TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [149]
Dougie Hollyfield, as was his habit, kept his eyes open, watching, and when a little girl ran after a Frisbee and stumbled, he immediately ran toward her. He was so fast he even beat her mother. He looked up to see Gillette Janes speaking to Jack Crowne’s older sister, dark-haired, tall and leggy like her brother, a lawyer. They looked mighty interested in each other.
He remembered how badly the house had been shot up, and he’d had to deal with the aftermath of all those people trying to kill not just Rachael, but Jack Crowne and Gillette Janes himself. What a mess that had been. But it seemed to have changed things here quite a bit, beginning with the huge building project Gillette had begun two weeks later when he’d opened up Slipper Hollow to the world around it.
Dougie Hollyfield’s cell phone blasted out “Born Free,” programmed especially for him by Agent Savich the previous day. He answered it and grinned hugely at the clear, crisp voice of one of his deputies. “What did you say? Mrs. Mick’s car broke down and she’s in labor and alone? Well, why didn’t you call Dr. Post? You don’t have his cell number?” Dougie gave it to him. “Look, he’s here, so I’ll tell him his fun is over and to meet you at the hospital with Mrs. Mick.”
He flipped his cell closed, accepted a glass of very nice champagne from a passing waiter, and walked toward Dr. Post, who was laughing at something Suzette from Monk’s Café was saying to him.
Funny how life worked, he thought, and waved to Dr. Post, who turned and lost his smile.
The cell tower party lasted until midnight. Everyone was calling everyone else, even when they stood three feet apart, and everyone was exchanging cell numbers.
It was a glorious night, a half-moon high in the sky, the music slow and dreamy now, couples dancing.
Dougie Hollyfield didn’t think there was any more champagne in Slipper Hollow.
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KNOCKOUT
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Everyone shut up! All of you—get down and put your faces on the floor!” The man punctuated his order with a half dozen shots fired into the air from a submachine gun. Chunks of ceiling plaster fell onto the marble floor. In a few seconds, everyone lay flat, no one moving a muscle, the echoes of their shocked screams thick in the air.
Savich’s first thought was Thank God Sean’s not here with me. He slipped his hand in his jacket pocket, pressed two keys on his cell phone and lay as still as the twenty other people in the First Union Bank of Washington, D.C. He heard some sobs, but for the most part everyone lay on their stomachs in heart-racing, petrified silence, noses against the marble floor.
He heard Sherlock’s voice. “Hello? Hello?”
The man screamed, “You worker bees behind the counter, don’t even think of pressing the alarm! You, yes you, Mr. Loan Officer. Get me the bank manager now! Now, or this asshole dies!” Savich slowly shifted his head to see Buzz Riley, the security guard, an ex-cop Savich had known for five years, with a snub-nosed .38 barrel stuck in his ear by a man maybe two inches taller than Riley was, with a lanky build and big hands that made the .38 look like a toy.
Savich knew who they were and it wasn’t good. The media had dubbed them the Gang of Four, and they had been making a name for themselves as they zigzagged their way across Kentucky and Virginia during the past four weeks. And now they were making their debut bank robbery here in D.C. What was different about this group was that two of the four robbers were women. That, and the fact they were killers. When they burst into a bank, people died. To date, six people had been killed, all four bank security guards and two customers. Riley had to be scared out of his mind.
Another robber fired a spurt of bullets into the air that thudded against the high, old-fashioned ceiling, raining down more plaster, digging into the graceful 1930s molding, sending