by Mark Stone
“I thought you’d get a kick out of that,” Davey said, stepping out of the car with me.
“Any idea where she is here?” I asked, looking out into a sprawling parking lot filled with huge eighteen-wheelers.
“She came here in a tiny little yellow sports car. It was kinda badass, actually,” Davey said. She pulled to the back of the lot, around where that huge Little Debbie truck is now. I’m guessing she’s right behind that.”
“Good,” I said. “That’ll provide us the cover we need.”
“We’re just gonna walk up there?” Davey asked, looking over at me with a quizzical look on his face.
“I mean, yeah,” I said, shrugging. “You got a better idea?”
“Not really,” he said. “But it does seem kind of anticlimactic. Like, shouldn’t we be descending from a helicopter or something, maybe with some machine guns and stuff?”
“Maybe next time,” I answered. “At the moment, we have this and our two feet,” I said, pulling out the gun I’d lifted from Oliver when I knocked him out.
“I guess that’ll have to do,” Davey said.
We made our way to the back of the parking lot, moving swiftly but with enough hesitation to be careful about things. I had come this far and uncovered enough that I knew I needed to be wary about Wendy finding me here before I was ready for her to know.
As Davey and I found a spot behind the Little Debbie truck, Kneeling behind one of the tires and peeking our heads out in order to see the little yellow sports car Wendy had driven here in, I shot my friend a look that told him to be quiet.
Davey being Davey, however, he did anything but actually heed my instructions.
“Why aren’t we busting her?” he asked as he laid eyes on the woman, leaning against the hood of the yellow car, tapping her foot impatiently and checking the watch on her arm.
“Aren’t you wondering why she’s waiting here?” I asked. “Don’t you want to know why she’s tapping her foot and checking the time? She’s waiting for someone. She has a partner in all of this, and as much as it breaks my heart, I think I know exactly who that partner is.”
As the words left my mouth, a motorcycle screeched to a stop in front of the car. Pulling his helmet off, Scott revealed himself. Smiling, he shook his head.
“What took you so long?” Wendy asked. “I haven’t talked to you in hours. I thought the plan had gone to hell.”
“Some friend you’ve got there, LJ,” Davey whispered from beside me. “Good thing your tastes have improved since then.”
He was right. Though it had been laid out in front of me, there was a part of me that couldn’t believe one of my oldest friends was a part of all this. Still, as I knelt there and listened to what he had to say, I couldn’t deny the truth anymore.
“Don’t be stupid, Wendy,” Scott said, chuckling loudly. “You worked this all out to a tee. It happened just the way you said it would. As soon as Oliver got wind of the fact that John Lucky was onboard, he got all antsy about things. It wasn’t long before he started moving the Linchpin around. I had the damn thing replaced with a fake flash drive a couple of hours after the ship set sail. By the time the Russians pretended to attack and kidnap me, everything seemed like child’s play. They all fell right in line, just like you said they would. It was beautiful, Momma.”
“Momma?” Davey asked, turning his mouth down. “Even if he wasn’t trying to screw you over, he’d still be a douchebag.”
“Shh,” I scolded, keeping my focus on Wendy and my former friend.
“So, what happens next?” Scott asked.
“That depends,” Wendy said. “What did you do with the Russians?”
“Exactly what you told me to,” Scott said. “They kept asking me when they were getting the Linchpin. I guess they bought the lies you fed them hook, line, and sinker. So, I put bullets in both of their heads. It was ugly, but it was necessary.”
A shudder ran through me. I had known Scott nearly my entire life. I played with him as a kid, watched football with him on Sundays, and even went to my grandfather’s funeral with him in tow. I knew him inside and out. Or, at least, I thought I had. He wasn’t a killer. So, how had he killed not one, but two people in cold blood? I guess I didn’t know my friend nearly as well as I thought I had.
