“The old ‘you’ll never take me alive’ dupe? You don’t have a choice, pal,” Jake said. “A little jail time will do you good. Clear your head.”
“I should die and you know it. You just don’t have the balls to do it.”
“I got the balls. But I like the thought of you playing house bitch to a big-dicked inmate named Bubba for the next thirty years. Sounds more appealing. In the meantime, I’ll just think about how I’m going to spend the fifty grand I took from your warehouse.”
Shane’s eyes widened, then he grinned. “That was you, huh? Guess I killed the wrong guy for it. You should shoot me now, or you’ll pay me back someday with your blood.”
“No chance, asshole.”
“Still no? Maybe I can up the ante for you. I’ve been thinking about your name. Caldwell. Now seeing your face has me wondering. Did you happen to have a brother named Nicky?”
Jake stiffened.
“I thought so,” Shane continued. “I can see the family resemblance. He overdosed, right? Got a little bad heroin?”
Bear parked the Nav next to them and climbed out.
“Who do you think Nicky was dealing for, Caldwell? Who do you think supplied Nicky with the drugs that killed him?”
“He’s baiting you, Jake,” Bear said, his own 9-millimeter pointed at Langston. “I called it in. Squad’s on the way.”
Jake pictured Nicky on the dock, the needle sticking out of his arm like his sister described, dull and vacant eyes. A hint of a smile that it was all over. He flashed to the times he took Stony’s punishment for Nicky because that was his job, to protect, to watch out for him because they were brothers. A job he failed because of the piece of human garbage on the ground in front of him.
“You know he tried to go straight, Jake?” Shane asked. “He tried to kick the habit.”
“Shut up,” Jake warned.
“Said he owed it to his family. But I was the devil on his shoulder who put the needle in his hand.”
Jake’s grip on the gun tightened.
Langston grinned. “I gave him the needle because a good junkie is a loyal customer for life. Your brother was weak and a coward. Just like you it appears.”
Bear took a few tentative steps forward. “Jake…don’t.”
“You son of a…” Jake said, the gun trembling. He wanted to shoot him. Oh God, how he wanted to put a bullet hole through the middle of that smug face.
“But Nicky was a loose end and I hate loose ends. He knew too much about my operation and I couldn’t let him live. I gave him a nice, extra uncut dose to put him out of his miserable existence. On the house.”
Jake took another half-step forward, his finger tightening on the trigger. He never wanted to hurt someone more badly in his life. The desire to shoot Langston and cut his face with the gold ring flooded his every cell. Snaps of breaking bones and echoes of screams.
“You’re not the only one who wants to put someone out of their miserable existence,” Jake said. “You know who wants you dead and buried? You know who is paying me…paying me to end your miserable fucking life? Jason Keats. And you know what? I might just do it for free.”
The smile dropped from Shane’s face; his bravado gone.
“Jake…” Maggie said, but it was too late.
Jake fired the gun. Again and again and again until it clicked empty and tendrils of smoke wisped from the barrel.
He lowered the weapon and took a step back. Shane lay huddled on the ground, his eyes as wide open as Jake imagined Nicky’s were in those waning moments. But, instead of a lifeless gaze to the sky, Shane focused on the ground in front of him riddled with bullets. Other than the growing wet patch in the front of his slacks, Shane Langston was otherwise unharmed.
With Bear guarding their foe with a pistol, wrapped his arm around Maggie. As they walked away, he pulled out his cell to give Keats the news.
Epilogue
Tears leaked into both Bear and Jake’s eyes as Halle and Maggie reunited an hour after Bear’s men hauled Langston off to jail. Maggie had picked up their daughter and swung her around. Halle’s strong arms wrapped such a choke hold around her mother’s neck Jake was surprised Maggie didn’t pass out. Bear was carted away soon after at the insistence of the volunteer paramedics. They transported him to Sedalia to get the bullet out of his shoulder. Jake, Maggie and Halle were completely exhausted from the day’s traumatic events and everyone crashed out early with Jake not making it past Maggie’s couch, Maggie and Halle together in Maggie’s bed.
The next morning, Jake lay awake on the couch considering his future. Being fifty thousand dollars richer with Langston’s stash made the process a whole lot easier, even if it was blood money. Jake thought of it as spoils of war. It took him a minute to work his way to a sitting position. He stood and made his way back to Stony’s house, his truck parked outside. Bear must’ve had it brought from the shootout at Shane’s, the damage minimal given the war it had been through. He unlocked the toolbox and breathed out. The money bag waited untouched.
