But there was time for that later. First Lansing had to try and fend off Lupo’s little bunch. There was always the cop’s lady love. Lansing smirked. Snatch her and Lupo would come to them. It was in the works, but frankly they had other paths to follow first. When the time was right, he would turn to the pathetic resistance of Lupo’s group of loyalists.
If he had to kill them all, then so be it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Bill Grey Hawk
The first clue he had that things were going bad was when he heard a scream outside his office.
His door exploded open, rattling its hinges and slamming into the wall.
The thug named Johnny was the first inside, followed by his trained monkey, Marty.
“Don’t even think about it,” Johnny said. In his hand was an ugly black pistol.
Grey Hawk’s hand stopped short of the drawer where his father’s World War II trophy, a Walther P-38 sat, oiled and ready. He knew he’d lose the race. He looked at them and he knew he’d lost the fight.
He knew he’d run out of time.
“Your lady out here’s gone home. Marty has some papers for you to sign, then you can go home, too.” The way Johnny smirked, Grey Hawk knew home was some sort of euphemism. He thought briefly about going down fighting, but he’d lost the chance.
Marty was reaching into the drawer and plucking out the Walther.
“Lookie here!” He held it up loosely, then tossed it to Johnny. “Fuckin’ museum piece.”
“Too bad. Tends to make me think our friend here wasn’t gonna be very friendly.” He dumped the confiscated gun into the trash can in the corner.
Marty slid a three-sheet document on the desk in front of him.
Grey Hawk looked at Johnny, questioning.
“It’s all legal,” said the thug. “It’s your resignation.”
Nearby, Marty giggled.
“Get my briefcase,” said Johnny. He still pointed the pistol.
Marty nodded and left the office, returning a moment later still giggling.
“Thanks,” said Johnny, his face flushed. He took the case and in a flash Marty held the gun.
Bill Grey Hawk suddenly knew that he was dead if he didn’t sign the document.
And he was dead after he signed it.
He felt the reality all the way down in the bottom of his gut.
He tried to conjure up a picture of his wife and kids, who had been through so much.
But he couldn’t. Their faces were fuzzy, blurred.
“Sign the documents.”
Grey Hawk found his voice. “Why? Your people can’t legally take control of the casino. This does you no good.”
Johnny laughed. “It has nothing to do with the casino. It’s just for your, uh, your people. It’s a—whattya call it? A formality. It’s the boss’s way to make sure your folks will understand when you disappear…”
Grey Hawk leaped up and made a break for the door, but the desk was too massive, too large, and Marty beat him to the corner, grabbing his shirt and hauling him back. He forced the older man back down in his chair and shoved it up against the desk. The pistol went to his temple.
“Not friendly at all,” said Johnny.
He stepped up and laid his briefcase on the desk, opening it so the contents were visible.
“Sign the papers, old man.”
“No.” Grey Hawk’s voice was a croak.
Johnny took out a hacksaw.
“Sign the papers.”
“No.”
“Are you left-handed?”
He tried to out-think the thug, but he got confused.
“You’re a rightie.” Johnny said with a nod. “And if you’re not, oh well.” He took out a blue bottle with a nozzle.
They stared at each other. Then: “Hold down his left hand.”
Marty did.
“Sign?”
Grey Hawk’s mouth was pasty and dry and completely useless. His only leverage was to not sign, but the pain would cripple him and then he’d sign. And then they’d kill him.
Johnny laid the saw’s blade on Grey Hawk’s wrist. Apparently he knew just where to place it. Like a man about to slice a baguette, he moved the blade up and down and again, drawing blood with shallow slices. Grey Hawk was resolute.
“Here’s good,” said Johnny, smiling.
Grey Hawk saw that the thug’s forehead was shiny and his upper lip was slick. The thug licked his lips.
Marty held Grey Hawk’s hand down like a steel clamp.
Johnny drew his arm back and the first downward cut went all the way to the bone.
Grey Hawk screamed. Blood ran over the desktop and onto the carpeting.
“Sign?”
Grey Hawk was going into shock already.
“Fuck! Put the pen in his hand.” Marty complied, squeezing the gnarled fingers until they grasped the implement loosely.
Johnny struck a match, turned the nozzle on the torch, and adjusted the blue-red flame to a pinprick tip. Then he took the hacksaw and went to work.
The screaming began and didn’t end until long after Grey Hawk had scrawled a signature on the sheet and it was whisked away before any blood could get on it.
By the time Johnny switched to the torch, Bill Grey Hawk’s curled-up hand lay on the carpet like a sun-dried crab.
And he was slumped on the desk, his gore-flecked cauterized stump tucked under his head. His heart hadn’t survived the trauma, and Johnny hadn’t intended to stop in time anyway.
“Bring in our new friend,” Johnny said, wiping down his face and hands. His eyes were glazed, as if he’d injected heroin.
Marty fetched William Treewalker, who had been sitting in the outer office, hands covering his ears. At least he had his hands. Trembling, his knees weak, he stared at Bill Grey Hawk’s body.
Johnny was putting things back in his briefcase. He gestured at the desk.
“Your office now. Clean up this mess.”
