Deadly Secrets

by Ann Christopher

  He cleared his throat a couple times, sounding gruffer by the second. “What about my medical license? Are you going to report me to the board?”

  “Nope,” she said, trying to keep the sour taste of disappointment out of her voice and failing spectacularly.

  “Wow,” he said on a shaky laugh. “I can’t believe this. And…WITSEC?”

  “Yours if you want it.”

  He said nothing.

  Her stomach rumbled.

  She drummed her fingers on the counter and checked her watch. She still needed to shower and watch yesterday’s Daily Show. Were they done here? Could they wrap this up?

  “So, listen,” she said, “there’ll be some paperwork to take care of in the next couple days, and the marshals will—”

  “I just… Are you telling me that all the shit I did with Kareem… It’s gone? Just like that?”

  Judging from the sound of his incredulity, the snitch here didn’t think he deserved this second chance at living a civilian life any more than Jayne did. How strange was that? Maybe Jayne should take advantage of his ambivalence and march him down to April’s office, where they could all agree on which prison to send him to and for how long. Just to make everyone feel like justice had really been served.

  Sure, he had rehabilitation potential.

  That didn’t mean she thought he deserved it.

  “What’s up, Randolph? Why aren’t you jumping for joy? Isn’t this everything you ever wanted? And, by the way, why’d you fire your lawyer in the middle of the proceedings? He was working hard and doing a good job for you.”

  “He’s a good guy, but I’m not going to keep taking up his time, because there’s nothing he can do for me.” He took a ragged breath. “There’s nothing anyone can do for me. So I don’t need to go into the program.”

  “Wait, what? But it’s in your deal.”

  “I’m not holding the government to that part of the deal.”

  Jayne felt as though she’d stuck a fork in a socket.

  “You said that’s what you wanted, Randolph,” she reminded him. “A fresh start somewhere else. And now we’ve got you all lined up to get a one-way ticket to the greater Duluth area, or some other thrilling locale, where you can have an exciting career as some doctor named Eugene Carr if you want. You should be thrilled. Instead you’re acting like someone died. What’s going on? What am I missing here?”

  “I’m discovering that a life in hiding isn’t really my thing.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked. “What’re you going to do now?”

  “I wish I knew. I went into this wanting to bring Kareem down and be able to look myself in the mirror. I never believed I’d actually get a second chance.”

  Jayne didn’t try too hard to restrain her derisive snort. And to think she’d been worried about whether this jackass was safe or not. “‘Be able to look yourself in the mirror’? Yeah, because you and Sheriff Andy Taylor and Marshal Will Kane only do things for the noblest of reasons. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, Randolph. I’m not falling for that routine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You CIs just kill me, acting like you’ve seen the light and just want to be of service, but here’s the bottom line: you’re a criminal. You act like you’re doing the government some huge favor by snitching on your comrades, but all you’re really doing is covering your own asses.”

  “And how was I covering my own ass when I stuck my neck out and dropped that first dime on Kareem a few years back? No one was looking at me back then. I wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Same thing this past winter after Kareem’s trial. He’d been acquitted. He was home free. And no one was eyeballing me. But I still raised my hand and told Brady about Kareem shooting Yogi in the back of the head and Kareem’s warehouse full of dope. Which the feds were able to seize. So maybe you should get your facts straight before you point your finger at me, counsel.”

  The hard rumble of anger in his voice didn’t slow her down the least little bit. Any career criminal worth his salt could charm and talk his way out of anything, and she ought to know, because she’d been raised by one.

  “Listen, doctor,” she said, jerking open the cabinet door, grabbing a wine glass and slamming it onto the counter, where she splashed six or eight ounces of the Pinot into it, “felons like you are a dime a dozen. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re special just because you did a couple of right things in a lifetime of corruption or because you have an MD after your name. And I absolutely believe you only did it to further your own goals. Your goals just haven’t revealed themselves yet. But they will. CIs can never keep secrets any better than five-year-olds can.”

