Wicked Break

by Jeff Shelby

  Mo moved to a crouch and returned the fire up on the ledge.

  A shot boomed from near the fire ring, a large-caliber handgun burst, and Lonnie was up and running low toward the tree line. Mo rotated and fired at me, covering him. I tucked in tight behind the trunk of the pine, my forehead scraping against the bark. Bullets thudded into the trees around me, wood chips showering my neck and face.

  The truck engines revved to life, drowning out the screams for the rest to hurry.

  Mo waited for the last of his buddies to get into the tree line, then limped back quickly, still sweeping the entire outer edge of the campground with the AK-47. He disappeared into the trees.

  Doors slammed, tires spewed rocks and dirt through the trees, and the trucks U-turned and headed out to wherever they’d come from.

  The entire skirmish had taken maybe two minutes.

  The quiet was overwhelming.

  “You good?” Carter yelled from the other side of the circle.

  I couldn’t see him. “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  I moved from my stomach to my knees, my throat aching and burning from the gun smoke and dirt.

  Malia was still next to the fire ring, her would-be rapist beside her.

  Carter emerged from the trees across from me. His rifle was aimed up at our original spot.

  I rose to my feet and walked slowly toward the fire ring, holding the rifle at a ready position and watching the entire tree line.

  “Who was our helper?” I asked, squinting up at the trees.

  “Not sure. I saw somebody when the first shots came out of there.” He lowered his gun. “But they’re gone now.”

  We turned to the fire ring.

  The skinhead was dead. The entire right side of his body was soaked in blood, an expression on his face that assured me my bullet had caught him by complete surprise.

  I wanted to feel good about that, but I couldn’t.

  The first thing that had struck me about Malia Moreno when we’d met her at her home was the color of her eyes. They were the same unique amber shade as her brother’s, the kind of eyes that stopped you in midstep.

  Now, lying in the dirt, the right one still looked like that, still held on to that mesmerizing quality as she stared up at me.

  But the left one was gone, taken by the bullet that had taken her life, replaced by a socket full of red, thick blood.

  Thirty-four

  I’d called 911 and reported what happened. The local sheriff’s department arrived quickly, took our guns, cuffed us, and questioned us about the four dead bodies on the ground.

  Carter refused to say a word, staring aimlessly into the forest.

  I told them who we were, that we’d followed Lonnie and Mo out here so that we could talk to them and had seen what was happening to Malia. We’d had no choice but to shoot. I told them to call Wellton. They probed further, but I gave them nothing else, preferring to wait on Wellton. They were annoyed by that and kept the handcuffs on us while we sat in the dirt.

  Wellton emerged from the pines and walked toward us from the other side of the clearing.

  “Oh, look,” Carter said. “A forest dwarf.”

  Wellton was halfway across the circle when he whistled at one of the deputies and motioned for him to head toward us.

  They reached us at the same time.

  Wellton pointed at us. “Unhook ’em.”

  The deputy looked uncertain. “Uh, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that.”

  Wellton glared at him. “I didn’t ask what you were supposed to do. Do it or you’ll be wearing your own set.”

  The deputy’s cheeks reddened, but he produced a key and promptly unlocked both of us. He hurried away, taking the cuffs with him.

  Wellton glared at me. “I said you could poke around. I didn’t say you could go around killing people.”

  “Hey, we—” I started, but Wellton kept going.

  “You drive out here and just start taking target practice?” he asked, his eyes flaring with anger. “I asked you to help me out. I didn’t ask you to drag me into multiple murders. Which part didn’t you understand?”

  “I understood all of it, Wellton,” I said, irritated. “But we had no choice.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Wellton fired back. “You could’ve put the guns away and called the cops before you started blowing people away.”

  “They were going to rape her,” Carter said quietly as he stood up.

  We let that hang in the air for a moment and it seemed to temporarily diffuse Wellton’s fury.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Malia Moreno. They brought her here,” I said, standing up, dusting off my shorts.

  Wellton blinked quickly, chewing his bottom lip.

  “Deacon Moreno’s sister,” I said, answering the question he was trying to put together in his head. “Carter and I met her yesterday.”

  Wellton turned around and watched the medical examiner’s people cover both of the bodies.

  He turned back to me, confusion tightening his features. “They killed the sister of a big-time gang leader? How’d she get here?”

  “Lonnie and Mo. The two guys that put me in the hospital.”

  “You saw them bring her here?” Wellton asked.

  I recounted how it all went down.

  Wellton looked at Carter. “Guns are yours?”

  Carter nodded.

  “Registered?”

  Carter didn’t move.

  “We’ll take them in to confirm ballistics and what Noah’s told me,” Wellton said, his anger percolating again. “I’ll see what I can do about getting them back to you. Maybe.”

  Carter said nothing.

  “There was another shooter,” I said.

  Wellton didn’t understand. “What do you mean, another shooter?”

  “Somebody jumped in from where we were watching.” I pointed up to the spot. “Whoever it was was with us, though, not against us.”