“I don’t get it, though,” Scott said. “If we’re going to sell the Linchpin anyway, then why didn’t we just sell it to the Russians? Seems just as good as anyone.”
“Where is it?” Wendy asked. “Where’s my flash drive?”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Give it to me,” Wendy said, extending her hand out in a flash.
“Um, okay,” Scott said. He started digging into his pocket, and I began to understand what was going on here. Not only had Wendy duped Charlotte and me, but she was in the middle of duping Scott as well.
“Stop!” I yelled, pointing my gun at the pair and rushing out from my place behind the truck toward them. “Stop right there! Scott, she’s going to—”
But once again, I was too late. In the time that it had taken me to jump out, Wendy had pulled the flash drive from Scott’s hand and shot him in the chest. My former friend fell to the ground, and unlike Maxwell, he hadn’t been wearing a vest. I could tell from the sheer amount of blood that poured from him as he hit the pavement.
“Lucky John?” Wendy asked, turning toward me, her eyes widening. “I was hoping Oliver would have killed you by now. He did think you were responsible for stealing the Linchpin, right?”
“Put your gun down,” I said, pointing my gun at Wendy. She didn’t do as I said. In fact, she pointed her gun at me. Or, more aptly, she pointed it right beside me. She mustn’t have been much of a shot. “This is over.”
“I couldn’t agree more myself,” Wendy said, a smile spreading across her face.
Reading her expression, I looked to my left and saw that it wasn’t her aim that was off. It was my assumption. Davey had jumped out right alongside me, and Wendy had her gun pointed right at him.
“Now,” she said, cocking the gun. “Walk away from this, or I’ll kill him where he stands.”
“Wendy, you don’t want to do this,” I said, my eyes widening and my heart speeding up. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know who you plan on selling the Linchpin to, but you don’t have to—”
“I’m not selling it, you moron!” she screamed. “If I wanted to do that, I’d have given it to the damn Russians. There are more important things than money. There’s truth. There’s holding people accountable. This country is guilty of horrible things, and I’m going to make them admit it. I’m going to use this power, the power I created, the one that was stolen from me, to make the people in power fess up to their corrupt ways.” Tears started to well up in her eyes. “When I was young, all I wanted was to make a difference. I thought I had gone too far, but the truth was, I hadn’t gone far enough. If I had, maybe my mother wouldn’t have died.”
“What?” I asked.
“Contaminated drinking water,” Wendy answered. “It happened last year, right after I met you. And the state did nothing. The government did nothing. She was hardly the only one. It happens all the time, and nothing ever happens. That stops right now. I’m going to hold them all accountable. Either that, or I’ll launch these damn nukes and make them all pay. And the best part is, they won’t even look in my direction. Everyone who was after the Linchpin was on that ship, including you. By the time they work their way through that list of suspects, it’ll be far too late. That’s why I went back to find Scott. It’s why I got you onboard. I knew it would confuse things. I knew Oliver would see your connection with Scott, and your reputation would make Oliver nervous. He’d get sloppy, and I’d get what was rightfully mine. It wasn’t even hard to convince Scott to help. All I had to do was promise to help make him rich. I could teach him to pretend to play poker while feeding him help through an earpiece, and he was mine. Promising to split the money I’d get from selling the Linchpi
n put him over the moon. Too bad he wasn’t thinking selflessly enough.”
“Selfless? You’re insane,” I said. “You can’t do that. I know things might have been rough, and I know you’ve been through a lot, but we all have. It doesn’t mean you get to hold an entire government hostage. You can’t do that. I won’t let you.”
Wendy laughed loudly, laughed bitterly. “You don't have a choice,” she said. “Not unless it’s worth your best friend’s life.”
“Actually, that’s not the reason he doesn’t have a choice,” Davey said from beside me. “He doesn’t have a choice because I’m making it for him.” Then, without another word, Davey ran toward Wendy. And wordlessly, she shot at my friend twice.
