by Erik Carter
He hurled it across the room.
The weighted end impaled the wall, fissures in the drywall. The handle quivered.
He left the bedroom, and as he walked past Odom’s body, he held up the suppressor.
Thanks for the tip, he thought as he shoved it in his back pocket and left.
Screams. Lots of screams.
And panicked people funneling around Jake from both sides, going for the exit.
Old Reno tavern was as divey of a dive bar as Jake had ever seen. Flickering neon beer signs lit the gloom, which smelled like cigarette smoke and perspiration and desperation.
The patrons flooded around him in a panic he’d created when he walked in and fired a round into the floor. Even the bartender, who seemed the type who would unflinchingly poke a deadbeat’s eyeballs out, had run away.
The only person who remained stationary was the man sitting at the bar, staring at Jake with wide eyes, a beer bottle in front of him. Shaking. A fat, redheaded slob with tattoos.
McBride.
As the last of the bar’s patrons pushed past Jake, he approached McBride.
The man’s curly red hair poked out the bottom of a beanie, from which a drop of sweat rolled out, over his forehead, down his round nose. His hand was six inches from the beer bottle. Tattoos on his knuckles. Shaking.
“Oh, shit … Oh, shit…”
Jake could just hear a faint melody. Sad music. A doleful Bill Withers song. He didn’t need any extra sadness. He considered putting a round through the jukebox, then also considered how hillbilly that would look. Shootin’ the jukebox. He let it be.
A revolver stuck out of the back of McBride’s jeans, right by his exposed, sweaty ass crack. Jake grabbed the gun. A Smith & Wesson. He tossed it over the bar.
The notebook was already turned to the correct note when Jake pulled it from his back pocket. He slapped it on the bar in a puddle of water and booze.
The list. Cobb’s and Odom’s names crossed off.
Cobb
Gamble
Hodges
Knox
McBride
Odom
Glover
Burton
Jake tapped his finger next to McBride.
McBride shook harder. “Come on, Pete. Please. I was just doing what Burton wanted. You know that, right? He’s the big cheese. All us guys gotta do what he says.”
Jake raised the Glock. The weapon was now several inches longer with the addition of the suppressor, which he pressed into McBride’s forehead. He felt the other man shake through the gun’s handle.
He looked McBride in the eye.
Then he squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Glover hated the look and feel of Burton’s beach house.
It was so jagged and uncomfortable. Everything was lines and planes and flat surfaces and glass and metal. Sure wasn’t cozy.
Yet Burton loved the place, took great pride in it, as though it was an extension of his success. And, of course, it was. No one else outside the immediate Farone family could afford a place like this.
Glover leaned against the smooth marble countertop in the kitchen, a phone receiver to his ear. The house felt even more uncomfortable than usual because no lights were turned on. There was only the moonlight coming in through the copious glass, reflecting off the waves and sand beyond. Just past the kitchen, in the living room, Burton stretched out on a vast, angular sofa, tumbler of scotch in hand, staring out to the beach. His stillness was disconcerting.
When they’d arrived a few minutes earlier, they discovered that there’d been a break-in. They immediately cleared every room, switching on lights as they went. Afterward, Burton had him turn all the lights back off.
Burton was like that—when he got pensive, he liked darkness. Glover supposed that jived with the cold nature of his home.
For several minutes they’d sat together in the long, uber-chic sofas in the living room, in the darkness, looking out into the waves. When the phone rang, Burton had waved Glover away to answer it.
Glover hung up, rushed into the living room. Burton didn’t turn away from the waves.
“Someone blasted Odom in his apartment,” Glover said. “And McBride at Old Reno.”
“Someone?” Burton scoffed. “It’s Hudson. And he came here looking for me.” Burton pointed to the floor, indicating the break-in on the lower level. He took a sip. “What about Cobb?”
“Never reported back,” Glover said.
Burton thought for a moment.
Glover waited. It was best to remain quiet when Burton got like this. And Glover had never seen him this bad.
Finally Burton said, “Bring everyone in.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tanner popped three chewable antacid tablets into his mouth.
Tropical fruit.
None of the three were the same color, and supposedly each had a different flavor, but he chewed them all together into a disregarded mush. It all tasted like chemical shit anyway.
Tanner’s stress level had steadily climbed all night, which meant that so, too, had his stomach acid.
Why were things always so much worse when there was a personal element?
And why, when there was a personal element, would your brain not give you a damn break?
Tanner’s brain kept reminding him of that thirty-second moment, in the break room, three months after Jake had joined the force.
A half-minute slice of life.
Jake had told him that his father had never been a bad man but had never been a great man either. That when Jake’s mother had died, his father crumbled, turned to the bottle. That Jake had been emotionally on his own since he was nine years old. That his father’s half-absence and eventual death left him searching for strong men from whom to model his own development.
That Tanner was one of those male role models.
Tanner sighed. He took another sip of stale coffee, sloshed it around his mouth to clean the chemical pineapple taste from his teeth.
Jake, goddamn you. What the hell are you up to?
Tanner put the coffee mug on the scratched laminate of his desk and leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head.
