Protector - Laurel Dewey [17]
“Don’t you try nothing!” the woman yelled.
“I’m not gonna stop you,” Jane said, almost insulted. “You want to do this right, or do you want to make a mess? Relax.” Jane slid her body next to the woman so that she could see down the barrel of the extended pistol. “You gotta stop shaking. Take a good, deep breath.” The woman drew in her lungs. “Now, let it out slowly,” Jane counseled. The woman followed suit, letting out a long stream of air. “Good. You’re not shaking as much. Okay, there’s several ways you can do this.” Jane directed her attention toward the suspect. “You can aim for his head,” Jane gently placed her index finger under the woman’s wrists and slightly moved the gun sight in line with the suspect’s forehead. “That’d be a sweet shot. However, we’re about fifteen feet away and even the best cop could miss. Your second option is to bring the gun down here.” Jane gently directed the woman’s aim to the suspect’s groin. “That’s a tempting shot. You hit the mark dead on and he never hurts anyone else like that again. But, tempting as it is, we’re still fifteen feet away and there’s a good chance you’ll miss. So there’s option three.” Jane directed the pistol at the suspect’s chest. “That’s what we call a ‘center punch’ and it always works. You fire a magnum plug right there and you solve your problem in less than a second.” Jane turned to the woman. “I’d go with option three if I were you.”
The woman thought for a second, then nodded. “Okay,” she said calmly.
“Now, before you plug him, I need to know if you have a safe place for your daughter to stay.”
The woman furrowed her eyebrows as if irritated by the question. “What?”
“Is there a safe place for the kid to live? A family member you trust? Preferably not one on his side of the family. A sister? A brother?”
“She live with me!”
“Well, of course, I’ll do everything I can in court to make that happen.”
“What you saying?” The woman started shaking.
“Relax! It’s going to be okay. It’s just that after you kill the son-of-a-bitch, I’m going to have to arrest you and take your daughter away from you.”
The woman started to cry. “What? You can’t! She need me.”
“I know. But that’s why I need to know about a trusted family member who can look after her—”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Conservatively, probably six months to ten years.”
“Ten years!”
“I’m just throwing out numbers. I don’t know for sure. Hey, I don’t make these rules. If it were up to me, I’d say shoot the asshole and I’d buy you dinner. But I’m not in charge. So, again, have you got anyone you can trust with your kid?”
The woman started shaking violently and sobbing. “No! I can’t let her be away from me. She need me now!”
Jane let out a long breath of air coupled with a sigh. “Well then . . . you better not shoot the bastard. It’ll just get too complicated.”
For the first time, the woman took her eyes off the suspect and looked at Jane, tears streaming down her face. They stared at each other for what seemed like eternity until Jane moved closer to the woman’s ear and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
The woman lowered the pistol. Jane carefully slipped it out of the woman’s sweat-soaked hands and gave it back to the patrol officer. She turned to Weyler. He didn’t say a word—he just stared at her with a look that bordered somewhere between apprehension and disbelief. Jane picked up her leather satchel and walked to the elevator, punching the “down” button with the side of her fist.
Everyone turned their attention to the woman. Everyone, that is, except for Emily, who watched Jane enter the elevator and disappear behind the steel doors.
Chapter 5
It was just after 10:15 a.m. when Jane sped out of the DH parking garage. As she rounded her Mustang onto 14th Street and curved around the Civic Center, she noted that it had taken just over an hour for her life to fall apart.
Jane saw the look on Weyler’s face after she disarmed the Mexican woman. She noted how he appeared genuinely guarded by