Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3)

by Owen Laukkanen

  Fine. This is fine.

  He had a criminal prosecutor who never bothered to sleep. He would eat this up. He would pull out his wallet and put three bills in the judge’s hands not caring fuck all about the quality. He needed it for work, he needed discretion about needing it for work. If he wanted discretion he would pinch it from the evidence room like a normal city employee. The prosecutor was a crusader and paranoid about his hand getting caught in the cookie jar. Crusaders were easy money.

  You boys have a good day.

  • • •

  His young colleague worked criminal court. Nothing major, small disputes. Traffic violators, small drug busts, low level assaults, the occasional confrontations with the police. Most of it was fines, dismissals. Routine. Routine. Rubberstamp. He didn’t like it.

  Then docket #237: Dispute of Seizure, Tammy Appleton v. AZ Department of Public Safety.

  Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips v. A couple of yahoos out of Buckeye, hoping to live a porno fantasy with Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips.

  Pulled her over for a broken tail light and New Jersey plates—bullshit—and when she got uppity they searched the car and found 1.7 million in a couple of Safeway shopping bags. Drug money, Light bulbs going off, cocks go tight against zippers. Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips calls bullshit, throws a fit on the side of the I-10 and ends up in handcuffs and a strip search in DPS Substation #37’s observation room #1.

  It’s mine, Your Honor. I earned it! Ten years of my life! Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips had the documentation. Tax records, IRS affidavits. Being an Exotic Entertainer paid the pills nicely.

  The dipshits were still claiming foul, insisting it’s crack money. Hilly billies, nobody smokes fucking crack.

  He threw the case out.

  Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips pours on the relief and thank you’s. It goes on for five minutes, Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips body dipping and swerving. Rubbing through his pants, he focuses on her lips. Glistening, pink with gloss, wet. Her bony white trash long finer nailed hands pushing against stiff silicon with her version of sincerity, orange tan plastic squeezing together, apart, together, apart, nipples making little tee-pees.

  He finished with a shudder, his undershorts going so damp, you’d think he’d pissed himself.

  You’re welcome, Ms. Appleton, and please try to enjoy the rest of your stay here in Arizona.

  • • •

  Hola, juez, Hola!

  He didn’t let the boys into the car this time, just handed them a sheet of paper through the driver’s side window:

  Motel 6, Room #139

  7116 N 59th Ave

  Glendale

  She has a lot of money

  Mucho Dinero.

  Come by the house after you’re done. Dress like men before you go over to the motel and bring a camera.

  Arizona law states that all seized property be returned in as close to its original state as possible, which meant Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips would be carrying around 1.7 million in a couple of plastic shopping bags minus the hillbillies’ tip money.

  Even if Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips wised up and put the money in the bank and was carrying around a cashier’s check now, the boys would fuck her up enough to teach her not to drive anywhere carrying around that kind of money. And at least there would be pictures of Big titty bleached out middle aged crow’s feet dick sucking lips crying, mascara running, while the boys squeezed and pinched her tits and laughed at her stretch marks and brown roots.

  He felt celebratory. He thought maybe he would go home and have Rosalie lube into the black plastic body suit with all the zippers to her openings. And maybe when the boys came over, they could piss on her and tell her what an ugly bitch she is.

  That would be a lovely end to the day.

  Running Late

  Tess Makovesky

  Cars scattered like lemmings before a wolf as Zak flung the squad car through the traffic, gunning through the gears and swearing under his breath. He was running late and he knew it might cost Karen dear. Trouble was the instructions had been so bloody vague—it had taken the experts at HQ nearly two hours to identify the derelict lodge in the woods on the edge of town as the location for the swap. Even after he’d taken the fastest car in the fleet he’d been held up by a constant stream of roadworks and buses and pedestrians crossing the road, until he’d been reduced to pounding the wheel in sheer frustrated rage.

