Page 72 of Operation: Reckless Angel

They filled her in on who they’d talked to and what they’d learned, including their conversation with her husband. Then they laid out the plan for the conversation with Penny Weston. Briana understood why they needed more on Amanda’s husband. Without a body, foul play would be hard to prove, even with her eye witness testimony. It would basically be her word against his. They needed more on him to make a case stick or even allow for an order to search the lake for her body.

Briana and Roth left Jackson, who held his position to watch for the Sheriff to leave the office. They returned to her van and drove to Penny Weston’s place. It was dark beneath the snow-covered trees. And the entire area was silent when they exited her van and walked up to the porch where Roth had stood earlier that day talking with her. A second vehicle, a minivan, was parked in the driveway now, which Roth assumed was her husband’s, and even though the lights were on in the house, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

Briana glanced over at the partially frozen lake, admiring the beauty of the moonlight upon it. Combined with the quiet, it was peaceful, serene, captivating. “Now I understand why people like to live out here,” she said to Sebastian. “It is beautiful.”

“I bet it’s even better in the summer.” He nodded to the dock and the little boat that was near it, sitting in a cradle out of the water. “I’d love to go out on that lake in a boat at sunrise with a cup of coffee and a fishing pole.”

“We’ll add that to our camping plan,” she said with a grin.

Roth returned her smile. “You better be careful; I’m going to hold you to these plans.”

She bumped him on purpose as she stepped in front of him and knocked on the door. “I’m counting on it.”

Penny Weston looked flustered when she answered the door. Briana had never met the woman, but it was clear they caught her in the middle of something. The confused expression turned into something else when her gaze shifted from Briana to Roth.

“You? I’ve already told you and your partner everything I know. Will you please stop bothering me?” She glanced behind herself into the interior of the home as if looking for someone or expecting someone to come up behind her.

“If we can have another moment of your time, Missus Weston. It’s important,” Roth said. “This is my other colleague, Briana, and she’s who Amanda met with at the diner several days ago.”

Penny Weston’s gaze darted to Briana. From the expression on Penny’s face, Briana knew that she knew Amanda was planning to meet her, well, with someone, not necessarily her by name. It was a guilty expression, not a surprised expression.

“I can’t be involved,” Penny insisted in a panic-filled whisper.

“Amanda’s dead. I saw him drop her body in the lake yesterday morning,” Briana said.

Penny , and the color drained from her face. “No, she went away.”

“No, she didn’t,” Briana countered. “She didn’t leave with me from the diner, wouldn’t go because you backed out of the plan. Why wouldn’t you help get him away from her long enough for her to flee?”

“I was afraid,” Penny stammered. “For us both.”

That was all she said before the quiet all around them was shattered by gunshots. Both Briana and Roth saw the shocked expression on Penny Weston’s face and the expanding red blood stain which saturated the white sweater on her chest. In that split second, they both dropped to their bellies. Penny crumpled to the floorboards of the deck beside them as two more shots rang out, the bullets striking the glass on the door in line with where Roth’s head had been.

Penny Weston gurgled, a sick sound that indicated blood was filling her trachea and lungs. Her lifeless eyes stared at nothing. Both Briana and Roth knew that she was gone. There was nothing they could do for her. They also knew the shots had come from near their car.

As Roth eyed the door into the house, planning to get inside, into relative safety, a glow rose inside and behind the glass as a whooshing sound filled the night. The smell of smoke tickled both their nostrils and the sudden sensation of heat radiated from the house as the flames rose and expanded.

Roth had his pistol in his grip. “I’m going to return fire. Move to the back of the house,” he ordered.

Briana had just unholstered her pistol from inside of her right boot. “I’ll pin him down when I reach the back corner so you can make it.”

“Go!” Roth prompted her as he reached his arms straight out in front of himself while still lying prone on the snow-covered deck boards. He squeezed off a half-dozen rounds towards the direction the original shots came from. A salvo of return fire answered him. He hoped Briana made it around the corner of the house. He only had to wait a moment before he heard her shots. He pressed up and ran in a crouched stance in the direction of the shots and Briana, who fired her Sig P228 with only a sliver of her face and her right arm visible at the corner.

No return shots answered. He slipped behind her and pressed his back to hers, his aim along the back of the house, anticipating that their assailant was making his way behind them. “Where is this fucker?” he whispered. He took his phone from his jeans pocket and dialed Ops. He held the phone in his left hand, his pistol in his right. His gaze focused on the other corner of the house in front of him and the lake past it, as well as the woods to his left.

“Ops, go,” BT answered.

“Pinned down by gunfire at my location,” he stated. “Unknown number of assailants. At least one casualty, Penny Weston. And her home is on fire.”

“Do you want me to dispatch local LEOs?”

“Negative,” Roth replied. “I suspect it is the Sheriff.”

“I’m patching in Jax,” BT said.

Roth heard keys clicking.

“I’ve got you on the tracker system. Go on comms whenever you can, and if you need to stow your phone, leave this line open.”

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