The Dream Machine: Book 6, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (28 page)

Riehl filed the thoughts away. The girl had led them here, and there had been no way for her to warn White. So no matter what had happened leading up to this point, they had the element of surprise working in their favor, along with overwhelming numbers. For every man in that house, there were four highly trained law enforcement officials closing, all of them armed with superior firepower.

They reached the sidewalk in front of the house. Riehl and company peered along the side of the house. The other group, Megan and Eddie’s team, were silhouettes against the calm bay. Over the headset, the lead from the tack unit told everybody they were ready to move against the back door.

“Get into position,” Riehl said. “Twenty seconds. Be ready.”

“Roger.”

Riehl motioned and his team headed for the house. The front door was only fifteen feet away when the windows shattered and gunfire erupted.

***

I had my eyes on the dock, fifty yards away, where the bay boat swayed in the weak tide, while the tack unit headed for the back door. One man carrying a tiny battering ram hustled ahead. I wanted to go in with them, but Megan had drawn the line. I was allowed to provide cover and support from the rear, but I couldn’t go inside. Not enough training, which I couldn’t argue with. A dynamic entry was a learned skill and without the learning I was liable to screw it up for everybody.

Over the headset, Riehl exchanged a few words with the team lead. I could just see the men in the front yard as they surged toward the house, timing the approach perfectly with Megan and the guys closing on the back door. In twenty seconds, somebody would shout
Police!
Both doors would be breached. Flash-bangs would be tossed. And then the long arm of the law would descend on the assholes inside. I hoped they were all drunk, I hoped they were all sleeping off last night’s debauchery following the prison break. I hoped White got cute and went for a gun, because I didn’t want him going back to prison.

Not very sympathetic, especially coming from a guy like me who’d been inside. But with my second chance, I’d made amends and tried to atone ever since. There was no such remorse in White and from what I knew he’d been given plenty of opportunities to give it up.

As Megan and the men were halfway up the back yard, I saw a curtain twitch.

“GUN!” I shouted.

But nobody heard me because the shooting had already started.

***

White only had a shotgun. Only.

He was good at many criminal activities, but not necessarily deadly with a gun. He fired wildly out of the bay window on the front of the house, hoping to push the police back while he figured out what to do next. Next to him, the tiny guy they called Shovel had pulled an Uzi from God knows where and was firing also.

Two SWAT assholes went down, though whether it was from his shotgun or Shovel, White couldn’t tell. The cops backtracked, pulling their injured colleagues back. White put one of them in his sights, eyeing down the long barrel of the shotgun. The guy was a beast, six-five or six-six, probably two-fifty of solid muscle. He didn’t look like a local yokel who’d barely graduated from a police academy. He looked
different,
like he was important.

White had him dead to rights as he began to squeeze the trigger.

***

I aimed at the window where I’d seen the curtain twitch a split second before the shooting started. Nobody from our side had gotten hit, as far as I could tell. I squeezed the trigger and the bullet sailed true but I couldn’t tell if I’d hit anybody.

Somebody inside the house was screaming. Not in pain but in mad joy. Another window shattered from inside as somebody poked a handgun out and fired blindly. Because the house was elevated and the shooter didn’t have an angle, the bullets sailed harmlessly over the heads of the tack unit. I dropped to a knee and took dead aim.

And hit the old siding above the window.

Our guys were sitting ducks in the backyard. There was nothing to take cover behind. The tack unit and local SWAT were forced to push back, Megan with them.

***

Riehl pulled the cop away from the house while the gunfire continued. The entire time, he expected to feel that punch, that snake bite. He’d been shot before so knew what to expect. So long as it didn’t hit any vital organs, he’d be alright. And he wasn’t about to let this cop get shot up more and die on the lawn. No fucking way.

There was a car parked street side in front of the house. If he could just get behind it, they’d be fine…

***

White had the big guy dead to rights. His finger pulled the trigger, but before he felt the convulsive jerk of the weapon something stung him in the shoulder. In that split second before firing, White was thrown off-target. The shotgun went off and most of the shot didn’t even make it out of the house. The paneling around the bay window splintered as White went down. The bullet had unbalanced him. Somewhere, maybe upstairs, the bitches were screaming. But White barely heard them over the shootout and barely registered their raw fear over the pain in his shoulder. It took away his concentration.

