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Shorty answered the phone when it woke him up. It was late, and he wasn’t alone. But there weren’t too many people who would call him this late. His mother — and it would mean an emergency.
And Mac. And that would mean an emergency too.
So he barely glanced at the number, just slid out of bed and went into the bathroom to answer it. His voice was a bit hoarse as he said hello, and he cleared it.
It wasn’t his mother or Mac. And it took him a moment to recognize the woman who was talking to him. Angie? Angie who?
Oh. Mac’s Angie. That cleared some fog out. His brain started clicking through all the scenarios that would explain why Angie would be calling him instead of Mac. None of them were good.
“Wait,” he said. He poured himself a glass of water, drank it, then splashed his face. “OK, start over. You think there was a hit ordered on two cops, and no one came to back them up? Where’s Mac?”
Angie laughed. “Mac’s at the hospital acting like an anxious guard dog,” she said. “I’m with Janet, and Stan Warren. He says you know him.”
“Yeah,” Shorty said. “I know him. Usually he shows up at the end of things going south, not at the beginning. So, let me organize my thoughts here. Did the cops reach a person when they called in?”
He could hear her muffled repetition of his question, and snorted at her addition. “He wants to know if the cops reached a person when they called in. Who else would they reach?”
“Angie?” he said. “Put me on speaker phone, OK?”
“Hi Shorty,” Janet said. “We come to you as usual when things turn to technology and we can’t figure it out.”
Shorty snorted again. “That usually means anything more advanced than turning the computer on,” he muttered. “Agent Warren? Did you call in?”
“I did,” Warren said slowly. “I called dispatch three times? One for man down, one for a detective, and one for a crime scene team. And I called my office.”
“Did you talk to a live human being?” he repeated his question.
“My office? No. I left a message at the SAC’s number. It should have pinged him though, and nothing has come back.”
Shorty interrupted as a thought occurred to him. “Janet, have you tried calling your office — I assume you’re still at the crime site?”
“We are, I did, and I talked to my cop reporter. The other one,” she said crisply.
He considered that. “Where are you?”
“Out by Sand Point,” Angie said. “Joe Conte said something about a blip in the dispatch printout.”
“Probably should be talking to him,” he muttered absently, trying to think of how he would do that. Rerouted the calls, obviously. But not Janet’s? Interesting. “Agent Warren, what about when you called the SPD? Did you call 911? Or some dedicated line?”
“A dedicated number,” he said. “You don’t want to have to wait for the next available dispatcher when you’re a cop with a problem.”
Then it was doable, he decided. “If you were going to set up a hit on Rodriguez and Dunbar, who would be the most likely people they would call for backup? You and that other FBI guy?”
There was silence. “Probably,” Warren said slowly. “I know Nick has been worried about something. Something internal. There are probably other cops they might call. But the number would be fewer than five. You call your partner. You call dispatch. I doubt anyone would consider that Joe might reach out to Mac. And Nick didn’t have time to call anyone.”
“Did his wife?”
“I don’t think so,” Stan Warren answered. “She had her hands full keeping Nick alive. Her neighbor is a nurse, and they live 15 minutes from UW med, or he probably wouldn’t have made it. So no, I doubt she even tried.”
“OK, it would take some work, but it could be done. A cutout number, designed to divert calls into the dedicated number. Maybe even specifically the calls of a few telephone numbers. They would have been smarter to cut you back in and let you call for the crime scene team, though, and let it proceed as usual. I wonder why they didn’t?”
“Conte seemed to think they did for the Queen Anne location where Mac rescued Joe,” Janet said. “It’s just this one, that he thinks is still in a shadow. He wondered if they took down a cell tower. But that seems too broad — surely people would notice?”
“A blip when they made the cuts, a blip when they cut it back in for Queen Anne,” Shorty said. But why not cut both areas back in? “Because they’re not done there yet! Agent Warren, get those two out of there!”
“I’m the sole protector for two households of kids,” Warren growled. “What do you mean they aren’t done?”
Two households of kids? Oh, Rodriguez, and the neighbors. “They were smart; they kept the cutout short for Queen Anne, right? So why wouldn’t they keep it short for Rodriguez’s neighborhood?”
There was silence.
“Guys?” he said worriedly.
More silence. “Guys????”
When no one responded, he set the phone down, and started to get dressed. When he walked out through his bedroom, his friend called his name sleepily.
“Sorry, babe,” he said, and he was. “Emergency call. I’ve got to go. Stay as long as you like.”
“Damn it, Shorty!” she said as he closed the front door. He winced.
He got into his Lexus, backed out of the garage and headed out of Bellevue toward the UW. Sand Point? Wasn’t that what they said? He called Mac. Mac didn’t pick up, but if he was in the hospital, that wasn’t surprising.
He swore under his breath. “I told him,” he muttered out loud. “I didn’t want to be a part of this anymore. I told him. And he promised.”
He hit the redial button and kept driving.
