Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(6)

Through it all, the Rolls-Royce’s ride was almost supernaturally smooth and silent. It was like she was driving in a sensory deprivation chamber, which gave her an unsettling sense of detachment, as if she were watching the chase rather than participating in it.

Jack made a sharp, screeching left into the Commons shopping center, the Escalade fishtailing as he fought for control, shearing off his dangling front bumper and sending it cartwheeling into the air.

The bumper ricocheted off the Rolls-Royce’s massive chrome grill, and right over the Spirit of Ecstasy, as Eve followed the Escalade into the Commons.

Jack came to a tire-squealing stop in front of the supermarket, bailed out of the Escalade, and ran into the store.

Eve pulled up behind his Escalade, drew her weapon, and rushed into the supermarket after him. She was nearly mowed down by the rush of panicked customers fleeing the grocery store like a spooked herd of cattle, but she managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of Jack, on her far right, running toward the liquor section.

She stayed low, moving swiftly but methodically through the store, stopping to glance down each aisle before she crossed them and became an open target. People were still running for the exits and she was worried that Jack might double back on her or slip away in the crowd.

“I know you’re here,” a man called out from somewhere in the liquor aisles. She hadn’t heard Jack speak before but she knew it was him because of the angry desperation in his voice.

Eve peered around the edge of the aisle. Jack was down at the other end, standing near the meat case at the back of the store. He was half turned to his left, holding an open vodka bottle by the neck in one hand and his gun in the other.

“Show yourself,” he said. “Don’t be a coward.”

“Here I am,” Eve said, stepping into the aisle in a firing stance. He turned and looked at her, confusion on his face, his gun aimed loosely in her direction. Three shots rang out in rapid succession, shattering the vodka bottle in his hand and dropping him to the floor.

But Eve hadn’t pulled her trigger.

She dropped back and peered around the other side of the aisle. At the far end, she saw a young uniformed security guard, still holding the gun he’d just fired.

Eve removed her badge from her belt and held it up. “I’m a sheriff’s deputy. Put down your gun.”

The security guard, a man she pegged as being in his early twenties, bent down, gently laid the gun on the ground, and backed away from it with his hands raised.

“Oh God, oh God,” the guard said, his voice cracking.

Behind Eve, two male deputies rushed in, guns drawn. She knew them by face, but not by name. They knew her, too.

“The assailant is down in the next aisle. The security guard shot him.” She gestured to the guard, then looked at one of the deputies. “Call an ambulance and stay with the guard.” She met the eye of the other deputy. “Clear the rest of the store and lock it down. No one in or out until the ME and CSU get here.”

She returned to the other aisle, her gun aimed at Jack’s body, and moved cautiously toward him. His body was still, lying in an expanding pool of blood and vodka, but his gun was still within his reach and she wasn’t taking any chances.

She reached him, saw the bullet hole in his forehead and the brain matter all over the packaged meats, and holstered her gun.

“Is he dead?” the security guard asked.

Eve turned to him. He seemed to her like a scared child wearing an adult’s oversize uniform.

“I’m afraid so,” she said.

The young man dropped to his knees and started to cry.





CHAPTER THREE


Eve knew before she stepped outside that the media would already be there. The paparazzi haunted the Commons parking lot 24/7, hoping to grab a shot of a celebrity buying groceries, eating at a restaurant, getting a cup of coffee, getting ice cream cones with their kids, or catching a movie. And there would be a hundred civilians, each one an aspiring social media influencer, filming the scene with their phones for a live global audience, making the TV reporters, once they showed up in their lumbering satellite broadcast trucks, feel like the last few dinosaurs left staggering around after the asteroid strike 65 million years ago.

But she went outside anyway, knowing it would beam her face to the world. She needed the fresh air. Her adrenaline rush was crashing, leaving her feeling light-headed and queasy. What she saw in the parking lot, though, stoked her anger, causing her to find new reserves of adrenaline that she didn’t know she had.

There were a half dozen patrol cars, sealing off the entry and exit to the shopping center, and uniformed deputies were out unrolling yellow police tape to establish a wide crime scene boundary that would also encompass space for the arrival of more official vehicles. Other deputies were already taking statements from the people who fled the grocery store. And she saw Captain Moffett get out of his plain-wrap Explorer and start marching toward her, his uniform starched and creased as stiff as a suit of armor.

The Lost Hills sheriff’s station was located on Agoura Road, on the northwestern boundary of Calabasas, five miles from the Commons shopping center. The captain and the deputies somehow got here, the commercial center of Calabasas, within three or four minutes. She knew that backup should have arrived at the sting house just as fast. Or faster.

But it didn’t.

And that was infuriating.