Doc (15 page)

Izzy climbed out of Caleb’s bed, crossed the room, and opened the closet door. She pulled one of his large
T-shirts off a hanger and shrugged it on. There was no hope for her hair without a shower, so she gathered it at the back and secured it with a rubber band.

She left the bedroom and entered the living room. The quiet sound of Mark and Caleb talking told her they were in the kitchen. She walked past the scattered pile of her clothes on the floor. The disarray looked out of place in Caleb’s otherwise neatly
organized home.

True enough, Izzy had come into Caleb’s life like a tornado. She’d disrupted his normally ordered
—and sterile—existence. She hoped her presence, however chaotic, was a good thing.

She turned the corner and entered the kitchen. Caleb and Mark both turned toward her. They might have just been a pair of friends catching up on old times.
Anyone would think that, before they caught the dour looks on both men’s faces.

“I’m heading home,” said Mark
, pushing off the counter he was leaning against and heading toward the front door. “Call me if you need anything else,” he said over his shoulder. Izzy wasn’t sure whom he was talking to.

The door shut soundly behind him
, almost echoing in the silence. Izzy turned to look at Caleb, who had large, dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. He also hadn’t shaved since the day before. Overall he had the wearied, disheveled appearance of an anxious yet exhausted man. It seemed as though Izzy’s presence had wrecked both the house and the man.

She moved toward him, reaching for him.

“Don’t,” he told her.

“Caleb
—”

“Just don’t.”

“Look at me,” Izzy demanded. When he refused, she said it again. “You didn’t hurt me, Caleb. I’m fine.”

Caleb shook his head. “It’s not fine.”

Izzy crossed her arms in front of her. She’d rather be touching him but she didn’t want to force the issue right now. “I’m telling you it is. And I’m also telling you that trying to turn yourself in for a crime you haven’t committed is also bullshit. I won’t go along with it,” she told him. “I won’t say something that isn’t true.”

“I hurt you, Izzy!”

Izzy shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”

“I meant to!” he argued.

“No, you didn’t. You
meant
to scare me, but it didn’t work. I’m still here and I see exactly who you are, Caleb. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s crazy.
You’re
crazy!” He jabbed a finger into his own chest, “I’m not safe to be around, Izzy!”

“That’s crap. You’re the safest person I’ve ever been with.”

He gaped at her. “That’s… that’s…” He ran a hand through his uncombed hair and stared at her. “You don’t—”

“You don’t open doors for me,” she told him.

Caleb’s eyebrows furrowed and he stared at her. “What?”

“You don’t open doors for me. You go in ahead of me.”

“So… your argument that underneath it all I’m a nice guy is based on the fact that I’m an asshole? What? I go in first—”

Izzy shook her head. “Not first,
primary.
You are primary through the door, Caleb. Every time. No matter where we are. You always put yourself between me and potential danger. I don’t even think you know you’re doing it most of the time.”

“Izzy
—”

Izzy moved closer and cupped his face in her hands. “Pop always said if you want to know someone, watch them when they don’t know you’re looking. The little things, the things they don’t even know they do, will tell you everything you need to know. It doesn’t matter what they say, or what they do for an audience, it’s what they do without having to think about it, that’s how you know what kind of person they are.”

“You’ve seen me at my worst, Izzy. You’ve seen the kind of damage I’m capable of. It’s inside me, Izzy. It’s always been there. It’s the only thing my piece-of-shit old man ever gave me.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said firmly. “People aren’t their parents, Caleb. What they do to us may shape who we are but we’re
not them
. We don’t have to be them.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit!” he snapped. “It’s
absolutely
who we are. It’s in our fucking DNA, Izzy! And you believe it. You know goddamn good and well that you believe it.”

“I do not
—”

“Then why won’t you have kids, Izzy?” he challenged. “If you’re so sure that we’re not destined to be just like our parents, why won’t you have kids of your own?”

“Because I don’t
want
them!” she argued. “Because I don’t live the kind of life that has room for kids! My job is dirty and dangerous and I love it and it’s not a place for a kid. I don’t have kids because I don’t
want
kids, Caleb. Not because I’m afraid to have them! Is that what you think of me?” she demanded. “That I’d leave my kid alone, shitting themselves in a filthy fucking diaper, starving and terrified? You think for a second I’d ever do some shit like that?!”

Caleb hesitated, but not because he wasn’t sure of his answer. He seemed genuinely surprised
—shocked—by the question. “No,” he said. “No! God, Izzy, I don’t think that. You’d never do that. It’s not in you to do something like that.”