  Fuck... fuck... fuck. Another bus crawled past, this one filled with the grinning faces of kids on their way home from school. Time was running out. Everywhere he looked he saw Karen’s accusing face—mirrored in shop windows, waiting in line at the next stop for the bus. Hang in there love, I’m doing my best. Only last night they’d been wrapped in each other’s arms on the living room floor, television blaring unheeded, their headlong dive off the sofa scattering cushions to the corners of the room. There was a bottle of Chateau, something close enough to grab, but Karen had drunk the wine straight from Zak’s mouth as they kissed. Karen had her hands on Zak’s arse and Zak had his in the comforting softness of Karen’s hair, knotting it as his fingers meshed. Now he felt oddly apart, removed from Karen and from the petty happenings of everyday life. A sports car roared past but he barely spared it a glance. Banner adverts for the latest movie, a new sports store on the local high street, even the late sun filtering through golden autumn leaves, spooled past the car unseen. There was only Karen, and the car, and the car’s systems reacting beneath his hands.

  Finally the turn appeared—a set of gates at a ferocious bend. Heart in mouth he veered across both lanes, hardly bothering to look for oncoming traffic, and bounced down the forest track under a canopy of trees. Thick mud from the unused track sucked at the car wheels, slewing the steering as he took the corners too fast. A carpet of fallen leaves covered the ground, but here and there where the mud showed through he thought he could see the impression of tires. Someone had been here, and not that long ago.

  The track ended at a clearing with trees clustered round the edge as though reluctant to approach too close. There at last was the old house. It had been lodge to some long-lost estate, a quaint building with black-and-white timbers and a steeply pitched roof, but now it was in desperate need of love and repair. Bit like me, Zak thought with a flash of gallows humour. Then he was out of the car and running, leaving the door swinging wide. His heart beat a painful staccato in his chest and almost stopped at a sudden clatter of noise, but it was only a pigeon’s wings and not the gunfire he feared. Reaching the front door in half a dozen strides he tried the handle but it was locked. That, or jammed shut after so many years of decay. He pounded on the peeling paint work with both fists.

  “Karen? Kaz! It’s me, Zak. I got what the bast—I got the tapes they wanted. Are you in there? Kaz!” The tapes that until this morning had been in the evidence locker. The only proof of old man Heaton’s confession to killing a man. The tapes that his three sons had somehow got word of, and kidnapped a serving police detective in a frantic attempt to have returned to them. You didn’t mess with the Heaton boys, even the DI knew that. Which probably explained why he’d considered for all of two minutes before saying no.

  Zak hadn’t taken that one lying down. “What the fuck d’you mean, no? Don’t you care that one of your officers could be in trouble? Don’t you care that Karen’s life’s at stake?”

  “Yes, I care,” said the DI, rubbing his straggling moustache. “I’m surprised you do, though. I thought you didn’t like her—you complain about working with her often enough.”

  Zak could understand. They’d had to pretend to a certain cool dislike. Who wouldn’t be suspicious, faced with a display of blind panic over someone he grumbled about every chance he go
t? He stumbled out of the DI’s office, waited until the man’s attention was taken by something else, and ran to the evidence room to steal the tapes. It wasn’t the first time he’d helped himself; over the years he’d nicked money and drugs to give to informants and the like. Not that he was bent; he always made that distinction to himself. Bent coppers did it for the money or the kudos it could bring them in the local underworld. He only ever did it to get a better result. His clear-up rate was second to none; his informants always better informed. Of course, the stealing was still the same. The tapes burned a hole in his conscience now, their flat weight knocking against his thigh.

  There was no response to his shout, except for a brief mocking echo of his words. A single leaf rustled as it fell to earth; somewhere a bird chirped once; but from the lodge there was silence—the silence of utter loneliness.

  “Shit!” Zak glanced at his watch. He was only three hours late—surely they’d have waited that long? The Heaton brothers might be psychopaths but they didn’t lack for brains. Even they must realise that with the drop-off point abandoned and Karen dead, they’d never get those tapes.

