Coming upon the gate in the fence, he immediately knew where to look. He searched for and found the toothpick pinched between the gate and the fence post exactly where it should have been. Amy had left the toothpick a few inches above the ground. Had any intruder opened the gate, the toothpick would have fallen, and Gunnar would have known there was something seriously wrong.
The fact that no one had gone up to the stakeout roost was fine and good, but of course, no indication that there wouldn’t be any serious problems ahead. The houseful of Kelly’s alleged hitmen had been unobserved for the past hour. For all Gunnar knew, he could go upstairs, check on the camera aimed at the house next door, and find his quarry missing.
Gunnar fished the keys to the apartment from his pocket and climbed the back stairs. The sun had gone down, but the lights from the surrounding neighborhood were strong enough to see by. Finding the second toothpick, the one three inches off the floor and secured between the door of the stakeout apartment and post intact, he entered the apartment feeling reasonably safe and hurried straight to the Nikon.
And he cursed for almost two full minutes after looking through the viewfinder. The house next door was empty.
“How much worse will a worst-case scenario get tonight?” he muttered to himself as he backed away from the camera and paced the room.
The supposed hitters must have left the house across the street sometime after Amy took off. Of course, things were not at a crisis point. Gunnar forced himself to relax as he fished in his jacket pockets for his phone. For one, the men next door could have just gone out for dinner. Even though they had approached Whitlock’s neighborhood before, neither Gunnar nor any of his “Foundry Gym Irregulars” had seen the team get any closer to the Whitlock house. And even if something were to happen tonight, Tommy Novak was spending half the evening in Whitlock’s guest bedroom.
But Gunnar wanted to give Tommy a heads up on the situation.
“And you gotta do it cool and in control, pal,” Gunnar muttered to himself as he tapped his phone’s face to activate it. There was no sense in getting Tommy riled up about having lost Whitlock’s nemeses.
Gun-packing nemeses, Gunnar almost said aloud but caught himself. He really needed to get a hold of his anger.
He took a deep breath instead of pressing the speed dial to Tommy’s phone. He walked back to the camera, took another look out the window, and started wandering back to the table that held the coffee maker. In mid-stride, a news alert chimed on the phone. Just because he had set the machine to alert him for certain stories, he glanced at the screen. And he saw a local headline about the one organization he wanted to know absolutely everything about right now.
“WBBF,” he whispered and tapped on the headline. “So what’s this?”
Sure enough, the WBBF, or rather a problem of the WBBF, had made the news. Some guy named David Montgomery, a prominent security specialist to wealthy Los Angelinos, to more than a few celebrities, had died in a car crash last night. As Gunnar read the story below Montgomery’s patrician-looking photo, he discovered that the man had recently worked for the “embattled WBBF, the controversial bodybuilding organization—embroiled in ongoing steroid allegations and the death of one of their athletes recently—providing the usual corporate security for….”
“WBBF security?” Gunnar almost yelled across the room.
Except his train of thought was derailed by a knock from the back door.
He froze in his spot.
Someone was outside the door. No one should have been looking for him up here. No one besides Kelly and his team knew he was here, and they should all have called him before showing up at the door. Even Joey.
Except that damnable old man next door.
Gunnar’s right hand went toward the holster on his hip.
“Hello?” a yell came from behind the door. It definitely wasn’t Nicos, the old guy from next door.
Gunnar moved forward, approaching the door, moving well clear to the left of it.
“Hello?” the voice called again. “I’m making a delivery, and I need some help. Hello?”
If he moved very quietly, Gunnar thought he could get as close to the door as the peephole.
As he was within three feet of the door, cautiously off to the side, he heard the creaking of wood off to his left. His head snapped in that direction.
Another creak.
The sound was distant.
Beyond the front door!
Gunnar’s thumb snatched the safety strap off the holster. There was someone moving on the front door as well.
On instinct, he pivoted to the left as he heard more creaking noises. Several noises. There was more than one person moving toward the front door of the apartment.
But just as he turned, the back door ripped open. It tore out of its lock, smashing into Gunnar’s back with violent force.
CHAPTER 60
Gunnar was almost knocked off his feet as the front door came ripping open, too. What might have been three men came rushing into the apartment through the front door as he heard movement behind him.
A jarring hit from behind sent pain radiating through Gunnar’s back. This time he was sent sprawling onto the floor.
The hit from behind carried such force, Gunnar realized as he was going down that it felt as if his attacker took a lunge and drove a knee into his back. An interesting fact, some still-objective part of his mind seemed to remark as he hit the floor. The truth was that no matter how he was hit, it had sent him down on his hands and knees.
Off to the right, he heard the clattering of metal against wood. Oh, shit.
It was the gun, he had a fleeting instant to realize. His gun had slipped from its unfastened holster and fallen to the floor, tumbling away in the darkness.
But that line of thinking was interrupted by the kick he received in his left side. The intruder who had come through the back door followed up his initial attack by kicking Gunnar when he was down, then kicking him yet again. There were four men in the room, Gunnar’s mind registered, all the while struggling to fight through the pain. The men from next door, obviously. Something must have happened. A mistake was made. The hitmen in town to scope out Kelly’s client had somehow discovered the stakeout.
