Page 64 of Lock ’N’ Load

Behind him, Trista gasped. Matt hazarded a glance at her. Her face had paled, and she held a hand tight to her mouth. Her shoulders began to heave, and he knew she was about to be sick.

She spun and darted out the door, her hand still over her mouth.

“Trista, no!” Dammit. He still wanted her to stick close.

In a powerful, athletic pirouette, Sheba spun and bolted into the bathroom, barking furiously. Her hind legs bunched, and she launched past the door. A strangled cry followed. From his position in the bedroom, Matt couldn’t see what was happening yet, but he knew the audio cues.

Sheba had just bitten down on her quarry. Though she was trained not to inflict any major damage, a police dog’s jaws clamped around a person’s arm or leg was a terrifying thing.

“Call it off, call off your dog!” a panicked voice came from the bathroom.

Matt charge into the tiny master bathroom, aiming at the ground where Sheba did indeed have her jaws clamped around a man’s upper arm. “Police!” he yelled, just as the man reached for the weapon holstered on his left side. “Don’t move!” Matt shouted, and the man froze. “If you pull that gun, two things will happen. I’ll shoot you, and my partner will rip you to shreds.”

Now Matt’s heart pounded. If the guy tried to shoot Sheba, he’d nail the fucker without hesitation.

The man’s hand fell from the butt of the gun he was reaching for. When Sheba gave the arm clamped in her jaws another shake, he cried out again, louder this time.

“Stop fighting the dog,” he ordered, and the man obeyed, his dark eyes wide with fear, his chest heaving. “Do exactly as I say, and do it slowly.” The man nodded. “Pust,” he said to Sheba, and she released her grip and backed off, not letting the guy out of her sight. “Slowly, roll onto your stomach and interlock your hands behind your back.”

The guy did as he commanded, and Matt quickly extracted the holstered gun, securing it behind his belt in the small of his own back, then patting the man down for additional weapons. Next, he backed away. “Roll over but stay on the floor and interlock your hands on top of your head again.”

As he complied, Matt cast a quick glance behind him, worrying over where Trista had gone. A phone beeped, and he realized it came from beneath the dead body. Probably the cell phone he and Trista had just called, indicating an unanswered call had come in.

The guy in the bathroom wriggled backward to lean his head against the tiled wall. The movement had Sheba lunging to bite, uttering a deep, menacing growl in the back of her throat.

“Call your dog off!” The guy pressed farther back against the wall, his heels slipping on the floor as he tried pushing himself farther away in an effort to avoid Sheba’s snapping jaws.

“Don’t give me orders, asshole.”

For a moment longer, Matt let him experience the terror of a K-9 in full-on attack mode. Not because he was a sadist but because he wanted to impress on the guy that both he and Sheba meant business. Not only did he still have his Glock trained on the guy’s chest, but experience had shown him that even the most hardened criminals, ones who had no qualms about going hand to hand with a cop, backed down like a bunch of babies when confronted by a K-9.

“Okay, okay.” The voice was pure American, not Russian, as Matt had expected.

Aside from the blooming shiner under his right eye, the guy was totally average in appearance. Average height, weight, and with brown hair and brown eyes. Even his clothes were un-noteworthy. Tan slacks, polo shirt, untucked short-sleeved overshirt to cover his gun. He dressed the same way a lot of plainclothes cops did.

“Make any quick moves, and I’ll shoot you,” Matt said with zero inflection in his voice.

“I’m CIA, dammit,” the man growled, then thought better of it when Sheba upped his growl with a louder one of her own. “I said, call off the fucking dog. I’m on your side.”

“That fucking dog,” he snapped, “is my partner, and you’ll treat her with the respect she deserves or I’d be more than happy to let her rip off your nuts with her bare teeth.”

“My apologies, Sgt. Connors.” A muscle in his face twitched as he warily eyed Sheba.

Matt narrowed his eyes. He knows my name. So maybe the guy was CIA after all. But he’d been hiding in a bathroom not ten feet away from the dead reporter. “Did you kill Thomas George?”

“No.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I was ordered to check on him.”

“Ordered by whom?”

He shook his head. “Can’t say.”

Not that Matt had expected the guy to give it up, but it had been worth a try. He assumed the order came from someone inside Trista’s unit. Wayne Gurgas, most likely. “Using your right hand, pull out your creds and hold them out. Don’t make any other moves.” As an added warning, he subtly tipped his head to where Sheba stood bristling, her head lowered, eyeing the guy like she really did want to crunch down on his balls.

He reached awkwardly around to his rear pants pocket, extracting a black wallet that he held out to Matt.