“Yeah, dad?
“Johnny, call Lawson. Tell him I need to meet with him right away.” He looked back to Evelyn. “You better hope he isn’t dead.”
“Or what, De Luca? You going to hurt me, right here in front of the chief of police?”
Nero took two steps toward her and looked her dead in the eyes. “No, Evelyn, if Lawson doesn’t answer that phone, I’m going to kill you.”
14
“Evelyn Delaney,” the gunman had said. Lawson contemplated this as he crossed Las Vegas Boulevard on his way to the Flamingo Hotel. He had managed to walk into the elevator at Caesar’s just as security was on its way to investigate the gunshots in his room.
Hearing Evelyn’s name wasn’t a total shock. After all, she had been as responsible as anyone for him being sent to prison. However, hearing her name out of a man’s mouth who had been hired by her to kill him was a bit shocking. How deep does this thing run? The only reason someone in her position would get involved with killers for hire would be because she had a secret that she wanted to keep hidden. But as far as Lawson knew, she was just doing her job by pinning Lauren’s murder on him. Why would she want him dead?
It had always been suspicious to Lawson that she never uncovered anything that would exonerate him. If she had been good at her job at all, she would have seen that he had nothing to do with Lauren’s murder. But that is why Lawson had added her name to the list. He didn’t think she had direct involvement with putting him away, but now that she had tried to have him killed, he was going to have to rethink that stance.
Lawson walked into the lobby of the Flamingo and headed straight for the elevators. He got off on the second floor and found the ice machine/snack room. He opened the door, set his bag down beside the vending machine, and knelt down beside it. The door handle moved behind him, and he slammed his foot against the door, not allowing it to open. Through the fogged glass he could see the outline of a woman trying to enter.
“Hey, come on. I need some ice.” She knocked a couple more times. “Come on, let me in!”
Lawson just held his foot in place.
“Are you passed out in there?” The woman huffed, “Vegas.” And then she walked off.
Lawson squeezed in between the vending and ice machines. No small feat for a man his size. He reached as far back as he could and ran his fingers along the back wall. After a few inches, his hand found what he was searching for. Cassie had indeed taken care of him. He got back to his feet with the key to room 223 in his hand.
He heard a knock at the door again. “Hey, asshole.” It was the ice lady again. “I brought my boyfriend this time. I suggest you open the door so we can get some ice.”
God forbid princess doesn’t have ice in her vodka soda. Lawson picked up his bag and opened the door. When he did, both the woman and the man took two steps back. Lawson towered over them.
“We . . . we can come back,” the man said, looking up at Lawson.
Lawson took a step forward, and both of them backed up even farther. His cell phone began to ring. After another moment of holding the couple’s frightened glare, he turned and headed down the hallway toward his room. The two of them didn’t bother pushing the envelope. He was glad, because he didn’t need anyone else raising suspicion about his presence. He pulled his phone from his pocket, and the caller ID said Johnny De Luca. Lawson had other things on his mind at the moment, and another conversation with Junior wasn’t on his radar. He ignored the call and swapped the phone for the room key.
Lawson opened the door and immediately felt this room was more his speed. It was a much smaller square room, two queen beds, a dresser with a TV, and a small desk near the door. It felt more like home. He knew this was an odd thought, but it was true. He was used to confined. He set his duffel bag on the bed, and finally he had a chance to take another look at the notebook. He flipped through the pages to the very back. Back to the page that he’d spent hours staring at. Thousands of hours. The only thing on the page was a list of names. Five of them, to be exact. But it was the last name on the list that he had always felt guilty for writing.
Cassie Foster.
His partner and friend.
The first time he considered writing her name on his list of possible people who had tried to bury him, he immediately hit the floor and did another two hundred push-ups. Even he knew it was an outrageous thought. But sometimes all the mind needs is a seed. Once that seed has been planted, the detective brain has a nurturing way of watering that seed with terrible thoughts, and before you know it, you’ve grown a tree of doubt. Complete with long hanging branches strong enough to tie a rope and hang yourself.
As he stared at her name on the page, Lawson thought about what happened earlier. How it had been so easy for her to lie to him. Had meeting him at the rundown motel been a way to gauge where his head was? A way to get him to trust her so he would tell her everything, so she could find a moment to bury him for good? Is that why she brought a picture of Lexi? Is that why at the bar she pointed out Johnny, then slipped him the note, ensuring that he in fact would trust his old partner and only his old partner?
Seed planted.
Terrible thoughts watering it.
The tree of doubt was on the rise.
The only thing Lawson knew for 100 percent fact was that he himself was the only person in the world he could trust. And that being the case, everyone else would have to be suspected. And if everyone is a suspect, he had to take precautions to make sure that even Cassie wouldn’t give him up.
Lawson heard a woman laugh through the walls. Probably the ice queen.
Ice.
Lawson shut his notebook, grabbed the silver ice bucket beside the bathroom sink, and walked down the hall. He checked both ends of the long hallway, making sure he knew where the elevators and exits were. The ice queen from earlier had given him an idea, so he went and filled the ice bucket. On his way back to his room, he knocked on the door beside his, the one that shared the adjoining door inside. He gave it a few seconds, and when no one answered, he went back to his room.
