Love on Ice
Chapter 38
The leader and one other left first and worked their way into the backyard, careful to avoid windows and doors. What they didn't have was a floor plan for the house. They'd done a search for the address but shortly after the house had been purchased all of the real estate companies had removed the house from their web sites. They didn't even know the square footage of the place.
He directed the man with him to go through the lower door off the lower deck while he carefully climbed the other set of stairs to the upper deck.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Rick had had an idea for his book so he was at his computer station. Suddenly his desktop and all of the lights in the house went out. "What the hell?!"
Alexis was in bed, sound asleep, so she didn't notice anything.
Kate was with Maria in the kitchen and was helping her to clean up after dinner. Kate was rinsing before putting things into the dishwasher while Maria was wiping down the table, countertops, and range. Without warning it all went dark and Kate looked around. "What the? Stay here!" Kate worked her way out of the kitchen to try a different room.
Rick never knew just how dark the house could get when all the lights unexpectedly went out. Looking around told him that it wasn't just his little space. Then there was a small amount of light. That had him up and looking over the short wall to the space below. Down there he saw a light swinging back and forth. His eyes opened wide in shock.
Rick watched the light for a moment as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. While it was obviously a flashlight, it wasn't entirely a tight beam. He was starting to make out that there was a man and next to the flashlight was a weapon.
He had written about them often enough by now. Derek Storm had certainly used his fair share of them. He could also tell that the weapon had a silencer attached to it.
His first idea was to pull out his cell phone and make a call. But it wasn't just dark inside, it was also silent. He feared that the intruder would hear him. Now Rick needed to figure out what to do about him.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Kate walked into the living room, tried a lamp, and got nothing. Pulling out her cell phone showed that it wasn't affected. It was simply a blackout for an as yet unknown reason.
Kate kicked herself for not putting the power company on her phone list. She was going to have to search for their number now.
Kate knew she could do this on her phone if the WiFi was still active. However, it needed power, so doing a web search on her phone was out. They didn't have a land line since they didn't think it was necessary. Everyone had a cell phone including Maria. Her Captain hadn't required her to have a land line so they hadn't bothered.
Then Kate heard Maria scream; Kate took off running since being able to see in the dark was getting better.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Rick knew going down the stairs would expose his legs to this thug as he watched him sweep the ground floor. He really only had one course of action so he waited a moment until whoever was close enough.
Once Rick was satisfied that he could jump that far he placed his hands on the short wall, vaulted over the wall, and landed feetfirst on this guy.
Rick heard a thump that he took to be the sound of his weapon going off as they both hit the floor. Rick was far more ready for this than he was so Rick was back on his feet before the intruder was.
Rick had no idea where the round he had discharged had gone but that could wait. A quick move and a twist then Rick heard the familiar snap of this man's right wrist breaking, followed by hearing his weapon land on the floor.
To his credit the guy didn't scream from the obvious pain, but he did grunt and pant. One fast move later and he now had a broken right arm to go with his broken wrist.
Once again the guy only grunted from the pain. Rick then slammed his palm into the man's nose and heard a nice crunching sound telling him that he had broken his nose.
Since Rick was sure he had him dazed he took his head and pushed it down while bringing his knee up to meet the thug's nose. That caused him to stagger so Rick jammed his fingers into the guy's throat and watched him fall to the floor, choking on his fractured Adam's apple.
Rick left him and began looking for more of them. If there was one, there was probably more. It was something Derek Storm would think about.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Kate rushed into the kitchen and saw a man had Maria. She reached for her weapon. She was still trying to work the Ming case when she could so she and her team were under orders to be armed at all times.
"Don't, Detective." He made sure she saw his weapon that was equipped with a silencer jammed into the side of Maria's head just below her jaw line and pointed up. "Take it out nice and slow and lay it on the floor."
He didn't look Chinese to Kate so it didn't make sense yet. Kate was betting that she could pull her weapon and put at least one round into this guy. But it would mean that Maria would get shot in the head. Depending on what type of round it was, he could blow Maria's brains all over the kitchen.
Kate put out her left hand, showed him her palm, carefully took out her weapon, then very slowly placed it on the floor.
"Very good, Detective. I would hate to blow this woman's brains all over this kitchen."
Kate noticed that yet again he had called her detective. Except she was an inspector now. She was a detective back in New York City. That gave her a clue.
"What do you want?" Kate asked him.
"Kick it this way, Detective. …Carefully." What he wanted was her weapon away from her and closer to him.
She still had her backup weapon strapped to her lower leg at her ankle so she wasn't totally unarmed. It was just that getting to it before he shot both of them wasn't going to be easy.
Kate kicked it but it only made it about half way since she had only tapped it.
"We're going to have a little talk, Detective. Jerk me around and things will only get worse for you and your family."
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Rick saw his flashlight beam before he saw the man. He had no doubt that this intruder was equally armed. He was too busy to question why. Right now he had a bigger problem: weapons meant they were willing to kill.
He had done a lot of training when he was younger to be as good as he was. But it didn't include how to use a weapon. If it wasn't obvious he wouldn't even know whether the safety was on or off.
