LaMoia waited at the estate’s back gate, waited for the driver of the Navigator to climb out and unlock it. He waited for the exact moment the man inserted the key into the padlock and twisted. Waited for the lock to pop open and the man to remove it and the chain from the gate.
Then he stepped out of shadow and calmly announced, “Police.”
The driver jerked from the surprise and reached for a weapon. From just over three feet away, LaMoia squeezed the trigger and blew the man’s kneecap away. As the driver spun around, screamed, and fell to the ground, LaMoia saw someone inside lunge from the backseat up into the driver’s seat. He could have fired on the man, but until a gun came out either window, he had a better option.
Instead, he counted silently in his head-singing, actually-to exercise the proper patience. Right when the man slipped in behind the wheel, LaMoia fired repeated rounds directly at the car’s front bumper. One, two, three, four… With the fifth round, he hit the G spot and the front airbags deployed, inflating and snapping the driver’s head and body back into the seat like a sixteen-ounce glove on the fist of Muhammad Ali.
He strode forward then, the gun trained right into the face of the would-be driver, ready to send the first person who twitched to his Maker.
He tore the driver’s door open, not seeing the woman in the far back until the interior lights came on. That one needed medical attention. He might drive her himself-the Navigator was a nice ride.
He recognized the man behind the wheel as Ricardo Romero. He’d been doing his homework.
“Sorry,” LaMoia said. “Road closed.”