Disclaimer: I still don't own "Logan Lucky" or it's characters. I'm just putting them in some mild peril for this chapter…
IV
STEP SIX: EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Sarah nervously drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Her instincts railed at her to call for some kind of back-up, but Clyde had been adamant that his friend was more likely to carry out his threat to shoot himself if first responders converged on the house. Still, Sarah struggled not to reach for her cell phone. Sitting on the sidelines had never been her style.
Mike Miller had been waiting for them when Sarah pulled into the driveway of Duane's house. He'd been sitting on the porch steps beside a distraught blonde teenager (Lindsey, Sarah guessed). Sarah had kept a respectful distance, fighting her instincts to step in and take charge of the scene in her capacity as a government agent trained to handle crisis situations. She wasn't Special Agent Grayson here…not unless the situation spiraled out of control.
Therefore, she made herself stand back as Clyde listened to Lindsey's explanation of the situation. Clyde exchanged brief words with Mike, and then Clyde disappeared into the house. It was apparent that Lindsey wanted to follow, but Mike walked her over to one of the neighbor's houses, out of harm's way.
She wanted desperately to help—God willing without blowing her cover and the whole investigation. Closing the robbery case was important, and she couldn't do it if she lost Clyde's trust, but she wasn't willing to sacrifice anyone's life in the process, particularly not a Marine with post-traumatic stress and suicidal tendencies. Worse, if this "Duane" was severely unstable (which she couldn't asses since Clyde had insisted that she wait outside), he could shoot Logan before he killed himself, and she'd be on the hook for both men's deaths.
It wasn't worth the risk, she decided as the minutes dragged by. Sarah would keep her promise and not call in reinforcements—for the moment-but she wouldn't allow the stand-off to continue without at least getting close enough to assess the situation. She reached beneath the driver's seat for the .38 and clip that she had stashed there before meeting with Logan earlier that night. She'd had no place to hide the weapon with the black dress she'd worn, and she wasn't going to rely on the taser in her clutch in a situation that could become a gunfight.
In one fluid motion, Sarah had loaded the weapon pushed open the car door. Duane had been watching for their arrival, so she assumed he was in one of the rooms at the front of the house or had cameras providing a clear view of the street (perhaps a view of the entire perimeter of his property, but Sarah hoped she wasn't dealing with someone quite that paranoid). She made her way to the side of the house, keeping an eye out for hidden cameras or other security devices that might be in place.
She hadn't taken more than a few steps before the sound of gunshots halted her in her tracks. Two shots in quick succession from what sounded like a large caliber handgun. The sound had come unmistakably from the back of the house.
Her breath caught in her throat, a surge of fear making her heart suddenly slam in her chest. It galvanized her into action. Cursing, Sarah pulled out her cellphone and dialed 9-1-1. "This is Agent Sarah Grayson, F.B.I. I have shots fired at 2121 Huckley Avenue. Suspect is the property owner. He is suicidal. There is a civilian and an undercover Federal agent in the house."
By the time she had provided all crucial evidence to the operator, Mike had emerged from the neighbor's house. He shouted for Lindsey to stay inside. Sarah met him on the lawn, tucking the gun into her belt beneath her sweater, out of his sight.
"Was that-?" Mike asked.
Sarah nodded.
"Stay here, keep an eye on Lindsey. I'm going to see if Clyde needs help," Mike told her.
She shook her head, "Let me-"
"I know Duane, you don't. Stay here, and make sure no one calls the police." Leaving her, Mike ran for the house. She waited until he was well inside before she headed for the back of Duane's house.
She noticed that the neighbors had started poking their noses out of their doors and windows, searching for the source of the shots. Their eyes widened when they noticed the woman with the gun moving through the side yard. Sarah hissed quietly at them: "Stay inside and away from your windows. The police are on their way." Obviously, they weren't taking her word for it; she saw them pulling out their own cell phones.
She didn't blame them; she could imagine what a sight she was creeping in the dark in her slinky dress wielding the weapon. She simply didn't care. Her concentration was on reaching the back of the house as quickly and quietly as possible. If an armed and emotionally disturbed man was holding Clyde at gunpoint (or God-forbid had shot him, but Sarah didn't want to think about that), the Sarah was his best chance for survival. She needed to get to the two men and contain the situation before the police arrived and things became infinitely more complicated.
She paused by the patio door, forcing herself to slow down despite the urgent need to get inside and see for herself that Clyde was all right. She needed that element of surprise. She kept behind the potted shrubs and patio furniture as best she could as she entered the yard. Sarah peeked around curtains and through the open blinds, checking the rooms within her view for signs of activity. Nothing. She checked the eaves for more cameras. There was one near the sliding glass door, pointed in her direction.
