Chapter 6 - The Man with the Cigar
"Don't move, SEAL," the man said. His voice was gravelly, ruined by decades of heavy smoking. "Hands where I can see them."
Grant slowly straightened up, raising his hands to shoulder height, keeping his body positioned between the man and the open door of the SUV.
"You're the guy who drove my wife's car into the river," Grant said, his tone deadly calm.
The man chuckled, a wet, rattling sound. "I'm the guy who cleans up messes. Natalie was supposed to take two hundred grand and walk away. She got heroic. That was her mistake."
"And putting my eight-year-old daughter in the back of your car?" Grant asked, stepping half an inch to his left, angling his body toward a stack of rusted steel tires. "Was that part of the cleanup?"
The man's eyes narrowed slightly. "The kid was insurance. Rebecca said if we kept the kid quiet, you'd be too broken to start asking questions. And it worked. For eighty-seven days, you were just another sad widow sitting in an empty house."
"She talked today," Grant said quietly.
The man's finger tightened on the trigger. "We know. Trooper Miller saw you park your truck down the street ten minutes ago. Rebecca's already on her way to that cute little salon downtown to finish what we started."
The mention of the salon tore through Grant's control like a thermal charge.
Grant didn't wait for the man to pull the trigger.
He lunged to his right, grabbing a eighty-pound steel rim from the pile beside him and hurling it with terrifying force straight at the gunman's head.
The heavy rim struck the man's arm just as he fired.
PUB.
The suppressed shot whined harmlessly off the Explorer's roof rail.
Before the man could regain his balance, Grant was on him.
Fourteen years of Naval Special Warfare hand-to-hand training exploded into action. Grant grabbed the gunman's wrist, twisting it inward until the bone snapped with a loud crack. The pistol fell into the wet mud.
Grant didn't stop. He drove his elbow straight into the man's sternum, forcing all the air from his lungs, then slammed him against the side of a crushed pickup truck.
The gunman collapsed into the gravel, clutching his broken arm, coughing up blood.
Grant picked up the suppressed pistol, ejected the magazine to check the rounds, slammed it back in, and racked the slide.
He stepped over the groaning man, leaning down until his eyes were inches from the killer's face.
"Trooper Miller," Grant said, his voice dropping into a register that made the gunman shiver. "Where is he?"
"At... at the front gate," the man gasped. "He's watching the street..."
Grant brought the butt of the heavy pistol down against the man's temple, knocking him instantly into unconsciousness.
Grant searched the man's slicker, pulled out a pair of heavy zip-ties, bound his hands and ankles securely behind his back, and shoved him out of sight beneath the rear axle of a delivery van.
Grant checked his watch. 10:42 AM.
He pulled his phone and dialed David Harper.
"David," Grant said the second the call connected. "Rebecca knows. She's heading for the salon."
May you like
"I'm already on it," David's voice came back, tight and ready. "Camille locked the front shutters. I've got my service weapon drawn at the back door. How far out are you?"
"Five minutes," Grant said, sprinting toward the rear gate of the impound yard. "Hold the line."
