Her Last Breath, page 12
Jack got to the stoplight at the end of the block and looked into the rearview. The doors on the white van opened, including the ones in the back. Baskin and four other SWAT members filed out and headed to the right, down an alleyway that would bring them out one building away from the abandoned textile mill. As Jack turned left to head in that direction, he saw the van then pull out onto the street, the remaining two SWAT members left inside as backup.
“Good to go?” Jack asked, looking over to Rachel. He honestly hadn’t meant to ask. He could tell she was getting fed up with his constant checking in on her. But he also felt partly responsible for her. He knew her ailments and also knew the risks she was taking by continuing to work. He’d accepted the fact that if she died during duty, it would be his fault—his fault for not telling Anderson, his fault for not pushing harder against her to take the time off to get herself in tip-top shape. Hell, maybe even to retire so she could focus on knocking the hell out of the tumor in her head.
He continued around the block, taking a left at the next intersection, and pulling his car quickly to the side of the street, just out of sight of the mill building. At the same time, he watched as Baskins’s team came out from the mouth of the alleyway and started marching towards the door of Cane’s HQ. Everything was going according to plan, right down to the second. It was a good feeling, a push of confidence that he felt surging through him as he killed the engine and opened the door.
Rachel drew up behind him, also getting out of the car and rushing toward the building. She moved with catlike agility, her footfalls so soft he didn’t even hear them. It made him think that maybe she really was feeling perfectly fine. That, too, went a very long way to making him feel much more comfortable about her being on this case, in this tense situation.
Baskins stopped, holding up a fist to communicate to his team that they needed to stop as well. Jack took a quick glance at all of them. Baskin was armed with a standard Glock, with another handgun holstered on his hip. His other members were armed with similar weapons, with the exception of the man that brought up the rear. He held a shotgun, a Remington 870.
Jack and Rachel took the lead positions. The moment they were in place, Baskin held up his pinky. The man with the shotgun came rushing forward, stepping in front of Jack. He looked to Jack for confirmation, and Jack nodded.
The SWAT member brought the stock of his shotgun down on the doorknob and then, in a movement so quick that Jack barely saw it, he drew back and kicked the door in. It buckled and tore the frame away from the building. The man then stepped back as Jack and Rachel went into the building.
All Jack had time to see was that the place was dark. There was a small light source coming from the back of a very large, open room. He saw two figures standing in the gloom, and a third sitting at a small table.
And then the gunshots started, filling the building like thunder.
Jack did the only thing he could do in that moment. His instincts told him to retreat back outside and take up position by the door. But doing that would only block the door, leaving the SWAT guys outside. So he hit the floor, taking a clumsy shooter’s stance. He nearly called out for Rachel to do the same, but she was already a step ahead of him. As Jack hit his chest, drawing up his Glock, Rachel was already rolling hard to the right, heading for another small table behind them. Jack was barely aware of the sound of her flipping the table over for cover; a round from somewhere further ahead of him struck the concrete of the floor less than six inches from his face.
Jack fired blindly twice, just to return fire and to give him a moment to get a better look at the situation. As he sized up the situation, three SWAT members came into the door, already firing.
Jack saw four men just ahead of them, no more than thirty feet away. One was standing behind a concrete column that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Two others had done the same as Rachel, flipping a table over and using it as a shield. A fourth was rushing to the back, headed for a door.
“We’ve got one running for the back!” Jack yelled over the gunfire.
At the same time, he heard Rachel call his name from behind him. He didn’t dare glance back, firing at the man behind the column and managing to only chip away at the concrete.
“Jack, I’m laying down cover now!” she yelled.
Trusting her completely, Jack sprang to his hands and feet as he heard Rachel’s Glock blast out four rounds. he scrambled back to her, diving behind the table just as she ducked back down behind it. The table, he found, was an old worktable; made of some sort of sheet metal, it blocked the shots that came from the other side of the building.
All of Baskins’s men were in the building now, taking whatever cover they could. One remained stationed by the door, leaning partially inside and getting off a few rounds. Two others were hiding behind columns like the one Jack had been staring down, waiting for the man behind it to show himself just a bit. Jack had no intention of killing someone—he’d always rather have an arrest than a dead body—but he also knew that if he got a clean shot to a shoulder, leg, or foot, he was going to take it.
As he leaned hard to the right to try to get a shot, the man that had been running for the back door fired off several rounds back into the building. One pinged off the side of the table and another one apparently struck a SWAT guy because Jack heard a cry of pain from close behind him.
Jack tried to fire back at the man, but the gang members sensed it and opened up again. Jack had to slip back behind the table but he saw that the SWAT member with the shotgun took the shot for him. The man behind the pillar screamed and stumbled back, falling to the floor.
This caused just enough for a distraction. Shooting from the gang member side came to a brief stop, which opened the perfect window for the SWAT team—and Rachel. Jack watched as she sprung up and took aim, firing off a round that allowed Baskin to press forward with two of his men.
