Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  But they were still part of the job.

  “And the place?” he asked, shifting his gaze to Creel.

  Taking a moment, letting his expression register with everyone present, Creel said, “Clean. Or as clean as it can be, anyway. Definitely nothing in print, no hard copy anywhere.”

  Nodding, it was as Baxter had expected. Scrubbing the place of fingerprints and DNA would have been impossible, would have only given them a couple of names at best.

  So long as there was nothing to give the accompanying address, they would be okay.

  “And the third?” he asked.

  Lifting his left shoulder an inch in a shrug, Creel said, “Not sure. Sounds like he was about bled out by the time they dropped him off. Didn’t have a chance to check or finish him.”

  Shifting forward a few inches, Baxter left his hands in place, mulling the response.

  It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear, but there wasn’t a lot that could be done about it. Given the short window of time, and the direct order for them to get back, there would have been no way to see to it.

  No chance they could have gotten inside to the young man even if there was, not without drawing infinitely more attention to themselves.

  It was a loose end, something that would need to be considered for sure, but right now it was far from their most pressing matter.

  Turning his gaze toward the window overlooking the operation below, he could see the light outside beginning to fade. With evening fast approaching, the temperature was yet to drop inside the warehouse, the place still active for a bit longer on the day.

  “In about an hour, this place will shut down for the night,” he said. “Once it does, it is yours.”

  Looking back, he saw a hint of confusion on Creel’s face, the omnipresent bemusement on Pyle’s.

  “I won’t make the mistake of foisting anybody on you again,” he added. “When shift ends here in an hour or two, all the boys will head home, then it’s just the three of us in here.”

  “The three of us to what?” Creel asked.

  Baxter would have thought the answer obvious, pausing a moment to see if it was rhetorical. Seeing the younger man staring back at him, awaiting a response, he sighed deeply.

  “The reason I pulled you back,” he said, “is because everything that was happening was bringing law enforcement a little too close. That’s shit we don’t need.”

  Lowering his hands, he leaned forward, a bit of a smile coming to his face, “But after everything you’ve told me, it’s only a matter of time before Scarberry shows up.”

  Again, Creel looked over to Pyle, attempts at processing etched across his features, his expression looking as if they were coming up short.

  “You think Scarberry is going to show up here? Tonight?”

  Whether Baxter thought it or just hoped it was still a question of some debate. All he knew for certain was that they had killed his uncle, had now taken multiple runs at him and the woman he was working with.

  They had a confirmed visual sighting, had managed to bring him out of protective custody, even gotten him over to the farmhouse. He was getting bolder, a state of hubris that Baxter was banking on one last time.

  Where things went down was all the same to him, just so long as it happened.

  “You don’t?”

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski left the front door to Jessup Lynch’s cabin standing open. Sprinting out the front, she practically knocked Jessica Marlucci over getting back to the SUV, wanted nothing more than to leave her and Marshal Burrows both behind.

  If not for the combined facts that she couldn’t strand them in Tennessee and that at least one of them had the coordinates she needed to find Tim Scarberry, she would have done just that.

  Instead, she had flung herself into the passenger seat, ignoring a stunned Marshal Colvin as she reached across, slamming the horn repeatedly with her fist, even after her team spilled from the house.

  Not until they were strapped into the backseat, both panting, exchanging looks of various meaning, did Lipski spin around in her seat, peering down at her younger charge.

  “Where is he?”

  Opening her mouth to respond, Marlucci’s eyes went wide for a moment, her mind fighting to compute what was being asked, before she consulted the handheld in front of her.

  Rattling off a string of coordinates, she paused long enough to gulp before turning her attention to Colvin. “Make a right out of here. Fast.”

  “You heard the lady,” Lipski added, twirling around onto her bottom, not bothering with the seat belt. Gripping the handle above the passenger window, she sat poised for the duration of the eight-minute drive, her bicep clenching to hold her in place as Colvin swung the vehicle around curves and into turns, pushing them as fast as the SUV would allow.

  Which was fine by her. After days of this, she was ready to be done, to bring Scarberry in, clear any black marks that might be beside her name because of it.

  Afterwards, whether she ended up shooting him herself or not was a still a question she wasn’t quite prepared to answer.

  Not definitively, anyway.

  A total of ten minutes was all it took for the transition from her standing at the foot of the stairs in Lynch’s house to them pulling up to a rundown farmhouse, the location just as random as every other stop they’d made on the day.

  Standing back fifty yards or so from the road, it was a single-story ranch, remnants of a garage door swinging in the corners of the frame that once held it, the rest in shattered disarray on the ground, black tire streaks bisecting it.

  Along the road was the crumpled remains of a sheriff’s department vehicle, a second one parked in the driveway.

  Despite all that, not a single person could be seen.

  “Shit,” Lipski muttered, looking at the assorted carnage strewn across the front lawn.

  Every part of her wanted to believe that Scarberry was nowhere near this mess. That he hadn’t been the root cause of it, or even worse, on the receiving end of whatever had happened.

