"Sandy… Sandy… it's me. Can you hear me?" he said, kneeling beside her.
When Sandy looked up, her face had lost its shape; her eyes were dimming as blood pumped out of her onto the tile floor. "I know… where… Chooch… is… Calvin told me… after we… we had sex and… and… he told…" She was shaking badly, struggling for breath. "Then… Clark Crispin came… seen my file… knew I was… Black Widow…" She started to choke, blood flowing from her mouth now, running down her chin.
"Shit," Shane said. "Let's get you outta here, to a hospital."
"No… " she said as he tried to lift her. "No… Please… listen. In Arrowhead… Sheets said… they're holding him there…"
Sandy's strained words were overwhelmed by a heavy pounding on the front door.
"Open the fucking door, Cal! Open up!" Coy Love shouted.
"Give that asshole something to think about," Shane barked. Alexa turned and fired her fifth shot through the bolted wood door.
"Shit," they heard Coy say angrily from the porch outside.
"Shane… you've gotta listen…" Sandy whispered.
When he looked back down at her, she seemed smaller than she had just a moment before, as if she were losing volume, a pint at a time.
"Shane… you get him back… you take… take care of Chooch…" she rasped.
"I'll get him."
"He's yours… Shane… yours and mine." She was almost whispering now, her voice so small that he had to bend down to hear her.
"I was wrong…" She reached up and clutched his collar, pulling him down closer. "I didn't think you'd want him… I wanted him but couldn't raise him… You gotta do better." Her voice was so weak now, he placed his ear almost on her lips to hear. "He needed… his father… It's why… I made you take him… It's why… it's why… I…" And then she was looking at him, but her gaze had turned empty. Her heart had stopped beating. Those flashing black eyes went dead and stared up at him, damp and blank as licked stones.
Shane slowly lowered her to the floor. When he looked up, he saw Alexa staring at him from the door.
"Shane, we've gotta get outta here," she said.
Suddenly, Coy Love's face appeared at the window. Then his gun came up, aiming at Shane, who snatched Calvin's.38 out of his belt and fired twice just as Alexa peeled her last two rounds at the ex-cop. The window shattered as four bullets hit Coy Love, blowing him backward into the brush outside the chauffeur's cabin.
"Let's go!" Alexa screamed, and Shane got to his feet.
They could hear more voices screaming outside. They found the back door and threw it open. It led into the six-car garage. A black Lincoln Town Car was parked inside. Shane grabbed the keys off the pegboard, then he and Alexa jumped into the car; he started the engine, pulled the garage-door opener off the visor, and pushed the button. The door opened while Alexa was digging into her purse for a spare clip. She jammed it into the grip of her Beretta just as he floored the Lincoln, hurtling out of the garage and onto the driveway.
Armed men in black suits blocked their path but scattered as he plowed through them.
Out the front window, he could see security men running at them from several directions, all digging under their coats for weapons. Shane yanked the wheel and bounced the car up over the curb and onto the newly sodded front lawn. They shot across it, taking the direct route to the front gate, tearing up chunks of grass before finally bounding back over the curb onto the main driveway.
With four men chasing them on foot, they sped out the front gate, Alexa holding her gun at port arms. The Town Car skidded onto Casuarina Concourse, then a mile and a half later rounded the corner onto Cutter Road. Soon they were speeding under the leafy banyan trees, heading toward the airport.
"Get Bob at the flight center. Tell him we gotta get moving."
While Alexa turned on her cell phone and dialed, Shane got a Miami all-news radio station. It had been only five or six minutes, but the story was already breaking.
"Our field news team covering the plush NFL party Logan Hunter is throwing at Elton John's Coral Gables mansion has reported a shooting," the announcer said. "We're still awaiting more details, but as we have it so far, several people have been gunned down. A man and a woman are identified as the shooters and have fled the scene in one of Elton John's personal vehicles. Stand by as we get more information."
Shane let Alexa off at Million-Air Charters, then parked the car around the corner and up the street in a dense growth of oleander bushes, out of sight of the road. He wiped their prints quickly, using his old shirt, not forgetting to do the back of the rearview mirror, the place most car thieves miss. Then he walked around the corner and met Alexa. They entered the office and found Bob in the pilot's lounge, filing his FAA flight plan.
"Ready to go?" Bob said. "That was quick."
"Can't afford the hangar time." Shane smiled, but the grin felt wide and shiny and about as genuine as an Amway salesman.
"Be right out," Bob said.
They quickly boarded the plane, this time without waiting for the red carpet. Shane and Alexa sat in tense silence as the two pilots finally got aboard, shut the door, and smiled warmly. "We've got a slight tailwind for a change," Bob said happily. "Should get us back in four and a half hours or so." He settled into the right seat and wound up the engines.
Moments later they were rolling down the runway, taking off, leaving Miami and four dead bodies behind.
Shane sat stoically in the cabin, unable to deal with his thoughts. Alexa reached over and took his hand. "You okay?" she asked. "What did Sandy say to you?"
"Nothing," he answered. He couldn't tell her yet, couldn't quite admit it to himself.
His mind went back almost sixteen years, recapturing a memory long forgotten: it was his second summer on the job, right after the first arrest Sandy had arranged on the Valley bond trading case. They'd gone to dinner several nights later, to celebrate. Sandy had made her pitch to him, offering to work for the police as an informant. They'd had too much to drink, and in the car outside her apartment, he had shucked her out of her dress, then in awkward, thoughtless passion had entered her. There had been no tenderness in the coupling, and surely no love. It had been pure sex for him, raw and unadorned, an act he thought held no consequences. For Sandy, it was like a handshake to close their new deal. He had been just twenty-two years old.
The next morning he had felt cheap and ashamed of himself. She was a prostitute, and since he had always demanded more from his intimate relationships, he had never made love to her again. Instead, they'd gone into business together. Over the years he had managed her informant's career, making her rich while getting his share of class A busts in the bargain. The drunken romp in the backseat of his car was all but forgotten.
All these years later, the consequences of that mindless act had finally come due. If what Sandy had told him was true, she had changed his life forever with her one dying sentence.
Then he remembered what she had said in the doorway of her Barrington penthouse two days before. It had made no sense then, but now it spoke volumes: "You weren't doing me a favor," she had told him solemnly. "I was doing one for you."
Chapter 47
THE ROAD was dark and winding, and he was going too fast, overdriving his headlights.
"For Chrissake, slow down. We're gonna die on one of these curves," Alexa barked at him.
Shane momentarily lifted his foot off the gas and then, without realizing it, slowly sped up again, impatient to get there.