by Nick Thacker
Finally my right arm popped free, and just in time.
Mustache and the first fat guy had pretty much recovered and seemed to have gotten their wits about them once again, and I could see both of them reaching for their weapons.
I was closest to the guy I’d just punched three times, so I reached into his belt and felt around for the weapon, keeping his girth in front of me. He was easy to maneuver, as he was all but knocked out — still wobbling, but on his feet, trying to steady himself.
I got the pistol, tipped it back, and fired a quick shot, not even lifting the weapon out from under the guy’s coat. It was an odd dance, me grasping the man’s belt with one hand, holding a pistol and aiming out the back of his coat with the other, and kneeling on the floor.
But it worked. The other guy went down, and Mustache couldn’t get a shot off without hitting his own —
Mustache aimed and let off three rounds in quick succession, completely blowing up my theory. The man I was using as cover starting falling forward, toward me, just a huge, soft dead weight that would surely trap me beneath.
Unacceptable. I lunged sideways and got to the side of the bed just as the man fell with a heavy thud onto a beautiful old rug that lay at the foot of the massive bed.
Mustache had calculated the same way I had, decided it was far more worth it to kill me than to protect his own guy, and started shooting. I was in some deep shit, and now that shit had gained a new facet: they were going to kill us no matter the cost.
Great.
I was prone between the wall and the bed with enough room to roll over but not enough to actually hide. Mustache would be on me in seconds, and I would be toast.
I looked out the door to see if Joey was around. He hadn’t hit anything on his path out of the room, but I had really kicked the crap out of him. Two boots to the chest from a guy dead-set on kicking you as hard as he could really could do a number on you, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if Joey was just out cold for a spell. I wouldn’t have faulted him for it, but it would be really convenient if —
Joey was, in fact, awake. He entered the room again surprisingly similar to how he’d done it the first time, with a pistol at his back.
Rayburn was bleeding from the side of his head, but he otherwise seemed fine. Pissed, snarling, and ready to do some damage, but fine. He had a smattering of Joey’s hair in his hand, and Joey was holding his broken, mangled fingers delicately with his other hand.
Christ, I thought. This really can’t get any worse.
I sat up next to the bed, noticing that Mustache was tracking me with his eyes and his weapon, and stuck my hands up. I carefully dropped the weapon to the floor and kicked it over to Rayburn.
My hands went up again, this time resting behind my head. I shook my head slowly, trying to piece together some way out of this mess.
I was at a loss.
Joey’s face was contorted in pain, but he seemed to share my assessment of the situation. He shook his head slowly, in reply.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Rayburn said. “I’m not going to kill your friend here. Yet.”
He pushed Joey’s head down and then smacked him on the side of it, just above his ear, with the butt of his pistol. He forced Joey to his feet, the entire time staring directly at me.
“I am going to take both of you to where I am keeping Hannah. There we can discuss the rest of our time together. If it goes smoothly, I kill your friends quickly. If not…”
He reached in front of Joey and grabbed at his wrist. Joey’s eyes widened and he pulled away.
Rayburn smiled. “Such a simple procedure, but severely effective. No one wants to know what ten broken fingers looks like, do they? And certainly not ten broken fingers that have had a little time to heal.”
Mustache had walked over to the foot of the bed and motioned at me to start walking. I walked toward Joey and Rayburn and Mustache took a position behind me. Rayburn swung Joey around and marched him out the door.
“Thing is,” Rayburn said as we entered the hall, “I’m not going to give your friend the opportunity to let those fingers heal, because you can’t heal when you’re dead, can you? You ruined that, didn’t you, Mr. Dixon?”
52
THE MAN JOEY HAD SHOT in the hall was still there, staring up at me with his big, dead eyes and open mouth as we passed by. Rayburn didn’t even turn his head, and from what I could tell hardly seemed to notice. I couldn’t see Mustache’s reaction, but I figured it would be equally cold, especially after watching him shoot his own buddy to get to me.
Whatever these guys are after, it’s serious business, I thought.
Rayburn had told me he wanted the parts of Crimson Club that had true value. I knew it was really a way of saying he wanted the sleazy parts of the company, but I did believe those were the parts of the business that made the most money.
He thought I wanted the same thing, too, since I had been meddling with his team for a couple days now, and he had reason to believe I was the one who’d started the ball rolling in the first place, by taking out his brother.
And yet I still had no idea what to tell him. I’d bought time, taken out two more of his men, and had gotten the odds shaved down considerably to 2-on-2, assuming it was just Mustache and Rayburn himself left.
But I realized too that there might be someone else guarding Hannah, and Joey was probably out of commission with his hand in the shape it was in. So back to 2- or 3-on-1.
Not as good, but still better.
But I didn’t have a play. I didn’t know what I would do to make sure I could get both men down before one of them took out me, Hannah, or Joey, or all three. I was unarmed again, and the cards were continuing to stack against me.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Rayburn turned right at the large staircase and started pushing Joey down.
“Outside.”
I nodded. Okay, fair enough. He wanted to keep us in the dark. Another card in the deck stacked against me.
