February 4th, 12:07 AM

"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak,                                                                                                                            Somewhere in the town                                                                                                                                                      Tonight there's gonna be trouble,                                                                                                                                  So don't you be around"

      Sanger's eyes snapped open as Phil Lynott's voice filled the silence of the darkened bedroom, and as his hand shot out to grab the phone, he glanced at the bedside clock. When he saw the time, he instantly tensed, steeling himself for whatever was coming. Thumbing the send button, he struggled to a sitting position and croaked, "This is Sanger."

      "Garrett, it's Dean Bledsoe" he heard, and tensed even more. "The alarm at the facility sounded just a few minutes ago. Dispatch followed procedure and called to make sure it wasn't accidental, but got no answer. We've got units heading to the scene, and I'm on my way to pick up Paul, but I thought you might want to be there too."

      "I'm on my way now, sir," he announced, throwing back the comforter and swinging his feet to the floor. By this time, Nora had awakened as well, and lay watching him silently from the bed.

      "And when you get in your car, turn the radio to the closed channel," Bledsoe stated. "The chief wants to keep the media away as long as possible, so all units have been instructed not to use open communications."

      "Got it. I'll be there ASAP."

      Striding to the closet, he yanked open the door, grabbed some clothing, and began to change out of his pajamas. Nora got out of bed and walked to the dresser, removing a pair of socks from a drawer and crossing the room to hand them to her husband. "What happened, sweetie?" she inquired.

      "We seem to have had a breach at one of the safehouses," he replied, as he pulled on the socks. "They have units on the way, but Dean and Paul are going out too, and want me there as well."

      "It's him again, isn't it?" she questioned, as he jammed his feet into a pair of sneakers, and he paused for a moment, returning her gaze.

      "More than likely, yes," he answered. "There's still a chance that it was a malfunction, or that someone set it off unintentionally, but I'm almost sure we'll find out it wasn't." He rose from the chair, gave Nora a quick kiss, and hurried from the room.

      "Go back to sleep, hon, you have to be at work in a few hours," he called out from the hallway. "You don't want to fall asleep doing your rounds. Love you, babe!"

       "Love you too, Garrett. Call me when you get a chance, and let me know if you'll be home tonight," she responded.

      He dashed to his car and climbed in, extending an arm through the window to fasten the detachable flasher to the roof as he backed out of the driveway. Snapping on the radio as he drove, he listened intently, but at first heard only the call numbers of units who were en route to the scene. Then, as he neared the exit that would take him to the freeway, a voice cut clearly through the babble, quavering with emotion: "Dispatch, we have officers down, we need medical response to the scene... And someone from the ME's office."

      "Fuck!" he growled, switching on his siren as he increased his speed, glad that traffic was lessened by the late hour. Using the cars' navigation system to guide him through the fastest route, he reached the building in less than ten minutes, observing his superiors closing the doors of Bledsoe's car as he careened into an empty spot and turned off the motor. He exited the vehicle and hurried toward the two men, quickly catching up to them, and they walked rapidly through the crowd of officers and paramedics. Then, as they pressed forward, they heard something that stopped them in their tracks. From somewhere ahead of them, there was a raw, anguished, primal scream: "Nooo...!"

      They exchanged a startled glance, then continued moving forward, and as they rounded the side of an ambulance, they saw Quentin Tate and a uniformed officer attempting to support another patrolman, whose legs appeared ready to collapse under him, and whose face was twisted into an agonized grimace. Sharon Clavell stood nearby, watching the scene as Sanger and the others reached her. She glanced up as they arrived, and, noticing their quizzical expressions, she inclined her head towards the patrolman and explained, "That's Heath Bridger, Angie Ruiz is his fiancee. Or, I guess I should say, she was his fiancee."

      All three senior officers winced at the words, and watched as Bridger was led to an ambulance by his partner and Tate, while a second one lurched out of its place and barreled down the driveway, siren blaring. Sanger turned to Sharon Clavell and inquired, "Who was that they just took away?"

      "Her partner, Danny Belmont. They found him out by the dumpster," she responded. "He's in pretty rough shape, EMS isn't sure if he'll make it."

      "Shit!" Paul MacDevitt growled. "What about the two witnesses?"

      "Not sure yet. One of the rooms appears to be barricaded from the inside, but there's been no response. They were still trying to make entry when I came out here."

      Sanger turned and jogged to the building, with Bledsoe and MacDevitt close on his heels. They entered the living-room area, weaving through the crowd of officers, paramedics, and evidence techs and stopped abruptly before entering the kitchen. The flashes from the technician's camera gave the scene a weird sort of stop-motion effect as they observed the overturned furniture, broken dishware, and most disturbingly, the blood-covered body of Angelica Ruiz, sprawled across the kitchen floor, awaiting the arrival of the medical examiner. 

      "Jesus God, what the fuck went on in here?" Dean Bledsoe rasped.

      "One hell of a struggle, that's for damn sure," MacDevitt replied. "Obviously he didn't get the chance to use whatever he injected Lena and Keel with this time."

      As Sanger opened his mouth to respond, their attention was diverted by the sound of a door opening, and they looked around to see a patrol officer exiting one of the bedrooms. "Looks like they went out the window, sir," the officer said, addressing MacDevitt. "There was a chair wedged under the doorknob, and the window transom was open. That seems to be what set off the alarm."

