Chapter 31 Shots Fired This Location
"She said stay here," Shane said.
"No. She said stay in the car." Carmen climbed over to the driver's side, and started the Sorrento. "I'm staying in the car." Carmen started creeping down the road, lights out, as Shane climbed into the front.
"If we're gonna go, might as well go," Shane said when she got seated.
"Good point." Carmen turned on the headlight high beams and stomped on the gas. The Sorrento spewed stones and pebbles as Carmen pulled off the shoulder and as fast as she could drove the several hundred yards to the trucking company's driveway, and turned in. The driveway and the parking lot behind the big Butler building warehouse were paved, but had seen much wear-and-tear from loaded truck traffic. The SUV bounced over potholes as Carmen shot down the driveway and around behind the building. She tapped the brakes as they rounded the corner. There was a row of trucks parked along their left, facing the loading dock of the building on the right. The area between was a hundred feet wide, and halfway down the row of trucks the headlights showed something on the ground in front of one of them. It looked like a body. Carmen sped to it, jammed on the brakes, threw the shift into Park, and jumped out.
It was Lauren.
Carmen ran to her. She was lying on her back on the ground. Shane knelt on the ground on Lauren's left side. Lauren's right hand was over a wound on her right side, at the bottom of her rib cage, but she held the hand funny. The pool of blood surrounding the small hole and soaking her shirt grew.
"My.. hand... broken," Lauren whispered, eyes closed. "Sucking chest wound. Cover ... it."
"I know what to do," Carmen said quietly. "Don't move. You're going to be all right." She carefully pulled Lauren's hand away and placed her own hands on the wound, trying to stop the blood loss. Lauren's eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. Then her eyes opened, and she looked at Carmen. "I ... ."
"Shhh, don't talk," Carmen whispered. "Shane, call 9-1-1."
"Don't move, not a muscle," Gabe McCutcheon said quietly. He came out of the dark shadow between two trucks behind them. He looked ghostly red, illuminated by the Sorrento's tail lights. Carmen and Shane turned and looked at him. He held a gun pointed at them. Carmen looked down at Lauren's belt and the empty holster. She noticed a baseball bat on the ground near Lauren's head.
Shane ignored Gabe and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket.
"Shane, put the phone down," Gabe said. "I'm not going to tell you again."
"Fuck you," Shane said, but she slowly bent to put the phone on the ground. She stood facing Gabe, with Carmen and Lauren at her feet. "What are you going to do, kill us?" Her voice was calm and cold.
"Not if I don't have to," Gabe said. "But I have to admit, you guys sure fucked everything up the last day or two. Who's the cop?"
"Friend of ours," Shane said.
"Why are you here?"
"We've been tracking you down for the last two months."
"Why?"
"You don't know why? Because you killed Jenny, that's why. And then those two guys down in Mexico. And then Max."
"You know about all that? You guys are pretty good. What happened to that woman, Alice? She confessed. Last I knew she was in prison upstate."
"She's still there," Shane said. "We're going to get her out. Put you in prison instead."
"I see."
"You didn't know we were coming after you?"
"Not until early this morning. I got home last night from my delivery run, went to bed. I got up this morning, made myself a cup of coffee, looked out the window, saw a shitload of cops pouring all over my other apartment. Was your cop friend here one of them?"
"Yes," Shane said. "You have a lot to answer for."
Gabe seemed to sigh. "You probably won't believe this, but I never intended any of this."
"We know," Shane said. "You were blackmailing Jenny and Niki Stevens. You got a hundred grand out of them. Then Jenny hired that private detective to find out who was blackmailing her. She found out the night of the party at Bette and Tina's house. We know you had been watching us from the vacant house behind my place. You were watching us that night. The only thing we don't know is what happened. Did Jenny find you and confront you? Tell you to go fuck yourself?"
"She texted me she wasn't going to pay any more. She had this bullshit story about having some stolen negatives from her movie that were worth a lot of money. She said half a million, maybe a million. She said she wanted to trade them for the videos I had of her and Niki. She said she would show me one of the reels of the movie as proof."
"So what happened?"
"After your party started, she surprised me. Somehow she found out I was in the house behind yours. She came through the gap in the back fence and went around to the front and rang the doorbell, like she was selling Girl Scout cookies. I didn't answer, and then she texted me. She knew it was me. She texted, I'm on your fucking doorstep, Gabe. Open the fucking door. So I did. She came in. She looked around, went upstairs, found the back bedroom. She's standing there, looking at the back of her own house, and Bette and Tina's back yard."
"I bet she was pissed," Shane said.
"Maybe," Gabe said, "but she didn't show it much. She was snotty and arrogant, but she mostly kept it cool. She let me have it, telling me what a bastard I was for conning Helena out of ten grand and royally fucking up your wedding. I think she was more pissed about ruining the wedding than she was about Helena's money. She said Helena wouldn't feel the money, it was a drop in the bucket for her. But she said you really should have married Carmen. She said Carmen was the best thing ever happened to you, and maybe you'd fuck it all up, but at least you needed the chance to give it a try."
Shane and Gabe both looked at Carmen, who still had her hands over Lauren's chest wound. "Shane, she's going to die if you don't get on the phone and call 9-1-1," Carmen said. She looked at the baseball bat lying on the ground. "You hit her with the bat?" Carmen asked.
"Yeah. I don't carry a gun. Never did. Never used one on anybody."
"Well, good for you," Carmen said. "Shane, hand me the bat. I'm going to try to splint Lauren's arm with it. Take off your shirt, tear the sleeves off."