Lupo
They’d tiptoed around each other ever since she’d walked past him, gloriously naked, on her way to the shower. She had one of his towels wrapped around the back of her neck, but her perfect breasts thrust out at him completely unencumbered, and her wide mouth had curled up in pleasure at his discomfort—and at his long glance.
“Christ, put some clothes on!” Her mocking laughter from the bathroom followed him all the way to the opposite side of the apartment, where he sought refuge from her as far away as he could get.
The woman was toxic to relationships. She knew it, and she loved it. He’d end up taking a lot of crap for having put her up in his place, but on the other hand he firmly believed she was in danger.
He waited until she sounded occupied in the bathroom, then sat in what he’d designated his music den, a leather sofa facing the bay window and a wall of compact disks that made up his prized collection. He flipped through a stack of recent purchases. He’d been dragged screaming into the iPod universe and enjoyed it, but he was still an album man who preferred scanning through liner notes even if they required a magnifier to read. There was a new Marillion he hadn’t listened to yet, and a recent Wakeman disk that promised a return to the old style.
I’ll be the judge of that.
It would be best to distract himself and keep his mind from reminding him what Heather looked like naked. She was a goddess.
He reached for his headphones and saw Ghost Sam standing in the corner, fading in and out. Great, now he was hanging around to catch a glimpse of Heather naked. I didn’t think ghosts would care about naked chicks, but what do I know?
Ghost Sam made a gesture with one disembodied hand, but Lupo wasn’t sure what it meant.
A strange, insistent buzzing made him look up and a shadow crossed the window.
He thought, bird.
But he immediately knew it wasn’t a bird.
Another sound, this time at his front door.
A light shuffle, a very soft clink.
He knew that sound.
It was a gear clink, something metallic on a belt clinking against something else.
He dove for an extra-wide bookcase a few feet away, his hands scrabbling under one of the shelves, flicking a tiny latch and coming back with the MP5 submachine gun he kept clipped on a hinged flap cradled in his hands.
He was too late.
His door imploded and a flash-bang grenade went off with its tell-tale crump!
He’d anticipated it by a second or two and had squeezed his eyes shut.
Now he opened fire with the suppressed MP5 and sprayed the doorway, where two sets of black-clad assassins had followed the grenade and fanned out in search of the flat’s occupants, their gun muzzles searching for targets.
Lupo beat them.
His first short burst took down two, making a mess because he’d held the muzzle up to go for their heads. The bolt was not completely silent, reloading rounds with the usual metallic clack-clack-clack-clack and loud reports, part of the result of suppression.
Sure enough, the commandos were armored-up and he’d have barely hindered them had he aimed for their torsos first.
He was already swinging the bulbous muzzle sideways while the first two fell in a heap, squeezing out another long burst that took down two more before they could bring their guns to bear. One of them let loose a burst that stitched a pattern on the brick wall behind Lupo, spraying him with jagged stone chips. The third commando dove through the arch that separated one flat from the one next door he had bought to make a larger living space.
A growl erupted across the flat and the oversized silver-gray wolf that lunged out of the white bathroom door disappeared through the same arch in pursuit of the armored assassin who’d escaped Lupo’s gunfire.
Heather!
Lupo leaped behind the sofa and aimed for the door—five, was that a standard team? An Alpha team? But if so, they’d have come in as wolves. He waited for a few seconds, and was rewarded with a delayed-effect assassin who had hovered outside to catch defenders unawares.
Lupo raked the last killer with another burst, zipping him across the legs so he could try to interrogate him. But before Lupo could reach the guy, a pistol appeared in his hand.
Feeling the Creature’s reflexes overriding his own, Lupo dropped and rolled while rounds whizzed by over his head, then he finished the job by squeezing the trigger on the MP5 and emptying the magazine into the wounded survivor. The last commando slammed back to the floor with a wet splat from the back of his head.
The werewolf in the other room was tearing the commando apart, ripping out his throat and then shredding his clothing and armor, digging into his belly with ravenous jaws. When Lupo approached, the wolf dug in her front paws and stared into his eyes, growling a warning. Heather was not in the mood to share. She tore muscle and tendon, and her fangs made short work of the unfortunate commando’s organs and intestines. Her snout was covered with gore and her eyes smiled at him.
Jesus, thought Lupo, who wasn’t so used to watching it happen.
And not on his goddamn floor, which was slick with spilled and splattered blood.
Six of the fuckers.
One of those he had shot groaned, but before Lupo could reach him Heather leaped from one body to the other and tore out the survivor’s throat. He died with a cut-off scream and a gurgle as he bled out.
Damn it, I would have liked to get some answers from the asshole first.
He left Heather alone with her second unexpected meal, and checked out the doorway.
Fortunately by now his neighbors were likely to be all at work, and all the guns had been suppressed if not exactly silenced. The door was barely hanging on one hinge and he was able to wrestle it into place then lock it. His flat was a mess of death and gore, and once again he was left holding the bag.
Jesus.
Maybe he should just lay down plastic tarps permanently instead of carpeting.
He figured he might still squeeze one favor out of a certain somebody who’d taken care of a surplus corpse situation for him recently. Would they accommodate him, and what would he owe them?
