Then the Munroe brothers had decided to up the ante.
The minute Tony had figured out who'd taken Bess, he'd made a decision to do whatever it took to get her back alive and unhurt. It hadn't been guts alone that made him take on a guy with a shotgun; it had been guilt. Bess had been kidnapped because of them. Because of who they were together.
Tony leaned his head back, more tired than he could remember being in a long time. "It wouldn't have changed anything," he said. "If you'd taken care of them back then, we'd still be right here today."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You bust their heads then, they still would have done something stupid, they just would have done it sooner. You saw that guy I shot. If he could have got up out of his chair, he would have tried to ram that shotgun down my throat."
"My old man didn't teach me much, but he did teach me this. Some guys you gotta beat quick and beat hard so they don't get up again. You don't, and they think they're invincible." Carter punctuated his words by thumping a fist on the steering wheel. "You don't bust their heads so bad they can't remember who they are, then they go and do stupid stuff like kidnap an old lady because they think nobody'll do anything about it."
"I'm telling you, it wouldn't have changed anything, not unless you killed them, then you'd be in jail," Tony said. "That's never gonna happen, not if I have anything to say about it."
They drove the next block in silence. Tony was right, but Carter was right, too. The Munroe brothers would be trouble again -- not for a while, not until they healed up and made bail, if they could make bail -- but they'd be trouble. Them or somebody like them.
"We did what we did," Tony said. "What matters now is we don't let it happen again."
"So we bust heads next time?"
Tony looked out at the quiet neighborhood. It wasn't much different than any other run down neighborhood, full of reminders of the good old days that maybe weren't that good to begin with. Tony and Carter drove down this street every day on the way to the deli. Tony was used to these streets, just like he was used to the old man sitting on the dark front porch in his wife beater. He was used to Norman and Bess and Julie, who worked for them to help support her mom.
Life was good here, but it wasn't good enough to risk their freedom or the safety of any of their friends.
"Next time," Tony said. "We move on."
Chapter Six
They didn't make love that night.
It was the first night they hadn't made love since they'd been in Idaho. Tony wanted to, but Carter insisted Tony needed sleep more than sex. Tony was too tired and too sore to argue.
The sheriff had confiscated Tony's gun. Tony had expected worse. Carter hadn't exactly bought any of their arsenal at Norman's sporting goods store. Instead of arresting him for possession of an unregistered firearm, the sheriff had told Tony it was strike one and to keep his nose clean. Tony figured if they hadn't rescued Bess, he would have been spending the night in jail.
Not that the loss of one gun mattered all that much. Carter had procured enough weapons for a small army. Tony had a different handgun within easy reaching distance on his night stand. He dry swallowed two aspirin instead of taking the pain pills the E.R. doctor gave him. He didn't want his head muddled; he just wanted to take the edge off the pain.
He closed his eyes and tried to float away, but sleep wouldn't come. The bed was too empty without Carter's comforting bulk, and the emptiness had an unsettling feel to it. The same night the deli's window had been busted, Tony and Carter had vowed to each other that they'd always have the other's back. It was as close as the two of them would ever come to getting married, and Tony was good with that. But tonight he'd felt a chill that he didn't think was entirely in his head.
Carter didn't like sitting back and waiting. He didn't like letting assholes get away with the kind of shit the Munroes had back when they'd busted the window. He probably didn't like that Tony hadn't told him who the Munroes were when he'd first figured it out back at the farmhouse. But if Tony had, Carter might have killed both of the brothers instead of just breaking the one's nose. If that had happened, no matter what Bess told the sheriff, they'd probably both be spending the night in jail.
Finesse, that's what Uncle Sid had taught Tony. "Guys like Carter, they're just muscle. No brains. You gotta be the brains, and to be the brains, you gotta think ahead. Don't let nobody disrespect you, but don't you go disrespecting yourself by acting stupid."
Of course, as far as Uncle Sid was concerned, Tony letting Carter fuck him up the ass wouldn't exactly be a sign of proper respect, either. But Tony had news for Uncle Sid. Getting fucked up the ass by Carter was the ultimate sign of respect. And love.
And he fucking missed it.
Tony shifted on the bed and winced at the twinge of pain in his side. He had to think of something else or he'd end up with a hard on the size of Detroit. The problem was, every time he shut his eyes, he kept seeing their friends' faces.
Bess's face when Carter kicked in the door, her eyes wide and round, and a knife at her throat.
Norman's face at the hospital, tears brimming in his eyes as he held Bess' hand while the doctor patched up the cut on her neck. It hadn't been a bad cut, no stitches required, but Norman had been more scared for Bess than he'd been for himself during the robbery.
And the worst thing -- Norman thanking Tony and Carter over and over again for bringing his girl back safe.
The two of them had never had to deal with something like that back in Jersey. Wiseguys didn't go after wives. They didn't go after girlfriends or daughters or the women who ran their own businesses and served whoever frequented their place, no matter what family they belonged to. Sure, when turf wars got out of control, innocents sometimes got caught in the crossfire, but nobody snatched women or kids to use as bargaining chips. By the time Bess and Norman finally left the hospital, Tony felt like he needed to either punch someone or explode. Carter probably felt worse.
