And came face to face with a figure dressed head to toe in black.
A long beat passed. There’s someone in the garage, he thought, bewildered.
Someone …
Then his sensual daze cleared.
Jerking to full attention, he dropped back into his seat and dove for the Sig Sauer he kept underneath it.
The assassin backed up a step and raised a steady gloved hand.
Joyce gasped with horrified comprehension.
Even as his fingers closed around his gun’s butt, Ray knew it was too late.
He was a dead man, but then he’d been a dead man for months.
Staring down the length of a silenced pistol, his last thoughts raced through his head:
Why had he thought he could protect Joyce from Kareem Gregory?
Why didn’t they ask the doctor whether the baby was a boy or a girl?
Was Jackson dead already?
“Run, Joyce!”
Ray raised his weapon and prayed he could buy her time to—
His world exploded with a muted pop, and there was nothing.
Payton Jones pumped a second shot into Ray’s forehead, waited while he dropped and, being careful not to step in the blood and leave behind a footprint like the one in the Simpson/Goldman murders, edged around the man’s crumpled body as it dangled half in and half out of the car.
There was more work to do.
The screeching wife had backed into a bike hanging on hooks against the far wall, her screams echoing off the concrete floor like cannon fire. She really needed to knock it off before a Dudley Do-Right neighbor stopped by to investigate, and time was a-wasting.
The first tap to her forehead shut her up and splattered the bike—damn, it’d looked like a nice one, too—with bits of brain and what looked like ten gallons of blood. The second tap wasn’t really necessary, but was good procedure, just in case. Another quick squeeze of the trigger, and it was done.
Her face frozen in an eternal, wide-eyed grimace, she tumbled out of view behind the car. A long, crumpled strip of black and white paper—a picture, maybe?—fell out of her limp fingers and hit the ground with her.
Ahhh, silence.
Now it was time to clean up and get the hell out of Dodge.
All in all, this’d been a nice day’s work. It felt pretty good, the satisfaction of an operation run by the book. The money would feel pretty good, too.
Payton smiled.
A nice rare steak would be great for dinner tonight, maybe with a baked potato. Oh, and chocolate cake of some kind, with ice cream. Yeah. That’d be nice.
But first things first: ditch the stolen car with its stolen plates and steal new ones for the long drive back home, all before the cops got wind of this nice handiwork.
Picking up the four shell casings and then the duffel bag from the corner where it’d been stashed, Payton walked to the side door leading to the backyard, which had a flimsy joke of a lock, and glanced around one last time, just to survey the scene and make sure there were no clues, no giveaways.
There weren’t.
“Dumb fuck.”
Who were these two? Payton didn’t know and didn’t need to know, just like there was no need to know who’d ordered this hit. You couldn’t build too many layers of protection into these operations; keeping things on a need-to-know basis was better for all concerned. One fun fact had trickled down through the grapevine, though, and Payton squatted, considering it.
The man’s vacant eyes stared off at the ceiling even as his blood formed a red halo around his head where it rested on the concrete. Payton leaned over the body and gave a bit of valuable, though posthumous, advice.
“Never go back for a funeral, dumb-ass. It’ll trip you up every time.”
He shouldn’t have touched her, Jack thought, his arms immersed to the elbow in bubble-filled scorching water because the dishwasher, like the waitress, had gone home with a stomach thing. The diner’s kitchen sink overflowed with a day’s worth of cruddy, sticky stainless steel pots and pans, and he attacked each one as if it had done him a great personal harm.
This was where he belonged, hidden in the back. What’d he been thinking, going out there? Talking to her? Ruffling her feathers just to see the flash of passion in her eyes? What kind of plan was that?
He hadn’t been thinking. That was the problem. He hadn’t had a clear thought since he first laid eyes on Amara months ago.
She was tall and curvy in all the right places, with legs, hips, and ass in abundance. Longish hair, wavy and black, piled on top of her head in a careless style that was sexy and easy. Smooth pretty skin about the color of his, but no doubt infinitely softer, not that he’d ever know.
Yeah, he’d noticed.
Even though he’d done a decent job of ignoring her up until now, he’d noticed.
He wanted that body curled around his with no daylight in between. He wanted the taste of her in his mouth and her sweat slicked all over him as he fucked her into next year. He wanted her cries in his ears and her scratches on his back.
But the bigger problem was that there was something else about her that called to him. That was why he’d gone out of his way to be obnoxious.
Was it the smile? It had to be. That smile transformed her face. She was beautiful without it, of course, but in the cold, flat, untouchable way a runway model was beautiful. The smile changed it all. Those sleek, high cheekbones became dimpled and cute, her cool dark doe eyes glowing and warm.
That smile. Yeah, it tied him in knots.
The pots finished at last, he crept back to the swinging kitchen door and peered through the round window. She was still there, typing furiously on her laptop, looking exhausted.
He checked the time: ten forty-eight. She was a hard worker. Tenacious, too. No matter how much he wished he didn’t, he admired her. A lot.
