Nightcrawler (Trackers #1)

Chapter Twenty-Four

RAVEN

Miguel was worried about me, but I couldn’t think about his feelings at the moment. I’d come here to do a job with the most capable men around, so I knew everything would be okay as I walked into the front of the building. It was teeming with people, and I was surprised by how many vendors there were in the place. There had to be three hundred booths set up in five rows front to back on both sides of wide aisles, and along both sides. I’d been in here last summer with Nana in a wheelchair and had forgotten that a lot of these booths were set up the night before. There were always vendors selling things like jewelry who laid their wares out in locked glass cases.

There were no tents like the actual Ventura County Fair in the summer when another five-hundred vendors set up outside to sell everything from keychains to coolers to fried, greasy fair food. The funnel cake vendor was always a big draw for me, and I always spent the next week going hard at the gym to work off the damage I’d done the day before.

I looked down the length of the building in time to see Miguel enter from the other entrance, and I grinned at him. When he waved, I knew I’d been seen. He pointed to the left and I nodded, going left as he went right.

I worked my way through the throngs of patrons, making my way to the far left aisle, checking out each vendor booth, looking for the one selling Grateful Dead memorabilia. I prayed we’d find Allcott and that it wouldn’t be difficult to get him to give up the location of Howell—if he even knew it. I wondered whether the others had been serious when they’d said Mac McCallahan was CIA. How was it possible to be both FBI and CIA? I supposed Mac could work for the FBI with a CIA background. I had no idea. I was just happy Jarrett and Thayne had brought the big Green Beret with them. He looked deadly. I had to work hard at putting the image of him snapping a neck with his bare hands out of my mind.

“Anything?” Cassidy asked in the earwigs.

“Negative, Cass,” Miguel’s voice came back.

“Not so far,” Mike said.

“Negative,” I parroted, feeling a sense of pride that even as injured as I was, Miguel had included me in the search for Allcott. It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable at a fugitive hunt. I’d tracked down more baddies than I cared to admit, going after everything from a stolen work of art to the Mulberry diamond. But going after a huge biker, with a rap sheet filled with violent crimes, who most likely wouldn’t be anxious to talk to anyone in law enforcement about his old running buddy, wasn’t my idea of a walk in the park, especially with holes in me.

I got to the end of my aisle and turned, dodging a harried woman with a double seater baby carriage. Both blonde toddler girls wore pink bows in their tousled hair, and both were screaming bloody murder. Apparently, they weren’t the least bit interested in antiques.

By the time I got to the end of the third aisle, I decided I hated antiques, even though I really loved the midcentury, modern look of my nana’s house. Most of the furnishings, with the exception of the fluffy couch where Miguel had first sucked me off, were antiques. That couch was my addition to the house after my nana’s sectional finally gave up the ghost last summer. I’d always love my new couch…mainly because of what had happened there.

“I’ve got Allcott in sight,” Cassidy said. “He’s set up in the West pavilion. It looks like he’s the only one in the booth, but it’s big and he’s got a bunch of crap set up on hanging racks which look like T-shirts that block the view from the sides. We won’t know for sure until we’re right up on him.”

“Fuck!” Miguel said in the earwig, probably thinking the same thing I was, that we’d chosen the wrong building. “Wait until Raven and I join you and Mike.”

“Roger,” Cassidy said. “Jarrett…you guys keep an eye on the entrances if he decides to bolt.”

“Roger,” Thayne and Jarrett said in tandem.

“Gimme a sec, guys,” McCallahan’s voice said. I could hear him grunting. It sounded like whatever he was doing took great effort, and I wondered if he was climbing down from the building by whatever means he’d used to scale it.

I felt relief wash over me as Miguel appeared at my side. He grinned at me and then to my surprise, pulled me in for a hard kiss. Even though it lasted only two seconds before he pulled away and grabbed my hand, I was blown away. He’d just kissed me in front of a hundred people, right out in the open. We began moving to the side entrance which led to the open courtyard.

