Janet Evanovich - Explosive Eighteen

I pulled my Glock out of my bag. “I really don’t think we need extra.”

“Yeah, but this is good,” Lula said, opening her trunk.

I looked inside and stopped breathing for a beat. “That’s a rocket launcher!”

“Yep,” Lula said. “It’s the big boy. I got it at a yard sale in the projects. It’s loaded for bear, too. See that mother stuck onto the end of it? It goes KABOOM !”

“No rocket launchers!” I told her. “Absolutely no rocket launchers. This isn’t Afghanistan.”

“We don’t have to use it,” Lula said. “We just knock on their door and show them this bitch. Then they wet their pants and hand over Jason.”

“It could work,” Brenda said. “I almost wet my pants seeing it in the trunk.”

She had a point. I had to admit, I had a moment when I first saw it, too. “I guess it might be okay, as long as we only use it to scare them.”

“Show-and-tell,” Lula said.

Lula shouldered her rocket launcher. I had my hand wrapped around my Glock. And Brenda had her cute little girl gun. We marched up to the front door of Billings Gourmet Food, and I tried the doorknob. Locked. We circled the building and tried the loading-dock gates and the roll-up garage doors. All locked.

“I’m not going home without Jason,” Brenda said. “I’m going in.”

“Me, too,” Lula said. “I’m right behind you.”

“How are you going in?” I asked them.

Brenda set off for the office entrance. “The front door. I’m going to ring the bell and ask for Jason.”

“And if they won’t give him to us, I’ll shoot a rocket up their ass,” Lula said, following her.

I had to run to catch up, and I checked the parking lot on the way. I didn’t see a Rangeman vehicle. Not good, I thought. This smelled like disaster.

Brenda went straight to the door and put her finger to the bell. After a couple minutes, the door opened and Lancer looked out.

“Oh shit,” Lancer said.

He tried to close the door, but I already had my foot in it.

“Where’s Jason?” Brenda asked. “I want my son.”

“I dunno,” Lancer said. “He’s not here.”

Brenda pushed past him into the office. “Of course he’s here. Where else would he be? My sister-in-law wouldn’t put up with him in her house.”

“Hey,” Lancer said. “You can’t come in here. It’s not office hours.”

Lula shoved past him, close on Brenda’s heels. “S’cuse us. Outta our way.”

Lancer eyeballed the rocket lancher and turned white. “I’m going to have to get tough now. I’m going to have to force you to leave.”

“Do you got one of these babies?” Lula asked him, patting the rocket launcher.

“No.”

“Then how you gonna force us to leave?”

“I have a gun,” Lancer said. And he pointed his gun at Lula.

“I don’t like when people point a gun at me,” Lula said. “It makes me nervous, and it’s rude. Do you see me pointing my rocket launcher at you? I don’t think so.”

“It’s rude to break into people’s private property,” Lancer said.

“It’s rude to kidnap my son,” Brenda said.

We were in a small lobby. A hall led off to the right.

“I bet you have him down here,” Brenda said, moving along the hall, little girlie gun held out in front of her.

Lula followed Brenda. Lancer followed Lula. And I followed Lancer.

Brenda opened a door and looked inside. “Warehouse,” she said. And she moved on.

I did a fast scan of the cavernous space. Rows of boxes stacked one on another. Gallon tins of olive oil on wire shelves. More boxes. An eighteen-wheeler in the garage area. No Jason.

Brenda opened a door at the far end of the hall and yelped. “Jason!”

We all ran down the hall and looked into the room. Jason was working on his laptop. Slasher and another man were slouched into a couch, watching a small television.

“I’m sorry, boss,” Lancer said. “I couldn’t stop them.”

“What do you mean you couldn’t stop them?” the man said. “You have a gun, don’t you? Shoot them.”

Lancer hesitated.

The man stood, pulled a gun, and pointed it at Jason. “How about this, Brenda. How about I shoot your kid if you don’t go home. He’s doing good stuff for us here, so I’ll only shoot him in the leg.”

Brenda went beady-eyed. “Chester, you bastard. If anyone’s going to get shot, it’s going to be you.”

And before anyone could move, she fired on Chester, tagging him in the arm.

“Kill her!” Chester yelled. “Kill her!”

Lancer trained his gun on Brenda, and I tackled him from behind. We went to the floor, and his gun discharged two rounds. One zinged past Lula, and the second cut off two inches from her four-inch stiletto heel.

“ What the heck ?” Lula said, toppling over, off balance from the two-inch heel difference. “I’m hit!” she yelled. “The asshole shot me. Woman down. Woman down. Call 911.”

“You’re fine,” I said to her. “You just fell off your shoe.”

“I see darkness,” Lula said. “It’s closing in on me. There’s a tunnel of light. I see angels. No, wait a minute, there’s no angels. Shit, it’s Tony Soprano.”

It wasn’t Tony Soprano. It was Chester Billings, roaring like a wounded bull elephant, charging across the room at Lula and Brenda. He knocked the little gun out of Brenda’s hand and grabbed the rocket launcher. Somehow in the scuffle the rocket got launched, whooshing across the room, punching a hole in the far wall, disappearing from view. There was an explosion that rocked the building. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Everyone was yelling and scrambling for cover. A second smaller explosion rattled furniture, and I could see flames lick through the hole made by the rocket.

“Fire in the warehouse,” Lancer said. “The rocket must have hit a propane tank.”

Smoke poured into the windowless room, and there was a rush to evacuate. Everyone ran into the hall and scattered. Lancer, Slasher, and Billings ran in one direction. Lula, Brenda, and Jason ran in another. I was the last out of the room. I stepped into the hall and the lights blinked off. I was confused in the dark, choking on the smoke. An arm wrapped around me, nearly lifting me off my feet, moving me in the opposite direction. It was Ranger.

“This way,” he said, pushing me down the hall to a fire door.

He shoved the door open, and we were out of the building. I could hear emergency vehicles screaming on the approach road.

“How many people were in the building?” Ranger asked.

“Six plus me.”

Ranger was connected to Tank in the other SUV. “Talk to me,” Ranger said.

I could hear Tank on speakerphone. “Lula disappeared into the woods behind us. I shouted at her, but she kept going. Five more people came out of the building and scattered. A woman and a young guy panicked and ran in opposite directions when a flaming chunk of roof landed next to them. The woman is hiding behind the Dumpster. We tried to get her, but she shot at us. The guy is out there somewhere. Looked like he had a computer. Three men jumped into a Mercedes and took off.”

“Everyone’s out of the building,” Ranger said to me. “Let’s move, unless you want to talk to the police.”

“No!”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me at a flat-out run across the lot, over a grassy median that separated Billings Gourmet Food from the neighboring business, Dot Plumbing. Two Rangeman SUVs sat at idle in the shadow of the Dot building. Ranger got behind the wheel of one, and the second followed us to the edge of the lot, lights off.

Flames were shooting from the top of the Billings warehouse. Police cars slid to a stop in the lot. Fire trucks rumbled in.