Page 86 of Manner of Death

He called the number he’d texted. It rang several times, then kicked over to voicemail. Then he tried the other officer. No answer.

Okay, not good.

He switched to the feed from his Ring camera.

In an instant, his heart dropped into his feet, and he sprinted up the hall to the bedroom.

“Get away from the windows!” he called out to Sawyer.

“Get—what?”

Bashir whipped into the bedroom, and though Sawyer was clearly confused, he’d taken Bashir’s warning to heart. He’d pressed himself against the wall beside one of the windows, even pushing his injured arm back as much as he could to be as flat as possible.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Bashir beckoned him out into the hall, where there were no windows at all, and he spoke fast. “The officers aren’t responding to calls or texts, and my Ring camera’s feed has been cut off.”

Sawyer blanched. “Are you serious?”

“Uh-huh. So we need to get the fuck out of here.”

“Agreed.” Sawyer took out his phone. “I’m going to have dispatch send some units out here. Do you have a gun?”

“Yeah. Let me grab it.” Bashir’d had mixed feelings about obtaining a firearm, but a previous mentor had said it wasn’t a bad idea.

“There are some messed-up people out there,” she’d told him. “And you’re going to be the reason a lot of them end up in prison. You don’t want to be unprotected if one of them comes looking for you.”

Words to live by, it turned out.

Staying low as he passed by the windows, he moved to his bedside. There, he retrieved the .45 from his nightstand drawer along with a pair of spare magazines. Between those and the mag in the gun, that gave them twenty-four rounds to work with. Bashir’s experience as a medical examiner said that would be more than sufficient to neutralize Boyce as a threat. His growing fear of his deranged colleague made him wonder if it was enough.

“Thanks, Nan,” Sawyer was saying as Bashir returned to the hall. “Let me know if you get anything from them.” He ended the call and faced Bashir. “She’s sending more units our way, and she’s going to do a radio check with the patrols outside.”

Bashir nodded. Being thorough made sense, but his gut told him the radio check wouldn’t result in any news, never mind good news. The patrol officers outside were, more than likely, dead.

“So what do we do now?” he asked Sawyer.

“Well…” Sawyer thought for a moment. His eyes flicked to the gun. “You can shoot that, right? You’ve trained with it?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Good. You’d be surprised how many gun owners don’t—anyway. I can still use my dominant hand, so I can shoot in a pinch, but with my left arm out of commission…” He shook his head.

“Got it.”

“Two hands on the weapon!” his instructor had barked. “This isn’t Hollywood, folks!”

Sawyer was again quiet. Then, “Do you have Boyce’s cell number?”

Bashir nodded as he took out his phone. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

“Okay. I’m going to have Nan try to ping the GPS data and get a location on him.”

“Is that, uh…”

“Legal?” Sawyer shrugged as he sent the call. “I’ll take that up with a judge when we’re not dead after this is over.”

“Fair enough.”