  Not that any of her actually believed it, the likelihood of such a thing too great to be ignored.

  Especially given that his cell phone had come on just a moment before.

  “How much you want to bet he did something stupid and got himself arrested?” she asked, the question asked in a low tone, one that didn’t expect an answer, wasn’t surprised when none came her way.

  “Pull in behind the cruiser,” she said, extending a hand toward the sole vehicle sitting in the driveway.

  Doing as instructed, Colvin pulled to a stop, the gearshift barely into position before Lipski was out.

  The first thing to greet her was the smell of charred rubber, her feet crunching over the splintered remains of the door. Giving it nothing more than a tertiary glance, she strode straight for the front door, a new set of smells assaulting her senses.

  Smells she was all too familiar with after a career working as a marshal.

  Glancing to Burrows behind her, her mouth hooked into a grimace as she stepped over the threshold into the house, her eyes battling to refocus in the dim light.

  From somewhere deep inside, she could hear movement, the shifts of the house punctuated by the rattle of a plastic bag.

  “Hello? U.S. Marshals!”

  At the sound of her voice, the noises fell away, replaced by heavy footsteps, the source of which appeared a moment later.

  Standing no taller than Lipski’s nose, everything about the man seemed bulbous, from his midsection to his mustache. Red-faced and sweating, he leered at her a moment before asking, “Who the hell are you?”

  Annoyance crept into Lipski, both at his tone and his pretending he hadn’t heard her announce them a second before.

  Jurisdictional turf issues were the sort of thing that usually got blown out of proportion, most local authorities realizing their own limitations and being all-too-happy to hand over a scene.

  Unless
of course their ego got in the way.

  Pulling her badge from her waist, Lipski flashed it, “Deputy Marshal Lipski, Marshal Burrows, U.S. Marshal Service.”

  “Marshals?” the man asked, his face twisting up. “These your guys?”

  Looking a question to Burrows, Lipski’s face held the expression as she took another step forward, the scent in the air growing stronger.

  “Guys?” she asked. “As in, plural?”

  Rolling his eyes at her, the man shifted to the side, waving a hand for them to enter. “Come on in, have a look, Marshals.”

  Choosing to ignore the connotation, the underlying meaning it held, Lipski slid past him, sweat and body odor rolling out in a wave, mixing with the assorted smells already in the home. Moving as quick as she could, she stepped through the kitchen and into a rear living room, a second deputy standing there.

  Younger than the first, he nodded as she entered, stepping back toward the wall, obvious he had no desire to be inside.

  With her heart pounding, nervous energy roiling within her, she shifted her gaze down to the bloodied bodies of two young men spread on the carpet.

  At a glance, it was clear they were dead, parts of them scattered across the room.

  Just as obvious was the fact that neither of them was Tim Scarberry.

  Letting out the tiniest sigh of relief, Lipski nodded to the deputy before turning and moving back out into the kitchen. Looking to Burrows still in the doorway to the front room, she shook her head, a slight relaxation of his facial muscle revealing the same reaction she’d had a moment earlier.

  “They yours?” the sheriff asked.

  “No,” Lipski said, striding to the far side of the room, getting as far from the various smells as possible, before turning back to face him. “Anybody else present?”

  Narrowing his eyes a bit, the man asked, “Like who?”

  Inside of five minutes, already she could feel an intense dislike burning for the man before her, everything from his stance to his tone to his word selection rubbing her the wrong way.

  “Fifteen minutes ago, the cell phone for a man we’ve been tracking became active at this address.”

  To that, some of the previous hostility bled from the man, his face losing a bit of color as he looked over his shoulder to the deputy peeking out from the room behind him.

  “What man?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s strictly need-to-know right now,” Lipski said. “Have you seen anybody else here?”

  For a moment, there was no response, the man maintaining his pose, looking between them.

  Slowly, his head began to rock back, a faint smile appearing on his lips. “You guys are U.S. Marshals. You’ve lost a witness, haven’t you?”

  The fingers on Lipski’s right hand curled into a ball, so tight she could feel it quivering, anticipation roiling through her.

  “Again,” she said, pushing the words through gritted teeth, “need to know basis.”

  Casting a second quick look over his shoulder, the man smirked, his stomach bouncing from the gesture. “Nope, we’re the only two men that have been here. And we damned sure didn’t turn on any cell phones.”

  Twisting over a shoulder, Lipski glanced to Burrows. “Find it.”

  Without a word, he disappeared back the way they’d come.

  “Any idea who they are?” Lipski asked.

  “Nope,” the man replied, again smirking at her. “A gunshot victim showed up over at Monroe County earlier today. He might be able to help you.”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  The sun sat low in the rearview mirror, an orange disc that caused me to scrunch my eyes up tight to block it out.

  Headed due east, there was no way for me to obstruct it completely, the thing sitting directly on our backside as we pushed across Georgia. Combining with the tension we were both already under, it kept us both bathed in sweat, despite the best efforts of the air conditioner to keep us cool.

