She carefully dumped the rest of Caroline’s body out onto the floor of the lighthouse and considered what help the box might be. It was about the size of a trunk you might take to college with you, or maybe on a summer camp trip with the local scout troop. She thought that maybe if she broke the box somehow, she might end up with a sharp piece that she could attack Taz with when he came back… if he came back.
That was as good a plan as any, so she picked up the box and slammed it down on the floor. It banged loudly, but nothing happened. It was well made. She picked it up again and heaved it toward the wall. Nothing. She began flinging it around furiously, bashing it against the wall and over and over on the floor… but it never gave way.
She fell breathlessly to the floor as the box tumbled end over end and landed upside down and wedged up against the wall. Between her heavy breaths, she dry-heaved and gasped for air. She was hyperventilating. She tried desperately to fight off the panic and slow her breathing. She stood up and walked slowly around the room with her head tilted back like a marathon runner. In with the good air, out with the bad.
She paced around the room a few times, until finally, she felt her pulse slow to what felt a normal pace. Her breathing was slowing, so she eased herself down against the wall and tried to think happy, calming thoughts.
“Ha!” she said out loud to the empty room, “Happy, calming thou—”
Her thought never finished, because in her mind she realized the box was sitting next to the wall like a step. She stood and ran over to the opposite side of the room, stepped up onto the box, and screamed. She could see out. The windows were about six feet off the ground and, until now, she hadn’t been able to see outside. She screamed for twenty minutes, until finally her voice left fades as she realized there was no one on the beach below the lighthouse. It was probably too late in the day for anyone to be out, especially this far south on the island.
She stopped yelling, but she kept looking out, watching the waves roll up onto the beach.
She might not be able to get out, but she would see him coming. And she would smash the box on top of his head if he came through that door.
If he never comes back, I’ll probably die of starvation up here.
But at least I’ll see the sunset one last time before I do.
25
Union Of The Snake
Remington Hoyt Reginald was surprised at how stupid the cops must have thought he was… they were hiding in plain sight—and in uniform—at his apartment. He wasn’t sure what was up, but the police were onto him. Governor Dickerson had obviously figured out some way to get him arrested and taken down, but that was okay. Remington had his bugout bag, his Gram doll, and Pepe (what he had taken to calling his new pet skunk) with him in the car. He rolled past the building and slowed down for just long enough to figure out where he could go.
It had become obvious that the Governor-elect had no intention of naming Remington as his Chief of Staff—hell, he’d gone on TV and named some other senator from Vermont to the post. So, it was time to make good on his threat. He had a friend at a local television station and he’d called him about some explosive information he had on the newly elected Governor. He didn’t have digital copies of it, so he’d hit a Kinko’s somewhere, scan everything he had, and email it to the reporter. But he couldn’t help looking over his shoulder every few minutes, sure he’d see a black SUV, with blacked out windows, following him.
He needed a way to blend in—as if blending in would be easy for a man carrying a doll and a skunk. He could think of only one place where that would be considered normal; the Keys.
He decided he’d head down toward the Keys and make himself disappear, so he pulled his car onto US 1 and clicked on the air conditioning.
“You okay back there, Pepe?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
The skunk tittered and lifted its head. It was snuggling in the blanket Remington had grabbed from the apartment and had its arms wrapped around the Gram doll. He had long since stopped spraying, and Remington wondered if he’d run out… or if he’d become tamed by the pretzels and cheese puffs Remington had been feeding him. Maybe both.
He checked the bag sitting next to him and found it to be empty. Fearing that the skunk would rebel against him if he didn’t replenish their food supply, he pulled off at a Food Spot… then thinking better of that decision, he maneuvered around the parking lot to pull into a Mom ‘n Pop grocery store next door. Pulling into the first parking place, he turned his car off, but without the AC going he realized he couldn’t leave Pepe out here in the burning heat.
He grabbed his Coach Metropolitan Courier bag (made with genuine sport calf leather) from the back seat and tucked the blanked in the bottom of it.
“Sorry, Pepe,” he said, gently picking up the skunk, “but I can’t leave you outside this time.”
The skunk purred and relented… maybe he felt the heat too. Remington folded the flap over the bag and closed the car door. He clicked his fob and went inside. This time he didn’t look around, and missed the black SUV pulling in behind him.
Armed with a handheld basket from the front of the store, Remington started shoving in various cheese flavored chips, puffs, and balls, which seemed to be the skunk’s favorites. He walked the aisles, choosing a large bag of lightly salted sunflower seeds for himself, and grabbed a few bottles of water from the cooler in the back.
The door dinged at the front of the store and Remington glanced up and saw a man wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans walked in. He wasn’t sure what tipped him off that something was up, either the fact the man didn’t take his sunglasses off, or the fact he’d raised a shotgun and blew a giant hole in the clerk at the register. Either way, Remington fell to the floor and scrambled back toward the bathrooms.
Dammit, he thought, that didn’t take long. He was certain that the man must be working for Gil Dickerson. To walk in and murder someone in broad daylight without pause had to be the work of someone with serious connections.
