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“The guy who showed up the same time you all arrived at David and Rick’s condo. Enzo’s been with you all day. This is the first time he’s seen anyone following you. He texted me. Luca and I hustled over here.”

  I peeked out the windows again and scanned the street below me. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “He’s in the parking garage across the street, third level, behind the second cement pillar. He’s using night vision goggles. Good stuff too. Expensive.”

  “It’s nice to know he’s well-equipped. Where are you?”

  “The roof.”

  “Which one?”

  “The building to your right, same side of the street as you. Watch.”

  I glanced in that direction and saw a quick red flash coming from the roof of the three-story building next door.

  “A laser sight?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I have it on my sniper rifle if he decides to make his move tonight.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Not sure. He’s driving a black Ford van with stolen plates. He parked it on the far side of the same floor of the garage he’s on. I can’t see his face clearly enough to get a picture so Janet can make an ID.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “When he leaves, we follow him to where he lives and have a serious talk with him,” he said. “Hold on. Enzo is calling me.”

  I waited.

  He came back on the line. “The guy’s on the move.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Not sure. This roof is higher than you are and my vision of the third floor is partially blocked by the fourth floor of the garage. You got eyes on him?”

  Since I was on the third floor, the man was directly across from me. I could make out a figure walking toward a black van parked at the far end of the garage.

  “Got him,” I said.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Opening the back of the van and pulling out a crate.”

  “A crate?”

  “Yeah, a wooden box about three or four feet long. He’s opening the box and taking out a black tube with a strap attached. It’s about three feet long.”

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Sounds like it might be an RPG.”

  “What’s an RPG?”

  “A rocket. He’s gonna blow you guys up.”

  42

  All I could think about were my two kids and loving husband, who would kill me if he knew what was going on. Unless the man across the street did first.

  “Where’s he now?” Frankie asked.

  “Still standing by the van,” I said.

  “Hold on. I’ll call the boys and send them up there.”

  “Tell them to hurry. He shoved something into the black tube and now he’s slung the strap of the tube over his shoulder.”

  The driver’s doors of the two vehicles on each end of the street flew open. Enzo and Luca exited so fast they left the car doors open. They sprinted toward the entrance of the parking garage.

  Frankie came back on the line. “I don’t want to scare you, but I can’t see him well enough to have a shot. If the boys don’t get there in time, you gotta put him down.”

  “Frankie, I’m a mommy! I can’t do this!”

  “Man up, babe. You got no options.”

  Running back into the family room, I yanked the Glock out of my backpack. The Irregulars were beginning to eat the snacks that David had put out.

  “Guys, I don’t want to scare you or anything, but you might want to leave,” I said.

  “Why?” Cas asked.

  “There’s a man across the street and he might have some kind of rocket thingy in his hands.”

  “Is it an RPG?” Rick asked.

  “I think that’s what Frankie called it,” I said.

  Rick’s voice was instantly hard. “David, get everyone out of here right now. Go to the basement and hurry.” He turned to me. “Show me.”

  David opened the front door of the condo, and the Irregulars scrambled out after him. Rick followed me back into the dining room.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  I pointed at the garage. “Right there, behind the second pillar from the street.”

  The man’s right leg and shoulder were all we could see. He seemed to be fumbling with the tube. Rick opened the window in front of us. There was no screen. Street noises intruded into the room. I smelled pizza being cooked in the restaurant across the street.

  “He has to step out to fire,” Rick said. “When he does, that’s when you shoot.”

  I jacked a round into the chamber. “And how would you know how to do any of this?”

  “Sweetie, I told you I was a medic in the first Iraq war, but I was also a sniper. I used to do stuff like this a lot.”

  I turned the gun around to hand it to him. “I’m a mommy. I don’t do stuff like this.”

  He put up his hands. “I haven’t fired your Glock, and I don’t know how it’s going to react. You have, and you can do it.”

  My hands began to shake. “Please, Rick, I can’t.”

  “You want to tuck your daughters in tonight?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then suck it up, buttercup. When he steps out, you aim for his center mass and give him a double tap.”

  “But what if I miss?”

  “Probably not good to think about that right now. Try to shoot in between your heartbeats.”

  That wasn’t going to be easy since my heart was racing from the surge of adrenaline rushing through my system. My father taught me how to shoot in Nebraska from the time I was a little girl, so I know my way around guns.

