by Simon Wood
He grimaced and exposed teeth rimmed with red in a split and rapidly swelling mouth.
Shocked by the carnage inflicted on the man’s face, Josh turned the chopping block over and saw a blood spattered bloom the size of an open hand smeared over its surface. Disgusted, he sneered, dropped the wooden board and looked for the gun.
Mitchell moaned.
Searching the carpeted floor, Josh found the gun.
The weapon had landed in the corner of the room. He snatched the weapon up. It was heavier than he expected.
Having never owned or fired a gun, he never
imagined the pistol would be such an effort to hold, let alone shoot.
Josh turned the gun on the killer. He would hold the hit man at bay with it while he called the cops. They can sort the whole fucking thing out now. Josh had done his part. He’d found the killer who knew everything the police needed to know. They could take it
from here. The gunshot surprised Josh and he fell backward against the wall. He immediately checked himself for a wound and found none.
Mitchell was sitting up with another gun in his left hand, this weapon smaller than the one Josh held. He was grinning through an open wound of a mouth and squinting through lacerated and bloody eyes. His right arm hung limply at his side. The hit man fired again.
The second shot also missed its target.
“It always pays to bring two guns,” Mitchell said through his broken face.
Without hesitation, Josh jerked his arm out at the killer and fired once, twice, three times in rapid succession.
The first bullet went wild, the second hit Mitchell’s right shoulder and the third hit him in the chest.
Mitchell jerked with each impact from the bullets, but didn’t go down. He did not fire his weapon. Josh, not taking it as a sign of surrender, took another step forward and fired for the fourth time. Another burst of light flared from the gun muzzle, another simultaneous explosion deafened, another spent cartridge ejected onto the carpet, more burnt cordite filled the room and Mitchell took a second hit to the chest. This time, he went down.
Please be dead. Please be fucking dead, Josh’s mind chanted as he rushed over to the killer. Mitchell might have been on his back, but that gun was still in his hand. And as much as he hated having to go near the man, it wasn’t over until he saw a corpse. He stood over Mitchell and saw rasping breaths leaving the hit man’s body. Josh prepared to fire for the last time.
The professional winced in pain. His body sent messages to his brain, none of them good. How could three
small chunks of metal feel like cannonballs thrown at his chest? Talking was a bitch—it felt as if his teeth were dice shaken in a cup and scattered across a table.
He knew several of them were loose. He breathed
through his mouth. Breathing through his nose made his face ache. He thanked God there was no glass in his eyes. Pain was relative. His broken arm stung when stationary, but it screamed when he moved it. It all hurt, but it hurt less if he kept still.
Michaels stood over him. His own 9mm pistol was
in Michaels’s hand. He found the situation funny. The hunted had turned hunter. Michaels aimed the pistol at his face.
“Don’t do it.” The professional’s teeth shifted when he spoke. He sucked a gasp of air into his mouth to cool his aching gums.
“Why shouldn’t I? I doubt you’d do the same for me if I was lying there.”
Michaels shook. The professional didn’t know if it was from fear or anger.
“You’re probably right, but I want you to know
something.”
Michaels showed little interest in anything the professional had to say. However, he let the gun drop to
his side.
A man joined Josh Michaels. He stood behind him
and peered over his shoulder. The professional didn’t recognize the man, who was dressed in running clothes, and Michaels seemed unaware of the man at his back.
Even though the professional saw the man, he wasn’t sure if he was really there. Unlike Michaels, the ceiling or walls, the jogger lacked substance. The running man was like a reflection off a lake.
“Know what?” Josh said.
It clicked. The professional now knew the running man. The runner was Stuart Shore, an AIDS patient.
He had been the first. The first one Dexter Tyrell had hired him to kill. He’d mowed down the jogger on a
300
Simon Wood
deserted Seattle highway one rainy fall morning almost two and a half years ago. But Stuart was unharmed, exhibiting none of the lacerations or broken bones from the last time he had seen him. He was as he had been the moment before his murder. The last time the hit man had seen Stuart, he’d crushed his neck under the wheels of a car to make his death look like a hitand-run.
Stuart looked down at the professional like Josh
Michaels did. He wanted to know what his murderer had to say, too. Others joined Michaels and Stuart.
The room was filling with them, all a transparent reflection of who they once were. People stood behind
Michaels and the dead jogger. The murdered poured in from the kitchen and the bedroom. Much to his discomfort, he turned his head over his shoulder and saw
them filing in through the front door. They were all there. All the innocent people he had killed for Pinnacle Investments.
They swarmed around him jostling for position,
hoping to get a better look. There must have been over fifty people crammed into that house. All the people he had killed. He didn’t remember all their names, but he did remember how and where he’d killed them. The
farmer he’d pushed into his threshing machine poked his head between two others. His family and friends never knew if it had been an accident or suicide. Jesse Torino—he’d beaten and shot her before stealing her purse to make it look like a smash ‘n grab gone wrong.
