Low Tide (20 page)

“Alright, get over to my office and I’ll brief you. We need to go in quiet.” Wyatt hung up. “Twenty minutes.”

“What’d he say?” Grace asked.

“Grace, we’re going to be there in twenty minutes. We’ll be there, somewhere. I need you to get you and the kids out if you can.”

“I’ll figure it out. There’s a—” Grace was silent for a moment. “He just turned the water off. There’s an old chicken house on the lot next door. If we’re out, that’s where we’ll be.”

“Grace, be—” Maggie stopped when she saw the call disconnect. She started to say something to Wyatt, but Pittman rushed in.

“I’m here. The guys are getting geared up. What do we have going on?” Pittman asked.

Wyatt reached into a closet and pulled out his black body armor vest.

“Same guy from the other night,” Wyatt said, getting his vest on. “He’s at his house on Houser Road. I’ll get you the house number, but it’s the only house on the block where it dead ends. Blue.”

“I know it,” Pittman said.

“I’m going,” Maggie said to Wyatt.

Wyatt paused in securing the Velcro straps on his vest. He seemed about to say “no.”

“Go get your gear on,” he said instead.

Maggie shoved her cell phone into her back pocket, ran back to her office, and grabbed her vest off of the small coat rack behind the door. She put it on over her SO tee shirt, slapped the Velcro in place, and then walked around her desk.

She opened one of the bottom drawers and pulled out her ankle holster, with her department-issued Glock 23. She yanked up the right leg of her jeans and strapped it on. Then she grabbed her keys and hurried back to Wyatt’s office.

“How many kids, Maggie?” Wyatt barked as soon as she walked through the door.

“Three. Two toddlers, boy and a girl, and an infant girl.” Maggie felt hot tears trying to form in her eyes, and she looked down, pulled out her service weapon, and checked it unnecessarily.

Grace heard the sink faucet turn on as she scurried from the end of the hall, back into the kids’ room. Jake and Tammi watched her from the rug, where they were rocking the baby in her carrier. She fumbled with the phone’s power button, got it switched off, and shoved it into the open toy box under some stuffed animals.

She had just turned around and picked one of the kid’s backpacks off the floor when Ricky stopped in the doorway, a towel around his waist.

“What are you doin’?” he asked her.

“I’m just gonna pack a couple things for the kids to do in the car,” she said.

“They don’t need much.”

Since she’d hung up the phone, Grace’s mind had been scrambling for a plan. What she’d decided was that she needed to get them into the kitchen. Ricky had made them stay in the kids’ room almost all day, while he packed his things and made some calls in the living room.

“The kids are hungry,” she said. “Can we stop somewhere on the way to Jacksonville?”

“No, we can’t stop,” he said, his lip curling up. “I got people waitin’ on me. Go make ’em some Spaghetti-Os or something, ’cause I don’t want to hear them whining in the car.”

“Okay. Do you want me to fix you a sandwich, baby? You haven’t eaten in days, Ricky.”

“No. I gotta lay down for like an hour, ’cause we’re drivin’ straight through. Just hurry up and make sure those kids are quiet.”

“Okay,” Grace answered as he turned and walked toward their room. “I’ll pack you some sandwiches, okay, baby?”

He didn’t answer, just shut the door.

“C’mon, kids, come with Mama Grace,” she said, picking up the carrier. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”

The kids followed her down the hall, past Ricky’s bedroom door, walking carefully, even on the blue shag carpet. Grace led them into the kitchen, and put the carrier down on the kitchen table.

The table was rectangular and Grace had set it long ways under the kitchen window, with two chairs on one side and two on the other, so the kids could watch the squirrels in the back yard while they ate.

“Jake, you sit here, and Tammi sit down here,” Grace almost whispered.

Then she leaned over and looked out of the open window, but she didn’t see anything but the kids’ outside toys, and the lawn chair she sat in with the baby when she watched the kids play or sprayed them with the hose. When he was gone, she was going to get chairs for the kids, too, little kid-sized lawn chairs, so they could eat outside when it was cool.

Grace hurried quietly over to the fridge and took out some string cheese and apple slices for the kids and set them on the table.

“Just a snack, okay? Mama Grace is gonna fix you something better later.”

Tammi put her blue bear, Binky, in the seat next to her and started unwrapping her cheese. Grace looked toward the hallway and listened, but heard nothing. Then she leaned over, got her fingers around the edges of the warped screen and started wiggling it, careful not to make any noise.

“What you do, Mama Gray?” Jake whispered.

“Shh, Mama’s busy. It’s okay.” Grace got the screen loose, and hung it flat out the window as far as she could reach. There was only one other window on this side of the house, maybe eight feet to the right, and that was Ricky’s room. They couldn’t go out one of the doors, because Ricky had locked the deadbolts and taken the keys. They needed to go this way, and she needed to do it right.

