The new password for the surveillance camera app was CJCregg—apparently Ash was a bigWest Wingfan so Bobby had picked something she’d remember—and Jim quickly signed in to get a visual of her living room.
Both she and the gunman were exactly where Bobby had last described them.
Ashley’s tiny dining table was in the camera’s wide-lens frame, and Jim knew it was no accident that she’d set up her computer there. She sat behind it, frowning as she looked at the screen, while the gunman paced behind her.
He wasn’t an operator, that much was clear. Whoever he was, he had little to no firearms training—which potentially made him that much more dangerous in terms of things like accidental discharge.
But something about the way he moved was disconcerting. He was twitchy and sweating. Like he couldn’t stay still. Like he was jacked up on cocaine or some type of amphetamine.
Jim zoomed in to look more closely at the room. Ashley’s phone was out on a little table near the front door—about fifteen feet away from where she was sitting.
As he impatiently waited for Bobby to arrive, he got out of his truck and quietly closed the door behind him—no need to make Mr. Jumpy jumpier.
It occurred to him that the gunman probably drove there, and one of those other cars parked in that row markedGuestsprobably belonged to the man.
So Jim turned on his phone’s flashlight and used it to look inside of each of the vehicles—checking to see if the door was unlocked, or if there was something inside that could help identify who the hell the man was.
Of course, one possible way to take the gunman down was to use his car alarm as a diversion. Set it off in hopes that he’d open the front door to look out to see WTF. But it would help if Jim could figured out which car was his…
It was then that he saw it.
Half covered by a blanket on the backseat of an expensive and shiny new sedan.
An AR-15 assault rifle, with a fucking bump-stock attached.
As Jim looked back at the gunman’s twitchy movement and sweaty face in the surveillance feed, he knew with a flash of fear exactly where he’d seen that before. This motherfucker was gonna suicide. Whatever information he was trying to get from Ashley, he was gonna use it to kill as many people as he could before he took his own pathetic life, via suicide-by-SWAT-team.
And he’d probably start his bloody rampage right here, by putting a bullet into Ash’s head.
Jim’s phone lit with a text—from Colleen.Still five minutes away.
He looked at that rifle lying there in that car. Breaking the window to take itwouldset off the car’s alarm, only now he didnotwant to do that. No, the only diversion he was willing to risk now was to kick down Ashley’s door. It would make the gunman point his weapon at Jim instead of Ashley.
Jim knew he made a big target, but he also knew that a bullet in the gut or chest wouldn’t stop him from taking that weapon and ending that motherfucker. Only a headshot could stop a Navy SEAL, and that would require a shit-ton of luck—heads were hard to hit.
But just in case this mofo was unusually lucky, Jim quickly moved his truck to block in the gunman’s car, before quietly running for the stairs.
***
Ashley stalled, sifting through file after file—none of which held the information that Greg was looking for. “It’s in here, somewhere, I know it,” she told him, “but I have to be honest, Mr. Ramsey, it’s highly unlikely the staff at the women’s shelter will let you see Betsy at this time of night.”
“I’m not worried about that,” he told her, and the way he said that made her skin crawl.
“I also want to urge you to call your lawyer,” Ashley said. “I feel confident that he can help you.”
“He’s dead,” Greg said, and her heart dropped. “So no, he can’t help.”
“Okay,” she said as now her heart pounded. “Well, then…”
“He didn’t have the information I needed,” Greg told her.
“Well, I do, I’m sure of it,” she said as her brain raced. She’d somehow have to warn the shelter that he was coming. God knows what kind of weapons he had stashed in his car. But God, what if, after she gave him the name of the shelter, he killed her anyway, which would mean she wouldn’t be able to warn anyone… “I think I should go with you. To talk to the staff at the shelter—”
Across the room, her phone whooshed with an incoming text. Oh, thank God…
“That’s probably Jim,” she told Greg. “You should double-check that he’s not coming over anyway, to make sure that I’m okay.”
Greg crossed the room to where her phone was on the table near the door. “He says,Tomorrow’s great, sweetie. Can’t wait to get down and dirty. I love you madly, wish we could do it now.”