On the other side of the door, Jonas Martin, aka J-Mart, the retired army sergeant turned co-owner, along with his silent-partner brother, of the Twelfth Street Diner, looked up from the stack of bills he was counting from the register. He caught Jack in the midst of his pathetic Amara surveillance, gave him the what the hell? raised eyebrow, and jerked his buzz cut head toward the dining room.
Sighing and scowling, Jack pushed through the door and presented himself for the forthcoming interrogation.
“What the hell are you doing?” barked J-Mart.
“Minding my own business,” Jack said. “You should try it.”
Without missing a beat in his relentless counting of single bills, J-Mart snorted. “Why don’t you grow a pair and go talk to her? What’re you? Gay?”
“If gay means I want her thighs up on my shoulders, then yeah. I’m gay as the day is long.”
J-Mart laughed while Jack, feeling like a shark on the other side of the glass from a juicy seal, stared hungrily at her. She was deep in her own world, muttering to herself as she typed, paying them no attention, and he couldn’t absorb the details about her fast enough.
“She doesn’t bite, Jack.”
“She could bite me all she wanted. In another lifetime.”
Jack couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. Things were bad enough without J-Mart thinking he was a coward; he wasn’t. In the old days, he would have pursued and caught Amara, enjoying both the pursuing and the having, but he couldn’t do that now because he wasn’t free and would never be free again.
And he wouldn’t taint anyone else’s life. That had been his one promise, his vow to himself and to God: no collateral damage. Or, to be a hundred percent accurate: no more collateral damage.
“I’m not into relationships,” he added.
“No shit.” J-Mart, serious now, paused in his counting, with half of the bills in one hand, half in the other. “You’ve been here almost a year, and I don’t know a damn thing about you other than you were a Marine. And I wouldn’t know that but for the Semper Fi tat on your arm.”
Jack lashed out, hating this shit. “Are you writ
ing my biography, or what?”
“You let me know,” J-Mart said solemnly.
“Know what?”
“If the trouble you’re in gets too close, you let me know. I’ll help.”
He left, heading back into the kitchen. Jack gaped after him, floundering and speechless, his throat burning with suppressed emotion. Too late, he thought that he should’ve made another joke or issued another one of the easy denials he was so good at, but the moment had passed and he didn’t have the heart for it anyway.
In the meantime, Amara was sitting over there, all by her lonesome.
Thinking fast, Jack poured another glass of Diet Coke and walked to Amara’s booth. When he got there, she had her elbows planted on the table and her hands buried in her now-messy hair.
Startled, she looked away from the screen and up at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Oh. Hi.”
“Here.”
Still feeling irritable and off balance from his interaction with J-Mart, knowing he was making a mistake and hating himself for becoming no better than a rutting stallion when she was in the room, he slammed the drink down and snarled.
“It’s late. You should go home.”
“Thanks.” She took a grateful sip. “Can’t, though. I’ve got to finish.”
“Finish what?”
“My closing argument.”
He couldn’t help scowling, which seemed to amuse her.
“Let me guess. You don’t like lawyers.”
“No one likes lawyers.”
She gave him a tired half grin. “You may be right.”
Jack paused. Now was the time for him to go. He’d delivered her drink, told her to go home, and his mission was done. Too bad he was trapped in her gravitational pull.
“So you’re representing some drug dealer?” he asked her.
“Alleged drug dealer.”
Bullshit lawyer doublespeak. “Why’re you wasting your time and talent on scum like that? I don’t get it.”
She blinked up at him. “Wow. You’re right. When you put it that way, I should just skip the whole judicial process and try to get him scheduled for lethal injection right away. Is tomorrow soon enough for you?”
Damn. She was beautiful and funny. And people said miracles didn’t happen.
The slope he was on got that much more slippery. First he talked to her and then he flirted with her. Crude flirting, but still flirting. Now they were laughing together, and who knew where that might lead?
Better to stop things right here, right now, and he knew just how to do it.
Dropping his voice, he gave her a smirking onceover and watched while her smile faded and disappeared. “Better go home, Bunny. It’s late and some lucky man is probably waiting for you to give him his bedtime treat.”
Chapter 3
Seething anew, Amara watched Jack head back to the kitchen. What was with that guy? One second he was a pleasant human being and the next he was leering and insulting her like it was an Olympic event.
Bastard.
He was right about one thing, though. It was time for her to go home, and the diner closed at eleven anyway. Her poor brain had done all the critical thinking it could handle for now, and she’d reached the point of diminishing returns. Might as well call it a night, go soak in that tub and have a glass of Zinfandel.
Standing, she twisted left and right to work some of the kinks out of her back, and then began the laborious process of cramming all the junk back into her overstuffed briefcase. Files, pens, the laptop … all of it went slowly inside while she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t loitering.
Still, she couldn’t help peering over her shoulder one last time, in the general direction of the grill, but the only sign of life came from Esther. The old woman pulled her woolly hat down over her ears, nodded a vague good-bye to Amara, and headed through the glass door and out into the night.
No Jack. Not that she ever wanted to see him again.
Now anxious to be gone, Amara jammed her fists into the sleeves of her black raincoat, belted the middle without bothering with the buttons, grabbed her briefcase, and stalked out.
