Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

Twenty minutes, max, I thought. Maybe less.

I helped get Paige to the house. She was shot above her hip — a small entry wound in her back and a larger exit hole between her ribs and pelvis. Her skin was already shock-purple and the surrounding flesh swollen. Bleeding freely but not hemorrhaging.

I ordered Clay, Lindsey, and the Hickmans into the barn to edit and splice. Told the security men to go with them and be ready for Bodart and his company thugs. Gave Lindsey her twenty-minute deadline.

Wesley, Sequoia, and I got Paige onto the long leather sofa near the living room fireplace, used two rolls of gauze to stanch her bleeding. Lots of isopropyl. Propped up on her elbows, she watched dispassionately as a doctor would. Sweat rolled down her face and her hair was a tangle of pond water and mud. She kept asking to see Clay. We wrapped her in blankets while Burt got a fire going, his pistol-grip shotgun propped against the fireplace rocks.

Heart thumping, ears ringing, but clearheaded — as on our door-to-door searches in Fallujah — I looked through a kitchen window to the pond and the hills and the narrow dirt road that would bring Team Bodart to us. No sign of them from this angle. So I scrambled to the front of the house, where I could see the long driveway that the sheriffs and fire department would use. I reloaded my .45, wondered who would arrive first — the deputies, fire and rescue, paramedics, or the Special Activities Division of the CIA.

When sirens wailed, I had my answer. I looked down to the road, saw the county convoy, then pressed the gate opener. A moment later five vehicles, lights flashing and sirens shrieking, raced through the gate and up the drive.

Back under the palapa I glassed the two-track and watched as Bodart brought the black SUV to a stop on the far side of the pond. He threw open his door and stood on the running board for a better look at Spencer and his demolished helo. I waited for what action they would take for their old friend and ally Briggs Spencer. Deimos, god of terror. And what they would do with Clay and his video, so close to them now, but so well protected. I had an opinion on both questions and I was right.

Bodart cursed, swung back into the driver’s seat, and did a neat highway-patrol turn to reverse his direction. Put some gas into his getaway. The SUV bounced and skidded, the men inside rising and falling like crash test dummies. Brake lights, dust rising, tires swerving on the sandy, decomposed granite that would eventually lead them to the paved county road and the interstate.

In the barn Lindsey clicked the upload bar on the screen. She looked up at me with cool pride. Clay sat on a workbench between his mother and father, hunched in a barn blanket, pale and spent. His straight white hair plastered down over his forehead. Patricia held his hand. The security men stood watch at the windows.

“It’ll take half an hour to upload, a few more minutes for them to get it ready to post,” said Lindsey. “Is Dr. Hulet doing okay?”

“I think so. We got the bleeding slowed down. Paramedics coming up the drive right now.”

“What do we tell the cops?” asked Rex.

“Just the truth,” I said. “Spencer fired first. I’ll keep them out of here as long as I can. If the upload is finished before they get here, come to the house. Make noise and keep your hands up. If you hear them coming here before the upload is done, hide the laptop up in the hayloft and let it finish. The deputies will be touchy, so be cool.”

Clay caught me just outside. He worked a hand out through the blanket. Still shivering. I thought he was offering to shake hands, then saw his offer was something else.

“Thank you, Mr. Ford.”

“We’ll do it again sometime.”

Clay cracked a small smile.

From under the palapa I looked southwest through my binoculars to where Spencer had died. No smoke now. Just a distant black stain with a gutted helo in the middle, bits of shiny copper catching the sunlight. And a blackened form lying downhill of the crash. Crumpled and small. Reminded me of the tormented figures in Clay Hickman’s paintings. I thought of Dawn Spencer. Looked down at Paige’s blood on the patio concrete.

Time to face the music.

Back in the house I pushed Clay’s gifts under a couch cushion on my way to a window. Then watched the sheriff’s vehicles block the driveway and park so no one could get in or out. Three deputies, guns drawn, crouched low. Two more covered them from behind the open doors of a cruiser. Lights blipping, sirens off. I recognized the team leader, a deputy who had been a rookie patrolman when I first worked with him eight years ago. Antwan Sheffield.

I opened the door and waited. Then slowly stepped out, hands up. Felt the barrels turn my way. Neck hair rising, race of heart. Sheffield crabbed toward me with a two-handed grip on his gun, aiming at my chest.

“Sheff.”

“Don’t move, Ford.”

“There’s a shot woman on my living room couch.”

“You still don’t move.”

The next-nearest deputy took my coat collar and pushed me into the wall face-first. Cheeks and hands on old adobe brick. Through the open front door I could see through to Paige. The deputy frisked me high to low. Felt him pull the .45 free. Muttered something. He checked me all over again for a second gun, then yanked my arms off the wall one at a time. He pulled the restraints tight enough to hurt and keep me obedient.

Three other deputies clanked heavily past, guns out. Then the paramedics, who went straight to Paige and Burt. Burt started in telling them what to do.

Antwan holstered his weapon, took me by one arm, and pushed me inside. “What is this situation here, Ford?”

“A long story.”

“How many more guns we walking into?”

I nodded to the shotgun against the fireplace, told him about the two armed security men and the four innocents out in the barn.

“Anybody else hurt?” he asked.

I told him we had a dead man in the scrub brush half a mile away. And that he’d shot the woman.

“You saw him do it?”

“We all did.”

He gave me a hard look. “You sure brought some bad heat to this department, man.”

I shrugged, no bandwidth for any of that just now.

He turned me around and cut the cuffs off just as the paramedics wheeled Paige past me on a gurney. She lay covered to her chin in a blue SD County blanket, an IV-drip kit taped fast to one arm. I looked at Sheffield, then followed the gurney toward the ambulance.

“Clay?” she asked.

“He’s okay.”

“Get him home, Roland.” She smiled weakly.

“I’ll see you soon, Paige.”

“Bullets hurt.”

“Best doctors in the world in San Diego.” I touched her hand as they glided her to the back of the truck. The gurney tucked into itself, and in she went.

Antwan had come up behind me. “It’s show-and-tell time.”

I sat up with Paige at Palomar Hospital that night. Her wound was painful but not life-threatening and she seemed serious about wearing the scar proudly. The drugs made her loopy and talkative. Then somewhere midsentence she’d close her eyes and sleep half an hour, then come to again.

“What about the video?”

“Posted and eleven thousand views, as of two hours ago.”

“It’s gonna really mess some people up.”

“I talked to Rex. The FBI wants to see Clay first thing tomorrow.”

“How is he? Clay?”

“Just fine. I told you.”

“He’s home from the war,” she said dreamily.

“He took the long way back,” I said.

“I was going to resign my position at Arcadia if Clay went home. Now I don’t have to. Since my boss tried to kill me.”

We watched the San Diego news. Details were sketchy, but early this afternoon a gunman in a helicopter shot and wounded a woman near a remote Fallbrook-area residence before the helicopter crashed and burst into flames. The gunman died at the scene but the unidentified woman has been hospitalized and is expected to recover. Next up, will the Chargers stay in San Diego or won’t they? It all comes down to money. Stay tuned. I thought: Just wait until they find out who the dead gunman is. A whole new round of stories.