Travis Starnes
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Designated Target - Chapter 14
🕑 Added 2022-08-27 01:45:34 +0000 UTCTaylor’s big exit did mean he couldn’t turn around and ask for her address but he’d worked with Whitaker long enough to know how to navigate the databases she used to track people down. It took about ten minutes for him to pull her address, which was precious time ticking down
It had occurred to him that there was still ways that Dayoub could have put up roadblocks, the most obvious being calling down and telling them to not assign him a vehicle when he requested it. Taylor could have gotten around that, but it would have required calling Solomon, having Solomon call Dayoub’s boss, who would then call Dayoub and have him pull the block. That would have taken at least twenty minutes and maybe more if people were being hard to get a hold of. Dayoub might not have been able to stop him for the full hour, but he could have probably gotten close to it.
Thankfully, he wasn’t as petty as some of the mid-level agents Taylor had met in the Bureau, and didn’t do anything to impede Taylor any further. A few minutes later, Taylor was tearing out of the underground garage with sirens on, weaving in and out of traffic, rocketing north to the suburb to the house owned by Nadine Sutton.
Taylor’s phone rang.
“Are you out of your mind,” Whitaker said when he answered.
Taylor shook his head and resisted the urge to laugh. Dayoub was craftier than Taylor gave him credit for. He hadn’t called Solomon, he’d called Whitaker
“Don’t act like this is out of character for me.”
“This woman is good. As good as anyone you’ve gone up again. She might be better than you.”
“So what, I should let her get away?”
“You know I’m not suggesting that. What you need to do is wait for backup. Haven’t we run into this before? You’ve almost gotten killed multiple times running in without backup, and none of them were as good as Chelsea.”
“Which is why I can’t wait. Getting her current ID was luck. Hell, getting her real name that got us her current ID was luck. We’re not going to get a shot at her again, not before she gets Finney.”
“I know the case is important, but we’ll get the Amato’s again. They are cocky and can’t stop incriminating themselves and alienating associates. I don’t want a witness killed any more than the next person, but not at the cost of your life. For Christ’s sake, you’ve got a child on the way. Do you want this baby born without a father?”
“Of course not. And this isn’t just about Finney. She’s killed a lot of people. Mostly all scumbags, yes, but a lot of those scumbags were on the verge of testifying and the families they worked for killed a lot of innocent people before you guys finally got them, or they got themselves. You’re the one who got me into the crime-fighting business, and you did it by convincing me that we were helping people … shit,” Taylor said, barely missing smashing into the back of a semi.
“Don’t kill yourself getting there,” Whitaker said, knowing how Taylor drove when he was worked up. “So what are you going to do?”
“No idea. I’m making this up as I go.”
“I hate it when you do that.”
“I know. I’ll be careful.”
“See that you do.”
Taylor hung up and kicked the SUV into high gear. As he pulled off the highway, he shut off the sirens, although he kept the lights on. It was still half a mile, but he didn’t want to announce his presence. At least not right away.
The neighborhood was nice. Not, rich nice, but solidly middle-class nice. For a moment, Taylor wondered about the choice of homes. He’d been involved in a bunch of chances over the last few years, working with Whitaker, and one of the things he’d learned was neighborhoods were terrible places for someone to try to escape from. Fences everywhere, lots of people who notice when you show up in their yard, security cameras and RING doorbells recording every time movement happens in front of them. You can’t just disappear.
If you’re forced to live anywhere, an industrial area would be your best bet. It’s easy to get lost in factories and warehouses. People come in and out of industrial businesses all the time. Customers, vendors, salespeople, and all kinds of people come through industrial businesses, and employees generally could care less.
Second best would be a wooded area. Wilderness has a lot of places for people to disappear into, although that worked better in mountainous areas than coastal ones like this.
Knowing how good she was, Taylor was perplexed. Both in the army and in investigations, intelligence was the key. Going in when you didn’t understand the situation was always a danger, and this was a question that didn’t sit right with Taylor. At least not until he pulled into the subdivision. It was on literally on the other side of the tracks, with a single rail line separating the gentrified sprawl of neighborhoods and strip malls from a manufacturing area filled with warehouses, small factories and fenced-in areas filled with pipes and shipping containers.