The entire world seemed to grind to a halt as I heard those shots, as I watched my best friend in the whole world fall backward, dropping to his knees and then to the pavement just as Scott had done before him.
I couldn’t let this be for nothing. I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself for absolutely no gain. So, I did what I had to. I pointed my gun at Wendy’s shoulder, and I squeezed the trigger.
I ran toward her before I even stopped to see if the bullet hit. I didn’t need to look. My time in the army was enough for me to know how good my shot was. I could have hit her right between the eyes if I’d have wanted, but unlike Scott, I had no intention of killing anyone tonight, even if they deserved it.
Wendy fell to the floor, too, but I caught her, resting her against the ground and snatching the Linchpin out of her hand. It seemed insane that something like this, a small piece of plastic, could be worth everything all of these people had been through. But here it was, and this was the last place it would ever be.
“Don’t do it, John,” Wendy said. “They have to pay for what they’ve done, for the people they’ve ignored and hurt and let die. They have to pay.”
“This isn’t the way,” I said, snapping the flash drive in my hands. “And it’ll never be the way. Not ever.”
Dropping the pieces of the now useless drive on the ground, I pulled out my phone and knelt beside Davey. Calling 911, I checked his pulse to make sure he was still with me. Seeing that he was, and talking to the woman who picked up on the other line, I prayed someone would make it in time.
28
“You think getting shot makes me sexier?” Davey asked me, as serious as a heart attack as he plucked a shrimp from a tray as it passed by. It had been three weeks since the incident with Wendy in the parking lot of the truck stop, and almost one week since my friend was released from the hospital. Luckily for all of us, the bullet went clean through, and Davey’s injuries were minimal enough that a single surgery fixed most of it.
As he dipped his shrimp in cocktail sauce and stood almost steadily on the beach under a banner which read that the party we were now enjoying was in his honor, I smiled because it was clear that he was back to his old self.
“How could you get any sexier?” I asked, patting him gently on the shoulder.
“You know what? You’ve got a point. I was just hoping that, given the sexy nature of myself, that the fine reporter who caused you so much trouble on the boat might go after me.” He looked over at Random, who was laughing with her sister and had her arm slung around Maxwell. “But it seems like she has a different type.”
“Maxwell is a good guy,” I said, defending the man. “And do you really blame Random? I mean, he did help save her back there.”
“Only because I couldn’t go,” Davey whined. “Otherwise, I’d have been the one fighting for my life on a cruise ship beside that hottie.”
“I had you there for the end of it. Isn’t that enough?” I asked. “Besides, even that was enough to almost get you killed. I’m not sure either of us could have handled your having a bigger role in all of this.”
“Fair enough,” Davey said. “But next time, I’m going in full steam ahead.”
“Next time?” I asked, arching my eyebrows curiously.
“Come on,” Davey said. “We’re talking about you. I doubt you’ll make it to the end of the week without getting yourself into some kind of trouble.”
“I hate how much sense that makes,” I responded. “Oh, you never told me the name of the boat.”
“What?” Davey mused.
“When I got back here, the boat i bought,” I said. “You told me you had a good name for it.”
“Oh, right,” Davey said, chuckling. “I figured what better name for Lucky John’s boat than Snake Eyes.”
I laughed heartily. “You know what? I kind of love it.”
“I thought you might,” Davey answered.
Then, feeling a tug at my arm, I turned to find Mia there. “Good to see you,” she said, smiling at me. “After everything that happened, I was afraid you might not ever want to come outside again.”
“You know me,” I muttered. “Takes more than a couple of assassination attempts and being betrayed by one of my oldest friends to get me down.”
“How is Scott?” Mia asked, her face growling solemn. “Have you talked to him?”
“He’s still in the hospital,” I answered. “And no, I haven’t. What’s more, I have no desire to. Anyone who could do what he did for the promise of money isn’t someone I want to be friends with. Besides, I picked up a couple of real friends along the way here. I don’t need the fake ones.”