Shit. The sliding door was her best way into the house, but the minute she approached, Duane was going to be able to see her…
She heard more sounds from deeper in the house: A thump, a curse, and then a crashing noise like glass or ceramic breaking. It was the thump that alarmed her. It had been heavy, like the sound of a body hitting the floor. She hadn't heard a gunshot, but there were dozens of ways an ex-Marine could hurt or kill a man without using a gun. Sarah couldn't wait; she had to get in there, see that Clyde was safe, and deal with the fallout after the scene was secured. She'd just have to move fast.
Resolved, Sarah ran to the sliding glass door. On the interior side of the door, the curtains had been drawn. She had to move fast and hoped Duane wasn't standing on the other side of those curtains with a gun. She reached for the door handle, hoping it wasn't locked. The curtains fluttered. Sarah reflexively shrank away from the door, raising her weapon. The lock on the handle clicked, and a second later Clyde pushed aside the curtain and pulled open the door. He startled slightly at the sight of Sarah, crouched on the patio, pointing a gun at him. "Sarah?"
Immediately, she lowered the weapon.
Clyde stared at her, shock in those brown eyes, his brow furrowed in confusion. She stared back, her gaze drawn to his prosthetic arm. The mechanical hand was dangling, almost detached from the arm cone. She could see that the hand itself had been shattered and some of its fingers completely removed by a distinct hole like that made by a bullet from a large caliber handgun. A second slug was lodged into the mechanisms of the artificial wrist, had almost severed the hand completely. His good hand was holding a .44 magnum. The clip had been removed from the gun.
She could surmise what had happened (it was kind of her job to do that kind of thing): Clyde had tried to talk Duane into handing over the gun. Duane had started to pull the trigger, and Clyde had tried to take weapon out of the other man's hand, somehow covering the barrel with his mechanical hand. Duane had squeezed the trigger just hard enough for the gun to discharge twice. Clyde must have pushed at the barrel so that it pointed away from both him and Duane, otherwise the two slugs would have passed right through the prosthetics and hit Clyde in the head or the chest. That thought made the breath hitch in Sarah's throat.
However, Clyde looked unharmed. Freaked out, but unharmed. Sarah was immensely, insanely grateful for that. However, he was watching her as if waiting for an explanation. "I told you to stay in the car," he said.
Right.
"I heard shots," she said lamely. "I thought you might need help."
He gave her a quizzical glare, like he could tell it was a bullshit answer but wasn't ready to argue about it just yet. "I had it under control."
She glared right back. He could at least be a tiny bit grateful. "Did you? Kind of looks like you almost got your head blown off. Cops are on their way now, whether your friend likes it or not." He frowned, and Sarah added quickly. "The whole neighborhood heard the shots. What did you expect? And I'd put that down, too, if I were you, less you want to get shot someplace that can be glued back together." She nodded to the .44 in his hand.
Clyde had already come to that conclusion. He ducked back into the house, making a beeline for the bedroom at the far end of the hallway. "Might be a good idea if they don't see you waving that thing around," he nodded to her weapon. "What are you doing with a gun, anyway?"
Sarah had already prepared an answer for that question. "I sell pharmaceuticals, Clyde. I carry samples in my car. People looking for a fix would leave me dead in a ditch and not feel all that bad about it afterward. I have a license for it."
When they reached the bedroom, he turned, blocking the doorway with his massive frame. "Wait out here." From the look in his eyes, it wasn't a request. She nodded, taking a step back from the door.
"Duane?" Clyde knocked on the door before entering the bedroom. The man on the other side of the door grunted, which Clyde interpreted as permission to re-enter the room. Through the partially open door, Sarah finally caught a glimpse of Duane. The man was sitting on the edge of the bed, head in hands. His night table had been overturned, and a lamp lay shattered on the tile floor. She figured that was the thump and crash she'd heard.
"I said I was sorry, Clyde." Duane said by way of greeting. He rubbed at his jaw. "You didn't need to sucker punch me."
"You weren't being reasonable."
"I'm still your superior officer."
"You aren't my superior officer anymore, you only pull that crap when you're losing an argument, and you shot me in my new arm! I waited five years to get this thing." Clyde moved to stand at the foot of the bed, offering the other man a hand up. "The police are going to be rolling up here any minute now. Probably a good idea if you go wait for them instead making them come in here."