Heavy night air, so cold it burned her sinuses on the inhale, cleared her head as she trotted down the salted steps to the deserted sidewalk. The sleet had stopped, thank goodness, but the street was shiny and dangerous, a sheet of black ice waiting to claim foolish victims who hurried across it. Mindful of her heels, she picked her careful way toward her car, which was to her right in front of the bank in the next block, directly under a street lamp.
It was darker than normal, though, and she glanced around an extra time or two, just in case. The familiar buildings—a brownstone, an office and a dry cleaner’s—seemed gloomy and unnecessarily shadowy tonight, almost sinister. She wished she’d asked J-Mart to walk her to her car. Silly, yeah, but she wished it.
She kept moving, getting closer to—
Whoa. What was that?
With her face low against the roaring wind, it took her a moment to register the fleeting dark figure in her peripheral vision, but someone was out there where she couldn’t quite see and—
A woman’s shrill scream and a man’s cry pierced the silence.
Oh, God. What was it?
Right there, two cars down from hers. Two people struggling.
A man—oh, God he was huge and he wore a knit cap pulled low over his eyes—had a woman trapped between her open car door and the driver’s seat and was pummeling her with his fists, cursing her.
The poor woman shrieked and cowered, trying to shield her head with her hands.
“Fucking bitch”
Punch. Scream.
“Get out of my fucking way.”
Kick, kick… punch.
“Please,” the woman begged, sobbing, “please, please,” and Amara realized, with horror, three things:
The woman was Esther from the diner;
The man wanted her car; and
He was willing to beat Esther to death for it.
Desperate and petrified, Amara looked around for help, but there was no one to call and nowhere to go. The diner was too far away now, and nothing else was open. They were alone out here with a maniac. Panic kicked in, followed by the flight instinct.
Run, Amara, run.
She backed up several steps, ready to sprint to the diner for backup. Esther would have to fend for herself until Amara brought help back. But then Esther dropped to her knees, moaning, and Amara knew Esther would be dead long before help arrived.
Amara took a deep breath and screeched even as she dug in her briefcase for her cell phone, punched 9-1-1, and prayed the call had connected.
“Help! Help! There’s a carjacking at Twelfth and Main!”
The man paused in his kicking of Esther and looked around at her with murder in his beady eyes.
“What the fuck ?”
Amara locked her knees and stood her ground. “L-leave her alone.” She flashed the cell phone as if she meant business. “I called the police. They’re coming! And if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll take your picture.”
The man stared at her, clearly weighing his options, and then took a step in Amara’s direction. No, God. Please no. Amara was taking a big breath, gearing up for another round of screaming, when, to her complete astonishment, a floodlight came on in the building nearest the man, shining on them like an angel’s glow.
The man wavered, glancing between the buildings, where voices could now be heard, Esther, who was on her knees groaning, and Amara. In his wild, flashing eyes, she saw rising panic and indecision.
Clammy sweat dripped under her arms and down her sides as she considered two horrifying new possibilities. What if he was a crazed druggie? What if he had a gun?
More voices rose up, behind her this time. She didn’t dare turn and look.
The man heard them, too. Galvanized, he hurried to Amara, hand outstretched. “Gimme that phone, bitch.”
If she’d been thinking, she’d have just to
ssed the phone to him. But there wasn’t time for thinking, only instinct. Raising her left arm, she swung it in a vicious backhand, slamming him across the face and shoulder with her thirty-pound briefcase.
Reeling, he roared with rage.
“Oh, God.” Amara braced for the attack and raised her arm again.
He leapt at her.
She glimpsed the glazed, feral eyes of a habitual drug user and smelled his fetid breath in the quick seconds before his rough, cold, brutal hands closed around her throat and squeezed until agony sliced through her body.
Jerking her knee up as hard as she could, she connected with his groin and he let go, howling with pain. Free now, she staggered back, coughing and wheezing, and thought she heard someone call her name. The voice sounded remote through her fear, as though someone in China was yelling at her, but this was no time for listening.
The man rounded on her again.
Amara prepared to swing the briefcase again because she wasn’t going to die. Not like this.
From behind her came an animalistic sound that was somewhere between a yell and a roar. Afraid to glance away from the druggie to identify this new monster, Amara froze and waited, her view of her attacker occluded by the steaming puffs of her panting breath.
The druggie looked around, flinched, pivoted, and finally ran off. At the corner he turned left and disappeared just past the bank.
With a weak cry of relief, Amara’s boneless legs gave way and she collapsed to the pavement. “Thank you, God. Thank you.”
Running feet in jeans and hiking boots came into her field of vision, and then she saw the same muscular brown forearm that had tried to take her chicken and noodles earlier. Never in her life had she been so happy to see a limb.
“Jack.”
Raising her head, she saw a twisted face full of worry layered over a killing rage. No wonder the attacker had run off. Jack looked capable of ripping the man apart with his bare hands and eating his flesh while it was still warm.
Mustering every ounce of strength, she flashed him a weak I’m okay smile.
“Amara.” All the anger leached away from his expression, leaving naked fear. “We heard you screaming.”
“Esther,” she began. “Is she—”
Deadly Pursuit Page 3