Mac was pacing. He hated waiting. Hated hospitals. And waiting for the results of surgery on a man shot to pieces? He’d done this before. And the results had never been good.
Although this hospital was a multitude of steps better than the hospitals he’d paced around in before.
They were in a small waiting room outside the ICU. At least he thought that was what was on the other side of the double doors. A nurse had parked them all here, and told them to wait for a doctor. So they were waiting.
Rand was watching him with barely hidden amusement. Joe was sitting next to him, zoned out on pain killers, his bandaged-wrapped leg stretched out in front of him. He should take him home, but he didn’t think Joe would go. Not until they knew more about Nick’s condition.
Anna Rodriguez was sitting between the two men. She looked grim. She worked in the ballistics lab? She could probably tell them more about the damage than the surgeon could. Her neighbor Juan Moore sat in the next block of chairs, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. A nurse, someone had said. He’d probably just saved Rodriguez’s life — or at least gave him a chance to live.
Mac glanced at his phone, it was midnight. The shooting had gone down at 9 p.m. That was a long time to spend in surgery. He should know. He’d been the patient last spring. But nothing like this. He saw that his phone had no bars — no reception up here.
“I’m going to go downstairs to find a place with cell service where I can check in,” he said abruptly. Juan looked up.
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “I should call home myself.”
“Go home, Juan,” Anna said. “You’re a hero to get Nick here alive. But there’s nothing you can do here, and Paulina might need you.”
He hesitated, and then nodded. “Someone can give you a ride?”
She nodded. Mac doubted she planned to go anywhere soon.
Juan actually knew the building well enough to get them outside. As soon as Mac had service, his phone began to ping about missed calls.
“Shit,” he said, thumbing through them. Shorty had been calling every two minutes for the last 20? That wasn’t good. He called him back. “Whatsup?”
“Angie called me from Rodriguez’s place,” Shorty said. It sounded like she was in a car. “And mid-call I lost them. Haven’t been able to get them back on the line. I’m almost there — I think. I don’t have an exact address. You?”
Mac looked at Juan. “What’s your address?”
Juan told him, and he repeated it to Shorty. “I’ve got Juan Moore with me — Rodriguez’s neighbor. We’re headed out from the hospital. Ought to be right behind you.”
“See you there.”
Mac shoved his phone back into his pocket. “Let’s go,” he said to Juan.
“What’s going on?” Juan said as he fell into step with him. Mac glanced at him.
“You got any weapons experience?” Mac asked. Something about the man said he’d been in the military. He was about 5-foot-10, compact and fit, probably about 35. He could do worse for backup, and he was afraid he was going to need some.
Juan shrugged and nodded. “Did two years in the Army,” he said. “Came out a medic, went to nursing school. But that was nearly 15 years ago. I don’t think I’ve shot a gun since. I don’t own one.”
“I have one you can use,” Mac said grimly. He told him what Shorty had said.
“Agent Warren was going to stay there, wasn’t he?” Juan said, and he was walking faster.
Mac unlocked his 4-Runner, and was headed out of the parking lot before Juan even had his seatbelt fastened.
“Call Janet,” he said. She didn’t pick up.
“Call Angie.” No one.
“Call Warren.” No one.
Mac’s jaw muscles tightened, and he drove a bit faster.
Juan pulled out his phone, and called his wife. No answer.
“Not only no answer, no voicemail,” Juan said, and his voice sounded almost panicked. “I should have gone home an hour ago.”
Mac glanced at him. “Hold it together,” he advised. “There’s nothing you could do that FBI Agent Stan Warren can’t do — and do better. I’m guessing it’s part of that blackout.”
Juan didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. He closed his eyes briefly, and took a couple of deep breaths.
“So, your wife? Paulina? How many kids are in the house?” Mac asked.
“Seven. Carolina Rodriguez is the oldest — she’s 14. My youngest is just a toddler,” he said.
“Describe the house to me,” Mac ordered. Juan did, starting with the front door, and moving through the house.
“It’s a basic ranch,” he finished. “Like the Rodriguez’s place — mirrored layout. Our garages are next to each other.” He hesitated. “Something else you may need to know. Paulina? She grew up in El Salvador. They came here as political refugees when she was seven. She still has nightmares from her childhood. I don’t know what her dad did down there, but there was a bounty on his head — there, and here, I think. So that gunfire really triggered her memories. She was holding it together for the kids, but barely. Which is why I should have gone home hours ago.”
Mac nodded, and chewed that over for a bit. “So, if the bad guys show back up? What will she do?”
Juan was silent. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Hide the kids. That’s a given. As I said, I don’t keep weapons there, but....”
“There’s all kinds of things that can be turned into weapons,” Mac finished his sentence for him. “Knives, to start with.”
Juan nodded. “Yeah, I could see her going at an intruder with a butcher knife,” he said with a half-laugh. “I just hope the intruder isn’t Agent Warren.”
Mac grimaced.