Puppetmaster (Coastal Fury Book 8)

by Matt Lincoln

  We were the most exposed going up the far end of the jetty, but when we reached the end, Header nudged me and pointed off to the far edge of the beach. Directly in front of us was a mangled mess of overgrown grass and shrubbery, but a little further down, a boardwalk had been built. The houses stretched the length of the beach, but they sat up above sea level. The boardwalk met the road above and created access points to walk down to the beach. Below the boardwalk, the shadows promised to hide our approach.

  “How far out is the house?” I whispered. He shrugged and pulled out the GPS that Warner had given us.

  “Three thousand yards that way,” he murmured, pointing down the length of the boardwalk. I looked back at Paul and Jay, and they both offered curt nods that confirmed that they would follow us.

  We quickly snuck under the wooden slats that hovered over the beach. The sand stretched across the underside of the boardwalk, spilling out onto the blacktop on the other side at each intersection, and running up into the grass that met the backs of the houses in between. Theoretically, anyone that lived here could cut under the boardwalk to the beach at any moment, so the four of us kept our heads on a swivel. The extra shadows kept us well-hidden. If anyone came out and began making their way beneath the boardwalk, we would see them long before they noticed us.

  Three thousand yards wasn’t a long walk, and we quickly reached our destination. We slowed behind a patch of long grass and looked up at the building. Like the other houses, this one was large, towering over the beach. The oversized windows stretched along the backside of the house, giving the residents what must have been one hell of a beachfront view. Unlike the other homes, though, this one had every single light on. The other places we’d passed had one or two illuminated rooms, and we could see into each room, but this one kept every blind drawn. The only thing that indicated the number of people inside was the collection of shadows that moved behind the curtains.

  “We’re going in blind,” I muttered.

  Header turned to me with a mischievous grin. “You’re looking at this all wrong, Marston.”

  “I am?” I shot Header a sharp look. I knew he liked to fly by the seat of his pants, but this hardly seemed the time for a lackadaisical approach.

  “You are,” he nodded confidently. “We were worried that since Warner had overheard the plan, they may have rescheduled their meeting. Based on the drawn curtains and the alarmingly high electric bill they’re about to have, I don’t think they rescheduled. This is it. We were worried they wouldn’t be here, but Marston… They’re here. We’re here. This is it.”

  Realization dawned on me as I processed what Header had said. He was right. This could have been a fruitless trip, but by the looks of things, we were exactly where we needed to be. I swallowed hard and nodded, adjusting my grip on my rifle.

  “I was looking at this all wrong,” I admitted, smirking back at my partner. Header beamed at me and then looked over at Jay and Paul, who were close behind us.

  “You ready, boys?” he whisper-shouted.

  “Ready,” Paul said with genuine enthusiasm.

  Beside him, Jay flashed us a wicked grin. “Let’s get these bastards.”

  We quickly climbed the slope up to the building. The drawn blinds ensured that no one was peering out the windows, but we couldn’t be too careful. I was positive that they would have some security set up outside, so we all stayed low and in the shadows.

  When we got closer, we gathered at the corner of the house, away from the windows. We dropped to the ground and began crawling beneath the windowsills to avoid notice. I almost crawled right into the heel of Header’s boot when he stopped suddenly in front of me. He glanced back at me with a pointed look, and I allowed my heightened awareness to kick in as I tried to read his mind. There was no movement around us and nothing of note in the distance. The only sounds were that of the ocean crashing onto the beach, and the chatter of what sounded like a lively get-together on the other side of the window.

  I immediately figured out what he was thinking. If there were this many people in the room, we could take care of everyone at once. Header popped up onto his feet, staying in a low crouch. I took another moment to listen and then slapped the back of my hand against his shin to keep him from moving.

  “What?” he mouthed, not making a sound.

  “Women,” I whispered. “All the voices are women.”