"Shane, get out of the way," Gabe said. She was standing between him and Carmen and Lauren.
"No," Shane said.
Shane looked at Gabe for a moment, then picked up the baseball bat and sat it down next to Carmen, She quickly started removing her shirt.
"How'd you know we were watching you?" Carmen asked.
"Night vision glasses," Gabe said. "Same as you guys. Everybody's got them, now."
"Did you know we were following you from Imola?"
"No. Never saw you. But when I got here I want to make sure nobody was around."
"Why did you come here?" Carmen asked.
"The office safe," Gabe said. "I'm getting as far away from here as far as I can, as fast as I can. I thought I'd break into the safe, take whatever cash there was."
Shane was busy trying to rip the sleeves from her shirt to give Carmen something to use to splint Lauren's arm. She finally got them to rip off.
"I was looking around with the glasses when I saw your car creep over the rise with the lights out," Gabe said. "That's the first time I knew there was a problem. Then I watched Lauren sneaking up. You know what was funny? Me watching her with night vision glasses when she was looking at me with night vision glasses."
"She didn't see you?" Shane asked, handing the sleeves of her shirt to Carmen.
"No. I ducked down when I saw her."
"And then you ambushed her with the baseball bat."
"She had her gun out," Gabe said. "What would you do?"
"Well, I wouldn't shoot her," Shane said.
"No choice," Gabe said. "I got her gun but she came after me anyway. She tried some of that karate-kicking bullshit stuff. So I shot her."
"Shane, come over here and put your hands on her chest wound while I try to splint her arm."
"Shane, get out of the way," Gabe said. She was standing between him and Carmen and Lauren.
"No," Shane said. "You're not going to kill them. I won't let you."
"You going to stop me?"
"If I have to."
"That's a good one. You're coming with me."
"The hell I am. Just get in your car and go."
"Can't do that, not with you guys here. I'm sorry, Shane, but I can't leave them alive."
"I told you, I'm not going to let you kill them. You killed Jenny, you killed Max."
"Jenny ran out of the house, I ran after her. She ran up the steps, she was going to get you guys, and when I caught up to her she hit me, so I hit her back. She went off the deck. It was an accident."
"It wasn't an accident when you rolled her into the pool," Shane said. "It wasn't an accident when you poisoned Max with vodka and Oxy, and then ran her down."
"I never intended any of that to happen," Gabe said.
"Max was helping you, wasn't he? He helped you videotape Jenny and Niki. How much was his share of the blackmail?"
"She wanted thirty percent," Gabe said.
"He was a he, not a she," Shane said.
"Like you fucking care," Gabe said.
"I do care," Shane said. "I didn't like Max much, but he went through a lot of shit. You murdered him, plain and simple."
"Nothing's ever plain and simple," Gabe said. "Get out of the way."
"No."
"Shane, I need you here," Carmen said. She hoped her diversion would keep Gabe and Shane from getting into each other's faces. Gabe had the gun. "I need to splint her arm. I need you to keep pressure on the wound. He's not going to shoot us in the back."
Shane glared at Gabe, turned, and knelt beside Carmen. She put her hands over top of Carmen's so when Carmen pulled away she could keep pressure on the gunshot wound.
"You okay, Lauren?" Carmen asked quietly.
"No," Lauren whispered.
"We're going to switch hands now. Shane, you ready?"
"Yes." She lowered her hands directly over top of Carmen's on the right side of Lauren's chest. "Go," she said.
Carmen slowly withdrew her hands from Lauren's chest and Shane began pushing down, keeping pressure on the wound.
Carmen let out a big sigh. "Stay still. I'm going to splint your arm."
"Not going ... anywhere," Lauren said.
"Good," Carmen said. "This may hurt a little."
Carmen picked up the baseball bat Shane had set down beside her and stood, bending over. Then she whirled around with the bat and threw it, tomahawk style, as hard as she could at Gabe, who was standing about ten feet away. He fired Lauren's gun, but he was flinching backward in the microsecond, and the bullet went past Carmen. The bat windmilled into Gabe's arm, chest and smashed his face, and he dropped the gun. Carmen and Shane both dove for it; Shane was closer and faster. She stood with it facing Gabe, whose face was bloody. Blood streamed from his nose. Somehow he had hung onto the bat.
Carmen whirled back to Lauren, knelt and put her hands back over the chest wound.
"Shane, get the phone. Don't take your eyes off him, but get the phone and call 9-1-1, now," Carmen said.
Gabe covered his bloody nose with his left hand, but he held the handle of the bat in his right. He stepped toward Shane, raising it.
"Freeze, motherfucker," Shane said.
"Shane, pick up the phone and give it to me. I'll call. I can do it one-handed."
Shane back away from Gabe and toward Carmen and Lauren. She looked down to where her phone was lying. She bent to pick it up. Gabe took a step forward with the bat.
"I told you to freeze, motherfucker," Shane said.
"What are you gonna do, shoot your own father?" Gabe asked.
"You're not my father," Shane said. "My father died in a car crash in 1998 when an 18-wheeler jack-knifed across the 410."
A look of confusion clouded Gabe's face. "I don't know what that means," he said.
"I know," Shane said. "Let's keep it that way. You're just a sperm donor. You're just some guy too fucking dumb to wear a condom when you knocked up my mother. That's your only relationship to me. You're the poster boy for access to birth control. I'm the poster girl."
"That's not how it—"
