Contract to Kill

  “Chip, you okay?”

  Over the top of the scorching air bag, Mason saw the ambulance swerve to the middle of the street. It slid sideways for a second, then regained its traction.

  Chip opened his door and dived out.

  All over the parking lot, car alarms blared, adding to the din of the ambulance’s siren.

  Finishing Toby Haynes would have to wait. “Chip, we’re outta here.”

  It didn’t happen.

  Mason realized he could barely hear his own voice. Like his own, Chip’s eardrums were pounded from the dual air bag detonations.

  His friend pulled his handgun and sprinted toward the ambulance.

  “Stop the car!”

  Holly slammed the brakes, pulsing the antilocks.

  “Change in plans. Harv, you’re with me. Holly, get Karen outta here. Stay within a few blocks. I’ll radio you.”

  Before the sedan had stopped, Nathan and Harv were out. He toggled his laser and lined up on the gunman dashing for the ambulance. He painted the crimson dot on the man’s rib cage, then moved it a few inches to the left to lead his target. He had a better chance shooting center mass than risking a missed head shot.

  He closed his eyes at the instant he pulled the trigger. Unsuppressed, the report pounded his ears. The gunman shuddered but didn’t go down.

  Mason knew Chip was vulnerable out there. Still semi-dazed from the air bag deployment, he staggered out of the driver’s seat and drew his pistol.

  He heard an engine roar and looked toward the street. The ambulance crew must’ve seen Chip running toward them because they were leaving in a big hurry.

  A single handgun report rang out.

  Mason watched Chip double over.

  Thoroughly pissed off, Mason yanked open the rear door of his SUV and grabbed the M4. He leveled it at the man who’d just shot Chip. The guy looked an awful lot like the gunman from Haynes’s apartment. He must’ve followed the ambulance too.

  Mason leaned forward and pulled the trigger.

  Holly screeched the tires on wet pavement as she executed a U-turn and sped away.

  “Down!” Harv yelled.

  A split second later, a machine-gun burst pierced the night.

  Nathan saw a white star of fire spit from the SUV. He dived for the parked cars at the curb and sensed dozens of bullets whizzing past his feet. The staccato roar of the machine gun echoed off every building in the area and crackled down the street.

  Behind him, Harv’s handgun boomed three times, the muzzle flashes freezing raindrops.

  He looked toward the ambulance and was relieved to see it speeding away.

  The man Nathan had shot was down on one knee.

  Could he have missed? No friggin’ way. He’d drilled the guy for sure. The gunman, likely Hahn, given his size, clutched his midsection and limped back toward the SUV in a crouch. Nathan remembered seeing body armor as they’d descended the stairs at Toby’s apartment.

  A smile touched his lips. “Hey, asshole,” he yelled, “you want some barbecue sauce for those ribs?”

  He lined up for a head shot at the same instant a second salvo peppered the area around him.

  Shit! Nathan covered his face as bullets skipped off the asphalt and whistled away. Mason was spraying the entire area without regard to collateral damage.

  “Harv!” Nathan whispered loudly.

  “I’m okay.”

  “We need solid cover! Head for the corner of Boot World. Go!”

  He came up and saw no sign of Mason. It didn’t matter. He bench-rested his Sig on the hood of the car and sent three quick shots through the SUV’s fender into the engine block. A glance in Harv’s direction confirmed he’d made it to safety. At least there weren’t any houses around here.

  Mason fired again, this time from deeper in the parking lot. More supersonic bullets tore through the car shielding Nathan. Sooner or later, a lucky shot was going to find him. He needed to join Harv behind solid cover.

  “Give me suppression fire in three, two, one . . . Now.”

  Harv’s handgun boomed as he sprinted for Harv’s position. His friend changed magazines when he arrived.

  Nathan peered around the corner. “There were two vehicles at Toby’s. Keep eyes on the street. Give me more suppression fire. I’ve got an idea. A way to advance without being in the open.”

  “Don’t get yourself shot. Like Holly said, we don’t have vests and they do.”

  “You ready?”

  Harv nodded.

  “Now.”

  Harv leaned out and fired his pistol toward the SUV, allowing Nathan to pivot around the corner and smack a huge glass window with his Sig. A cascade of tempered shards rained down, and he rushed inside the store. Thankfully, no alarm blared and the inside of the store remained dark. Moving quickly, he worked his way toward the entrance of the store facing the parking lot.

  At the same time Nathan’s mind registered the cracks, the glass blew inward, followed by the roar of automatic fire. Mason must’ve seen him breach the window and go inside. Thankfully, the bullets missed to his right. Nathan ducked for cover behind an endcap display as Mason fired another burst.

  Like something out of a horror movie, the shoes on the rack came to life as dozens of .223 slugs found them. They jumped into the air and bounced around as if possessed. Nathan heard Harv’s gun boom two more times, silencing Mason’s machine gun. Without warning, a shrieking security alarm wailed to life and the entire store was invaded with blinding light. Nathan squinted against the visual assault and crawled toward the broken-out door. He rolled onto his back, painted his laser on the closest interior security light, and took it out. Two more shots later and he was in darkness again. He couldn’t locate the source of that damned racket; it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.

