Blood Tattoo (A Nicholas Colt Thriller Book 5)

by Jude Hardin

  I thought it might do me good to get out and talk to someone for a while, and of course I would keep an eye out for Nicholas everywhere I went.

  Number Three was about twenty feet from the line of crape myrtles when the arrow thudded home just below his right shoulder. This time the optic camouflage suit continued to work. The feather end of the arrow seemed to be floating in midair, in suspended animation, as the ghostly figure arched and writhed and finally fell to the ground.

  I fought a wave of nausea. I tossed the bow aside and collapsed onto my back, literally unable to support my own weight for another second.

  I called Di on the radio.

  “Wild Canary, this is Bullfrog. Mission accomplished. Over.”

  “Are you all right? Over.”

  “I don’t think so. I feel like shit. I’m tired. Over.”

  “Hang in there,” she said. “It’s almost over. Over.”

  “Yeah, almost. Over.”

  “I hear birds chirping,” she said. “Are you outside? Over.”

  “I’m on the roof. I’ll tell you about it later. Over.”

  “The president has been moved to a different vehicle, and the motorcade—with the addition of a police tow truck now—is proceeding along the route as planned. Congratulations, Bullfrog. Your first assignment was a huge success. Over.”

  “Thanks. If I can muster the strength, I’m going to gather my things now and get the hell out of here. Over.”

  “Roger that. Make it quick, because the homeowner should be back from her appointment soon. I’ll pick you up on the road where I dropped you off. When you see my car coming, stick your thumb out and act like you’re hitchhiking. I want you to stay in character until we get back to the safe house. Don’t forget to put the walkie-talkie away and take the headset off. See you in about fifteen minutes. Over and out.”

  I tossed the crossbow to the grass, and I took care with the dangling binoculars this time as I stepped onto the second rung below the roof’s overhang and climbed down. I carried the ladder to the garage and hung it back on the wall where I’d found it and then closed the garage door. Terry was still shredding away on the guitar, lost in his own little world of music. He never even looked up.

  I retrieved the crossbow and walked back into the house through the front door. I trotted back to the bedroom where my things were, loaded the crossbow into the guitar case and the field glasses and walkie-talkie apparatus into the backpack. I looked around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. The room was a mess. The homeowner was going to be pissed, and probably frightened, but I figured saving the world was worth it. Anyway, her insurance would take care of everything, and maybe now she would get an alarm system.

  To my amazement, a spider had already started spinning a web across the broken window. It was a big brown one with long spindly legs. Spiders have always fascinated me. I like them. I stood there and gazed at the critter’s meticulous construction job, wondering how anything so awesome could have possibly evolved by accident.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there oblivious to my surroundings. Just a few seconds, probably, but that momentary lapse in concentration turned out to be something I would regret for the rest of my life.

  In the movies, bullets slam into people like sledgehammers and knock them around, but that’s not what happens in real life. In real life, the shooter gets more of an impact from the recoil of the gun than the victim gets from the bullet. It’s physics. I looked it up one time. Also, most people assume that getting shot is extremely painful, but that’s not always the case. Not at first, anyway. Sometimes it’s painful, and sometimes it’s not.

  This time it was not.

  The blast came from behind, violently jarring me out of my trance. My breath caught and my heart pounded, but I didn’t realize the full gravity of the situation until a split second later when I saw the blood splatters on the wall. I looked down at the wound, and for some reason all I could think about was that first phone call two weeks ago.

  I never should have answered the call. I turned away from the window and faced the doorway to the bedroom. A man stood there holding a semiautomatic pistol, the one he’d shot me in the back with. I guessed him to be about five-eight. He wore jeans and a wife-beater T and a hateful snarl. Crewcut. Full sleeve tats on both arms.

  “Who the hell are you?” I said.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing. Come on into the living room where we can talk. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “You shot me. I need a doctor.”

  “I’m going to shoot you again if you don’t do what I say. Move, motherfucker!”

  The .357 was in my backpack, only inches away, but it might as well have been in another zip code. If I tried to go for it, Tattoo Boy would unload on me. I didn’t want to follow orders from this punk, but I didn’t seem to have much of a choice.

  “All right,” I said. “You win.”

  He backed out of the doorway, holding the gun on me as I followed. When we got to the living room, he motioned for me to sit on the couch. He pulled an ottoman to the other side of the coffee table and sat across from me.

  “Where’s Jet?” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You her new boyfriend?”

  Was this guy stupid, or what? Surely he’d seen the shape the bedroom was in. It should have been obvious to him that there’d been a home invasion, and that I was the burglar.

  “I’m not anyone’s new boyfriend,” I said. “And I don’t know anyone named Jet.”

  “Lying sack of shit. I made it to the edge of the woods a few minutes ago, and I saw you walk in through the front door. So I know you’re not the thief who broke in here. You probably just now got home. You got a big surprise when you saw the broken window and the room all fucked-up, didn’t you? Almost as big a surprise as when I shot your ass.”

  The bullet had entered the lower right side of my back, just below the kidney, and had exited through my abdomen, about three inches to the right of my belly button. I grabbed a couple of throw pillows from the couch and held pressure on the holes, using my left hand for the front and my right hand for the back. A steady stream of blood oozed from both sites.