“Watch out! He’s a big son of a bitch,” the shout came from somewhere above Gunnar.
The attackers crowded around him.
Then Gunnar’s head was almost driven into the hardwood floor. A fist had come crashing down from above, pounding into his cheek, blasting splotches of white light across his field of vision.
He lost his precarious handhold on the floor now, slipping, falling facedown.
But the attackers were not content to leave him there. He could feel arms snaking around his own from behind, pinning both of his arms back as he was being pulled to his feet.
“He’s strong, man! He’s strong, get him,” a scream trilled from somewhere nearby in the empty room. Someone must have realized his dimensions and worried about his strength to break free.
To make sure the odds of that were kept to a minimum, one of the thugs sprang in front of Gunnar, cocked an arm, and launched a fist into his face. The sickening thud of bone and flesh smacking against bone and flesh tore through Gunnar’s head, accompanying the pain washing over him and the salty tang of blood filling his mouth. A vicious blow to the abdomen followed, then another, then a third. Thankfully, Gunnar’s well-muscled midsection protected him from the blows.
But unfortunately, the puncher must have realized what powerful slabs of muscle he had been hitting. He varied the assault, in turn. He struck Gunnar’s head again, sending a ringing right cross to his jaw. Another blow to the head and consciousness would be slipping away, a panicky voice screamed through Gunnar’s mind.
Except he had been beaten so badly and his arms pinned so tightly that there would be little he could do ab
out it.
“You were sold out, you piece of shit,” the puncher’s voice taunted Gunnar. “You and your friends’ve been here all this time, and only now we see what’s happening.”
“Oh, you’re going down, man,” someone else in the room yelled.
A fist crashed into Gunnar’s cheek again. But somehow, he managed to stay conscious. The next blow landed in his gut again. Although not exactly pleasant, he could still keep his muscles tight enough to withstand the hits.
The puncher’s fist must have hurt from the shots to the face, Gunnar realized somewhat hopefully. The fact was that it wasn’t easy to keep beating away on someone’s head with only a pair of bare fists.
“Come on, man, let’s take him out and get the others,” another man said from somewhere in the darkness. “The lady said we gotta take ‘em all if we wanna make it out of L.A. alive.”
The lady said? Gunnar forced himself to keep thinking. What the hell were they saying? Sold out? Lady?
“Bastard,” the puncher said simply and drove a fist into Gunnar’s solar plexus.
“How ‘bout that, asshole?” someone said a few feet away. “Your friends are going down. Especially your doctor friend. We’re going after her next. Then we’re gonna find that nice, tight little ass that was in here before, and we’re gonna enjoy ourselves for good long time.”
Despite another gut punch, a wild, enlivening bolt of panic lanced through Gunnar. That and the pain seemed to jolt him back to his senses, somewhat. He had to stay awake! He had to live! They were going after Erika next. Then they were going for Amy.
And then Gunnar’s arms came loose. The punk holding him had let go. For some reason….
Coherent thought was washed from Gunnar’s mind again. The pain was just too overwhelming. It burned through him from the small of his back all the way up to the base of his skull.
The guy had let him go, but only to punch him in the back.
Gunnar stumbled forward, went past the puncher who had punished his face and gut, and fell facedown across the davenport.
“Fuck this shit,” one of the punks said. “Just kill him, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
They would shoot him in the back, Gunnar realized as he sprawled over the couch. They had obviously tired of the beating and wanted to move on. Someone had tipped them off to the surveillance, so they needed to bring this to an end, kill him, and get out.
Someone behind him would go for his gun any second, Gunnar guessed. In another moment, he was bound to hear the smooth, well-oiled, barely-audible click of a cocked hammer and a large caliber bullet exploding out of a handgun.
Gunnar’s only chance was concealed inside the davenport. His hand went between two cushions, and he prayed that he would feel the cold steel of the Beretta.
CHAPTER 61
Gunnar now truly knew what it meant to tap into his last reserve of energy. He thought he’d done that in the past. He thought he knew what it meant from his days in the gym. But none of that had been for real. None of that had ever involved life and death stakes.
Springing off the couch, spinning and cocking the big Beretta 9mm hand-cannon, was a true test of Gunnar’s last ounces of willpower. He leveled the gun at the nearest thug, who just happened to be the puncher, and squeezed the trigger twice. By the brief flicker of illumination created by the muzzle blast, Gunnar saw he had unleashed two on-target rounds. Both of the 9mm Parabellum slugs tore through the heavy’s gut. They sent him staggering backward as spouts of blood gushed out of his wounds. Those would be killing rounds, Gunnar knew. The sadistic prick was going down, and he didn’t have a chance in hell of ever coming up again.
But that left three more punks in the room, and Gunnar only had fractions of a second to decide how to take them out. The one furthest away, the one who had attacked him from the back and pinned his arms, had already lost his nerve. He tried stumbling away in the dark. He tried going for the door.
