No good deed, p.36
No Good Deed, page 36
part #4 of Destiny Saga Series
“Do you really think he’s a danger to us? If he were here for some kind of hit, we would have had to randomly call a reporter who just happened to be in Richards back pocket. If what you guys said was true, and Richards was surprised by the raid; then this guy couldn’t be in his pocket, since he knew enough to make it clear we were looking into him. Unless you think he works for Richards but just chose not to say anything, and that seems like a pretty far reach.”
The doorbell rang as she looked at me.
“I guess,” she finally said. “I’m going to be close enough I can listen in, though.”
“That’s fine. Just stay out of sight, and everyone keep quiet.”
I headed with Mom to the door as everyone else headed off.
“Can we help you?” Mom said as she answered the door.
“Hi. My name’s Dan Figeroa, and I’m with the Houston Chronicle. I wanted to ask you a few questions?”
“About?” Mom said, playing it cool.
I stayed just out of sight, behind the front door, figuring it was best to keep my options open.
“Are you Angela Bell?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know if he picked it up, but I knew her well enough to hear the hard edge to her tone. I could see how him knowing her name would be upsetting, but considering he knew which house to drive up to, it wasn’t that big of a surprise.
“You’re the legal guardian of Caspian Grey?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there has been a lot of commotion over the last few days. The town administration has been put under temporary federal jurisdiction, after many local leaders, judges and law enforcement officials were arrested on federal racketeering charges.”
Mom didn’t say anything one way or another, and maintained a pretty impressive poker face.
“Anyway,” he said after it was clear she wasn’t going to reply. “Caspian’s name has come up multiple times about some of the activity around the alleged criminal activity. I wanted to ask you, and hopefully him, a few questions about it.”
“I can tell you now, he has not been charged with anything.”
“No, ma’am, I know he wasn’t. But it seems like he’s a witness to some of the events. I have reports of multiple instances of shoot-outs with criminals and discouraged law enforcement officers.”
Mom just stared at him again, choosing to remain silent.
“Look, I get it. You’re trying to protect him, which is fine. You can choose to give no comment to my questions, but that will leave me with only what I’ve been able to dig up, and my own suppositions.”
“Just let him in,” I said, coming around the door frame.
“You must be Caspian.”
“I am. Come on in, and we’ll talk.”
We got seated at the kitchen table, and he set up a small recorder.
“Do you mind if I record this?”
“Yes. You can take notes, but no recording.”
He frowned, but put the tape recorder away.
“So, are you aware of what’s been happening in town?”
“Somewhat. My company's lawyer has also been representing me in some personal matters … some of which, like you said, had to do with the arrests. He told us about a raid that was happening, but only a little bit about who was arrested, or what they were charged with.”
“Can you tell me about how you got mixed up with this group?”
“First, I want to make it clear I’m not ‘mixed up’ with anyone. My company bought into a failing industrial park a little east of Houston. Members of this group apparently had their eyes on it, too. They tried to ... dissuade me from making the purchase. Thankfully, I was lucky, and they were not successful and were arrested.”
“By dissuade, you mean they threatened you?”
“Kind of. It wasn’t me precisely. There was an owner of a small factory who hadn’t agreed to sell to them. I was in talks with him to purchase his company and fold his factory into our own planned facilities. I happened to stop by to talk with him when they were trying to beat him into signing over to them instead. I stepped in and stopped them.”
“How, exactly, did you manage that?”
“I got lucky. I surprised them. The combination of that and some physical training allowed me to help out the business owner enough to get the upper hand.”
“Did they retaliate?”
“Yes. They managed to get someone in the child protective services to file an order against Mrs. Bell, and a judge to ram it through. When they came to serve the protective order, two policemen separated me from everyone else and took me to an abandoned warehouse, where they planned on beating me into signing over all the property to them. Thankfully, more legitimate officers showed up, and put a stop to them.”
“These would be the same two officers who later showed up at the martial arts studio you train at?”
“Yes. Thankfully, my sensei happens to also be ex-Israeli special forces, or something. I’ve never gotten a straight answer on what he did for them. Anyway, they made a bad decision coming for me there.”
“This is all a little hard to believe. You’re not even eighteen yet, you train with an Israeli soldier, and you own what, from my research, is a very successful business.”
“I’ve gotten lucky a few times. Look, let me level with you. I know the story of the attacks on me is sexy. It’s got gangsters and shootouts. It, however, doesn’t have a lot of connection to what’s happened in this town. I just bumped into them in a small way. From what I’ve heard, they were into a whole lot more than just dealing with me.”
“Like you said, it’s a good story.”
“Yes, but I don’t want me - or, more importantly, my family - attached to it. We’re just trying to live our lives. We aren’t involved with these people. We were, at least potentially, their victims.”
