“You know it.” Sandra slid into the seat. “We gotta get our props back from PGCPD.”
Cole walked toward the front of the store. She really didn’t want any three A.M. coffee, often so thick it tasted like fuel oil. Nor did she need any Slim Jims or Little Debbie anything but it was not the best hour for shopping for anything wholesome. Even the bananas in a basket at checkout, she knew from experience, would be oily black by this hour.
At the corner of her eye she saw a van pull in to pump gas. She had parked her cruiser near the front door but off to one side. Hugo was in the front seat watching her. He always did that, watched her every move from the driver’s seat when she left the vehicle. Otherwise he was content to ride in back where he was more protected. She waved on her way past, thinking she should walk him when she returned. Sometimes she just sat in the parking lot of this place on her break and ate a small bag of whatever seemed the most harmless to her health as she watched the wee hours of Rockville crawl by.
Once inside, she went quickly to the ladies’, then the drink cases, found a bottle of latte and grabbed a package of almonds and headed for the counter.
The young man behind the counter looked less interested in her paying than in the game on the small TV behind the counter. She could probably have walked out and he wouldn’t have cared. She plunked her items down.
He glanced at her in surprise. “Oh hey, didn’t see you come in.”
Cole looked at him. “You really want to pay more attention to who comes in here and when they leave. It’s the right time of night to be robbed.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded, rubbernecking over his shoulder as he rang up her purchase. “Sure thing, Officer.”
Cole waved off the offer of a bag and collected her items. “Good night.”
She saw a man coming toward the door as she pushed through it. She paused and allowed him to enter. He was big, ponytailed, with a tattooed neck and arms exposed by his T-shirt. She skimmed the vulgar threat printed across his chest and met his eyes. He jerked his head in greeting under his cap as he moved through the door. She waited until he was several steps past her before she exited.
The van was now pulled up before the store with a space between it and her cruiser on her driver’s side. No one in the front seat. She surveyed the service station area. No one else in sight. A single car drove up, slowed, spotted her cruiser, and sped away. Hugo was watching her as she juggled bottle and nuts to release her weapon in its holster. Her heart was banging yet there was no clear reason.
The man exited the store and moved toward the driver’s side of the van. She watched until he opened the driver’s side door. Relaxing a fraction, she set her goodies on the hood of her cruiser and with one hand on the butt of her weapon reached to open her door.
The front passenger door of the van swung open behind her.
She spun around, drawing her weapon, but it was too late. A man emerged from the van and grabbed her. He twisted her arm viciously to make her drop the gun. The van’s driver had rounded the van and joined them, forcing a cloth with a chemical smell over her nose and mouth, choking her and preventing her from screaming. The first man caught her arms and pulled them behind her so quickly that she couldn’t reach the button to release Hugo, who was barking and scratching, trying to get through the glass.
She fought hard, kicking and biting and trying to reach the Taser on her belt, but they had come prepared to eliminate her options. She connected with thigh and gut more than once before they simply picked her up bodily. Twisting and kicking, she tried every move she’d ever been taught but her arms and legs were losing coordination. No, she was losing consciousness.
The thought so enraged her she kicked out wildly when she was lifted up, her steel-toed boot connecting with muscled flesh.
Blinded by the cloth, she didn’t see it coming. The blow of a fist jerked her head back. Through a burst of stunning pain brilliant comets shot across her vision. She tasted blood as she was dumped in the back of the van. And then she was sliding down into a suffocating slack-limbed blankness.
*
The coordinates the county police dispatcher had just given Cole’s backup team were for an area of Montgomery County Scott didn’t know well. That didn’t stop him from driving like a street racer as his GPS locked onto the location.
He looked back over his shoulder. Hugo and Izzy were with him, in the back of his truck. That was little comfort. No one yet had eyes on the target.
Ever since they’d been alerted to Cole’s abandoned cruiser in the convenience store parking lot he had been going nuts behind his calm exterior.