by Neil Turner
Max pulls out his cell phone and calls Tony. “You’re about to have company. Bad guy carrying a girl coming your way.”
“Brittany?” Tony asks.
“Could be. Keep your head down!”
Tony’s reply is unintelligible. “Got it?” Max asks impatiently. Tony’s whispered reply sends a chill through Max before he tucks the phone back into his pocket. Then he leans in closer to get a good look at Jake. Blood glistens on his partner’s ashen face and coats his chest.
Jake holds up his cell phone and waves Max away. “I’m calling 911,” he mutters. “Go!”
Max takes off after the guy carrying the girl. The man has a healthy head start. I wish to hell I hadn’t shot the fuckin’ tires out, Max thinks bitterly as he runs past the pickup truck and spies his prey a couple of hundred yards ahead. Fucker’s probably twenty years younger than me.
I pull into position C, as instructed by Jake. I tuck the Journey into yet another little grove of trees and bushes, this one a dozen or so yards up the lengthy driveway leading from the road to the farmhouse. My instructions are to keep my head down and duck low beneath the dashboard to use the van’s engine for protection if shots come from up the road. I have no role to play until Jake and Max need the vehicle brought up to the house or they meet me here.
Gunfire erupts from the direction of the farmhouse—booming explosions with a string of sharper little pops mixed in. Jake’s and Max’s shots would be the little pops. Handgun pops. The majority of the gunfire is from the bigger guns. It’s heavier. Faster. Even from here, I can feel the damned blasts. It’s all over in twenty or thirty seconds.
A quick glance at my phone shows no new messages from Jake. Or Max.
Now that whatever mayhem was taking place up there has ended, a message from one of them would be welcome. Are they okay? I sit still for a couple of seconds, mindful of Jake’s orders to keep my head down while I await instructions. None come. We didn’t discuss this possibility. I lift my head above the dashboard and look in the direction of the house, but can’t see a damned thing through the tree branches and surrounding shrubbery. I ease the door open, step out, and rise to my full height to peer above the foliage. The vegetation still hampers the view, so I push deeper into the bushes and part a few branches. The roof of the house is visible in the moonlight above a rise in the driveway that obscures a view of the rest of the house and its surroundings.
The phone in my pocket finally vibrates. I duck down and pull it free, fully expecting to find a text letting me know that the excitement is over and it’s time to bring the Journey. Instead, it’s a voice call from Max.
He’s talking rapidly before I get the phone all the way up to my ear. He sounds agitated, saying something about a bad guy and a girl headed my way.
“Brittany?” I ask stupidly.
“Could be,” Max mutters. He’s out of breath.
What the hell is going on? I wonder in the same moment that I hear footsteps approaching, crunching on the gravel. Whoever it is, he’s coming fast. I don’t hear what Max says next as I duck back into the van and pull out the shotgun.
“Got it?” Max asks when I put the phone back to my ear.
“He’s coming,” I whisper before cutting the connection and dropping the phone into a pocket. I hold the gun awkwardly across my body and take a sideways step closer to the drive as the pounding footsteps move steadily closer.
Only one set of footsteps? Didn’t Max say that a guy and a girl were coming? The footfalls I hear are heavy. The guy, then. Where’s the girl?
I duck down when a bobbing head appears above the rise in the road. I’m confused by the silhouette for several seconds. Then I work out that I’m watching a man—an extremely large man—sprinting right at me with someone draped over his shoulders. One hand is wrapped around the legs of the person he’s carrying. The other is holding an arm that dangles across his chest.
Which means his stomach is unprotected when I step into the drive and bury the muzzle of the shotgun in his midriff. I hope I’ve run the shotgun barrel clean through the son of a bitch. Air explodes out of his lungs as he slams into me. I realize it’s Joe just before his forehead slams into my face. As we rocket backward in a tangle of bodies and limbs, I inadvertently squeeze the trigger. The blast of the shotgun is deafening. Then the back of my head slams into the packed rock of the driveway and the world goes black.
BOOM!!!
