Page 75 of Nightcrawler
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 houseafter 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 hissmile 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 slowerthan 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 terrifiedcivilians 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.