“Lay down your weapons right now!” Baskin yelled.
Jack popped back up and saw that two of the remaining three members had indeed dropped their weapons. One had already placed his hands over his head. The third seemed to be reluctant, but when both Jack and Rachel trained their weapons on him, he slowly tossed down the handgun he’d been using.
“Are any of you Claudio Case?” Jack asked.
Baskins answered, stalking in from his side to look at the damage. “No. None of these men is Case.”
“He must have been the one to slip out the back,” Rachel said. And without even thinking about it, she took off running.
“Rachel…” Jack said, but she didn’t even turn back to him.
Jack took one final look around the room to survey the damage that had been done. There were two gang members on the floor. One was writing in pain, clutching at his left shoulder. The other one wasn’t moving, and a large pool of blood had already started to bloom around his waist. There was also a single downed SWAT member, currently sitting against the wall with blood pooling out of his right leg.
“You got this covered?” Jack asked, looking back to Baskins.
“Yeah, we’re good here.”
Jack started for the door and at first, he wasn’t too worried. There were, after all, two other SWAT members out around the buildings, specifically looking for anyone that came rushing out and retreating. But then he thought of how things tended to go when Rachel took off running after a perp—especially once getting her cancer diagnosis
That put some extra speed into his step.
And there was even more when he passed through the back doorway and heard more gunfire coming from further down the alleyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rachel exited the building so quickly that she nearly slammed right into the wall of the neighboring building when she came out into the alleyway. She spotted the man that she assumed to be Claudio Cane just up ahead, running quickly and barely taking the time to look over his shoulder.
“FBI!” she yelled. “Stop running, right now!”
But Cane did no such thing. He continued to run, coming to the end of the alleyway. Rachel peered ahead, certain that she would see the two other SWAT members waiting there. She did see one of them, swiveling into the alleyway from behind the cover of the wall. But Cane also seemed to see him at the same time. He raised his handgun—which appeared to be little more than a basic .09 millimeter—and fired indiscriminately.
Rachel flinched at the sound, raising her own gun as she continued to rush forward. Shooting him would be easy, but part of her training as an agent had drilled several very basic rules of combat into her. If she could take him in alive and as uninjured as possible, it would do wonders for getting information for the case. A dead source of information is a useless source of information.
Besides that, she was gaining on him. And as he drew closer to the end of the alley, Cane was slowing down. He realized he was trapped and—
The SWAT member on the opposite side of the alleyway popped out next. Rachel heard the gunshot, sure it had come from the SWAT member, but it had been Cane instead. He wasn’t much of a runner, but the bastard was fast with a gun. The shot hit the SWAT member, causing him to stumble back.
Then, apparently sensing Rachel on his heels, he turned around. When he did, he purposefully went to the ground in what Rachel saw as a genius move. It would not be an easy or clear shot for the remaining SWAT member and Rachel had to readjust her trajectory.
In the end, that was fine. She came to a sudden stop, surprising Cane. When he fired, the shot went wide, and Rachel was able to take advantage of his prone position by kicking him in the wrist. The gun went flying out of his grip and she instantly dove on him. She dropped down hard on his chest, her right knee slamming into the same wrist she’d just kicked. She felt and heard the wrist crack, probably breaking.
Rachel drew her right arm back, not to deliver a blow but to simply brace Cane against the ground. He fought as well as he could, bringing his left arm up and landing a blow that just barely caught the side of her head. Rachel did her best to maneuver herself to her side so that she could lock in a rear-naked choke, but she couldn’t get her footing She scrambled, putting all of her weight against him and—
The world went bright for a moment. For a split second, it seemed like the sun had exploded and then everything had gone a perfect and beautiful shade of white. It was startling and came out of nowhere. She cried out and tried getting to her knees to scramble away in shock but before she could, Cane delivered a hard elbow to her stomach as he fought away.
Rachel gasped for breath as the world’s colors came rushing back. She also saw Jack go leaping by her, slamming into Cane. They both went to the ground in a heavy heap and the moment they were down, Jack delivered a vicious right-handed blow. Rachel could hear it as it connected with Cane’s jaw.
Jack planted a knee into Cane’s back as the remaining SWAT member also came surging forward. Rachel took a moment to force herself to relax, knowing that fighting and gasping for air would just make it harder to collect her breath again.
“You okay?” Jack asked. She could hear the genuine worry in his voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she croaked.
It was true enough, she supposed. But even as she said it, she thought of that flash of light. It was vaguely similar to some of the symptoms she’d experienced in the past. But she also realized that it had been so brief that Jack may not suspect a thing; he likely thought that Claudio Cane had simply managed to slip away from her and get in a good lick before trying to escape. She hated the idea of lying to him but she knew if he suspected her condition had caused her to lose focus and put her life at risk, he wouldn’t be as understanding as he had been in the past.
And she honestly didn’t blame him. She knew that at some point, she had to put the safety and well-being of others above herself. She hated that she was struggling with it so much, but it was a conflict she was going to have to wrap up if she planned to continue working as long as she could.
