CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jim picked up his truck from the lot on base, and headed out to grab a burger and a beer for his second dinner.
He was exhausted—it was barely 1830, but that was 2130 in Florida, and he’d been on Eastern Time long enough to feel it. He also hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Still, he knew the best way to combat jetlag was to move as quickly as possible into the biorhythms of the new time zone, so instead of driving home and crashing into his bed, he was gonna eat another meal and force himself to stay awake, at least until the sun was fully down.
He wasn’t up to socializing with any SEAL teammates, so he headed back over the bridge to his favorite mom and pop place called Werewulf’s. He’d just sat down at the bar and caught the owner’s eye—a woman named Greykell Perks who tended bar while her three kids cooked—when his phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Meals-at-the-bar at Werewulf’s weren’t meant to be eaten while staring at your phone. No, the burger experience came with sci-fi movie gems playing on the bar TV—tonight was Escape from New York, which deserved his full attention. Still, he pulled his phone partly out of his pocket just to see who he was going to ignore. He was betting it was Thomas King, checking in on him.
But the name on his phone’s screen was Ashley, and Jim’s heart actually pounded with hope as he broke his rule and took his phone out to read her text.
But then her words make his heart pound for completely different reason as he read them: Sweetie, sorry to cancel last minute, can’t do dinner tonight, must reschedule, maybe tomorrow?
Sweetie? Jesus… He looked at his watch and did the math. Her trip to San Felipe from the airport would’ve brought her home to her condo right about…
Now.
This was an SOS message if he’d ever seen one.
It didn’t take much to imagine what had happened. She’d gotten home, and whoever had broken in was there, waiting for her. She’d given her attacker some made up some story about her “boyfriend” coming over for dinner, and having to send him a text to cancel—in hopes that upon reading that text, Jim would realize that something was very wrong.
“What can I get you, Jim?” Greykell asked, but Jim was already on his feet and heading for the door.
“Sorry, Grey, gotta run.”
As he fast-walked, he searched his phone for the security app that was attached to the hidden cameras that Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly had installed at Ashley’s condo. He’d signed out last night, and when he tried to sign in now, the password failed. Of course it did. A stickler for internet security, the first thing Chief Taylor would do was change the password.
So now Jim full-on ran for his truck on knees that burned, threw himself inside and started the engine with a roar. Fastest way to San Felipe would be via back roads at this time of evening, so he headed roughly north and east as fast he could, even as he called Taylor through his Bluetooth.
The Chief picked up on the first ring, cheerful as always. “Hey, LT. You’re on speaker! I’m in the car with Colleen. Rumor has it you came back early.”
“Chief, I need Ashley DeWitt’s home address.”
“Uhhh…”
Colleen’s voice came in. “Hi, Jim, how are you?”
“Kinda desperately needing Ashley’s address. She just t—”
“She sent me an email this morning,” Colleen spoke over him. “She didn’t say what happened, other than that something happened with you, and that it was over. I’m sorry to hear that.”
Bobby cut in. “With all due respect, sir, I’m gonna ask you to get that address directly from Ashley…? I mean, if she wants you to have it—”
“She just texted me,” Jim said. “She’s in trouble. Bob, I need you to check the security feed. She called me sweetie, and said she had to cancel plans for dinner tonight—”
“Hang on, I’m pulling into a parking lot so I can check the app,” Bobby said, even as Colleen misunderstood.
“Jim,” she said, “whatever plans you had with her, it’s not… well, if I’m reading that email right, it’s likely that she never intended to meet you in the first place.”
“We didn’t have plans for dinner,” Jim said as clearly as he could. “She told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. She made it very clear. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, because suddenly I get a text where she’s canceling the dinner that we weren’t going to have unless pigs started flying…”
Bobby swore pungently. “You’re right, LT. Recorded video footage shows her being accosted outside of her front door by a man with a handgun.”
Jim drove faster. “I need her address.”
“Oh, my God,” Colleen said, “let me see…”
“Interior camera currently shows…” Bobby said. “Yeah, she’s okay, I don’t think he hurt her, but he’s in her condo with her. She’s put some distance between them, she’s a few feet away from him now. She appears to be talking to him, doing something on her computer as he looks over her shoulder. He’s got…” He swore again. “It’s a Glock, LT. Nine millimeter.”