Her house at the back of the neighborhood closest to the manufacturing area in a cul-de-sac, butting right up against what looked to Taylor like an abandoned factory of some kind. He’d stopped halfway down the street so it was hard to make out the building behind the houses and fences, but he could see the building had broken windows and general dilapidated look that went beyond just word down.
Taylor stayed in his vehicle for a moment, looking down the quiet suburban street towards the house listed as being owned by Nadine Sutton, marveling at the juxtaposition of someone like her, a woman who murdered people for money and someone who seemed to have little qualms about shooting bystanders if they got in her way, living in a place that, broken down factory in the background aside, could have been on a postcard advertising the simple American life. Of course, this wasn’t the first time he’d been struck by someone like her living in a place like this, but it was still a reminder of how evil could always be lurking just around the corner.
The house was quiet. It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky, but it wouldn’t be dark for another hour, which meant if she was watching, it wouldn’t be hard for her to see him coming. There had been some kids playing in their yard near the front of the neighborhood, but this area was quiet, with no one on the street or in front of their homes. If Taylor had to guess, most of her neighbors would be older. She wouldn’t have wanted to live somewhere with people who might notice her coming and going, if she could help it. The empty streets meant there wasn’t a crowd for him to hide behind and the few trees in yards wasn’t enough to make it hard to see him walking down the sidewalk towards her home.
There wasn’t much for it, however. The same reasons that kept him from waiting for backup also meant he couldn’t wait for the sun to go down and do this in the dark. He either had to risk it now or let her get away. Nothing in her history suggested she held a grudge, so Taylor didn’t think she’d come for him if she got away, but he still didn’t want to let her go without giving it his best shot, which meant he had to go now.
Taylor got out of the car and circled around behind it, pulling his weapon from its holster and holding it close, in case he needed it. He’d put on a vest before leaving, but he didn’t expect that to help him if it came down to it. She’d have to assume he was wearing some kind of armor and she was a good enough shot to kill him in spite of that. His only real hope was that she wasn’t sitting, looking out the window, waiting for someone to come for her.
If she was running, which he thought she was, and she was sentimental enough to come back for the things she’d accumulated over the last twenty years living in this identity, then she’d be busy packing. She also wouldn’t be expecting just Taylor. There had been other agents around when he’d spring his trap, so she knew he had resources and she would have had to assume he’d be coming in with a full assault team. Sitting with a rifle, staring out the window, waiting to shoot it out with the Feds wasn’t her style.
If she was still here, she was going to be doing her best to get out as quick as possible. Of course, she’d still have precautions in place.
That had been going through Taylor’s head as he made his way down the street. If he was wrong, at least he wouldn’t be around to hear about it. Thankfully, he wasn’t. Or at least he made it to the front door safely. The windows on either side of the door were opaque. It was dark inside and there wasn’t a window or anything that could backlight someone standing on the other side of the door, so Taylor was going to be going in blind.
He’d just started to reach for the handle when he heard a sound unmistakable for anything else, the racking of a shotgun slide. He threw himself away from the door, landing hard on the concrete front steps, as a fist-sized hole blasted through the hardwood, followed by a second and then a third. She might not have been sitting in the window with a rifle, but she’d definitely been waiting on him. It was only because Whitaker had taught him never to stand directly in front of the door when approaching a house, for this very reason, that kept the same size holes from punching through him as well.
Style lying on his side, Taylor brought up his weapon and fired back, shooting through the opaque glass, suddenly seeing into the house for the first time. The front entryway led into a larger open room and looked to have another room on the right Taylor couldn’t see. As the glass shards started to rain down, he thought for a second he could see the back of a leg disappearing to the right into the larger room at the end.
Pushing himself up, he kicked in the already broken front door and went into the house gun first. The room to his immediate right was more of an alcove than a full room, with a small couch and chair laid out like some kind of lounge. Thankfully, it didn’t have any doors in it, so at least he didn’t have to worry about her circling around behind him as we went into the house.
