Shadow Of Misgivings (Margot Harris 5)

“I figure I’ve got a day. Since this might be my last night here, do you want to have dinner with me? Maybe eat some Mexican food and drink Tequila until they have to carry us home?”

“It's a tempting offer, but I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend for dinner. It should be a good time, except for the part when he asks me how my day was and I leave out the part where I found a dead body.”

Marv lowered his head. “Sorry I got you involved. I should have known if Mal was involved it was going to be trouble. It always is with that guy.”

Margot wished she could tell him differently.

“Do me a favor, Margot? Leave this alone. I don’t want you ending up in the workshop freezer. ”

“You fired me, remember?”

“Yeah, I did, but you seem the stubborn type.”

“Don’t worry, I’m out. Knowing Mal, he’s going to show up in the next couple of days anyway, acting like nothing ever happened. Maybe for him nothing really did.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Odds are I am,” Margot told him, even though she had trouble believing it.

She got in her car, wondering if she had meant it when she’d said she was out. She’d just put the car in reverse when she saw a Ford Bronco speeding towards the parking lot. The SUV never slowed down as it hit the curb. It jumped the sidewalk and plowed into Margot’s Prius.

She had her seatbelt on and managed to cover her head and take her foot off the brake so her car would be knocked backward instead of getting crushed. Still, the impact flipped her over and sent the car sliding on its roof across the parking lot. She was hanging upside down with her head against the crushed roof of her car. If she’d been taller, her head would have been as crumpled and mangled as the top of her car.

She looked over and saw the boots. She’d seen them before. Either the person who hit her had the same taste in footwear as Deputy Brantley or Brantley himself was limping toward her car getting ready to finish her off.

She heard the gunfire and through the cracked window she saw the man in the boots stumble. Margot figured Marv was shooting at him. If it was Brantley, she figured he’d still be wearing a Kevlar vest. She hoped Marv had gone for the head, but then Brantley kneeled and she could see that he hadn’t. Brantley's right arm swung around revealing the H&K submachine gun in his hand. He fired in a wide arc in Marv’s direction. Margot hoped he got out of the way.

Her purse with the gun had been on the passenger seat, but now she couldn’t see it anywhere. Outside, Brantley fired some at someone Margot couldn’t see while she undid her belt and dropped to the ceiling of her car. She looked back to see Brantley reload his weapon and swing it her way.

She scrambled to the passenger door. The crumpled metal made it impossible to open, so she drove her elbow into the cracked window. It fell away and Margot rolled out of the overturned car as Brantley sprayed it with machine gunfire. While she ducked down, Margot saw her purse lying by the back window. It had been unzipped when she set it down, so the contents were spilled out. She couldn’t see the gun, but the mace was right by the window.

Like the window she had broken, it was covered in a spider web pattern of cracks. Margot drove her heel into the window and the glass fell away. She snagged the mace as Brantley came around the corner.

Margot scrambled away just ahead of Brantley’s bullets. She ran around to the back of the Prius, stopped, and put her back against the trunk. Over by his tipped over bike, she could see Marv on the ground. He wasn’t moving and his pistol was laying by his hand.

Brantley came around the car and Margot grabbed his gun. She knew she couldn’t overpower him, even though he had to be weaker than before. Margot pushed the gun away just enough so the volley of slugs she fired didn’t come her way and then sprayed his face with the mace.

She was hoping for the chemical spray to debilitate him enough so she could twist the gun out of his hands and use it against him. While it definitely caused him some serious pain, however, it never loosened his grip on the machine gun.

He punched her across the temple while she was trying to dislodge the gun from his grip. The blow spun her around and sent her to the ground face first. If Brantley could see, she would have been a goner, but he was still trying to get the burning chemical out of his eyes. He couldn’t take aim even though she was only a few feet away.

Margot ran to the other side of her car again while Brantley tried to blink away the mace. She looked through the window again but couldn’t find her gun. Margot could hear sirens in the distance but didn’t think they would arrive before Brantley recovered enough to shoot her. If she decided to run, she’d have to make it a long way before she could find any cover. The odds of getting a bullet in the back were high.

“Come on Margot, why make this so difficult on both of us?” Brantley said.

The fact he was talking made it seem like he was recovering quickly. The alligator back patter on the window didn’t make it easy to see inside, so she kicked in that window as well.

“You can’t run or hide. Margot. Why don’t you quit being such a stubborn bitch?”

Margot crawled in the car and found the gun. She could see Brantley’s boots moving by the back of the car. He was coming around to finish her off. She shot him in the foot as he moved past her. He fell on his back and sat up pointing the machine gun her way. Margot shot him in the face twice. He fell back as he pulled the trigger, shredding the trunk of the Prius as he fell.

Chapter 7

Margot sat up on the hospital bed. Just doing that made her dizzy. She had suffered a concussion and lost a lot of blood, though not from bullet wounds or she would probably be resting in the morgue instead of a hospital bed. The knock on her head had bled a lot but she’d also cut up her elbow and her ankle busting out her car windows. The adrenaline rush of avoiding getting cut in half by machine-gun fire had kept her from noticing. When she’d realized Brantley's last volley had gone over her head she had relaxed and ended up passing out from the loss of blood.

“Maybe you should lay back down,” Radcliff told her. She wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but she knew he had been there when she woke up.

She smiled at Radcliff, told him, “Just give me a second,” and then found the remote that adjusted the bed and raised up the back so she had something to lean against. Once she did that, the dizziness went away and Margot almost felt like herself again.