Chapter 18

They sat in the car and looked at the place. Danni had kind of hoped it would not even be open today but, she was discovering that her luck was on a down swing at the moment. Danni was also discovering that while her mother might still remember the streets and basically how to get from one place to another, she had no clue about the condition that all of these places were currently in. Her Mom had only been gone for a few years now and she should have known more than she actually did. Danni had just assumed she would. Danni was finding out how wrong she was.

This place was a good case in point. Tammy commented, “your father and I used to go to this place all the time before you were born.”

Danni gritted her teeth and replied, “Mom, that was over twenty years ago. This neighborhood has kind of changed a, um, you know, a little since then.”

“Oh non sense,” Tammy replied in an up beat way, “a bar is a bar is a bar.”

Danni just told her mother point blank, “it’s a Canadian bar and I don’t have my gun.”

Point blank obviously did not work. Danni had hoped but, yet again, was disappointed. Her mother just waived her off, “people are people. They all go to bars for the exact same reason.”

The red and white shirts that Danni was seeing around this place, as well as going in and out of it, told her that it was used by more than just Canadians in general. These guys were THOSE Canadians. Danni suggested, “look why do we even have to go to a bar? It’s too early to go to a bar. Let’s just go get lunch. There’s a Foo King Junior right around the corner from here.”

Tammy made a horrible face and almost spit, “those things are still around?”

“Hey,” Danni shot back, “I happen to like Foo King burgers, ok? So lay off. Jesus Mom, why did you ever come back? You know, you haven’t even been back an entire day, yet, and already you’ve managed to explain to me how you hate every little thing about every place we’ve been.”

Suddenly Danni heard the strangest noise. Her mother was sniffing and when Danni looked at her mother the woman acutally had her head bowed. Tammy had already pulled a napkin from her purse and she was wiping at her face. Was that crying? Danni groaned and then slid down in her seat, “OK, I’m sorry I said that. All right?”

“I just want to be with my daughter,” Tammy said in a very tear jerking kind of way. “You’re all I’ve got left.”

Danni could translate exactly what that meant. Her mother had moved to where she did because that was where the Patrelli’s were. That clan was rather prolific and, as Danni understood it, there were plenty of them. If her mother was saying this then it was either a ploy or she had pissed someone in her family off. Danni was betting on “D,” all of the above.

“Mom,” Danni said. The woman would not stop crying. Danni huffed and repeated herself. The tears were starting to work now. Danni could feel it. Her mother was now successfully making her feel like a heel. Danni was still going to hold her ground though, “there is no…”

A van slowly turned off Horn Avenue and into the parking lot. Danni only really noticed it because of how out of place it looked here. Another car, one that was most definitely out of place, tuned in right behind it. Unlike with the van, Danni could actually see the occupants of the car. They were more out of place here than the vehicles themselves.

“way in hell…” Danni mumbled her original sentence as she kept her eyes concentrating on the new arrivals. That car had five guys in it and there was no telling how many were in the van.

There were not many reasons that those guys could be here and, the first one that Danni could think of was that they wanted to shoot up a Canadian Gang’s hang out. Danni thought about turning on her vehicle and getting out of here but, the car stopped long ways in the only way out of the parking area. Then the five guys, who got out, looked as if they were more than prepared to defend that position. They didn’t actually pull out guns but, they did have their hands inside their jackets.

The next option was just to get down low and wait for the end of the war but, as the van slowly kept rolling it was starting to make Danni think that she was wrong about her first guess. The van was coming right for her car. Why would they care about her? Danni suddenly start thinking about everything that had been happening lately. The guys that had broke into the station probably had friends and, what would their friends look like? Danni mumbled, “guys in suits with guns is what.”

Her mother actually stopped crying for a second and looked to her daughter, “what was that baby. I can’t hear very well when I’m so disappointed.”

Danni looked too her with great enthusiasm and a huge grin, “no way in hell that I would miss out on this with you!” Danni practically pushed her out of the car and then, once outside of it, grabbed her mother’s hand and drug her right into the bar at a not quite running pace.

Tammy was more than a little confused but, she had stopped crying and was now actually pretty happy. Just inside the door Danni stopped to give her some instructions but, paused when she noticed how quickly her mother’s tears had vanished and been replaced by an eager grin.

When her mother tried to speak Danni cut her off with, “just do what I say and don’t argue!” Danni almost tore her mother’s arm right out of the socket when she snatched her right to the very back of the bar. They stopped by the last pool table that was next to the fire door. Danni was busy examining the looks that they were getting from more than a few of the guys in red and white. That should have been a creepy feeling when you considered what some of these guys did for a living.

On the other hand, Tammy was busy looking at the pool table. She put her hands on it and rubbed with great affection. When Danni saw her mother doing that it almost made her want to puke. Then her mother said in a voice that made the hairs stand up on the back of Danni’s neck, “oh let me tell you about this table.”

Danni snatched her mother’s hands away and with even more alarm said, “too much information!”

Several guys in suits were now entering the bar. Two of them took up positions by the front door. One of them peeled off to the his left and stationed himself, with one leg propped up on a stool, by the bar. Another went to his right and just barely waded into the crowd of Canadians who were watching the ball game on the big screen. The last two were headed right for Danni.

The good news was that nobody had come in the back door. Danni realized that it did not mean it was clear. The suits probably had enough guys to cover it but, Danni was pretty sure she had another way out. She looked to the Canadians and saw that they were starting to become visibly alarmed by the new patrons. She looked over to the bartender and he was even more alarmed. He also kept looking down and behind him with a very nervous glare. That told Danni she was right. She picked her target and prepared to fire her improvised weapon.