The professional recognized a guy who worked with computers. He’d tampered with his car to make it look like a bad overhaul and the car had crashed into a truck, killing the computer analyst and seriously injuring the truck driver. Two people were allowed front
row access. Mark Keegan led Margaret Macey to the head of the throng. Keegan glanced at Josh and flashed him a smile Josh didn’t see. Keegan turned his gaze back to his killer, his features hardening.
All of them wanted to know. They wanted to know
his name, his real name. Not the names he’d used to get close to them to gain their trust before killing them. It was time to tell.
More than that, the professional wanted to tell them his real name. For years he’d lived a life where the people he came in contact with never knew who he truly
was. He couldn’t remember the last time someone said his real name, and it made his heart sink. He wanted someone to say his name. Just once.
The professional smiled. In a bizarre twist, the killer was touched that so many would turn out for this occasion.
He had always thought he would die alone, without a friend or foe present.
“I want you to know my name,” the professional
said. The blood in his throat made speech difficult.
“I didn’t think it was James Mitchell. But tell it to someone who gives a shit,” Josh said.
Michaels’s lack of interest hurt the hit man. Seeing the gun being raised, he feared Michaels would shoot him before he got the chance to say his name. He
didn’t wait for an invitation.
“John Kelso. My name is John Kelso.” He blurted
out his own name like a stool pigeon under the bright lights of a cop’s interview room.
The murdered victims of John Kelso murmured his
name amongst themselves.
“Jesus, is that important to you?” Josh asked.
Kelso swallowed and tasted his blood running back down his nose. “Yes.”
Michaels snapped his head away from Kelso and out the window. Police sirens fill
ed the air with their wail.
Their sound was muted by distance, but it wouldn’t be long before their arrival. Neighbors must have called them during the gunplay.
Michaels, panicked by the sound of approaching police cars, lost his hardness. He recognized time was
running out.
“Tell me, did you tamper with my plane?” he demanded.
Kelso
glanced at Keegan at the front of the crowd.
“Yes, I did.”
Michaels drew in a deep breath and exhaled, closing his eyes momentarily. “I wish I could kill you all over again.”
Slowly, Kelso’s victims became more solid and Josh Michaels and the house took on a hazy quality. Kelso knew his time was running out.
The sirens grew louder. Michaels made for the front door. Kelso grabbed his leg. Josh stopped and looked down at him.
“Say my name,” Kelso commanded.
“Fuck you,” Michaels spat.
“Say my name and I’ll tell you something you should really know.”
“Like what?”
“Say my name,” Kelso insisted.
Michaels hesitated. The sirens were close now, too close for comfort. “Okay. John Kelso. Your name is John Kelso. Now tell me.”
“You can’t save them. You’re too late.”
“Save who?” The puzzled look returned to Michaels’s face.
“Your family. You can’t save them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Josh’s blood froze. His body became brittle—he would shatter at the slightest touch. He refused to accept it.
Regardless of what Kelso said, it wasn’t too late. He could still do something about it. He kicked off Kelso’s grip on his leg.
“What have you done to Kate and Abby?”
The hit man laughed. His eyes darted in all directions, focusing on nothing. “You’re too late,” he said
again.
“Don’t say that.”
Josh’s head swam in the confusion of the screaming sirens and Kelso’s boast. The man was laughing at him.
His anger made him want to inflict a lifetime of pain on Kelso. He wanted to make him sorry for the misery he’d caused him, his family, his friend and Bell. The sirens sounded like they were outside the door. There was no more time.
“Are they still alive?”
“They won’t be when you get to them.”
“What does that mean?”
Kelso shook his head and laughed. Josh knew he
wasn’t going to get any more from the hit man.
“Time for a taste of your own medicine,” Josh said.
Josh put out his arm with his thumb up and gradually turned his arm. When his thumb pointed down,
Josh shot Kelso in the face.
John Kelso’s laughing stopped.
Josh tore out of the house, the gun still in his hand.
Faces at the windows of the neighboring houses peered through curtained windows. He leapt into the car, throwing the gun into the passenger side foot well. Police cars approached from both ends of the street, still several hundred yards off in the distance. He roared off in his car, not bothering to turn on his lights. He turned left into a small residential street without stopping at the four-way stop. It was a minor diversion that would slow his journey by moments, but he would
avoid the cops.
He checked his mirrors and was relieved to find no police cars in pursuit. Josh made a turn onto another street and he saw a speeding squad car tear across the next intersection heading for Bell’s house. He was clear of them. The cops wouldn’t be knocking at his door; well, for a while, anyway. Neighbors probably had his license plate number and his fingerprints were all over the house. It wouldn’t take them too long to track him down.
His journey home was more frantic than the road
race to Bell’s. Josh drove more recklessly and more dangerously. With what was at stake, he had no choice.
His family’s safety was paramount.
What has Kelso done? How has he gotten to Kate
and Abby? They were questions he could only guess at with a deep-rooted fear that scared him. He would never forgive himself if they were killed as a result of his mistakes. His fear and loathing tasted sour in his mouth.
