Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(85)

There were lights on, and they drove around the block, saw more lights in the back. Lucas called Chase and asked if they could enter without a warrant.

“We’ve got a warrant—went after one as soon as you called. I’m about halfway up there. Do you have your iPad?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I’m going to transmit a copy of the warrant to you, for the home of a Carol Lou Lacey. She’s the girlfriend. You’ll have it in one minute. Or, you could wait until I get there.”

“I think we want to move,” Lucas said. “I don’t want to hover outside the house too long and I don’t want to move away to where we can’t see it. What’s the basis for the warrant?”

“Paroled felon believed to be in possession of a firearm. It’s a no-knock because of the weapon angle.”

“Send it.”

“I did. You should have it.”

Lucas had turned on the iPad as they were talking. He checked his mail, found a PDF of the warrant, sworn by Chase before a federal judge. Bob: “That’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in weeks.”

Rae asked, “How’re we going to do this?”

Bob and Rae were trained in violent felon apprehension; that was much of what they did. They’d take the front door, they decided, while Lucas watched the back. Bob would kick the door and he and Rae should be on top of the occupants before they could resist.

In theory anyway.



* * *



—

THEY DECIDED THAT BOB would go with his handgun, Rae with her M4 carbine, and Lucas would take Bob’s M4 around to the back. They moved to a park three blocks away, and armored up. Bob and Rae would wear helmets and U.S. Marshal jackets with reflective lettering, in addition to vests. Lucas would wear a Marshal jacket over his vest.

A cyclist rode by, did a circle, came back and peered at them: “What’s happening?”

“A law enforcement issue,” Rae said. “Be best if you went on your way.”

“Do you have warrants?” the man asked, still circling. He was wearing black cycling shorts, a black cycling shirt with Italian words on the chest, and a black helmet that looked like half of a football.

“You a lawyer?” Bob asked, as he pulled on his jacket.

“I’m a concerned citizen,” the man said.

“Go home and call your congressman,” Lucas said. “We’d hate to have to bust you for interfering with the arrest of a violent felon.”

“What if I took your picture with my iPhone?”

“That would be annoying, but not illegal,” Lucas said.

The cyclist rolled in a circle, like he was thinking about it, and then Rae jacked a shell into the chamber of her M4, a lethal ratcheting sound, and the cyclist said, “Okay,” and rode off, away from the target house.

“Why are bicycle riders so much more annoying than motorcycle guys?” Bob asked.

“I don’t know, I drive a Porsche,” Lucas said.

“Well la-dee-fuckin’-da,” Rae said. “Listen, guys, I’m getting my rush on. Let’s go.”



* * *



—

THEY DROPPED LUCAS on the block opposite the target, where he would wait in the street until he saw the Tahoe pull up in front of the target. Then he’d run through the yard to the back door of the target house. Like Rae, he could feel the adrenaline; and God help him, he liked it.

The Tahoe disappeared around the corner and, fifteen seconds later, he saw it pull up outside the target. He jogged through the side yard of the house behind the target, to the back door, and he heard the front door go down and Bob and Rae shouting. The back door looked cheap, like the house, and he kicked it at the lock, once, twice, and the door splintered and broke open and he was inside looking at a man and a woman sitting at a kitchen table looking at the muzzles of the guns held by Bob and Rae, then they turned and looked at Lucas, and Bob said, “Leroy Nathaniel Carter, you’re under arrest on suspicion of possession of a firearm as a felon.”

The woman screamed, “Get out of my house!”

Then Carter was on his feet, a huge man in jeans and a T-shirt, muscles bulging in his arms and chest, red-faced, and he shouted, “Fuckin’ cops. I hate you fuckin’ . . . ”

And he lurched toward Bob with the woman right behind him.

Bob said, “Back, back . . .”

“Go ahead and shoot, motherfucker, go ahead and shoot me . . .”

“Stepping right,” Rae said to Bob, and Bob switched his handgun to his left hand and the woman shouted, “Get that nigger out of my house . . .”

Carter lurched forward another step. He was huge, most of it muscle, some of it fat, but he was slow. Bob had finished third in the heavyweight division of the NCAA wrestling tournament, losing on points only to the eventual champion, and while not as big as Carter, he was very fast and very well trained. Bob stepped into Carter and hit him in the solar plexus with his right fist, a sound like a meat axe going into a side of beef, and Carter bounced backwards and opened his mouth as if to object, but then turned white and sank to his knees and then toppled onto the floor, holding his chest.

The woman, Lacey, bent as if to help him, but then made as if to slap Bob on the face, which wouldn’t have bothered him. But she wasn’t slapping: she raked him with knife-like fingernails, cutting his forehead open, and Bob bumped back, blood streaming from his forehead below his hairline, and then she turned on Lucas with her nails, which were an inch long and filed to silver points and swung her hands to slash him . . .