  Wellton looked up at the ledge. “They weren’t shooting at you?”

  “No.”

  Wellton ran a hand through his short hair. “Either of you get a look at who was up there?”

  We both shook our heads.

  He exhaled, clearly puzzled. “Alright. We’ll check for casings and anything else we can find up there.” He turned around and looked at Malia. “Tell me about her.”

  “Lonnie shot her,” I said. “He was the only one near her at the end. I’d already put the other guy down.” I explained the rest of the chaotic scene, going back to when we’d arrived up until the sheriff’s people got to the scene.

  Wellton took a deep breath. “Peter Pluto hires you to find his brother, Linc. You find Lonnie and Mo at Peter Pluto’s house. Pluto’s dead and they nearly kill you. Then they come after you again.” He chewed on his bottom lip again for a moment. “You go looking for Deacon Moreno, talk to him and his little sister, and then she ends up here on the end of a rope pulled by one of the guys that killed your client. Which puts us back where we started.”

  “It’s not Noah’s fault,” Carter said.

  “I don’t know why they went after her,” I said, thinking Wellton was insinuating the same thing.

  “I didn’t say you did,” Wellton said. “But it seems like your conversations with the Morenos might have triggered this.”

  I didn’t see how or why that was possible, but I could see the trail of his logic. I was positive, though, that we hadn’t been followed into either Moreno’s neighborhood or to the campground, so I found it hard to believe that this was a reaction to something Lonnie and Mo had witnessed.

  “No way all of this is a coincidence, though,” Wellton said.

  “Not a fucking chance,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Then how does it all tie together?”

  I shook my head again, frustrated at hearing it all laid out in front of me. I couldn’t connect the dots. And I didn’t know why Malia was brought here, but I knew that it couldn�
�t have just been for random reasons.

  The people from the medical examiner’s office lifted Malia’s covered body and placed her on a gurney. Clouds of dust rose up into the air as they rolled the gurney away and I felt an empty pain in my gut.

  “There’s one thing that seems to connect all of this,” I said, wondering how long the image of Malia’s face would haunt my thoughts.

  Wellton shoved his hands in his pockets. “What’s that?”

  “Linc Pluto,” I said.

  “Who you haven’t been able to find,” Wellton reminded.

  “I’m gonna find him,” I said, surprised by the edge in my voice.

  “We cleared his apartment, by the way,” Wellton added. “Found the weapons and brought them in.”

  The medical examiner’s people came back and picked up the body of the kid I’d shot. The image of him over Malia flashed in my head. I can’t say I felt badly that he was dead.

  “You find anything else there?” I asked.

  Wellton shook his head, but I could tell he was thinking about something else.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking about what happens when Moreno hears about this.”

  Carter let out a low, long whistle.

  “Yeah,” Wellton said, acknowledging Carter’s whistle. “Moreno’s gonna go off.” He paused. “And you two could be on his list.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you were here,” Wellton replied. “He’ll find out one way or another. And he’s gonna hold everybody who was here responsible.”

  Carter shrugged. “We’re on a lot of lists.”

  Wellton shifted his gaze from Carter to me. “I know. Just watch your asses. I’ll do what I can to put it out that you were the good guys here. But a guy like Moreno may not give a shit.”

  At that moment, I didn’t care about Deacon Moreno. He could do whatever he needed to do. I was concerned about only one person.

  Linc Pluto.

  Thirty-five

  I needed the water.

  Carter and I drove back to Mission Beach. He left the second we arrived at my place, saying he needed a nap. I knew that even Carter—tough, indifferent, and rarely bothered—needed to decompress in his own way after our bloody altercation.

  I changed into a pair of navy board shorts and a red rash guard, grabbed my board, and headed out.

  The beach was nearly empty in the late afternoon, the gray skies probably more responsible than the time of day. The sand felt cool under my feet. The water was greener than it was blue and greeted me with soft ripples at the end of the sand.

  Goose bumps rose on my arms as I walked into the chilly water. I slid onto the board and duck-dived under the first two small waves that came at me, the salt water dripping down my forehead, stinging my eyes as I came back up for air.

  I paddled out past the break line, but instead of sitting up and watching for the sets, I stayed down on the board, the side of my face resting on the waxy fiberglass, my gaze fixed out over the flat ocean to the west.

  The image of Malia’s face wouldn’t leave me. Carter and I had done what we could, but it hadn’t been enough. I could deal with that because we hadn’t expected to encounter such an ugly situation. Seeing her life end in such a hideous way was going to leave scars that I didn’t think would fade.

  Swells formed on the horizon and I sat up. I spun around and got myself into position, paddling just as the water rose beneath me. Popping to my feet, shifted my weight hard against the wave and sped down to the bottom. I cut back to the top and snapped the nose of the board through the lip of the wave, grunting as I twisted my body with more force than usual. The ocean spray freckled my face. The nose whipped back toward the bottom and bounced on the last breath of the wave as it closed out and dissolved into the ocean.