“The story still needs to be told.”
I sat silently for a moment, staring at him, racking my brain trying to think of a way out of this. I don’t know why I turned and looked out of the window. At that moment, it seemed like a random act; but something in my subconscious must have been triggered, because as I looked, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something was wrong, and it took me a moment to put the pieces together.
Three large, black SUVs had pulled up to the house. I watched the doors start to open, and I felt myself fall into 'the flow,' unconsciously. I’d barely registered the guns when I started moving. I reached over and shoved Mom’s chair hard, pushing myself diagonally as I simultaneous stood, pushing my chair back and leaping across the table at the journalist.
Mom went flying, her chair toppling over, banging into the ground hard. I hoped I hadn’t hurt her, but I knew what was going to happen next, and I wanted her out of danger, at least as much as possible. I had just reached Dan when the first bullets tore through the window. I felt a burning sensation on the back of one calf as I tackled Dan out of his chair and held my body over him.
Everything sped back up as I dropped out of 'the flow.'
“Get down,” Jawarski screamed as she crouch-walked out of the room.
Seeing Mom and Dan were safe, for the moment, I ignored Jawarski. I crawled out the other door, towards the dining room and the back of the house. As I made it out of the door and into the kitchen, the slightly muffled staccato fire of automatic rifles was offset by a much closer, and somewhat slower, pop-pop of a handgun.
I assumed that was Jawarski, returning fire on our attackers. I listened intently to the sounds of the gunfight as I got to the back door. I could hear a few more handguns joining the firing. Some seemed to be coming from inside the house. Others, somewhat muffled like the assault rifles, indicated that the rest of my security people were in on the battle as well.
As I got to the back door and stood, I felt a slight twinge. I looked and saw a gash across the lower leg of my jeans. It hurt, but not unbearably; and I could still walk, so I ignored it for now. I went out the back door, staying low, and around the side of the house.
Jawarski would kill me when she found out I was putting myself in danger, but there was no way I was staying put when my family was on the line. As I came around the house, I had just a moment to react when I almost ran into a man with a web harness and carrying an assault rifle of some kind.
He started to lift the barrel, reacting as soon as he saw me. My reactions were quicker. I grabbed the side of the barrel and shoved it away, while punching him in the neck with everything I had.
I rarely let go with my full force, but I held nothing back this time. I felt something give, and he dropped like a stone, making a single gargling noise before smacking into the pavement, and remaining still. I’d held onto the barrel, and as soon as he started dropping, his grip had released.
I didn’t have a ton of experience with rifles, but I’d read up on them, and had a basic understanding of how they worked. I flipped the weapon around and made sure it was ready to fire. Everything seemed ok, so I started sneaking around the side of the house.
I saw several men using an SUV as cover and firing into the front of the house. Two bodies were part way between the SUVs opposite side of the house, and one part way between the SUVs and me. Those must have been more men that tried to get around us, that Jawarski or one of her people took care of. The number of people I’d seen get out of the vehicles and the number of people and bodies I could see from where I stood, told me some of these guys were unaccounted for. Of course, before I could worry about that, I had to deal with the guys in front of me.
I lifted the weapon and felt myself drop into 'the flow'. I was silently thankful for all of Levi’s training with me on that, as it was now almost an automatic response and not something I had to really focus on. Jawarski had once said that, if you were going to shoot someone, you shoot them center mass, and that taking ‘shots to wound’ is a good way to get people killed. That was probably good advice for most people.
It occurred to me as I took aim, that the town was crawling with cops, who would almost certainly already be on their way, considering our house sounded more like a war zone than a suburban street. When the Feds - who were currently in charge of the police department, while the city was being reorganized - finally showed up, it would probably be better for us if we hadn’t stacked up a lot of bodies.
I took careful aim at each person I could see. Clearly, they were wearing body armor, so I began aiming for shoulders and upper arms, hoping that a bullet there would make it hard, if not impossible, to keep shooting at us.
I started pulling the trigger, working methodically down the men visible to me. While each one seemed to take forever from my point of view, I knew there were only a second between each shot. I was feeling good about myself when the last guy fell, until a bullet struck the wall next to me, forcing me back around the corner.
I’d been overconfident. Two of the men had switched their guns to their other hands, and started returning fire. They weren’t accurate, but it didn’t seem like these guys cared. They were just spraying at the house, hoping to do damage. They kept up enough fire that I had to back away, hoping to circle back around the house. In the distance, I could hear sirens.