Although Josh reached speeds of eighty miles an
hour in some places on the residential roads, it was still too slow. The speed of light would have been too slow for him. He didn’t know how much time his family had before it was too late, so every second counted.
He turned onto his street. The car slewed across the road, the back end threatening to overtake the front.
Rubber shredded off the tread as the tires squealed in pain. He raced up to his house and stamped on the brakes. The car ground to a halt in his neighbor’s front yard after plowing two wild furrows with its wheels.
Kate’s minivan was parked outside. It meant they
were inside, or so he hoped. If they weren’t, he didn’t have a clue where they could be or have a hope in hell of finding them. Josh had put a bullet through the face of the only man who knew where his wife and child were. He should have brought the hit man with him.
Josh reached for the gun in the foot well. His reckless driving had tossed it around inside. Blindly, his hand leapt from place to place in the car’s darkened interior.
The vapor lights provided poor illumination for
the vehicle’s cabin. His hand found the bulky steel lump under the front passenger seat and his fingers wrapped around the weapon. He burst out of the car.
“Please be okay. Please be okay,” he quietly chanted.
Josh tried opening the door, but it was locked. He fumbled in his pockets for his key and cursed when he realized his keys were still in the car. He tore back to the car and yanked them out of the ignition, almost snapping the ignition key off.
“Kate, Abby,” he bellowed. “Are you okay? Answer
me, it’s important.”
Running back to the door, he searched for the door key, finger dexterity impaired by the cumbersome
pistol in one hand. Finding the key, Josh jammed it into the lock, twisted it and threw himself against the door.
The explosion tore the house apart. The blast blew windows outward, scattering glass far and wide. Flaming wood shake was projected high into the air, imprinting the sky with comet-like heavenly bodies.
Lengths of siding snaked across the neighborhood like balloons inflated, then released. The concussion spat the house contents into the street. The garage door shoved Kate’s minivan aside and embedded itself in an SUV three houses down the street.
The sound, although deafening, was impressive— orchestral in nature. The blast’s thunderclap was interlaced with shattering glass. Glass fragments tinkled on the road surface like waves crashing on shingle. Burning shakes thudded into lawns like the hooves of Derby runners approaching the first furlong. Crackling house materials rounded out the symphony.
Neighbors already awakened by Josh Michaels’s dramatic arrival had time to witness his house be torn
asunder in a spectacle of color and sound. The price of admission was expensive. Neighboring homes had their windows blown in and debris burned on their lawns.
Josh was flung into the air, protected from projectiles, the blast, and the heat by the door ripped off by the explosion.
He landed in the front yard with the door on top
of him. He kicked off the door and got to his feet. He ignored the ringing in his head and the aching in his bones.
Hearing and feeling the blast was no preparation for what he saw. His home was a burning skeleton—every single part was aflame. Nothing and no one could have survived that. It struck him. His family was dead. He dropped to his knees, his hands to his head, the gun in his right hand pressed up against his ear.
“They’re dead. I’ve killed them,” he screamed above the roar of the fire.
For several moments, Josh was alone in the street. None of h
is neighbors ventured from the confines of their homes. The event was too astounding. Exploding houses didn’t happen here. Eventually people appeared and gathered into groups discussing the occurrence. No one approached Josh. Everyone kept a healthy distance from the blaze and the homeowner with the gun. Even from the other side of the street the flames dried the skin on their shocked faces. God alone knew what perils lay ahead for any person who went near the catastrophe.
Josh knelt on his scorched lawn unable to come to terms with the meaning of the disaster. The people he cared most about, Kate and Abby, were dead because of him. It didn’t matter what he did to improve his plight. He had now suffered the worst kind of punishment.
If he had let it happen, let Kelso kill him, maybe his family would be alive—maybe a lot of people
would be alive. But there wasn’t much point to if; there wasn’t much point to anything anymore. Everything he held most dear was gone. Josh raised the pistol to his temple.
The blaze-watching crowd gasped as their neighbor put the gun to his head. What were things coming to— was their neighborhood going to hell?
A car screeched to a halt behind Josh.
“Josh! Put the gun down.” Bob Deuce flew out of
the car.
Josh ignored the shouts and closed his eyes. The
flames were so strong that even through his eyelids, red and yellow images danced before him. He took a deep breath and held it. He tightened his finger around the trigger.
Bob threw himself on top of Josh and slapped the
gun away from his head. The gun roared and the slug kicked up a chunk of lawn. Sprawling, both men fell closer to the burning house, the heat intense on their bodies. Their clothes, heated by the flames, felt hot enough to combust. Bob wrenched the gun from Josh’s grasp, then yanked his friend to his feet. He shoved Josh toward his neighbors.
The crowd parted at the sight of the weapon.
“I’ve got to get you out of here.”
Grabbing on to anything he could grasp—an arm, a shirt collar—Bob dragged Josh forward. The man had no will and was as malleable as a puppet, but he was a living dead weight. Using his bulk, Bob managed to move his friend away from the blaze.