  Raising her glass in a toast to herself and her incomparable way with words, Jayne tipped her head back and drank the wine dry in two or three quick gulps. Only when the brain freeze set in and the silence lengthened did she begin to think maybe she’d gone too far.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “You’re quite the passionate public servant, aren’t you, counsel?” he asked wryly.

  “I’m passionate about the victims of your crimes.” She clinked the bottle against the glass as she poured more wine. “It’s not my job to be passionate about the sharks who prey on them.”

  “You might want to ease up on the wine, Jayne,” he said quietly, catching her by complete surprise. “Take it from someone who’s holding a fifth of Jack and wishing he hadn’t promised he’d stop drinking. Alcohol fucks with your mind. The two of us need to stay sharp.”

  Astonishment froze her in place.

  “I’m done with this conversation,” Jayne snapped after several beats. She raised the glass with every intention of doing another bottoms up, but she realized that the residue of the last glass had turned disgusting in her mouth. Her snacks suddenly didn’t look that tasty either. “We need to make arrangements to get your final paperwork executed. Saturday morning work for you? I’ll need a couple days to get it together.”

  “No big weekend plans? That makes two of us.”

  “You know what, Randolph? I could do without the sarcasm at this hour. Where do you want to meet? I know you’re keeping your head low, so we could—”

  “I’m staying at my cousin’s house outside Dayton. Can you meet me here? Nine thirty?”

  “Dayton? Fine. Give me the details.”

  He did.

  “Don’t flake out on me, Randolph,” she warned. “I don’t want to take a forty-five-minute drive at the butt crack of dawn on a Saturday morning only to discover that you’re not there because you went out to breakfast or some such.”

  “Absolutely. And Jayne? I want to thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I work for the taxpayers, and I’m not doing you any favors. I’m doing the job my office has directed me to do.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m thanking you for the reminder of all the reasons I can’t stand the sight of my own face.”

  The dead sincerity in his voice made something tighten inside her chest.

  “Randolph…”

  “And it reminds me why I don’t want to waste the taxpayers’ money by trying to keep me safe.”

  She felt a nasty twinge of guilt. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Sure you did. Cheer up, though. One day, probably sooner rather than later, one of my old running buddies who doesn’t appreciate my noble impulses will catch up with me and take me out.” He paused. “And you and I both know they’ll be doing the world a favor when they do.”

  5

  DAYTON, OHIO

  Late that Friday night, Kerry Randolph parked in the driveway of his cousin Ernie’s ranch house, grabbed his stuff and headed for the front door, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder and eyeballing all the shrubs as he went. It was late and raining, and the Boogeyman wanted him dead. Kerry’s skin therefore crawled with a toxic level of awareness of his surroundings. If the summer breeze kicked up from two to two-point-one miles per hour, he’d probably feel it. His ears, likew
ise, strained to hear every sound: the rain’s patter…a dog’s bark a couple streets over…the elusive flap of a bat’s wing…a stealthy footstep if one came up behind him.

  He was a hunted man, so this was his new normal.

  This was what he deserved.

  Doing the occasional good deed didn’t pardon him from his fate.

  Oh, sure, he’d called the DEA six months ago and snitched about his drug kingpin boss, a guy who had two hundred and fifty kilos of heroin stored in a warehouse. The late and unlamented Kareem Gregory had been a lifelong friend. And also a crazed sociopath, even if he had demonstrated the ultimate decency of getting himself blown up in a gas fire a couple days after Kerry flipped on him.

  Still.

  You didn’t betray a guy like that, or his organization, without repercussions. Which meant that Kerry had spent a lot of time walking backward lately, trying to see which of his former associates was creeping up on him with his weapon locked and loaded.

  Especially since a couple days ago, when someone had slipped him a threatening note:

  Did you think you’d get away with it?