“That’s right!” she shot back. “I would never do that because I might be
related
to her, but I’m
not her
! Everything good in me I got from Pop and everything good in you came from your mom. And those two, my Pop and your mom, they’re stronger, more important, than the shit heels who should’ve loved us but didn’t.”

Caleb shook his head. “I don’t know, Izzy. I don’t know. Being around me, being with me, it’s a bad idea.”

“Try and make me leave again. See what happens.”

Before he could reply, the cell phone on the counter rang. Caleb turned and picked it up, studying the screen. “It’s Prior,” he told her.

Izzy listened to Caleb’s part of the call and watched him scribble down directions, presumably to the cabin where Jeter and Jace Paul were holed up.

Caleb disconnected the call and set the phone down. “We need to get ready,” he told her, moving past her and toward the bedroom.

Izzy stood in the kitchen, watching him walk away.

“This isn’t over, Caleb,” she called after him. “The conversation
or
the relationship.”

All she heard was the sound of the bedroom door closing on her.

Caleb followed his own hastily scribbled directions beyond the city limits and north on 90 to the edge of the Black Hills National Forest, just a few scant miles from the Wyoming border. He followed an unpaved road just outside the Spearfish city limits, past scrub bushes and trees yellowing in the late autumn sun. He spotted Tex’s Hummer and Shooter’s large diesel truck parked off the not-so-beaten path. He nosed the car off the road next to Shooter and killed the engine. Shooter, Easy, and Tex were standing behind the Hummer, waiting for them to arrive.

Izzy had been remarkably quiet in the car, surprising since the last thing she’d said to him was that she wasn’t done talking. He was grateful for the silence since he didn’t know what to say anyway. Nothing with Izzy was ground he’d covered before. He felt set adrift without a map or a compass and he knew he couldn’t necessarily trust his instincts. Without giving her so much as a glance, he threw open the Charger’s driver side door and got out. She followed.

Shooter nodded to him. “The cabin’s up on that ridge, just over the crest.”

Caleb turned and shielded his eyes to assess the location. The trees provided a small bit of cover but not much due to the late season. He couldn’t see the cabin and that meant the cabin’s occupants couldn’t see them, either. At least they had one thing going for them. A shadow emerged from behind two trees just to his left. Hawk Red Cloud stepped out and approached the group. The large Sioux scout was neither out of breath nor apparently concerned with the situation. “We’ve got two entrances, front and back, minus the windows. There are two on each side. I make out two men, both inside. One of the rear windows is covered with a sheet, though. My guess is, if they still have the girl, that’s where she is. We’re going to have to go in silent,” he told them. “Unless they change position while we’re gearing up.”

“Why?” Shooter asked, unsnapping a large, rectangular case.

“Because one of them is in the kitchen, next to the door of that back room. We go in hot and he makes for that door, well, there might not be anyone left to save.”

Shooter nodded, accepting the man’s assessment. “Alright. We go in silent,
and secure the two of them immediately.”

Tex opened the back of the Hummer and pulled a large duffel bag to the edge of the cargo hold. He unzipped it and began handing out wireless earpieces. Once attached, each man strapped on a
bulletproof vest. Caleb turned while adjusting his to see that Izzy had opened the trunk of the Charger and pulled out her own vest. She pulled it on over her head and velcroed it tightly around herself.

Shooter looked at Caleb and then jerked his chin at Izzy, who was racking the slide of a Mossberg as she approached them. “Where’s she going to be?” he asked Caleb.

If Izzy felt slighted by the question, she didn’t show it. It wasn’t an insult, Caleb knew. Shooter didn’t know her, had never been in the field with her. Caleb hadn’t really, either. What Shooter was really asking for was Caleb’s opinion about her place on the team: go in with them, or wait here. Izzy had always been cool under pressure. Though they’d never been on a team together, she’d done a hell of a lot of takedowns—more than Caleb had, honestly. She knew the game well enough and she for damn sure understood what was at stake, it was the reason she’d stalked her prey all this way and stayed in the shadows of Rapid City while she searched.

“She’s with me,” Caleb told Shooter. “I’m on point. We’ll take the front entrance.”

Shooter turned to Tex and Hawk. “You two are on the rear entrance. Hawk, you take point on that one.” Tex didn’t argue. If guns blazing was the plan, any one of them could charge in first, but no one was stealthier than Red Cloud.

Izzy eyed Shooter’s sniper rifle warily. “If they’re dead, we don’t get paid,” she told him.

