I squeezed shut my eyes, and prepared for what was coming.
“So, I’m sorry,” I concluded. “I’m taking this like a man, because that’s no less than the Knuckleheads deserve.”
Silence.
Absolute silence.
No calls for my blood. No demands to ‘string me up.’
For the first time in all the months I’d ridden with them, I was hearing the impossible…
The Knuckleheads in silence.
Finally, it was Coyle who broke that peace.
“Okay,” he grunted, adjusting his position on the broken concrete floor. “Just for that, I’m going to make this as quick and painless as I can.”
I felt something hard nuzzling at the back of my head.
It was the length of Coyle’s baseball bat. He was pressing it against the back of my skull – weighing the best angle to swing it.
“One hard hit,” he promised, and I heard the whoosh as he took a couple of practice swings. “One big swing, and it’s lights out for Recon.”
I lowered my head, and squeezed shut my eyes.
This was the worst part.
Waiting.
Waiting for the inevitable.
And then I heard it…
Like a big hitter at a Major League ballgame, Coyle swung that bat towards my head, and I felt the cold gush of air hit me a moment before the oiled hardwood did.
And then there was a meaty sounding ‘thwack’, and that was the last thing I remembered…
Chapter Forty-Three
Christi
The trunk of the old Police Cruiser popped open, and I was nearly blinded by the scalding light that poured in.
“Hey!” Looming silhouettes blocked the blistering sunlight, and I heard one of them cry out: “We’ve got a live one here!”
Shielding my eyes, I felt big hands grab me, and haul me out of the trunk of the car – right onto the scorching sands of some remote stretch of desert highway.
“Jesus, there’s another one in here,” the voices continued, as I tried to get my bearings. “It’s him. It’s Agent Stone!”
Finally, my eyes adjusted to the change in brightness.
The looming shadows were men in suits. I recognized them instantly – the FBI agents we’d had that awkward lunch with, in that diner back in Escondido.
One of them was kneeling beside me, offering me a bottle of water. Agent Schloemer, I seem to remember…
“You okay?” He laid a hand on my shoulder, and it was like ice. “Drink this – go slow, though. You’ve probably got heat stroke.”
I grabbed the bottle of water and tore off the top with trembling hands. Then, gratefully, I gulped down mouthfuls of the lukewarm liquid.
I was in my jeans and tank top, and they were plastered to me with sweat. So was my hair – lank and sticky, plastered to my forehead and neck as if with glue.
As the water refreshed me, my brain replayed what had happened…
***
I’d been struggling, held fast by those bikers, as Coyle dragged Mason down to his knees. I watched with mounting dread as the biker leader lined up the man I loved, so he could take a fatal swing at him with his baseball bat...
I sobbed, as I remembered the moment I’d seen that great length of wood swing through the air, and hit my lover right on the back of his skull – with a meaty thud that echoed back and forth across the roof of the abandoned food court.
And then Coyle had turned, and was barking orders even before Mason’s lifeless body had slumped face-first into the floor in front of him.
“Yo!” Coyle had growled, singling out two of his nearest bikers. “Those two dirty cops left a cruiser outside. Bring it round front.”
They nodded instantly, obedient to the last.
Coyle jerked his thumb towards Mason’s limp, lifeless body.
“Toss what’s left of Recon in the trunk, and then throw that girl in with him. Then the two of you go and leave it some place far, far away…”
The two bikers nodded, obeying his orders without question. As they marched off, Coyle turned and started crossing the room towards me.
“You monster!” I sobbed, as I lay there on my knees. “I’m going to fucking kill you for that.”
Suddenly Coyle was right there on top of me – looming over me like the grim shadow of death.
He peered down at me, as I knelt in the dirt with tears pouring down my face.
“Kill me?” He snorted bitterly. “You’ll have to find me first.”
He turned and looked at two of his bikers, who were hefting up what I presumed to be Mason’s corpse.
I sobbed, as I saw them drag him towards the entrance to the abandoned mall – his feet dragging lifelessly behind him.
Coyle watched my reaction.
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be with him soon.” His smile was grim and humorless. “We’re gonna load you both up in the back of that police cruiser - and you’d better hope that the cops come looking for it before that trunk turns into an oven.”
He snorted bitterly.
“There’s a GPS on the thing, and those two cops haven’t checked in for a while. Your odds are good.”
And then, narrowing his eyes, he warned:
“But if they do find you, and you haven’t been oven-roasted by then, by the time you come looking to kill me, I’ll be long gone.”
I looked up at Coyle with nothing but hate in my heart. The same hate I’d had for the two dirty cops who’d killed my father.
Coyle had killed the man I loved. Executed him, right there in front of me, just like those cops had done with my father.
And that meant Coyle’s fate would be the same as theirs.
With Mason gone, along with my father and my farm, I truly had nothing to live for any more. Nothing except revenge.
And it would take a miracle to change that.
***
“Holy shit… He’s alive!”
I nearly spat my water out when I heard that.
I turned, and woozily looked across at the other men in suits – Agent Mitzell and Special Agent-in-Charge Barron.