“Oh fuck, no!” Max exclaims as he drives one foot after the other in the wake of whoever was bearing down on Tony’s location. Silence replaces the startling explosion, save for the sound of Max’s footsteps and his wheezing while he struggles to suck in enough oxygen to keep propelling himself forward.
Shotgun for sure. Did the mob fucker have one? Max has no idea. Surely, Tony didn’t open fire. I told him the bad guy was carrying a girl! Possibly Brittany, for Christ’s sake.
Max finally clears the rise that leads down to the road. Three bodies are strewn across the drive. All still. All silent. Oh God, what had they done? Maybe Jake was right when he wanted to leave Tony behind.
As he closes the distance, Max gets a better look at the bodies lying still in the moonlight. The smell of cordite hangs in the air. The girl is easy to pick out with her slender limbs all akimbo. She’s tiny in comparison to the big figures sprawled on either side of her.
Secure the scene is his first thought when he reaches the bodies. Where’s the gun?
Oh shit, that’s Tony, he realizes when he looks down on the man lying face up. Tony’s face is drenched in blood that is flowing freely and pooling on the gravel beneath his head.
“There it is,” Max mutters when he spies a rifle butt sticking out from beneath the corpse that is face down—definitely a corpse, judging from a hole the size of a dinner plate that has been blown out of the back of the man’s T-shirt. It takes Max the better part of a minute to wrestle the gun out from beneath the deadweight pinning it to the ground. Big fucker, he thinks as he works the gun free and angrily flings it aside. He yanks out his cell phone to call Jake. No answer.
“Shit!” he howls at the indifferent moon before he calls 911 and unleashes a flurry of information.
“We’ve already received a call from that location. Units are on the way,” the emergency operator says.
“Jake,” Max mutters in relief. Maybe he’s still okay.
“Pardon?” the operator asks.
“My partner. Jake Plummer. He called you?”
“Someone called,” she replies. “An unidentified male. We’re not sure what’s going on, sir. What’s your name and interest in the situation?”
“Maxwell,” he replies impatiently. “Retired cop. My partner, Jake Plummer, called you. Is he still on the line?”
“No,” the operator replies after a beat. “We received a call about gunshots with an officer and others down. That’s all we got before the caller stopped speaking.”
Max sags down on his haunches and rests his forehead in his palms while his phone dangles between two fingers.
“Sir?”
Max blows out his frustration in a long exhalation and lifts the phone to his lips. “You’ve got the location here?”
“Yes,” the operator replies. “I need—”
“There are at least six victims out here,” Max interjects. “There may be more in the house. Send multiple units. The scene seems to be secure.”
“Sir!” the operator exclaims in frustration.
Max’s eyes are on the still body of the girl when he snaps back, “I’m checking on people here, madam. Some of the good guys are down, okay? Make sure you get some cops and ambulances out here right fuckin’ now.”
Max plunges the phone deep in his pocket as he pushes himself upright and reluctantly walks over to take a closer look at the girl. His first aid training warns him not to move her to take a closer look, but the sliver of face peeking out from under a hoodie confirms it’s Brittany Valenti. Her right hand is tucked beneath her. The fabri
c covering her upper arm is speckled with the type of shredded tearing that comes from buckshot. Max’s eyes stray to Tony while he softly asks the prostrate father, “What have you done to your girl?”
Chapter Thirty-One
I come to in an ambulance, groggy and disoriented as hell. Once my head begins to clear, I rip a pile of gauze off my face and reach for the paramedic who is perched beside me.
“My daughter?”
I startle the poor woman, who recovers quickly. “The girl who was with you?”
“Yes,” I reply hoarsely.
She rests a hand on mine, meets my gaze, and smiles reassuringly. “She’s fine. Bump on the head, a little buckshot in the arm. Nothing serious.”
I let out a deep sigh of relief. “When can I see her?”
“At the hospital. Her ambulance is right behind us.”
I start to sit up to look out the back window and am overcome by dizziness and nausea. The paramedic reaches for me and pushes me back down. “Whoa, Daddy. You fared a lot worse than she did.”