  That was when it hit Kerry. Really sucker-punched him in his third eye. What the fuck was he doing, pinning all his hope on getting into WITSEC? What good would that do him? If someone wanted him dead—and, let’s face it, the writer of that note certainly did—then he was going to be dead soon. The marshals wouldn’t change that. Moving to Duluth—or hiding out here, for that matter—wouldn’t change that. Not for the long term, anyway. Why go through all that effort when he could comfortably get dead here in Cousin Ernie’s house?

  That was why Jayne’s news had fucked with his head so badly. The feds were letting him go. He still had his medical license. Therefore, as far as the law was concerned, he had a legit chance of living a productive civilian life.

  How ironic was it that at almost the exact moment the feds were giving him the all-clear, someone from his past was rearing up to threaten him?

  That’s karma at work, sports fans.

  It raises your hopes, only to smash them on the jagged reminders of the bad shit you’ve done and why you don’t deserve even a moment of peace.

  The street was quiet and the other houses dark as Kerry hurried up the path, so that was good. The half-moon provided enough illumination for him to see that the bushes were, in fact, just bushes. They didn’t develop arms and legs and start closing in on him, so he’d made it back to his temporary home safe and sound for the night.

  This was a mixed blessing.

  On the plus side? He was alive. Yay.

  On the flip side? Tomorrow he’d have the renewed thrill of skulking inside Cousin Ernie’s cramped house all day, bingeing on HBO movies and trying not to be poached like some endangered African rhino.

  Kerry was a smart guy (Northwestern med wasn’t in the habit of handing out scholarships and MDs to dummies), but he hadn’t found a way out of the fucked-up mess he currently found himself in. A job? Long-term plans? Please. He didn’t believe in such luxuries these days.

  He just wanted to come out of this shit alive. A clear shot at another twenty-four hours.

  He kept walking.

  That spot between his shoulder blades prickled again as he got to the porch. Back in the day, that feeling had been a reliable warning that he needed to get his head out of his ass and start paying attention to his surroundings, because some serious shit was about to go down. Now that he was a wanted man with a big X on his back and the life expectancy of a mouse in a python’s tank, the prickle was like breathing.

  Didn’t mean anything. His body just did it.

  Think about something else, man.

  Kerry’s stomach rumbled and his mind shot to the still hot and fully loaded Whopper with cheese he was about to inhale—

  Wait a minute. Did they forget the ketchup?

  Kerry paused to tighten his grip on the Coke and his keys in one hand and the bag of burger and fries in the other. From what he could see, the clowns at the drive-through had ignored his request for ketchup, salt and extra napkins.

  This was his fault, though.

  Had he checked the bag before he pulled away from the window? Had he remembered that the cupboard was bare (Cousin Ernie was on the road most of the time and couldn’t be bothered with groceries) and he had a better chance of being awarded the Medal of Honor than finding ketchup in his cousin’s moldy-ass fridge? No, he had not. He’d been so eager to get back to his new little home away from home that he’d forgotten the Leo Getz rule from one of his favorite movies of all time, Lethal Weapon 2:

  “They fuck you at the drive-through.”

  Yeah, he was fucked. Ketchup-less and fucked. Fucking idiots.

  Fumbling everything into his left hand, he unlocked the door with his right. Then he stepped into the dark living room, regretting his promise to Kira that he wouldn’t drink that fifth of Jack. After that, he wished, for the billionth time, that her feelings toward him were a lot more I can’t live without you, Kerry; fuck me now, and a lot less I care about you as a dear friend, Kerry; thanks for calling. While he was at it, he might as well wish they’d never had that hot but short-lived affair a couple years back, because God knew the memories were still messing with his mind. Or he could just go all the way back to the beginning and wish he’d never laid eyes on his boss’s wife—or, hell, his boss—in the first place.

  Yeah. That about covered it.

  He wished he’d never laid eyes on Kareem Gregory, the root of all sin in Kerry’s life.