Moving forward, Taylor held against the corner, went low to avoid popping out at the expected height, and leaned in, only to throw himself back once more to avoid a fourth shotgun blast that ruined the wall next to him. Pushing himself back up, Taylor stuck his gun around the corner and let off a few rounds. He didn’t have a chance to actually hit anything that way, but he needed to get her to back off before he tried it again. She was smart enough to know that any bullet coming her way would be dangerous, even one blind fired.
Fighting in close quarters like this was always difficult, but doubly so when you were by yourself. Blind corners and random open doorways made a house, especially one where your opponent knew the layout well, dangerous ground.
Taylor leaned back out, thankfully not getting shot at again, and saw she’d disappeared. There was an exit into the backyard to his now left and a doorway deeper into the house directly in front of him. She would have come into view from where he’d been in the hallway if she’d made a move to the sliding glass back door, so Taylor continued into the house after her. Most of the bedrooms were closed and the hall light was off, making this area a lot darker, except for an open the door to the left at the end of the hall. Again, Taylor pressed himself against the corner. This time he didn’t go low, since she’d have noticed him doing that before, which meant it wouldn’t do him any good. He leaned in gun first, hoping that, if she tried for a shot assuming he’d gone low again, he’d at least catch it in the vest, Taylor was surprised to see the room empty.
She hadn’t had a lot of time to close doors behind her and Taylor doubted she’d trust the flimsy plywood doors anyway. The window in the room was open and didn’t have a screen on it, which Taylor guessed would be what someone who wanted to keep options for escape open to them would do. He made his way slowly into the room, aware she could be lying in wait in one of the other rooms, ready to come out from behind him, and headed for the window, keeping an eye on the door and the closet, since this could easily be a trap.
Instead, he saw her going over the fence, towards the factory. Taylor brought his gun up, but she was already out of view before he could draw a bead on her. He knew she kept herself in good shape and she was well trained, but he was surprised she moved so fast. He doubted he could have made it over the fence this fast if he was in her place.
Taylor vaulted through the window and pulled himself just enough over the fence to make sure she wasn’t lying in wait. Still one step ahead of him, he saw her going through an open doorway into the factory, exactly where he didn’t want her to go. If a house was dangerous, a place like that factory would be foolhardy to go into on his own.
Which is exactly what he was going to do. She was on the run now and if he lost her, she’d be fine for sure now.
The factory was shadowy, with light filtering in unevenly through the broken windows, creating flickering patterns of light and dark that made everything look like a threat.
Taylor stalked slowly through the door, past large, rusted machinery built to do who knows what, listening hard for a sound that might indicate where she’d gone. The building creaked and groaned with age, small animals or the wind causing scrapes and sounds that could just as easily have been a person. Taylor was moved to the right of the building, since working around the outside theoretically limited where the danger spots could come from. He was about halfway to the eastern end of the building when movement out of the corner of his eye caused him to jump back behind a large piece of machinery, just in time to once again avoid being shot, the lead ricocheting off the metal machinery, sending fragments whizzing inches past his ear.
The time for slow playing this was over. Instead of creeping back or taking blind shots in the direction Chelsea had fired from, Taylor sprinted across the opening between the machinery, more bullets whizzing behind him as he passed. Running about ten feet, Taylor turned left around a pillar and headed deeper into the factory, trying to get around her.
She was moving now too. He could hear her feet pounding on the concrete, although between the sounds of gunfire and both of them running, it was hard to tell where she was. Of course, the same must have been true for her, because he finally managed to get the drop on her, coming around a corner as she sprinted down past the same machinery going the other direction, towards where he’d been a moment ago. Taylor whipped his weapon around and fired, but the gap was small and they were both moving, making it a tough shot. He saw her flinch, ducking slightly as she disappeared from sight. The way she flinched suggested she didn’t know where the shot had come from, especially since she didn’t change the direction she was running.