“She’s okay?” I ask when the world stops spinning.
She nods.
“She’s been through hell.”
“I heard a little. Poor girl.”
“What did they do to her?”
She shrugs. “Can’t say, but I can tell you that she’s one tough little gal. Whatever she’s been through hasn’t broken her spirit.”
“Does she know about Bobby?”
The paramedic gives me a blank look. “Was Bobby one of the people who got shot out there?”
“No. Her boyfriend. They killed him.”
The paramedic’s eyes widen. “I didn’t hear anything along those lines, but we were kinda busy with you.”
I retreat into dark thoughts about what Brittany has been through. Then the blackness closes in again. When I resurface, I’m being wheeled through an emergency room entrance.
“Dad!” Brittany cries out from behind us. “Wait!”
The stretcher slows before Brittany’s tear-streaked face appears above me. She looks terrified.
“Hey,” I manage to croak.
“Oh my God, Dad! What have they done to you?”
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
Her eyes cut to my paramedic friend, who nods. “He’ll be okay. It looks worse than it is.”
A manic little laugh of relief escapes Brittany as she throws her arms around me.
The paramedic gently tugs her away after a few seconds. “You might want to hold off on the hugs for a bit, honey. He’s probably a little tender.”
I try to wave the paramedic aside, but she shoves my arm back to my side and starts wheeling me away. Brittany jogs along beside us. Once we reach the counter, my paramedic tugs her away.
“He needs to see the doctor now, sweetheart. So do you.”
Brittany breaks away long enough to lean in and plant a kiss on my cheek. “Hurry up in there, okay?”
I manage a smile and nod.
I check out of the hospital after a few hours in the emergency room. Brittany is with me as we emerge into the lobby. We’ve both suffered concussions, plus various scrapes and bruises. I’ve got a broken nose. If it weren’t for the haunted, faraway look in Brittany’s eyes and a gauze bandage on her arm, you’d be hard-pressed to see any sign of her ordeal. She caught a few bits of buckshot in her arm when the shotgun went off, but the wounds are minor—especially considering what happened to Joe. Jake Plummer is a different matter. He was still in surgery when I checked out. Max says things are touch and go. Fucking Joe. I’m glad I blew the sonofabitch away.
I call a cab to pick us up.
“Bobby?” I ask Brittany.
Her face crumples. “One of the paramedics mentioned him,” she says through a torrent of tears. “I didn’t know he was dead until then. Why, Dad? Why?”
I gather her into my arms and stroke the back of her head. “I’m so sorry.”
She pulls back after a minute or two and turns her tear-streaked face up to mine. “I suspected the worst after they took Bobby away, but they wouldn’t tell me anything about what they planned to do with him. When I asked if they were bringing him back, Joe just smirked.”
The bastard.
“I’m glad you killed him, Dad.”
I nod. I’m certainly not lamenting the end of Joe, but being the instrument of anyone’s death isn’t sitting well with me.
“You want to talk about Bobby?” I ask.
She winces and swallows, then shakes her head. “Later, Dad. I’m still having a hard time believing that he’s really gone. Besides, you can barely talk.”
It’s true. My shattered nose has been wrestled back into place and is being held there by some sort of cast, supplemented with a swath of gauze and surgical tape. My nostrils are packed with cotton or something. Speaking is a chore.
We sit quietly for a minute or two before a couple of people approach. FBI, judging from their demeanor and the cut of their suits.
“Mr. Valenti?” a middle-aged woman asks.
I nod. “FBI?”
She nods, then introduces herself and her partner. “You feel up to talking to us?”
I cut my eyes to Brittany, who is curled up against my side, then shake my head. “Not now?”
She nods as her sorrowful eyes linger on Brittany, then hands me a business card. “We’ll need to speak with both of you. Soon.”
I nod and pocket the card. “We’ll come by tomorrow, if that’s okay?”
“Tomorrow is good,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry we’ll have to put you through more grief. You’ve been through more than enough already.”
“Yeah,” I reply.
