‘I normally take a walk around the farm first thing in the morning,’ Forrest said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Clears the cobwebs away; gets my mind ready for the day.’
Jesse was more than happy to tag along. He wanted Forrest with as clear a mind as possible when he put his proposal to him. He’d done a few quick calculations and he wanted to ensure Forrest fully understood the benefits for both of them if Jesse went solo and took Forrest’s business with him.
They crossed the courtyard and skirted round an old barn. At the back of it there was a chopping block made from an old tree stump with an axe buried in it. There was a neat pile of chopped logs against the side of the barn. Forrest took hold of the handle and worked the axe free. Jesse watched him as he hefted it in his hands.
‘I thought you had staff to do that sort of thing,’ Jesse said.
‘An hour spent chopping logs beats going to the gym any day.’
Jesse nodded his agreement, although he doubted it. For one, there wasn’t a TV screen to watch. Worse still, no lithe young women in tight leotards to make sure your whole body did a bit of stretching. But he wasn’t here today to disagree with Forrest.
Forrest flipped the axe in his hands and offered the handle to Jesse. ‘You want to have a go?’
Jesse shook his head. ‘Bad back,’ he said.
Forrest nodded sympathetically and drove the handle deep into Jesse’s gut. All the air left Jesse’s body like it was never coming back. He dropped to his knees and opened his mouth but his throat had closed up at the same time his lungs imploded. He looked at Forrest with his face turning blue, unable to get a breath in or out. Forrest just looked at him, his mouth twisted in contempt. When his breath came, it hurt like hell, going down his windpipe like a great lump of broken glass. His first breath came out sounding like it was whistling straight out of a hole in his chest. Forrest lifted his foot and pushed him backwards onto his butt.
Chapter 67
ANGEL WAS JERKED OUT of a light sleep by the sound of his phone ringing. He was slumped in an uncomfortable armchair in the corner of Destiny’s hotel room. In the bed, Destiny stirred at the impatient noise going off in Angel’s jacket pocket.
She hadn’t wanted to go home the night before. She’d been scared and upset. She didn’t want to be left alone. It was understandable. Angel knew that if he’d pushed his luck last night—and not very hard either—he’d be in the bed with her now. But he hadn’t and it was probably for the best. Evan had jumped straight into bed with Gina and look where that had got her. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Evan’s fault.
Angel took the phone out of his pocket and peered at the screen. ‘Ha,’ he cried, ‘it’s the asshole himself.’ Destiny sat up and pulled the covers around her. Angel stood up and stretched his back out as he answered the call.
‘Where the hell are you?’ he said, not bothering to hide his irritation.
There was no reply. He looked at the screen. The call was still connected.
‘Hello? Anybody there?’
Still no reply. He looked at the screen again and shrugged at her.
‘Maybe he butt-dialed you,’ Destiny said.
He nodded, a smile on his lips. ‘That’s good. The asshole butt-dialed me. You should be on the stage.’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘I am, or did you forget?’
They both chuckled at that. Angel went to end the call.
‘Wait,’ Destiny said, stretching a hand towards him. ‘Be quiet.’ She cocked her head. ‘I can hear somebody talking.’
‘You’ve got good hearing—’
‘Shush!’
Angel shushed and sat down on the bed next to her, holding the phone between them so they could both hear.
‘Turn the volume up,’ she whispered.
‘I didn’t know you could do that,’ he whispered back.
‘Idiot.’
She took the phone out of his hand, cranked the volume up all the way and they both listened as a voice gradually got louder. He took the phone back from her.
‘I recognize the voice,’ he said, ‘but it’s not the asshole. I’d recognize his whiny voice anywhere.’ He was quiet for a couple of seconds, and then snorted in disgust. ‘I can hear somebody whimpering in the background. That’s the asshole.’
