Page 29 of Out of the Shadows (Angelhart Investigations)

Jack walked briskly to the barn. The night was dark. There were no streetlights, only the lights from the house partly illuminating

the yard. The moon hadn’t risen yet, the air hot, still. He heard the chickens in their pen. A soft neigh of a horse. A dog

barking in the distance.

He quietly opened the side door of the barn and slipped inside. A faint light came from a stall on the far side of the barn.

Goats maa’ed and moved on as they settled for the night in their pen. Jack approached the light, looked over the short stall

door, and saw Cody sitting in the middle with a flashlight. Relief flooded through him.

He didn’t want to yell at the kid, but after the relief came anger that Cody had scared everyone.

“I told you to stay in the house. We were worried.”

“Shhh, you’ll scare her.”

Cody gestured his flashlight toward a hay-filled box in the corner. Nimbus, the gray-and-white cat, lay panting, her belly

large.

“You need to come with me, Cody.”

“Please, she’s little, not much more than a year old. She’s too young to have kittens, but someone dumped her out here and

she needs me.”

Jack wasn’t going to leave Cody out here all night with the cat.

He called Laura. “Cody is in the barn like you said. The cat is about to give birth. He doesn’t want to leave, and I don’t

want to scare the creature. Can you talk to him?”

“Yes.”

Jack gave Cody his phone. “Talk to your mom.”

Walking the length of the barn, Jack checked every possible hiding place like he’d done before. There were three faint lights

hanging overhead across the length of the barn that gave just enough ambient light for him to see.

All secure. He returned to Cody.

“Are you sure, Mom? Because she’s all alone and she didn’t eat the food Luisa and I gave her this morning.” He listened, then

said, “Okay. Okay. You promise, first thing in the morning?... Okay. I’m sorry, Mom.”

He handed the phone to Jack. “I have to go back with you. Mom says cats like to be alone when they deliver their kittens and

it could take all night. She also said that she would come out here before she goes to bed and check on her. You’ll let her

do that, right?”

“Yes,” Jack said. He hated that this kid was scared—for his dad, for his mom, for the cat. All because of that asshole Aberdeen.

“She is a pretty cat.”

“She’s never had a home, but she’s used to the barn, and she’s a good mouser, and she likes me. We had a barn cat when we

first moved here, he came with the house, but he was old and he died. Nimbus is young. Mom says we’ll spay her, but we can

keep some of the kittens, and Sydney’s friend Jenny wants one. Do you want one?”

“No,” Jack said. “I’m not home enough to have a pet.”

“That’s sad,” Cody said.

Maybe it was, Jack thought. “Are you ready?” he asked Cody.

Cody got up and, with a glance back to the laboring cat, left with Jack.

Luisa knew something was wrong as soon as the Uber driver turned onto Joy Ranch Road, the two-lane road that led to Laura’s

street.

It was quiet out here, and no one parked on the street because of deep drainage ditches and the plethora of no-parking-anytime

signs.

But there was a truck parked partly in a ditch, where the far southwest corner of Laura’s property met the road.

“Stop,” she told her driver.

He complied. “Is everything okay?”

“Let me out here.”

“Um, the house is just around the corner.”

“And don’t go straight. Turn around here and go back the way we came.”

“Is something wrong?”

She gave him her best smile. “No. I’m going to play a prank on my brother, but if he sees your lights, he’ll know that I’m

here.”

“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t sound like he believed her, but she got out and hoped he did as she instructed.

He did, and she would leave him a big tip through the app when she knew everyone was safe.

Slowly, Luisa approached the truck. She took a picture of the truck’s license plate and sent it directly to Rick Devlin with

a message that the car was parked illegally near Laura’s house.

She sent a message to Jack, not wanting to make any sound by calling.

Suspicious truck parked three hundred yards from Laura’s street, adjacent to her back fence. I’m coming in through the back.

Be alert.

Then she pocketed her phone, hopped the fence, and pulled her gun. She felt alive and exhilarated for the first time since

she decided not to reenlist in the Marines. Her heart rate slowed and her senses expanded. This was what she had trained for.

Luisa walked silently through the yard toward the house.

Jack’s phone vibrated as he was about to exit the barn. He glanced down and read the message from Luisa. Cody reached for

the handle, and Jack took his hand. He squatted next to Cody and whispered, “We need to stay put for a second.”

“What’s wrong?” Cody’s voice quivered.

Jack put a finger to his lips to indicate to remain silent. “Luisa is here,” he whispered, “and she’s looking at a strange

vehicle.” No use giving him too many details. He didn’t want Cody to panic.

Jack texted Laura.

Stay away from the windows. Luisa is checking on a potential situation.

He saw three dots indicating she was typing.

Then he heard a gunshot and the dots disappeared.

“Mommy!” Cody screamed.

Jack turned to him. “Hide. Pick the best place to hide and stay there until you hear my voice.”

Cody looked terrified, then he ran down the aisle of the barn and turned into one of the stalls.

Jack pulled his gun and ran toward the house, worried about Laura as well as Luisa. He focused on his training. He’d been

a cop for thirteen years, and the muscle memory never faded. Tactically, he knew running across the yard wasn’t smart, but

it was the shortest distance to the house. He made it quickly, and pressed his back against the house, and stopped. Listened.