  But what if I miss?

  The man stepped out from behind the pillar and raised the tube. Assuming a shooter’s stance, I concentrated on the middle of his chest and relaxed my shaking right hand. The man seemed to be fumbling with the controls as he aimed the tube at us.

  Pray for mommy, kids.

  Taking a deep breath to slow my heart rate, I fired two rounds at the center mass of his chest.

  43

  The impact of the two bullets blew the man backward. The rocket tube flew out of his hands as he landed on the garage floor. The roar of the Glock being fired in the small dining room was deafening. The odor of gun powder surrounded us. I saw a couple of people run out from one of the shops in the building next to the one we were in, but when they didn’t see anything, they went back inside.

  Rick said something to me, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t understand him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Great shot,” he said. “Right in the O-ring.”

  I started to sob. Rick put his arms around me and gave me a hug. “You didn’t have an option. If you hadn’t done it, we would all be dead.”

  “But…” I whined.

  “No buts. It’s over. Your kids still have a mommy and your husband a wife.”

  Enzo and Luca exited the stairs and ran into the garage with their guns in front of them. When they got to the man, Luca kicked the tube further away and then knelt down and put his hand on the man’s neck. He turned to us and gave me a “thumbs up.”

  They put their guns down as Frankie ran out of the same garage door toward them. He said something to them. Luca nodded. He handed his weapon, a lupara, to Frankie and stepped back.

  Frankie took the sawed-off shotgun and, at point blank range, fired both barrels into the man’s chest. He handed the smoking gun back to Luca. Strangely, I didn’t hear any sound from those shots.

  I was still crying as I turned to Rick. I had to clear my throat to speak. “What the heck is going on? Isn’t the guy dead?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s dead. I think Frankie is cleaning things up a bit.” He paused. “Speaking of which…”

  He picked up the two hot bullet casings from the dining room carpet and put them in his pocket. “Old habit. I never left any evidence behind. If anyone ever finds the body, they won’t be able to tell th
at you shot him since there isn’t much left of his chest.”

  I kept crying. Rick handed me a tissue. I dabbed my eyes and blew my nose. “I want to go over there.”

  “Are you sure? After what Frankie did, it might be a trifle messy.”

  “I just murdered a man. I have to.”

  And this is a big part of my story.

  He closed the window. “I’ll make sure David and the girls are okay, and then I’ll walk over there with you.”

  44

  As soon as Rick and I entered the third floor of the parking garage, the acrid stench of gunpowder drifted toward us in the cool March night air. Rick took out a handkerchief and covered his mouth and nose.

  “I hate that smell,” he said through the cloth.

  We walked toward the body. “That’s a strange comment coming from a sniper,” I said.

  “Sweetie, I might have been a sniper, but I am a tres sensitive person.”

  “How many gay snipers did they have in Iraq?”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell, and believe me, when you’re as good a shot as I was, no one ever asked.”

  Frankie put up his hands to stop us when we were about twelve feet from the body. Frankie’s face is square, and his olive skin bears small scars from adolescent acne. A narrow soul patch runs from the edge of his lower lip to the deep cleft in his chin.

  Like Enzo and Luca, who are younger than Frankie, he is blocky but not fat. It looks like they all work out together, and from the size of Frankie’s biceps, it looks like he could more than hold his own lifting heavy weights with his youthful companions.

  The aroma of the fresh blood and body fluids oozing from the body onto the cement floor of the garage now overwhelmed the gunpowder smell.

  Frankie moved to block my view of the corpse. “Not a good idea for you to check this mess.”

  I felt like I wanted to cry again. “I need to see him,” I said softly.

  Rick stepped around me and removed the handkerchief from his face. He man-hugged Frankie.

  “Dude,” he said.

  “What up, bro?” Frankie asked.

  “You guys know each other?” I said.

  “He cuts my hair,” Frankie said.

  “And we ride motorcycles together,” Rick said. “We have for a long time.”

  Didn’t see that coming.

  Rick walked over to the body.

  Frankie turned back to me. “Bro has serious ink,” he said, nodding toward Rick.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. At least one of my friends does too,” I said, as I remembered a tattoo I’d inadvertently seen on Linda’s lower back when she was in the hospital. “I need to see the body.”

  Frankie didn’t move, but peeking over his shoulder, I could see Rick lean down.

  “Uh-oh,” Rick said to himself.

