Captive-in-Chief (42 page)

While the Chief radioed back to the house, Cash walked back along the roadside. The first rider, taken out by the Chief’s swerve, lay in a twisted heap. Semi-conscious, the rider had at least two obvious breaks, one of which was not only obvious, but clearly visible as the shard of bone protruded from the lower left leg of his pants.

Cash stepped on the shard. A scream split the night sky but there was nobody to come running to the rider’s defense. They had chosen their spot well for the attack. The Empire Grade road cut through deep stretches of forest as it plunged down into the heart of Santa Cruz, cutting alongside the University of California’s campus, home to the Astronomy Department, headed by Cash’s father. Or, Cash thought,
formerly
headed by his father. As a child, Cash had hated the home deep in the hills above Santa Cruz. However, its isolation was perfect for his father’s work. Light pollution was at a minimum but for a young boy, its seclusion was a prison. For a young boy whose mother had died during childbirth, it was hell.

Cash pushed down harder and squinted in the darkness to see the face of their attacker. The young man’s neck and face were covered in gang tattoos. ‘Sur’ and ‘X3’ were the most visible. Everybody from Santa Cruz knew the Surenos gang.

“Rigs, check some of the other bodies for tattoos, see if any of them have Sur or anything like 13 on them!” shouted Cash over the gang member’s screams. Cash had lost friends to the gang in the past and pushed harder with his foot.

“All of them!” he shouted back after a few minutes.

The Chief stumbled towards Cash, wheezing. “Cash, what are you doing?” he struggled.

“Chief, are you okay?” asked Cash turning his attention to the Chief, who was fading quickly.

“I’m fine, got winged during the mayhem,” he smiled. A trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth and he slumped against a tree.

Cash ran to him, placing him gently against the tree, feeling for the wetness covering the Chief’s back. He pulled him forward and searched for the wound. A bullet had entered through his back and, from the Chief’s breathing, had definitely punctured a lung.

“Rigs! Radio for an ambulance!” he screamed. He had already lost one father and the Chief had always been like a father to him in the past.

“Cash?”

“Yes, Chief?”

“Promise me…”

“Anything, Chief,” he struggled to hold back tears for only the second time in his adult life and within an hour of the last.

“Kyle, please… for me…” his last breath died.

Cash laid the Chief gently against the tree and instantly turned his attention to the whimpering gang member.

“Talk!” instructed Cash.

“Fuck you, bitch!” cried the gang member.

Cash was in no mood for discussion. He placed the end of the shotgun on the gang member’s injured leg and fired, removing the damaged lower half cleanly.

“Talk!”

“I only know we were paid to hit the house and anyone who was there,” gasped the gang member, scrambling between the waves of pain that were flooding through him.

“Who paid?”

“Someone paid the boss! I don’t know who!”

Rigs joined him. “I think he’s telling the truth,” he said, noting the desperation in the gang member’s face.

“So do I,” said Cash, allowing Rigs to take the shotgun from him.

Rigs stepped over to the gang member and raised the shotgun, placing the barrel on his forehead.

“Plea…” begged the gang member, cut off by the boom of the shotgun.

“I’ll cancel the ambulance then,” suggested Cash to a nod of agreement from Rigs.

“So you knew the Chief quite well?” asked Rigs, rubbing the end of the shotgun on the gang member’s clothes to clean it.

“He was like a father to me and his wife was like the mom I never had.”

“And his daughter?” asked Rigs having pieced most of Cash’s secret past together.

“Sophie, the girl I was going to marry.”

“But?”

“Exactly. But,” replied Cash.

“Not quite what I was hoping for,” said Rigs.

“Me neither,” said Cash, looking at the Chief. “First, my father’s dying word was ‘Sophie’ and now the Chief’s dying word was ‘Kyle’ – Sophie’s new guy. I mean, Jesus, rub salt into the wound, guys,” he said more to himself than to Rigs.

“Where to?” asked Rigs, scooping up whatever weapons he could lay his hands on.

“Sophie’s place. She needs to know her dad is gone and I’d like to know what’s on this,” said Cash, holding up the flash drive.

“And then?” asked Rigs, looking at his arsenal.

Cash nodded, reading his friend’s mind. “Yes, then we go issue a little payback and see if we can find out what the fuck just happened.”