Inside the house, he grabbed his last change of clothes and went to the bathroom to take a shower. He let the hot water beat on him until he emptied the tank and his skin turned red. He got out, dressed and went to the kitchen. As he waited for the coffee to brew, he looked out the back window to the pond. Heavy algae covered the surface of the water, but the old dock on the far bank floated unchanged. For the first time in years, the image of the two of them fishing for crappie replaced the nightmare of Nicky lying there. Good times instead of bad.
He poured the finished coffee into a large mug. His stomach growled, but the coffee was the only consumable thing in the house besides a half empty bottle of ketchup and a jar of dill pickles. He walked out the front door into the morning sun. Not much of a breeze, the humid air already sticky. Minutes later, he gazed from the top of the world at the swaying tree tops that would soon explode into a rainbow of colors. Maybe he’d stick around to see it if Maggie would have him.
“Hey.” Jake turned to see Halle walking up the hill from home. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a pink T-shirt and cut off sweats with the Warsaw Wildcat logo on them.
“Hey, yourself,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Still tired.” She dropped next to him and admired the beauty of the valley below.
“Me too. It’ll take a few days to catch up. Doing okay otherwise?”
“I had a nightmare about Shane and his knife last night. Scared the hell out of me. Woke up in a pool of sweat.”
“Most nightmares fade with time,” Jake said.
“Most?”
“Best I can do.”
“How are you feelin’?”
He rubbed his chest. “Sore. I don’t recommend getting shot. Even with a bulletproof vest.”
She laughed. “I’ll try and remember that. So, this was your spot, huh? You and my mom?”
Jake looked over. Halle looked so much like her mother at that age it gave him chills.
“Yeah, this is where we came to get away from it all, even if it was just for a short while. I didn’t have what you would call a…satisfying home life.”
“Mom told me a little. Sorry about your dad, even though it doesn’t sound like he was much of a good person.”
“Thanks. He wasn’t. But we’ll bury him tomorrow and life will go on.”
She picked up a few blades of grass, peeling them in half lengthwise, one at a time. Jake remembered Maggie used to do that before she broached a difficult topic.
“So, my mom dropped the bombshell on me. You’re my dad.”
Jake exhaled deeply. “She did, huh? How do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, eyes narrowed and contemplative. “Kind of weird. I always thought it was some random guy. I’d see strangers around who kind of looked like me and I would wonder if he was the guy or not. After a while, I gave up thinking about it. I guess it’s nice to put a face with the name. You know what’s funny, though?�
�� She peeled another blade in half and tossed the remainders, watching them drift away in the wind. “She’s always telling me to not get swallowed up by any boy. That none of them are worth it. But I don’t think she believed it. I could tell she was waiting for that boy who left her behind back in high school. She always believed you’d come back someday whether she would admit it or not.”
“Halle,” Jake started before faltering. He didn’t know what to say.
“It’s also pretty cool,” she said, rescuing him, “to know I have the kind of dad who would risk his life to protect me.”
She leaned over and kissed Jake on the cheek. Before he could respond, she ran down the hill back to her house. His daughter’s lips tingled his skin, a pretty good feeling. It had been a long time since he felt good.
* * *
They buried Stony in the Turkey Creek Cemetery next to his wife and son. Two plots remained to one day hold Janey and Jake. Maggie and Halle waited under the tree, next to Janey, Luther and the boys. Jake barely recognized his nephews. Earlier, Luther tried to make polite conversation. Jake cut him off and informed his brother-in-law if he hurt Janey again, he’d spread Luther’s remains over ten different counties.
The service was quick and generic. Stony had few friends and none bothered to come. Jake and Bear helped carry the coffin from the hearse and placed it on skids that would lower the casket. The preacher talked, but Jake processed little. Instead, he played back the Stony movie one last time. The coffin lowered in the ground and the crowd dispersed, but Maggie and Halle remained, waiting for him. If he wanted it, they would be there for the rest of his life. Maybe he could handle that.
Two workers leaned on old shovels, waiting patiently for Jake to make his exit. He hadn’t been able to say the words at Stony’s death bed. They’d likely bring peace and allow him to let go of the anger driving him down the wrong path for far too long. He had the perfect opportunity multiple times over the last few days but couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Jake walked to the edge of the grave, snaking trails of rich, brown dirt rolling off the top of the plain casket. He reached into his pocket for the ring. He ran his fingers over the rough, pain-laden surface. The ring caused scars. Scars were reminders of how life went wrong. But scars were also reminders that despite them, one could make the choice to live.
He stretched out his hand and released the ring. It clinked off the surface of the casket and settled into the loose dirt, the scarred side down. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“I forgive you,” he said.