  “Uh-oh, what?” I said.

  He stood up holding the tube. “This RPG is a Tavolga.”

  “That sounds like something from an opera,” I said.

  “Nothing musical about this. It has a thermobaric warhead. Way more than enough to blow away our condo.” He paused. “It’s Russian-made.”

  Bile bubbled up into the back of my throat.

  45

  Elbowing my way around Frankie, I walked up to the body. Luca held the lupara shotgun in his arms. Enzo had an Uzi at his side. They stepped back.

  “Yikes,” I said, when I saw the corpse.

  Rick stood up. “A bit untidy I’m afraid.”

  I tried to speak, but my breath caught in my throat.

  What have I done?

  Over a year and a half ago, while working on another story, I accidentally shot my terrorist neighbor while defending myself in my kitchen. We had struggled for his gun. It went off and hit him in the chest. The wound bled profusely, and after he died, he pooped and peed all over my kitchen floor. But that was nothing compared to this.

  The entire front of the victim’s chest was a mangled mess of bone, skin, muscle, cartilage, heart and lung tissue, and other body parts I couldn’t identify. The twin blasts from the sawed-off shotgun had destroyed any physical evidence that I had shot him first.

  Rick squatted down and pried open the victim’s mouth.

  I swallowed and cleared my throat again. “Are you a dentist too?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me.

  “Why are you checking his mouth?”

  “Russians have shoddy dental care. The RPG was Russian. I thought that was interesting.”

  I opened my mouth to asked him how he knew this, but he held up his hand and I stopped.

  “On a couple of secret missions, I saw a few Russian bodies, and all of them had stainless steel fillings in their teeth.” He held the victim’s mouth open. “I don’t see any. His teeth appear to be normal.”

  “Maybe the Russians are getting better at dental care.”

  His voice was hard. “And maybe he’s not a Russian and he bought the RPG on the black market.”

  He pulled up the man’s right sleeve, exposing his upper arm. He looked at a large tattoo of a weird-looking fork. “Interesting.”

  Frankie walked over and looked at it. “Bro.”

  “I know,” Rick said.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked.

  “Rick, show her.”

  He pulled up his own right sleeve. He had a similar tattoo.

  “It’s a Seal trident,” Rick said.

  My heart felt like it skipped a beat. “Does that mean…”

  “I was a Seal. He was too.”

  No!

  I’d killed one of our military men.

  Rick looked up at me. “Don’t feel bad. Not all of our men work for the good guys when they get out. Guys like him drift to the dark side and do wet work for money.”

  He picked up the victim’s right hand and then his left. “Huh?”

  “Huh, what?” I said.

  “Small wonder that he fumbled with the RPG. He’s missing a few fingers.”

  Uh-oh!

  46

  The tension that had been escalating in my neck now blasted into my temples. It felt like a belt was being tightened around my head. I massaged my neck with my left hand.

  For the first time, I studied the man’s face. “I know him,” I said, as I continued to rub my neck, “and you’re right, he’s not a Russian.”

  Rick stood up and brushed off his hands. Enzo stared at me. Luca did too.

  “This the guy Janet told me about?” Frankie asked. “The one you plugged in the garage at MidAmerica Hospital?”

  I stared at the corpse’s face. He was someone who blended into the background, a man you would see and not remember five minutes later. He seemed average when I first encountered him, and he still did — with the exception of the gaping hole in his chest.

  And I killed him.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Who is he?” Rick asked.

  “He accosted me in the parking lot at Costco and told me to stop working on the Fertig story. I took out my Glock and told him to leave us alone. He verbally threatened me, but he left. Then he attacked Linda and me in the garage at MidAmerica hospital and tried to shoot us. I fired first and shot off a finger or two on his right hand.” I paused, remembering that event. “He laughed at me. When he reached for his gun a second time, I had no option but to fire again to protect Linda and me, and I shot off part of his left hand.”

  “It would appear that laughing at you isn’t exactly a healthy thing to do if you value your fingers,” Rick said.

  “Especially if it’s a man who is laughing,” I said. “That does upset me.”

  47

  Frankie walked over to Enzo and Luca. He lowered his head and spoke to them in Italian. They nodded and walked over toward the victim’s truck. Frankie rejoined us.

  “Don’t you think we should call Janet?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking that’s a definite negatory,” Frankie said.
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