  I went back out several more times, pushing my body harder through the water than it was used to. Anger and frustration fueled my muscles and I wanted my body to feel tired, sore, and empty.

  I trudged out of the water an hour later, salt sticking to my arms and face, mission accomplished.

  A familiar face slowed me as I came up the sand.

  “Started to wonder if you were gonna stay out there all night,” Liz said, sitting on the wall that surrounded my patio.

  She was the last person I expected to see, but I wasn’t disappointed. I crossed the boardwalk and leaned my board against the wall. “Thought about it.”

  She wore a black T-shirt, faded jeans. Her hair was pulled back away from her face, mirrored sunglasses resting atop her head. Her blue eyes looked gray beneath the overcast sky. A thick brown folder was next to her.

  I sat down on the wall next to her and pushed the wet hair off my forehead. “Needed the exercise.”

  “It looked like more than exercise to me.”

  I watched the water, the waves getting smaller as the tide pulled the evening in. “Did it?”

  I felt her shrug next to me.

  “What do I know?” she said. “I don’t surf and you’ve never offered to teach me.”

  I looked at her surprised at her interest. She’d never mentioned it in all the years I’d known her. “Is that a request?”

  She met my gaze. “Maybe.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, then I laughed and looked away.

  “John said you had a tough day,” she said.

  A small spark dissipated inside me as I realized she wasn’t just there to say hello. “Wasn’t the best.”

  Purple and orange strands punched through the gray marine layer and tickled the horizon as the sun hit the edge of the water.

  I glanced at her. “That why you’re here? Wellton wondering if I was okay?”

  “John asked me to take a look at some of the paperwork,” she said, dodging the question. “I just did some quick nosing around. You knew that the Pluto father was involved in this National Nation crap, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that the main suspects in his murder were gang members?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody was charged, but two witnesses gave descriptions that matched a couple of bangers, low-level guys. Turns out they were known associates of Wizard Matellion. They had alibis, but the case notes indicated they were soft. Since Anthony Pluto wasn’t an upstanding citizen, no one really gave a shit and the case dead-ended.” She pushed the brown folder in my direction. “I didn’t have time to read through the whole case file, but I thought you might find that interesting. Keep it for as long as you need it.”

  Liz had found a solid connection between Linc, the skinheads, and the gang, and that gave me encouragement. There were still some gaps that needed to be filled in, but she had tightened some of the gaping holes and I hoped that reading through the file might allow me to do the same.

  “Thanks,” I said, placing my hand on the file. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  She thought about that, her expression indicating that she was measuring her response.

  “John thought I’d want to know that you had a rough one,” she said finally. “He knew I’d want to know. And I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

  We sat there silently, watching the water go flat as the strands of sunlight evaporated slowly. I didn’t know how to address what she had said. There was meaning in it, meaning that we never seemed to be able to clarify between us. We danced around both our feelings for each other and our differences with each other, finding it easier to argue and dodge and avoid rather than actually deal with those things.

  I was tired of the dance.

  Liz stood. “Six months. You never called.”

  I leaned forward, my forearms on my knees, nodding.

  “Yeah, I was royally pissed at you,” she said. “So I understand why you might have stayed away at first. But you never even called me. Never came to see me. We had that fight at the hospital and that was it—you didn’t even try to work things out. It was like our relationship didn’t e
ven matter to you. What was I supposed to think?”

  I stayed quiet.

  “Now we’re running into each other again and…I don’t know.” She paused. “I hate saying it, but I’ve missed you. And everything you’ve said and done in the last few days—the way you reacted to seeing me with Mike, the junior high put-downs—even if it was all stupid and inappropriate and irritating, tells me you feel the same way.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “And I want to believe that, Noah,” she said. “I do. Except that it seems like I’m the one that’s always making the overtures here. And it makes everything feel one-sided.”

  “Yeah, but six months ago it was one-sided,” I said. “You walked away from me. You made the decision. Not me.”

  “Because you, once again, did something utterly stupid that nearly got you killed.” She paused. “That scared me. And it angered me because you were only thinking of yourself. Not us.”

  The conversation we were having now was the same one we should’ve had the day after the argument—and could’ve if I’d been adult enough to see that then. Liz had thrown her emotions on the table and I hadn’t bothered to take a look. Or do the same.

  “You caught me off guard with Mike,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting any of that.”

  “I know that. And none of it was meant to piss you off. He asked me out. I said yes.”

  “I know. But it hurt. Seeing you with someone else.” I looked at her. “I don’t want to see you with any guy but me.”

  She pointed at me. “That’s what I’m looking for. Statements like that. Actions that back that up. That’s what I need.”

  I stared at the concrete boardwalk, the sand scattered around my wet footprints. I wanted to remove myself from all this crap and focus on Liz, be where I wanted to be with the person I wanted to be with. Let everything else fall away and make things right.

  But a small part of me knew I couldn’t leave the past few days behind. Any attempt at a relationship with Liz would be halfhearted until I could put it all behind me. Permanently. And Lonnie and Mo weren’t going to go away just because I wanted them to.