Stafford drew his eye away from the scope for a moment, saw the slender woman in the lacy top running down the sidewalk. Bitch probably planned to abort her baby until he rescued it with his brave actions today. He returned his eye to the scope, found her in his sights. Aimed, putting her back square in his cross-hairs. Squeezed the trigger…a miss!
He reloaded, again put the woman in his sights again. She’d stopped running and hid behind a car, but she’d miscalculated. She thought the car blocked his view, but he had a clear line of sight. He could drill a bullet right into her pretty little head—
Stafford froze when he recognized her.
What the hell was Valorie Dawes doing here?
A moment’s thought gave him the answer. Of course. She was working with her boyfriend, Kryzinski. She’d followed him, too.
He had to stop her before she stopped him.
He took careful aim. Put her earlobe at the center of his scope’s cross-hairs. Breathed in, then out. Edged his finger toward the trigger…
And hesitated.
Stafford lowered his rifle, stared at the weapon in his hands. Dawes wasn’t a baby killer. Like Kryzinski, she was a cop—a fellow traveler moving society toward strength instead of weakness. She was no privileged Stacy, blessed with beauty and money, looking down on men like Stafford with their sickening pity. Dawes was a Betty, one of the eighty percent, as much a victim of the system as Stafford.
Or was she? Dawes accompanied her baby-killing friend to an abortion clinic. Aiding and abetting.
She deserved to die, then.
He looked back in her direction. Shit! She’d moved out of sight. Where?
Sirens pealed in the background, getting closer. Time to go.
Stafford gathered up the ejected shells from his tarp spread around him, counted them to make sure he’d collected them all. Disassembled the weapon and returned it to its case, along with the empty magazines. Stored the spent cartridges in a cloth pouch he brought for that purpose. Rolled up the tarp, stowed it in his backpack.
While packing, he graded his performance. Two nine-shot magazines meant eighteen shots. Of those, only seven found victims. Two appeared to have died on the scene—the woman in scrubs he assumed was an abortionist, and the Black man running from the car. As for the others, he couldn’t be sure.
Four shots at inanimate objects to flush victims out of hiding. So—seven real misses out of eighteen shots. Abominable shooting. Horrific.
But the thrill of it! The fear in their screams, their panic!
He hustled to the exit door of the building’s flat roof, padded down the single flight of unlit stairs to the top floor. Opened the “Authorized Personnel Only” door and peered out. Nothing, no one.
He strolled to the freight elevator some twenty feet away, pushed the call button.
It didn’t light up. He pressed it again.
Nothing.
He walked to the twin set of passenger elevators and smashed the call button there. Also nothing. Security must have shut them all down.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. The painful ringing of tinnitus pealed in his ears. He pressed his gloved fingers to his temples, rubbed them. After a long minute, the ringing passed.
Calm now, he turned toward the stairs, pushed through the heavy metal door, and despite his pounding heart, maintained a casual, steady pace down.
One flight. Two. Two more to go.
Shouting and pounding feet resounded in the hallway as he passed the doorway on the second floor. The fire alarm sounded—loud. He spotted a flashing, clanging alarm fixture overhead by the door. At least three more echoed in the stairway above and below him.
Stafford reached the first floor. The stairs continued down another half-flight to street level. The emergency exit loomed ahead. His truck would be ready for him, mere steps away outside.
He pushed open the door a few inches. People shouted, screamed, ran every which direction. No one paid any attention to him. He opened the door wider.
Catastrophe!
A car had skidded to a stop a few feet ahead of his delivery truck. A stream of vehicles, all devoid of drivers and passengers, lined up behind it, blocking his escape.
Fuck!
A siren sounded in the distance. He needed to move.
Leaving the truck here spelled disaster. The cops would search it, uncover his tricks to hide its identity, trace it right back to him. They’d also find the cop, bound, gagged, blindfolded—and alive. Able to identify him.
He couldn’t leave that problem behind.
Stafford unlocked the truck and climbed inside.
Hidden behind the parked Volkswagen, Val listened for gunfire. One shot came close enough to buzz by her ear, paralyzing her with fear for several seconds. She flattened herself to the ground, laying parallel to the car next to the wheels, waiting.
Val’s memory flashed back to her thirteenth birthday. The day of the mass shooting at the shopping center that claimed the life of her uncle, Valentin Dawes. She’d never learned the details of that day. Did he cower in fear behind a barricade, like she did now? Or did he rush in, with reckless disregard for his own safety, to save the lives of so many others? Did he think of her in that moment, as she did of him now? Would he have followed a different strategy if Val had been there, bleeding and pinned down under sniper fire like Beth?
She’d always imagined him running into the gunfire, like they always showed Army guys doing in the movies. That scenario struck her as foolish now. Of course Uncle Val took necessary risks, but he showed courage, not stupidity.
Val had to act. Her lifelong friend lay suffering on the sidewalk, fifty yards away. She couldn’t just let her die there.
She crawled to the front of the vehicle and risked a glance over the hood to the shooter’s perch, right across the street. Nothing there, not even the reflection of the sun in the gun’s scope, the sight that saved Beth from death minutes before.
The shooting seemed to have stopped, or at least paused for a bit. He might be leaving…or reloading. Impossible to tell. Regardless, it gave her an opportunity to run the hundred feet to her car in the parking lot…
Val rose up to a sprinter’s pose, counted down: Three, two, one—and ran.
