Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

As Payne rushed for the door, he kicked the shooter’s gun toward the back counter. The two customers there were lying on the floor in front of it. The one to the left was curled up in the corner with his back to Payne and, almost comically, shielding his head by holding a white plate over it. The one on the right was facedown and still. Blood soaked the back of his shirt.

The enormous cook, who had ducked below the counter, now peered wide-eyed over its top.

Payne shouted, “Call nine-one-one!” then threw open the door and ran out.

Daquan, blood on his right hand as he gripped his left upper arm, crawled out from beneath the cash register.

He hesitated a moment before moving toward the shooter, who was motionless. He picked up the small-frame semiautomatic pistol from the floor.

The cook stood and shouted, “Daquan, don’t!”

Daquan went out the door.

He turned right and took off down the sidewalk, following Payne.

—

The storefronts along Erie Avenue gave way to a decaying neighborhood of older row houses. Daquan Williams watched the teenager dart out into traffic and dodge vehicles as he ran across Erie, headed in the direction of a series of three or four overgrown vacant lots where houses had once stood.

He saw that Matt Payne, arms and legs pumping as he picked up speed, was beginning to close the distance between them.

“Police! Stop!” Payne yelled again.

The teenager made it to the first lot off Thirteenth Street, then disappeared into an overgrowth of bushes at the back of it.

Payne, moments later, reached the bushes, cautiously pushed aside limbs, swept the space with his pistol, and then entered.

Daquan started to cross Erie but heard a squeal of brakes and then a truck horn begin blaring. He slid to a stop, narrowly missing being hit by a delivery truck.

It roared past, its huge tires splashing his pants and shoes with slush from a huge pothole. A car and a small pickup closely following the truck honked as they splashed past.

Daquan finally found a gap in traffic and made his way across.

He ran to the bushes, then went quickly into them, limbs wet with snow slapping at him. One knocked his cap off. The dim light made it hard to see. After a long moment, he came out the other side, to another open lot. He saw Payne, who had run across another street, just as he disappeared into another clump of overgrowth at the back of another vacant lot between row houses.

While Daquan ran across that street to follow, a dirty-brown four-door Ford Taurus pulled to the curb in front of the house bordering the lot. Daquan dodged the sedan, running behind it, then started across the lot.

Ahead, from somewhere in the overgrowth, he heard Matt Payne once again shouting, “Stop! Police!”

This time, though, was different.

Almost immediately there came a rapid series of shots—the first three sounding not quite as loud as the final two.

Daquan heard nothing more as he reached the overgrowth and then, while trying to control his heavy breathing, entered it slowly. He raised the pistol and gripped it tightly with both hands.

More snow fell from limbs onto his soaked T-shirt and jeans. He shivered as he stepped carefully in the dim light, listening for sounds but hearing only his labored breath. He finally reached the far side.

He wiped snow from his eyes.

And then his stomach dropped.

Oh, shit!

Matt Payne was laying facedown in the snow.

The teenager, ten feet farther into the vacant lot, was making a blood-streaked path in the snow as he tried to crawl away.

Then he stopped moving.