by Osborne, Jon
As was their morning custom, he and Bane were enjoying a walk along the babbling creek that ran directly through the heart of the Race Master’s twenty thousand acres in rural Massachusetts. Their morning constitutional had always marked the favorite part of the Race Master’s day, providing him with an all-too-rare opportunity to unwind. To clear his mind. To reset his thinking. And to reflect upon the events of the previous twenty-four hours.
Though the day had broken clear and hot across the cloudless blue sky and the temperature outside had already surged past ninety-five degrees on the mercury, the leafy trees overhead shielded them quite nicely from the intense summer heat as he and Bane made their way deeper into the beautiful woods.
The Race Master took in another deep lungful of air through his nostrils and let out his breath again in a satisfied rush over his perfectly straight white teeth. He loved the land here. Unlike most of the rest of the country, the niggers had yet to gain a strong foothold in Massachusetts. The Jews were a completely different story altogether, of course, but he knew that he needed to approach his sacred mission one step at a time if he wanted to get it done the right way. He’d learned that lesson from none other than Adolf Hitler himself. The Fuhrer had badly overextended himself in his quest to purify the world in the 1930s and 1940s, and that had proved to be the great man’s greatest mistake. If Hitler had just taken things one step at a time, the world might have been a very different place today. A better place.
The Race Master’s two-way Nextel phone suddenly chirped in his pocket, knocking him out of his thoughts. Frowning angrily, he dug it out and lifted the receiver to his mouth. “What is it, Josef?” he barked. “I’m busy here.”
Sullivan cleared his throat on the other end of the line. “The mission, sir. It was accomplished late last night.”
A hot jolt of adrenaline ripped through the Race Master’s veins at the welcome sound of Sullivan’s words, setting every last nerve-ending in his body on fire with excitement. No matter how old or how jaded he got, the news of a dead mongrel would always exhilarate him. “And the operative, Josef?” he asked quickly.
“Took a header off the Queensboro Bridge about an hour ago, sir. At least, that’s how the news outlets are reporting it.”
The Race Master flipped off his phone and tucked it back into his pocket, letting out a soft sigh of resignation as he did so. As much as he loved purifying the world, he absolutely hated losing good men. Still, he knew that it marked a necessary precaution in his line of work. Though he employed a number of go-betweens to act as shields between himself and the authorities, there was always a slight possibility that one of them would point out the trail that eventually led back to him, and that was a chance he simply couldn’t afford to take. His work here was much too important, his mission too vital. To purify his race, a few of its best members would have to die for the cause. A hard truth, perhaps, but a simple one nonetheless.
At his feet, Bane abruptly froze in his tracks at the sound of something rustling around in the underbrush twenty yards to their right, trembling in place like a living statue, every muscle in its powerful body tensed and ready for action. Once again – just as had been the case back in the den earlier in the day – long strings of sticky drool dripped down from Bane’s sharp white fangs.
The Race Master looked down at the dog and smiled. “Angriff, Bane!” he ordered. Attack!
In the blink of an eye, the Presa exploded into the underbrush and emerged a moment later with a small white hare caught between his mighty jaws. The rabbit emitted a tortured, high-pitched scream that filled the woods all around them as it struggled frantically to escape Bane’s powerful mouth but it was no use. The dog shook its muscular neck once, violently snapping the other animal’s spine. Blood from a severed jugular vein spurted across the forest floor, a fine red mist of it spraying across the tops of the Race Master’s expensive Italian shoes.
The Race Master looked down at his feet, then back at the enormous dog. And then he smiled again.
“Well done, Bane,” he said, nodding his head vigorously in approval. “Very well done indeed, my friend.”
CHAPTER 14
Dana and Bruce Blankenship had the requisite “getting-to-know-you” chat on the hour-and-a-half-long plane ride out to New York City.
Thankfully, their conversation turned out to be the exact opposite of the brutal third-degree to which Dana had been subjected earlier in the day in the oak-paneled confines of Dr. Shelley Margolis’s impeccably maintained office suite in Parma.
