Denouement by E. H. Reinhard

and tried the time-tested method of counting sheep. I was somewhere around eighty when my phone rang. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and reached for the phone. I didn’t recognize the number though it had a Tampa area code. The caller had to be Faust.
    I answered. “Lieutenant Kane.”
    “Hey, it’s Faust.”
    “Yeah, what’s up?” I asked.
    “We, um, have had a development.”
    I heard someone in the background at his end of the call, telling him to stop moving his head.
    “Okay, what’s the development?” I asked.
    “Azarov came into my house.”
    “What!” I stood, accidentally ripping my phone’s charger from the wall. I unplugged it from the bottom of my phone, let the charger fall to the floor, and went to my desk. If I’d had any drowsiness in me, it was immediately gone.
    “Yeah, he was in my house, I assume to kill me, but obviously he didn’t.”
    I took a seat. “Do you have him in custody?”
    “Unfortunately, no. He must have taken off right before my guys got here. I was only out a couple of minutes.”
    “Only out?” I asked.
    “Yeah, he knocked me unconscious.”
    I let out a breath. “Are you all right?”
    “A little banged up, but I’ll make it.”
    I again heard someone on his end of the line telling him to keep still.
    “I have a couple EMTs sewing me back together as we speak. It isn’t too bad. I’ve been through worse.”
    I heard a man’s voice telling Faust he needed to go to the hospital. Faust responded with a simple no .
    “How did he know where you lived?” I asked.
    “I’m guessing he got it out of Dupold. He came out to where I’ve been staying since a few weeks back.”
    The where I’ve been staying comment struck me as a little off, but I didn’t press. “What the hell happened?” I asked.
    “Well, the security system in the house is linked to my phone. So, I’m lying in bed, reading, and get an alert that someone has entered the home through the patio door downstairs. I go to the nightstand for my gun, but sure as shit if it’s the one time that it isn’t there. I had it broken down for cleaning in the gun room at the end of the hall. So I leave the bedroom to go and get it when I see light shining up the stairs. I stop at the corner of the stairs and wait. A man comes up with a gun. I disarm him, deliver a handful of strikes and send him airborne back down the stairs with a front kick to the chest. I figure that should be it. Well, he tries getting up, so I run down the stairs and plant a knee to the face. That still doesn’t do it. He tries dragging his sorry ass away, and I stomp down on the back of his head. Finally, the guy goes out cold. After he was out, I realized it was Azarov.”
    “You had him knocked out? How the hell did he get away?” I asked.
    “Well, that’s another story in itself. I go back upstairs and grab the first gun I see from my gun room. I head back down and drag him out to the kitchen, where I use a roll of duct tape to tape him to the chair. I call it in to my guys. Well, he wakes up and immediately begins to antagonize me, bragging about my agents he killed and things of that nature. Every bone in my body wanted to put an end to him right there. Anyway, we have a little back and forth, and I figure it’s in his best interest if I tape his mouth shut. I go over there with a piece of tape, and the son of a bitch bites me like a rabid dog. I get him off of me, go to the sink to inspect the wound, and he somehow gets out of his restraints. I go for my gun, but he ends up getting the drop on me. He tapped me with an uppercut and a knee to the face that put me out.”
    “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” I said.
    “I’m sure he tried. I had a gun right there. Luckily for me, it was the gun that it was. I’m thinking when he saw my guys approaching up the driveway, he fled.”
    “What gun? I don’t follow.”
    “It’s an IG forty. Or that’s what they are trying to call it. They issued one to each agent in the