The man began walking through the store as bits of glass and broken pieces of store counter and displays crunched beneath his shoes.
Remington crawled as quietly as he could toward the rear of the store, hoping there was a back door or some place to crawl in and hide.
“Misther Rethginald,” the man said with an obvious lisp, “we bosth know how thisth isth going to end.”
It felt strange to be both terrified of this assassin who’d been sent to kill him and yet distracted by the man’s speech impediment. Not that Remington associated any kind of humor with speech impediments—he’d had trouble pronouncing the letter R for quite a few years of his own childhood—but to hear a deadly hitman struggling with his death threats… okay, there was no time to be politically correct here.
Remington said nothing, instead just continued to crawl along, trying his best to time his movements with the killer’s to mask the noise. He hoped someone would walk in and disrupt the scene, if only for a second. He could feel Pepe scratching against the inside of his messenger bag and hoped the skunk would calm down, but his pet seemed determined to escape.
“My employer isth disthpleasthed with the way you have handled your… arrangement,” the man said, continuing to crunch his way through the store.
No shit, Remington thought as he came to the doorway that led to three choices, Women’s, Men’s or Employees. He chose the third, and scrambled through after shoving open the Employee door. He ducked his head as the man fired his shotgun into the wall. Chunks of sheetrock and wood shattered and fell around him as he stood up and ran. He looked around and found what he was looking for… a giant, walk-in cooler. He figured he could duck in there and be hidden and protected at least for a minute or two. From there, he wasn’t sure what the plan was… but he needed time to think.
He jumped up and ran toward the cooler. Jerking open the door, he jumped inside and ran to the back, where boxes of ice cream treats, popsicles, frozen candy bars, and frozen drink mixes
sat on crates. The floor of the metal cooler was sticky from the residue of what looked like a recent spill of something cherry or strawberry flavored, and Remington felt the skunk start scratching at the inside of the bag, probably smelling the sweet stuff on the ground.
“Not now, Pepe,” Remington whispered into the edge of the bag.
Thankfully it seemed to work, and the animal quieted down. Remington crouched behind the last shelf unit in the cooler and stilled himself. He strained to hear any sounds coming from beyond the closed door. Over the unit’s condenser humming continuously, he could barely hear the footsteps coming closer and closer.
“Misther Rethginald,” the man in black called from outside the door, “there isth nowhere to hide. I have you trapped insthide this room and it will not end well for you if you continue to try to ethscape.”
The cooler apparently achieved its desired temperature and clicked off for a second. Other than a small orange glow coming from a light switch inside the door, Remington had no way to see his surroundings. He felt around for a weapon of some sort, not sure what good any of these confections would do against the man’s shotgun. He briefly considered throwing a box into the man’s face and trying to shove past him out the cooler door, but that likely wouldn’t work. He’d probably be expecting something like that and would just deflect the box and promptly blow a hole clean through Remington’s chest. The stainless-steel shelves looked as if they might provide a pole or shelf bracket that could be used as a weapon, but upon trying to loosen one, he found them too well put together. The metal wouldn’t budge.
Remington began to feel as if this was it… the end. And out of nowhere, in the dead silence of the dark cooler, his cell phone began to ring. Loudly.
Shit, shit, shit, Remington said, searching frantically in his bag for his phone to shut it off.
Outside, he heard the assassin laugh.
“It stheemths that you have a cthell phone call, Misther Rethginald.”
Dammit, Remington thought as he pushed Pepe aside, found the phone, and silenced it. Looking at the number briefly, he saw it was from a contact he’d entered in his phone as G.D. Gil Dickerson. Most likely, the Governor was checking to see if his hitman had completed the job. On top of all of this, Pepe began to chirp wildly, apparently tired of being trapped in a messenger bag.
“Thisth game is over, Misther Rethginald,” came the man’s voice, just outside the cooler door now.
And suddenly, a plan flashed into Remington’s mind. He was reminded of the first time he’d met Pepe, back in his apartment… and how incapacitated he’d been by the smell of the skunk. He heard the man’s hand take hold of the cooler door handle and the slight creak of the hinge.
“Sorry, Pepe,” Remington said softly.
He closed the messenger back flap over the top of the skunk, positioned himself in the center of the cooler in front of the door, and waited silently.
The door clicked and then the man hesitated.
“I’m going to open thisth door, Misther Rethginald,” the man said through the crack, “and we’re going to talk thisth out like stheriousth adulths.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Remington said, holding the bag out in front of him.
He crouched low to the floor in a sprinter’s stance. The door swung open and Remington pounced. He leapt forward, keeping below under the man’s shotgun barrel. The blast went off above him, deafeningly loud inside the cooler, sending the skunk into hysterics.
Remington shoved past the man, tumbling him backward. As he jumped over him, he opened the messenger back and dumped the enraged and frightened skunk onto his head. He could almost feel Pepe loading up for the mother of all stink blasts, but he didn’t wait to see what would happen—he just ran as fast as he could for the front door.