Santa Cruz, CA

Cash made Rigs circle the area twice before they pulled over. The first time to check the area was clear; the second was nerves. Fifteen years was a long time. For a thirty-five-year-old, it was almost half his life. Sophie had been out of his life for as long as she had been part of it. They had met at the age of five and from the moment he had laid eyes on her, he had planned to spend his life with her. There hadn’t been a day in those first fifteen years that they hadn’t spoken or been a significant part of each other’s life. In the second fifteen years, they hadn’t spoken once.

“Can you keep watch?” asked Cash.

Rigs nodded once.

Cash walked slowly down the path. The house was, as expected, in darkness, as it was barely 4:00 a.m. He hesitated as he raised his finger to the doorbell
.
What would he say? What
could
he say? The Chief was dead, that was what was important about the visit, everything else was irrelevant.

Cash pressed the bell and felt the fifteen years disappear as the all too familiar ding-dong echoed down the corridor.

A few seconds later calls of “who’s there?” accompanied a lot of shuffling around.

The door cracked open. Cash’s breath caught the back of his throat, his heart pounded and his stomach lurched.

A tall and powerful young man stood before him. “Can I help you?” he asked in a perfect English accent. The man was exactly the same height as Cash, six foot two, with a very similar build. If Sophie had wanted a Cash replacement, she couldn’t have picked a more perfect example, only he was younger, much younger.

Cash stepped back and checked the door number. It was the right house, he didn’t need to check, it had been his second home, but the young man had thrown him.

“I was looking for the Kramers?” said Cash, stepping forward again.

“Everything okay?” asked Rigs, joining Cash. He had noticed Cash back away from the house. “Holy shit!” he said when he caught a glimpse of the young man at the door.

“What?” asked Cash and the young man at once.

“Kyle, who is it?” came a voice from deep in the house, a voice that Cash recognized all too well.

“You’re Kyle?” asked Cash, his mouth dropping.

“How old is he?” asked Rigs, the question aimed at Cash but meant for Kyle.

“I’ll be fifteen next month,” replied Kyle, not sure who to answer.

“Cash!” came a breathless voice as Sophie reached the door.

“Sophie,” replied Cash, gasping for air himself. She was as beautiful as he had remembered, perhaps even more so.

“What are you doing here?”

“Is your mom here?”

She nodded, suddenly wary.

“Best get her. Rigs, meet Sophie and Kyle, you’re on coffee duty.” Rigs dipped his head, nodded awkwardly and walked quietly into the house and headed for the kitchen.

Sophie and Kyle had to step back as the strange man who wouldn’t look them in the eye almost barged them out of the way. He had coffee to make in their kitchen.

“Why is he making coff…” she stopped, the sudden realization of why Cash was there making coffee in the middle of the night. “Dad?” she asked, tears already welling.

Cash nodded and with Kyle’s help, they led her into the living room.

“What’s going on?” asked the Chief’s wife entering the living room, tying the cords on her dressing gown as she did so.

“Mrs. Kramer,” said Cash, turning to greet her.

“Cash!” she exclaimed, her voice less than welcoming.

“Mom, it’s about Dad!” cried Sophie, cutting off a tirade from her mother that was fifteen years in the making.

Mrs. Kramer’s face whitened as she dropped onto the sofa that Cash was sure she was unaware was even there.

“I’m afraid, he’s gone,” said Cash, nodding at Rigs who was hovering in the doorway to enter with the coffees. He placed them down on a coffee table while the news sank in and left the room to maintain his watch.

Kyle comforted his grandmother, leaving Cash to comfort Sophie, her head sunk into his shoulder, finding the spot she had so readily occupied many years earlier.

“What happened?” asked Mrs. Kramer, breaking the silence.

Cash started at the beginning and informed them of the loss of his own father and the resultant attack by the Surenos gang, where a bullet had caught the Chief and despite it, he had fought on.

“Could he have been saved?” asked Sophie.

Cash shook his head.

“Why would the Surenos kill your father?” asked Mrs. Kramer, trying to make sense of the murders. “I can understand them wanting Harry dead, but your father?”

Cash shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea, none of it makes any sense.”