Colleen rattled off an address that Jim quickly input into his GPS. “I’m ten minutes away,” he reported.
“We’re about twenty,” Bobby said. “Wait for us, Jim! Colleen, call Wes. And Senior Chief Becker.”
“I’m on it,” she said.
“Colleen,” Jim asked, his heart in his throat. “The gunman. Is it Brad?”
“No,” she told him. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s definitely not Brad.”
* * *
Greg Ramsey wanted to know where the hell Betsy, his soon-to-be ex-wife, was.
It was funny—not funny-ha-ha but a little bit interesting-funny—at first, anyway, because Ashley honestly couldn’t place him as he came stomping down the outdoor corridor as she was attempting to unlock the front door to her condo.
She knew she’d seen him before, but she simply couldn’t remember from where. And then it stopped being any kind of funny when he brandished that deadly looking gun and demanded that she tell him where Betsy was hiding.
And everything clicked into place.
The break-in. The search of her apartment—including the pockets of her clothes. Greg had been looking for information, for files, for records, for hand-scribbled notes, for anything that would tell him his soon-to-be ex-wife’s whereabouts.
“I honestly don’t know where Betsy is,” Ash had said, and Greg had shoved that gun up right beneath her chin, slamming her head and shoulders against the wall beside her front door. She hit so hard that she saw stars.
“She’s in a shelter,” Ashley said quickly, aware that one jerk of his finger on the trigger would end her life. God, she didn’t want to die. “I honestly don’t know which one, but just give me a chance, and I can find out.”
That wasn’t really a lie. She could find out. She probably even would find out. But there was no way in hell she was going to let this man get anywhere near the woman he’d already spent years abusing. She’d die first.
But as he roughly grabbed her keys from her hands, unlocking the door and pushing her and her bag inside, she looked up toward where she knew those cameras had been recently installed.
Was anyone watching? She honestly didn’t know. And no way was she simply going to passively wait to find that out.
Instead, as Greg had dug into her handbag to take possession of her phone so she couldn’t call 9-1-1, she’d told him, “I’ll need my computer to access the file. But first, you need to know that I made plans to meet Jim, my Navy SEAL boyfriend, here for dinner. At 7:30. If I don’t text him, to tell him that something’s come up, he’s going to knock on that door. And when I don’t answer, he’s going to kick it down, and you’ll probably kill him, but not before he kills you, too, so please let’s not do that.”
Greg had backed away and set down his gun—he was not as comfortable holding it as he pretended to be—as he looked at Ashley’s phone. She gave him the code to unlock it, and spelled out Slade as she prayed he wouldn’t notice that the only texts she and Jim had exchanged were from the hospital, waiting for Kenneth to get out of surgery.
I found a treasure trove of vending machines and got us tiny bags of corn chips and pretzels. Do you want anything to drink?
Hoo-yah, thanks, I’d love something with caffeine. :-)
Not exactly romantic.
But Greg wasn’t exactly romantic, either, and he’d typed in the text message to Jim that she’d dictated, starting with the bright red flag of Sweetie.
Jim was on his way. He had to be, even though he hadn’t yet texted her back. But he was smart, he was sharp, he was everything Ashley had ever wanted—except for the flaming asshole part of him.
Still, she knew without a doubt that he was on his way.
* * *
Bobby and Colleen were still ten minutes out as Jim pulled into Ashley’s condo parking lot.
Guest parking was clearly marked, so he pulled into an empty slot even as he quickly looked around, finding the door to her second floor apartment, as well as the stairs that would get him there.
The new password for the surveillance camera app was CJCregg—apparently Ash was a big West Wing fan so Bobby had picked something she’d remember—and Jim quickly signed in to get a visual of her living room.
Both she and the gunman were exactly where Bobby had last described them.
Ashley’s tiny dining table was in the camera’s wide-lens frame, and Jim knew it was no accident that she’d set up her computer there. She sat behind it, frowning as she looked at the screen, while the gunman paced behind her.
He wasn’t an operator, that much was clear. Whoever he was, he had little to no firearms training—which potentially made him that much more dangerous in terms of things like accidental discharge.
But something about the way he moved was disconcerting. He was twitchy and sweating. Like he couldn’t stay still. Like he was jacked up on cocaine or some type of amphetamine.
Jim zoomed in to look more closely at the room. Ashley’s phone was out on a little table near the front door—about fifteen feet away from where she was sitting.
