“I will take care,” Bob said.
“Okay, he’s getting out,” Rae called. “There’s another car turning into the lot. I think he might have been waiting for it. Or maybe not.”
“Maroon Ford?”
“No, it’s one of those little cream-colored British Cooper things.”
Lucas saw the Mini Cooper pulling slowly into the parking lot, driven by a heavyset, bushy-haired man wearing black plastic-rimmed celebrity glasses. He was talking on his cell phone. Lucas had never seen the man before, but he could see a short man walking on the other side of the car. The Mini paused in exactly the wrong place, from Lucas’s point of view, and Rae called, “What do you think, Lucas?”
“I haven’t gotten a clear look at him...”
The Mini Cooper driver finally picked out a parking space and pulled away. The short man climbed a stoop at the front of a town house, rang the doorbell, and took a furtive look around, peering directly at Lucas without seeing him in the Jeep. Lucas called, “That’s him. That’s the guy.”
Bob called, “Coming in closer.”
Lucas: “Good, but keep an eye on the guy in the Mini. Don’t know what he’s doing.”
Rae: “I’m coming. Call it, Lucas.”
Lucas was climbing out of the Jeep, keeping as much of the vehicle between him and the man on the step as he could. He said to the radio, “I’m going to call him down.”
Bob: “The guy in the Mini has got keys out. I think he’s going up to that town house...”
Soto pushed the doorbell again and Rae said, “Lucas, wait just one...”
Lucas didn’t think he could and instead lifted his pistol and shouted “You! Stop! Federal marshals.”
—
SOTO TURNEDtoward him and his right hand dropped diagonally to the left side of his belt line: a concealed weapon. Lucas could sense Rae running in from the east side and Bob was coming from farther west, staying close to the front of the town houses where Soto wouldn’t be able to see him.
Lucas shouted: “Federal...”
And the town house door opened and a big man was standing there in a T-shirt and cargo shorts and Soto shoved him back and lurched inside.
Bob was still coming and Lucas screamed, “He’s inside, might come out the back. Bob, cover the back!”
Bob pivoted and ran hard toward the end of the building and a second later was out of sight. Lucas ran toward the still-open doorand Rae was coming up with her M4 and Lucas got to the door and saw the man in the cargo shorts pressed against a closet door and Lucas shouted, “U.S. marshals, where is he?”
The man called, “Out the back, he’s got a gun...” and pointed, and Lucas and Rae went that way.
Lucas was at the back door and saw Soto a hundred feet away, angling toward one of the center buildings, and he shouted, “Stop! Stop!”
Soto kept going, then Rae leveled the M4 and Lucas said, “What?” and she fired a quick burst past Soto and into the brick side of the building behind him and Bob was coming and shouting, and Soto abruptly stopped and put his hands in the air. He had a pistol in one and hastily threw it on the ground.
Lucas called to the others, “Watch for another gun,” and Bob shouted, “Into the dirt, facedown, into the dirt.”
Soto, his hands above his head, knelt, then lowered himself facedown into the dirt. Rae had the rifle pointed at Soto’s head, and Lucas came up from the side, and then Bob was there with handcuffs. “Bring your hands down behind you, one at a time...”
He did and Bob cuffed him. A minute later, they’d taken another pistol off the short man, from an ankle holster, and a heavy switchblade from a side pocket. Lucas pulled Soto’s wallet out of a back pocket, took out a Florida driver’s license that said “Stanley Evans.”
Lucas looked at Soto and said, “Stanley Evans? Right.”
“He’ll be in the database,” Rae said.
“Scared the shit out of me when you opened up,” Lucas said to Rae. “I was afraid chunks of lead would be coming back at me.”
She shook her head: “Low penetration rounds. They hit thatbrick wall and turn into dust. Certainly would have chewed up ol’ Stanley, though.”