  Karen dead... The words echoed in Zak’s brain, chilling his blood until his hands went numb. He beat on the door again, uselessly, ignoring shards of pain from the splinters driven deep into the flesh. Nothing. Not so much as a footstep, not so much as the squeak of a mouse. He gave up and shoved his way through the undergrowth to the back.

  Straight away he saw where they’d ripped away hoardings and smashed a window to gain entry to the lodge. There was a scrap of something blue caught on a shard of glass and Zak’s stomach flopped into his boots. Karen had been wearing a light blue blouse last night. Because she’d stopped at his place he’d washed and pressed it for her, and left it hanging on the chair by the bed. She was gone when he woke up—always an earlier riser than him—and the blouse had left with her. It was a fitted blouse, one of Zak’s favourites since it flattered her waist and boobs, although it was a bugger to iron. Now it was torn, but the sadness gave him hope. She’d been here, for sure. All he had to do was find out when—and whether alive or dead.

  He scrambled through the gap, tearing a sleeve himself and nicking his arm. It bled freely, spattering on the window frame, and he knew he was destroying potential evidence but didn’t care. Finding Karen alive was what mattered now, not groping around after clues and DNA. He didn’t know what he would do without her if she’d gone. She was always the stronger of the pair. She was the one who’d jumped him, at the last Christmas party. She’d laughed because her nickname was a backwards version of his name, then dragged him into the stationery cupboard and stuck her hand down his pants. She hadn’t even been particularly drunk.

  “Why?” Zak had said afterwards, tucking himself away. “Why now? Why me?”

  “If I’d left it to you I’d still have been waiting next year,” she’d said, and given his privates a pat.

  She was the one who’d decided to keep the whole thing quiet, so they could go on working the same shift. The rules said you had to notify the DI if you became ‘romantically involved’, but that would have meant different hours, or even a move to another division. “Bugger that,” Karen had said. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

  “That’s the U.S. Army,” Zak had said, but she just laughed.

  He could do with the army now, or at least a few good well-trained men. You couldn’t ask for backup when you’d taken the law into your own hands, though. He was on his own.

  The Lodge was worse inside than out. Paint hung in streamers from the walls; the ceiling bulged downwards in worrying waves; floorboards gave, spongily, as he tiptoed across the rooms. A spider’s web cast its sticky threads across his face and he wiped it away with the unripped sleeve. The smell of rot was heavy in the air but overlaying it was something sharper, fresher, more out of place—the scent of tobacco smoke. Too fresh. Possibly being smoked right now . Were they still here after all? He abandoned caution and ran toward the scent.

  The stairs creaked alarmingly and the banister rail toppled as he hurtled past. It clattered to the tiled hall floor and Zak knew there was no hiding his approach. Speed was everything now.

  The first room he tried was empty of everything but a broken chair and a pile of sticks in the hearth. He paused just long enough to grab a leg from the chair, then ran again. The landing held three more doors—all shut, one leaning crazily and two secure. Which to choose? Hesitating here was wasting valuable time—time Karen might not have. They’d never have got through the broken door, but one of the others had fag ash on the boards outside. He chose that, and kicked it in.

  All his senses strained to pick up any trace of human presence. Was that a rustle? A whiff of aftershave and sweat? A shadow by the wall? Surely not—his mind and the dingy room were playing tricks. Then the shadow moved.

  “Kaz?” Three strides took him to her side. She was bundled up with tape across her mouth and her hands behind her back, but thank God she seemed unhurt. He tackled the tape first, ignoring her yelp to yank it off. “Are you okay? I thought I’d lost...”

  Too late he saw the warning in her eyes—the shock, the horror, the sudden pallor of her face. Too late he sensed a trap, and turned. Joe and Harry and George—three stocky, sandy—haired chips off the Heaton block, waited for him just inside the door. One with hands on hips, one with a crowbar, one hefting a gun. It was the gun he saw the most, looming in his vision like a cannon although it was only pocket-sized. A Walther by the look of it, probably a P99. Zak had traded one of those for a list of names only the other month, helping himself from the evidence locker when there was nobody about. He hoped this wasn’t it. The irony of being at the wrong end of the barrel of his own fucking gun was too much to bear.