“You’re free to go,” she says with a final sympathetic glance at Brittany. A mother, no doubt.
I thank her, wondering if she would have sprung me if she’d known I have murder on my mind. Good thing I didn’t mention it. With my common sense a little scrambled by the drugs from the hospital and maybe the knock on the head, I have decided that I have business to take care of. I have the cab drop Brittany at Pat’s house.
When I don’t get out of the cab, Brittany turns a surprised look on me. “Where are you going, Dad?”
“I hab a little business to take care of.”
Pat, who has come out to greet us, leans down to meet my gaze. “Hab?”
I shrug. The letter V is going to be absent from my vocabulary for the foreseeable future.
Pat eyes me suspiciously. “Business, Valenti? Whatever it is can wait. You look like you should be in bed.”
“Soon,” I mutter.
When I call to check in with Penelope and tell her where I’m heading next, she demands that I stop in the office first. I do, and when she fails to dissuade me from what she proclaims to be “your crazy idea,” insists that she’ll drive. I down a couple of extra painkillers before we leave.
“I can’t talk you out of this?” she asks a final time when she parks at our destination.
I reply by pushing the car door open and climbing out.
We barge through the doorway of Jonathan Walton’s Willis Tower office five minutes later. Walton’s eyes widen for a second when he sees us. My blackened eyes are swollen almost shut, but I can see enough to enjoy the moment of fear in his eyes when he recognizes us. I hope the sight of me scares him as much as it frightened Penelope when I walked into the Law Offices of Brooks and Crooked Nose Valenti a short while ago. If my appearance doesn’t terrify the fucker, the erupting volcano of my fury ought to do the trick.
“Walton,” I growl.
Walton’s smug smile drops back into place after he absorbs my appearance. He immediately presses the intercom button on his phone.
“Security,” a deep male voice responds.
“Get up here right now.”
“Yes, sir!”
Last night’s events in Wisconsin haven’t yet hit the airwaves. Otherwise, Walton might not look so cocky as he adopts the Asshole Pose by easing his c
hair back and casually crossing an ankle over a knee. He tilts his head an inch or so and smirks. “You’ve got maybe a minute to say whatever you’re here to say.”
Penelope tartly replies, “You’ll be seeing plenty of us in the days ahead, Mr. Walton.”
“Hopefully in the many nightmares you deserb to hab,” I add.
His lips curl up in an amused smile. “Deserb to hab, huh?” he mocks. “Did you take a fall in the shower, Valenti?”
I don’t reply. Penelope does.
“Don’t be an asshole,” she snaps. “The man is hurt.”
Walton shrugs. “Whatever. You should have called Herbert Cumming before you came here to bother me.”
“Cumming,” Penelope mutters in disgust. “He’s your lawyer, after all, is he?”
“He’s the guy you’ll need to speak with about settling the claim against your client.”
“So, you’re in bed with Butterworth Cole, too,” I say while a smile tries to form on my face. A picture of Jack Nicholson as the Joker in an old Batman movie comes to mind. It scared the hell out of me as a kid. Bet that’s how I look. Hope so. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
A deep voice behind us snaps, “Stay where you are. Don’t move!”
Security has arrived. “Is he going to shoot us, Jonathan?” I ask Walton with my eyes locked firmly on his. “If he does, you’ll hab to wait for the FBI to show you what we’b brought.”
Walton’s cocky smile falters at the mention of the FBI. His eyes shoot past us to his security guy. “Let’s hear them out for a minute or two.”
“Are you sure, Mr. Walton? These people are trespassing. I can have them removed.”
I ease the corner of a sheaf of papers out of my shirt pocket and cock an eyebrow at Walton. “Interesting stuff, Jonathan. Sure you don’t want to hab a look-see?”
A big hand grabs my biceps and jerks me back a step. “I told you not to move!”
Penelope reacts before I can. “Get your hands off him!” she snarls while ripping Mr. Security Guard’s hand off my arm.
Walton holds his hands up. “Stand down, Jones. You can turn them over to the cops after I hear what they have to say.”