“Did you say the observatory was destroyed as well?” asked Sophie through her tears.

“Yes, and we were heading there after my dad’s deputy had called him and was very excited about something.”

“James, excited?”

“Yeah, Dad said that wasn’t normal for James. You knew him?”

“Yes, I’ve been involved in the project. Cambridge University partly funded the program, along with other universities and the US and UK governments,” confirmed Sophie. “And as for James, that’s an understatement, the man was a miserable son of a bitch on his better days.”

Cash looked at Kyle. His eyes were drawn to him; it was hard to believe the young man was only fourteen, soon to be fifteen. He was a powerful looking young man, much like Cash himself had been at that age.

“Just like his father,” said Sophie quietly watching Cash’s gaze.

“What?” asked Cash, breaking his look.

“Kyle’s the star of his team, just like his father was,” offered Sophie, resulting in a raised eyebrow from her mother.

“Cash!” shouted Rigs from the front door. “We’ve got company!”

Cash was up and running in an instant, catching the FN-P90 machine pistol from Rigs as he joined him at the front door.

“So what we got?” asked Cash, cocking the P90.

“I’ve got some movement in the woods off to the north. I count at least three.”

Cash peeked around the doorframe and focused on the wooded area to the north of the house. Like Cash’s father, the Chief enjoyed his privacy. The house was a mile from its nearest neighbor and set back a quarter mile from the main road. A lawned area stretched for fifty yards before disappearing into the woods.

“I’ll check out the back and try to circle around,” said Rigs, leaving Cash to cover the front of the house.

“You three, upstairs and take cover,” instructed Cash to Sophie, Kyle and Mrs. Kramer.

Cash watched the targets while his protectees made their way up the stairs. Rigs appeared off to his left. A thumbs-up signaled that the back of the house was clear and he was moving in on the targets. He moved silently and almost effortlessly through the undergrowth. The man was a machine in his element.

Rigs signaled that he was in position. Cash moved out of the house and towards the targets. The three moved, raising their weapons but Cash moved too quickly, already finding cover behind the Chief’s car.

The targets’ movements had opened them up as planned to Rigs. He raised his P90 and was about to start shooting, when he paused, noticing their clothing for the first time.

“Jesus, don’t shoot!” screamed one of the targets. They all dropped their weapons, suddenly realizing they had been outplayed.

Cash stepped out as Rigs whistled the all clear to him.

Three police officers stepped out of the woods, their hands held high above their heads.

“What the hell were you guys doing?” asked Cash.

“We were on our way back from the Observatory when we spotted you in the Chief’s car. We tried to sneak up on you but obviously you spotted us.”

“I’m afraid the Chief’s dead.”

Fear turned to anger on all three of the officers’ faces and their hands instinctively dropped towards their holsters.

“It wasn’t us, they killed my father, Professor Harris, as well,” Cash quickly explained, realizing their misunderstanding.

“Cash?” asked one of the officers.

Cash nodded.

“Jesus, I didn’t recognize you! It’s been so long. Paul Banks,” he stepped forward offering his hand.

Cash couldn’t place him.

“Banksie!”

“Banksie, as in pot-head Banksie?” asked Cash.

Banksie’s face dropped slightly. “All in the past,” he said awkwardly.

“Of course. Have you got back up on the way?” asked Cash, scanning the area.

Banksie shook his head. “We’ve been trying to radio for back up, but nothing. We’ve tried our cells, none of them are working!”

Cash looked at Rigs, knowingly; it wasn’t over.

“Are Sophie and Mrs. K alright?” asked Banksie.

“Obviously upset but yeah, they’re fine.”

“And that handsome young lad of yours?”

Cash looked at him.

“Seriously,” chipped in Rigs quietly to Cash. “You didn’t see it?”

Cash shook his head. “No, I didn’t.” He walked back into the house and straight upstairs.

“Sophie? It’s fine, they’re police officers,” he called out.

Sophie, Kyle and Mrs. Kramer appeared from one of the bedrooms.

“Can I speak to you in private, please?” he said, looking at Sophie, who nodded.

“Kyle?” he began, as they walked into Sophie’s old bedroom.

Sophie nodded and began to cry. Cash looked on with contempt.

“Me or my father?” he asked angrily.

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