As he impatiently waited for Bobby to arrive, he got out of his truck and quietly closed the door behind him—no need to make Mr. Jumpy jumpier.
It occurred to him that the gunman probably drove there, and one of those other cars parked in that row marked Guests probably belonged to the man.
So Jim turned on his phone’s flashlight and used it to look inside of each of the vehicles—checking to see if the door was unlocked, or if there was something inside that could help identify who the hell the man was.
Of course, one possible way to take the gunman down was to use his car alarm as a diversion. Set it off in hopes that he’d open the front door to look out to see WTF. But it would help if Jim could figured out which car was his…
It was then that he saw it.
Half covered by a blanket on the backseat of an expensive and shiny new sedan.
An AR-15 assault rifle, with a fucking bump-stock attached.
As Jim looked back at the gunman’s twitchy movement and sweaty face in the surveillance feed, he knew with a flash of fear exactly where he’d seen that before. This motherfucker was gonna suicide. Whatever information he was trying to get from Ashley, he was gonna use it to kill as many people as he could before he took his own pathetic life, via suicide-by-SWAT-team.
And he’d probably start his bloody rampage right here, by putting a bullet into Ash’s head.
Jim’s phone lit with a text—from Colleen. Still five minutes away.
He looked at that rifle lying there in that car. Breaking the window to take it would set off the car’s alarm, only now he did not want to do that. No, the only diversion he was willing to risk now was to kick down Ashley’s door. It would make the gunman point his weapon at Jim instead of Ashley.
Jim knew he made a big target, but he also knew that a bullet in the gut or chest wouldn’t stop him from taking that weapon and ending that motherfucker. Only a headshot could stop a Navy SEAL, and that would require a shit-ton of luck—heads were hard to hit.
But just in case this mofo was unusually lucky, Jim quickly moved his truck to block in the gunman’s car, before quietly running for the stairs.
* * *
Ashley stalled, sifting through file after file—none of which held the information that Greg was looking for. “It’s in here, somewhere, I know it,” she told him, “but I have to be honest, Mr. Ramsey, it’s highly unlikely the staff at the women’s shelter will let you see Betsy at this time of night.”
“I’m not worried about that,” he told her, and the way he said that made her skin crawl.
“I also want to urge you to call your lawyer,” Ashley said. “I feel confident that he can help you.”
“He’s dead,” Greg said, and her heart dropped. “So no, he can’t help.”
“Okay,” she said as now her heart pounded. “Well, then…”
“He didn’t have the information I needed,” Greg told her.
“Well, I do, I’m sure of it,” she said as her brain raced. She’d somehow have to warn the shelter that he was coming. God knows what kind of weapons he had stashed in his car. But God, what if, after she gave him the name of the shelter, he killed her anyway, which would mean she wouldn’t be able to warn anyone… “I think I should go with you. To talk to the staff at the shelter—”
Across the room, her phone whooshed with an incoming text. Oh, thank God…
“That’s probably Jim,” she told Greg. “You should double-check that he’s not coming over anyway, to make sure that I’m okay.”
Greg crossed the room to where her phone was on the table near the door. “He says, Tomorrow’s great, sweetie. Can’t wait to get down and dirty. I love you madly, wish we could do it now.”
Ashley dropped to the floor.
Get down… do it now…
She had total faith that Jim knew exactly where both she and Greg were, thanks to that security camera.
She heard the door crash open, heard Jim’s voice: “Drop the weapon, drop the gun, drop it drop it drop it!”
She heard a clatter—no gunshot, thank God—heard a crash that had to be Jim tackling Greg onto her coffee table, shattering it and smashing it flat, and then Jim shouted, “Ash, you okay?”
“I am,” she called. “Are you?”
“I’m fine,” she heard him say. “Do me a favor and secure this motherfucker’s weapon. I kicked it into the kitchen.”
She crawled out from beneath her dining room table to see that Jim, indeed, had Greg Ramsey pinned on top of her former coffee table, his arm around Greg’s throat, his legs locked around Greg’s waist as Greg struggled to get free.
“Define secure,” she said.