As Dana buckled herself into her seat and adjusted her lap belt, she tried her best to not think about the fact that not only was the DC-10 in which she and Blankenship would be flying today the exact same model of plane as the one in which she and Bradley had been flying when their worlds had changed forever the previous May, but also that this trip represented just her third time in the air since the horrific crash that had claimed the life of poor Bradley’s mother.
“So,” Dana said, letting out a soft sigh relief once the aircraft had finally lifted off safely and they were cruising along at an altitude of thirty thousand feet. “Tell me about yourself, Agent Blankenship. From all reports, you’re something of a technological genius. Is that true?”
Blankenship smiled modestly, and Dana couldn’t help but notice the slight chip in one of his front teeth. No doubt it had come courtesy of the balled-up fist of some random bad guy out there, but this minor flaw in his appearance didn’t detract in the least little bit from the agent’s good looks. Quite the opposite, actually. If Dana had to compare him to a celebrity, she most likely would have picked Mark Harmon.
“Well, Agent Whitestone,” Blankenship said, shifting in his window seat in order to face her more directly. “I guess you could say that I know my way around a circuit board. I was a computer science major at M.I.T. back in the days when Apple IIes were all the rage. I do my best to stay up-to-date on all the latest developments, though. Try not to get too far behind the times.”
Dana lifted her eyebrows, duly impressed. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was one of the finest technical schools in the entire country. You didn’t need to be a complete egghead to get into the place, but it didn’t hurt your chances if you were. “A Massachusetts boy, huh?” she asked.
“Connecticut, actually.”
“Same difference.”
Blankenship laughed. “Yeah, but thankfully I didn’t get saddled with the accent. I nevah pahked my cah in Hahvad Yahd, if that’s what you want to know.” He paused thoughtfully. “I do like a nice cup of chowdah every now and then, howevah. Even had a girlfriend named Heathuh in high school who used to get wicked pissed off at me all the time for the smallest things, hey.”
Dana giggled at Blankenship’s dead-on reproduction of a thick Boston accent. His easygoing manner was just what she needed after her very difficult morning. She glanced down at the simple gold wedding band on his left ring finger. “How long have you been married?” she asked.
Blankenship lifted his left hand and studied his modest jewelry. “Fourteen years next April. Best eighty years of my life so far.”
Dana smiled. “Fellow insider?”
Blankenship shook his head. “Hell, no. Madison’s a civilian. I really don’t think I could survive a relationship with someone from the Bureau. I already bring enough work home with me as it is, you know what I mean? Don’t need it crawling into bed with me at the end of the night.”
Dana nodded. She knew exactly what Blankenship meant. It had been precisely the reason why she and her former partner, Jeremy Brown, had cooled their heels on their own romance prior to Jeremy’s horrifying death in the line of duty eighteen months earlier. “Makes sense,” Dana said, shifting her thoughts away from Jeremy, at least for now. Thinking about her former partner’s death just still hurt too much for her to deal with right now. Probably would hurt too much for her to deal with for a very long time to come – if not forever. “Any kids?” she asked, steering the c
onversation around to a pleasanter direction.
Blankenship smiled again. Unabashed pride lit up his handsome face. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Twin girls. Sixteen months old.”
“Got a picture?”
Blankenship nodded and leaned forward in his seat. Digging out his wallet from his back pocket, he flipped it open and an accordion-like length of plastic unfurled eight inches, each square slot filled with a different photograph. “Got about ninety million of them,” he said. “Have a look for yourself. Nothing in this world I like more than bragging about my little girls.”
Dana studied the long row of pictures featuring two of the most adorable little girls she’d ever laid eyes on in her entire life. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “They’re absolutely precious. What are their names?”
“Olivia and Sydney,” Blankenship said, still beaming. He pointed to the little girl on the left-hand side of one of the photographs. “Olivia’s the older of the two. Beat her little sister into the world by four minutes and six seconds, and I have no doubt that she’ll hold that technicality over Sydney’s head for the rest of their natural-born lives.”
