go that is off the radar of the Merides brothers and law enforcement. He’s probably been going in and out for the last few days, he’ll get cocky because no one has found him. He’ll show.”
So he sat and waited. He didn’t move. Stakeouts were like being in the Army. You had to sit and wait and ninety-nine times out of a hundred nothing happened when you were on your post. But when the shit hit the fan, you had to be ready to act.
A car drove up to the decrepit apartment. The building was one long unit on a narrow lot, two stories, four units top and bottom, sagging stairs, and broken railings. An empty fenced lot to the right, a larger but equally broken apartment structure to the left.
The unit they were watching was in the front upstairs corner.
He kept an eye on the car. At first, nothing happened. That made Nate nervous. Drug deal? Drive-by? Had they been spotted?
A minute later, the passenger door opened. Mitts Vasquez got out of the car and before he could walk up the stairs, the driver left.
“It’s him,” Aggie said, excited.
Her hand was on the door.
“Wait.”
“We need to get to him before he gets inside. We don’t know who’s in there, what kind of weapons they might have. We don’t have a team for the back.”
She was right. “Follow my lead.”
She didn’t argue.
Nate had already disabled the dome light, so it remained dark when they simultaneously opened their doors.
Before Mitts even stepped on to the bottom stair, the downstairs apartment door opened.
Nate didn’t hear anything before the gunfire. Mitts went down fast, three bullets ripping into his body. Nate had his gun out and was behind the truck. Aggie dropped to her knees and had her gun out as well.
The shooter hadn’t seen Nate or Aggie—at least Nate didn’t think that he had. He left the dark apartment, fired one more bullet into Mitts’s head, then turned and walked briskly down the street toward the main road.
“Call it in!” Nate ordered Aggie. He went after the shooter.
“Freeze! FBI!” Nate shouted.
The shooter didn’t look back. He went from fast walk to sprint. He was young—early to mid-twenties—and looked scared. A tattoo on his neck stood out, but at this distance Nate couldn’t tell what it depicted.
Nate was an excellent shot, but he couldn’t risk collateral damage in the residential neighborhood. If he missed, his bullet could go through a wall or window, injuring an innocent inside.
The shooter rounded the corner onto a busy street. A stoplight ahead was red and before the runner even registered his plans, Nate knew what he was going to do.
Damn damn damn!
“Freeze!” Nate shouted as he ran.
The shooter ran to the driver’s side of the first car at the light and pointed his gun at the driver’s face. “Out or I shoot!” Nate heard as he ran toward the intersection.
A slow-moving car clipped Nate as he ran diagonally into the street to cut the guy off.
The driver opened her door. The shooter pulled her out of the car and threw her to the ground, then jumped in, driving through the red light before Nate reached the intersection. Two cars screeched to a stop to avoid hitting him.
Nate helped the middle-aged woman stand. He wanted to berate her—why’d she open her door? She’d been safe inside the locked car, she could have driven off, but he didn’t say anything. People not trained for situations like this didn’t always know the smartest move.
She was shaking and he walked her over to the sidewalk, where he sat her on a bus bench.
“Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance?”
“I—I—I’m okay.”
She began to silently cry. Nate called Aggie. She answered immediately.
“He carjacked a woman at the corner of Blythe and Mission.”
“I’m on the phone with SAPD dispatch. Do you have a description?”
“Blue Honda Accord, license BH8-G. I missed the last three digits.” He turned to the woman. “Do you know your license plate number?”
She shook her head. “My insurance cards are in the car … they say to keep them in the car … I need to call my husband.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Holly Johns.”
He gave Aggie her name. “Have them run the name, get the plates. He was going south on Mission Road. Hispanic male, five foot ten to eleven, one sixty, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. Wearing dark jeans, a white T-shirt with a logo on the front, and dark gray hoodie. No facial hair. Neck tattoo, indistinct.”