This man was showing just where he was and Rick wasn't. So he worked as quietly as he could to get at least to his flank if not actually behind him.
Rick had no choice but to crawl across the floor slowly as he watched the flashlight sweep side to side. His mind drifted for a moment. He was going to have to remember this for Derek Storm in one of his books. Rick shook his head, then leapt up, catching the intruder by surprise. Much like the last man he got a single shot off that went somewhere before Rick could snap his wrist, have him lose control of his weapon, and fall to the floor.
This guy briefly screamed while grunting from the pain. Since pain can be debilitating, Rick took the opening to break his arm with a resounding snap. This time he simply grunted.
Rick gave him credit he used his left hand to hit him squarely in the jaw. Though, because of the pain and it being his off hand the blow was light.
Rick wasn't a killer and didn't know for a fact that he had killed the first man, but he was now worried that there were more than two. So he rammed his fingers into the intruder's throat and pulled out his Adam's apple.
Rick dropped his Adam's apple and let the guy who was now effectively dead fall to the floor. "Alexis!" Rick whispered to himself and quickly moved toward her bedroom. Along the way he was finally aware that Snow hadn't barked. Did that mean Snow had been shot and killed before she could bark or were Alexis and Snow still safe? It didn't matter; he hurried to her bedroom anyway.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
"What do you want?" Kate asked him again.
He didn't get to answer her question. Maria, while scared to death, wasn't putting up with this crap. This was her family; Rick and now Kate had been really good to her.
Maria lifted her right leg and tried to take a peek just to make sure and slammed her heel straight down onto his toes in his shoe, not a steel toe boot. For both of them their eyes were adapting to the darkness.
He screamed from the pain but recovered quickly. He really needed all of them alive so shooting any of them was out until after he had learned all there was to learn. Then all of them, including the brat, would die.
Maria swiped her hand at the arm holding the gun and connected. Unfortunately she just didn't have the strength and while he didn't really mean to he pulled the trigger.
Kate took this moment to jump him and began using him as her own punching bag, just like the one she had practiced on several times.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Kate found herself flying across the dining room table to land on the floor in a heap. He took this moment to look if he could see his weapon that he'd lost. This bitch wasn't in his league but she had gotten the jump on him because of that old woman. He would take great pleasure in seeing the old lady suffered greatly for that.
Kate thought she had been doing relatively well. But whoever he was this guy was clearly better than she was. It was then that she really wished that she'd gotten Rick to teach her how to do what he did. She really should have tried harder.
Kate was up and he was on the other end of the dining room table and seemed to be looking everywhere. She was betting it was for his weapon. If he found it, she was dead.
There was nothing on the table she could use as a weapon. All the knives were in the kitchen itself. Though the wine coolers were close… She opened a door and pulled out a wine bottle. Her first thought was to throw it at him. Instead she broke it, spilling wine all over the floor. It would only be long after the fight was over that Kate would kick herself for not remembering her back up weapon. She had no excuse for why she had forgotten about that.
Turning to look at him she realized that he had indeed found his weapon. What she needed to do was to get in nice and close to use her broken bottle. Just as she took a step she saw Rick move into the kitchen and take hold of his hand. A fraction of a second later she heard a snap.
Rick was pissed as hell. Alexis and Snow were fine and the sound of a fight lead him to the kitchen. What he found pissed him off even more.
Maria was on the kitchen floor and he saw a dark liquid that he took to be blood. Kate was taking a bottle of wine out of one of the coolers and there was a man standing there with his back to him. Rick watched him reach down and pick up a weapon that looked just like all the others.
Taking a couple of steps, he grabbed his hand, twisted it, and was rewarded with yet another snap of bone. This intruder was unlike the others. This one screamed from the pain. A second later and his right arm was broken and the man screamed yet again. Rick was really, really pissed so he got a quick jab to his throat that caused him to begin choking.
Rick wasn't satisfied. He took the same right hand and much like all those Three Stooges episodes he tried to jam two fingers into the thug's eyes. Except his choking caused his head to move so only one finger got jammed into his eye.
That really had the guy screaming. "OW! OW! OW!" Rick had just broken a finger on the bone around his eye socket.
Rick walked around cradling his broken finger in his good hand. Kate took a moment to take out an unopened bottle of wine and stepped forward to break it over the man's head.
She watched, satisfied, as he fell to the floor and ceased screaming. Now her attention was focused on her husband who was walking around holding his hand and cursing up a storm.
"Babe?!" Kate went over to him.
"Call the police and an ambulance." Rick used his head to motion toward where Maria was lying on the floor.
"OH GOD!" Kate had seen lots of bodies and far too many had blood around them. So did Maria. Kate dropped to her knees and checked for a pulse. "She's alive!"
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Kate saw two men on the floor in her house on her way to the front door to let in all the police and probably her own captain, as well as the EMTs for Maria.
Kate had checked over Maria and she had been shot in the stomach area and was bleeding. She had started to apply pressure with a kitchen towel but soon saw that it was a through and through.
