Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. The two others were in dark clothes and were hard to make out.

The guy in the jeans looked up and down the street, then approached the driver’s door, fiddled with it for a moment, and pulled it open. The lights flashed and for a moment you could hear the alarm, but he climbed in and after a couple of bleeps the alarm stopped. The two other guys then stepped up to the rear doors and whoever was filming zoomed in on them. The picture became more grainy, but the nearside guy, the one who must have shot at us, turned and looked up and down the road just before he opened the door and got in.

I said, “Back up and freeze on his face… Just there!”

Dehan spoke through clenched teeth, “Got you, you motherfucker!” She glanced at Newman’s astonished face, but she didn’t apologize. Instead, she said, “Jay Guzman. He’s from the hood. Started out as muscle for the Sureños. Then did his degree at Attica and graduated with honors in various forms of murder. There were three hits attributed to him at the correctional facility, then a string more over the last few years, mostly for the Mob.”

Newman looked impressed. “Any doubt?”

She shook her head. “None.”

I said, “Let’s go get the son of a bitch.”

“Take a SWAT team.” He stood. “I’ll come down for the briefing.”

While Newman gathered the team in the briefing room, Dehan found Guzman’s number. He had a nice house out near Eastchester Bay. She called and waited while it rang. Then she suddenly cocked her hip and flopped her head on one side with an idiot grin. The accent was straight out of the deep south.

“Oh, good morning! I represent the Exclusive New York Fine Food and Wine Company. We have been asked to extend an invitation to Mr. Guzman to be among our very select group of members. I wonder if Mr. Guzman is there? Could I speak to him possibly?” She waited, listening, with a bright smile on her face, then said, “Oh, he’s sleeping? Oh, heavens no! Don’t wake him!” She laughed out loud. “I’ll call back at a more convenient time. Five o’clock? I’ll be sure to call then. You have a super day, y’hear!”

She hung up and strode into the briefing room. Newman was talking but she interrupted him.

“Guzman is at home right now sleeping. Apparently he was up late and will sleep till about four. But we need to act now. There is too much riding on this.”

Newman glanced at me. I smiled and nodded. He turned to the SWAT team. There were six of them.

“Okay, like I said, this guy is very dangerous. We are going into his home. We don’t know what we are going to find in there but we have to assume the worst. Our latest intel is that he will be in his bed asleep, but you need to be ready for him to be awake and armed. He has a wife and two kids. So you will need to be aware of them and keep them out of harm’s way. The wife may be in bed with him. Be prepared for that.

“Jones, Smith, Patel, and Philips, you go in the back. Dehan, Gunther, and Sanchez, you go in the front. Dehan is in charge of this operation. Get him alive! Okay? We need this man alive! Go!”

He stood and put a hand on my shoulder. “You sit this one out in the car with me, Stone.” He grinned. “How does it feel to be getting old?”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn’t know sir.”

He laughed and we made our way out to the cars.

Twenty One

There is nothing in this world more frustrating that having to sit in a car and watch your partner lead a SWAT raid on a house where you know there is an armed man who has put two slugs into your body. It doesn’t get much more frustrating than that.

We sat in silence as they deployed in their body armor, four around the back and Dehan and two more entering through the front garden, flattened against the walls. The two guys with her, Gunther and Sanchez, looked big and tough. Beside them Dehan looked delicate and frail. I knew she was as tough as nails, I’d seen her in action and I knew she was fast and lethal, but to me right then, with two bullet holes in my chest, she looked like a young girl that I should be protecting.

“It should be me going in there, not her.”

Newman looked at me curiously. “In your condition you’d be a liability, John.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“It was very brave, what you did. Well beyond the call of duty.”

I shrugged. “No it wasn’t. I didn’t think. Any one of us would have done the same for a partner.”

He grunted. There was a shout. Dehan’s voice. Then they were battering the door and the three of them were storming in, hollering. I strained my ears, listening for gunfire, then climbed out of the car where I could hear better. The only sound was the distant sigh of mundane traffic, the whisper of the breeze among the cold, naked branches, and far off, muffled, the occasional shout. I stood staring, knowing that people might be dying, that in that house was the intention to kill, and Dehan was the victim of choice.

I heard Newman shout, but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t even know that I was running. I crossed the lawn and I was up the stairs to the porch and busting in through the doors. A woman with two kids sitting on a sofa in the living room. A cop in a helmet and body armor standing over her. He glanced at me and frowned