‘Shush!’ she said again, louder this time, and bent her head in closer to listen. The bedclothes dropped to her waist. She left them where they were as she concentrated on the voice coming out of the tiny speaker. Her breast brushed against Angel’s arm and he was reconsidering the wisdom of his gallant decision the previous night when she said:
‘It’s Forrest.’
Chapter 68
‘YOU COULDN’T KEEP YOUR nose out of it, could you?’ Forrest said, standing over Jesse. The axe was the right way around in his hands now. Jesse couldn’t take his eyes off it. It wasn’t an axe either; it was a splitting maul. Like a sledgehammer, but with a blade on one side. Eight pounds of drop forged alloy steel that laughed in the face of the toughest logs, let alone something as soft as a man’s head. Jesse’s head was plenty soft, although mainly on the inside.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Jesse said, a pathetic whine in his voice.
‘You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?’ Forrest swung a kick and caught him on the arm. ‘Now look at the shitstorm you’ve kicked up. You’ve ruined everything.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jesse said again and shuffled backwards on his ass.
Forrest’s eyes narrowed, his jaw moving tightly. ‘What do you mean: What am I talking about? Are you stupider than you look?’
A thought suddenly took hold in Jesse’s mind. An awful thought. A thought that turned his bowels to water. A thought that told him he’d come running to the very last man on the planet that he could trust.
‘It was you all along, wasn’t it,’ Jesse said. ‘You set me up.’
Forrest slid his right hand up the handle of the maul and back down again, like you do when you’re preparing to take a swing with an axe or a sledgehammer, getting it properly balanced in your hands.
There was a wetness coming from the seat of Jesse’s pants. He didn’t know whether it was the morning dew or he’d soiled himself. ‘You’re working for that fat greaseball, D’Amato.’
Forrest surprised him. He threw back his head and howled with laughter.
‘What? What’s so funny?’
‘You are so, so stupid.’ Forrest flipped the axe in his hands and jabbed Jesse with the handle. ‘D’Amato works for me.’
‘But I thought—’
‘What? What did you think, Jesse?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked all around him, at the rolling countryside that went on forever, thought about the big house and all the rest of it. ‘It’s not like you need the money.’
Forrest shook his head sadly. ‘If only you knew.’ He sat on the chopping block and rested the axe across his knees.
Jesse relaxed slightly. ‘This place must be worth millions,’ he said.
‘It is,’ Forrest agreed. ‘Millions and millions. Too many to count.’
‘So why—’
‘Because I don’t own it, stupid.’ He leaned forward, pushing his face into Jesse’s. ‘The corporation owns it. And my father owns the corporation. Or at least he did.’
‘So now it’s coming to you.’
Forrest looked at him wearily; like somebody had asked him to explain the workings of the internal combustion engine to a field mouse and he didn’t know where to begin.
‘How does your father feel about you?’ Forrest said.
Jesse frowned and although he knew the look on his face made him look like a retard, he couldn’t help it. He had that sort of face.
‘Because mine hates my guts,’ Forrest said, without giving Jesse a chance to think of an answer. ‘Or at least, he did. Thought I was a total waste of space as well. You know that phrase about your mother’s leg?’
Jesse nodded a
lthough he didn’t have the first idea what he was talking about.
‘He blamed me for all the trouble he got into with D’Amato. The first time I went to D’Amato’s club was when he took me with him one time. Like a rite of passage. Trouble was, it was him who got caught with his pants down—literally.’
‘So D’Amato was blackmailing him?’
Forrest nodded. ‘He blamed me. Like it was my fault. He used to make me take D’Amato’s money to him as a punishment.’ He smiled at the memory and ran his hand up and down the axe handle. ‘You know D’Amato’s not such a bad guy for a fat, blackmailing greaseball.’
Jesse’s eyes as good as bulged in their sockets at Forrest’s assessment of the man who’d had him tied naked to a chair and threatened to bat his balls into the next county. ‘Really?’ he said, not able to hide the astonishment in his voice.
‘Yes, really. You might not think so, but we started to get along. Then something happened that changed everything.’