We made it through the foyer and into the downstairs hallway without being spotted, then into a large open room at the back of the house on the east side. It was dark and seemed to be unused, but there was a door leading outside at the rear end of the space.
Rayburn pushed Joey toward it and told him to pull the door open. Up close I could tell it was one of the small, ‘normal looking’ doors I’d seen from outside, one that led into some room of the lower level.
The daylight was blinding compared to the dark room, and we all took a second for our eyes to adjust. The gravel driveway and parking strip was directly in front of us, the grass of the lawn just beyond, and even farther away the beach began and met with the waves of the Atlantic.
There were still people around, but everyone seemed to be busy with something only they knew about. Heads were down and the only people walking around looked to be headed for a specific destination. No one was strolling casually through the grounds, no one was enjoying the scenery, and no one saw us.
I realized in that moment the genius of Rayburn’s plan. He was now one of the patriarchs of this family, if not the patriarch. I had no idea if he would come to own the mansion in light of his brother’s passing, but he certainly wouldn’t warrant any strange looks from anyone else around the estate — he would fit in as well as Hannah herself would.
Rayburn could move throughout the premises without being accosted, questioned, or even wondered about, and that meant no one would care about the four of us walking somewhere in broad daylight.
He pushed Joey outside and into the sun, and Mustache pushed me. There were three steps to descend before my feet hit the white gravel lot and the salty air hit my nose. I walked to the row of cars, turning to the left only when I saw Rayburn lead Joey that direction.
We stopped again at a pair of large golf carts, the gas-powered kinds you find at theme parks, chauffeuring people around who would rather burn money than calories. Rayburn shoved Joey into the driver’s seat, Mustache shoved me into our
s, and then they both fell into the passenger’s seats.
“Head down the path over there,” Rayburn said as he pointed to our left, northeast.
It was the same winding path that I had seen earlier, the one that led down to the boathouse and dock, with the Wassamassaw waiting behind it.
Joey fidgeted a bit as he tried to place his hands on the steering wheel without stressing his broken fingers, but he eventually gave up and decided to one-hand it. I nodded once at him as they passed, and I took up the back of the line.
Mustache’s pistol jabbed hard into my side, bruising a rib. I jumped a bit and scowled. “Listen, asshole, if we’re going to be this close, maybe you can tell me your name?”
He sniffed, looked out at the beach, then pressed the handgun harder into my side.
I slammed the wheel to the left and smashed the gas pedal, whipping Mustache around and almost out of the vehicle. He caught his balance as I righted the wheel and slowed back down, finding a bit of pleasure in his momentarily terrified face.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought I saw a squirrel.”
“Do that shit again and I put one through your side.”
“Where you’ve got that stick aiming, it’ll be just a flesh wound,” I retorted as I turned onto the path and headed down to the beach. “And that would really not make me happy.”
He seemed put off by this, but I found a little more pleasure once again as he tried to slide the pistol around my side, finally landing on a spot he apparently thought would be a good location for a kill shot.
We drove on for a few hundred feet, reaching the boathouse without passing anyone else. No one even looked our direction. I watched the back of Joey’s head as he parked and got out. Rayburn had his weapon trained on Joey, but he was watching me. I got out of the golf cart, not bothering to park it nicely up against Joey’s, and walked toward Rayburn. Mustache tracked me the whole time.
I kept my gaze steady, my nerves calm, and my steps even, but I suddenly felt weary. Old age or hard life, or a combination of both, but I was starting to feel like I was going to crack.
53
THE BOATHOUSE WAS MADE OF slatted wood paneling, interspersed with vertical strips of white painted metal. It didn’t match the house, but it wasn’t too far off. the designer had obviously chosen modern simplicity over trying to congeal the mansion and boathouse together into one unified look.
Rayburn saw me eyeing the house. “My brother designed it. This yacht was his little pet project. Started getting real interested in boats about ten or so years ago, but he rarely actually went out on the water. Just liked working from inside it.” He paused, as if realizing that he was shooting the breeze with the enemy, but then his face relaxed a bit and he continued. “It’s damn impressive, too. Wait until you see the office workspace he set up inside. You’d never guess you were floating.”
I remembered Hannah saying much the same back at the bar. Her father had a massive office in the house, she’d said, but he hardly ever worked from there later in his life. He’d preferred the calm rocking of the boat in the dredged spot on the water apparently, where he could be alone with his thoughts. Or away from the house. I wasn’t sure about the man’s motive, but if I had a yacht, I’d want to be working there a lot, too.
I got it. If you have a multimillion dollar yacht, you want to use it. Didn’t matter if he wasn’t much of a ‘boat guy,’ at least he was in there doing something.
We started walking toward the door on the side of the small boathouse, and I could see the Wassamassaw sticking out from behind it as we drew nearer. It was even more spectacular up close. I reveled in every detail of it, from the hand-carved solid wood railings to the single, large ocean kayak hanging on a mount just off the starboard side of the yacht.
The stern dipped down a steep vertical and jutted out again to form an entry deck on the back of the boat. A watertight door on that deck led somewhere into the bowels of the engine room. Just to the side of the deck on the long, shining starboard wall, was the single-word moniker.
