Page 69 of Return of the Spider

We climbed into the building, the gunfire outside now echoing behind us. In the far distance, the first sirens wailed.

Dodging pallets of concrete mix stacked on both sides of the inner dock, we went to a set of double doors and looked through a porthole window into a large, high-ceilinged space filled with towering steel shelves, some heavily loaded, some empty.

“We’ve got company in here,” I whispered. “Hooded dude went in the first dock chasing Prince and Rodolpho.”

“I think the cousins are going for Donovan,” Sampson said.

A figure sprinted toward us from the stacks. We both stepped back and to either side of the double doors.

When the man, one of Prince’s armed guards, barged through,he found the muzzles of two shotguns pressed to the back of his head.

“Police,” Sampson said. “Drop the gun.”

He dropped his weapon.

“Where’s the woman?” I said. “The one they just brought in here.”

He said nothing.

“Tell us,” Sampson said. “She’s a cop. If he kills her, you’ll go down for it too.”

The man answered in a thick Haitian accent, his voice shaking. “Other side of the warehouse. Prince’s office.”

“Who’s attacking?”

“No idea. Prince, he got many enemies.”

Sampson spun his shotgun and clipped the guy right behind the ear with the side of the stock, knocking him out cold. He dropped in his tracks.

“No time for niceties,” he said to me. He kicked open the double doors and entered the warehouse.

CHAPTER

56

I’d known john sampsonsince elementary school. I’d met him shortly after I moved to Washington, DC, to live with my grandmother.

As we grew older, I’d seen him handle himself remarkably well in a couple of fights. And I was well aware of his training with the U.S. Army and of the years he spent on patrol with Metro before becoming a detective.

But I had never seen the man who blew through those doors, intent on rescuing Officer Nancy Donovan. Low, aware, with his attention sweeping three hundred degrees left and right, he raced forward into the relative protection of the stacks. I was right behind him.

Sampson slowed to a stop, held up his hand, and listened. We could still hear shooting outside, but it was distant and sporadic.

Then, far ahead of us and to our left, toward the northeastcorner of the building, we heard muffled, frantic voices. Sampson nodded to me, gestured in that direction, then turned into a stalker.

He moved quickly through the stacks, staying right in our aisle, and slowed again when we could see the far wall. Then he stopped and listened once more.

We could hear male voices arguing in Haitian Creole. They were closer and almost directly ahead of us now.

Sampson slipped off his shoes. I did the same, and we crept in the direction of the voices, shotguns shouldered, ready.

When we were some fifty yards away, we heard the argument growing more intense. There were at least three male voices. And then we heard Nancy Donovan.

“You do this, Patrice, and you are guaranteeing yourself a death sentence,” she said.

A slap. “Shut up, bitch,” Prince said. “We have other things to think about.”

We crossed another aisle in the stacks of shelves. They were no more than three aisles away now, to our two o’clock.