She squinted up her eyes as she let it the screen fall into the grass. It didn’t make a sound.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then she stood and waited, watching out the window and gently rocking the carrier in the hope that Rose would stay asleep. She just needed to wait a few minutes, just long enough for either Ms. Redmond to come or for him to fall asleep. If the police weren’t there in a few minutes, she was going.

Maggie, Wyatt, two deputies and two SUV-loads of SWAT parked their cars diagonally across the road at the corner, then bailed out. The house was just a few hundred yards down on the right. Between the house and the officers was one overgrown lot. There was a falling-down wooden shed at the back of the grown-up lot, and alongside it, dividing the lot from Alessi’s property, was a wooden privacy fence that was warped and weathered and had huge gaps in it.

They all drew their weapons, and headed for the lot next to Alessi’s. By arrangement, Wyatt and half the team went in the direction of the front of the house, the rest of the SWAT guys headed for the middle of the property, and Maggie and two SWAT guys toward the shed.

The two guys with Maggie were supposed to go through the back door. Maggie had been ordered by Wyatt to stay by the shed with Grace and the kids if they were there. If they weren’t, they were to get Plan B from Pittman.

They weren’t there. Maggie and the SWAT guys rounded the back side of the shed and found no one. From there, they had a clear view across the yard and back of the house. Two windows, one door, no kids.

Maggie swallowed hard as one of the guys depressed his mic button and whispered.

“This is Stephens. No one here.”

Pittman’s hushed voice came through Maggie’s earpiece, too. “How’s the back?”

“Nothing,” Stephens answered.

“Get in position and await my order.”

The two SWAT guys bent over and ran across the yard soundlessly, beneath the two windows and to the tiny back stoop. They positioned themselves on either side of the door.

Maggie was about to wipe the sweat from her forehead before it hit her eyes, when a child’s legs appeared out the window, and then he was dropped the couple of feet down into the grass. It was the little boy.

The SWAT guys both looked, and Maggie stood a bit straighter, held up her hand. She depressed her mic button. “I’ve got a kid coming out one of the back windows,” she said, her voice hushed.

“Copy. Await my order,” Pittman said.

She stepped to the very edge of the shed and waved the boy over as he stared at her, confused. He ran toward her in his bare feet. She grabbed him as he reached her, and sat him down up against the back wall of the shed. When she looked back again, the little girl was already standing in the grass, holding her hands up toward the window.

The baby carrier was coming out. The little girl grabbed the handle with both hands and lowered it to the ground.

Maggie saw the two SWAT guys look at each other and then look back at the carrier. The closer one looked ready to move. The little girl was trying to carry the carrier without letting it drag on the ground.

Maggie held up her hand again, then bent over and started across the grass. As she crossed the side yard, she saw Wyatt and the other men running across the grass at their end of the house. The quick glimpse she got of Wyatt’s face as he saw her told her that she was in trouble, but she had no time to think about it.

She had just reached the little girl when Grace’s upper half appeared through the window. She looked like she was going to try to slide out. Maggie ran to her, put Grace’s arms around her neck, and pulled her out, grateful that it was almost noiseless.

She shoved Grace toward the baby and the little girl and waited underneath the kitchen window while Grace ran with the carrier in one hand and the little girl’s hand in her other.

They had just cleared the other window when the little girl twisted away and turned around. She ran a few steps toward Maggie.

“Binky!”

The world stopped for just a second. Maggie heard nothing but the blood pounding in her ears, then, from inside the house, very close, “Shut the hell up!”

The next ten seconds or so passed so slowly and yet they were so fast that Maggie was unaware of thought. There was only the adrenaline and the blood in her ears.

She ran toward the little girl, who had frozen in place, just ten feet away. As she took her first step, she heard the back door as the SWAT guys broke through it, and further away, she heard the front door breached.

Maggie saw Grace put the carrier down and start to run back toward Maggie and the girl. Maggie saw her mouth open wide, but she didn’t hear her make a sound.

Just as she reached the little girl, Maggie heard a sound above or behind her. Maggie grabbed the girl’s arm near the shoulder and slung the child toward Grace. She landed on her butt in front of Grace, and Maggie saw Grace bend over to pick her up.

Then Maggie heard glass shattering, and she turned around and started to raise her service weapon. Alessi was already in the air, his legs pumping

He came down on top of her, and they both went down, Maggie on her back and Alessi on his knees. Maggie felt one of Alessi’s knees grind into her left thigh as they landed. His other knee made a sickening sound as it hit the ground. The earth seemed like it would punch right through Maggie’s back and, as her arms hit the ground, her weapon flew out of her hand and skittered a few feet away.

Maggie vaguely heard thumping and yelling inside as Alessi leaned over her, his hip bone pushing the air out of her, and reached for her .45. Maggie pulled her right knee up and reached down.

It seemed like slow motion to Maggie, as Ricky straightened up and moved to pull the slide on her gun, looking down at her with hate and meth and fear on his face.

Maggie raised her right arm and shot him in the chest.

He bent backward, then fell forward on top of her, and his chest blocked all of the light from her vision. He smelled of copper and gunpowder, soap and cotton, cat pee and adrenalin.