Cross Current

“It’s late for a manatee here,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” Rusty said, and from the sound of his voice in my ear, I knew he was looking at me, not the manatee. Then he said, “I’m not very good at this,” and he placed a hand on the side of my face and kissed me on the mouth. While I would have to agree with him that his technique for getting there was rather abrupt, when it came to the actual kissing, he wasn’t half bad.

An alarm sounded several blocks over in the neighborhood, and we broke apart, taking an air break. The alarm continued to whoop, and I said, “Sounds like somebody can’t remember their code.”

“Damned gadgets,” he said. “What the hell good are they when everyone ignores them?”

I didn’t get to answer him. It was then I heard the shot. It wasn’t a little pop like they say gunshots make, and not a whomp like an explosion, either. It was a muffled boom. Like it had come from inside a house. We both started ru

XIX

I leaped up to the second step, and my sneaker slid in a puddle of something wet. Blood. I didn’t stop to examine it but took the rest of the steps two at a time, calling out Jea

“I’m in here,” she shouted.

The screen door was shredded and part of the wood frame hung in splinters. Where was Rusty when I needed him? I wondered if Jea

“Everybody okay?” I called out before approaching the door.

“Yeah, we are,” she said. “Not sure about the other guy, though.”

When I went to reach for the handle to open the door, I realized there was no handle left. I grabbed a piece of the dangling wood and made an opening between the screen and the shredded door frame big enough to climb through. Just inside, to the right of the door, the plaster was blown off the wall, the bare cinder block exposed. Jea

“Damned if I can remember the code right now,” she said.

All three kids were standing in doorways in the hall, their eyes huge. One of the twins called out the code to his mom, and soon the alarm shut down. No sooner did it stop than the phone started ringing. In the distance, a siren wailed.

Jea

The door frame scraped open, and Rusty slipped into the room, holding a handgun down low with both hands. I started to tell him that everyone was okay, but he swept past me, ru

“What happened, Jea

Rusty crossed to the front door and looked down into the yard.

“The bastard cut the screen with a machete,” she said. “I grabbed the gun when I heard the alarm go off. When I got into the hallway, he was coming through the door swinging that big old blade. I guess he heard me pump the action on the gun. He must have jumped back and to the left, behind the wall. I’m pretty sure I winged him, though.”

“The cops are here,” Rusty said, looking through the remains of the screen. He turned around and looked at Jea

Jea

After Collazo, more uniformed officers came through the door, followed by several folks in plainclothes. I didn’t know if they were detectives or technicians. The living room was getting damned crowded. Rusty brought up the rear. They all huddled around the door and mumbled, examining the damaged wall and wood.

Collazo pointed to the shotgun lying where I had left it. He looked at Jea

“You asking me?”

“Jea

She shook her head. “Yes, that shotgun is registered to me, and I am the one who fired it tonight at some dirtbag who was trying to break into my house, waving a machete around.”

“He was entering through the front door.”

Jea

Jea

Cops and technicians had been coming and going, and none of us paid them much mind, but when Agent D’Ugard arrived, there was a noticeable straightening of the spines of all the men in the room. She nodded to Collazo and then headed straight for Rusty. When the two of them disappeared into Jea

“Miss Sullivan, your story.”

I blinked. “Oh, okay. Well, I need to back up a little and tell you about what happened earlier this evening. Then, maybe all the rest of this will make sense.” As I told Collazo what had happened in Pompano, I kept glancing down the hall, wondering what they were doing back there. Collazo took in the dead chickens and Voodoo rituals without so much as a blink. Unlike Rusty, this man knew his home turf. “I thought I had really paid attention on the drive back from Pompano, and I didn’t see anybody follow us back here. I don’t know how he knew where to find us.”

“That’s the problem with amateurs,” Collazo said.

” I have to agree with Detective Collazo.” It was Agent D’Ugard, with Rusty close at her side. They’d just come out of the bedroom. I checked for disheveled clothes or hair, then felt silly for doing it. I cursed my own dirty mind and wondered why I would even care.

“The events of this evening,” she continued, “as related to me by Agent Elliot, are proof enough that you ca

“We need to move them all. Not just the child. None of them are safe here tonight. Even if we remove the girl, there’s no way of being certain they won’t come back here later looking for her. We need a safe house where we can keep this entire family protected.”