Shooter grinned at her. “I won’t kill anyone, Izzy. I’m just the backup. And don’t worry about getting paid. We live here, and this is in our wheelhouse, so we’re helping out our brother. No one’s taking your money from you.”

Izzy nodded. “I appreciate that.”

She watched the men finish gearing up. “What?” Shooter asked her.

She shook her head. “Nothing,” she told him. “I was just thinking about Pop, that’s all.”

Shooter placed his large hand on Izzy’s shoulder and squeezed. “Family’s family, Iz.”

Tex stepped forward and looked up to the ridge. He frowned. “We should have brought Abby,” he declared. “For the girl.”

“I’ll take the girl,” Izzy told him. “You handle the others. We’ll call RCPD once everyone is locked down.”

“Alright,” Shooter said firmly. “Let’s move out. Everyone knows their assignment. Stay out of view of those windows and wait at your points of entry for Go.”

Everyone nodded and spread out quickly and quietly.

Tex and Hawk headed left, through the trees and up the hill. Shooter, Easy, Caleb, and Izzy turned right together
, though Easy and Shooter broke off from them as Izzy and Caleb maneuvered toward the shoddy one-story cabin that rose into view ahead of them. Caleb and Izzy reached their destination first, as it was closest. He crept up the porch, placing his boots on the sides of the steps to avoid stressing the cracked wood. When he reached the top, he swung right and pressed himself up against the wall, just beside the doorknob.

Izzy reached out and gently tested it. When it gave just a bit, she let go of the knob and nodded at Caleb.

“We’re in position,” Caleb said softly. The earpieces were top of the line and picked up even the barest whisper.

“Understood,” came Shooter’s voice.

“Uh, we got a problem,” Tex cut in. “Our entry’s locked.”

Caleb frowned. The rear door was closest to the kitchen. It was imperative that they breached that entrance, even more so than the front. Before he could say anything, Izzy said, “I’m on my way.”

She crept back down the steps and edged toward the right side of the house. Which was smart, he noted. There were two windows on that side, but one of them was blocked by curtains. If the girl was in that room, she wouldn’t cry out in surprise at seeing a heavily armed woman sneaking past her window. Plus, Shooter was on that side. He and Easy were spotters for the operation and they’d safely navigate Izzy to the back door.

Caleb watched as Izzy disappeared around the corner of the cabin. He held his breath and steadied his hands. He didn’t like it when she was out of sight. He pressed his back further into the wall behind him to fight the urge to go after her.

“Easy now,” came Shooter’s voice over the earpiece. “The one in the living room is on the move.”

There was a long moment of silence as Caleb imagined Izzy waiting by the w
indow, tensed and ready to move past it at the lieutenant’s word. Finally the word came and just a few seconds later, Caleb heard Izzy say, “Hold this.”

The sound of a snort came over the earpiece. “You hold Vegas’ purse,” Hawk whispered. “Now Izzy’s shotgun. Must feel good to be useful.”

“Fuck you,” Tex whispered.

“Shut it,” Shooter ordered and they maintained radio silence while Izzy picked the lock on the back door.

Caleb looked down at his watch and timed it, for lack of anything better to do. At the 47-second mark, she said, “Got it.” He smiled to himself.
That’s my girl.
The thought had come to him unbidden, and it surprised him, but he didn’t have time to think about it now as she made her way back to the front of the cabin to prepare for entry.

“He’s back,” Shooter told her. “He’s on the couch. Go ahead
; he can’t see you.”

Within seconds, Izzy appeared around the corner of the house again. Caleb felt his stomach uncoil now that he could see her again. She crept back to her position by the front door. “Okay,” she whispered.

“Stand by, sports fans,” Shooter said. Half a second later, the front tire on the rusted-out truck parked in front of the cabin jerked. Caleb heard a slow, quiet hiss of air as the tire deflated. After an adjustment, Shooter fired another silenced round from his rifle and disabled the second vehicle.

“No one’s leaving this party early,” said Easy.

“Ready?” came Shooter’s voice again.

“Front entry ready,” Caleb replied
, looking into Izzy’s eyes as he said it.

Her breathing was even. Her hands were steady on her weapon. Her eyes were clouded, not bright with fear or excitement. She was definitely
ready.

“Rear entry ready,” Tex replied.

“There’s a joke in there somewhere,” said Hawk.

“Tell it later,” Shooter ordered.

Caleb took his own deep breath and settled into the heels of his feet. He put his hand on the knob.

“
Three…” said Shooter.

Caleb turned the knob as far as it would go to the right.

“Two…”

He cracked the door just the barest of inches.

“One…”

He let out the breath he was holding and pushed in the door.