  Sometimes the body has a way of transcending modern technology.

  Lifting the bottle of Gatorade from the middle console, I twisted the top off, letting a long pull slide down my throat. Even though my core felt like I had swallowed a coil of barbed wire, I knew I needed to force the fluids, to have another protein bar, to give my body what it needed.

  It had been a hell of a day, another in a string that was scripted by the devil himself. Coupling with the extreme heat, it wouldn’t take much to zap my body of precious energy, leaving me vulnerable at the worst possible time.

  Beside me, Lou seemed to be sipping at hers as well, the set of her jaw and the death grip she had on the bottle both indicating she wasn’t doing nearly as well.

  Which was to be expected. Given the jurisdiction she worked in and the fact that she’d only been doing it a couple of years, this had to have been the most extreme thing she’d encountered.

  A word that was apt for a variety of reasons.

  “You know, you don’t have to do this,” I said. Reaching out, I lowered the fan on the air conditioner a notch so she could better hear me, the damn thing not doing a lot to cool us anyway.

  Giving no response, Lou continued staring for a moment before slowly turning her head my direction.

  “I could say the same to you.”

  “You could,” I conceded, my eyebrows rising in kind, “but you’d be wrong. Those men killed the only family I have left. The men that employ them took every last semblance of a life I ever had.”

  For a moment, it looked like she was going to counter, rattle off the ways my thinking was flawed, tell me that meeting violence with violence would only manage to get me killed or thrown in prison.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she said only, “You telling me I don’t have to do this is wrong as well. They tried to kill me, got me fired.”

  Pausing, she shifted to face forward.

  “Both noble reasons,” I said, “but both very recent. They don’t explain why you’ve been so willing to go along with me from-“

  “Baxter,” she said, not bothering to look my way, a single word that cut me off.

  “I’ve been willing to go along since the moment you said Baxter.”

  Unable to stop it, I felt my jaw drop open. Alternating glances between her and the road, it was if some doorway that had been shut in my head, something that had allowed me to see only my own hatred, finally opened.

  And once it did, things began to line up, bits and pieces I’d missed, snippets I’d been ignoring, too wrapped up in my own shit.

  “You want him too.”

  Nodding her head slightly, Lou continued gazing straight ahead. “They listed it as a hunting accident, but come on. The Chief of Police just so happens to get struck by a stray bullet?”

  Glancing down, she looked at her hands twisted into a ball on her lap, before continuing, “I guess after I went off to play ball and Eric Baxter went to jail, Vic started looking for new markets. Eventually, he settled on the reservation.”

  Shame, dread, acrimony, all welled within me, adding to the hatred I so harbored for the man.

  “Which inevitably caught the eye of my father.”

  Still, I remained silent, letting her continue.

  “Some say he was out, happened to stumble on a deal in progress,” Lou said. “Others speculated that he was followed. Either way didn’t matter.

  “My father is dead, shot in the back by some son of a bitch looking to make a buck.”

  Squeezing the wheel tight, I could see the knuckles of my left hand flash white, my wrath for the man and his operation somehow managing to ratchet up another level.

  Something I would have never thought possible.

  “And soon thereafter is when you decided to become a deputy.”

  Nodding slightly, Lou said, “They wouldn’t hire me on the reservation, not knowing what had happened to my father, so I went to the closest possible precinct I could find. Figured I’d work my way over from there.”

  Outside,
the sun continued pushing a little lower in the evening sky, mercifully taking with it a few degrees of heat. Around us, interstate traffic flowed at a steady rate, oversized green signs along the side of the road telling us we had less than an hour before reaching our destination.

  What would be waiting for us there, I had no way of knowing. Just as I’d told her a moment before though, whatever it was would be a welcomed change to hiding in Oregon, going through the motions of a life I never wanted.

  Standing idly by as someone I cared about was tortured and murdered.

  The Justice Department might have claimed what happened before as a victory, but to me, it was anything but. Sitting and listening to Lou’s story only drove that home, proving that while I might have helped in putting Eric away, I really hadn’t managed to slow the evil that he represented.

  In essence, I had given up my life, and two good men had still lost theirs anyway.

  The thought left a sour taste in my mouth, preceding a steely resolve that pushed through me, hardening me to whatever lay ahead.

  The men that had burst through the garage doors earlier might be professionals, but they weren’t carrying what the two of us were.

  “You say I don’t have to do this, I say you don’t have to, but we both know the truth,” Lou said, shifting her gaze over to look my way.

  Matching it, I replied, “Damn right we do.”

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  To the casual observer, it could be said that a police detail had been sent to watch over the young man admitted earlier in the day for a gunshot wound. Given a separate room outside of the post-op ward following surgery, they were tucked away in a remote corner of the second floor, a far cry from the usual bustle of most hospital hallways.

  To Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski, it was nothing more than window dressing, the officers assigned so clean they practically squeaked, acne and hair gel dotting both from the neck up.

  The sort of people that were sent when their boss didn’t feel the assignment was worth handing off to anybody with actual value to the precinct.