Mark for Blood (Mason Dixon Thrillers Book 1)

by Nick Thacker

  We were in this together, and if he didn’t fund it, no one would.

  So I had thirty grand at my disposal, and I figured half would be a good stock for taking care of business — the other business — and the other half I’d split between fixing my ride and finding Hannah. I knew what they wanted, so I needed to also figure out how to get them off of it and get Hannah out alive, or else get Hannah away from it all and let the feds sort through the details.

  I couldn’t call my contact, that much was clear. My old friend was in over his head as much as I was, and he would be actively looking for a CYA-grade scapegoat. There was no way I was calling him and filling him in on details. I figured if he was good at his job he’d figure things out eventually and swoop in to save the day or blow it all up and we’d be no better or worse off for it.

  Which meant I was pretty much on my own. Joey was good for some grunt work, but for that to be useful I had to have grunts for him to deal with and I had to know what I wanted him to do. I was flying blind, driving his car and heading into unknown territory.

  But I was stubborn, and I was pissed. I had already decided what I would do, I just needed the catalyst. The moment of realization that came with a revelation. Something that would zap into my mind at exactly the right time until I knew what I was supposed to do.

  Most people have no idea what to do in a situation like this, because they haven’t been trained to deal with high pressure. They hesitate, they wait, they let others make the calls for them. They don’t let their instincts drive them, and if they do their instincts lead them to try things they’re not qualified to try.

  But I am qualified. I’ve been trained, I’ve had practice, and I have that weird and unique combination of I-believe-I’m-right and I-don’t-give-a-shit to make the practice stick. So being pissed, having a target, and knowing that I could do whatever the hell I wanted to do to them made me somewhat of a dangerous fool to mess with.

  The problem, of course, was that I didn’t know exactly where this target was. I could hit it, that was certain, but I needed to see it first.

  32

  I CALLED AS I DROVE. I headed up 174 to 17, planning on taking it across to 21, then down all the way to the end at Hunting Island. Hannah had mentioned her old place was right across the river from Harbor Island on the northern tip. I knew Harbor Island well, as I’d spent some time at the tavern there that supplied the work crews their booze. The northern tip of Harbor Island was mostly yacht owners and condominiums. The work crews were constantly busy tearing apart the old condos and redoing them for the new owners, in an endless and vicious cycle.

  By my calculations, the house I was looking for would be visible just after the bridge over Johnson Creek. There was nothing else there, and the tip of the island wasn’t very big.

  I lifted the phone up in front of me and dialed the number I’d memorized as I drove. I picked up speed, feeling the intensity and adrenaline growing inside me.

  It rang. Three times, and then it clicked onto a connection. The sound of static hit my ear, light, but I could tell there was a human on the other end.

  I waited.

  She started talking after a few more seconds. Scared, disturbed, losing her mind. Crying, of course. “Mason, is that — is that you?”

  My nostrils flared, and I clenched the phone tighter in my hand. “Hannah,” I said. “Are you —“

  I could sense the phone on the other end being ripped away from her ear. She squealed, a quiet, compliant sound, not quite a scream. Then a grunt as something of force hit her.

  “Listen up, you son of a —“

  “I believe you are no longer in a position to negotiate,” a new voice said, calmly, into my ear. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I seethed for a moment.

  “Are you still there, Dixon? I hope so. We have been waiting, impatiently, for your call. I’m glad you found the number.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We are a little bit past that, are we not? This is about business, plain and simple. Hannah’s business, as she is now the sole living owner of the company.”

  Hannah wailed in the background, then she stopped suddenly. I winced, knowing why.

  “Oh,” the voice said. “I did forget to mention that to the lovely lady. Sorry. Mr. Dixon, why don’t you fill her in on the details? One second.”

  I heard the clicking sound of the man fumbling with the phone, then the static increased and expanded — I was now on speakerphone on the other end, about to talk to the entire room.

  “There. Hannah, can you let Mr. Dixon know you are able to hear him?”

  She whimpered in the background.

  “Hannah,” I said. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

  “There will be time for catching up later. Soon, actually. For now, I need you to do what I’ve asked. Won’t you tell Hannah how her brother is doing?”

  I shook my head, not even caring that they couldn’t see it.

  “Be a good sport about it, my friend. There’s really nothing you can do about him now. In fact, it will probably be, what, four or five days — at least — before anyone thinks to check for him? Wait, that’s not right, is it? The funeral, of course, will happen Sunday. Today is, what, Thursday? So that narrows it down a bit. They’ll be looking for him, starting rather soon. And we don’t want to keep Hannah for that long. I’d feel much more comfortable to have this niggling little problem resolved, say, by Saturday evening.”

  “What do you want?” I asked again.

  “I want you to tell Hannah how her brother is doing.”

  “She already knows you killed him.”

  I couldn’t hear Hannah’s response, but I could assume she was sitting there, wherever she was, shaking. With fury, with pain, with fear.

  “Care to share the details?” the man asked.

  “Not so much.”

