Without a shirt and wearing a thin layer of sweat, muscle definition and veins were plainly evident, as if the man had just finished working out in the minutes before his arrival.
Where or how that could have happened, Creel didn’t feign to know, not particularly interested in the man’s fitness regimen.
Jerking his head up from the weapon he was cleaning once again, Pyle asked, “You have him?”
As he delivered the question, a gleam that looked almost ravenous settled on his features, a vulture eager for his next meal.
Having witnessed what the man did to Jessup Lynch, it was a look almost enough to make Creel’s stomach turn.
“No,” Creel replied. “God damn media showed up at the exact same time.”
Setting the gun down, Pyle leaned back in his chair. Tilting his chin toward the ceiling, the hollows of his collarbones growing more pronounced, he dug at the stubble growing along his throat.
“The media? Did you...?”
“No,” Creel said. “Baxter.”
Finishing his scratching, Pyle lowered his chin back to square. “Huh. Where is Scarberry now?”
Opting against answering just yet, Creel pulled out the chair before him. Settling himself down into it, he rested both elbows on the table, measuring up Pyle square.
In the business that he and Baxter worked in, the community was actually quite small. There were only so many people that did what they did, the number able to be counted on both hands, less than that if one was considering only major players.
Even in a place as gun crazy as Georgia, there was only so much demand to go around.
Especially when most people could just walk into Wal-Mart and snatch up most anything they wanted these days.
As such, Creel had a pretty good hold on who was who, on a first name basis with everybody worth knowing.
Not once had he ever heard of, let alone encountered, Elijah Pyle.
Yet still, Baxter insisted on his presence.
A few years older than Creel, he clearly had some experience, some skills that lent themselves to being a veteran of the life, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Just like the young men currently being fed out as bait, someone looking the part and actually having the ability to handle themselves were two vastly different things.
“Who is E?” Creel asked.
If Pyle was surprised in the slightest at getting the question, he didn’t let it show, his only response being a slight raise of his eyebrows.
“You really want to have this conversation right now?”
“I really wanted to have it a few hours ago, but we got cut off,” Creel replied.
There was no immediate response to that, the two sides sitting and staring at one another, each measuring their adversary.
For the first days of their tenuous partnership, it had been pretty easy to maintain distance. They were two professionals brought together for a job, bought and paid for by a trusted source.
Now, as things were evolving a bit, the definition of their interaction was shifting with it.
“How long you been with Baxter?” Pyle asked.
Feeling vitriol well within him, Creel snapped, “You asked me that already.”
“And remind me what you said,” Pyle countered, his voice not rising, his features intimating he was almost enjoying the back and forth.
His molars grinding slightly, Creel could feel his heart rate increasing, spite rising.
“Two years.”
“Two years,” Pyle said. Nodding, he pursed his lips a bit, adding, “So you don’t know a damn thing then, do you?”
All eight of Creel’s fingers curled back, his nails digging into his palms as he stared across the table.
“About what?”
“About how things used to be round here,” Pyle replied. “What, you think an operation that large got there by hiding in a warehouse out in the woods? That Vic was the man that built this empire?”
Having never thought much about either question, or having the slightest clue where they were meant to lead to, Creel remained silent, sitting and staring.
“E is Eric Baxter,” Pyle replied. “The older brother. The smart one of the family. The guy who based things on the western edge of Atlanta, where the real money was at.”
Only a time or two had Creel heard the name Eric Baxter, someone that was alluded to and nothing more.
Why he was E, how Pyle fit in with him, he still hadn’t the slightest idea.
Leaning forward, Pyle braced his upper body against the table, matching Creel’s pose as he lowered his voice. “The one that got sent to prison, leaving the whole damn thing to Vic, who promptly turned tail and ran away.”
As he spoke, hints of bitterness, resentment, crept into his words, bleeding across his face.
For a moment, neither side said a word, sitting and staring, each searching the other for some visible response.
“Jesus, you’ve never heard a word of this, have you?”
Defensiveness crept up inside Creel. “I’m not from around here. No reason for me to have followed this backwoods bullshit.”
“Backwoods bullshit,” Pyle repeated, his eyebrows rising as he pushed himself back a few inches. Taking his gun up from the table, he began again with his cleaning rag, his gaze averted. “You just whore yourself out to the highest bidder, cash the checks with a clear conscience. That it?”
Tendons and striated muscle bulged in Creel’s lower arms as he sat, upper body clenched, wanting nothing more than to fly across the table. To pin Pyle’s condescending self to the wall and wail with everything he had.
If not for the order issued from Baxter and the weapon in Pyle’s hand, he would do just that.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing here?” Creel countered.
Casting a glance upward, Pyle smirked before returning his attention to the gun. “Not hardly.”
Continuing to work on the weapon, wiping at dust that didn’t exist, he added, “I’m here because before Vic ran this place into the ground, Eric was in charge. And before they hired you to handle shit, they had me to do it.”