While Kate was gone, Rick had questions. So a splash of cold water from the dispenser at the refrigerator shocked this guy awake. Rick sat him up against the wall and looked him over. His right arm had a compound fracture and his right wrist was bent the wrong way. His left eye was a complete mess and he was bleeding on his floor.
"Who sent you?" Rick wanted to know what the hell was going on.
The leader heard him but knew he wasn't going to talk so remained silent save for a little moan from all the pain.
Rick wanted answers and knew something he was betting the jackass didn't. He reached out and used his left hand, since his middle finger on his right hand was clearly broken, and pinched where he knew it would hurt like hell. Rick listened to the intruder scream like he had never screamed before. The leader was no stranger to pain, but this was a pain he had never experienced in his life and it just kept on hurting.
Rick let go and watched his body continue to convulse with leftover pain. "Who sent you?" Rick waited a moment and reached out to pinch the same nerve as hard as his left hand would allow and listened to him scream bloody murder.
Kate could hear someone screaming and didn't recognize it as Rick's voice so she stayed at the open front door and waited. She didn't have to wait long. "Mommy?" a soft little voice whispered. That was followed by hearing Snow barking at something.
"Alexis, no!" Kate ran to her, scooped her up, and hid Alexis's face against her own neck. "SNOW, COME!" Kate took her back into her room and prayed Alexis hadn't seen the strange man lying on the floor.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Hours earlier Kate had watched Maria being worked on, then lifted up and taken away in an ambulance. There had to be half the police in all of Vancouver in her house. Even her captain and her team had shown up.
Most of them, save for her captain, were gone now. But now the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were there and were just finishing asking them both a lot of the same questions the others and her own captain had asked.
Kate had Alexis in her lap and Rick had hold of Snow who had quieted down. She was actually doing relatively well given the number of strange people in her house.
Her captain had seen the bodies and they were all Caucasian so he doubted they were involved with a Chinese gang, but he couldn't discount it.
"I want you in the office tomorrow and I want a written report over what happened here tonight. I'll share it with the local office and the RCMP."
"Mr. Rodgers. For a hockey player I don't know how you did all that, but I'm thankful." He could have lost the best homicide investigator he had ever seen and Vancouver needed her.
Rick exhaled tiredly. "Thank the bullies in high school for that."
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
The sun was starting to come up and none of them, save for Alexis, had gotten any sleep that night. "Where's Maria?" Alexis had seen everyone including a lot of people in uniforms but she hadn't seen Maria.
Kate gathered Alexis into a hug. "Maria's in the hospital, pumpkin."
"Maria's sick?" Alexis had been sick a few times and she didn't like being sick.
Kate nodded. "Yes, and we're going to go see her as soon as we can." If the hospital would let Alexis get that close.
"Come here, pumpkin" Rick held out his arms; Kate let go of her and Alexis walked into his embrace.
"You're hurt, Daddy." She saw the bandage on his finger. He had two fingers taped together for now. He still needed to see a doctor and get an x-ray but it would do until he had the time.
"I've been hurt before. Remember when that hockey puck hit me in the face?" Rick rubbed the spot on his face just below his eye where it had hit him.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Kate was gone so she could wash up a bit before going to the hospital to check on Maria.
Then Rick heard her screaming. "Go find Mommy, pumpkin. She needs you." Rick figured she could use a good hug from Alexis. He could do it but he was betting Alexis was just what she needed at the moment.
Rick let go of her and pushed her a little. "Go find Mommy and give her a hug." Rick kept Snow with him. Rick hears Alexis sniffling as she slowly walks away. Her mommy was screaming and now she was scared.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
The men that had attacked them were gone. Their weapons were gone. Their house was a mess. There was blood on the floor and Kate had seen at least one bullet hole. Now she was in a bathroom and had just finished washing her face and saw that she looked like shit.
Kate began screaming. She agreed with her captain. This didn't have anything to do with the Ming case. That only left one case she could think of that it could have anything to do with: her mother's case.
She was still screaming. "Mommy?" a soft, barely audible voice called out. Furious, Kate turned to face the voice and all she saw was Alexis.
Instantly the hatred was gone and it was replaced with the love she had for her daughter. Kate got down on her knees, opened up her arms, and clutched Alexis to her. Then she began crying.
How Alexis could take her from beyond angry to crying because she loved someone so very much surprised her. It also had her soothing her crying daughter. She wasn't mad at her and she really wasn't hurt and Alexis needed to stop crying.
{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}O{}
Rick watched Kate come back and she was carrying Alexis in her arms. He knew his wife and he'd seen her cry before. She had clearly been crying. Actually both of them looked like they had been crying.
"That was dirty pool," Kate grumbled. She was ready to be so angry that she started to destroy half the house until Alexis had shown up. "But I love you." She kissed him.
"Better hold that thought. ...I know who sent them, Kate. I just don't know why." Rick watched her face change from love, to shock, to anger, then she was questioning him. He hadn't told anyone yet. Kate was going to be the first. He hadn't really lied to anyone. They simply hadn't asked HIM directly if he knew who had sent them. They'd asked Kate but they hadn't asked him.