  But for Kareem, he’d be an upstanding citizen right now, a doctor with a home, wife, kids, dog and a conscience that wasn’t squirming and guilty. He’d be so straight and narrow he’d never even think of jaywalking. He wouldn’t spend his endless days feeling like the waste produced by the maggots that infested roadkill.

  He’d just be a man.

  A good man.

  But that ship had sailed years ago, the first time he let Kareem talk him into a yes when Kerry knew he should have been screaming no.

  Well, anyway.

  He was in the process of swinging the door shut behind him when terror clamped a vise grip around his throat and tightened the screws.

  Fuck.

  He was standing on a crackling sheet of plastic that had not been there half an hour ago when he left to get dinner.

  Showtime.

  Instinct made him duck and drop his food. Then he rolled and lunged back to standing as he yanked his piece out of its ankle holder and flipped off the safety, determined to face his attacker like a man.

  A worthless man, yeah, but still a man.

  Useless moves? No question. He would die tonight and there was no getting out of it. Hell, it was almost a relief. That didn’t mean he had to make it easy for the MFer, whoever he was.

  He was gripping the pistol with both hands, getting his feet under him and looking for somewhere to aim in the shadows, when there was a movement beside him and a sudden, white-hot slice of pain in his side.

  Stunned and wheezing, he dropped to his knees. Then came the sickening warmth of his blood as it drained from his body and hit the plastic with a steady patter that sounded a lot like the rain outside.

  The gun fell out of his hands. He squinted into the darkness, wondering what had happened, because he hadn’t heard the sound of a shot.

  Had he…had he been stabbed? With a knife?

  Who did he know who rolled with a knife rather than a gun?

  But Kerry knew, of course, even before he saw the shadows rearrange and resolve into a man’s shape…the hint of white in those dark eyes…the gleam of his satisfied smile…the cold glint of a blade that was made for gutting deer and other large animals, not people. Only someone who truly hated Kerry would bother to get up close and personal enough to slice him and feel the primal thrill of blood on his hands.

  This was, in other words, pleasure, not business.

  The voice, as smooth and smug as ever, only confirmed it.
<
br />   “Did you miss me, Kerry, my brother?”

  Kareem.

  Kerry almost laughed. It was so obvious now. Why hadn’t he believed what he knew in his gut to be true?

  Kareem, like vampires and zombies, didn’t just die, no matter what your lying eyes told you.

  Life was never that easy.

  Kerry loosened his jaw, gasping in a futile effort to get enough air into his mouth and down to his heaving lungs. Summoning more strength than he’d known he possessed, he grabbed the back of the nearest chair, stood up, sagged against the wall and pressed hard against his side to keep his guts inside his body, where they belonged. Not that it mattered. He would bleed out soon, but he had a couple of things he’d like to accomplish before he did.

  “I can’t say I did, man. Where you been?”

  Kareem, always willing to brag about his thrilling exploits, was only too happy to answer. “Outside Miami. I’ve got people.”

  “Of course you do.” Another gasp. Another searing flash of pain lighting up Kerry’s body. Another ounce of his strength, gone forever. “What brings you back now?”

  Kareem stilled, all his delight at being in the catbird seat leaching away in favor of a cold fury far beyond anything Kerry had ever yet seen him display.

  “Funny you should ask.” Kareem examined the blade from every angle and ran his thumb along its fine edge. “I have a few questions for you, so I hope you don’t die too quick.”

  “I hope so, too,” Kerry said.

  Kareem didn’t seem to appreciate the humor. He moved closer and brought his black malevolence with him, so much that Kerry felt the chill down to the last cell of his body. Or maybe that was just the blood loss making him shiver.

  “How did you find me?” he asked.

  “You can discover all kinds of interesting shit when you bug your wife’s phone,” Kareem said. “And you and I hung out at old Cousin Ernie’s house back in the day—did you forget? But I’m the one asking questions now.”