by Erik Carter
She was a woman whose emotional life had been in shambles, right after she was married, right after things were supposed to get better for her. Maybe she’d turned to the world of her father, a dark, corrupt world full of drugs and illegal sex. Silence had seen it before, both in his previous life as a police officer and certainly in his current life as a vigilante assassin—people hitting rock-bottom, self-destructing within the patterns they’d been exposed to all their lives, when there seemed to be no other choice.
His attention strayed over Jonah’s shoulder to Beasley’s picture-perfect townhouse beyond.
Beasley. The key to it all. The person who would lead Silence to the answers about Amber.
And even though Beasley might have been a piece of shit, the bastard was in trouble. Plus, it certainly seemed like the guy had turned his life around.
For that reason alone, aside from the fact that he was the key to the investigation, Beasley was worth saving.
Kim spoke again. “And I—”
“Hold that thought,” Silence said.
He dashed toward Beasley’s front door. A moment later, he heard Jonah and Kim run after him.
At the porch, he put his finger on the doorbell. Stopped. He’d heard something. On the other side of the door. Footsteps. At a run.
Silence pounded on the door.
A shadow flashed across the glass of the peephole.
The door swung open. Beasley stared out at them, looking terrified. He’d taken a beating, his left eye swollen shut.
“You can’t be here,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because he’s here. I … I think he’s here again. I heard something … out back … just before you knocked.”
“Who?”
“Oh, God. Did you hear that? He’s back. You have to leave! He thinks I’m working with you.”
Beasley went to shut the door. Silence threw his hand into the gap, the edge of the door thudding to a halt in his palm.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Some guy. Some enforcer. From the Well.”
A face flashed through Silence’s mind. The blond, curly-haired man, the one who’d been following them all day.
Silence had no more time for questions, delays. He shouldered the door hard, slamming Beasley back. His shoes squeaked on the tile of the entranceway.
He drew his Beretta from the shoulder holster.
“Get out,” he said.
“I can’t leave! He told me I can’t. He threatened my daughters!”
Silence had even less time to argue. If there really was someone in here, not only was Beasley’s life in danger, but now so was Silence’s.
He looked out the door. Jonah and Kim stood on the doorstep, both wide-eyed.
If Beasley was correct and this enforcer was here—
A sound. From upstairs.
Silence bolted to the side, grabbed the handrail, bounded up the steps, three at a time.
To the second floor. Plush carpeting. Built-in shelving on the far wall, loaded with brushed nickel picture frames, photos of Beasley’s daughters. Three doorways. One open, two closed.
Another noise. This one from the ground floor.
Shit.
A violent shuffle. A muffled scream of pain. Another scream, this one from outside the townhouse.
Kim.
Covering himself with the Beretta, Silence returned to the stairwell, cleared the corner, looked down.
And saw Beasley.
On the floor.
Throat slashed. A massive pool of blood spreading on the tile surrounding him. Coughing, blood spouting from his mouth.
Silence leaned over the handrail, looked through the open doorway.
The other two were gone.
Where Jonah and Kim had stood moments earlier, there was now just brickwork and white vinyl railing, bathed in bright sunlight.
Down the stairs. A glance to Beasley. He was nearly expired. Another glob of blood shot from his mouth. His breathing crescendoed. A gurgling exhale. And his head rolled to the side.
The last couple steps. Silence swept his Beretta before him, clearing the threshold. To the door. He looked back at Beasley.
Yes, quite dead.
For a brief moment, Silence had seen light on the horizon, answers about Amber Lund’s fate, a resolution to the chaos.
And just like that, his hopes were expired. They drowned in the pool of blood spreading on the tile around Ray Beasley’s lifeless neck.
Well, shit.
He cleared the doorway. Looked outside.
And saw the man who’d been following them all day.
The curly-haired, blond man, on the far side of the long lawn that fronted the townhouses, running down the sidewalk to the Honda Accord and clutching Kim’s wrist. She stumbled behind him, screaming.
Jonah was just behind them, in pursuit. He grabbed Kim by the free arm, tried to pull her from the man’s grasp, but Mr. Accord sidestepped, slugged Jonah across the jaw. A wet, dull crack, and Jonah collapsed.
Shouts, screams from the sports bar. A few good Samaritans dashed across the street toward the chaos.
Mr. Accord threw Kim into the car through the driver side, and with a quick, practiced motion, he was immediately behind the wheel. The Accord fired up, the tires chirped, and the car zoomed off just as the good Samaritans ran up.
Silence sprinted up to Jonah, splayed on the sidewalk, eyes squinting.
“Keys,” Silence said.
Jonah didn’t respond, either hesitant or dazed from the blow.
“Keys!”
Jonah complied, digging in his pocket and holding the keys up to him.
Silence snatched them from his hand, already reaching a run once more. The Fiero was ahead, a block away, a splash of faded red paint. A few strides of Silence’s long legs and he was there. Door unlocked. Into the driver’s seat. A look through the windshield.
Ahead, the Accord screeched around a corner, disappeared behind a squeaky-clean hardware store bounded by a line of oversized terra cotta pots brimming with flowers.