They were kneeling in the sand, hoisting Mason’s corpse up into a sitting position…
Only, it wasn’t a corpse any more.
My eyes widened as I saw Mason hack, and cough, and then turn his head to vomit on the dirt.
“Get this man some water!” Barron turned and shouted towards an unmarked black Ford, where two other men in suits were loitering. “Call a fucking ambulance – he’s hurt.”
Hurt?
Maybe. But hurt meant alive.
I pushed Agent Schloemer aside and scrambled across the dirt towards the heaving, gasping bulk that I’d previously thought had been the corpse of Mason Stone.
“Mason! Mason!” I practically threw myself across his broad back, feeling the wet squish of his sweat-soaked t-shirt. “Oh my God, you’re alive. You’re alive.”
“Huurggh,” Mason mumbled, before turning his head and vomiting onto the dirt again.
I felt cold hands on my shoulders, and heard Special Agent-in-Charge Barron murmur: “Give him some space.” When I refused to move, he practically peeled me off of him. “Jesus, woman. He needs air.”
Reluctantly, I let the FBI agent pull me away, and I watched from a few feet away as Mason heaved what was left in his stomach into the dirt. Agent Mitzell poured cold water over the back of his neck, patting his back to force air into the big man’s lungs.
“Jeeze,” the FBI agent caught sight of the back of Mason’s head. “He’s got a lump here the size of a baseball.”
“Hurrrgh,” Mason wretched – although by this time, there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to get rid of.
I just knelt there, and I wasn’t sure if the wooziness was from behind trapped inside the trunk of that car for God-knows-how long, or from the euphoria of seeing Mason alive again.
With my head swimming, I barely heard Special Agent-in-Charge murmur in my ear. It was only w
hen he roughly shook me that I turned to him, and found the FBI agent staring right into my eyes.
“What happened?” Barron demanded.
I knelt there silently for a second, gathering my thoughts…
…and I had a lot of them.
Finally, after taking a ragged breath, I told them something I’d never have imagined doing when Coyle and his biker brethren had locked me in the truck of that police cruiser.
I told them what Coyle told me to tell them.
***
“So, here’s what you tell the FBI, when they find you…”
“Go fuck yourself,” I spat, as two of Coyle’s bikers hauled me down an abandoned corridor, towards the gaping maw of the broken-down old mall.
“If they find you,” Coyle growled back, marching alongside.
Suddenly, I found myself blinded by the sunlight, as I was dragged out into the parking lot of that big, run-down old shopping mall.
Parked out front, engine burbling, was the powerful Dodge Charger that Officer Dempsey and Officer Sanchez had brought us here in.
The trunk was open, and it was half full with the bundled corpse of the man I loved…
I sobbed as I saw Mason’s lifeless body, shoved carelessly into the trunk of the police cruiser.
“So, here’s what you tell the FBI, when they find you,” Coyle repeated, digging his fingers into my shoulder, and forcing me to turn and face him.
“Go fuck yourself,” I repeated.
Slap!
Coyle’s palm left a ringing imprint on my cheek.
“Keep your shit together,” he growled at me, as stars burst before my eyes. “Your life might depend on it.”
I hated him. I hated him so fucking much.
But I also shut the fuck up, and decided to listen.
“If you ain’t broiled by the time the feds show up,” Coyle growled, “they’re going to drag you out of the back of that police cruiser, and here’s what you tell ‘em.”
I stared back at him, hatefully.
“You tell ‘em those two dirty cops got wind of Recon being an undercover agent. Tell ‘’em they got scared, and abducted you right off the street.”
That much was true. Those two cops had thrown Mason and I into the trunk of their police cruiser in front of a dozen or more witnesses.
“Then you tell ‘em they clocked Recon with a baseball bat, but were too gutless to finish you off. Didn’t want a felony rap, or something…”
My eyes narrowed into slits.
Coyle had been the one who’d bashed Mason’s skull in. Now he wanted to blame it on those two dead cops?
“Then tell the FBI they got scared, they dumped the car, and they ran.”
I glowered up at Coyle silently, wishing with all my heart that I had the strength to wrap my tiny hands around his bull-like throat, and choke the life out of him.
“By the time the FBI start checking, there’ll be no trace of Officer’s Dempsey or Sanchez,” Coyle was still talking. “They’ll search their apartments, and it’ll look like they packed the bare essentials and fucking hightailed it. If they check their bank accounts, they’ll see cash deposits and figured they went on the lam.”
As I stood there, silently, Coyle leaned in closer. I could feel his hot breath on my face.
“Stick to the story, and the FBI will figure those two cops tried to whack you both, failed, and then ran out of town like the rats they were.”
He snorted bitterly.
“When they see the money Bertha deposited in their accounts, the FBI will figure Dempsey and Sanchez took a quick payout from us, and will assume the two of them never want to be found again.”
Shaking his head, Coyle admitted:
“Conveniently, they never will.”
I felt a chill down my spine as I heard that.
True, Dempsey and Sanchez had murdered my father – and would have murdered me, if given half the chance.
But it was still a brutal way to go. Slaughtered in an Airstream in the middle of an abandoned mall, and then dragged off to an unmarked grave somewhere in the California desert.