Outside, the bright morning sunshine blinded me for a few seconds, but we quickly crossed to the Western pavilion and entered the building. Cassidy and Mike were standing just inside the doors, waiting for us.

“He’s in the middle aisle,” Cassidy said.

“Let’s go,” Miguel replied, nodding. He let go of my hand and we started slowly making our way through the teeming crowd toward the middle of the building. I tried to slow my heart and breathe deeply when I realized it was racing as we dodged people who kept stopping when they saw something they wanted to look at. When we turned the corner at the center aisle, I spotted Mac McCallahan at the end. He towered above the crowd and even if he hadn’t, the red-orange buzz cut would’ve been a dead giveaway that I was looking at the right man.

He grinned and gave a little salute. I smiled back as we began converging on the Grateful Dead booth in the middle of the row. When I spotted a big man talking to a customer at the counter, I immediately recognized him as Allcott. He was ugly, huge, and big…really fucking intimidating…big. A brown bandana wrapped around his long hair with a Grateful Dead skull patch at the front. His oversized T-shirt had a large screen printed picture of Jerry Garcia on it. His arms were huge, and his gut was even larger. He was scarred and if he’d approached me out in public, I would have had pepper spray in one hand and a Taser in another. He looked every bit like the ugly biker type I hated.

I felt Miguel’s tension in the distance between us. He was practically vibrating with it. I moved closer, reaching out a hand, and placing it on the small of his back. His muscles jumped, but he didn’t turn to look at me, just kept walking. The sudden realization that this man was a predator just like Mac McCallahan, and I had to admit, having a Recon Marine at my side, gave me a sense of power. I knew Miguel would protect me with his very life if it came to that.

We slipped alongside the booth, and Mac came from the other side.

Allcott looked up at Cassidy and Mike with a ready smile, but something in their mannerisms must have alerted him, and his smile faded. He knew what they were even before Cassidy pulled his coat aside to show his badge.

It was at that moment that I spotted a big man in the back of the booth. He was sitting on a folding chair looking down at his phone.

“LAPD,” Cassidy announced.

The man looked up, and the eyes of Connor Ray Howell Jr. met mine.

He was out of his chair in a second. It toppled to the ground as he ripped the rear curtain of the booth back, crashing Grateful Dead tees this way and that as he scrambled out of sight behind the curtain.

“Fuck!” Mike shouted at the same time Cassidy did. “Howell’s here and he’s on the move!”

“We’ll be watchin’,” Jarrett said.

“Roger that,” Thayne said back.

I shoved their voices into the background and followed Miguel who’d pushed past several antique buyers in the next booth where there wasn’t a counter and ran through the curtain separating the rows. Overflowing boxes of crap were like an obstacle course as we pushed past a vendor selling some kind of antique kitchen utensils. He shouted at us as we skirted his front table and then backed up when he spotted the pepper spray in my hand. I didn’t even realize I’d pulled the chemical weapon off my belt until a woman holding a baby screamed at the top of her lungs.

Shit . I kept moving, running as fast as I could after Miguel who was charging after Howell. The tall biker was at least 300 pounds, and Miguel hadn’t lied about his height. He was an equal to Mac McCallahan in that. His bulk made him slower than us, but he seemed to have no qualms about pushing through the crowd blocking his path. He shoved men and women to the ground, barely dodging a woman with small children as he ran. Everyone protested loudly as he passed, jumping out of his way with shouts and screams, but he kept on going.

He was about fifty feet ahead of us, running toward the back double doors. He burst through them, knocking over a security guard as he passed. The guard hit the ground hard, rolling to her side as she scrambled to pull her walkie-talkie off her belt and scream into it. I heard Cassidy’s disembodied voice in my ears as he reported his trajectory to Jarrett and Thayne. I kept running but I had a stitch in my side as I finally made it to the doors with Miguel at my side.

“Got him!” Jarrett’s drawl announced. “I can take him out. Oof !”