I was coming around the edge of the house, into the backyard, considering if I should drop the rifle, since I didn’t want to be one of the people carrying one when the cops showed up. I should have been more focused, and it took me several beats to realize there was a person just around the corner. My reaction was further slowed by my surprise at realizing the person in front of me was Richards. I started swinging my rifle towards him, when Richards’ handgun fired.
The only thing that saved me was he was clearly as surprised as I was. The bullet slammed into the side of the rifle, sending shards of metal tearing into my arm. I could still work my fingers, but it hurt like hell. The other thing that saved me was that his gun clicked empty.
At that moment, everything that had happened over the last year - from trying to separate our family with trumped up child endangerment charges, to trying to grab Tina, to his final attempt on my family right now - hit me. I saw red and charged. He took a clumsy swing which I slapped away, sending it sailing harmlessly past me.
Lowering my center of gravity, I exploded upwards. My left hand grabbed him by the neck and lifted Richards off his feet putting him in almost an arc as his body swept upwards. I redirected my force as he hit the apex of the shallow arc, slamming his shoulders and chest into the ground. I released his neck, not wanting to kill him as the air in his lungs was forced out by the impact. I could see him turning red as he tried to unlock his muscles enough to take a breath.
I didn’t hesitate. Standing up, I smashed the heel of my foot into his wrist, feeling a snapping sensation from the joint. I followed it up with a stomp to his knee. I knew it was overboard. Richards was already incapacitated, but I wanted to make sure he didn’t run away again. With one hand and one leg, I was confident he wasn’t going to get anywhere before this was all over. I kicked the rifle he’d been carrying across the back porch, well out of his reach, just to be sure.
As if on cue, the sirens sounded from the front of the house, and I heard men yelling. I turned my back on Richards, and headed to find Jawarski and my family.
The door was just swinging open when I heard a soft metallic sound behind me. I twisted around in time to see fire erupt from the end of a handgun in Richard’s left hand.
Chapter 25
Considering the number of times, someone’s pointed a gun at me over the last few years and my enhanced reflexes, I would have said I was ready to deal with situations like this. In fact, I’d done alright in nearly the exact situation, once before.
This time, however, I froze. Maybe it was because I was coming down from the adrenaline high of everything that had happened, or maybe because, in my head, Richards had been neutralized. Either way, when I saw the end of the barrel explode, I froze in place, my brain locking up, somewhere between fight or flight.
I was drawn back into reality when the bullet smacked into my chest.
One of the things I remembered from the last time someone shot me was the initial impact didn’t hurt nearly as much as I would have thought it would be especially when your adrenaline’s running.
Maybe it was because I’d already started coming down from the excitement, or maybe it’s just different every time; but this time there was pain, lots of it.
My body screamed, the feeling of fire radiating from somewhere just below my breastbone. I’d been off balance with the turn to see what the sound had been, half turned towards Richards when the bullet smacked into me. The combination of being half on one foot and the impact of the bullet sent me falling backward into, and the through, the door I’d partially opened.
I involuntarily put a hand to my chest, feeling warm wetness seeping out between my fingers as I tried to cover the wound. I was lying at an angle, and could still see Richards, also lying on the ground, his brow furrowed in concentration.
In that brief moment, as we looked at each other, it occurred to me that I probably got off lucky. He’d been shooting with his left hand, and it was clear from the awkward way he was holding the weapon that he was not left-handed. From what I knew about him, he wouldn’t have tried to just hurt me or put me out of action. He wanted to kill me, especially after I’d hurt him so badly. I’d bet he hadn’t been aiming for a simple chest shot.
He also clearly wasn’t done yet. He lifted the gun up, concentration clear on his face as he aimed. I tried to stand, move, get out of the way when I found I couldn’t move my legs. It hadn’t occurred to me, as I was falling, that there was another reason I would have not fallen back. I willed my body to move, and nothing happened. I could feel my arms, but I realized I couldn’t feel my legs at all.
His finger tightened, and I imagined I could almost see the bullet down the length of the barrel. I didn’t close my eyes, nor flinch as I looked into his hate-filled eyes.
There was a tremendous boom! It took my brain a second to register that I was still alive. No fire leapt from the end of his gun, no bullet exploded from its shadowy depths. For a moment, I was confused. I’d accepted what was about to happen, visualized my last moment. The mental whiplash slowed me down, until I saw his expression. It’d changed from one of hateful victory to utter surprise, his mouth opening slightly.
I looked up, trying to figure out what was going on, and saw Jawarski standing over me, a gun extended in her hand, wisps of smoke still leaking out the spout.
Yelling voices screamed from the other side of the house. Jawarski holstered her weapon and knelt next to me.
“Caspian?” She said worry creasing her brow.
Her hands went to my chest, moving my blood soaked fingers.
“Can’t .... move .... legs,” I managed to get out, each word an effort.