The dogs were barking and he heard pounding on the front door, then it stopped.

Jack saw a glimpse of a figure near the corner of the house, only feet from him. Aberdeen had an accomplice during the hit-and-run

and break-ins, though he had been alone at the hotel. Staying flush against the wall, away from the back lights, he glanced

over, then heard a low whistle.

Luisa.

He whistled back, and Luisa immediately came to him.

She whispered, “I saw him approach the door alone. I don’t think anyone is with him, and no one else was in the truck. Police

are on their way.”

Jack handed her the key to the back door. “Get inside, stick with them, I’ll go around front and cut him off.”

As Jack spoke, the sound of breaking glass cut through the night. He pictured Laura’s large front window shattering.

He ran to the front while Luisa went in through the back.

Laura retrieved her shotgun from under her bed when she heard the shattering of glass. Obi and R2 were barking up a storm,

but they were secure in the den with Sydney and Bagel.

“Police are on their way,” Logan said. “They already had a call.”

Laura worried about Jack and Luisa—she didn’t know where they were, if they were injured, if Cody was okay.

Calm down , she told herself. Jack had Cody. Cody was safe. She would protect Sydney.

“Get my handgun from the safe,” she told Logan.

Logan went to the closet and retrieved the gun. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but so help her God, if that man went anywhere

near her daughter she would shoot him.

She wanted to go to the den and be with Sydney, but that would mean exposing herself and she didn’t want to put Logan or herself

in the line of fire. Aberdeen had a gun, he’d shot at her front door, but the extra lock Jack had insisted they install had

held.

She heard more glass as someone climbed through the window. Then swearing and a crash.

“You fucking bitch! Give me what’s mine!”

Then a shout from the kitchen and another gunshot.

Then another.

Jack.

Laura ran from the room, Logan behind her.

Jack looked through the broken window. Aberdeen had climbed through, but cut himself on the multitude of shards that covered

the floor. He swore and kicked at a chair, toppling it. Blood poured from his hand.

“You fucking bitch!” Aberdeen screamed. “Give me what’s mine!”

He started down the hall, limping, blood dripping from his left hand, a 9mm semiauto in his right.

He was heading toward the den and the bedrooms. Where Laura and her family were hiding.

He saw Luisa in the kitchen, caught her eye, and pointed at her. She nodded, and shouted, “Aberdeen! Freeze!”

Jack jumped through the already broken window, glass crunching under the soles of his durable boots.

Aberdeen turned first to Luisa, gun aimed at her, then he heard Jack and swirled to face him. He fired at Jack, and Jack and

Luisa both aimed at Aberdeen and fired back.

Jack saw Laura running down the hall, shotgun in hand, and he shouted at Luisa, who couldn’t see the hall from her angle,

“Cease fire!”

Aberdeen was down on the ground. Jack immediately went over and kicked the gun away from his hand, then squatted to check

his pulse. He moaned. Blood poured from his arm and his side—both Jack and Luisa had hit him. He heard sirens in the distance.

“You’re bleeding,” Laura said.

Jack looked at his arm. He thought he’d felt a sting.

“It barely grazed me.”

“Where’s Cody?”

“Hiding in the barn.”

“I need to see him. I don’t want Sydney to see this.”

Luisa said, “I’ll watch him.” She still had her gun trained on him.

“Luisa, you need to stop the bleeding,” Jack said.

“Why?” she snapped. “He broke into this house with the intent to do harm.”

Luisa was usually the cool, calm, collected sibling. This was a side of her Jack hadn’t seen before. But he hadn’t spent much

time with her since she left the military. Maybe that needed to change.

“Because,” Jack said quietly, “it’s the right thing to do.”

She scowled, and Logan said, “I’ll watch him, Lu. You save his life.”

She hesitated a fraction of a second, then holstered her weapon, grabbed towels from the kitchen, and put pressure on his

wounds.

Jack and Laura went to Sydney, and the three of them kept a firm hold on the dogs so they didn’t go into the living room and

cut their paws on the broken glass.

“Don’t look,” Laura told Sydney, who looked at the fallen man anyway.

Jack led them and the dogs outside and into the barn. He shouted, “Cody! All is clear. You can come out.”

At first, he didn’t hear anything. Then there was a creak and the chickens started squawking. Cody emerged from one of the

stalls, covered in hay and chicken feathers and chicken poop.

Laura ran to him and hugged him tightly. “Where were you?”

“The door to the chicken hutch—” He pointed. It was a tiny door and Cody could barely have gotten through it. He said to Jack,

“When we clean their pen or there’s a monsoon, we let them out that way so they can hang out in the barn.”

“That was a brilliant place to hide, Cody,” Jack said.

“Are you okay, Mom? I heard guns.”

“We’re all great,” she said and hugged her children. She looked at Jack over their heads and he saw her gratitude. Spontaneously,

he walked over and embraced the group.

He couldn’t wait to introduce his son to the Barrett family. He had a feeling they would be spending a lot of time together.