by Dahlia West
Real thunder shook the corrugated metal walls of the warehouse just then, as if emphasizing Jack’s opinion on the matter.
There were too many men here to go inside, guns blazing, and Jack had a few loose ends to tie up anyway before he dealt with these traitors. They might not freely offer the info on Haze’s location, but Jack had a feeling that he knew just who he could ask.
It wouldn’t do to go tooling around Rapid City with three dead bodies stashed in the back of his “borrowed” pickup, though, and so Jack carefully lowered the gate of the truck’s bed. He pulled back the tarp and gripped a stiff and unblinking Wash around the upper torso. He slid the body out and sat him up against the warehouse’s back wall.
The two men Jack didn’t know ended up on either side of his former MC brother. Occasionally illuminated by bolts of lightning above them, they made quite the grisly trio.
Jack closed the gate during a rumble of thunder and got back behind the wheel. He pulled out of the alley and onto the next street over, in search of someone who could tell him where to find the coward who’d left him in an arroyo to die.
Chapter Sixty-Six
‡
He headed across town and turned onto a side street and parked two blocks from his actual destination. Jack had never actually been here before, but he knew about it, the way he knew about everyone he had dealings with in Rapid City. He killed the truck’s engine and unzipped the large duffel bag he’d packed.
He pocketed the few items he thought he’d need to get the information he was after, then swung out of the cab, boots splashing on the slick, black pavement.
The rain was coming harder now as he stalked in between mostly darkened houses. Lights flickered in a few of the windows and Jack figured the power was about to go for most of the city.
He picked the lock on the back door of a tiny house nestled in the center of the block. He slipped inside and let his eyes adjust to the darkness before moving ahead. He passed through the kitchen, a living room littered with beer cans and pizza boxes, and made his way down a shadowy hallway.
In the last room on the left, the sound of snoring was unmistakable. Jack reached out a gloved hand and slowly eased open the door.
* * *
Several minutes later, after he’d had enough of the obnoxious sound, Jack made his way back to the foot of the bed and kicked it with his heavy boot. “Wake up, you fat bastard,” he growled.
Rawlins awoke with a start, grunting and wheezing. “Wh…wazzat?” he muttered. He gave a small cry of surprise when he finally saw Jack looming over him.
“What the fuck?” he hissed.
Jack grinned at him. “Miss me?”
The cop stared at him. “Preacher?” he breathed.
“Back from the dead,” Jack replied.
“Jesus Christ,” Rawlins gasped. “It was you!”
“Before we start,” said Jack, “I’m just curious. How’d you find me?”
Rawlins, always one to toot his own horn whenever he could, snorted. “Some Barney Fife up in the hills got a “feeling” about a drifter who’d settled in his town. Called the station to ask about any escaped convicts, wanted criminals, yada fucking yada.”
He shrugged. “I heard about it and called Morrie. They sent some guys to check it out, along with a kid who knew you and could identify you. If it was you.” He snorted again. “Guess they should’ve sent a few more guys.”
“Guess so,” Jack agreed. It was time to get down to brass tacks. “Keller and Zane,” he said to Rawlins. “Where are they headed tonight?”
Rawlins narrowed his eyes at him and pressed his lips together.
Jack sighed. He didn’t really have time for this. Haze might be dead already. He needed to get a move on if he wanted to do the deed himself. “Keller and Zane,” he repeated more firmly. “Where are they, Rawlins?”
Rawlins’ pig eyes blinked at him furiously. “Fuck you.”
Jack sighed. “Yeah, I figured.” He reached into each of his jacket pockets and drew out a clear plastic squeeze bottle in one hand and his trusty Zippo in the other.
Rawlins’ eyes widened. “What’s that?” he demanded, shrinking away.
“Lighter fluid,” Jack replied, flicking the little stopper off the nozzle.
It wasn’t, actually. In fact, it was a non-flammable solvent. It smelled like shit, though, and it would be easier to convince Rawlins that it would turn him into barbecue.