For one second too long.

He’d missed his opportunity to kill the big motherfucker.

***

Riehl handed the cop off to one of his buddies who got him the rest of the way behind the car. Then Riehl turned back to the house. It was a miracle he hadn’t been shot as he hauled the guy across the front lawn. Their progress had been slow and linear, making them the perfect targets

The rest of the team had held their position on the lawn miraculously, despite stepping into an ambush. Riehl brought his gun up and held it out in front of him.

“MOVE!” he yelled.

The men rallied as Riehl zipped across the yard, his gun trained on the bay window while he barreled toward the front door. When he got close, he started firing at the door. At the last moment, Riehl took one long stride and launched. Two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle hit the door and shattered it.

***

The back door of the house flew open and three guys came out. They were all armed but I was too worried about getting blown away to make sense of what kind of weapons they were aiming at us. Gunfire erupted from the sagging deck as the three men let loose.

There wasn’t much to take cover behind. I went into a roll and kept on barreling till I felt cold sand. Quickly surveying the damage, I saw one guy on the tack unit down. His back was arched as pain ripped through him. One of his buddies was trying to pull him back toward the neighbor’s house.

Megan had taken cover behind what looked like a generator. She, the other tack guy, and a couple SWAT were coordinating their fire, taking turns so they could advance. The assholes on the porch lost their nerve and started backing away to the house. They were so focused on what was in front of them, they weren’t paying attention to little old me.

I aimed and fired, not thinking, just acting. The nearest guy, some scary-looking brawler with a shaved head and overcompensating beard, took it in the side and spun around. His buddies saw him get shot and reality must have set in for them. They might have been hardasses but they weren’t looking to die.

Both threw their weapons down and grabbed air.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” Megan shouted.

Only one of them listened. The other was too dazed from seeing his buddy get shot he must not have registered. Megan kept shouting.

“GET DOWN NOW!”

His friend shouted at him for get on his knees or he was going to die, but the guy kept looking at his other buddy who’d been shot. He couldn’t seem to believe it.

***

White had no choice. The big motherfucker he’d intended on shooting had just broken through the door like it was made out of balsa wood.

White tried to crunch another shell in place, but he was out of ammo. Through what used to be the bay window, White saw the rest of the pigs moving toward the front door. White turned to Shovel, who’d just reloaded his Uzi, and hit the puny man as hard as he could. Shovel’s knees wobbled and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he slumped to the ground.

Which was perfect for White. He easily took the Uzi out of the guy’s hands, spun, and fired into the foyer. The big guy in the dress clothes scrambled out of the way. He’d missed again. And more cops were piling in.

White had no choice. He had to go out the back.

***

I watched as the SWAT guys ordered the three assholes to lay face down on the deck. Slowly but inevitably, the cops moved in. These guys were out of commission, so that left two more in the house, including White.

Over the headset, Riehl’s voice came on. “White’s coming out back!”

The backdoor flew open again. White had what looked like an Uzi up and sprayed bullets without even aiming. The cops near the house were forced to hit the deck.

Fortunately for them, White saw me. He forgot about everybody else. The sand around me shot into the air as he fired.

He was going to shoot me. Even if I dropped to the ground and rolled away. He had an automatic weapon and presumably a lot of bullets.

So instead of dodging I decided to shoot him first.

I dropped to one knee and put the bastard in my sights and unlike him I took my time and aimed.

I kicked White’s gun away as he squirmed on the ground. I’d hit him in the gut and then Megan had put a couple more in him as he went down.

The tack unit and SWAT guys took the others guys away while the troopers took the still-screaming women out of the house. They left us alone with White, their intent obvious.

Riehl zip-cuffed White’s hands behind his back.

“Got any last words, dickhead?” I asked.

After the big federal agent moved away, White rolled over. His t-shirt was blood-soaked already and once he saw the three of us standing over him, the fight went out of his eyes.

“Get me an ambulance,” he said.

Riehl kicked him in the side.