I almost laughed as I realized Thayne had joined him and was probably poking him in the side. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so serious. Howell turned the corner of the building ahead of us and disappeared out of sight. Fuck! The bastard was getting away.

By the time we turned the corner a few moments later, he was nowhere to be seen. We kept on running. There were no crowds on this side of the building but when we got to the end of it, we ran into an even thicker crowd of people than we’d seen inside. I couldn’t see Howell anywhere and swore under my breath as we began making our way through the crowd.

When a shot rang out, I almost couldn’t believe it. Someone had just fired a gun but it didn’t sound like a sniper rifle. Everyone started screaming and total chaos ensued as terrified civilians began gathering their children and running. Some dropped to the ground, making our going even harder.

I spotted Howell seventy-five feet ahead of us. The sight of a huge gun in his hand glinted brightly in the sunlight. I’d never seen a Desert Eagle in person but when Howell stopped and pointed it in our direction, getting off another five shots, I had no interest in what it looked like, only in the bullets which were whizzing by us. Cassidy and Mike also had their guns drawn, and so did McCallahan.

“Raven, get down!” Miguel shouted, grabbing my arm. I was yanked to the ground as a bullet narrowly missed me. My heart was pounding, adrenaline racing through my veins as I hit the dirt hard. I cried out at the pain which lanced through me like a sword, momentarily whiting out everything. “Raven! Raven!” I rolled to my back, grunting as I looked up into frantic, brown eyes.

“I’m fine, Miguel,” I groaned, holding my side. “Go!” I waved him away and he stood, looking down at me as he hesitated. “Go!” He turned and ran, disappearing from sight a second later.

MIGUEL

Fury filled my veins with fire as I began running away from the man I’d practically thrown to the ground…the person I’d come to care about most in this world. He was hurt and that fucker had nearly killed him. I was in a blood-filled rage as I tore through the crowd. Howell had disappeared from sight and the shooting had stopped. All I could hear in my earwig was grunting as the others ran after him. There was only one way out of this place, and I headed for it, knowing the others would reach him before I could.

“I’ve got him!” Jarrett shouted. “He’s comin’ my way.”

“Jarrett! Don’t!” Thayne cried out as I heard a scuffle.

“ Oof! Fuck! You’re a big motherfucker, ain’t ya? Try that again.” A shot rang out and for a second, I was paralyzed with fear as I worried that Jarrett or Thayne—who’d obviously intercepted Howell—had been shot.

“LAPD, Howell!” Cassidy shouted.

“FBI! Drop your gun!” Mac yelled. A series of shots rang out and I caught sight of Howell, just in time to see him falling backward. His gun flew out of his hand as Mac, Cassidy, and Mike stood twenty feet from him, all with smoking gun barrels. By the time I ran up, Howell was lying bloodied and very very dead on the ground in front of me.

I couldn’t believe it. Several emotions hit me all at once. I’d wanted to protect innocent lives just like I’d done overseas. I’d wanted to bring him in alive and claim the bounty on his head. But most of all, I’d wanted to kill the man who’d nearly killed Raven and my other friends myself. I assessed the sight of the man bleeding out in the dirt for only a second before turning to go back to Raven. When I saw him limping toward me, holding his side, and very very much alive, I ran to him, enveloping him in my arms, and breathing in his scent as I buried my face in his hair.

“I love you, Raven,” I gasped. “I love you…love you…love you.”

He hugged me back. “I’m okay, baby. I swear it. I’m okay,” he assured me. “Just a little banged up. I swear I’m fine. Look at me.” He pushed me back, forcing me to break my hold on him. “Look.” He lifted his shirt and twirled around to show that the bandages were in place and looked good. He dropped the shirt and pulled me back into his arms as he hugged me tightly. “I love you too, Miguel. I love you.” The words were the best thing I’d ever heard in my life.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over. It was all over.