  “Fine. We’ll just have to share the pictures with her. Cell phones these days are quite miraculous, are they not? I can store hundreds of photos in here. I wonder how many more scenes need to be photographed before I’m out of memory?”

  I clenched my teeth. Raged, internally, knowing that I couldn’t do a damn thing from inside the car.

  “What do you really want?”

  “You really are dense, aren’t you? I want the business. Plain and simple. That’s what it was always about. Thanks to a competitor, I assume, the old man himself has been taken care of. No one believes it was a suicide. Either way, it made my job that much easier.”

  “You have the business. She’s sitting right there. What’s stopping you?”

  “Yes, she is right here. Waiting patiently for your arrival, as am I. You see, I convinced her to sign her name on whatever documents I put in front of her within the first hour of her stay. It didn’t take much negotiation, but then again I’m not surprised. I’m a fantastic negotiator.”

  I heard Hannah try to scream something in the background, but then she was quickly silenced to a whimper.

  “So you have what you want now. Let her go.”

  I turned onto 17 and started the next leg of the journey. The road was silent, quiet except for a few trucks bundling through their route. I sped up, letting Joey’s car shake a bit then settle in around ninety-five.

  “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t have the business, actually. Something like this is a bit tricky, as I’m sure you know. This business is a little… nuanced. So a written document won’t do much good getting me what I really want. I need the transfer codes.

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I played along anyway.

  “I have them. But they’re not written down, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So I’m going to come to you in person, and give them to you. Then I’ll take Hannah back, and then I’ll kill you. See, win-win-win.”

  The voice laughed. “Well, that is some plan you’ve worked out. But I can’t have loose ends in my business, you understand. You know all about t
hat, don’t you? Eliminating loose ends?”

  “I do, actually. You’re one of them.”

  “Well, the feeling is mutual. And I can’t wait to discuss it with you in person.”

  The connection terminated, and I stared down at the phone for a few seconds.

  A few thoughts raced through my mind. First, I needed to get to Hannah. I was terrified about what the man had said. If he’d just wanted to get the company, and he was telling the truth and Hannah had in fact signed it away, then why was she still there? Why didn’t she have these ‘transfer codes’ this guy needed? And if she didn’t, why was she still alive? The answers I could come up with were not something I wanted to ponder at the moment. Second, he was confident that I wouldn’t bring the cops or anyone else into it. That meant Hannah had told him, at least a little bit, about who I was. Or — and I was hoping it was this — she’d told him I was the guy who could get him his transfer codes. She’d know I didn’t have them, but it would bring me to her.

  But there was another problem. One I hadn’t expected. It hit me like a truck heading the opposite direction had just smashed into me head-on.

  He had said that someone else had taken out her father. I knew that, and he knew that. But he’d said it had only helped things along. It had helped make the hostile takeover far more achievable.

  My father had been the one to do it.

  So it meant that he had inadvertently helped them get to Hannah.

  33

  I CALLED JOEY AS I got close to the bridge connecting St. Helena Island with Harbor Island. It was a longer bridge than the one between Harbor and Hunting, but more importantly it was still far enough away from my destination that I could take the time to talk for a bit before having to really put my guard up.

  “How are things?” I asked.

  “Good, nothing out of the ordinary. Why? You only ask me that when you’re stressed.”

  “I’m a little stressed, yeah.”

  “Hannah?”

  “They have her. Got to her brother, too. And Marley.”

  “Old man Marley?” he asked. “Why? He was a good guy.”

  “He was in their way. That’s all it was to them, Joey. I’m on my way to Hannah’s father’s house, out on Hunting Island.”

  He sounded confused about it when he made me repeat it. I told him I’d been surprised also, but apparently the man was connected in high places and had been able to acquire some land out there. Only house on the island, I told him.

  “What’s the move? This ain’t really our thing, boss.”

  I nodded, then confirmed. “Yeah, I know. It’s not, and there’s a reason for that. I’m no Rambo, and I don’t want to be. But Hannah…”

  I wasn’t sure what it was about Hannah. I’m not even sure it was about Hannah. It was likely just the entire thing, the injustice of it all. I wasn’t about to let them get away with it. They’d just gone the extra mile and really pissed me off by grabbing her.

  “It’s not about Hannah,” Joey said, softly. “You know it’s not.”

  The kid could read my mind. “No, Joey, it’s not. But it certainly doesn’t help that they have her.”

  “Okay, well, we’re in it. You and me both, you hear? So don’t go playing hero. I can help.”

  “It’ll look more suspicious if we shut down the bar for no reason on a Friday night.”

  “I can come up with something. We have before.”

  I sniffed, thinking. “No, too risky. I’m just going out here to scope things out. I’m not prepared to get into any skirmishes. In and out, and I’ll be back in three hours.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  “Please do,” I said. “If I’m not back in three, let the cops know. It won’t be a missing persons until tomorrow, but it’ll help.”

  I knew he’d ignore the request and just come down here and try to find me himself, but I needed to at least pretend plausible deniability.

  “You got it, boss,” Joey said. “Take care of yourself.”