His office was a gray box with a single window. The desk filled most of the floorspace. Frames covered the side walls—certificates, his college diploma, training class photos, ceremonial photos.
The corkboard on the rear wall had, for months, been plastered with photos and notes about the Farone investigation. Increasingly, in the last two months especially, the right-hand side of the board became dedicated to Burton’s schism within the Farones.
Which now constituted the entire gang, it would seem, after the massacre in the alley.
There was a sucking sound.
A damn annoying sucking sound.
Pace.
Sucking air between his two glossy, blazingly white front teeth.
He sat on the corner of Tanner’s desk, and he was using Tanner’s phone. Argh! Tanner didn’t appreciate having this fed’s face pressed up against the phone he used every day, and he sure as hell didn’t want his fed ass smashed against his desktop.
This close, Tanner could smell the guy’s cologne. It was as clean and shiny as his teeth.
Cocky son of a bitch.
Pace hung up. “Odom’s lady friend found him dead in his apartment, broken neck. Cobb, McBride, and now Odom. That’s three of Burton’s men confirmed murdered.”
Tanner sat forward, removed his hands from the back of his head. The old office chair squealed as it straightened, and it squealed a second time as he pivoted the chair to look at the photos on the Burton half of the corkboard behind him.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“It’s because of the Farone girl,” Pace said through that smartass grin of his.
Tanner narrowed his eyes. “How do you mean?”
“Rowe was in love with her, and everyone in the Farone organization knew it. Someon
e anonymously calls us, tells us that Rowe was the one who beat her to a pulp tonight, and yet the members of Burton’s gang start showing up dead, on the same night, murdered one by one. Rowe didn’t kill Cecilia Farone. It was—”
Tanner stuck up a hand, looked away from him. “It was the Burton contingent, and now our man is out getting his revenge. Thank you for the wonderful insight, Mr. Federal Agent. How did I ever get by without you?”
Paced chuckled, unfazed. “Then tell me this: why didn’t Rowe go for Burton first?”
Tanner pointed to the photos behind them. “Because they had a rivalry. That’s why Burton killed his lady.” Tanner ran a hand along his mustache. “He’s saving Burton for last.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
It had been a fifteen-minute drive from Pensacola to Pensacola Beach. In theory, there had been plenty of time for Jake to cool off.
But he hadn’t.
The same rage roiled in his gut, the same clouded vision that he both perceived and didn’t perceive.
And by the time he took the curve around the road to reveal Burton’s ultramodern beach house, he still felt venom pulsing through him.
Several cars lined the horseshoe driveway. He recognized all of them. Burton had called in the forces. In the middle of the night. Word must’ve gotten out about Jake’s killing spree. Just as Jake had predicted. That’s why he’d come here.
To get them all in one fell swoop.
Jake stopped two houses up, parked on the side of the road, edging the wheels into the packed sand of Burton’s neighbor’s lot.
He stepped out of the Grand Prix. Onto the road. And started toward Burton’s house.
As he took out the Glock, he made a quick mental calculation—an assumption that Burton would have a man waiting for him.
The assumption was immediately validated.
There was a figure at the side of the house, a dark outline at the peak of the beach’s embankment. The man stood by the concrete stilts, holding what looked like a shotgun.
Jake crossed the road, approached the house from the opposite side.
As he came around the corner, where the embankment met the flat bottom of the primary floor, he peeked beneath and saw the other man.
It was Knox—twenty-something, black, mocha skin tone, square jaw with the strong, scrubbed-clean features of a would-be Hollywood actor. He held a pump-action, much like the Mossberg Jake had faced back at the Farone mansion.
Jake went farther down the embankment, soft white sand silencing his footsteps, and he eased onto the concrete patio area, which held a propane grill and an upscale set of lawn furniture.
Knox’s back was turned to him, still facing the road. If Jake could stay quiet enough, this would be a clean kill.
Too late.
Something caught Knox’s attention.
Knox spun around, the shotgun swinging with him, aimed in Jake’s direction.
Jake lunged forward, his left boot slipping on the sand-covered concrete. Knox’s finger tensed on the trigger, but Jake’s shoulder collided with his ribs before he could squeeze. Knox buckled.
The Glock struck the shotgun’s barrel with a metallic clank. Both weapons dislodged. The men’s arms tangled as momentum carried them forward, off the concrete, away from the house.
Jake landed on Knox as they thudded in the sand. He reached for Knox’s neck, missed. Knox swiped Jake’s arm, pulled at his hair. Fire from his scalp. His face snapped back.
A fist connected with Jake’s side. The pain registered muffled and distant. Unimportant. He immediately threw a punch of his own, cracking his fist across Knox’s jaw, throwing the man’s head to the side.
The grip on Jake’s hair released, but Knox took the blow well, his face snapping right back around. His big, dark eyes locked on Jake. A line of blood trickled from his upper lip.
The shotgun was a few feet away, half-buried in the sand. Jake reached. His fingertips grazed the stock. The gun shifted.