If either of them had family who cared, they’d hear a story of two cops gone bad – who’d gone on the run rather than face the consequences of their actions…
But the truth was – they had faced the consequences.
And they were both dead because of it.
Not that they’d deserved any better.
“Hey!”
It was Coyle, his sharp voice snapping me from my thoughts.
“You tell ‘em that,” he repeated, jabbing a finger in my face, “and the FBI will assume you and Mason were still on the level. That you were still on their side.”
He brought his face one inch closer to mine.
“You and Mason can still come out of this as heroes, and those two dirty sons of bitches,” I assume he was talking about Dempsey and Sanchez, “get exposed for exactly what they were.”
I stared up hatefully at Coyle.
How could Mason come out of this a hero? He was dead.
And for all his macho bullshit – telling Coyle he’d “take it like a man”…
…dammit, I’d have taken Mason alive and living as a coward, rather than brave and dead as a hero.
“That’s what you tell ‘em,” Coyle repeated, jabbing a sharp finger into my chest. “You got it?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I repeated, as they hauled me into the trunk of that police cruiser.
The trunk clunked shut, and I was plunged into darkness.
At the time, I had no intention of doing, or saying, a goddamn thing that Coyle had told me to…
***
…but intentions have a funny way of changing.
I don’t know how long it had been since Coyle had told me the ‘official’ version of events – the one he wanted me to tell the FBI…
But now? As I knelt there in the sand? I suddenly realized why it had been so important to him.
When I was in the abandoned mall, surrounded by the Knuckleheads, I thought Coyle had swung his baseball bat and caved the back of Mason’s head in – killing him instantly…
But that was only what he wanted us to see.
As I sat there beneath the broiling sun, I realized that Coyle had faked the whole thing.
That Major League swing of his wasn’t as hard as he intended it to look.
He hadn’t cracked the back of Mason’s skull in, like he’d promised to. He’d just made it look like he did, to satisfy the bloodlust of his biker brethren.
In reality, Coyle had just knocked Mason out.
There was no other explanation for it.
It couldn’t have been an accident that Mason was still alive. Coyle had arms bigger and more muscular than most men’s thighs, and if he’d really intended to, he could probably have splattered the walls of that mall with Mason’s blood and brains.
But, instead, he’d just given him a tap.
It was enough to knock Mason the fuck out. Apparently hard enough to keep him out.
Hard enough, at least, for those bikers to assume it was Mason’s corpse they dragged out of that mall, and threw into the back of the old police cruiser.
But it wasn’t hard enough to kill him.
As I realized that, I heard more retching, and turned to watch Mason uselessly try to heave up the contents of his already empty stomach.
“I-I’m okay,” he was waving the FBI agents aside. “I’m okay… I just need some fucking air, okay?”
I watched Mason’s broad back rise and fall, as he sucked air into his lungs… And I don’t think I’d been happier to see anybody alive in my entire life.
In the distance, we all suddenly heard the wail of sirens, and I realized the ambulance they’d call in was nearly here.
Looking up, I saw the red and blue lights, flashing in the distance.
Thank God, I thought to myself, as I reached for the water bottle Agent Schloemer was offering me.
Thank God…
It was over.
Chapter Forty-Four
Mason
“It’s not over.”
Special Agent-in-Charge Barron sat by my hospital bed, and helped himself to the grapes sitting on the bedside table.
“The bureau says it’s over,” the agent continued, as he chewed, “but it’s not over for me. I’m still going to nail that bastard Coyle one way or another – even if it takes me the rest of my career.”
I watched his lips move, but I was having trouble really listening.
It had been two days since I’d been whisked to this hospital in the back of an ambulance – and perhaps the first day since that I’d begun to feel vaguely even human again.
As Barron spoke, I was lying back in a hospital gurney, with an intravenous drip in one arm, and monitoring equipment wrapped up around the other.
I just wished he’d stop talking. I just wished Agent Barron would get the hell out of my room – and let Christi come visit me instead.
But, apparently, that was not meant to be.
Now I was awake, conscious, and in charge of my faculties, the FBI were determined to ‘debrief me.’
“How’re you feeling, by the way?” Special Agent-in-Charge Barron asked me, as he took a rare break from his monologue about the Knuckleheads and those two dirty cops. “They give you any good drugs?”
I snorted.
“The morphine was only for the first day,” I told him, half closing my eyes. “Been nothing but ibuprofen since then.”
“Oh, man,” Barron winced. “Tough break.” He narrowed his eyes. “How’s the head?”
In addition to the bandages around my torso, the band aids on my face and hands, and liberal coatings of Neosporin, I was wearing a veritable turban of gauze around my head – where Coyle’s baseball bat had impacted.
“Still hurts,” I lied, since the head injury wasn’t nearly as bad as I was making out. “But I’ll be okay.”
Shit, I was better than okay. I might have only been feeling vaguely human, but that was human enough to want to yank out this drip, and get back on my own two feet again.
I hated being cooped up in a hospital bed – and I hated it even more since I knew the staff here were being overly cautious,
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