  Header froze for a moment before responding. “If all the women are here…”

  “All the men are gathered somewhere else,” I finished. The men had to be mid-meeting, which was perfect. If we could find them before the woman caught on, this would be a straightforward mission.

  That was a tall order considering nothing else about this case had been quite that simple.

  Header dropped back down, army-crawling toward the front of the house. When we reached the front room, that’s when we heard the deeper voices. They weren’t as boisterous. Whatever they were discussing, it was serious.

  The windows to this room were nowhere near as big as the ones at the back of the house which made sense since the view wasn’t as spectacular. They were, however, frameless, which worked to our advantage. After we all ensured that we were on the same page, Header reached down, grabbed a paving stone, took a couple of steps back, and hurled it toward the window. The glass rained down in shards as we all ducked and dove through the window, rifles raised. We spread ourselves around the room quickly, while the suited men recovered from the shock of our nasty and sudden interruption.

  It only took a couple of seconds for their pistols to come out.

  While we were all well-armed and well-protected, we were also seriously outnumbered. Although we hadn’t heard too many voices from our perch outside, it became immediately apparent that we had miscalculated. The room fell into total silence as we faced each other down, no one willing to take the first shot. The benefit of that was that I could really take in my surroundings.

  The room was a well-appointed study. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were built into the walls between the windows, and an oversized mahogany desk sat in the corner. Behind the desk, a sizable man with slicked-back inky hair sat with a forgotten cigar between the fingers of one hand. He was the only one not wielding a pistol. In front of the desk, at least three men had closed in, ready to protect him if needed. It was obvious that he was the head of the snake, but reaching him would be a challenge. I was up for it, though.

  When I aimed my rifle at him, the shots began firing at me before I could let one of my own go. I braced for impact as I pressed the trigger, but two of the men in front of the desk got in the way. The bullet ripped through the first man’s chest, and he collapsed into a heap on the floor. Undeterred, I fired again, with similar results. Pain seared through my ribs as a shot hit my vest, sending me down to my knees. Holm’s face flashed across my mind, and I fought through the pain, shooting any suits I could see.

  Around me, Paul, Jay, and Header were also picking their way through the group, though the overweight man still remained unscathed. He dropped behind the desk for cover. My blood boiled with each missed shot, and I had to fight through increasing pain as I was hit repeatedly. Something seared into my arm, and I screamed out in pain as I turned and fired in that direction. From behind me, something burned through my calf. I flipped over and fired at the man responsible for that shot.

  I was grateful for the protective gear. So far, I was alive, and a lot of the suits weren’t. I knew, though, that I would not make it much longer. I was down on the ground now, struggling to keep my rifle steady as I picked off the rest of the men. The returning fire slowed as we made our way through the crowd until there were only three men left standing. They were the last barrier between the man behind the desk and us.

  I flipped myself over to sit upright on the ground. I didn’t dare try to stand, not with the wound in my calf. The men before me were also injured, and although they looked determined to fulfill their duties to protect their boss, they were n
o longer shooting at us. We were at a standstill again, each waiting for the other side to make the first move.

  “Who are you?” I gasped, fighting through the pain in my chest. It was guaranteed at this point that I had a couple of broken ribs.

  “None of your business,” the center guy spat. From my left side, Header chuckled humorlessly.

  “It is kind of our business,” Header pointed out. “We want the man behind the desk. We are not interested in you.”

  “However,” Paul added, “If you remain in our way, you’ll just have to join your friends.” He gestured wildly at the scattered bodies on the ground.

  “We’re running out of time,” I announced to no one in particular. “I know the women heard the shots. They may have called the police. If they didn’t, the neighbors sure did. I advise you to speak up because we have no intention of being here when the cops show up.”

  “In other words,” Jay clarified, “if you take too long to answer, we won’t hesitate to shoot you dead.”

  While Header and I were trying to give these men any reason to get out of our way, Paul and Jay seemed more than happy to do the dirty work. It made me wonder how in the hell Header knew these guys. Header was a lot of things, but he wasn’t quite this ruthless.

