by Alison Kent
The kid’s laughter was forced. “I just came to see if the coast was clear. Friends of mine. They’re bringing the booze.” He gestured with the phone he still held like a lifeline. “I can give them a call and make sure they bring plenty.”
“So what’s in the bag?” King aimed the light back in the guy’s eyes, and nudged the toe of one boot at the duffel.
“Stop! Don’t!”
“Or what? It might break?” He paused, added, “Or maybe blow up?”
“It’s just that…it’s not my bag, ya know?” he said with a lazy shrug that wasn’t lazy in the least, but stiff, and worried, and…scared.
King would worry about being scared stiff later. “And you don’t want me getting it dirty.”
“Yeah. The guy I borrowed it from can be a real ass.”
“Maybe you need better friends. Jason.”
Jason Malling’s head whipped up, his hand shot to the small of his back. King had his gun pressed to the center of the man who’d-made-the-last-few-days-a-living-hell’s chest before he could draw his weapon.
“Hands where I can see them, Jason. Up against the wall, both of them.”
“How did you know—”
“How did I know who you were? Because you’re stupid enough to think I’m as stupid as you are.”
“What?”
“Exactly.”
King slid the barrel of his weapon up to rest beneath Malling’s chin, reached back, and pulled the gun he’d been going after from his belt. “Carry on the side, boo. Faster draw.”
“Who are you?”
“Just someone who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Cady?” He’d heard her come out the back door, and he wanted her close and safe. But he kept his eyes on their trespasser.
“What’s going on?” she said, walking up behind him but smartly keeping her distance.
“Cady Kowalski? Meet Jason Malling. Better yet. Meet Jason Malling’s gun.” He waved her near, gave her the handgun, showed her how to hold it, and where to aim. “Safety’s off. If he moves, shoot him.”
Thirty-nine
After patting down their intruder, confiscating Malling’s gun, phone, and the gym bag he’d borrowed to haul around his crap, King escorted the convicted felon to the kitchen and tied him to one of the chairs.
The fact that King was also a convicted felon didn’t influence him to cut the younger guy any slack. He’d served time for a crime he didn’t commit, while Malling was still committing, and obviously hadn’t wised up at all since the first time he’d been caught.
He’d been out, what? Less than a week, and here he was headed back to do hard time. All King had to decide was whether to turn him over to the Staties or to McKie. The explosive device he had with him might even be enough to perk up Homeland Security’s ears.
“Is this the same stuff you used to blow up my Hummer?” While Malling looked on, King emptied the contents of the gym bag onto the table. Wiring. A timer. Detonators. Blocks of C4. Multiple blocks of C4. Enough to make sure Cady and half the farm went up along with the house.
That was the rest of the reason King wasn’t influenced to be kind to this piece of shit. Malling was outfitted to take out every living thing in a city block.
Talk about overkill. “Are you paying your bomb maker by the hour? Or by how much of the Northeast he wipes off the map?”
Malling sat with his hands tied behind him, his torso roped to the chair, his ankles tied to the chair legs. It was hard for him to look anywhere but down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How far away were you planning to be before you set this off?” King asked, picking up one of the bricks of explosive material. “Because I gotta tell ya, boo. I’m not so sure anyone in Rosingsville would’ve made it out alive.”
Cady had been standing near the back door, but now she came close and laid her hand on his arm. “Can you not treat that like a football please?”
“No worries, chère,” he said, though he set about packing everything back into the bag. “Jason here had some prep work to do before this stuff would do any damage.”
“I’d just as soon not see it being bounced around. It’s bad enough knowing it’s here,” she said, crossing her arms and pacing the kitchen behind him. “And thinking about what could’ve happened.”
Straining forward against his bonds, Malling lifted his head just enough to snarl. “You would’ve been in little pieces if it had, bitch.”
King knocked him across the face. “How about some respect, asshole?”
“Fuck you. And fuck her.” Malling spat blood. “She got all up in something that wasn’t her business, and we’re going to make goddamn sure she never forgets.”
“We? You got an army out there backing you up?”
“Fuck you,” Malling said, and this time he spit at King instead of the floor.
King heard Cady move, so he didn’t. He waited, staring down this asshole until the kid lost his cockiness and looked away first. Then King took the wet paper towel Cady handed him and wiped the saliva from his neck.
“Tell me something, boo.” He gestured with the now dirty towels. “Does the man giving you orders expect you to get the job done, or did he choose you because you’re a stupid expendable prick?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Malling grumbled, his head still down.
“I’m talking about all the times you’ve screwed up.”
“I haven’t screwed up once.”
“And that’s why you’re sitting here tied up in Cady’s kitchen? Because it was part of your master plan?” King looked over to where she stood with her hands at her sides curled over the lip of the stove.
She hadn’t said much at all since he’d handed her the gun and told her to shoot if Malling moved. She’d seemed calm enough then, her grip on the weapon controlled, and calm enough now—her only show of nerves during his manhandling of the bomb.