He pulled the armless desk chair over beside his door, then placed the overflowing ice bucket on the very edge of the seat. So much on the edge that it teetered over a couple of times and he had to reset it, ensuring that even the slightest knock against it would send a loud crash to the carpet below. Then he made certain that if the door happened to be opened, even if done extremely slowly, the bucket would fall from the chair. It was no high-tech ADT security system, but it would do the trick.
So he hoped.
15
Four a.m. in Vegas wasn’t like most other cities. Ninety-nine percent of other places in the world, the people were almost all rolled up in bed. Here, a lot of people were just catching their third wind. So it seemed quiet on the second floor of the Flamingo Hotel. Sure, Lawson heard the occasional slamming door, bass reverberating from the walls of a room a few doors down, and the occasional drunken singing as a successful night of partying staggered down the hallway past his room. But all things considered, not much noise at all.
That’s why it was incredibly easy to hear the ice bucket fall from the chair and slam onto the floor. Lawson squeezed the Beretta in his hand. He of course had hoped that no one would come for him in the night. Especially since there was supposedly only one person in the world who knew he was there. If the doubt tree about Cassie had been growing earlier, it was now a full-grown redwood. He heard four silenced bullets being shot into what he supposed were the pillows he’d made look like someone sleeping in his bed. So he pushed the anguish of realizing his only friend had turned on him out of the way and kicked in the adjoining door going back into his room.
Before the man that had just tried to shoot him could fully turn to face him, Lawson smashed him in the forehead with the butt of his pistol. The gunman’s finger involuntarily squeezed the trigger, and dropping unconscious, he shot a bullet into the bed beside him. Lawson immediately took a knee on the floor next to the
gunman, and after a search turned up only a tactical knife, zero identification, no money, not even a stick of gum, he knew this was a professional.
Cassie had turned on him.
She must have. Cassie was the only person that could have told this man about this room.
He sat back against the bed behind him. His stomach was in knots. How could she do this to him? And why? Why would she do this to him? Memories flashed in front of his mind. The first time he’d met her. The way she shook his hand as she made fun of his tie. To the time they made their first collar, and the way they’d gotten hammered drunk at the Golden Nugget to celebrate. To Lexi’s birth and how Cassie had been so happy to see her in that hospital, and the way she took care of Lauren in those first couple of weeks.
Lawson thought the people who had done all of this to him had taken every ounce of hurt out of him. But there is always more. This pain was as bad as any he had experienced, and he had experienced a lot. Anger swelled inside of him.
Rage.
There were no more tears to be shed.
Only blood.
Lawson tucked his Beretta into his pants and hoisted the hit man up onto the bed. He removed the sheets from the second queen bed and tied the man’s arms to the bedpost. He then went to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, soaked it in water, then took it and laid it over the unconscious man’s face. He removed the shoelaces from the extra pair of oxfords he’d packed in his bag and tightly tied down the top of the towel over the man’s forehead and the bottom of the towel at the top of the man’s neck. That way when he was doing everything he could do to escape the water flooding his mouth and nostrils, the towel wouldn’t budge.
Lawson went and filled the ice bucket with water, then the plastic trash can from the bathroom, and finally the wastebasket from the room, and set them all on the nightstand, keeping them within arm’s reach. As he slapped the man in the face, trying to rouse him, he heard music start up and laughter coming from the nonadjoined room next to him. What a completely different night they were experiencing.
What a different experience this was for Lawson as well. He would never have been doing something like this ten years ago. In fact, he may have even had a problem with torture being performed at all. But as he already knew, and was finding out more and more the longer he was free, he couldn’t be further from the man he used to be. Was that easygoing guy still inside him somewhere? As he slapped the man under the wet towel again, he couldn’t imagine that he was. The old Lawson Raines was dead.
As soon as the man whimpered, Lawson grabbed the ice bucket of water and slowly poured it over the towel as he sat on the man’s legs, clutching his jaw in his hand so he couldn’t move. The man writhed and choked on the water, desperately gasping for air. The thing about waterboarding is, you can only exhale for so long. And once your lungs are empty, the body automatically sucks for air. And when all that is there is water, it is as painful a few seconds as a man can experience. So much so that Lawson knew he wouldn’t be needing that third container of water. This man—any man—would tap out before then. The only reason some people say that torture doesn’t work is because a man will say anything to keep from having that water poured down his nose and throat again. So the information could be a total lie. But Lawson already had a good idea of what the truth was, so as long as this man’s story was close enough to confirm it, he would end the torture.
The man jerked and bucked under Lawson. But Lawson held his head still. The man sent there to kill him took every ounce of water meant for him.
“You can make this stop,” Lawson said in a calm and calculated tone. “All you have to do is tell me exactly who sent you. Nothing more.”
The man continued to choke on the water, until finally the ice bucket was empty. Lawson released his grip on the man’s jaw and removed the towel. After the man violently spat water, gasped for air, and finally took a breath, Lawson gave him a little reminder.