Silence fired the engine, which belched out its stank again. He slammed the stick into first, dropped the clutch, and the Fiero hurdled off.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Finley looked to the rearview mirror as he flew down the street, pressing the gas pedal harder.
No Fiero.
But he’d seen the tall man run to the car, hop in. And just before Finley had taken the corner, the Fiero had rocketed in his direction.
Finley jerked the Accord to the side when a hatchback backed onto the street from a parking lot, not noticing the other vehicle coming right at it, going twice the speed limit.
Kim screamed again. Whiny bitch.
“Slow down!” she screeched.
“Shut up.”
Finley yanked the steering wheel, whipping around a pickup truck parallel parking, its backup lights aglow, which sent the Accord toward the opposite side of the road, where a trio of women stepped off the sidewalk, about to cross the street. They pulled back, screamed.
Kim screamed too.
Finley maneuvered the Accord around the women, their arms interlocked protectively, bewildered faces, saucer eyes.
“What the hell is this, Finley?” Kim said. She had both hands clenched on the passenger seat cushion, eyes straight forward and wide.
Finley didn’t answer. He checked their six.
There it was.
A streaking red splash in the rearview mirror.
The Fiero peeled around the corner he’d just taken. The tall man loomed in the driver’s seat, his dark hair, the dark void of his eyes on a face that was tilted forward, determined, both hands gripping the steering wheel.
Shit.
The gap between the cars was shrinking. Rapidly.
This guy could drive.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Where are you taking me?” Kim whined.
“I said shut up!”
Another corner, j
ust ahead and to the left. The one he’d been anxiously waiting for.
The corner that might get him out of this mess.
Finley wrenched the steering wheel. The force threw him into Kim’s shoulder and plastered Kim to the passenger door. More screams. The Accord shuddered, tires squealed.
He smashed the gas pedal, stole a glance at Kim, who was scrambling to fasten her seatbelt.
The Fiero closed in, filling the rearview.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Silence watched the Accord turn.
And he cursed.
Because the blond man had just given himself a major tactical advantage. He’d entered an urban hedge maze.
An auto salvage yard.
A sprawling affair with hundreds of vehicles. And it wasn’t one of those nice, corporate chain, you-pull-it sort of places with rows of evenly spaced vehicles organized by make in fields of thick gravel. No, this was a real-deal, old-school behemoth with corroded piece-of-shit vehicles piled on top of each other in teetering towers that surely violated any number of municipal codes. Tires and sheets of rusty metal. Barely maintained paths riddled with oil-slicked puddles.
The Accord flew into the lot, between two of the car towers. It immediately turned right, disappearing.
Silence hit the brake, downshifted, brought the Fiero into the lot, and immediately was jolted hard, his teeth cracking into each other. Water fanned out of the pothole he’d struck. The impact made an awful noise from the Fiero’s undercarriage. A pang of guilt. You don’t hurt a guy’s car. He’d reimburse Jonah if there was any damage.
Second gear. A surge of gas. A high-pitched whine as the tires spun momentarily before grabbing hold. A man in coveralls appeared from behind one of the vehicles, screaming at him, waving his arms, pissed off. He jumped back when Silence zoomed the Fiero past him.
No sign of the Accord.
He peeled left, around the skeleton of a Pinto. Another empty path in front of him, long and muddy.
Around a pile of tires and rims.
Another empty pathway.
He turned again.
Nothing. No Accord. Just a father and son prying an alternator from an Oldsmobile and staring at him in confusion.
Silence eased his foot onto the brake, dropped a gear, slowed the Fiero.
And exhaled.
Dammit.
He gave the father and son a snappy wave as he passed and then turned left, heading toward the exit. Though his circuitous path had taken him deep into the belly of the automotive graveyard, his rigorous training ensured he’d maintained his bearings. He knew which way to go to get out.
Goddamnit.
He’d lost them.
And, as if on cue, he glimpsed the street through a gap in the spires of rusty metal and saw the Accord, far away, taking off, its engine roaring.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Prostitution.
Oh, God. That’s what all this was about.
Amber had been trying to become a high-end prostitute.
Gavin had to stay in character, but standing there in that horrid office with the slimy-grinned man and the two prostitutes leering at him, the realization that Amber had been pursuing this life nearly made his knees give out.
It all added up…
The revelation she’d gotten from her husband, two weeks after marrying him, the devastation she must have felt.
The word refined.
Her search for the Weasel, her other “uncle,” the one who liked hookers.
The drugs in her system, probably heroin like Uncle Weasel’s drug of choice.
And though Gavin’s mind had formed the dark connections, forcing him to picture his niece here in this creepy building, this ramshackle structure that had been renovated into a hooker office, his impulses quickly brought his thoughts away from Amber and to self-preservation.
Because Gavin had to get the hell out of there.
If Amber had gotten herself in way too deep, he’d gotten himself in equally deep by following her footsteps.
The door was still open behind him. But before he could turn, there was a noise.
A man approached, stopped in the doorway. He was black, on the short side, wearing a gray T-shirt peppered with holes, a pair of soiled jeans. And a grin.