Wassamassaw.
I stared at the word and the ship it had been inscribed upon for as long as our captors would allow. I took it in, breathing in the ocean spray and dreaming of a different life, one where I owned this thing and there was no one trying to kill me.
After a few seconds I felt Mustache’s pistol nudge me forward. We were standing just outside of a door into the boathouse, and I started walking toward it. Joey was there in front of me, and I let him and Rayburn pass and move inside.
The interior of the boathouse was sparse, but still held the same delicately planned, purposeful design. The slats of wood and metal shone and reflected the light bouncing off the water. The ‘house’ was actually a roof with three walls — the wall facing the ocean was completely missing, a widened and expanded dock in its place. A ramp rose from the dock to the starboard gate on the Wassamassaw.
Near the ramp a few plastic crates were stored, and on the opposite wall was a shelf, full of well-organized tools and supplies. A small chest freezer and a refrigerator sat on the wall opposite the Wassamassaw, and I could see a trash can full of empty beer boxes next to it.
At the very least they might offer me a beer, I thought.
Mustache and Rayburn pushed us up the ramp. Rayburn led, Joey just behind him, and I followed. Mustache waited on the dock with his handgun pointed at my ass the whole time. Again, nothing more than a flesh wound, but one that would really piss me off.
Stepping onto the deck was a surreal experience. I didn’t come from money, so this was the first time I’d been on a boat this size, and certainly the first time I’d been on one this nice. Everything was fancy — the handrail felt so smooth and polished, as if it had never seen a day of saltwater or sunshine. The windows were clean and set into the hull a bit, a line of matching wood stripping running the length and height of each to frame them out. And the deck itself was waxed and spotless, yet it still held the perfect amount of stick so I didn’t slip.
We were on the main deck, and from what I could tell there were three decks, not including a top-level, smaller sun deck.
“Damn,” Joey whispered, “this thing must be over a hundred feet long.”
“131 feet, actually,” Rayburn said. “A Pichiotti, built in the early nineties. Bought it brand-new through the company for about eight million, probably put another million into it. Twin Caterpillars, 650 horsepower.”
“So she’s fast?” I asked. I knew nothing about yachts. I didn’t even know if ‘fast’ was considered a selling point. Far as I was concerned, just sitting on this thing and not moving at all would be just fine.
“No idea,” Rayburn said. “Like I said, he rarely took it out. And I had never been on it.”
“Before just now?”
“Before…” Rayburn caught himself.
I got the message. I cocked an eyebrow, even though he couldn’t see my face. “So you brought her here,” I said. “She’s on the boat, now?”
“She’s… yes.”
“Let’s go. Now.”
All the fury of the past two days suddenly returned, and I no longer cared about the yacht. I no longer cared about the amazing view, the immaculate scenery surrounding me, and I no longer cared about trying to make small talk with these assholes to loosen them up.
“Rest assured, Hannah is fine,” Rayburn said. He walked beside me and started toward the front of the yacht. I could see a doorway leading to the interior and assumed it was going to be where the bridge and captain’s cabin was.
“My brother wouldn’t have allowed us on in these shoes,” Rayburn said, somewhat under his breath. “But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
He asked this in an accusatory way, and I began to respond. “I didn’t —”
I caught myself before I finished the sentence, not wanting to open a line of questioning that would get us in trouble. He didn’t need to know I hadn’t killed his brother, and he certainly didn’t need to know my fathe
r had.
As far as I could tell, he thought I had staged his brother’s suicide to get to his company, and that was the only card I had in my favor at this point. I didn’t want to reveal my hand and make this situation any worse than it already was.
We walked along the side of the massive yacht and finally into the doorway I’d seen before. Like the windows, the doorframe was lined with the dark mahogany trim, and the threshold was a polished brass-colored metal. It was made to be watertight, yet starkly beautiful. A line of cabinets stretched both directions from one corner of the long room, and a beautifully appointed full bar and counter had been set onto the wall just beneath the cabinets. The cabinets themselves were glass-front, offering a clear view at the gems within.
And gems they were. 15- and 18-year scotches, one Laphroag 25, even a fancy single-barrel Irish whiskey I’d never seen outside of specialized conventions. I probably focused on the cabinet a bit too long, but I couldn’t help myself. Rayburn — Hannah’s father — must have had a fantastic taste for fine whiskeys, something we would have shared had I known him.
I let my gaze drift all the way across the cabinets, allowing myself a final indulgence before I snapped back to reality. The bourbon selection in particular was quite nice, including a few Michter’s options, the obligatory Angel’s Envy Cask Strength, and a Booker’s overproof label I hadn’t tried yet but had heard was fantastic.
I pulled my eyes away from the elaborate bar setup, stepped inside, and felt the calm plush of the carpet subtly give way under my feet. White, to match the white-rock walkways and paths surrounding the mansion. The furniture was made of the same wood that trimmed out the boat, and it was all spaced perfectly in the room. Large, rounded leather chairs that looked like they belonged in an old-fashioned men’s smoking room provided the seating, and a matching couch sat along the opposite wall.
And there, on the couch, was Hannah.
54