  “Nate . . . can . . . hear me?”

  “I’m okay. Give me three more shots on my mark. I’m going to advance up to a parked RV. Any sign of Hahn?”

  “No. The last . . . of him . . . he . . . limping toward . . . SUV.”

  “Harv, I can’t hear you over this damned alarm. Here I go. Stand by . . . Now!”

  Nathan waited an extra second to be sure Harv fired before he made his sprint out the door. Harv’s gun discharged with slow, deliberate cadence.

  Nathan used the interval to advance through the front door’s frame. He lowered himself flat behind a short hedge and moved ten feet laterally to his right. If Mason had seen him come out of Boot World, he didn’t want to be in the same place for the next salvo.

  “When I open fire, follow my path through the store. Keep watching for Darla.” Nathan tried to gauge how much time had passed since Holly had sideswiped Mason’s SUV. It couldn’t have been more than sixty seconds. If Darla were in the area, she’d be showing up fairly quickly. If she did, he wouldn’t be able to protect Harv’s left flank.

  “Change in plan. I’m heading for the landscaped strip along the street. It’s—”

  Mason’s weapon roared again. Bullets tore through the hedge and uprooted grass along Boot World’s storefront. When the barrage ended, he popped up and aimed at the spot where he’d seen the flash of the M4, but Mason wasn’t there.

  “Harv?”

  “I’m in the store. I have eyes on you.”

  “Holly, are you copying all of this?”

  “My God, it sounds like a war zone down there.”

  “Stand by. Harv, on my mark . . . Now.”

  Harv fired four rounds through the front door.

  Nathan had to wait. “I’ll be crossing right in front of you; hold your fire.”

  “Nathan, I didn’t copy.”

  “Hold. Fire.”

  “Copy, holding fire.”

  Nathan made an all-out sprint for the landscaping strip next to the street. It wasn’t much
cover, but it did rise a few feet above the sidewalk and driveway. If he stayed near the curb, Mason’s bullets wouldn’t be able to find him.

  What happened next reminded him of the Robert De Niro movie Heat. Two machine guns opened fire. As if sliding headfirst into home plate, Nathan dived into the landscaping and ended up face-to-face with a trio of sago palms. Just in front of him, the ground erupted. Mud, splintered vegetation, and bark trashed him from head to toe. He rolled to his left off the curb, which gave him another six inches of protection.

  He heard it then, the roar of an engine. Would Holly come back in the middle of a firefight? She definitely would.

  Harv yelled, “Behind you!”

  He turned.

  And found himself face-to-face with the headlights of a Lexus sedan.

  If he didn’t move, he’d be run over.

  Nathan made a split-second decision to stay there for an instant longer. He didn’t think Mason or Hahn would fire at his location once the Lexus arrived.

  This is going to be close, he thought. He jumped up and slid over the hood of the Lexus as it turned into the parking lot’s driveway. In that moment, he was inches from Darla Lyons’s face. They looked at each other, and Nathan saw icy calmness in her eyes. It pissed him off. He’d wanted to smack the glass with his Sig, but there wasn’t time.

  Nathan landed hard, scraping his left elbow and banging a knee. He rolled back to the safety of the curb as the Lexus angled across the parking lot toward Mason’s position.

  Darla came to an abrupt halt in front of the SUV, shielding it from further gunfire. Gutsy move.

  At least Mason and Hahn wouldn’t let loose with those damned cannons again; the Lexus was in their way, but it didn’t block Harv’s line of sight.

  Harv popped four more rounds.

  Nathan watched the windshields of both vehicles take impacts. Way to go, Harv. Good shooting.

  With a screeching crunch, the SUV tore free from the parked car. Clearly, Nathan’s bullets into the engine block hadn’t shut the vehicle down. He should’ve shot its tires. In reverse gear, Darla mirrored the SUV’s movements, maintaining a protective position.

  Nathan came up from his crouch, painted the laser on the Lexus’s rear window, and sent three bullets through the glass. With a little luck, he’d score a hit, but Darla’s sedan continued to speed away.

  Boot World’s security alarm continued to wail. As if answering a mating call, half a dozen car alarms added to the chaos of the scene.

  Harv hustled over to his position. “I thought she was gonna run you over. Please don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m facing the same situation.”

  “They could still make a move against the ambulance.”

  “Holly, you copy?”

  “I’m here.”

  “We’re in the street. We need to reacquire the ambulance.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty seconds.”

  “I’ll drive. Slide over when you stop.”

  They saw headlights appear from an intersection.

  “Is that you? Did you just turn onto the street?”

  “Affirm.”

  “If the police get descriptions from anyone who just witnessed any of this, those two vehicles will be hard to miss.”

  Nathan nodded tightly. “We don’t have time to pick up our brass.”

  “Good thing we have plenty of barrels and firing pins.”

  To gain a few seconds, they sprinted toward the approaching Mercedes.

  Holly cut it pretty close slowing down, but she maintained control. The right front fender was bashed in, but not bad enough to wreck the tire. He watched her scramble over the center console into the passenger seat.

  “That was some great driving,” Nathan said.