After he'd spent an hour trying unsuccessfully to get some sleep, Tony finally gave in and got up. A nice, steady pounding had taken up residence inside his skull. He needed Carter, even if it was just to be in the same room with him. Tony took the handgun and padded down the hall on bare feet toward the living room.
"You're early," Carter said, his voice a low rumble. He was in the same chair as the night before, a solid mass of dangerous, implacable menace in their dark living room.
"Couldn't sleep." Tony glanced out the front window, half expecting to see the dark-haired guy from the crosswalk hiding in the shadows across the street, but the street was empty and quiet.
"Need something?"
A clear conscience. Funny thing for a wiseguy to wish for.
"We kidding ourselves about fitting in here?" Tony asked.
Carter took his eyes off the front window for a split second. "Today was nothing. We been through worse."
"Not here."
The first day they'd been here, when they'd stopped the robbery in Norman's store, Carter had been shot. They'd been lucky, the bullet had just grazed him. They'd been luckier today, and that had been against a couple of hicks who only hated them because they didn't hide the fact they were a couple.
"They took Bess because she's our friend," Tony said. "Is Julie gonna be next?"
"That's gonna happen anywhere we go. We could be in the gay capital of the world and somebody's gonna take a swing at us just to prove they're tough guys. That's been happening to me my whole life. The only way to deal is to stand your ground."
Carter was looking back out the window again, but his voice had a hard edge that Tony didn't think was entirely directed at the homophobes of the world. The same chill he'd felt in his empty bed had infiltrated the room.
"You mad at me?" Tony asked. "Because I said we'd move on?"
Carter took a minute before he answered. "You and me, we're tight," he said finally. "My arms are the ones gonna hold you at night, and I'll stand by you 'til the day
I die, you know that, but I don't like to run."
"We ran away from Jersey."
"We stayed there, we're dead men."
"We might be dead men here, too."
Outside in the night a dog barked, a high yipyipyip. Tony shifted away from the window, and Carter tensed. From where he stood, Tony could still see the street, silvery and quiet in the faint light of the streetlights. After a few moments, a cat streaked out from beneath a Toyota parked across the street. Tony let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Why we even talking about this?" Carter said. "How come you're thinking about running from guys like those idiots that took Bess when we're sitting here waiting for guys from back home to make their move? If we're gonna run, why ain't we running?"
It was an honest question. Tony wished he had a straightforward reason.
"All I know is it would be the wrong thing to do," he said. "We got a life here that has nothing to do with what went down in Jersey, and I'm not about to give that up because somebody got sent out here to take us down when we were minding our own business. Guys like the Munroes, that's different. That's because of who we are, in this life, not what we were." He took his gaze off the street long enough to glance at Carter. "There's no fighting that. I don't want anybody we care about hurt because of who we are now."
A red dot bloomed on Carter's chest a split second before Tony caught movement in the shadows out of the corner of his eye.
"Move!" he yelled at Carter, even as he ducked down beneath the window.
Chapter Seven
Carter dove out of the chair the same instant a bullet hole blossomed in the window with the sound of breaking glass.
The bullet thumped into the chair just over Carter's shoulder. Two more followed in quick succession. The bullet holes in the living room window formed a nice, neat, circular pattern just about the size of a man's heart. The shooter was good.
Tony's gun didn't have a suppressor. Neither did Carter's. The guy shooting at them did. He also had to have night vision gear. No way could he have seen inside the house otherwise, and that was no lucky shot.
"How many?" Carter asked.
Tony could just barely make out where Carter was hunched on the floor, out of sight of the guy with the gun. He didn't look like he'd been hit, and he didn't sound like he was in pain.
"Only saw one," Tony said.
"That leaves two more."
"We start shooting up the neighborhood, people are gonna notice."
"Then we do this quiet," Carter said. He crab-walked over to where Tony had his back to the front wall of the house alongside the front window, and gave Tony a hard, fast kiss. "I still got your back. I'm gonna set up by the back door. Anybody comes in that way, I'll take care of 'em."
"I got the front," Tony said.
One more kiss and Carter was gone, faded into the shadows of the house.
They'd locked the back door before Tony had gone to bed. That wouldn't stop anyone determined to get in. With any luck, the shooter thought he'd taken Carter out, which would leave the odds three to one in the bad guys' favor. When they busted in the house, they'd find that the odds, with Carter still healthy, were just about even.
Waiting in the dark by himself, Tony had nothing to listen to except the rapid beating of his own heart. He wasn't going to kid himself. These guys were pros. They couldn't be intimidated like the Munroe brothers, and they weren't about to make any stupid mistakes. Enforcers who made stupid mistakes died young. The guys Tony had seen in the crosswalk weren't young.
He'd known all along that this day might come. The only way they could have avoided it would have been to stay on the road, never stopping anywhere for long, never leaving a trail. That wasn't any way to live.
Had they been fooling themselves all along? Living on borrowed time since Jersey? Nothing more than dead men walking?
Not if he could fucking help it.
Tony shut his eyes just long enough to center himself.