He threw another punch at Knox, missing the face, hitting the shoulder on the follow-through. He pulled their combined weight through the sand toward the shotgun. Reached again. Grabbed it.
And smashed the stock across Knox’s head.
A sickening, wet thwack. Knox’s jaw had broken. The lower half of his handsome face was rearranged. He looked like he’d crawled out of a cubist painting. A horrible moan. Hands to his cheeks, patting at himself dumbly, weakly.
Dazed. Little strength left.
That would make this easier.
Jake wrapped his hands around Knox’s neck, and Knox slapped back with his remaining energy. All ten of Jake’s fingers squeezed tight, thumbs digging into the esophagus.
Sputtering noises escaped Knox’s lopsided mouth, from somewhere deep inside him. Spittle gurgled from his lips.
The sounds faded. His arms padded Jake weakly.
And he was still.
Jake leaned back, his hands remaining on Knox’s neck—no longer squeezing, but resting.
His chest heaved.
As it had been with the other kills, Jake hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. Adrenaline and rage had fueled him.
He needed to keep moving, to get into the house and continue his mission. But he’d give himself a moment, just a few seconds, to catch his breath.
Which was a mistake.
A metallic click from behind. An unmistakable, telltale noise. He didn’t turn around.
A jolt of pain as the barrel of the gun jammed into the back of his neck.
Then a sharper pain to his head that made his eyes shut and his body drop back to the sand.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Pressure on Jake’s upper arms. And his wrists. His thighs. His ankles.
There was a sharp snapping noise. Irritating. Almost painful.
He opened his eyes.
A pair of fingers snapped an inch from his face. Each snap brought another pulse of pain to his throbbing head.
It was Burton. Smiling.
And in a flash, Jake took in the entire situation.
He was tied to a small wooden chair in the center of Burton’s living room, on the dark gray area rug, next to the square, concrete coffee table, all of it encircled by the long planes of Burton’s stylish sectional sofas.
At the far wall, a few feet in front of him, Burton’s home theater projector screen had been extended. It was aglow with the bright blue standby screen. Otherwise, there were no lights on in the room, just moonlight coming in through walls of glass.
There were four other men in the room, all standing: Burton, Glover, Gamble, and Hodges, the remaining members of Burton’s contingent, the ones Jake hadn’t killed yet.
With the theater screen in front of him, Jake’s overactive brain flashed on a strange, out-of-place notion: that this scenario—tied to a chair, surrounded by adversaries—was one that a big-screen hero in a typical action movie would face with steely, unflinching resolve.
But here in the real world, Jake felt fear, deep down inside. Dread. Lots of it.
Burton leaned over, getting closer to his face, smiled. “Hello.”
Jake couldn’t speak, but he wouldn’t have replied even if he could.
“Earlier I told you I’d take my time,” Burton said, “that I’d involve all of my troops. I want you to know that I kept my word. I mean, you saw the condition of poor Cecilia’s face. Or, what remained of it, I should say.”
Snickers from the other men.
Burton put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “What do you have to say to that?”
Jake lunged at him, the ropes tugging all over his body. The chair legs pulled at the thick rug’s thick pile. He tried to scream. His lips moved rapidly, but only popping sounds came out.
Burton cocked his head.
“Wait a minute … you actually can’t talk, can you, Pete?” He chuckled, glanced at his men, then back to Jake. “You can’t talk because you saw Cecilia. I know what this is. It’s called selective mutis
m. Usually happens with children. Happened to a little cousin of mine, couldn’t speak for two years after she saw her daddy get squashed by a city bus.” He looked at the others. “We scared him speechless, boys!”
Laughter.
Jake had never heard of selective mutism, but from the way Burton described it, he knew this was exactly what was afflicting him.
Burton paced in front of him. “Now, you’re probably thinking we’re gonna kill you. And you’re correct. But first … gee, how do I put this?” He drummed his fingers on his chin, looked toward the ceiling in mock concentration. “First, we’re going to torture you.”
That same fear rushed over Jake, that same non-action-movie-hero dread, a stronger wave of it, this one with a powerful undertow.
Burton’s eyes widened with faux concern.
“Why, you look frightened, Pete! Don’t worry. I’m not gonna poke things in your eyes. I’m not gonna cut you or burn you.” He gave a smile. “I’m just gonna make you watch a little movie.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Burton was going to enjoy this.
Oh, was he ever going to enjoy this.
He stepped away from Hudson, looked at Gamble. “Get the tape ready.”
Gamble went to the projector at the other end of the living room.
Burton faced Hudson, tied to a folding chair, trying his damndest to look tough, but with palpable, wonderful fear showing on his lips and in his eyes.
Burton’s hands went behind his back. He gave Hudson a warm smile.
“You see, Pete, I took a precaution. I saw the urgent conversation you and Cecilia had before the Roja hit tonight. I figured it could very well be that she was looking out for you, telling you not to go to the hit. One of her premonitions or something. She always was a sweet little hippie to you, wasn’t she?
“So I thought, you know what, I’ll record it—if he doesn’t go to the hit, then I’ll have a videotape to show him.”
