Lula was opening and closing cupboard doors and slamming drawers shut in the kitchen. Every time she slammed a drawer, we would all jump, for fear of her setting off her explosives.
“We decided we would go through the building and look for Oswald,” Charlotte said. “I had the gun and we thought maybe we could get the drop on him. If I had him at gunpoint, we could call Rangeman, and they’d come take over. So, we went floor by floor and we were really quiet, and when we got the top floor one of the doors was locked. We listened at the door, and we thought we heard someone moving around.”
“The thing is, there weren’t any voices,” Melvin said. “We didn’t want to do something stupid and make things worse, so we went back downstairs to regroup. That’s when we thought about going next door. The building was boarded up with a condemned sign on it, but it looked like it was still sound, so we broke in and went up to the floor across from Oswald. There was a light on in one of the rooms and it looked like Oswald was working at his computer.”
“The other window was dark, and we were wondering what to do next when we saw you,” Charlotte said to me. “You were standing with your back to the window. We tried to get your attention, but you wouldn’t turn around. And then you disappeared. I think you must have sat down on the floor.”
Lula came back into the room. “I couldn’t find any first aid stuff, but I got a couple kitchen towels.”
“It’s just this one cut on my arm,” Melvin said, holding the towel against it.
“I almost wet myself when I saw you hanging outside the window,” Lula said. “You must have some rock-climbing experience.”
“I watch the Travel Channel sometimes,” Melvin said.
“We could see that the roof of your building was flat,” Charlotte said, “and it looked like air-conditioning units up there, and that’s when we got the idea to try to rescue you. We got a couple lengths of rope from the hardware store on the next block and tied them to one of the air conditioners. The plan was that Melvin would go down with the second harness. We thought we could do it because the distance between the roof and window looked manageable.
“We didn’t plan on the window being painted shut,” Melvin said.
“Well, it all worked out perfect in the end,” Lula said.
Not completely perfect, I thought. Lula was locked into a vest loaded with explosives and we had a dead Oswald on the floor.
“Does anyone have a cell phone?” I asked.
Charlotte gave me hers and I called Ranger.
“We’re okay,” I said when I connected to Ranger, “but Lula needs someone to defuse some explosives.”
“I’m on it,” Ranger said. “Diesel called me when Oswald got in touch with him. I saw the photos of you and Lula. Is Lula still wired?”
“Yes.”
“We’re about to enter the garage to the building you’re in. What’s the status of Oswald?”
“Very dead. How did you get here so fast?”
“When we got power back, the control room located your phone in a dumpster on State Street. We sent a drone up and it took several hours of searching but we finally got a visual of Charlotte and Melvin on the roof, tying ropes to the air units. Even before the drone gave us the address, we were all staged in the target area.”
“We’re on the top floor,” I said. “Don’t yell at Melvin and Charlotte. They tried to do the right thing.”
“I’ll have words with them and then I’ll offer them jobs,” Ranger said.
Minutes later Ranger, Tank, Ranger’s explosive expert Eugene, and Diesel walked into the bedroom and stopped just short of Oswald. They stood hands on hips, looking down at him.
“He looks like he’s been shot with a cannon,” Diesel said.
“Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum,” Charlotte said, still holding the gun.
Diesel nodded. “Yep. That’ll do it.”
“I borrowed it from the gun range in the basement of Rangeman,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t expect to use it.”
Eugene crossed the room to Lula and examined the vest. “Someone knew what they were doing with this,” he said. “State of the art. Do you have the remote?”
“It might be on Oswald,” I said.
Ranger bent over Oswald, found the remote, and handed it to Eugene. Eugene pressed a button and a small green diode blinked out on Lula’s vest. Eugene took a pair of scissors from his backpack and cut away Lula’s cuffs and the duct tape that was securing the vest.