Witness In Hiding. Lisa Phillips
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try.” The gunman smirked.
Zoe couldn’t move. All she could do was stare into his evil eyes and wait for death while her mind screamed at her to run. While images of death played across her mind. A woman, lying on the ground. The man stood over her. Her killer.
Now he’d sent this guy to silence her, so she could never tell anyone what she’d seen.
The man twisted, aimed his gun past Zoe. He pulled the trigger over and over again. The woman behind Zoe screamed and hit the floor.
“No loose ends.” His voice was as devoid of emotion as his eyes.
Zoe backed up and felt for the door handle. If she didn’t try to run he would certainly kill her. She should have bought that gun when she’d had the chance, but she didn’t know how to use one. Now she would die because she hadn’t been brave enough to overcome a simple fear of the unknown. Dead both because of what she didn’t know—how to use a gun—and because of what she did. But Zoe couldn’t think about what she’d witnessed. She only wanted to forget it. She never would. Not for the rest of her life.
Her slick fingers slipped off the door handle, but it opened anyway. Zoe didn’t know whether to rush through, or just duck.
Moose brushed past her, shotgun in his hands.
Zoe dived out of the way, behind the counter, issuing a quiet apology when she landed on the counter lady’s leg. The ball cap flew off Zoe’s head, releasing her spray of red curls. The woman was wide-eyed, a red stain on her shoulder.
“What is going—” Moose’s roared words cut off. Bang. Bang.
Zoe scrambled across the floor. The shotgun went off, then the gunman’s weapon—shot after shot. She covered her ears. There was nowhere to go. She was pinned behind the counter with no way out, and that man was coming for her.
Defenseless and innocent. Why did she have to die like a criminal? It was proof God’s love for her, His grace, had been withdrawn. For whatever reason, He wasn’t on her side anymore. His love and support had been rich during those years with Nathan and Tyler. They’d been together as a family and her life had been good. Now, nothing. God’s place in her heart was empty—He’d abandoned her.
Otherwise she wouldn’t be about to die on the dirty linoleum floor of a Laundromat.
* * *
Secret Service agent Jude Brauer had gone on alert the moment the first shot rang out. He tossed his notebook back on the driver’s seat and slammed the car door, palming his weapon instead. Question time would have to come later. There wasn’t even time to wait for police backup. He’d seen people inside and heard the gun battle. Jude couldn’t let an innocent person die. Seconds counted for everything in situations like this.
The windows of the Laundromat were glass, the lights on inside. His view was crystal clear between the red letters of the store name.
One assailant, center of the room.
A man down, discarded shotgun on the floor. Jude was pretty sure that was Moose, the man he’d been coming to meet. Moose was dead, which meant Jude would never get answers from him now.
The gunman advanced. The second of two women had dived behind the counter. Jude couldn’t let anyone else die.
Gun drawn, Jude pushed the front door open with his foot. “Secret Service, put your hands up!”
The guy spun, already firing, not even bothering to aim—but two shots later the clip in his gun emptied. Jude wasn’t hit.
Thank You, God.
He put two rounds from his Sig Sauer in the man’s chest. He hated to use lethal force, but there was no telling if this man had additional weapons or ammunition. The threat had to be taken out before anyone else was hurt.
The gunman’s body jerked as the shots impacted, but he didn’t go down. He actually grinned. “Won’t work, pig.” He said it like he thought he was invincible. High on something? His eyes were glassy, and that bravado had to come from somewhere. It was more than the protective vest he might have under his jacket.
As he stepped closer, Jude wondered if this had to do with his case or something else entirely. The task force he was part of was investigating a local pharmaceutical company with ties to foreign money. Moose might be the key to the whole thing, but it was only a hunch Jude had. He hadn’t brought anyone else in case it turned out to be nothing. Now Moose was dead.
The gunman ran to the interior door, where he glanced once behind the counter and said, “See you soon, Zoe.”
Then he raced through to whatever back rooms were beyond it.
Jude sprinted after him. He did the same glance maneuver the gunman had and saw a beautiful redhead on the floor, her wide green eyes looking up at him. Jude ordered, “Stay here,” to her and the purple-haired woman she lay there with. A woman who’d been shot. “And call an ambulance.”
He didn’t wait for her to nod; he just ran after the man into a fluorescent-lit hall with bland white walls. Two rooms. The gunman ignored both and hit the exit bar on the door at the end of the hall before he raced out into the night.
The guy had to have been wearing a vest to absorb those shots. Jude wasn’t wearing his, not on what should’ve been a routine interview. He had to be careful. This guy wasn’t afraid to kill.
And then there was the woman. Zoe, he’d called her. Who was she, and why did the gunman know her? The man had threatened her, and yet he’d let her live while he killed the man Jude had been there to see.
Had he shot Moose because of the shotgun, or because Moose knew too much? Maybe there was another reason entirely.
Jude reached the exit door, stood where there was cover and looked out before he moved to pursue the man. It wouldn’t do him any good to rush out and have the gunman attack him because he hadn’t been cautious. But the man wasn’t waiting.
The peal of car tires screeched out the parking lot and the killer tore off at top speed in a silver, low-slung, rusty car. No plates. The undercarriage scraped the asphalt on the way out, and then the guy was gone.
Lost him.
Jude slammed the flat of his hand on the door frame. That man—whoever he was and whatever his motive might be—had just killed the best lead Jude had been able to find on his case.
He pulled out his phone and called 9-1-1 to report what had happened.
Jude’s job was mostly to identity theft investigations and illegal transactions. White-collar crimes involving money and state-of-the-art technology that cost this country millions each year. Jude would dig into the problem. He would solve the mystery of what was happening and who was involved.
In this particular case, the pharmaceutical company and a South American cartel were moving money back and forth. It hadn’t been easy to trace the international transactions. But when Jude had found the Laundromat listed on one, he’d jumped on the information. He didn’t have enough evidence to obtain a warrant yet, but that hadn’t stopped him from heading over to the Laundromat to see what Moose had to say.
Online banking was the new cash. Huge transfers could be divided up into hundreds of small transactions or transfers between online accounts. It was the job of the Secret Service to recognize evidence of possible money laundering. The question was, who had been sending the pharmaceutical company so much money, and why?
Now his only lead was a rusty car. He’d have to get a description of the vehicle and the gunman to the cops and pray for a result.
Jude trailed back through the hall to a now open door. The other was signed as a bathroom. Before he got there, he glanced around. Security cameras had been installed at the corner where the wall met the ceiling. Did they work? Maybe he could get an image of the killer and run it through the Secret Service database as well as the FBI’s system. They could get the man’s identity from that.
If