Jack wasn’t quite dumb enough to enter a small space and douse it in lighter fluid with a semi-retarded asshat sitting in front of him. Rawlins would likely do something stupid and they’d both go up in flames.
Jack held out the bottle and squeezed.
Rawlins squealed. “Okay! Oh, my God! Okay! Jesus Fucking Christ,” he shouted, covering his face with his fat fingers. The liquid splashed all over his face and T-shirt, then streams of it landed on the bedspread. “The Starlight,” Rawlins bawled. “They’re going to the Starlight Motel. Rat trap just outside of town! On the fourteen headed north!”
Jack flicked his zippo, one-handed, and threw it at Rawlins.
The older man bellowed as he batted it away and then frantically started pounding out the small flame that had ignited when it bounced off the bedspread.
Jack laughed.
“You motherfucker!” Rawlins shouted when he realized he’d been played. “You son of a bitch!”
Jack shrugged and tossed the now-empty bottle onto the floor. He started to turn toward the bedroom door when Rawlins sprang for the nightstand. He fumbled with the drawer, only for a second, and drew out a snub-nosed .38.
He leveled it at Jack.
Jack turned to face the man fully.
Rawlins started to laugh now. Positively gleeful about getting the drop on Jack. “You dumb bastard!” he cried. “You never should’ve come back! You should’ve stayed dead!” Rawlins sneered as he pulled the trigger.
The hollow click of a hammer coming down on an empty chamber seemed almost as loud as a gunshot in the quiet bedroom. Rawlins pulled the trigger again, over and over, getting more agitated.
Jack grinned at the fat bastard, who gaped open-mouthed first at the gun, then at Jack. “Come on, Rawlins,” Jack drawled. “You can’t kill a ghost.” He held a single .38 caliber bullet up in the moonlight streaming in through the bedroom window.
“They’re going to come for you,” Jack told him. “DEA, FBI. Once they sift through every single thing I’ve sent them. Recordings, videos of you going to town on the club whores. Remember that one you nearly choked to death with your belt? She’ll probably have a lot to say about you. I gave them her name. I even gave them your bank account numbers. The offshore ones. How long do you think you’ll last in prison?”
Rawlins made a pathetic, desperate noise.
“Oh, they’ll put you in solitary,” Jack told him. “For your own protection. It’ll be a room much smaller than this, Rawlins. Where you’ll never, ever get out. And it’ll smell worse.” He looked around and wrinkled his nose. “Well, maybe.” Jack snorted, rolled his eyes, then tossed the bullet onto the bedspread before turning away.
Behind him, he heard the cop scrambling for it, but Jack was already down the hallway and out the back door. He ambled across the lawn, toward the street where he’d parked the truck.
The silence of the night was broken by a single, terrible scream. It was a rough, raw-throated thing, sounding like a man whose leg was caught in a trap. Which Jack supposed seemed fitting.
The sharp report of a single gunshot echoed in the night.
Jack disappeared, back into the shadows.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
‡
Erin had to open the barn door with both hands, fighting the sudden gust of wind that nearly forced her backward. Rain splattered her face and hair as she dived into the barn, out of the relentless storm.
She couldn’t see Bee in her stall and sprinted forward, toward the steel gate. The palomino was lying on her side in the straw,
heaving from the surge of a contraction.
“Damn it!” Erin growled as she flipped the latch and threw the gate wide.
Bee was early by at least two weeks. Erin would bet dollars to doughnuts the stress of the massive storm raging over their heads had jumpstarted her labor.
Buck wrestled the barn door closed and placed the heavy wooden beam across it to keep it shut. Then he joined Erin in the stall.
A small hoof was peeking out from underneath Bee’s tail and another hard spasm of the mare’s midsection pushed it farther into view. As Erin moved in for a better view, she saw that it was not one hoof but two and she swore again under her breath.
She dashed to the bunk room, turned the water on, and lathered up her hands all the way to the elbows. When she returned to Bee, she dropped to her knees, cleared away the blood, and inserted one hand to the wrist.