  I let Holm’s face float to the forefront of my mind to push me through the pain as I trained the barrel of my rifle at the man in the middle. He was lanky, but his face was young, unlined, and stress-free. He was new to this and might not have gotten as involved with the mob’s activities as some of the rest of them. Then again, he could be the worst of them all. There was no way to tell, and time was not on our side.

  “Time’s up!” Paul announced as he pulled the trigger. The man on the right dropped to the ground, and the other two men’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Wait!” I sputtered uselessly.

  “Anyone want to speak up now?” Jay added. I exchanged a look with Header, who looked to be in almost as much pain as I was in. He didn’t seem like he approved of Paul’s itchy trigger finger, but he said nothing.

  The other two men exchanged a nervous glance, and one of them looked down at their boss. I couldn’t see his face from my position on the floor, but I wondered how he was feeling. I didn’t care either way, but it had to be a weird feeling, knowing that the only two men left protecting you were about to drop, leaving him exposed and unarmed.

  “I understand why you don’t want to talk.” I opted for a softer voice to put them at ease. “You are working for a dangerous organization, and no one likes a rat. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that if you move out of the way and we kill the man behind you, there will be no one left to call you a rat.”

  The consideration in the lanky kid’s face was all I needed to see to confirm my suspicions.

  “It’s true,” Header continued, apparently noticing the same thing I had. “Your boss is behind that table. If we kill him, the entire organization crumbles.”

  “I have successors ready to fill my shoes,” a gravelly wheezy voice said from behind the table.

  “Are they ready to do it today?” Paul spat.

  “I don’t believe you,” Jay added. “I believe you had successors until we killed almost everyone in this room. Tell me, big guy, which one of these bodies was supposed to be your successor?”

  “You killed my son,” the boss muttered.

  “You killed other people’s children, boss,” Header pointed out. “You killed a lot of people. You’re slated to kill even more if you keep going. We can’t have that.”

  “What’s it going to be, kids?” Paul queried, training his rifle on the two men before us.

  “I swore to protect them to my death,” the lanky kid muttered.

  “That’s kind of useless,” Jay pointed out. “We can take it from here.”

  The kid suddenly aimed his pistol at Jay and pulled the trigger. Jay grunted as the rest of us fired rounds into the guy’s chest. He collapsed into a pile on the floor, and the last guy dropped his pistol on the floor. Jay fired a delayed shot, hitting the man square in the chest.

  “What the hell?” I gasped.

  “He had to go,” Jay insisted. Fury raged through me at my supposed teammate shooting an unarmed man, but I forced it back. This was the moment I’d been hoping for, and it was finally here. I wasn’t about to miss my shot.

  “Come on out, big guy,” Header teased. “You have nowhere to run.”

  Header was right, but the man didn’t move. I slowly pushed myself up to my feet and hobbled my way forward until I could see the top of the man’s head. He was large enough that he couldn’t hide too well, so it was an easy shot from this angle. He met my eyes as I raised my rifle and then closed them in anticipation of the shot. I took aim, steadied my breath, and pressed the trigger.

  The bullet ripped through his forehead, jerking his head back sharply before he slumped back and slid down to the floor. I waited for a sense of victory to wash over me, but it didn’t. I was met with complete silence as the last body slumped dead onto the slick red floor.

  “You did it,” Header groaned. I looked over at all three men, and they were all curled up, finally admitting that they were injured.

  “No, I didn’t,” I replied calmly. “We’re not done until we are safely out of here.”

  Red and blue lights pierced through the front windows, and I looked over at Paul and Jay. They forced themselves upright and headed out the broken window that had been our entrance. Header and I followed close behind, and together, we hobbled our way back down beneath the boardwalk. We moved as fast as we could in the dark, and I remembered my earpiece after I’d tripped and had to struggle to push myself up to standing again.

  “Warner?” I groaned. “Are you still there?”