Forrest’s eyes glazed over as he went back in time. Jesse watched his knuckles turn white as he gripped the axe handle. He wondered if he should make a run for it while he was distracted, but it was already too late.
‘The bastard cut me off,’ Forrest said, snapping out of his reverie.
‘Did he tell you that?’
Forrest shook his head angrily. ‘Don’t be stupid. The family lawyer is a friend. He thought he ought to warn me when the old bastard changed his will.’ He let out a short laugh, more like a bark. ‘Give me time to look for a job.’
‘What about this place?’ Jesse waved his arm, taking in the endless fields that surrounded them.
‘I live here at his pleasure. So long as I toe the line and do what he says, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘Now he’s dead—who knows?’
It seemed incredible to Jesse that a father would do that to his son. His own father—a man of great wisdom and unerring judgement—had thought he was an idiot, but hadn’t cut him off because of it. ‘All because he blamed you? No other reason?’
‘I think he might have caught a dose from the girl as well.’ He sniggered unpleasantly. ‘I don’t know what it was, but I hope it hurt like hell.’
‘Why was he so worried about being blackmailed?’
Forrest looked at him like it was the stupidest question he’d heard all day. Maybe all year. Maybe in his life.
‘Why were you?’ He prodded Jesse with the handle of the axe again.
From the tone of his voice, Jesse knew what he meant was Why didn’t you just pay up? Why did you have to come down and stir all this up?
‘Because I haven’t got a couple of hundred million in the bank.’
Forrest inclined his head and seemed to accept the truth in that. ‘The scandal. My mother would have left him. That would have cost him more of those millions than he was prepared to pay. Cheaper and less aggravation to pay D’Amato.’
Jesse wished more than anything that they’d had this conversation before things got to this stage. It was only money after all.
‘What did you do when you found out?’
‘Started making plans, what else? And got the bastard back at the same time.’ Forrest’s face lit up at the thought. Jesse waited for him to continue. ‘I suggested to D’Amato that he should up his game a little. Why wait for rich old bastards like my father to come along? Why not go looking for them?’
Jesse’s jaw dropped. ‘So it was all your idea?’
Forrest nodded with something like pride in his eyes. ‘I had access to the drugs, he had the club. A marriage made in heaven,’ he chuckled and raised his eyes to the sky.
And a ready supply of stupid rich friends and business associates to steer in the right direction, Jesse thought. You bastard. He wondered if anyone else in the firm had been caught. He knew the senior partner had been down at least once. Perhaps there might be some leverage there. If he ever got back, of course.
‘I don’t see how that gets your father back.’
Forrest smiled and leaned forward again as if he was worried his father might be eavesdropping. ‘I was getting half the money my father gave him for starters. My father was paying me and didn’t even know it.’ He chuckled at the irony of it. ‘I also made some changes to how things operated. Told my father that D’Amato wanted to deal with him in person. God, how my father hated those meetings.’
The smile evaporated as he remembered it was at one of those meetings that his father died. The best-laid plans of mice and men ...
‘You said D’Amato works for you.’
‘He does technically. The club got in some trouble and I bailed it out for a majority stake. Let’s say we’re partners.’
Jesse wondered if Forrest had told D’Amato to scare him. Was it him who said scare the life out of him, but don’t hurt him? Looking at him now, as he sat on the chopping block slapping the axe handle against his palm, Jesse found it hard to believe. He shifted uncomfortably on the ground.
‘And you’ve ruined everything,’ Forrest said, standing up and hefting the axe in his hands. ‘We had no trouble with the police or anyone else until you and your chickenshit detective started poking around.’
Jesse knew he had to make a move right now before Forrest buried the axe in his head.
‘Can’t we work something out?’ he said, hating the desperation he heard in his voice.
‘Like what, Jesse?’ Forrest said with an ugly smile on his face. ‘Like what? Like I just forget all about it? Or maybe you can come in on it with me? How about you kill D’Amato and keep his share? Then we’d be partners. Would you like that?’