“That’s understandable,” Mia agreed. “Does my sister count among those real friends?”
“Shockingly, she does,” I answered. “I’m even thinking about giving her an actual interview, though it’ll be awhile before I sign off on the idea of being on a Wheaties box.”
“Every great journey starts with but a step,” Mia said. “That being said, maybe you should step in that direction.” She motioned forward, and following her gaze, I saw Charlotte standing off by herself. “She seems nice.”
“She is nice,” I agreed. “She’s a lot of things.”
“Aren’t we all?” Mia said. Winking at me, the woman nudged me with her shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger, Lucky.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, grinning at the woman as I made my way over to Charlotte.
“You like it here, don’t you?” I asked, settling beside her.
“I like pieces of it,” Charlotte answered. “But it’s not home.”
“Could it be?” I asked, looking over at her with serious eyes.
“I’m honestly not sure,” she said. “It’s beautiful, and there are definitely things about it that are pulling me here.” She looked at me for just a moment. “There are people who are pulling me here. But I do have a life back up in Grayville. I have friends there. I have things I need to get back to.”
“So, maybe it isn’t home, then,” I said, grabbing her hand and spinning her toward me. “But everyone has to leave home every once in awhile. Maybe you don’t live here. That doesn’t mean you can’t visit a hell of a lot.”
“And what would I do when I visit here?” she asked me with eager eyes.
“I’m sure I can think of something.” I laughed. “That is, unless my luck has run out.”
“Oh, John,” Charlotte said, touching my cheek, leaning up, and planting a kiss on my lips. “I don’t think that’ll ever happen.”
As with all Lucky John books, this story is a standalone and can be enjoyed just as you’ve read it. If you’d like a little taste of what’s coming in the next installment, though, read on.
Epilogue
Naples, Florida
Rascal Mangrove walked into the Pleasant Palm with his hair brushed back and his best jacket on. Though, one look at the man would be enough for even a passerby to know that he didn’t exactly belong here.
The Pleasant Palm was one of the most upscale clubs in town. Where Rascal was used to used to the shoddy beer and darts type places, the man had to assume these guys wouldn’t drink a cool glass of Bud if their lives depended on it.
He scoffed as he entered, looking around at the ambience and knowin
g, without a shadow of a doubt that he would hate every single person in this room. The music was too light, too classical. The lighting was too soft and romantic, and Rascal just knew the food would be the sort of artsy stuff that painted a plate but wasn’t nearly enough to fill your belly. To be much more concise, this was absolutely not his kind of place.
So, it would only make sense to wonder what he was doing here in the first place. And, as it turned out, that’s exactly what the wait staff did nearly the instant he walked in.
“I’m afraid we’re all booked up for the night, sir,” a tall man with a pencil thin mustache and the sort of look on his face that told Rascal he liked wine that tastes like feet said, shaking his head as he neared him.
Rascal chuckled hard. As if he’d ever eat here. Probably couldn’t get a burger in this joint if your life depended on it.
“Is that right?” Rascal croaked out, considering the idea of having some fun with the man. “And what if I have a reservation?”
“I doubt that quite seriously, but on the off chance you do, I’m afraid it’s been lost and we won’t be able to honor it,” the man said.
“You didn’t even ask me my name,” Rascal muttered.
“That is correct,” the man said. “And I don’t intend to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an issue to attend to in the kitchen, and I simply don’t have time to deal with whatever delusions of grandeur you’re currently entertaining. May I suggest something more your speed? I hear the bowling alley has good chalupas. While I have absolutely no idea what that is something tells me you’re intimately familiar.”
“Your silverware is going missing, right?” Rascal asked.
Though the man had turned to head back to the kitchen, he stopped cold and turned back around.
“The good stuff, right?” Rascal asked. “And not just good. I’d imagine everything in this joint is good. This is the best. That’s what’s coming up missing, right?”