“We’ll get right on that,” Megan said.

White’s eyes had been jumpy. Now they were slowing down.

I kneeled so our faces were close. I looked him dead in the eye.

“Why?”

“…hope that…little bitch…dies…”

“Alison helped us find you, actually,” I said.

He grimaced. “She let me…her phone…”

I couldn’t believe it. Somehow Alison had snuck her phone up to White. That was how he’d gotten his orders out and coordinated the escape. Whoever was on the outside had been given Alison’s email address, that was how she’d gotten the photos of the bedroom.

Fucking unbelievable.

White’s eyes drifted away, so I nudged him. “Who else helped you?”

White was having trouble focusing.

“White, who helped you?”

“Warwick.”

I shook my head. One of the guards. Now for the final piece. “Why did Alison help you?”

He seemed to look past me. I didn’t know what he saw, but whatever it was it seemed to change him. The smirk disappeared and his face loosened.

“She wanted…to be god…”

White died before we got him an ambulance.

It wasn’t a shame.

Detective Villanueva called when we pulled up in front of the house. It was eight-thirty. Megan turned the car off, Riehl turned around in the front seat, and I put my phone on speaker.

“Eddie, I talked to Melanie Crawford.”

“And?”

“I confronted her about her connection to White and her story completely unraveled.” He sighed. “There was no rape. She had a lot of sex the night before and then roughed herself up a little bit, but there was no rape. White told her to lie.”

I looked at Megan and Riehl. “She say why she did it for him?”

“These two got a history. She said White offered her ten grand to make up a story. With her track record of bad boys, it wasn’t too hard to believe.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Detective. In case you didn’t hear, we got White this morning.”

“That news is making the rounds. Righteous kill. Wish I could have been there.”

“Next time,” I said.

“Yeah, next time.”

I hung up and we got out of the car. The house was a two-story colonial. It was old but well-maintained, looked like they’d just had the windows redone. Too bad the guard wouldn’t get to enjoy it.

Before we reached the front door, Warwick opened it. He seemed ten years older, the bags under his eyes prominent. He hadn’t slept last night.

He stepped onto the porch and just held his wrists out for us. It was so pathetic, I almost felt bad. But I kept thinking about Manetti, who was hanging on for dear life, and that made me want to kill the guy.

Riehl read the guy his rights.

When he was done, I asked, “Why?”

Warwick had tears in his eyes. He hadn’t closed the front door behind him, and now somebody else appeared. A young girl, not quite a teenager. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She’d probably gotten a day off from school because of the storm

“Daddy, what’s the matter?” she asked.

Warwick turned to his daughter and put on a brave face. “Go on back inside, sweetie. Go wake mommy up, okay?”

***

In the car, I rode in the back with Warwick. We had barely gotten up the block before the man completely broke down.

“Alison told me she could see into the future. I know that’s why they had her there. She told me she remembered all her dreams and…” Warwick started blubbering. “She told me my little girl was going to die…unless I helped White…she said White wasn’t going to hurt anybody…that he
couldn’t…
”

I rubbed my eyes. I was so tired. I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing. I’d had my fill of the truth for the last few days. But we had to know everything.

“How’d she know about your daughter?” I asked.

Warwick grimaced. “Because I brought her in to work one day and introduced them. I felt bad for Alison. I thought she might like the company.”

I shook my head. It was a sad, sad story all around.

“How did White escape? Did you leave him the keys, or leave the door unlocked? What?”

Warwick didn’t answer the question. “Is your partner okay?”

“I don’t know. Two of your guys are dead. So tell me how you helped White.”

Warwick sobbed for a long time. “White was supposed to give me more notice…so I could be sure I was there…I was supposed to help him so nobody got hurt…”

Megan drove quietly. Riehl didn’t turn around. They were acting like this was my case, and I realized, it had become mine.

“So how did he get out?”

“I left the slit unlocked and gave him a door key…but you gotta understand, he wasn’t supposed to hurt anybody…Alison said he wasn’t—”

“How did White and Alison talk?” I asked.

“She came to see him. I…”

“You let them talk.”

Warwick nodded. “She was a lonely girl, reminded me of my daughter…”