Behind him he heard a scream and thought at first that it might be Pepe… but the longer it went on, he realized it was the assassin.
He had no idea what was happening in the cooler, but he could suddenly smell the skunk spray, and it was strong, even out here. He burst through the front door and ran to his car.
Opening the glove box, he reached in and grabbed his .22 pistol. It wasn’t much, but at least he had some kind of weapon.
Inside the store, he heard bodies thrashing and things smashing, and it sounded as if a bull had been let loose inside and was destroying everything in its path.
Within seconds, even from behind the store’s glass door and windows, the reek of skunk began to drift out and Remington knew it would be impossible to breathe inside. He pointed his gun at the door and waited.
The noise continued inside, as did the screaming. Suddenly, the front door slammed outward and the assassin came charging out, his shotgun in one hand while the other hand was tugging at his face.
Pepe was clinging to the man’s head and appeared to be biting and clawing and spraying wildly. Blood ran down the man’s cheeks in dark rivulets.
“Get thisth mother fthuckin’ thskunk the fthuck off of me!!” he yelled and a random blast roared from his shotgun.
Remington pointed his tiny gun at the man. He aimed low to keep from hitting Pepe. He fired once, and the shot punctured the man in the right thigh. He stumbled to a knee and howled in pain. But it wasn’t enough to stop him. Pepe was circling around the man’s head scratching and clawing, and the swirl of hair and blood almost made Remington gag… or maybe it was the stunning amount of spray coming from Pepe.
He sprayed and sprayed and sprayed… all over the man’s head. Remington knew he was a little more immune to the smell than most, but it was strong… very strong. As if on cue, the man yelled and vomit spewed from his mouth in wild arcs.
“Oh, damn,” Remington muttered.
He raised his pistol, now almost hoping to put the man out of his misery, but he was still afraid of hitting the skunk. He aimed at the man’s chest, as high as he felt he could without aiming at Pepe. He pulled the trigger and the man jerked backward as if he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.
He laid on the ground groaning. Pepe was sitting on top of the man’s chest, licking the blood off his paws. Remington kept the gun pointed at the man and walked closer.
The gory sight of the man’s head was pretty gruesome, and Remington didn’t take long to examine it… but this guy wouldn’t be coming after him anymore. It looked like both of his eyes were clawed out, the assassin likely blinded. The smell on the man’s head was staggering. Remington had no idea Pepe could eject that amount of pungent spray. It almost knocked him over as he checked the man over. His nose was a bloody pulp and his mouth was covered in bile and foam. He convulsed and vomited again. Remington grabbed the man’s shotgun and opened the messenger bag on his shoulder. Pepe jumped in.
Remington left the man moaning in pain on the sidewalk by the grocery store. He jumped in his car, wondering if the guy would survive or not, but not waiting around to find out. In the distance, sirens began to wail. Someone had called the police upon hearing the gunshots. Remington screeched out of the lot and clicked open his phone. He dialed the number labeled G.D.
The familiar voice of Governor Gil Dickerson came onto the line. “Is it done?”
Remington was furious. He felt like screaming, but he held his composure. After counting to ten, he calmly answered.
“Oh, it’s done alright,” he said. “Your political life is done, I mean. Your private life is done. Everything you’ve started is done. You are finished. You’re going to jail… or maybe worse, before I’m through with you, Governor Dickerson.”
The line was silent for a time, and Remington could almost see the shock through the phone.
“We had a deal,” Remington said. “Everything was going to work out just fine. But no. You had to screw everything up by sending a cut-rate hitman to try and take me out.” Remington heard Gil start to stammer on the other end, but he continued. “All you had to do was appoint me to a cabinet post. Hell, I would’ve even negotiated what post, if only you had come to m
e before sending this asshat to kill me.”
“But I—” Gil stuttered.
“Shut the hell up,” Remington interrupted him. “But no. Now it’s all over. I’m going to release everything I have, and it’ll be all over the news by tomorrow. Say goodbye to your wife, say goodbye to your friends, say goodbye to your life.”
There was a moment of silence, and Remington wondered if the man was having another heart attack. He’d seen on the news that the man had what they were calling an incident.
Good riddance, he thought. But then Gil came back to the line, wheezing raggedly.
“But I didn’t send him,” he whispered. “I had nothing to do with it. You have to believe me. It was Hardy, he sent the Snake.”
Remington almost laughed. The Snake. Like a bad movie villain… the Snake had a lisp… He had no idea who this Hardy was, but he didn’t care.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass who sent him,” he growled. “You’re going to jail, Governor.”
“Wait!” Gil shouted. “Just wait. Give me a second to think.”
Remington started to hang up, but then decided to see what could be salvaged out of this cluster of a situation.
“You s-s-said you didn’t c-care if it was another p-p-position,” Gil stuttered, “I can think of something. I haven’t f-filled them all yet.”
Remington paused. Maybe it wasn’t too late. But then again, he had tried to get him killed… or at least one of his colleagues had sent an assassin. And it was pretty obvious they’d just send another one. He needed to know more.
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 58