He couldn't risk looking out the window. That was just asking to get the top of his head shot off. So he stayed there, back against the wall, eyes open now, his breathing and heart rate back to normal.
Waiting for the shooter to make the next move.
It didn't take long.
At first, the sound seeping in through the bullet holes in the glass sounded like the rustle of wind through the leaves in their front yard trees. Except there was no wind, not even a light breeze. What Tony heard was the soft tread of someone coming up their driveway and disturbing the leaves that had blown from the trees during the last windstorm.
The guy had probably scouted their house. He was good, but he wasn't perfect. Even with night vision gear, walking silently outside at night was harder than it looked. Or else maybe he didn't think he had to be that careful. Anyone who knew Tony and Carter well enough to be sent to kill them also knew Tony wasn't the muscle.
Tony left the wall and crawled across the floor to the couch, which was across the room from the chair where Carter had been sitting. Tony grabbed one of the throw pillows off the couch and crouched down behind it. He propped the pillow on the tip of the couch and buried the gun in the pillow. It wouldn't absorb as much noise as a suppressor, but it was better than nothing.
From his spot behind the couch, Tony had a clear shot at the front door. The pillow would fuck with his aim, but all he needed was a body shot, and the door would frame the guy nicely. Tony didn't think the shooter would try to come in through the window.
He was right.
In the almost non-existent light, Tony heard more than saw the guy try to turn the doorknob. The front porch creaked as the guy shifted his weight. Tony could almost see him freeze, then try the handle again. The door was locked, just like the back door, but then Tony heard a click and a thump -- the guy had a lock gun -- and then the sound of the handle turning.
The guy did have night vision goggles on. The goggles distorted the size and shape of his head, made him look like some movie monster instead of just another goon from back home.
Tony didn't move, he didn't even breathe. He held the pillow steady so that it would look like it had been tossed on the back of the couch. He watched the guy with only one eye, keeping most of his head behind the pillow. Tony's hair was dark again, not blonde like he'd bleached it after they first left Jersey. Tony hoped he looked like just another shadow in the room, even through the goggles.
At best, he'd get one, maybe two shots before the guy trained his own gun on Tony. The best bet would be a shot to the guy's torso, the biggest target, but so far all Tony could see of the guy was his goggled head and the gun he held out in front of himself.
Tony made himself wait. Kept his hand steady, his breathing light and as quiet as he could. He watched as the guy swept the front room with his gun, his goggled head slowly turning in Tony's direction.
When the goggles were pointed directly at him, Tony froze. He didn't breathe, didn't move, didn't even blink. Not enough of the guy was in the room to take a chance at shooting him. If Tony shot now and the bullet didn't take the guy down, Tony would be as good as dead.
In reality, the guy probably didn't look in Tony's direction any longer than at any other point he examined with his night vision gear, but to Tony it felt like an eternity. The guy turned to the corner where Carter had been sitting. The guy lowered his head to look at the floor where he no doubt expected Carter to be bleeding out.
This shooter was a pro. He didn't flinch when he saw the floor was empty, but he did take one more step into the room.
It had to be enough. Tony couldn't wait any longer.
He let his breath out and squeezed the trigger.
Stuffing sprayed out from the pillow along with the bullet. The sound of the shot wasn't as loud as it would have been without the pillow of muffle it, but the noise was still startling in the absolute silence of the house.
The guy with the goggles turned back to Tony before Tony could even tell if his bullet h
it the mark. Tony squeezed the trigger again and again. And again, hoping each time that one of the bullets did enough damage to keep the guy from firing back.
They didn't.
The guy fired. Tony winced, but the guy's shot went wide and smacked into the wall to Tony's left.
Then the guy crumpled to his knees, and Tony saw a wet patch glistening on the front of his dark shirt.
Tony stayed where he was until the guy face planted on the floor. Moving as fast as he could, Tony got out from behind the couch and kicked the guy's gun away from his outstretched hand, then picked it up. He checked the guy's pulse under the jaw line. He still had one, but it didn't seem like a strong, steady beat. Tony didn't want the guy dying in his house, but he wasn't the one who'd brought the fight here.
Tony thought about taking the night vision goggles, but decided against it. Now wasn't the time to play around with technology he'd never used before. The gun, though -- that Tony kept. The guy'd only fired four shots, and a suppressor was better than a pillow any day.
The adrenaline rush Tony had felt when the guy first turned the door knob was beginning to wear off. His side hurt and his head pounded, but the job wasn't over yet. There were two more guys out there.
He risked a quick look out the open door. Nothing moved in the shadows. No more black-clad men in night vision gear crept up their driveway. Did that mean the other two would be coming around the back?
He hadn't heard anything from Carter since he left to cover the back of the house. Carter hadn't yelled for him after the shooting started, but then again, Carter wouldn't. He'd wait until the fighting was over to make sure Tony was okay.
The decision to join Carter at the rear of the house was an easy one. Tony padded softly down the hall and into the kitchen, pausing to check at each open doorway in case someone had come in through a downstairs window. No one had.
Wiseguys: Blast From the Past Page 5