Jim actually laughed. “Start by locating it,” he said, in the same almost-gentle, conversational tone he’d used with Kenneth, during the paintball fiasco. “And then, just kinda stand near it. Or, you know, put it in the vegetable drawer in your fridge. Chief Taylor’s on his way, FYI, with Skelly and Becker close behind him. Oh, and if you can find your phone after you secure the weapon, it’d probably be good to call 9-1-1.”
Her front door was hanging from just one of its hinges. The amount of force Jim had delivered to kick it open… “You need me to get you some ice as long as I’m stashing the gun in the fridge?” she called to him as yes, the gun was right there, on the kitchen floor. She picked it up with her thumb and one finger. Opened the fridge door.
“Nah, I’m… good. Curious, like, who the fuck is this since I’ve already confirmed that he’s not Brad.”
“His name is Greg Ramsey,” she called as she stashed the gun, closed the refrigerator door, and then went looking for her phone. “His wife—ex-wife—is one of my clients. He says he’s already killed his lawyer…” And just like that, her matter-of-fact delivery crumbled and her voice broke.
“Ashley, are you okay?” Bobby Taylor was standing just outside her ruined front door. He started to laugh as he took it all in, then came to envelope her in a hug. “I’m guessing Lieutenant Slade decided not to wait.”
* * *
Jim needed ice—for his shoulder.
He’d hit the floor, hard, when he’d tackled Greg Ramsey.
Kicking in the door was easy enough if you knew how to do it. And yeah, his knees weren’t exactly happy with him right now, but they never were.
And it was worth it, entirely, to know that Ashley was safe.
The police had come and taken custody of Ramsey, his refrigerated Glock, and the arsenal in his car. Jim’s teammates—Taylor and Skelly and Becker and Lee—had all shown up, ready to assist, and were kind of pissed that he hadn’t waited for them.
And yet, they all took one look at the way Jim knew he was looking at Ashley as Colleen kept her arms wrapped tightly around her, and they completely understood.
Waiting had not been an option.
The police finally left, and most of Jim’s teammates, too, finally called it a night, and then it was just Bobby Taylor and his wife Colleen, still sitting on the sofa next to Ashley as Jim hovered nearby.
Bobby was ready to board up Ashley’s door—using a hammer and nails to secure her condo until the morning, when they could get the door replaced. The plan was for Ash to spend the night at their apartment.
Which was a good idea, but…
“It’s late, we should go,” Colleen told Ashley. “Do you want to bring your suitcase from Florida, since it’s already packed and it’s just until tomorrow…?”
It was then that Ashley glanced over at Jim. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, but… Will you just give me a minute, to, um…”
“Yes,” Colleen said. “Why don’t you walk Jim out to his truck. I’ll grab your stuff while Bobby boards up the door.”
And then, there they were, walking down the steps to the parking lot.
“Thank you,” Ashley said. “I knew when I sent that text…”
“Sweetie,” he said. “I knew right away.”
“And when you said that back to me in your text—Sweetie—I knew that you knew,” she said, laughing a little even though her voice shook. “Get down and dirty was inspired.”
“I love you madly,” he said. “That part was real.”
But she was shaking her head, stopping as they reached Bobby’s car. “Jim, no…”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I know that doesn’t change anything, I know it’s too late, I know I screwed up, but… Ashley, I wish you could at least think about forgiving me. I wish I could explain. I just felt so freaking lost, it was like I was in this giant hole, falling into the darkness, and I had no idea when I was gonna hit the bottom, or how terrible it was gonna be when I splattered, so all I could think was, why would you want me when I don’t even want me anymore…?”
She started to cry. “You can’t tell me that. You’re not allowed to say that, and make me feel responsible for—”
“No, please,” he said. “Don’t feel responsible. That’s not why I told you. I’m trying to be honest about what I’m feeling, and I’m not very good at it… But I’m okay. Really. I’m gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay. Because nothing could ever be as bad as it was when I was standing out here, thinking this motherfucker was going to kill you. That would’ve been unbearable. This? All of this is just a road-bump, compared to that. This, I can handle.”
But she didn’t stop crying. “I’m so angry at you. I just can’t pretend that you didn’t…”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, he couldn’t not. And she kissed him back—until she pushed him away.
“I can’t,” she said again. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I just hoped…”
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said. “But I can’t.”
“It’s okay,” he told her. And because he could see Colleen coming down the stairs, ready to unlock her car to let Ashley in, he walked to his truck, got in, and drove away.
Just like he’d promised Dunk.