Jesse had to admit none of it sounded like it would be happening any time soon. He looked into Forrest’s eyes and shuddered, seeing his grave in there, hearing the shovels in the dirt. He had to do something soon. Forrest was working himself up into a frenzy. Jesse looked up at him and then looked into the distance behind him. He did an exaggerated double take and dropped his jaw in what he hoped was a look of astonishment. It worked. Forrest spun round to see what Jesse was looking at. Jesse got his feet under him and jumped up but Forrest was already turning back towards him, fury in his eyes at being tricked.
It was too late to run. Jesse grabbed the axe handle with both hands and wrenched but Forrest kept his grip. Forrest’s hands were better placed—he swung his right hand in an arc and caught Jesse on the side of the head with the flat of the axe blade. Jesse staggered and lost his grip on the handle. Forrest jabbed him hard in the chest with the end of the handle and kicked his legs out from under him. Jesse landed on his butt with a jolt and spun round to scrabble away. Forrest kicked him in the middle of his back and sent him sprawling, his face bouncing off the dirt.
Forrest took a step forward, swung the axe high above his head and brought the blunt side of the axe head down onto the back of Jesse’s skull with a sickening, wet thump.
Chapter 69
THEY WERE BOTH SILENT, the sickening, wet sound of something heavy caving in the back of Jesse’s head still fresh in their minds. Destiny had her hand up covering her mouth. She couldn’t even manage an Oh My God. Angel might have seen it all before, but that didn’t mean he wanted to listen to it coming out of his cell phone in real time.
Beads of sweat popped out on Destiny’s brow and top lip. Her stomach heaved. She jumped off the bed and ran for the bathroom. Angel closed the door behind her to give her some privacy and leaned his head against the wall. He tuned out the sounds coming from the other side of the door. He heard the toilet flush and water running in the sink. She came back out with a towel wrapped around her, eyes red against her pale skin. She was trembling, her hand still over her mouth in case of a repeat performance.
‘Sorry,’ she croaked through her fingers.
He put his arm around her shoulders and she rested her head on his chest. A faint, acidic smell of vomit clung to her.
‘Do you think he killed Gina too?’ she said when she was finally able to speak properly again.
‘W
e don’t know Gina’s dead. And we don’t know if Jesse is either.’
‘But we heard—’
‘It doesn’t mean he’s dead. And all we found at the airport was some blood, so you mustn’t jump to any conclusions.’
Her face told him he could hang on to his hopes, but she wasn’t convinced. ‘So he must have Evan as well.’
‘Looks like it.’
Destiny’s hand, which had fallen away from her mouth for a few seconds, was straight back there. Her eyes were wide with fright as she looked up into his face. Angel squeezed her shoulder tighter.
‘It means none of this is your fault,’ he said. ‘Forrest planned it from the start. He supplied us with real drugs. It doesn’t make any difference how many times they got switched; they were all the same.’
She nodded but she wasn’t really taking anything in. ‘If he’s still alive,’ she said.
‘What?’ Angel said and then realized she was still thinking about Evan. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘He’s got to be. Why drag him out of one van, dump him in your own, drive a hundred miles and then kill him? If he was going to kill him he’d have done it at the warehouse when he killed the rest of them—’ He stopped, aware of how it came out sounding like Gina was probably included in that total.
‘What was Jesse doing there?’ Destiny said.
‘Who knows. Being the stupid dumb-ass idiot that he is.’
Destiny stiffened and held up her hand. ‘What was that?’
They both looked at Angel’s cell phone, lying on the bed where he’d dropped it. They were still connected.
‘Hello?’ a tinny voice called.
Angel grabbed the phone. ‘Hello?’ The phone went dead in his ear and he threw it back down on the bed. ‘Shit.’
‘What?’
He gave an irritated shake of the head. ‘Now he knows we know. He’ll be expecting us.’
The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets) Page 52