He turned and saw Heather back in human form, still naked, her face streaked with the two commandos’ blood. She was smiling orgasmically and her nipples were engorged. Hell, she was glowing and the musk came off of her in waves, so strong that Lupo almost jumped her right there. And she was ready for him, willing him to do it, her eyes on fire and her cheeks flushed and muscular thighs apart just enough that he could see her labia prominent as she posed for him, showing him how awesome a creature she was.
The werewolf gene had turned Heather into some sort of sexual tornado, capable of sweeping up everything in its path.
It was all he could do to stay away.
“Get dressed,” he growled. “There’s probably more of them.”
She pouted. “But, Nick, you know you want me—”
“Fuck, Heather! Wake up! We’ve got a mess here and there may be more of these assholes waiting outside. There’s more to life than fucking…”
“If you say so. Your little bitch muzzling you, sweetie?”
He rounded on her. “Get the fuck dressed. We’ve got to get out. And I have some calls to make.”
She eyed the other corpses, still in no hurry. “What a shame to let these perfectly good snacks go to waste. You sure you don’t want a bite? Hey! Ouch!”
He’d snagged her arm and manhandled her back into the bathroom. “Get dressed!”
She finally snapped to it.
He found a phone clipped to another flap, a little trick he’d learned from a past association, and called a number that was listed in very few places. It was a burner phone and contained a few contacts only. He explained to the voice who responded what his needs were and promised a return favor, in essence selling his soul. He didn’t even want to consider what they’d want in return for their help.
But what choice did he have?
He could never explain to Ryeland what was happening, and now Hart-Bart and his crew were running things.
He was promised a call back later, and he had no choice but to accept that response for now.
Heather was ready, hair still damp from a quick shower, all the blood gone, wearing painted-on jeans and a knit top that showed her still-hard nipples. She threw on her leather jacket.
“Lead on.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Colgrave
She was hovering around the edges of the task force encampment, wondering whether Ryeland would snag her and throw her into the mix. She normally didn’t care, but ever since Lupo had whetted her appetite for some good old-fashioned intrigue, she thought she’d like a taste of this mysterious bus shooter. Organized Crime had been dull lately.
But as she watched and listened, she became convinced that the feds had tied up Ryeland beyond all possible hope. He’d provided the cogs, but they had brought in the machine—and they considered everybody cogs.
She went to their coffee table because, let’s face it, it was better than what her side of the squad room was making available. Colgrave knew she could still turn heads, and sometimes that quality plus a clear-cut mission (as in an occasional coffee run) could get you acceptance where furtive lurking simply got you chased off. So she waited for a new batch of coffee to brew and kept her ears open.
Not far from where she stood, she caught a bit of something that made her ears perk up.
Hart-Bart, the nickname that had made the rounds for the DHS fed nobody liked and whose real name people were intentionally forgetting, snapped his fingers at Ryeland, who frowned but answered the call anyway.
“I need you to get me some background on a couple of your homicide cops,” Hart-Bart said without preamble.
“Whatever you need,” Ryeland muttered. “Who?”
“Dominic Lupo and, uh, Richard DiSanto.”
Colgrave almost looked up, but caught herself. She poured coffee and pretended to be occupied with the creamer, then slowly stirred the mix while staring at
a folder she’d carried for cover.
“They’re no longer on the task force,” Ryeland reminded him. “You must mean two other cops. Let me look at the list—”
“No, Lupo and DiSanto,” Hart-Bart said. “I want their personnel files brought to me. I’ll be right over there.” He pointed at a corner PC station, dismissively. “Make it snappy.”
Ryeland looked like he was going to argue or complain, but he visibly swallowed his retort, turned and walked away.
Colgrave also stepped away, but she could have sworn she felt Hart-Bart’s laser-like eyes on her back all the way across the room to her office. When she turned just before hiding again, she noted that Hart-Bart was whispering in the ear of one of his minions, who nodded. Then he looked right at her.
She ignored him and closed her door.
Then she dug out one of her burner phones.
Lupo
They were in the park near his place. So far, they hadn’t seen or heard anything suspicious. Life seemed to have rolled on despite the death that wrapped its arms around Lupo’s flat.
The call was from an unknown number, but he took it and it was Colgrave, telling him all about Hart-Bart’s request.
“He’s not even interested in newer info—he wants to see the old paper files. What the hell did you do? I mean, he’s here to investigate the bus shootings, isn’t he?”
Lupo was at a loss and said so. “Man, I don’t have a clue, Danni. I was just raided at home by a team of commandos—”
“What?”
“Yeah, long fuckin’ story. This is something to do with the Wolfpaw thing, except I thought it was over. My friend Heather Wilson was with me, and we just about got whacked.”
There was a short silence. “Uh, should you be telling me this? What about Ryeland?”
“Danni, you have to keep this under your hat. This Hart guy, Bart whatever, if he wasn’t interested in me and Dee, I’d say we’re coming in. But now I have to wonder if the whole fucking mess is connected.”
Wolf's Cut (The Nick Lupo Series Book 5) Page 23