Pushing hard, Taylor circled around the machinery coming up behind where she’d been running. She must have heard him because she whipped around and let off two more shots before making a dash for cover. The shots were close, but she’d fired blind, reacting instead of aiming, trying to get Taylor to dive for cover. Instead, Taylor dropped to a knee and fired. It all happened in a split second, leaving little time to aim as she vaulted over a conveyor belt headed for more cover.
She let out a yelp of pain as the bullet ripped through her thigh, her leg going out as she landed. Unfortunately, the collapse put her out of sight of Taylor again. He saw the bullet hit, and it was on the outside of the thigh, well clear of the bone. She would be slowed down, but it wasn’t an incapacitating wound. She was still dangerous and she could still fire her weapon, which meant he couldn’t exactly follow her over the conveyor belt.
Circling around back towards the doorway he’d come into the factor through, Taylor found where she’d fallen, but she was gone again. This time, he didn’t have to guess where she went. She left a trail of blood to follow. Taylor slowed down again. He had the upper hand now, he just had to keep from getting lured into an ambush and shot.
The trail led to a strange array of machinery. Taylor wasn’t an engineer, but everything so far had been laid out like he’d expect for some kind of assembly plant, but this area had been cleared. Marks on the floor looked like the equipment had been pushed back, almost making a circle out of them, with a container of some sort in the middle that Chelsea was leaning against. A long blood trail led to where he was sitting, blood pooling under her leg. She had dragged herself there, which meant he’d hit her worse than he’d thought.
Surprisingly, she wasn’t waiting with a gun. Instead, she had a small device with cables coming out of it that snaked their way into the box she was leaning on. Taylor had a good idea what the device was, and what was in the box. If he was right, neither of them were walking out of here.
“You’re a giant pain in the ass, you know that.”
“People have mentioned it.”
“You’re like a fucking dog going for a bone.”
“So what now,” Taylor said, gesturing at the detonator in her hand.
“It’s over. I’m damn sure not going to sit in a jail cell.”
“You’re smart. You’d do well in prison.”
“Maybe, but it’s not the life for me. I’d rather go out in a blaze of glory. Tell me you don’t feel the same.”
“I used to.”
“See, that’s why I never got hitched. You get into a relationship, and it fucks with your priorities.”
“I guess. If you’re planning on going out in a blaze of glory, why are we sitting here talking about it? Why haven’t you pushed the button.”
“I thought about it, but I decided I didn’t want to go out with no one knowing about me. I was good. Maybe the best working today, and I made sure no one knew I existed. Now that it’s all come apart, though, I want to leave something behind. Call it my legacy.”
“Now you develop an ego?”
“Ohh, I’ve always had an ego, the secrecy was just part of it. I know you probably have backup on the way, and I’m not going to wait around for them to stop me, so I’ll give you a fifteen-second head start, then I’m going to blow this place to hell.”
Taylor wasted two of those seconds deciding if he believed her, or if this was another trick to try and get away even though she was injured. She was clever enough to pull it off.
“I’m not joking. You now have twelve seconds,” she said.
She was hard to read, but Taylor believed her when she said she didn’t want to be taken alive. IT fit what he’d learned about her, so he did the only thing he could. He ran.
He was almost to the train tracks, starting to think he’d made the wrong call, when a giant boom sounded and flame erupted from the windows and open doorway, shaking a layer of dust off the ground around the building. Taylor could feel the heat of it from where he was standing.
The building was still intact and he was considering venturing back inside to see if she had, in fact, blown herself up, when a second, much larger explosion happened, strong enough to take Taylor off his feet completely. The first explosion had seemed to explode out low in all directions, not seeming to push against the upper parts of the building at all, more like how a shaped charge like a claymore, only much more powerful, would work. This second blast was much larger, ripping out in all directions, ripping through the roof and knocking giant chunks of the walls down. In seconds, the entire place began collapsing.
When she’d said she wanted to go out in a blaze, she’d clearly meant it. She might have used the first explosion as some kind of fake-out, but there was no way she made it out of the second one.