“The head’s retained!” she declared, fighting off a sudden wave of panic. Her other hand fluttered instinctively toward Bee’s tail.
“No!” Buck replied firmly. “Erin, slow down. Catch your breath. Do. Not. Pull.”
Despite her rising anxiety, Erin did as she was told and forced herself to take a long, deep breath. Buck was right. If she tried to pull the foal out, they would likely lose him before he ever emerged from the womb.
“Come on,” Buck demanded, rising to his feet and tugging on Bee’s halter. “Up, girl. Come on. Up now.”
Erin slid her hands underneath the mare and nudged her as well.
Bee had to get up and move around so the foal could reposition itself.
With a heavy groan, Bee finally relented and gave up her position on the straw bedding to haul herself to standing.
The strain of it was easy to see and Erin silently prayed for no more complications. A quick birth, so Bee could rest. Erin couldn’t stand the thought of losing either of them.
Buck brought the palomino out of the stall and walked her up and down the main aisle with Erin occasionally feeling along the mare’s belly to see if the foal had gone back down into the uterus. The hoof disappeared from underneath the tail and Erin thought that was a very good sign. She decided to believe it was, anyway, no matter what the truth was.
She’d gotten pretty good at ignoring the truth of things over the last year, she supposed.
Twenty minutes later, Bee had another large contraction and groaned with the strain of it. They managed to wrangle her back into her stall just before the horse’s legs buckled and she went down again on her side.
Erin knew this was it. Bee wasn’t getting up again during the birth, so she sent up another prayer that the foal had done its job and turned.
Buck grabbed the stack of towels outside the stall door and laid them on the freshly laid straw beside the horse’s rump. He took up a position near Bee’s head again while Erin stayed at the rear, eyeing the small hoof that had reappeared under Bee’s tail.
Buck comforted Bee, and Erin checked for a tiny nose to go along with the emerging hoof. Father and daughter worked side-by-side in a way they hadn’t since Erin had been just a girl. Buck had never sheltered her from ranch life, never shied away from the difficult or the unpleasant. Erin supposed that despite their personal issues, there was no one she’d rather have here helping her now.
“Okay!” Erin cried as another contraction pushed the foal out a few more inches. “The head’s repositioned!”
Buck nodded and whispered in Bee’s ear, telling her everything was all right now.
Minutes later, most of the head and shoulders were out. Erin tore the amniotic sac away for good measure.
“Dad!” she called out, fear swirling in her belly again.
Buck looked up, assessed the situation quickly, and got to his knees. “Get it out,” he demanded. “Get it out now.”
Now that the head was mostly out of the birth canal, it was finally safe to pull. Erin reached down and felt for the shoulders, planting her boot on the floor of the stall and pulling hard.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God, please.”
“Pull, Erin,” Buck encouraged. “Pull as hard as you can. If there’s bleeding, we’ll stop it after.”
Erin twisted her hips and used her own weight to slide the foal free. It flopped onto the ground, unresponsive. She pressed her palm to its chest. A slow, very slow, heartbeat thumped against her hand, but there was no steady rise and fall in the ribcage to go with it.
He wasn’t breathing.
Bee wailed.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
‡
Jack was a little late to the party, apparently. As he stood just inside the tree line, across the road from the run-down Starlight Motel, he watched Keller and Zane sweeping the rooms.
There were no cars in the lot other than their own police cruiser and the motel looked as though it’d been abandoned for years.
Zane stood as sentry while Keller booted in one of the doors, the next in the line of the ones they’d apparently already checked. Zane stayed outside, watching the remaining closed doors, as Keller checked inside the now-accessible room for their prey.
Jack figured it was as good a time as any to make his move. Now that the two men were separated, it’d be easier to get the drop on them one at a time. He had to move fast, too, because Keller and Zane were running out of rooms to check and sooner or later they’d get to the one Haze was hiding in.