  “If I just now got home, where’s my car?” I said.

  “Maybe you don’t have one. How the fuck am I supposed to know? I just know for a fact you ain’t no burglar. Guys your age don’t do this kind of penny ante shit. Unless you’re a meth addict or something, and I can tell by looking at you that you’re not. When I first got to the edge of the woods, you were heading in the front door with your crossbow. What kind of burglar walks around with a damn crossbow? No, you were out in the woods hunting or shooting at targets or something. I’ve been around criminals all my life, mister, and you ain’t no burglar. Who do you think you’re dealing with here?”

  “I needed cash,” I said. “I broke the window and climbed in. I swear, I’ve never heard of anyone named Jet.”

  “You broke the window and climbed in and then had a cocktail, is that it? I saw the bottle of vodka on the counter too, dumbass. In fact, I’m the one who bought that bottle. And in fact, I think I’m going to have myself a little right now while we wait for Jet to get home.”

  “I’m bleeding. I might be dead by the time she gets home.”

  “Oh, well. That’s what you get for waltzing in here and fucking my old lady and drinking my liquor while I was incarcerated.”

  “I swear, man. I don’t even know your old lady. I need an ambulance. Please. If I die, you’re going to be facing murder charges.”

  “Hey, I’ll just tell the cops I thought you were a burglar. Good fucking idea! I’ll tell them I was stopping by to visit with Jet, and I happened upon what I thought was a home invasion. How perfect is that? Jet’s new boyfriend—you—will be dead, and I’ll be in the clear. They probably won’t even bust me for violating the restraining order. I couldn’t have scripted it any better myself.”

>   He got up and backed into the kitchen, holding the gun on me the entire time. He grabbed the Stoli and uncapped it and took a swig as he returned to the living room. Once again, he perched across from me on the ottoman.

  I was about to pass out from the pain. It felt as though someone had skewered me with a red-hot fireplace poker. Dozens of psychedelic motes danced in front of my eyes as I struggled to maintain consciousness.

  “I know you’re not going to just sit there and watch me die,” I said.

  He sucked on the vodka bottle, wiped his mouth with his hand.

  “Where’s Jet?” he said. “Did she have a doctor’s appointment today or something? I’m the one who fucked up her legs, you know. Hell, I should have killed the bitch. I’m sure you’ve heard the story from her side. Well, now you’re going to hear it from my side.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  He raised the pistol and shot a hole in the wall behind me. Six inches to the left and it would have been my head. I leaned over and vomited on the floor.

  “You need to be interested, motherfucker. I don’t take no shit from a woman, you understand?”

  I was dizzy, and the gunshot had left me partially deaf. His voice sounded like it was coming from a cardboard tube.

  “I need medical attention,” I said.

  “She came home late one night—I’m talking three hours late—and I asked her where she’d been. She came up with some lame-ass excuse, out with the girls from work or some such bullshit, so I asked her why she hadn’t called to let me know. She didn’t have an answer for that. Not a good one, anyway, so while she was strutting on back to the bedroom, I came up from behind and kicked her right in that pretty little ass of hers. I mean I kicked her good, mister, with a size ten cowboy boot. She fell to the floor and started sobbing, like she always does, but I didn’t give a shit. I was hungry, and I was pissed about having to cook my own supper while she was out gallivanting around. Do you blame me? I walked on back to the kitchen and tended to the pork chops I had frying on the stove, and a few minutes later here she comes. She pulls a knife out of the cutlery block on the countertop—not just any knife, but the big-ass carving knife from hell—and she says, ‘Willy, this is the last time, you son of a bitch. Get out of my house, or I swear I’m going to cut your balls off.’ She called me a son of a bitch. Can you imagine that? I told her to go fuck herself. I told her this ain’t her house, it’s my house, and if anyone’s going to be getting out, it’s going to be her. I swear, mister, she came at me with that knife, and if I hadn’t done something, I do believe she would have killed me with it. I had to defend myself, you know?”

  “What did you do?” I said.

  I was shivering all over. Going into shock. Dying. I couldn’t believe that this idiot’s muffled voice was going to be the last thing I heard before drifting into oblivion.

  “What did I do?” he said. “I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I grabbed the skillet by the handle and slung hot grease on her legs. I could have gone for her face, you know, but that would have been cruel. So I slung the hot grease on her, and she just stood there looking stupid for a second. Then she dropped the knife and ran into the bathroom and started running cold water on her feet and lower legs where I’d burnt her. I told her I was sorry, but she called the cops anyway. Bitch. When they came, she denied ever coming at me with that knife. Lied through her teeth. They arrested me, and an ambulance came and took her to the hospital. I got the shitty end of the stick, as usual. They should have arrested her. It was obviously a case of self-defense, and that’s the plea we’re going to trial with. Not. Fucking. Guilty.”

  “So you’re out on bail?” I said.

  “Fucking A. At first, I thought I was going to be in the hoosegow for the duration, but my lawyer finally got me a hearing. Mama posted it, bless her heart. Otherwise, I’d still be in that shithole.”