Fireworks seemed to ignite in Creel’s mind as he remained silent, bits of information accumulated through the years lining up, snapping into place.
“I’m here because I have a score to settle. And because I made a promise years ago that when the time was right, I would return to make sure things got done the way they needed to.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
The air conditioning was still running, but with the passenger and rear windows gone, it did little beyond pushing out a loud and persistent rattle. Reaching out, I turned the blower off, the machinery falling quiet, the only sound the engine still puttering as we sat in the middle of the street staring at one another.
“You alright?” I asked.
Much like my exposed arms and shoulders, I could see a few of the glass shards from the window had gotten to the backs of her hands. One had even managed a nick on her left cheek, a single stripe of blood moving south down her smooth brown skin.
Seated with the microphone still in hand, the other with a death grip on the steering wheel, Lou managed a nod.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
Having served two tours overseas, the sound of gunfire wasn’t one I was unfamiliar with.
Later tonight – if I got that far – it would probably bring back some unwanted visuals, sights and sounds and even smells that would make finding sleep difficult.
At the moment, all it had managed to do was shove a bit of adrenaline into my system, my nerves all firing, my focus as high as it had been in ages.
No way I make that shot on the guy above the hood otherwise.
For Lou, this was probably the first time she’d ever been in a shootout or a high-speed chase, much less on the receiving end of both. I could tell from the quasi-glazed look on her face, from the shallow breaths barely moving her chest, that a bit of minor shock was setting in.
Soon, her hands might even begin to tremble, her body working through the trauma.
“Who the hell was that?” she whispered.
Shaking my head slightly, I said, “I don’t know.”
It wasn’t hard to make a quick determination that they probably worked for Baxter, the timing of us leaving the cabin and them showing up too much to be a coincidence. More than likely, they’d had me the instant I walked into the cabin, the presence of the media being what kept them at bay.
Shifting her attention down to the receiver in her hand, Lou extended it slowly, returning it to the hook alongside the radio. Rotating her hand back toward herself, she examined the back of it, looking at the thin red lines snaking across it, the tiny particles of glass sticking up at random intervals.
“All that stuff you said,” she whispered. “I thought it was bullshit. Somebody trying to make up a big story to hide that he’d ran off years ago, was back now breaking in someplace he shouldn’t have been.”
I knew it was just the shock talking, lowering her inhibitions, causing her to push out words she would never have otherwise.
I also knew that while it lowered the veil, it didn’t create ideas that weren’t already there.
“That’s probably what I would think if I were you, too,” I whispered.
To that, I did manage to get a half smile, the closest thing to interaction we’d had in a few moments.
On the road ahead, a flash of light drew my gaze upward, the sun moving across the windshield of an approaching car. Reaching out, I tugged the steering wheel over to the side.
“Lou, let up on the gas a little bit.”
Not trying to fight me in the slightest, she did as I asked, the Bronco moving over toward the shoulder. Once we were in position, she pressed the brake again, merely watching as I shifted into park.
Outside, the car idled slowly past, a family of four piled into a station wagon, gear stowed on top with bungee cords, all staring our way as they moved by.
Raising a hand, I offered a perfunctory wave in return, none of them returning the gesture as they inched past and continued on down the road.
“I have to get back to the station,” Lou whispered.
The words I had been waiting for, knowing they were my cue to go, I asked, “You sure you’re okay to drive?”
Shifting her eyes up to me, she only nodded.
If ever I was going to have a chance to slip away, this had to be it.
“The damage was all cosmetic,” I said, opening the glove compartment before me and rifling through it. Finding what I needed stowed at the bottom, I scribbled down the license plate number of the truck that had just attacked us.
Folding it in half, I held it up for Lou to see before tucking it into an empty cup in the console between us.
“The engine is fine, will get you back to the Sheriff’s Office. When you get there, run this number.”
Without waiting for a response of any kind, I returned the Beretta to the bag, zipping the top closed. Snatching it up from the floorboard, I shoved the door open and stepped out, slinging it over my shoulder as I went.
Chapter Fifty
Vic Baxter had been born and raised in Georgia, a birthright he took no small amount of pride in. The only time he had left for any period of time was his freshman year of college, which he had foolishly convinced himself he needed to go somewhere up north to attend.
While living not far from Atlanta, he wanted to see what the northern big cities were like. Wanted to try new foods, get beyond the rather homogenous blend of people that was the South in the eighties.
Even wanted to experience snow and cold weather.
All in all, it was a disaster that had lasted exactly one year.
Wouldn’t have made it even that far if not for the deal he had struck with his parents before going, the elder Baxters knowing he wouldn’t like it, but requiring he commit to at least his freshman year before plunking down a single nickel.
It had been miserable, cold and windy, and lacking for any of the basic trappings of home.