One hundred feet. About thirty-five meters. She’d clocked a four-point-six forty once at a track meet in college, her fastest time. Not in her current beat-up state after a brutal MMA fight, of course.
On the other hand, she wasn’t been running for her life then.
She wished she’d clocked this dash, because she’d never run so fast in her life.
No shots came during that brief sprint. Still, when she reached her car, she crouched over and bear-walked around to the passenger side. She unlocked the door, crawled inside, and opened the glove box. Found Gil’s .22 semi-automatic, checked it. Six bullets in the magazine, one in the chamber. Safety on.
Val glanced down at her skimpy, blood-stained camisole. She wished she’d worn something more practical under her uniform this morning, like a regular tank top or T-shirt and a bra. The camisole, even with its built-in bra, left nothing to the imagination, especially now. She considered checking the trunk for something else to wear, but that would cost time and expose her to the shooter again. Nix that idea. She’d have to continue as is.
She wished Gil was there, helping. Or Jan, or Grimes. Doing this alone seemed borderline crazy. Yet what choice did she have?
She considered waiting for backup, but with the shooter still active and Beth bleeding on the sidewalk, she needed to act now.
She slid out of the car and closed the door, peered up at the roof again. Still no sign of the shooter. Time to move—
Val’s phone chimed, and she hazarded a glance. Jan. She picked up. “Not a good time to chat.”
“Sorry,” Jan said. “I thought you’d want to know. We just arrested Tank.”
Val froze. “What do you mean? Where?”
A pause. “In Clayton, of course. Why?”
“Because I’m in the middle of an active shooter situation here in Fairview,” Val said. “Which means this shooter, anyway, is not Tank.”
“What?” Jan shouted. “Holy crap. Who do you think it is?”
Val grimaced and turned off the safety on her weapon. “Partner,” she said, “I’m about to find out.”
Stafford unlocked the safe in the rear of the delivery truck and removed his sidearm, a 9mm Sig-Sauer P320-M17 semi-automatic. His most trusted weapon, other than his M24, of course. The compact, powerful pistol felt good to hold—lightweight and balanced, its tan, angular grip a perfect fit for his hand, particularly when loaded with its compact 10-round magazine. He hadn’t fired it since his discharge from the Army, and never at a human being.
He had no problem with doing so now if necessary. And it would be necessary.
Firing a pistol, of course, was a different experience than a long-distance rifle. Proximity to target made a huge difference, particularly if the target was also armed. Like almost everyone, his accuracy with a handgun suffered compared with a rifle.
However, neither accuracy nor return fire would be a problem, at least not when taking care of Kryzinski. Like shooting fish in a barrel. An enormous fish in a non-existent barrel.
With that thought, the burning in his gut returned. He leaned against the interior wall of the truck, taking deep breaths. It took several seconds, almost a full minute, for the painful roiling to pass.
Stafford used those moments to assess the situation. He had a few things to figure out: what to do with the body. Cleaning up the blood. The noise.
Okay, the suppressor would minimize, though not eliminate, the noise, and playing the stereo loud would cover the muffled report well enough. One problem solved.
He also needed to get the hell out of there. With his truck blocked in, that meant traversing unknown territory on foot, amidst chaos, while armed, until he found another vehicle to steal. No small feat. Yet doable.
Stafford glanced down at his prey. The tarp had come loose, revealing the top of the cop’s head, covered in thick brown hair. He leaned down to secure it, but curiosity tugged at him. He slid the loose tarp down to reveal the cop’s face. Gagged and blindfolded—wait.
The blindfold had slid up onto Kryzinski’s forehead, and no longer masked his eyes. Which were open. Staring at him, blinking every few seconds, his gaze darting to the pistol Stafford held in his right hand.
Panicked, Stafford crouched, pointing the weapon at Kryzinski’s head, a mere four feet away. Though supported by his left, his right hand trembled like a dry leaf in a fall storm.
“Close your damned eyes,” he said, his voice raspy and high-pitched. Sweat poured down his face, loosening the fake beard and mustache.
Kryzinski shook his head. Dared Stafford to shoot while he stared him down.
Stafford thrust his hand forward a few inches to frighten the big cop. It didn’t work. Kryzinski kept staring. Daring. Demanding his own death.
“I said close them!” Stafford whipped the side of the barrel against Kryzinski’s skull.
Kryzinski winced, but blinked his eyes open a moment later. A trickle of blood seeped down the cop’s head, turning his short brown hair a reddish black and his ear into a crimson puddle.
Stafford snarled and yanked the blindfold down over Kryzinski’s eyes, then stepped back. He couldn’t let the cop get inside his head here. He must follow the plan, not shoot in haste. And not before equipping the Sig with its suppressor, planning body disposal, all of it. Couldn’t get out of sequence here. No mistakes, no diversions. Plan, then act.
He tore off the itchy fake whiskers, discarded the glasses. With that distraction gone, he solved the cleanup problem in a matter of seconds. He always carried plenty of tarps and blankets. After shooting the cop, Stafford would roll the body into another tarp, sop up any extraneous blood with the blankets, and toss them all in a dumpster. He recalled seeing one on the street a half-block away.
He should check. Yes. Be sure of the details before acting in haste.
Stafford returned to the front of the truck, confirmed that the coast was clear, and stepped outside.