  He dug in his pocket. “Joe? Thank God, I wasn’t sure you’d wait. I got the tapes...”

  “Fuck the tapes,” said the man with the gun.

  “What? But I thought... I brought them all this way.”

  “Wasn’t the fucking tapes we wanted, it was you. Giving away free drugs to old Fatface Mitchell so he can undercut us on our own fucking patch. Not on, Dad says. Got to teach you a lesson, Dad says.”

  Zak’s skin felt chilled. Fatface was an informer—the very one who’d told him about old man Heaton’s murderous ways. He’d been set up. He was hooked and sunk. “I suppose you’ve killed Fatface,” he said.

  “Let’s just say he won’t be making the same mistake twice.”

  “So what are you going to do to me?” Then, clearing his throat, “At least let Karen go. It’s nothing to do with her—she didn’t even know.”

  Joe shrugged. “Yeah, we might, if we’re in a good mood. Can’t say the same for you. Here, catch yourself hold of these. It’ll look like a drugs meet gone wrong.” He tossed a wad of notes and some packets of white dust across; Zak juggled briefly and they fell around his feet. The gun clattered, deafening in the silence of the room.

  Zak heard Karen scream and thought they’d shot her after all. “You bast—” he began, but couldn’t get the words to leave his throat. There was a strange metallic taste in his mouth, his chest hurt and he couldn’t breathe. His legs buckled and he folded to the dusty floor. Too late, he thought. Too late to help Karen, too late to save himself.

  He was late, all right.

  Last Supper

  Katanie Duarte

  Wes’ deep blue eyes sparkled with excitement as he applied gel to his dark, wavy hair. Steam from the shower he’d taken minutes before slowly dissipated as he ran his hand over his freshly shaven face, admiring his flawless skin in the bathroom mirror.

  As he headed to his bedroom to get dressed, he thought of her—creamy skin, vanilla scent, deep brown eyes, soft luscious lips. A memory of kissing her brought her name to his lips, “Sara.” Heat rose in his body. Wes couldn’t wait to be with her, to have Sara in his arms. She made him feel like he’d never felt before, made him want to be better, different somehow. And the scary part wasn
’t how he felt, but that he wanted to run toward it, like she was where he belonged.

  Fashionably dressed in a blue v-neck sweater and black jeans, he grabbed his keys and walked out of the door. Wes could never get to Sara soon enough or never spend enough time with her. He drove his car in an anxious daze. Lights of other cars on the freeway whizzed by. It had been a long time since he was this nervous. Things usually came easy for him because of his looks. He had money, a successful career, a nice car, a luxurious downtown condo and access to more women than he could ever handle. What he’d never wanted was love, but as it turned out, love came to him without him even trying to find it, and it was anything but easy. Wes had fallen and there was no going back.

  Wes’ heart pounded in his chest as he arrived at Sara’s picturesque little house. The house made him visualize what his life could be, and because of that, there was an image in his head of what the woman in that house could do for his life.

  He composed himself and made his way to her door. Breathing deeply, he rang her doorbell. When she opened the door it took every muscle and ounce of restraint in him to hold himself from rushing to her and taking her in his arms. Sara’s chestnut hair was pulled into a sleek ponytail revealing the full picture of her face. She was a vision, an apparition seen in a feverish dream; divinity just out of reach.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

  “You look beautiful.”

  Lifting up on her tip toes, she wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her hand in his hair and brought him down for a kiss. Their mouths were a tangle of lips and tongues in heat and desire. When they broke apart, Wes was left wanting. Looking in Sara’s eyes, he saw that desire burned in her just as strong as it did in him, and because of this, he made no hesitation taking her hand and allowing her to lead him inside.