[Georgia 03] Fallen

Will knew in his gut that she’d either be on the floor or on top of the killers if anything happened to her mother.
    “Will!” Amanda snarled.
    He kept the rifle close to his body as he ran past the car and into the house. The two women were standing in what must’ve been a screened porch at one time but was now a laundry room. Before he could close the door, Roz Levy started yelling at Amanda.
    “Give me back that!” the old woman demanded.
    Amanda had the Python. “You could’ve killed all of us.” She opened the chamber and ejected the load of .38 Specials onto the dryer. “I should arrest you right now.”
    “I’d like to see you try.”
    Roz Levy wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Will felt his throat clench around the effort to keep from yelling. “You said this would be an easy exchange. You said they’d take the money and give Evelyn—”
    “Shut up, Will.” Amanda spun the empty cylinder back into the revolver and tossed it onto the washer.
    She must’ve taken Will’s silence as following orders, but the truth was that he was so furious that he didn’t trust himself to speak. Arguing wouldn’t change the fact that Faith was stuck in that house without a clear exit plan. There was nothing they could do now except wait for SWAT to show up and pretend this was a hostage negotiation instead of a suicide mission.
    Unless Will went in himself. He gripped his rifle. He should go in there. He should do exactly what Faith had done two days before and bust down the door and start shooting.
    Amanda’s hand clamped around his wrist. “Don’t you dare leave this room,” she warned him. “I’ll shoot you myself if I have to.”
    Will’s teeth started to ache from grinding together. He pulled away from her, banging into a metal lawn chair in the middle of the room. He couldn’t help but take in his surroundings. A high-speed camera was mounted on a tripod, pointing out the window in the door. Roz Levy had covered the glass with black construction paper, leaving a small hole for the lens to peer through. A shotgun was beside the door. No wonder she hadn’t allowed Will into the house. She didn’t want him obstructing her view.
    Will looked into the camera viewfinder. The lens was sharper than his scope. He could see sweat dripping down the side of Faith’s face. She was still talking. She was trying to reason with the shooter.
    One shooter. One man left standing.
    Two bad guys had gone into that house. Both were dressed in black jackets and hats. One had been shot. Will was certain of that, at least. He had watched both kids forcing Evelyn across the lawn and into the house. The one in back had done all of the heavy lifting. He was expendable, just like Ricardo, just like Hironobu Kwon, just like every other man who’d tried to get his hands on Evelyn Mitchell’s money.
    But it had never been about the money. Chuck Finn wasn’t pulling the strings. There was no wizard behind the curtain. Here was the head of Roger Ling’s snake: an angry kid with blue eyes and a Tec-9 and some kind of grudge he was intent on carrying out.
    Will spoke through clenched teeth. “It’s just him now. This is what he wanted all along.”
    “He’ll never spend a dime of that money.”
    He struggled to keep his voice down. “He doesn’t care about the money.”
    “Then what does he care about?” She grabbed his shoulder and jerked him away from the camera. “Come on, genius. Tell me what he wants.”
    Mrs. Levy mumbled, “You know what he wants.” She was loading the cartridges back into her revolver.
    “Zip it, Roz. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Amanda glared at Will. “Enlighten me, Dr. Trent. I’m all ears.”
    “He wants to kill her. He wants to kill both of them.” Will finally dropped the biggest I-told-you-so of his life. “And if you had deigned for once to listen to me, none of this would be happening.”
    Anger flared in Amanda’s eyes, but she told him, “Go on. Get it all out.”
    In the end, it was her acquiescence that sent him over the edge. “I told you we should slow this down. I told you we should figure out what they really wanted before we sent Faith in there with a target on her back.” He closed the space between them, backing her against the washer. “You were so hell-bent on proving your dick is bigger than mine that you didn’t stop to think that I might be right about something.” Will leaned in close enough to feel her breath on his face. “Any