Chapter Eleven: Into the Fire
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"Something's not right." Leah said, her voice loaded with worry as her brown eyes darted around the hallway. After leaving Mary's, she and Danny had returned immediately to the house that was being used as the Professor's base of operations. "This place is usually more active than this. It's practically deserted!" She looked up at Danny. "This isn't a good sign."
"What do you think is up?" an alert Danny asked, pausing in his tracks.
Saying nothing, Leah simply pulled him into a nearby room and shut the door behind them. The tall, brown-haired man immediately recognized the room as the same bedroom he had woken up in when Leah had "kidnapped" him. After locking the door, Leah walked quickly over to the room's sole window and looked outside.
"Damn." she muttered, shaking her head. "That's another bad sign." She turned to the puzzled Danny. "He's got guys guarding your car outside."
"What?" Danny exclaimed, immediately going to Leah's side. Sure enough, as he looked out the window, the tall, brown-haired man could see about five tough-looking guys standing near his yellow and black convertible. It was obvious that they were looking for any sign of movement. McCoy knew that they had to be looking for him specifically. "Obviously, I'm a wanted man."
"You don't think he knows, do you?" Leah asked, looking up into Danny's eyes.
"It's possible." Danny sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. "I wasn't exactly quiet when I told Mary that I wasn't really joining the Professor. Anyone in the general area could have heard me." His brow furrowing in determination, the ex-Marine dropped his hand and turned towards the door again. "Only one thing to do now…"
"Danny, wait!" a worried Leah called, noticing McCoy heading for the door. "Where are you going?" Realizing that her partner was probably going to confront the Professor, the petite, brown and blonde haired woman ran in front of him and blocked the door. "Are you crazy? You can't face him alone! He probably wants you dead!"
"That hasn't stopped me before." a grinning Danny shrugged.
A silent Leah remained blocking the door. Her narrow, brown eyes focused heavily on Danny as she was obviously trying to decide whether or not to let him go. After a few moments, she finally sighed and relaxed.
"You have more balls than brains." she commented quietly as she pulled his head down towards hers and passionately kissed him on the lips. Not knowing why, he kissed her back momentarily before slowly pushing her away from him. An embarrassed smile lingered on her face. "That was purely for good luck…in whatever happens after this."
"I'm pretty sure that I'm going to need it." Danny smiled, heading out the door.
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"Well, it definitely looks like he heard that Danny wasn't on the level." Luis commented, lowering the binoculars from his eyes. The brown-haired, Latino detective's gaze had previously been focused on the group surrounding Danny's car. Frustrated, he put a hand to his forehead. "What do you want to do, Ed?"
"We're not doing anything until we find out where Danny and this Leah are." Ed replied as he parked his Hummer H2 a half of a block down from the Professor's base. The goons surrounding Danny's car didn't seem to realize that Ed and Luis were there, which Ed reasoned was a good thing. The gray-haired man was damned if he was going to give the Professor reason to harm either one of the missing pair…especially Danny.
"Calling them is out of the question." Luis stated as he shook his head. "He's probably monitoring their cell-phones somehow."
Suddenly, a flash of movement in a window upstairs caught the detective's keen eye and he raised the binoculars to his eyes to look. Unnoticed by the men down below, Leah stood there, waving some sort of cloth in the air.
"Leah's in one of the windows." Luis reported, getting Ed's immediate attention. "We need some sort of signal that we can see her, but something our buddies over there won't notice."
"Fortunately for us," Ed grinned, reaching for his headlights. "Those idiots don't seem to bright."
As Ed flashed the Hummer's headlights, the brown and blonde haired policewoman nodded and set the cloth down. Then, using American Sign Language, she signed Danny's name to Luis before mouthing the words "went after" and pointing away from her.
"Danny went after…" Luis muttered to himself as Leah signed her last sign: the letter P. It was enough for Luis to realize where his friend had gone. "Idiot!" The Latino cop slammed down the binoculars. "Danny went after the Professor on his own!"
"I'll never understand that kid's brain." Ed remarked while shaking his head and reaching into his backseat for the ball bat, which was still in there. He silently prayed that whatever was going on, Danny could hold on just a bit longer.
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The question of his ability to do something once again went through Danny's mind as he faced the dark, double doors that led to the patio for a second time. However, instead of wondering whether or not he could make the Professor believe him, the tall, brown-haired man was now wondering if he would survive the night. After glancing back to make sure that Leah hadn't followed him like last time, Danny pushed the doors open and walked out onto the patio, which was only halfway lit by the light escaping from the house behind him. McCoy could just see the outline of the Professor sitting at the table like before.
"And here I thought that semper fi meant something to you…" Mary's voice was suddenly heard saying.
"It does!" Danny's own voice was quick to reply, confirming McCoy's fear that the Professor now knew about his treachery. "It will never not mean anything to me."
"Maybe it does mean something to you now." Mary's voice agreed, ""Maybe it means that you'll always be faithful to the Professor…"
"Except for the fact that I'm not really joining with him!"
"What?"
"I'm not really joining him, Mary. It was just a scam that Luis and I came up with in order to bring him down…"
Two sounds reached Danny's ears simultaneously. A speaker of some sort was heard turning off at the same time that the doors behind him seemed to slam shut. The patio was only rendered dark for a moment, however, before a single shaft of light fell upon McCoy. The half-lit Professor sat, watching Danny's every move. The tall, brown-haired man froze in his tracks with a serious look on his face.
"I knew that you would slip up sooner or later." the Professor commented, "You had been playing the game nicely, Danny, but you were bound to make some sort of mistake." A slight chuckle escaped him. "I always suspected that Mary Connell would somehow be your stumbling block."
"You knew all along?" a surprised Danny asked, wondering if that's what the older man meant.
"Not for sure, but I did suspect." the Professor nodded, "I figured it was only a matter of time before Ed Deline or someone associated with him would try again to succeed where our criminal justice system had not." The older man shook his head. "However, you did surprise me in one area, Danny. I would have never imagined that you would have the chutzpah to do this behind Ed's back." A quiet laugh escaped him. "Seeing as how you're nothing but his pathetic lap dog."
An angered Danny silently readied himself for whatever was to come next, which wasn't an easy task since he suspected that the Professor was bound to kill him right there. As he watched the man in front of him carefully, the tall, brown-haired man found himself thinking of Mary and how much he wished that he could see her smiling face one last time.
"So, the only variable left is what happens now." the Professor said, tapping his fingers against the table. "Regardless of what you might be thinking, you are going to survive this night." He stopped tapping. "Letting you walk out of here would be detrimental to myself and my plan to bring down the Montecito. However, killing you would also be a waste." Another laugh escaped him. "After all, who else am I going to pin this entire thing on?"
"Like anyone's going to believe you." Danny scoffed, rolling his eyes.
"They'll believe this." the Professor said, holding up a computer disk. "I'm afraid that this little disk is only the start of a massive paper trail, Danny. One that should convince any jury in this country that you were the mastermind behind my eventual attack on the Montecito and a few other of my operations." A wicked grin crossed his faces. "It also implicates your friend, Lt. Perez, as a co-conspirator, and it wouldn't take much to add Ms. Connell's name to that as well."
"Leave Luis and Mary out of this." Danny warned as the doors behind him were heard opening. Leah was now standing behind him with pistol drawn and a fiery look in her brown eyes.
"Too bad that disk will add up to nothing." the petite brown and blonde haired woman said confidently as she walked in front of Danny. "Your confession to doctoring evidence throws it completely out of the window." She reached into her pants pocket with one hand and pulled out her badge. "Lt. Leah Higgins of the Nevade State police department. Get your hands up in the air!"
To be continued....