Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(104)

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Lucas and the others ran down the driveway and along the dark street and saw a man come out of a house across the street from what must’ve been Douglas’s house. The man saw them coming, shouted, “FBI,” and Lucas shouted back, “FBI, Moy team,” and the man turned away and ran up Douglas’s driveway, stopped, and shouted back, “I think I heard gunshots.”

“You did,” Lucas shouted, as he ran up the drive to the front door, with Rae now right behind him, with her M4, and Bob a few steps behind her. How long had they been running? Less than a hundred yards, but in the night and rain? Fifteen seconds? Longer?

Lucas snapped at Rae, “Cover me.”

She already had the rifle up, and Lucas went straight to the front door and began pounding on it. Nothing inside moved that they could hear, and the door, a heavy slab of walnut, didn’t even tremble in its frame. Lucas stepped back and kicked it as hard as he could. It shuddered but didn’t give.

Bob said, “Get out of the way. Get out of the way,” and the big man kicked the door, the door buckling with the impact. He kicked it again, and something splintered. A third kick knocked the door open enough that Lucas could follow the muzzle of his gun through. As he did it, the surveillance team’s SUVs began roaring into the driveway, their headlights flashing across the front of the house.

The first body was on the floor right in front of Lucas, and he shouted, “Man down.”

He kept his pistol up, felt Bob moving to his left, covering the hallway that led to the right wing of the house. Rae was moving to cover the hall to the left wing, and Lucas squatted by the body. “Parrish,” he said. Parrish was clearly dead, one eye open, one closed, two bullet wounds right in the middle of his forehead, another hand-sized blotch of blood on his back. In a half crouch, Lucas went on, glanced back, saw an FBI agent with a helmet and night vision goggles coming up behind him, a pistol in his hand.

“Don’t shoot me,” Lucas said, and the fed grunted once.

Up ahead, two more bodies were sprawled on the floor. Lucas called, “Two more down.” He quickly checked them: Claxson and an older man, who must be Charles Douglas, both shot at least three times, both dead.

Lucas said, “Goddamnit.”

Rae stepped beside him, and said, “Suzie? Carol? Wendy?”

“I dunno. Probably.”

Chase came up, staring, openmouthed, at the bodies. “My God . . .”

Lucas said to Rae, “Listen, let’s clear the house. You and Bob take the wings, I’ll go that way.” He gestured toward the back of the house. “But I think she’s running.”

And to Chase Lucas said, “Jane, I think she’s running, I think she’s in the woods. We need a lot of cops out here.”

“Got it,” she said.

Moy had just come through the door, and she turned to him, and said, “Andy . . .”



* * *



—

THE WINDOW at the side of the house blew out, and Lucas batted Chase to the floor, as he went down himself, Chase screaming, “I’m hurt! I’m hurt!”

Lucas crawled over to her, and asked, “Where?”

She said, “Leg,” and grabbed her left leg below her butt. And when she took her hand away, it was red with blood.

Moy was still standing, staring, and Lucas shouted, “She’s in the woods. Get some guys out there—the night vision guy. And we need an ambulance—right now.”

Chase was staring up at him, eyes full of pain, and she groaned, and Bob dropped to his knees beside her and dug into a pocket and came out with his Leatherman tool, and he flicked out a blade. He said to Lucas, “Roll her over, I’ll cut her jeans.”

They rolled her over, and Chase groaned again louder. Bob cut a slit up the back of her jeans, and two more at right angles, until he could peel the denim back and they could see the wound. The shot had gone in through the back of the leg and come out the front, just missing the bone. The wound was bleeding heavily.

Bob, as calm as he might have been addressing the Kiwanis Club, said to Lucas, “Through and through. Not pulsing.”

Chase asked through clenched teeth, “Am I gonna be okay?”

Bob said, “Yes. But it’s gonna hurt, both now and later. Believe me, I know.”

A fed came running through the door with a first-aid kit the size of a suitcase, knelt beside Chase, and popped open the lid. “I’m gonna plug the holes, put pressure on the wound.”

Lucas patted Chase once on the shoulder, and said to Bob, “Clear the house. Let these guys take care of her.”

Rae took the left wing, Bob took the right, Lucas went straight ahead into the kitchen. He stopped halfway in. What? What was it? Out the kitchen window, he could see high-powered LED flashlights playing through the woods and hear the plaintive wail of sirens. The sirens were too clear, this far back in the house, and he moved through the kitchen and found the back door standing open. She’d run through there into the dark, he thought.

Maybe.

He spent five minutes working through the back of the house, joined by one of the feds. When it was cleared out, Moy came up, and said, “We’ve got the streets covered, but it’s harder than hell to see anything in the dark and the rain. It’s been twelve minutes. If she made it out to a road, she could be a mile away.”