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What the hell have I stepped into here,he wondered?
The woman wearing only her bra bumped by him, her face still one of anger. “Excuse me,” she growled. “I’m going to get my clothes.”
Jack nodded at her and then turned his attention back to the stoned man against the wall. “Who’s gun is that in there?”
“A guy named Lee. He’s not here.”
“What are you on, sir?” Jack asked.
The man shook his head, looking both scared and amused. “Can’t answer that, man. You’re the FBI! What do you think I—”
But he was interrupted by someone from the back of the house—probably the mostly-naked woman if he had to guess. And he felt like an idiot for simply letting her get back there just because her nakedness had made him feel off-kilter and uncomfortable.
“The FBI is here!” she yelled. “Everybody outnow!”
The announcement made no sense to him because so far, he’d only seen two people and heard the very pleased woman in the back. And the house wasn’tso big, so he had no idea how many other people could be hiding in the back. But the presence of that revolver just sitting around like a toy made him realize that he had come in here just to kick up a hornet’s nest… and he was about to get stung.
He heard rapid footsteps in the back, the moving of something heavy, and a woman’s confused shout.
“Damn,” Jack breathed. He pulled his Glock and, without pointing it at the stoned man, said, “Get on the ground and stay there right now.”
Not sure what to expect, Jack held the Glock low and advanced down the hall, where he saw the first of several people come bustling out of one of the rooms in the back. There was one, then two, then a third. The first two ran down a hallway further in the back, but the third came rushing directly at Jack. It was a young man, maybe twenty years old, and he was roaring in a very dramatic fashion.
Jack held the Glock up, and the young man came to an immediate stop. He looked at the gun as if it made no sense—like he had never even heard of a gun before. He raised his hands in the air and took a step back.
“On the ground!” Jack yelled as more people came out of that single back room. He saw two more women, one of whom was slipping a shirt on as she made her escape.
The young man obeyed, but he did so very slowly. Jack’s mind was split into too many directions to know for sure, but he thought this one was stoned, too. As the guy got down on the ground, Jack advanced down the hallway. He saw that the escapes were going out of a door that led out into what looked like a backyard.
Instantly, he thought of Rachel. If she saw all of these people making a run for it, there was no way in hell she was going to sit idly by like a good girl.
Jack took one quick look into the room everyone had come running out of. It was a simple, dingy bedroom. A king-sized bed sat in the center, pushed against the back wall. There was no window, and the entire room was lit only by a small lamp. The room reeked of pot smoke, body odor, and latex… it wasn’t too hard to figure out what had been going on in here, though the sheer number of people that had run out of it made the options much more interesting.
When Jack turned away, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone was rushing at him from inside the room. Somehow, in his concern for Rachel, he’d sidestepped one of the most basic rules of checking a room: looking behind the opened door.
A man came charging at him, throwing a bony shoulder back and delivering a weak but stiff, right-handed blow. It caught Jack in the side of the head, just hard enough to send him stumbling back into the hallway. The attacker then carried on, heading out in the same direction as all of the others.
Jack gritted his teeth, pissed off and scared for Rachel, as he gripped his. Glock and raced off in pursuit.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Rachel was halfway back around the side of the house when she heard the back door burst open from the area where she’d just been standing and rooting through the trash. She halted right away and doubled back, peering around the edge of the house. By the time she got there, two people had already come out. A third—a scantily clad woman with her hair done up like a porn star—came immediately after.
The ghost of impulse took over, and she reached for a gun that was not there. She almost stepped out into the backyard anyway, but something one of the escapees said made her wait.
“Where the hell is that Seth guy?” one of the men asked. He was already headed around the other side of the house, almost out of sight.
“Don’t know,” the woman with the elegant hair said.
The running man said something else in response to this, but he was too far away for Rachel to hear him. She was pretty sure she heard the words “bastard” and “money.”
In that exchange, she knew all she needed to know: neither of the men that had come through was Seth Redman.
Two others came through, and then, almost as if it were a purposeful pattern, another woman. This one was dressed in a tacky bra and nothing else, though she was attempting to totter into a pair of shorts as she ran around the side of the house after everyone else. Rachel watched on, hoping that Jack would come out behind them all, but there was no sign of him.
Worried now—not only for Jack but also that Redman was going to get away, Rachel finally stepped away from the side of the house and hurried out into the backyard. She was about to yell out to the two men and women that were now rushing around the other side, but then one more man came out of the back.
Without Jack coming out yet, she assumed things had gotten out of control—and if she didn’t dosomething, this entire endeavor would be wasted. And she figured getting information out of one person, even if it might not be Redman, was better than nothing.