"I expect you're right." Duane allowed Clyde to catch him by the elbow, maneuver him to his feet, and guide him towards the door. He spied the dark-haired woman waiting in the hallway. "Who's that?"
"Duane Dawson, this is Sarah Butler," Clyde introduced.
Sheepishly, Sarah saw the ex-Marine size her up—from the high-heeled shoes that still only put her shoulder-high to the two men, to the slinky blouse, to the .38 that she was still brandishing-with one glance. Then Duane nodded, a single jut of his jaw signifying his approval. "You're the date I interrupted?"
Sarah tried to hide a smile. "He told you about that?"
"I like her. What's she doing with a lunkhead like you?" Duane asked Clyde.
Clyde shrugged. "Slumming mostly."
LLLLLLL
They didn't have long to wait before the first police officers and ambulance rolled up to the house. Sarah met them at the curb, her hands held out in plain sight. She started talking almost as soon as the officers emerged from the vehicle, hastily explaining what had happened, displaying her identification as 'Sarah Butler', and offering assurances that the situation was under control. She discreetly provided them the phone number to quietly validate her status as an undercover agent on scene. Two officers guided her over to one of the vehicles while two more made their way towards the house, shouting orders at the two men on the porch.
Clyde was leaning against the porch rails, wondering how the hell Sarah had managed to make that snub nose .38 of hers disappear before the cops arrived. He obediently kept his hands up (as best he could, considering what was left of his artificial hand was dangling uselessly on its base) as the officers approached. Duane sat on the steps, placidly smoking what he figured was going to be his last cigarette until the psych ward of the V.A. hospital decided he was no longer a threat to himself or others. He knew the drill; he'd been there a few times in the five years since his honorable discharge from the Corps.
"You mind running the group 'til they let me out, Logan?" he asked.
"I'll do what I can."
"Don't punch any of them," he added.
Clyde shrugged. "Hell, I wouldn't do that…I like them."
Duane cracked a grin as he crushed out the cigarette on the concrete walkway and obeyed the officers' commands to keep his hands in sight. "You're such an asshole, hillbilly."
"Well, I learned from the best, Sarge." Clyde gave him a salute.
The officers paused halfway up the sidewalk, their hands poised near their weapons. A female officer whose badge identified her as "McCabe" frowned at the two men, keeping most of her focus on Duane. "Evening, Mr. Logan, Mr. Dawson," she greeted warily, "How are you tonight?"
"Much better now, Julia, and I told you to call me Duane." He tossed an exaggerated sulk her way.
Clyde was grateful to see McCabe and her unsmiling behemoth of a partner, Officer Moreau. McCabe was herself a retired Coast Guard officer from a long line of servicemen and women. She and Moreau made it a point to be the first officers on scene when she heard any calls coming from Duane's address or the nearby Veteran's Center. After four such calls in the past two years, they were familiar with the Marine and his condition and had earned a small measure of his trust.
Moreau studied the two men, particularly Dawson, and surveyed the area. "Where is the gun, Mr. Dawson?"
Duane nodded to table behind him, where the gun and its clip had been carefully set out of his reach. Another uniformed officer retrieved it which McCabe kept her attention on Dawson. "Any other weapons?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"All right, then, I need to ask you both to stand up and turn around, keep those hands where we can see them," the officer ordered as she gestured for him to turn around so she could frisk him for the weapon she'd been warned about by dispatch. Clyde, on the other hand, had the bad luck of being searched by Moreau. "You go to all this fuss just because you missed us, Mr. Dawson?"
"Well, hell, you never drop by for a social call. 'Sides, I heard it was steak night at the VA. You should stay and have dinner with me after I get checked in." Duane saw his friend roll his eyes. "You aren't the only one who appreciates a pretty lady with a firearms fetish, Logan."
Clyde glanced at Sarah. She was waiting behind the police barricade, watching with a look of apprehension. When she caught him staring, she offered a small smile.
"Behave yourself," McCabe scolded. She waved for the waiting paramedics to bring up a gurney. "You make us nervous when you start waving guns around. I'm going to have to put you in the restraints this time, Duane."
"Kinky."
"I said behave yourself." McCabe and her hulking partner supervised, hands still hovering near their weapons until the paramedics settled Dawson onto the gurney. McCabe spotted the bruise forming on his face. "What happened to your jaw? Got anything to do with Mr. Logan's arm?"
Sheepishly, Clyde did his best to hide the broken prosthetic and its bullet damage from the other officers' stares. Dawson sobered for a moment, opening his mouth to say something, but thinking better and immediately closing it again. He never had much recollection of his psychotic episodes after the fact, and he didn't remember shoving the beneath his own chin or deciding to squeeze the trigger.