  “So what are you doing here now?” I said. “Why did you come here with a gun?”

  “Just to talk. That’s all. I never expected to have to use the gun, but my emotions got the best of me when I saw you standing by the window. My window, in my bedroom, by the bed I should be sleeping in and making love to my wife in. You should be ashamed of yourself, mister. Jet is a married woman.”

  I didn’t waste my breath trying to deny his accusations again. It was useless. He had his mind made up that I was this Jet person’s lover, and there was nothing I could say to make him think otherwise. He’d already polished off half the vodka. He was drunk and trigger-happy and I didn’t want to antagonize him into firing that damn pistol again.

  Di thought she had covered all the bases, but who could have guessed that the homeowner’s estranged husband would get out of jail and show up with a gun just in time to prevent me from walking away from the mission unscathed? It was an utterly unpredictable contingency, a coincidence of the highest order, about as likely as the house being struck by an asteroid.

  Yet here he was.

  And here I was.

  The pain had subsided, but my stomach kept roiling and lurching and trying to work its way up to my throat. Willy drank some more vodka. He was staring into space now, deep in thought.

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard guitar music. Terry Vine. Why didn’t he come and rescue me? Surely he’d heard the gunshots.

  But of course he couldn’t come and rescue me, because he was only a figment of my imagination. Was that right? Could that be true? Was I really a nutjob? Would my mind ever be right again?

  The music stopped. A hush fell over the room as I faded in and out of consciousness. This is it, I thought. This is where old Nicholas Colt catches the express train to glory.

  Then I heard Terry again.

  And then it was quiet again.

  And then I heard a car door slam.

  My mouth was dry, my body cold. My chest felt as though someone had parked a rhinoceros on it.

  The front door opened, and two women walked in. My vision was blurry, and I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought one of them might be my wife.

  Willy got up and pointed the gun at them.

  “Come on in, ladies,” he said. “The party’s just getting started.”

  I thought I heard Juliet say, “Nicholas, is that you?”

  I didn’t answer. It was another hallucination. Had to be.

  “What do you want, Willy?” the other woman said.

  I assumed the woman standing beside my hallucination was Jet. Maybe she was even real.

  “I want you to get your ass over here like I told you to,” Willy said.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “But I am here, so now you’re going to have to deal with me.”

  “I’m not scared of you,” Jet said.

  Willy aimed the pistol a couple of feet from the doorway and squeezed off a round. Once again, the thunderous BOOM rattled me to the core. The two women screamed and cowered back and huddled together against the door.

  “Did that get your attention?” Willy said. “Next one goes in your leg. Now get over here and sit the fuck down like I told you to.”

  The women came and sat on the couch, Jet on the far end and Juliet in the middle next to me.

  Juliet leaned over and whispered, her voice quivering between sobs: “Nicholas, I’m so scared. What’s going on here? We need to get you to a hospital.”

  I ignored her. I refused to give in to my diseased mind.

  “What do you want?” Jet said to Willy.

  “I want to know why you’ve been fucking Mr. Crossbow here. Me and you are still married, in case you forgot.”

  “I’m working on getting that changed. And for your information, I haven’t been fucking anyone. I’ve never even seen this guy before.”

  “Don’t lie to me, bitch. What’s he doing walking in and out of this house like he owns the damn place, then?”

  “I’m telling you, Willy, I’ve never seen him before. Why can’t you believe me? But even if I
was fucking him, it would be none of your business. I’ve been through with you since the night you did this.”

  Jet pointed to the gauze bandages wrapped around her legs.

  “I told you I was sorry about that,” Willy said. “What else you want me to do?”

  “I want you to get out of my life. Forever. I want you to get up and walk out of here right now and never come back. I hate you, and I’m going to keep hating you until you’re dead. Is that clear enough?”

  “You don’t mean that,” Willy said.

  “I do mean it. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  Willy took a swig of vodka. His expression went from ornery to somber.

  “But I love you, baby,” he said. “You’re all I got. If you don’t want me anymore, then there’s really no reason for me to go on living. I might as well blow my own brains out.”

  “Do me a favor,” Jet said. “Go outside and do it. This is new carpet, and I just painted the walls last month.”

  Willy laughed. “You won’t have to worry about any of that, because I ain’t going out alone. If I can’t have you, nobody’s going to have you. Especially Mr. Crossbow here. Before I eat this pistol, I’m going to pick every one of you motherfuckers off like ducks in a shooting gallery.”

  “She didn’t mean it,” I said. “I’m sure y’all can work this out. There’s no reason for anyone to die today. I’m begging you, Willy. Please. Call an ambulance. I’ll tell them the shooting was an accident.”

  Juliet had her face against my arm. She was crying uncontrollably now. I could actually feel the warmth and wetness of her tears.

  “Oh, I most certainly did mean it,” Jet said. “I meant every word of it. Willy, the day you threw hot grease on me and scarred me for life, I vowed to never take any shit from you again. I vowed to never be afraid of you, to never trust you, and to never allow you to hurt me in any fucking way. Now, you can go ahead and shoot me if you—”