Gunnar wanted to shoot him so much, it hurt more than the kicks and punches he’d received. But standing on his right and much closer were two more hitmen demanding attention. The nearest one had already palmed a large pistol. Gunnar couldn’t tell what it was in the dark, but that hardly mattered. It must have been a magnum or a 9mm or a .45.
Gunnar tipped the barrel of the Beretta toward the gunman and worked the trigger. Miraculously, one shot appeared to put two heavies at bay. The round tore through the nearest man’s head. It punched a rather neat, rather small entry hole into his forehead, discharging a discreet, very thin trickle of blood. But the bullet continued on a much more destructive and gruesome path through the rest of the man’s head. By the time it reached the back of the skull, Gunnar realized the 9mm slug must have deformed and expanded enough to send a shockwave through its victim’s brain, liquefying it in an instant and blowing out all of the back of his head.
The gunman’s lifeless corpse melted to the floor.
Gunnar then saw why the punk behind the shooting victim was also halted by that one round. The expanding spray of gore from his partner’s headshot splashed him across the face. Blood and liquid brain matter must have sprayed in his eyes, temporarily blinding him. As the heavy stumbled backward, screaming and wiping at his eyes, Gunnar put him down with two shots to the chest.
Then he spun to the left, looking for the last remaining hitman. He barely saw the criminal going out the door, disappearing into the night. Gunnar spat a curse and went after the punk. He ached to kill the bastard but knew he needed him alive. Gunnar needed to know what had happened here. Who had blown their cover? Who was the “lady?”
By the time Gunnar was on the landing, his quarry had nearly made it down to the lawn. Then, after jumping the last three steps, the punk spun around and fired a revolver at Gunnar.
The shot was hopelessly off-target, and Gunnar ran after the hitman, not even bothering to duck.
As the shooter tried to run for the fence, though, Gunnar had no choice but to try and slow him down somehow. He took a wild shot at him. The punk flinched, breaking his stride. He looked over his shoulder. Gunnar leaped over the railing and landed in the grass. The punk spun around, stumbled backward, and fired at Gunnar. The shot was surprisingly close. Gunnar could hear it whizzing past his left ear. Spurred by instinct, he took a return shot at the fleeing criminal.
And then the damndest thing happened. Gunnar couldn’t help but come to a stumbling halt as the shocking spectacle unfolded in a split second.
The shot from the Beretta found the hitman dead center in his chest. He fell backward, no doubt dead already. As he came down, his body hit the picket fencing. He smashed a fairly sizable segment of it, save for two pickets that went through his back and exited his chest.
The dead man sprawled on the ground like a vampire that had been taken down with extreme prejudice, driven through by not one but two stakes.
CHAPTER 62
Despite having just killed four people, Gunnar had faced less police heat than Kelly. Of central concern to the cops was the fact that he had been watching those four men for Kelly.
Although it had taken the better part of a long night and several marathon sessions of interrogation at the Lomita Station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, both Kelly and Gunnar walked away free. After all, Gunnar had sat in the apartment and done nothing whatsoever to provoke a vicious attack and a brutal beating. Previously, he had done nothing more than observe four men touring L.A. They might have been armed, certainly, but in the final analysis—or in Kelly’s final argument that forced the cops to turn Gunnar loose—he was merely renting an apartment across the street from four men who happened to own a cache of perfectly legal firearms.
“So, where does this leave Mr. Whitlock and his divorce case?” Gunnar asked, squinting against the first rays of the morning sunlight as they descended the front steps of the sheriff’s station.
�
��It leaves the New York City D.A.’s office asking questions about his soon-to-be-former father-in-law’s business,” Kelly said.
Good news, Gunnar supposed.
But within a moment, Copeland Whitlock had just about disappeared from Gunnar’s radar. His focus settled on the Mercedes Roadster parked in the lot he and Kelly approached. Almost as if on cue, its driver-side door opened, and Erika sprang from the car. A few seconds later, however, things hinted at a development slightly more complicated. Diane Holt’s Acura also pulled into the lot.
“Oh, my God!” Erika was the first to meet Gunnar, though, staring aghast at his battered face. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Don’t worry.” Gunnar did his best to sound laconic. “Nothing broken, and nothing a hot oil massage won’t fix.”
Erika appeared to be ignoring his tough-guy cool act. After a passing glance at Kelly, she studied the bruises and lacerations, contusions and swells that attempted to alter his features.
“Erika, by the way, this is Kelly Vaughn, my lawyer and employer,” Gunnar quipped. “She’s quite good. That’s why you don’t need to bail me out.”
A round of perfunctory thanks and introductions between Erika and Kelly followed, soon to be followed by a notably stiffer, more formal round of acquaintances between Diane and Erika. Diane seemed to be taking Gunnar’s previous assurance in stride that Erika was fully committed to the cause despite having written Brad’s death off as an accident in the first place. Nevertheless, their meeting remained a slightly awkward moment.
“What happens now?” Erika asked, her voice edgy, sounding like she hoped to God that Gunnar would opt to take the day off and not do any more violence-related detecting for the time being.
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