Of all things, it had been the noise of the neighbors rolling their trash cans to the sidewalk that had set off this particular bought of hallucinations, memories of an abandoned terrorist bunker near Mosul where they'd uncovered human remains stuffed into countless bags like garbage. Caught up in that, he was barely aware of Clyde's endless dialogue over the phone and couldn't recollect precisely when his friend had arrived in person.
One moment, Duane was reliving the horrid stench of decayed flesh, dirt, and stale air and praying for the images in his head to stop...and the next moment, he was flat on his back on his bedroom floor, jaw screaming in pain, with Clyde hovering above him with a wild-eyed look of fear.
When neither man answered, McCabe rolled her eyes and chose to play along. "I see. You both walked into a door." She nodded to the paramedics, who started moving the gurney towards the waiting ambulance. "Officer Moreau's going to take your statement, Mr. Logan. Next time, call us sooner or you're going to take a ride down to the station."
Duane craned his neck to look over his shoulder. "Clyde? Thank you, brother. I mean it."
Sarah was waiting, leaning against the trunk of her car, while Clyde spoke to the tiny knot of officers gathered on Dawson's lawn. It was nearly another two hours after the ambulance departed before the police had finished their work at the scene and given permission for Clyde to leave.
He turned back to Sarah, hesitating for a moment. He was giving her the same look as when he had opened the curtain and found her brandishing her gun. She'd been trying to think what else she could say to throw off his suspicions, but, to her dismay, she found herself still shaky from the adrenaline and fear. It made it hard to think. She didn't like that one bit.
So, when he walked over and joined her in leaning against the car, Sarah settled for asking: "How's he doing?"
"They'll keep him at the hospital for the mandatory observation time, then probably more therapy if the VA decides to pay for it this time. Lindsey will stay with Mike and his wife for a while. After that, who knows." Clyde knew the routine; he'd been through it too many times between Duane's bouts with depression and some of the other folks in their support group. He knew that he'd given Jimmy and Mellie more than a few sleepless nights during his own darker moments after returning home. They'd never admit it, but Clyde was pretty sure nights like those were the reason one or the other of his siblings kept talking him into living with them when he made plenty of money at the bar to afford his own place.
He just hoped there wasn't some jail time tacked on to his friend's troubles, since Duane had actually discharging the weapon this time.
Sarah's voice broke him out of his brooding: "How are you doing?"
He shrugged. "I'm all right, considering I almost got shot twice in one night…"
Sarah winced. So, he wasn't going to let that go just yet. "I did not almost shoot you! I never shoot anything unless I mean to." She stopped protesting when she saw him smirk just a bit and realized he was teasing her. Sarah elbowed him. "What? You don't believe it? You want to go shooting with me sometime?"
Clyde shook his head. "No, I'll take your word for it."
"Anyway, what was I supposed to do? Sit in the car with my thumbs up my ass and hope everything worked out? You know, you scared the shit out of me back there. I thought Duane had shot you for real." Sarah almost regretted the confession when his smirk started looking like a very smug grin.
"What? You were worried about me?"
Groaning, she pointedly turned her back and circled around to the driver's door. "Don't get all full of yourself now, Logan."
Clyde slid into the passenger seat. "Duane wouldn't have shot me." The gun had never so much as pointed in Clyde's direction, but Sarah would have no way to know that.
"Then why'd you do something foolish like grab at a loaded gun?" She was snapping, but she couldn't help it.
"'Cause he was going to pull the trigger this time," Clyde said it like it was a fact, which Sarah supposed it was, given all that had transpired.
Before she climbed into the car, she reached for the tennis shoes on the floor in the back seat. She'd made the mad drive from West Virginia in her heels—not to mention going through the chaos at Dawson's house-because there hadn't been time for her to give it any thought. Her feet were killing her, and she wasn't going to try to drive home in the painful shoes. Sighing in great relief, she dug the car keys from her jacket pocket and settled into the driver's seat.
"And punching him was the right answer?"
"It was an instinct." Clyde had only seen Duane put the gun to his chin and the twitch of his finger. Reflex had kicked in after that; he'd only wanted to move the gun before it took his friend's head clean off. Besides, it was much easier to take the gun from Duane when he was unconscious and apologize afterward.
"Well, in the future, please resist instincts that can get you hurt." Sarah left it at that. She pulled the car into the sparse late-night traffic.
TBC…
