The Debt Collector (Book 1 of a Jack Winchester Organized Crime Action Thriller) (Jack Winchester Vigilante Justice Thriller Series)
Page 21
Jack sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. Maybe ten minutes passed before he heard the sound of gravel. He glanced out to see an old red Pontiac muscle car tear into the driveway. Three guys jumped out along with a girl. They had to have been in their twenties. Tweakers.
Keith had casually mentioned over a beer that one of them owed him several months’ worth of rent money for a condo he rented out in the town. He’d also got wind that they were using it as a crack house.
Keith Welling was your typical businessman. He ran the marina, was married but had no kids. He invested his money into properties in and around Rockland Cove. By all accounts, he hadn’t run into trouble. Only once did he have to get the cops involved to get a squatter booted out. But these guys were different. He knew that someone in the department was allowing it. Every call he’d placed to them had just fallen on deaf ears.
Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth. The fact was the cops had been around but they could never find any sign. They were always one step ahead. And no one who knew them was saying anything.
That’s when Jack offered to help.
At first Keith laughed and turned down the offer until Pat, one of the local fishermen, had told him about Jack’s run-in with the bikers. That had made the local papers. It wasn’t something that was forgotten. In many ways it had earned Jack some respect in the town. Besides tourists, it was tough for newcomers to fit in. Local folk were tight. But that one event had given him a little leverage.
Stepping out of his truck as if he was about to go for an afternoon stroll, Jack crossed the road and walked up their short driveway. He wasn’t packing any heat. He just didn’t expect he would need it. That was one thing he had made a point to leave at the boat just in case police stopped him on his way out to the house where he had tracked the kid who rented the condo. To him this was a simple miscommunication. Keith didn’t want them out. He just wanted to get paid, and make sure the place wasn’t being used for crack.
Jack knocked twice on the dilapidated door. He heard movement inside.
“Get the door,” a gruff voice yelled out from inside.
“Why don’t you? You lazy bastard.”
Jack stepped back as the door opened, and a small girl stepped out. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. She had long blonde hair, thick eyeliner, and wore tight blue jeans torn at the knees and a white sweater.
“If you are selling, we are not buying.”
“Not here to sell.”
“Then what do you want?” she asked.
“A word with Danny,” Jack replied.
She looked him up and down as if trying to gauge whether he worked for the cops. She cast a glance over her shoulder and yelled back into the darkness.
“Danny. Get your ass out here.”
“Who is it?”
She turned back.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Jack.”
She shouted his name. There was a rustle inside and a skinny guy with long dirty blond hair poked his head around the corner. He was dressed as if it was the summer.
“Don’t know no Jack. What the fuck do you want?”
He stepped forward and the girl stepped to one side. He wore what might have resembled a white muscle shirt at one time, though now it was stained and looked as if it had become part of his skin. His jeans weren’t that much better. Torn, covered in oil stains, and scrunched up over the top of his work boots. Jack spotted small red bruises all over his forearms. They were needle tracks. He was tattooed all over. One tattoo was of a dragon that ran up the side his neck. In the corner of his mouth hung a cigarette.
“Keith sent me. He says you owe him six months’ rent on the condo.”
“And I told him. He’ll get paid when I get the time to get down there.”
He turned to go back inside the house.
“Yeah, about that. You see, he has been trying to call your phone and he’s not getting through.”
“That’s because it’s turned off. Listen. You tell him. I’ll pay him when I’m ready. Not before.”
With that he turned and slammed the door. Jack nodded slowly, breathed in deeply, and then drove his foot hard against the door. The brittle wood groaned on impact. The door burst open, sending wooden shrapnel in every direction. Danny barely had a chance to react before Jack had a hold on the back of his neck.
“Now. The money.”
“Shit. man. I’ll get it.” He shrank back in fear.
“Lead the way.”
He kept a firm grip on him as they went deeper into the house. The place was a complete shithole. As they passed by the kitchen, Jack glanced in. Piles of unwashed dishes were stacked high, others remained on the table. The floor looked as if it hadn’t seen water in a decade. Trash bags were tied and shoved into a corner. The smell of piss and marijuana hung heavy in the air. He had only turned his head for a second when he heard a gun cocked by his ear.
The voice spoke slowly. “Let. Him. Go.”
It was the girl.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, Rachael,” Danny said.
Two other guys came out of the living area and both of them were packing Glocks. One of them had a thick beard. The other looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. His eyes sank back into his face.
It was one of those moments where he kind of wished he’d brought his gun along just for the heck of it. Instead, he would have to deal with it the old-fashioned way. Jack slowly released his grip. The moment Danny was loose he turned and laid into Jack with what he must have thought was a fierce beating. Jack almost felt like laughing. Danny had about as much strength in those arms as a baby bird flapping its wings for the first time. That was the thing with tweakers, they spent so much time jacking up that they forgot to eat. Their muscles were barely able to control their joints.
“Now get on the fucking floor,” Danny yelled.
“You want me to do it?” one of the other men said, stepping forward then bouncing back in excitement.
God, I hate junkies, Jack thought.
“Not in here, Danny. I don’t want to clean up the fucking mess,” the girl added.
“Drag him outside then,” Danny yelled.
As the two men stepped forward and took a hold, Jack moved so fast, the expression on their faces said it all. He head-butted one of them. He then twisted the gun out of the hand of the one closest to him and pulled him in close by his long beard.
“Now put the fucking guns down,” Jack said.
There was a moment where none of them said anything.
“Listen to him,” the man pleaded as Jack tightened his grip on him.
None of them knew what to do. They were each pointing a weapon at Jack. Their arms were jerking up and down. Their eyes wild and out of control.
Jack lifted the gun under the guy’s chin.
“I’ll blow his fucking head off.”
“Danny. Do as he says,” the guy yelled.
The girl dropped hers, and the others reluctantly followed suit. They weren’t made for this. He imagined that in a town this small, the amount of resistance they got to their demands was very little.
“Kick them over.”
The skinniest of them stepped forward and slid them across the room with a quick kick.
“That right. Now go get the money,” Jack demanded.
Jack kept his gun tightly fixed below the bearded guy’s chin while Danny nodded to the skinny guy who reminded Jack of Gollum. The tweaker raced out back and returned with a metal lockbox. Danny opened it and tossed Jack a large wad of notes.
“Okay. See. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
“I swear you are fucking going to pay for this,” Danny said.
“Really? And here I was, going to walk out of here with the money and tell Keith what nice folks you were.” He paused. “Now you have until the end of the week to get out of Keith’s condo, or I’ll be back and you don’t want me coming back. You understand?”
They nodded fast. Jack scoop
ed up the guns and tucked them into the small of his back. He pushed the bearded guy to the ground.
“You guys shouldn’t be playing with big boy guns. You really could get hurt.”
He chuckled to himself as he backed out and returned to his truck. There it was. The thrill again. It was a piece of cake. Nothing like what he encountered in the city. In the city he would have taken out the girl before the others came out, but these were no killers. They were just college drop-outs who thought they were big-time drug dealers.
He slipped into his truck, cast a glance back at the house. Danny was outside glaring at him. Jack tipped his head before pulling away.
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Jon Mills
Jon Mills is originally from England. He is the author of The Debt Collector, The Promise and the Undisclosed Trilogy as well as many other novels under pen names. To get more information about upcoming books or if you wish to get in touch with Jon, you can do so using the following contact information:
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