, “I’m afraid I have to head back to Quantico tomorrow afternoon. Paula and Curtis will stay to help with evidence collection and a victim statement. There won’t be a trial, but a lot of families need answers.”

Rainey took the clothes from Katie. “Could you guys give Danny and me a second?”

Once they were alone, Rainey climbed out of the bed, peeled off the hospital gown, and began to dress. There was no need for the pretense of modesty. Danny found her staked out naked with a Y-incision carved into her chest. Diffidence was no longer an element of their relationship. When her head popped out of the black turtleneck she was pulling on, she saw Danny was holding out an envelope to her.

“Here, this is my entire grand jury testimony,” he said, careful to lower his voice. “It matters what came before and after that statement.”

“I know that, Danny. Keep it. I don’t need to see it.”

He slipped the envelope back inside his jacket. “I do believe you had nothing to do with Dalton’s death and that you don’t know who did. I suspect you do not want to know. I also believe, under the right circumstances, anyone can commit murder.”

“I expect that you would do so for my kids,” she said, pulling on a worn pair of jeans.

“That I would,” he said, and there was no further need to discuss it.

Katie brought comfort clothes, her subtle way of signaling it was time for her wayward investigator to come home and stay awhile. Rainey sat down in a chair to put on her shoes. Danny leaned in very close, his hands on the arms of the chair. What he had to say, he wanted no one else to hear.