He had a lot of answers he wanted to beat out of this boy, and he didn’t think Cady would object, but having her here to see and to listen, a witness to his interrogation, would hamper him. He’d hold back, take it easy for fear she’d somehow be hurt by what Malling revealed.
Gesturing for her to follow, he picked up the loaded duffel and carried it to the bedroom. Once there, he handed her his cell phone and the card he’d carried in his back pocket since that night in the hospital cafeteria.
He tapped a finger on the phone number, and went with his gut. “Do me a favor. Call McKie. Tell him that in a couple of hours, he can find Malling being held on trespassing charges in the Rosingsville substation.”
“Trespassing charges?” She looked from the card to his face, her eyes wide. “What about the gun and the bomb and trying to kill me? Kill us?”
“I’m going to let McKie handle it. If I try to explain all of that to the Staties, we’re going to be stuck here for the investigation, and what happened in Cushing Township will come up, and I’ll never get back to Louisiana. I figure Malling can pay a fine for ignoring the signs, and McKie can take it from there.”
“It’ll take the Staties a while to get here. You want me to call them, too?”
He nodded. “Tell McKie to be here in the morning and we’ll give him Malling’s stuff along with the flash drive.”
At that, she balked. “I can’t do that.”
“You can. You need to.”
She turned away, moved to stand in front of the window. “Kevin told me to hang onto it. To keep it safe.”
“You’ve kept it safe for eight years.”
But he knew this wasn’t about her doing what her brother had told her. It was that doing what her brother had told her had caused her a lot of unnecessary grief.
If she’d opened the files after Kevin’s death, not ignored them, not shied away, Malling wouldn’t be sitting in the kitchen, and the evidence Kevin had collected would’ve put more of Tuzzi’s runners behind bars.
He walked up behind he
r, put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Now you need to put it to work for you. You need to let Kevin finish what he started and take Tuzzi and his bastards the rest of the way down.”
Forty
Cady stayed in the bedroom only long enough to make the calls, then crept back to the main room to listen. She didn’t trust King to tell her everything Jason Malling said, and she needed to hear it all.
She’d been right in guessing that it would take a couple of hours to get a response to a trespassing call. She’d thought about adding “armed” to the description of the intruder they were holding, but had kept that part to herself.
Possessing a weapon would be a violation of Malling’s parole, meaning he’d be stuck behind bars if the troopers discovered the gun. Depending on the terms of his release, he could be stuck behind bars for leaving New Jersey.
She crossed her fingers that didn’t happen. They needed him to pay his fine, leave Pennsylvania, and report back to Tuzzi. That was the only way McKie could follow and catch him in the act of making contact.
She climbed into the main room’s recliner that sat closest to the hall. It gave her a clear view of the far side of the kitchen—at least the part above the shelves serving as a half wall between the two rooms.
She couldn’t see the table or the sink, but the stove, refrigerator, and back door were all visible. And she could hear every noise King and Malling made, as well as every note being sung by the chorus of creatures that seemed to have surrounded the house.
“Here’s what I want to know,” King was saying. “What exactly are you after? Why blow up the Hummer? Why run us off the road and smoke us out of our room? What is it you want? To scare Cady into next year, because that much you’ve done, boo. That much you’ve done.”
She frowned. Did King think her weak for being scared? Was Malling going to think her weak? Did she really give a shit if he did?
Malling finally answered. “I don’t know why you think I’m going to tell you anything.”
“Well, because right now, you’re looking at being charged with trespassing. I’m keeping the gun and the explosives off the table. But if you don’t talk, I can put them right back on. Make sure they’re the first thing the Staties see when they walk through the door.”
Cady winced at the string of expletives that came out of Malling’s mouth. She had to hand it to King, though, hitting the other man where it hurt without ever lifting a hand.
That’s all it took for Jason to capitulate. “What do you want to know?”
“You can start with everything.”
“I was born a rich white kid in Westchester County.”
“Uh, not that everything, jerk. Start with the break-in at the Kowalski house.”
“That shit’s all public record. Get a library card. Or take your ass down to the courthouse or wherever you have to go to see it.”
Cady heard a loud thud, and assumed King had slammed Jason’s gun onto the table.
“How did you know about the flash drive?”
“Kevin told us.”
“That Cady had it?”
“No. That it existed. That it was stashed someplace safe.”
“And you assumed she had it.”
“We didn’t assume anything, bro,” Malling snarled. “Except that Kowalski was lying. Trying to scare us off or talk us into letting him live. Couldn’t do it. He took out Ryland. He had to go down.”
“And you made that happen. Being judge and jury and all.”
“Us being Ryland’s brothers. An eye for an eye.”
“Kevin Kowalski was somebody’s brother,” King said, and Cady’s eyes welled. “A real brother, blood and birth, not your fraternity bullshit.”
“You calling it bullshit shows what you know.”
King paused as if gathering his thoughts, then asked, “Why start looking for the flash drive now?”
“Because I just got out, dickwad.”
“I thought Tuzzi had other runners doing his work.”
“That work, yeah. Not this.”