“Like your options?” the man said, tilting his head toward the prostitutes.
Gavin looked at the women again. They both gave him salacious bats of their eyes. One of them made a crude gesture.
Gavin glanced at the man behind him, then to the suited man. “You know, with all respect to the ladies, this just isn’t what I had in mind.”
The women pouted.
Gavin inched toward the door.
The man in the doorway gave a suspicious look to the suited man, who then stepped closer to Gavin.
“You a cop?” the suited man said.
Before Gavin could reply, the other man closed in as well, drew a pistol.
Gavin gasped.
The man patted him down, found Gavin’s gun and the book, which Gavin had put in his back pocket.
The man stowed Gavin’s Bodyguard then held the book at arm’s length, squinting at the title. “What the hell? A damn kids’ book.”
The suited man joined him in a laugh.
Then the black guy’s expression suddenly changed, his cheeks going slack. He’d turned back the front cover—and noticed something.
“Amber Stokes,” he read from the first page. He glanced up at the suited man. “As in, Amber Lund, that missing girl. They just found her dead!”
“I know, goddamnit,” the other one said. He faced Gavin but continued talking to his associate. “This guy is a cop. “
Gavin tried to say something, couldn’t. Sweat flushed his palms. His leg muscles tightened.
And he thought again of Carlton’s assessment of him. Gavin was living up to every insult his brother had ever hurled at him—the weakling, the poser, the man in over his head.
“A cop??” the black guy said. He lowered his gun. His free hand went up, fingers spreading as far as his eyes had gone wide. “Listen, man, I told that Amber chick when she was here that we don’t know nothing.”
Gavin found his voice.
“So she was here.” He pointed at the hookers. “Looking to join, yes?”
“What? No, man, she wasn’t trying to join. She was just asking about the Oil Man.”
The term resonated with Gavin.
Oil Man.
Amber’s notes, the list in the back of the book. There had been one that said:
Oil Man = Warren
Warren was the fictional police chief of Summerford, but clearly the Oil Man was real.
There had been a note that referred to The Well. And, of course, refined and crude. Code words, prostitution labels traded out for petroleum terms.
The Oil Man must have been the head of the operation.
“But I swear,” the black guy continued, “that’s all I told her, and—”
“Shut up!” the white one yelled. “Don’t tell this asshole anything.”
“Dude’s a cop!” the other one insisted. “And he’s investigating Amber Lund.”
The suited one narrowed his eyes, stepped closer to Gavin.
“No. He’s no cop. Cops carry badges. They have to. This one’s a private investigator. Aren’t you?”
Gavin’s heart thundered in his chest.
The suited man motioned for his associate, who closed in on Gavin from behind.
The prostitutes lost their salacious grins. They hopped from their chairs and hurried to the back corner of the room, high heels thumping on the thin carpet, and crouched behind the desk, preparing for something bad.
“Yeah, this guy’s a private eye,” the suited man continued. A dark smile flashed over his face. “And no one’s gonna come looking for him.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Silence gripped the sticky vinyl wrapping on the steering wheel as the Fiero hurtled down the street, back to Bea
sley’s townhouse.
Ahead, Jonah sat on the sidewalk, knees at his chest, arms wrapped around them, a small crowd of helpful individuals gathered nearby.
Silence zipped past the group, reached his left hand to the side of his seat, and tugged the parking brake. The Fiero screamed as it swung around to the opposite direction. He pushed back against the wave of centrifugal force, shoving both hands against the steering wheel, pressing his back into the musty seat, stabilizing himself. Screams from the group surrounding Jonah.
He burped the gas, pulled the Fiero to the curb, brought it to a screeching halt right by the crowd, who stepped away, some of them jeering at him. He popped the passenger door open, revealing Jonah, who stared at him slack-jawed.
“Get in,” Silence said.
Jonah reluctantly, painfully pulled himself off the concrete and climbed into the passenger seat.
As soon as he was in, Silence dropped the clutch, and the Fiero shot off, not even giving Jonah a chance to shut the door. The car’s momentum did the trick, shutting the door with a loud thud. Jonah yanked his arm and leg out of the way.
He then leaned his head back against the headrest, closed his eyes, groaned.
“I’m doing fine,” he said. “Thanks so much for asking.”
“Hear?” Silence pointed upward. Sirens. In the distance, getting louder. He swallowed. “No time for self-pity.”
“Of course,” Jonah said, touching the bloody bulge on the side of his head. “How silly of me.”
Silence took the next corner hard, around the block of townhouses, shifting Jonah in the passenger seat.
After another few feet, he pulled the Fiero around another corner, just as aggressively, into the alley between the opposite-facing rows of houses.
Jonah’s mouth fell open as he looked out the window. “What the hell are you doing?? Cops are coming!”
Silence didn’t respond. He leaned over the steering wheel and looked out beneath the top edge of the windshield, found the right building, brought the car to a sudden stop that sent Jonah into the dash.
He put the stick in neutral, yanked the parking brake, and stepped outside, leaving the engine running.