  “I second that,” Harv added.

  “Karen, you okay back there?” he asked.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Harv?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “Holly, I need you to reload my Sig. It’s in my right thigh pocket; the mags are in my left pocket. I’m going to push things to the limit, so everyone hang on. Call the intersections for me.”

  At each traffic light—red or green—Harv and Holly cleared him through.

  “The proverbial cat’s out of the bag,” Harv said. “They know Toby’s alive and we’re protecting him.”

  “The question is, do they know it’s us?”

  “There’s no way to know that without talking to Toby. Put yourself in Mason’s shoes,” Harv said. “What’s his next move?”

  “He’s definitely worried he’s lost containment. Now that he knows Toby’s alive, he might flee the area, or go into hiding, or leave the country altogether. Conversely, he might conduct an all-out offensive and try to end the threat tonight, which means he could make a move against Toby while he’s in the hospital.”

  “Based on Mason’s actions tonight, we can safely assume he’s desperate. We chased him away from Toby’s apartment, hid Karen, and just stopped his attempt to kill Toby. We’ve become wild cards in his little war of cover-up.”

  “We may not be wild cards if Toby or Mara gave us up.”

  “Right,” Harv agreed. “A lot of maybes, I know.”

  “Our primary goal is to save Toby’s life, and Karen’s. We’ll worry about his testimony in court later. For now, we do our best to keep Mason away from him.”

  “We need to think about something. If Toby or Mara gave us up, Mason’s next move might be to break into our corporate office to try to get our personal information. We should also post a few guards outside First Security. If nothing happens there tonight, we might be okay.”

  “For a while,” Nathan said. “If Mason has our names and the name of our security company, he’ll eventually be able to track us down.”

  “Not a nice thought. Hang on, I need to call Gavin and get things rolling.”

  Harv made the call. Security guards would be at the hospital and their headquarters within fifteen minutes or so.

  Holly hadn’t said much, and it worried him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You know where I stand on things. As a federal agent, I’m sworn to uphold the law. I’ve now participated in a hit-and-run coupled with a firefight in the middle of a mini-mall. And you guys may have just killed one or more of BSI’s personnel.”

  Nathan didn’t say anything, ran another red light, and accelerated to seventy miles an hour. He hoped they’d reach Sharp Hospital’s ER before Mason.

  “Nate, Holly’s right. Things have escalated. I’m not sure we should keep this under wraps any longer.”

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “For one,” Holly said, “I should come clean with my boss. The longer I wait, the harder it will be to explain why I waited. Right now, I can claim things have been going at a hundred miles an hour and we’re only now getting a break in the action. It’s not entirely true, but I can live with it. It should be his decision how to proceed from here.”

  As much as Nathan wanted to disagree, he couldn’t. She was right. Mason was out of control. It was evident he had no compunction about injuring or killing innocent people to keep his crimes secret.

  Holly continued. “I also think you should call your father.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Nathan said.

  “Why on earth not? Stone almost surely knows Tanner Mason’s boss. He and Beaumont need to know what’s going on. Furthermore, what Mason’s done tonight easily rises to the level of ‘domestic terrorism,’ don’t you think? It’s within your father’s domain.” She paused for a breath. “Did I miss anything?”

  “No, that sums it up nicely.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to beat you up. I know you’d prefer to deal with Mason privately, and that
may still happen, but at this point I’m obligated to report what I know. It’s the right thing to do. And so is calling your father.”

  “You’re playing Harv’s role.”

  She gave him a puzzled look.

  “It’s a compliment. Harv has always been the voice of reason and sanity in my world. He’s saved my life more times than I can count. We should give you executive override privileges.”

  “Executive override?”

  “Veto power over each other. I’ll tell you about it later. We’re here.”

  There was no sign of Mason’s SUV or the Lexus; all was quiet. If any of Mason’s stray bullets had found anyone, though, this tranquility would soon change. Nathan followed the signs to the ER and saw the ambulance parked under the sheltered entrance, its rear doors open.

  “It looks like they made it,” Harv said.

  “Let’s find a place to park where we can keep an eye on the entrance.”

  “How about I find a place to watch from the inside?” Holly said. “All ERs have waiting rooms. What’s the range of your radios?”

  “With an open line of sight, about three miles, but they won’t work well inside a big structure.”

  “Our phones will work.”

  “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. Harv?”

  “I think Holly’s right. We need someone on the inside, and Holly’s a good choice. I doubt Mason got a good look at us during the ambulance shoot-out, but he got an even worse look at Holly back at Toby’s apartment.”

  “What about your report?” Nathan asked. He didn’t want to use Director Lansing’s name in front of Karen. She’d kept quiet during their discussions, no longer crying but clearly withdrawn.

  “Am I okay delaying it a little longer? Yes, but time is running out. We’re talking less than thirty minutes. Deal?”

  “Deal. Toby will probably be in surgery within the hour, so let’s make sure Mason doesn’t get to him before that. I seriously doubt he’s fanatical enough to burst into a surgical suite and execute Toby on the operating table, but with his cowboy tactics tonight, who knows.”

  “At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past him,” Holly said.