  I paused, thinking about the request. “You know, Joey, I’m not sure I’ve ever understood what that means.”

  I hung up, turning my focus again to the road. The bridge stretched out in front of me, and I could see the lights of the condominiums and their clubhouses far away to the north, out my driver’s side window. There was a gas station just off the road, near the tavern, so I pulled off to fill up and plan my next move.

  It was difficult not to just rush in, guns blazing, but it would be the wrong move. First, there was the simple fact that I didn’t have guns to blaze. I had a small cache at my apartment, mostly collectible items but a few useful pieces of inventory, and I usually kept an extra 9mm at the bar. Joey didn’t even know about it, or at least he hadn’t told me yet that he knew about it.

  Besides the issue of armament, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to rush in and start a fight with more than one bad guy while they had a hostage. It never seemed to be a smart move in the movies, so it sure as hell wasn’t a smart move in real life. I’d been in a few scrapes and scuffles in my life, and I knew I could handle myself in a two- or three-on-one situation, but that was when it was a fair fight. No guns, no hostages, not many other unknowns.

  I was heading into a place I didn’t even know existed, and they would certainly be armed.

  I filled the tank and took stock of my situation. Right now was not the time for a bold, careless attack. I needed to play defense first. They were ready for defense, which meant I had to figure out how to turn the tables on them. Only if I couldn’t lure them out and fight them on my own terms would I even consider an offensive strategy.

  Even before offense or defense, though, I knew I needed reconnaissance. I needed to know what I was up against, and how many. That was the purpose of my trip today. To explore and learn the territory. Find this mansion and determine the best way to proceed.

  I was confident the mansion was where they were keeping Hannah. It had to be a place her father did his business, as they would want to have access to whatever files they needed, and it would be close to where they’d abducted her. Plus, there probably wouldn’t be anyone —

  Crap. I realized my mistake as soon as I’d started down that line of reasoning. I hung up the gas nozzle and hopped back into the car and fired it up. Of course there would be people around, I thought. There’s a funeral there on Sunday. Just over two days. I had no idea if funerals required setup more than a day beforehand. If so, there would be people around, milling about and cleaning things, I was sure. A mansion isn’t really worth showing off unless it’s in order. And there would probably be family and friends and business acquaintances of the old man all there, ready and waiting to pay their respects.

  Hannah had told me that they were heading to Hunting Island for a funeral — her father’s. The only building I knew of on the island besides those of the park was his mansion. That meant the funeral would take place at or near the house itself, and that meant — I assumed — there would be people around today.

  I slammed my hand against the steering wheel in frustration. There was no way Hannah’s abductors would be stupid enough to take her to the house with all those people descending upon it soon. I had based the entire plan — the stakeout, the waiting, the careful maneuvering, the attack itself — on the fact that I knew she was somewhere on Hunting Island, inside her old house.

  But if she wasn’t in the mansion, I was screwed. I had no other ideas. The man whom I’m spoken to hadn’t even cared to tell me where he would be waiting for me. He’d assumed I’d already known. It had probably led to my subconscious assumption that she was, in fact, at the house.

  I drove slower, winding around the area just past the bridge connecting St. Helena with the much smaller Harbor Island. The lights at the northern tip of the island from the Harbor Island Beach and Racquet Club twinkled in my peripheral vision, dancing left and right as the car swayed, beckoning me in. To relax, throw back a few drinks, and take it easy. It was a nice lif
e if you could get it, and every now and then I got someone in my place who could get it. They would come in with a hesitant swagger, a confidence that they tried to hide with an air of curiosity. A physical manifestation of the thought, ‘I wonder how the poor people live.’

  I’d never had a huge desire to find out how anyone else’s cards were stacked, as I was always so focused on improving my own deck. It wasn’t a zero-sum game to me, and I could be just as happy with a half-paid-off bar and run-down apartment as a guy who owned a mansion on one island but a condo on the next one over.

  Or so I thought.

  Part of my outlook was based on the fact that I truly had never known what it was like to have the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, so it was easy to rail against that vision and feign interest in reality. But a portion of my mind always wandered when I came around places like the one I was passing now. It nagged at me, pulling me in like the lights, gently nudging my psyche into wondering if there really was more.

  I snapped back to the present and focused on the road. I drove for a minute and saw the tavern on my left, the restaurant and bar I’d spent some time in. The owner was a nice guy, a connoisseur of Irish whiskey, and we’d spent a few hours at the beginning of my career talking out what it was like to own a bar.

  After the tavern there wasn’t much left of the island except a low marshy area before the bridge started up again, this time connecting Harbor with Hunting. I saw the road narrow as it was squeezed between the grates of the bridge, but it wasn’t the bridge or road I was focusing on. Instead, I noticed a flash of bright against the unnatural sheen of metal.

  A car, parked just out of my sightline, hidden behind a large shrub. I wouldn’t have seen it if its siding hadn’t caught on the light and glanced off the bridge into my eyes. I noticed it as I drove by and started over the bridge.