  “We’re still here,” he replied quickly. “What do you need?”

  I groaned through the searing pain. “We are heading back to the jetty. We need a lift.”

  “No problem,” he assured us. “Ben is standing by. Hold on a second.”

  We continued to inch forward in the direction of the jetty as I waited for Warner to get back. When he did, I breathed a shaky sigh of relief.

  “Ben will be there in a minute,” Warner confirmed. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed as I struggled forward. “I need you to call Ronnie.”

  “Holm’s sister?” Warner asked, sounding puzzled.

  “Yes, her,” I clarified. “Don’t tell her who you are. Send her the address and tell her she needs to look into it immediately.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, sounding uncertain.

  As we came around the last curve, I saw the familiar curves of Ben’s mini yacht as it approached the jetty. We moved as quickly as we could, and once we were all on board, I collapsed with a loud groan onto the main deck.

  “You are all in rough shape,” he confessed.

  “Yeah, we are,” I agreed. Ben pulled his phone out of his pocket and punched in a phone number.

  “I was told to call Donny once you all climbed on board,” he informed us. The ringing echoed through the cabin as he put the phone on speaker. I sat up so I could fill Farr in on the details of the mission tonight, but before I could get a word in, he dropped a brand-new bombshell on us.

  “Hey, guys,” Farr began. “There’s something you need to know about Robbie Holm.”

  Chapter 29: Ethan

  Most of our trip back to Brooklyn consisted of each of us getting patched up by a couple of guys I’d never seen before. Apparently, Farr had them on standby for the aftermath, and once again, I was impressed by his planning abilities. Of all of us, Jay seemed to be in the worst shape, so I counted my lucky stars that everything turned out the way it did. We were all alive somehow, and I had all of my limbs mostly intact.

  When they were done patching me up, I pulled out my phone and dialed one of the few numbers I knew by heart. Farr had given me the details about Holm’s car accident, including his suspicions that it hadn’t been
a true accident at all. I needed to hear the story straight from Holm, though.

  The phone seemed to ring forever as I tried desperately to reach him. I hoped beyond hope that he would answer, eventually. The sound of his voice would assure me that he would be alright.

  We were already closing in on the docks in Brooklyn when he finally picked up.

  “Marston, you’re relentless.”

  I sank back against the rearranged seat cushions and breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes. Yeah, Holm, I am.”

  “I didn’t realize that I needed to end up in a hospital in order to hear from you.” Holm did not sound friendly. If anything, I sensed anger. “What the hell is going on?”

  “There’s a lot to explain,” I admitted. “I needed to keep you away from it to keep you safe.”

  “Safe?” he barked. “You really have no idea what I’ve dealt with since you’ve been gone, do you?”

  “I don’t,” I admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “Farr didn’t tell you?” he asked, his voice softening slightly.

  “Farr knew?” The idea that the man was keeping something this important from me sent another wave of anger through me.

  “Yeah, Farr knew,” he confirmed. “You’d have known too if you bothered to communicate in any way at all.”

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. “I needed to protect our movements and our mission. I didn’t think… Damn, Holm, I am so sorry.”

  “Is the secret squirrel crap over now?” Holm asked pointedly. “Are you coming home? Is it done?”

  “It’s done,” I admitted. “We’ll be heading back home in a couple of days.”

  “What a relief,” he sighed. “We can compare notes over a few beers.”

  I grinned widely at that. “I’d love nothing more.”

  When I walked off the yacht, I saw both Farr and Tessa waiting for us. Tessa ran over to me when she saw me struggling to walk, and she eased me over to the SUV before helping me into the back seat. She helped me get strapped in while Header, Paul, and Jay all piled in as well, spilling into the third row. When we were all situated, Tessa hopped up front to wait for her uncle. Farr held a brief conversation with Ben and the two EMTs, and then he shook their hands and headed over to us. As he slid into the driver’s seat, he turned back to us.