Tammy had not failed to notice the sudden tension in the room. She leaned over to her daughter and in a loud whisper she asked, “um, what’s going on?”

“Mom,” Danni said seriously, “do not argue with me and listen. When everything kicks off run out the back door.” Danni shoved the car keys in her hand. You should be safe, they only want me. They don‘t even know who you are.”

Now Tammy was completely alarmed and confused, “why do those men wa…”

“MOM!” Danni growled at her with gritted teeth and a loud whisper. This time her mother really did shut up. If there were ever a sign that something was truly wrong, that was it.

What was very wrong was that, so far, nothing had moved like Danni had thought it might. Danni realized she was going to have to do just a little more. She locked eyes with her mother one last time and, thankful, got a nod. It gave Danni a little bit of hope because it meant that miracles can happen.

Brushing right by the first two guys was the part that Danni had been least enthused about. If one of them had decided to grab her then the game might be up right then. Danni wanted to sigh in relief when they did nothing at all. One of them gave her a nasty look as she rubbed him shoulder to shoulder but, past that he remained harmless.

There was no time to wonder why those two guys missed their chance. Danni had her own work to do. She slinked right up to the guy at the bar, tossed her arms around his neck before he could react, and then planted a huge kiss on his lips. The guy was stiff, alarmed, but then he actually tried to stick his tongue in Danni’s mouth! She cut it off at that point and jumped up, used her hip to force him all the way up on the stool, and pin his gun hand inside his coat.

When Danni was firmly in the guys lap, with her arms still around his neck, she joyously let her hair fall back and announced to a room what she was rapidly becoming the center of, “hey baby! Glad you guys could make it!” Danni put a fist in the air, “GO LONGHORNS!”

That got the Canadians to their feet. Danni was a little disturbed when it did not get them to do anything else. She had to think of something else very quickly because the guy she was on was about to force her off his lap and he had help on the way. Danni yelled out at the top of her lungs, “DAVID HEWLETT SUCKS!”

All hell broke loose as the Canadians tried to jump the suits. Now Danni had time to turn her attention on the guy she had pinned. She finally saw her luck changing too. There had not been too much stopping this guy, and a few of his friends for that matter, from finishing the job they came here to do. Instead of that happening, the guy she was sitting on was confused and the others reacted to her as if she were, at best, an annoyance.

Now Danni proved them wrong. You can do more to a person, when you have your arms around their necks, than just kiss them. In this case Danni used her advantage of leverage to slam the guys face down into the bar. Then she used the back of this head as a solid surface when she jumped over that bar and landed on the other side.

When Danni hit the floor she stayed as low as possible. No bullets had started flying yet but, it was probably only a matter of time. What she needed was something to launch her own with. What Danni had expected to find here was not. In fact there were two things not here. The first one was the shotgun that any self respecting bartender always keeps just out of sight and within reach. There was nothing here to even indicate that the bartender even had one!

Danni grunted in frustration, “damn Canadian bar! Why does that figure!”

The other, and single biggest thing that was missing here, was the bartender himself. Where did he go? That’s when Danni saw the little door, just large enough to crawl through, on the back wall. Danni crawled right out it saying, “not a twelve gauge but I’ll take it!”

The escape door led right to the parking lot and was situated underneath all of the utility meters on the side of the building. It was mostly hidden from view, from the parking lot, by a big tank that was plumbed right into the wall. Danni wondered what the hell the tank was for until she caught a glance of the red moose head stenciled on the side.

Danni also found the bartender. He was hiding behind the tank with a glass stein in hand. He was filling the glass from a tap on the tank. When he saw Danni he raised the glass and said, “don’t tell anybody but, I kind of like the Longhorns too.”

There was no time to even worry about this guy. He was harmless anyway and the least of Danni’s problems. She forgot all about him when she heard her mother yelling angrily. Danni ran out from behind the tank, down to the edge of the building, and saw the source of the noise. The suits were dragging her into the van and she was kicking and snarling at them for all she was worth.

Danni darted out from behind the building and was quickly noticed by one of the suits. It was a guy with a bloody nose and the same one she’d been sitting on back in the bar. He reached in to his coat. Danni froze to the spot and gulped. They had her. She had nowhere to run, jump, or hide. Danni closed her eyes. She felt the fear coming back. It was not the fear of those men. It was the fear of pain. Specifically, the pain she had felt when those bullets ripped into her chest and abdomen.

The guy hesitated. Another called him from the van. His hand slipped back out of his jacket with nothing in it. He even nodded to Danni before jumping in his vehicle. The door closed and the vehicle sped off.

“What the…” Danni was stunned. She was also a little confused, “I don’t believe this.”

She ran to her own vehicle, prepared to race after the rapidly retreating van and it’s follow on car. When she tried to open the door it was locked. She reached into her pocket for keys and then, in a panic, began feeling all over her body for where they might be. Her first thought was that she had dropped them in the mayhem. The she realized who she had given them too.

A sea of red and white was exiting the bar now. Their faces were more red than the jersey’s they had on. Danni dropped to the ground and curled up in a ball between two cars. She pulled out her phone and frantically began pushing the screen. Norm would not answer when she tried him. Jake’s phone did not even seem to be on. Even Barbara wouldn’t pick up! Who was left?

Danni heard someone in the parking lot yell, “hey guys, there’s that stupid bitch right there.”

She gulped, gritted her teeth, and forced out the words, “oh shit.”