And Haze belonged to Jack.
As another round of thunder crashed overhead, Jack broke into a slow jog, not making a straight line for the motel but skirting to the left to come in through the parking lot, taking pains to make sure he could easily be seen.
There was no sneaking up on Zane, since his field of vision was too large. Instead, Jack raised his hands, like he was out for a jog. When he got within shouting distance, he yelled, “Hey, Zane!”
Zane whirled, shotgun raised, and Jack lifted his own hands even higher, warding off a potentially crippling shot. From this distance, it wouldn’t be a kill shot, but Jack wanted to keep his nuts and his nose where they belonged.
“Whoa there!” Jack yelled. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” By this time he’d made it to the cruiser and ducked a little behind it. “What the fuck, Zane?”
Zane squinted into the darkness since the streetlight above them was out. “P…Preacher?!”
“Yeah, man, it’s me. What the fuck are you aiming at me for, buddy?”
Zane gaped at him. “You’re dead!” he cried.
“How’s that?” Jack asked, pretending he couldn’t hear.
“You’re dead!”
Jack leaned out just a bit from behind the car and gave the man a wide grin. Lightning flashed overhead just enough that both of them could see. “Well, hell yes, I’m dead, man! Hell, yes! DEA was all over my club. I had to do something. Couldn’t operate with all that heat. I had to take a trip, down to Mexico. But I’m back now, now that the smoke’s cleared.” Jack jerked his thumb toward the dark road behind him. “I just came from Rawlins’ place. He seemed to think you couldn’t handle this on your own.”
Zane scowled at him “Well…we got this.”
“Okay,” Jack replied with a smile, still keeping his hands in full view. “No problem.”
“Where the fuck have you been?” Zane demanded.
Jack simply shrugged. “Putting together some new deals. South of the border.”
Zane’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh, yeah?”
That was Zane, greedy as fuck and about as stupid.
Jack nodded. “Absolutely. Got weapons coming in. Cartel shit. Big money.”
Suddenly a barrage of gunfire broke out and Zane whirled in that direction. “Keller?”
Zane took a step forward, but Jack sprinted out from behind the car and grabbed the barrel of his shotgun while dodging to the left, out of the line of fire. Zane pulled the trigger anyway and the resulting boom rivaled the thunder overhead in its intensity.
The flash of the muzzle burned Jack’s palm, but he couldn’t risk letting
go and giving Zane a chance to actually line up a second shot. He pulled the gun toward him, making Zane lose his balance. Jack brought up his elbow and smashed it into the man’s face.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Until Zane let go of the gun.
In less than a second, Jack had the tactical weapon repositioned and aimed dead center at Zane’s broad chest. The bulletproof vest was a small matter. Jack pulled the trigger anyway and the upper part of the pellet spread caught the man in the throat and face.
Blood, brain, and bone flew in all directions as Zane’s already dead body landed with a whump on the gravel.
Jack was glad it was raining and the mess would wash off himself in due time.
A second gunshot sounded, this time from inside one of the motel’s rooms.
Jack ducked behind the police cruiser to give himself some cover.
After a moment, a lone figure appeared in the darkened doorway, peering out from behind the frame.
Jack waited patiently, not wanting to give away his position. He couldn’t tell if it was Keller or Haze, or someone else entirely. A minute passed, then two, and the shadow started to move. He stayed low and didn’t venture toward the parking lot but instead turned right and headed down the row of open doors, passing up each one until he was almost at the end of the building.
Jack finally stood up, revealing himself and racking the shotgun once for good measure. A brass shell ejected and a flash of lightning illuminated it just before it hit the dirt. He was partially blocked by the squad car still, though, just case the shadow wanted to open fire.
“Drop it,” Jack ordered, even though honestly he couldn’t see a gun in this darkness. He had to assume, though.
The figure hesitated, clearly calculating his odds of making it to the corner of the building and disappearing. Jack waited him out, because he knew the guy’s chances weren’t good.