Acknowledgments
Major thanks to my good friend Kate Foster. Your unwavering belief in Poor Boy Road carried me through the dark times of doubt. Thank you for pushing me along the way and not killing me for my repetitive word choices.
Thanks to my dad for always being there for me, for being such an amazing role model of what a father should be and for being absolutely nothing like Stony Caldwell. Love you, Pop.
Thanks to my mom who always encouraged me to write. I wish more than anything that you were still with us to celebrate this novel.
Thanks to Brenda Drake whose Pitch Wars and Pitch Madness competitions provided a ray of hope through the onslaught of rejection letters and connected me with people who loved Poor Boy Road every bit as much as I did. If we should ever meet, the first drink is on me, Brenda!
Finally, thanks to my cheerleaders and fellow authors Barry Brakeville, E.L. Wicker, Aften Szymanski and Sarah Henning. Your writing and encouragement helped me more than you know and mean the world to me.
II
Ares Road
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Acknowledgments
To the writers out there reaching for the dream,
and to the readers who make the dream worth reaching for.
Chapter One
A shriek erupted from the dead man’s cell phone, so jarring that Jake Caldwell almost dropped it in the blood pooling at his feet. A young girl, maybe a teenager—though the terror in her scream made it difficult to tell. A second later, a man’s muffled shout, a crash of something thick and heavy, and silence as the connection terminated.
Jake memorized the number from the cracked phone screen. Area code 913—Kansas side of the city. He tucked his Glock into his waistband holster, wiped the phone and put it back in the jacket pocket of the dead guy. The man appeared in his mid-thirties, dressed in a no-name blue suit, clean shaven, with a potato nose broken more than once. Bookending the blood-weeping black hole in his forehead, the man’s glassy eyes fixed on the open window behind Jake. A professional. To confirm, Jake lifted the jacket and revealed an empty shoulder holster. Whoever killed him probably took his gun. From the guy’s jacket pocket, Jake fished out a plain, ivory keycard and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Jake avoided glopping his size 13s in the crimson mess as he stepped over the body to the barren condo’s window. The owners were going to have a hell of a time selling the place now. Large bloodstains on the floor tended to ward off potential buyers. He knocked the jagged glass clear and stuck out his head, his close-cropped hair brushing the wood frame. The rusty fire escape hugging the side of the building stood bare, the drop ladder deployed to the narrow, trash-filled alley. The ladder to the floor above was fully raised. His quarry either pulled it after climbing up or, more likely, dropped into the alley. In either case, there was no sign of Alexander Voleski or the silver briefcase. Shit.
His man got away. A frantic scream from a girl he didn’t know. A mystery guy he didn’t kill. Sirens approaching from a distance. It was a Monday.
Jake loped down three flights and exited the building on Kansas City’s south side, an old, red-bricked canning factory someone renovated into mid-priced condos. Far from the city’s “top-of-the-line,” but better than his place. Then again, a lot of places were better than his place. Kansas City police cars roared up Broadway from the south, so Jake turned north. He kept a casual pace, a slight limp from his bad knee. The early afternoon sun glared overhead in a cloudless blue sky, but Jake flipped the collar of his jacket high to block the brisk March breeze blowing at his back.
He strolled north a block, working his way back to the crime scene from the opposite end. His employer, Jack Logan, drew up to the curb in a decade-old, black Explorer with peeling paint and the odor of cigarettes and fast food imbedded in the cracked upholstery.
He met Logan three years ago when they crossed paths in a dark and seedy bar. They’d stood o
n either side of a low life they both were hired to find. Jake wanted the guy to pay a gambling debt he owed to his mob boss, and Logan needed him to pay child support to a tenacious ex-wife. They were both screwed because the guy couldn’t even pay for the beer in front of him. Since their first casual meeting, they’d bonded the last several months over a couple of movies and steak dinners at Logan’s house. Logan was Jake’s only friend in Kansas City.
“I take it things didn’t go well?” Logan ticked his graying head toward the police cars. His dark sunglasses blended into three days-worth of five o’clock shadow on his leathery cheeks. The weathered lines etched in his face made him look older than fifty. Hard living and excessive drinking tended to do that. He steered from the curb and sped away from the condo.
“Not really, no,” Jake said. “You see Voleski bust ass out of the alley with the briefcase?”
“No, I was watching the back door.”
“He went out the fire escape on the side. We should have had another guy on this.”
Logan coughed and spat something thick out the window. “I can’t afford another guy.”
Jake Caldwell Thrillers Page 25