      The three veteran officers entered the bedroom and stood in front of the window, inspecting the opening. "Kind of a tight fit for somebody to get through that," Bledsoe observed.

      "Mr. Purdy and Ms. Malveaux are both athletic individuals, and both fairly slender, so it would hardly be impossible," MacDevitt returned.

      "But it just doesn't feel right," Sanger announced. "It would be entirely too easy for the bastard to catch up with them that way, so why take the risk? Since they had the door blocked, it would've made more sense to just hunker down in here and wait for us."

      "Well, it might not make sense to you, Garrett, but it's pretty obvious that's what happened," Bledsoe declared. "There's no way they could put that chair in front of the door from outside the room, and there's no other way out. So now we just need to have units do a sweep to try and find them, assuming that they may be hiding somewhere."

       Then another officer called through the window, "Sirs, we've found something on the other side of the building that you might want to look at."

      They made their way back outside, to the back of the building, where they found several officers gathered near the window of the other bedroom. As they approached the group, another patrolman dashed around the corner with a handful of evidence flags and passed them to the sergeant who had called through the window. "All right, what have we got?" MacDevitt queried, and the sergeant turned the beam of his flashlight toward the ground.

      "Two distinct sets of shoe impressions in the mud under the window," he explained. "One smaller than the other, and the larger pair has a definite heel, as well as pointed toes, like a western boot. They're rather deep, which indicates that they were made with a degree of force, as if the individuals either stamped their feet, or dropped to the ground from the roof"

      "Every time I've seen Ashley Purdy, he's been wearing cowboy boots," Sanger mused. "And the other set reminds me of some boots that Nora has, the big puffy suede ones with the furry lining that are so popular."

      "You mean the Uggs, I think," Bledsoe chimed in. "Yeah, both of my girls have a pair of those that my in-laws gave them for Christmas. And this does look very similar. Well, I guess you were right about them not just making a run for it straight from the window."

      "Sergeant, get someone up to the roof, check it for evidence," MacDevitt barked, then pointed to one of the others. "You, get on the radio, have a canine unit dispatched. No, scratch that, make it two. One to follow these tracks, and another to try to track the suspect, and tell them to make it ASAP!"

       The men rushed to follow his orders, and in short order they were informed of the existence of the trapdoor on the roof, and the access panel in the closet, which none of them had previously been aware of. "How the hell did we miss that?" MacDevitt fumed. "It's just lucky that none of the actual criminals we've kept here ever found it. That definitely has to go."

      "Pretty clever of them, to set off the alarm and then use the roof panel to get out," Bledsoe commented. "Since it sounds at the station, he wouldn't have time to stick around long enough to break through the door, so they let him go one way, then booked in a different direction."

      "Yeah, but since they didn't hang around to wait for us, and they haven't come back, that tells us something else," Sanger stated. "I'm guessing that they either saw or heard something that made them feel like it wasn't safe to stick around. So I have to assume that they either know who the bastard is, or have at least learned something that confirms what we discussed yesterday."

      "Shit, Garrett, the fact that the sonofabitch was able to key himself inside does that!" Paul MacDevitt growled. "First thing in the morning, I'm calling in the FBI, since we obviously need some help from outside the department."

      At that moment, one of the canine handlers stepped into the doorway with her dog, an energetic golden retriever, and said, "Chief, I took Dixie all around the property, and as far as I can determine, the perp parked his vehicle about halfway down the block, in the shadow of that big tree at the corner. He then walked from there, around by the dumpster, then through the garage, into the kitchen, to that door on the left side of the hall, then back out to his car."

      "Of course we couldn't get lucky enough to track the bastard down tonight," Dean Bledsoe hissed in frustration. "What about the two witnesses, Officer Young? Any luck finding them yet?"

      "Mark Doi and Pippin are out trying to track them, and they haven't reported back in yet," Officer Janice Young replied. The three men then spent the next few minutes rechecking the crime scene, hoping to find some piece of evidence that would lead them to their suspect, until a slim Asian patrolman hurried in, leading a large bloodhound.

      "Sir, Pippin and I were able to follow the scent for just over nine blocks, but we lost them at the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot," he reported. "The trail just stopped, which would indicate to me that they got into a vehicle."

      "So either they shmoozed a ride from some random shopper, or they managed to find a way to get ahold of someone to pick them up," Sanger muttered. 

      "Now we just have to hope that one of them will contact us soon," MacDevitt added. "Then we can get them into another safehouse."

      "Somehow I don't see that happening, sir," Sanger informed his boss. "If they know what we do, or even think it, we may not hear from them at all. Because unfortunately, for all they know, they have no reason to trust us anymore."

      "Why would you say that, Garrett?" Bledsoe questioned.

      "Because either they know who he is, or they're not sure who they can actually trust in the department," he replied. "I'm just about willing to bet my retirement account that they've gone underground for the moment, so I doubt that we should hold our breath expecting to hear from them for awhile."

      "So what do you propose we do, if they're not going to let us help them?" Bledsoe retorted.

      "Well, now that we can actually narrow the field of suspects, I suggest that we double down on what we've already been trying to do," Sanger answered. "We find the bastard and get him in a cell, before he finds them."