RAVEN

The Oxnard police on-site had worked with Cassidy and Mike, and reinforcements were called in for crowd control. When they’d first arrived on scene, they hadn’t been happy but that had changed when they learned the identity of the man who’d been killed. When they found out that Cassidy and Mike had been responsible for bringing down a freaked out, fugitive meth head who’d shot through a crowd of innocent people on the fairgrounds, with the help of an off-duty FBI agent, they’d extended every professional courtesy. Plus, it was clear to me that there were other levels of police clearance and coordination going on that we didn’t know about.

Miguel and I had spent the better part of the day at the Oxnard police station, recounting the events leading up to the killing of Howell, and by the time we left later that afternoon, we were all starving. We’d brushed off dusty clothes, congratulated each other on a job well done, and headed out to a nearby seafood place to eat.

“How are you feeling, Sunshine…really?” Miguel asked, taking my hand the second we were both sitting in the cab of my Dodge Ram back at the fairgrounds where we’d left the vehicle.

I smiled, squeezing his hand. “I feel fine. I got the wind knocked out of me. I think my injuries are survivable, Miguel.” When he said nothing, I turned to look at him, remembering the confession he’d blurted out there on the fairgrounds. “I love you,” I said, repeating my own.

He beamed at me. “Me too, Sunshine. Me too.”

I paused, keeping my eyes on traffic as I got on the freeway, not wanting to bring up the obvious…that Howell hadn’t been brought in as a fugitive. Instead, the fucker had been taken down by law enforcement, negating Miguel’s claim on the 60,000-dollar bounty he would have had a huge share in. Still, if I didn’t bring it up, it’d remain between us like an elephant in the room.

“They’re not going to pay the bounty, are they?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head.

“No, they ain’t,” he said, tiredly. He was quiet a minute and I turned to see him staring out the side window before dragging my eyes back to the road. “Jamie’s gonna fire me. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

I took a deep breath and gave voice to the thought which had been in my head for quite a while. “What do you say we go into business together?” I looked over at him as I felt all the air being sucked out of the truck. He was staring at me with wide eyes.

“What?”

I looked back at the road. “Why can’t I leave GMS Insurance and strike out on my own? We can be partners.”

He laughed. “Because that kind of thing takes money, Raven, and if you haven’t already noticed, I’m flat broke.” When I flicked a glance at him, his head was turned toward the window again. “Hell, I’m fucking homeless.”

I squeezed his hand hard, staring out the windshield as I drove. “You’re not homeless. You love me and I love you. You can move in with me. You have a home and as far as the work stuff…the partnership stuff…we’ll work that out.”

“I don’t know, Raven. I swear. It’s not because I don’t love you. I do. It’s because—”

I looked over when he stopped abruptly. The pain and uncertainty in his eyes was disconcerting. “What?”

“I don’t want to be dependent on you. I’ve never been dependent on anyone in my life, Raven. And trust me, Sunshine, this is no way to start a life together.”

“I want you in my life…all the way in my life,” I confessed, knowing it was all true. “I want you in my bed every night and I want to wake up and go to work at our own place, surrounded by our own people. My assistant, Judy, will come with us and run the front office. She hates our boss at GMS. She’s been trying to get me to leave with her and find a different insurance company to work with for years.”

“I don’t know, Raven,” Miguel said. “It’s not that I don’t think starting up a freelance bounty hunting agency is a bad idea. It’s just…well, Jamie’s always been my skip tracer. I don’t have those skills, and we’d need one…a damned good one.”

“Judy does have those skills. Who the hell do you think does all my scut work before I go out on assignments, Miguel? She’s the best damned skip tracer I’ve ever met.” I glanced over. He was watching me with interest. When the corners of his mouth turned up in a smile, I felt my heart pounding in my chest. “We can do this.” I turned back to the road.

“It sounds like you’ve been giving it a lot of thought, Raven,” he said quietly.

I squeezed his hand, smiling. “Ever since you dragged me bleeding out of James Passantino’s house.” I turned to look at him. “Ever since I knew I couldn’t live without you in my life.”

He smiled. “That long , huh ?”

I looked back at the road. “That long.”