“Now that you know what I want, just know that the trash can holds a lot more water than the ice bucket. Now’s not the time for games.”
16
The man looked at Lawson in a way Lawson couldn’t believe. He looked surprised that Lawson could possibly be doing this to him. Like he was the bad guy, even though this hit man meant for Lawson to already be dead.
“I don’t hear you telling me what I want to hear,” Lawson growled.
“You’re crazy, man. I am FBI! You can’t do this!”
“I didn’t hear an answer to my question, so I’ll assume you’re still thirsty.”
Lawson covered the man’s face again with the wet towel and tied the towel down. The man was screaming now. If not for the towel dampening the sound and the music playing next door, there was little question that someone would have heard him.
“What I asked you was very simple. Who sent you? And just so you know”—Lawson picked up the trash can filled with water and began pouring it over the man’s covered face—“if you think this torture isn’t worthy of someone who just came in my room and tried to kill me, you’d better keep that to yourself. Because if I see that same judgmental face again when I remove this towel, I’ll use your knife to cut your balls off and feed them to you. Because that’s what you really deserve.”
As Lawson spoke to the man getting his holes filled with water, he wasn’t sure the man had even heard him. Not that it mattered. Lawson would have his answer after this second bucket. He was certain of that. The water poured slowly over the man’s face. His struggle against it was becoming weak. He had had enough. Lawson placed the bucket back on the nightstand, untied the towel, and sat back, waiting for the man to clear his airways, waiting for the man to clear the air.
Sure enough, between deep inhales and coughs, the FBI hit man wasted no more time outing who hired him. “Director Adam Billings.”
Lawson’s mind’s eye immediately saw that name written on the list in his notebook. However, Adam Billings was merely the head of the Las Vegas FBI ten years ago.
“Director?”
Cough. Cough. “Yes. The head of the FBI. Please don’t pour any more water on me. Please! That’s all I know. This wasn’t sanctioned by my handler. And I was told to tell no one. As far as I know, Director Billings and I are the only ones who know. I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job. You know how it is. I swear—”
“Stop talking,” Lawson interrupted.
The man closed his mouth immediately and nodded emphatically. Lawson got up from the bed and paced the room. This information wasn’t surprising to him, but the secrecy of it was. This meant that this was personal for Adam Billings, but Billings and Lawson had always gotten along. Lawson and Cassie were helping Billings make a name for himself with the good work they were doing. And why would Cassie tell Billings where to find him? Why would she set him up?
Lawson stopped pacing and looked the hit man dead in the eyes. “I have one more question. If you answer it honestly, I’ll let you go.”
The man began nodding even before Lawson had the chance to finish his sentence. At this point this man would tell Lawson all the classified information he’d ever come across. He just didn’t want any more water.
“Is Cassie Foster involved?”
There was zero hesitation. “Who? I’ve never heard of her. I swear. I would tell you if I had.”
Lawson believed him. When a question catches a man off guard, it’s hard for him to hide knowledge of the subject. And when Lawson said Cassie’s name, if this guy knew of her, it would have registered on his face. But it hadn’t. Lawson took a minute, walked over to the window, and though his eyes were looking out, he only saw the problem at hand. He was now sitting directly in the middle of a moral crossroad.
This man had been sent there to kill him. But this man isn’t a criminal. He is trained in much the same way that Lawson had been. Probably started as a cop, then maybe a detective, then the FBI sent him to Quantico where he learned to be a well-rounded agent, then possibly some more stealth training, specializin
g in tracking. He may or may not have a family. A man like him is on the road a lot, doing a lot of secretive things, so that does make a relationship difficult but not impossible. The hardest part about this was that this man, like he said, was just doing his job.
It was Director Billings who had stepped over the line.
If Lawson killed this FBI agent, he was drawing a line in the sand. One which once crossed, he could never go back. In his own mind at least. Lawson had been a prisoner for ten years, but he wasn’t a criminal. Never had been. And he would be damned if he let these people who are after him turn him into one. Even as he had that thought, he realized its hypocrisy. He did just torture a man for information. But the man was fine now, already breathing normally, no long-term effects, except the conviction that if he ever crossed paths with Lawson again, he would more than likely steer clear.
Lawson looked back at the man tied to the bed. The man pleaded with his eyes for Lawson not to kill him. But he knew that now was not the time to speak. Lawson looked back out the window. This time he saw the lights on the High Roller Ferris wheel spinning against the black of night. He imagined this is what his brain looked like at the moment, swirling inside as he contemplated what kind of man he was going to be. This was the moment that would shape the rest of his life. And instead of seeing the sheets under this man filled with blood, he saw Lauren’s face. He often thought about what she would think of him now. She would probably have understood why he had to become what he did in prison. It was a matter of survival. But she would be disappointed in him if he carried it into the real world. She wouldn’t want what happened to her to turn him into a monster on the outside. She would want him to forget all of this and do whatever he could to work his way back into their daughter’s life.
But she also didn’t find the love of her life lying dead on the deck of a boat.
When the Man Comes Around: A Gripping Crime Thriller (Lawson Raines, Book 1) Page 7