A mistake he now sought to remedy every chance he got.
Perched on the second-floor office of the warehouse, Baxter sat with a barbecue pulled pork sandwich before him, globs of sauce and coleslaw oozing out the sides, dotting the paper it was spread on.
Beside it was a paper cup of sweet tea, condensation dripping down the side, a serving of peach cobbler perched opposite.
Seated beneath his framed University of Georgia degree, Baxter attacked the same meal with aplomb every afternoon, this one coming a few hours later than he would have preferred, but still coming just the same.
Just as it would the next day.
And the one after that.
In the background, the radio spat out the latest Thomas Rhett song – some tune about breakups and apologies and all the usual tropes of country music – the volume just loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the floor below.
Another day overseeing his empire, another day where almost everything was exactly as it should be.
The decision to send the trio of boys over that morning had been on a whim, just as had been the choice to call the press the night before. After years of having this hanging over his head, of having nobody to help run things, of overseeing something he was never that certain he wanted to do for life, he was starting to wear thin.
Time was coming up short.
It needed to end soon.
Taking up the sandwich in both hands, the bread just slightly soggy from the sauce slathered on it, Baxter got it halfway to his mouth before being stopped, the phone buzzing on his desk.
Looking from his lunch, just inches from his nose, the smell so strong it practically begged to be eaten, to the phone, Baxter’s first thought was to let it go. To shove it aside, perhaps return it in a half hour.
A single glance at the name on the screen before him pushed that from mind though, the sandwich returning to the paper in short order.
Wiping his hands on a paper napkin, Baxter shoved himself backward, the wheels of his chair making it just shy of the radio, close enough he was able to kill the sound.
Returning to his desk, he snatched up the phone, pressing it tight to his face.
“Vic Baxter.”
“I know who it is,” Julian Rothman snapped. “I’m the one that called you, remember?”
One of the few people alive that would even consider opening a conversation in such a way, Baxter let it slide.
Much like Elijah Pyle, Rothman was one of Eric’s guys.
And Eric’s guys were never to be touched.
“Hey, Julian, how are you?” Baxter asked, feigning a slight bit of interest.
“I’m forty pounds overweight and I’ve got a bunion the size of Rhode Island,” Rothman replied. “How the hell are you?”
Eschewing any response to the first part of what Rothman had said, Baxter nodded, determined to continue playing the game.
Just a few more days. Even less, if things went the way they should.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I wasn’t really asking,” Rothman snapped. “Christ, no wonder Eric was always considered the brains of the operation.”
Setting his jaw, Baxter rose from his chair. Walking over to the window, he looked down at the plant below working with complete precision.
A plant he had put together, workers he had vetted and brought in.
Six years later, people were still acting like Eric was the only one that could get anything done.
How quickly they seemed to forget he was the one that had allowed himself to get sent away to prison.
“I assume you’re calling for a status update,” Baxter said, all pretension of collegiality bleeding from his voice.
“Hey,” Rothman said, drawing the word out several syllables. “Now we’re starting to get somewhere. Tell me, are we getting anywhere?”
His nostrils flaring slightly, Baxter pushed out a breath. “Yes. Just this
morning-“
“Ay ay ay ay,” Rothman rattled off, stopping him mid-sentence. “I don’t need details. If you tell me something illegal, I’m bound by all kinds of laws to disclose it.
“I know breaking laws isn’t that a big a deal to guys like you, but I’d rather keep my lily-white ass out of prison if I can help it.”
Not wanting to comment on Rothman’s ass, or what would happen to it if he were incarcerated, Baxter continued to stare, his features hard, his appetite long past.
“There is movement,” he managed, shoving the words out through gritted teeth. “Enough that a change in status by the end of the week isn’t out of the question.”
“End of the week,” Rothman repeated, the previous hostility seeping out of his voice. “Well, it is about damn time.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Some would call it shock. Others, detachment. More still might even go as far as to call it some form of euphoria.
Whatever it was that had gripped Talula Davis in the moments after the encounter on the roadway, it was now gone. In its place was an elixir of emotions, a potent combination of things pointed in a handful of directions, all aching to be unleashed.
Anger at the three young men in the yellow pickup truck. Three bastards from a different state, people she had never even laid eyes on, let alone met, that had purposely aimed the front of their rig at hers and tried to end her life.
Had taken it a step further, opening fire, when that hadn’t worked.
Confusion at Tim Scarberry, his sudden arrival and disappearance both leaving her a bit off-balance. The fantastical tale he wove in the middle sounding like the stuff of a mediocre novel, something that she still couldn’t tell if was more fiction or fact.
Likely wouldn’t be able to unravel for some time yet.
Frustration with herself, both for allowing Scarberry’s arrival to cloud her thoughts and actions a bit, for not stopping him as he stepped out of her truck and disappeared into the woods.
Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic Page 18