Gasping, she slowly got to her feet.
“Rachel, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “Just…got the wind knocked…out of me.”
She got to her feet as the remaining SWAT member began to assist with getting Cane to his feet. At the same time, Baskins and two others came out of the building. Rachel did her best to focus on it all, to pay attention to every detail and make sure the flash of light wasn’t going to come back again. Of all of the side effects she’d experienced so far, it had been the briefest. She sensed that it had passed and that it had likely been brought on by the intense physical confrontation, but she wanted to be damned sure before she started walking around like everything was perfectly fine again.
“Good work, agents,” Baskins said as he came out to survey the area. “We’ve got five others inside and already found a stash of weapons that are going to raise some eyebrows.”
It was good to hear: a success. And maybe, just maybe, they not only had their killer, but a man that had been terrorizing the streets in numerous other ways as well.
***
Back at the station, Rachel wasn’t at all surprised to find that Angelica had something for her. As soon as Rachel stepped into the lobby area outside of the small bullpen, Angelica was there. She was handing Rachel a sheet of paper before she even realized what else was happening. Jack and Baskins were escorting Cane in not too far behind her.
“Here’s that list of the parolees Emma Stern worked with,” she said, her eyes taking in the entire scene being played out in front of her.
“Excellent,” Rachel said. Her abdomen was sore from the punch Cane had doled out, but she was otherwise fine. There had been no more flashes of light and so far, Jack seemed to be none the wiser. “Thanks so much.”
“Sure.” She bit at her bottom lip for a moment, as if trying to keep the next question in, but she asked it anyway. “Is that the killer?”
“Don’t know yet,” Rachel said, stopping long enough to let Jack and Baskins take Cane into an interrogation room. “There’s a good chance. All we know right now is that his name is Claudio Cane and that he’s a gang enforcer.”
“What’s a gang enforcer do, anyway?” Angelica asked.
“Just what it sounds like,” Rachel said. “They keep loyalty to their given gang in check. If a member suddenly starts to go against the grain—to ignore gang rules or policies—they step in as an enforcer. Sometimes it’s just to make an example of them. Sometimes it ends in murder. Every now and then, with bigger gangs, it’s beating the hell out of the guilty member and then dropping them off in rival gang territory.”
“Oh,” was all Angelica said.
They’d reached the room that Jack and Baskins had taken Cane into. Rachel held up the list of names Angelica had gotten and offered an appreciative smile. “Thanks for this.”
“Of course. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
They parted ways, and Rachel walked into the interrogation room. Claudio Cane sat behind the table in the center of the room, his eyes narrowed and his mouth slightly turned forward into a scowl. He was pissed and was making no attempt to hide it. Jack sat across from him in the only other chair, while Baskins leaned against the side of the table, palms on the surface and his eyes locked on Cane.
“And this,” Jack said, his eyes also targeted on Cane, “is the agent you took a shot at. The agent you were about six inches away from killing. She’d a damned good agent and my friend. She has a daughter—one of the sweetest kids you’ll ever meet. And you almost killed this woman. It sort of makes me regret not opening fire on you when we could back there in the alley. Now…I say all of that not to make you try to feel regret, but to let you know that if you make this following line of questioning hard, there’s going to be a lot of security cameras around here that might just go on the fritz. Especially in rooms where you’re alone with me and Baskins. There’s also a SWAT member that is in critical condition right now, on his way to the hospital. I know you didn’t shoot him because you were running like a bitch when this all went down. But the jury isn’t going to look favorably on you. And I think you know what a charge like this is going to do to a criminal record. So…do you get what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Claudio said in light roar.
Rachel soaked the entire commentary up. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Jack so furious and steady all at the same time. Everything he’d told Cane had sent a chill through her. She’d never seen this side of Jack and she wasn’t sure if she envied it or was a little scared of it.
“First things first,” Baskins said. “I know you’re not a stupid man Claudio. You know we’ve been after you for a while, right? But the business with your gang activity is secondary right now. Agents Gift and Rivers want to speak to you about a completely different matter.”
This seemed to surprise Cane, but only for a moment, Rachel saw the flicker of confusion in his expression, but he quickly replaced it with his hardened scowl.
“Agents,” Baskins said. “I’ll be outside. Can’t wait to dig in on Mr. Cane here.”
There was a tense silence as Baskins left the room. Rachel still felt the anger coming off of Jack as he sat slightly slouched in the chair, staring holes in Cane. Rachel made a move as if to step around the table in a pacing motion. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, hoping it communicated that she needed him to calm down and that she’d start things off. His silence indicated he picked up the message.
“Mr. Cane,” Rachel said, “we’re in Murphy’s Crossing because we’re looking into a series of murders that have taken place here and in Annapolis. In hunting down leads, your name came up in a rather interesting way. And as I’m sure you might imagine, it didn’t take much digging for us to realize the sort of trouble you tend to get into.”
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