“Or maybe he realized the flash drive did exist once Tyler found the folder on Cady’s laptop.”
Malling snickered. “That was so sweet, Renee realizing her new roommate was the bitch who fucked up everything for Stacia Ashton.”
“Tuzzi’s girlfriend.”
Cady assumed Jason nodded, since she didn’t hear anything but the legs of King’s chair scraping over the floor as he scooted back.
“Stacia’s whole future went up in flames when Nathan was convicted.”
Cady couldn’t sit still anymore. She lunged out of the chair and burst into the kitchen. “And you don’t think my family’s life went up in flames when your bro,” she said sarcastically, “killed mine?”
“Like I said. An eye for an eye.”
“And what about Deshon Coral?”
Jason looked away, shook his head. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Stupid fuck should’ve learned how to drive.”
“That’s it? No remorse?”
“I needed you to stay put, not go running across the country. He was hired to do that. Not to get himself killed.”
“And the smoke bomb?” King asked.
“What smoke bomb?”
“You saying you didn’t send a smoke bomb to our room to make sure we were on the street when Deshon came driving by?”
“Maybe Deshon sent it.” Jason slumped back, tossing his head to clear his hair from his eyes. “Maybe Kowalski stirred up more shit and has more enemies. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
King glanced over at her, looking as worn out as she felt. “The cops on their way?”
She nodded. “You’re keeping his phone, too, right?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Since you were stupid enough not to use a prepaid throwaway, I can do anything I want.” He tossed it to Cady. “When our friend shows up tomorrow, let’s make sure he gets that. Who knows what his people can do with the information stored in the memory.”
Jason groaned. “Fuck. That information falls into the wrong hands, I’m dead meat.”
Cady made a big production out of dropping the phone down her shirt. “Maybe one of your brothers will swing by and rescue you.”
Forty-one
Cady leaned against the Hummer, waiting for the black sedan they had seen turn off the main road and onto the Kowalski property to reach the house. This was it. The end of the line. She prayed she was doing the right thing. Prayed, too, for King to finish his phone call to his cousin and join her.
She didn’t think she had it in her to face Fitzwilliam McKie alone.
The Pennsylvania State Police had shown up close to midnight last night and taken her and King’s statements before taking Jason Malling away.
As he’d told her he’d do, King had kept the explosives, the gun, and the cell phone Malling had with him. Those three things were sitting on the hood of the Hummer.
Cady wasn’t exactly thrilled by the proximity of the gym bag, but King assured her that if someone as stupid as Jason Malling could haul it around without blowing himself up, she’d be fine until McKie retrieved it.
What she wasn’t as fine with was McKie retrieving Kevin’s flash drive. She’d been holding onto it, carrying it with her, a talisman she’d kept close for almost a decade.
Giving it up was not as simple as putting it into the government agent’s hand. In fact, she wasn’t sure King wasn’t going to have to pry it out of her cold dead one first.
He seemed to sense her tension as he joined her because he leaned close, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“So ask,” she said, irritated by the gesture that seemed so patronizing, even more irritated because she knew he knew that would be her reaction, and was using it to distract her.
“What’s with the hair?”
“My hair?” She reached up a hand, checked that it was still there. “What about it?”
“It’s just all over the place. Like it doesn’t know where to go.”
“This style critique coming from a man with a big bald spot?”
He gingerly tested his stitches. “Give me a month, boo. You won’t know it was ever there.”
“While we’re critiquing, what’s the ‘boo’ crap? Are you trying to scare me?”
He laughed, kissed the top of her head again. “You like cupcake or princess or pumpkin better? I can’t be calling you chère all the time.”
She huffed. “I don’t see why not.”
By then, McKie was rolling into the driveway toward them. He stopped several yards away, shut down his car’s engine, opened the door, and got out.
He shrugged out of the overcoat he’d been wearing, tossed it into the front seat, then shrugged out of his suit coat, too, and did the same.
By the time he got to where they were standing, he’d loosened his exquisite silk tie and the top button of his pristine white dress shirt.
At Cady’s side, King chuckled. “You look like a man ready to relax, boo.”
McKie held up both wrists. “All that’s left is the cuffs. If this information you’ve promised pans out? I’ll roll ’em up right here.”
“Get ready to strip to your skivvies then.” King reached behind him, handed over the gun, then the phone, then the gym bag. “This is going to blow you away. Literally, if you’re not careful.”
Fitz gave King a look, then checked the ammo and safety on the first and tucked it into his waistband. He slipped the phone into his pocket after a quick scroll through the contact list that had him both nodding and shaking his head.
The bag came next. He dropped to his haunches, scuffing his fancy shoes in the dirt, and opened it, sorting through the components inside that when assembled and ignited would leave a hole in place of half the Kowalski farm.
“The boy meant business,” McKie said, zipping the bag and punctuating his words with a long low whistle as he stood. “But I’m not stripping. Not yet.”
King turned to Cady. Fitz followed suit and did the same. Both men waited patiently, expectantly, and her hand began to sweat. She reached for some way to deflect the inevitable.