Dana shook her head in wonderment, still admiring her new partner’s children. “Unbelievable,” she said. “They’re like two little angels. Are they in Cleveland yet?”
Blankenship folded up the photograph slots and flipped closed his wallet again before returning it to his back pocket. “Nope, not yet. Everybody’s still back in Omaha. I’m still looking for a place for us to live.”
He paused and shook his head, letting out a frustrated breath over his teeth. “With the way the Director’s got us running around already, I just hope that’s something I can accomplish before Christmastime rolls around.”
Dana pressed her lips into a sympathetic line, but Blankenship chased away the look of concern on her face with a quick wave of his hand. “Anyway,” he said, “enough about me already. Tell me about yourself, Agent Whitestone. Tell me about your former partners. I might have to pick their brains regarding the best way to stay on your good side. After all, it’s not every day that you get paired up with the female Eliot Ness of the FBI. I need to stay on my Ps and Qs here and dot all of my Is and cross all of my Ts. And probably some other stupid alphabet clichés that I can’t think of right now.”
Dana rolled her eyes at the mention of her supposed celebrity, but her stomach clenched at Blankenship’s inquiry into the status of her former partners.
As for her celebrity, the previous year – much to her chagrin – she’d been featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report for her supposedly sterling work in helping bring down the Chessboard Killers and another murderous serial killer the press had dubbed “the Cleveland Slasher”. The exact same serial killer who’d turned out to have been her own half-brother. Dana was mildly surprised to learn that Blankenship didn’t seem familiar with the cases, because not only had the press driven those stories into the ground right beside all of the dead bodies that had come along with them, during those investigations she’d lost both of her previous partners – Crawford Bell and Jeremy Brown – in the bloodiest of possible fashions.
Not quite sure how to bring Blankenship up to speed, she just came straight out with it. Her new partner’s face blanched while she related all the sickening details. “Jesus Christ,” Blankenship said when she’d finished.
Dana smiled without humor. “Yep. Not the guy I blame for everything that went down, but I still can’t quite figure out why He didn’t step in at some point during all the madness and put a stop to it.”
Blankenship pursed his lips. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Dana. That really sucks.”
Dana sighed. “Yeah, it really does suck.”
For a long time after that, neither she nor Blankenship said another word, both of them drifting off into their own thoughts. Twenty minutes later, though, from the corner of her right eye, Dana watched Blankenship remove his wallet from his back pocket again to study the pictures of his two little girls more closely.
She smiled softly, not blaming Blankenship in the least little bit for his obvious sentimentality. After all, there were some things in this life more important than work, some things in this life more important than doing constant battle with the sick and twisted dregs of society that liked nothing better than to hurt the weak and innocent. As a matter of fact, Dana could think of three of those subjects straight off the top of her head.
Their names were Olivia, Sydney and Bradley Thomas Taylor.
She let out a quiet breath that she hoped Blankenship couldn’t hear. If nothing else, she knew that she’d need to be a lot more careful out there from here on out if she wanted to become Bradley’s mother. She owed it to the boy. Hell, she owed it to herself. She couldn’t afford to go running off half-cocked anymore with no absolutely zero regard for her personal safety should she be lucky enough to add Bradley to her life, someone who actually depended on her staying alive.
When their plane finally touched down with a bone-jarring bump at La Guardia airport in New York City an hour later, an electric jolt of panic bolted through Dana’s heart, her mind flashing back to the horrific plane crash she and Bradley had been in the previous May. She shook her head briefly at her own jumpiness, but then she immediately decided to cut herself a little slack. And why not? To put it mildly, she hadn’t exactly had the best luck in the world when it had come to planes lately, now had she? No, she hadn’t. Then again, when had been the last time that she’d been lucky with anything in her life?
It had been a while, to say the least.
Blankenship unbuckled his safety belt and turned in his seat to face her when the aircraft came to a gentle, rolling stop thirty seconds later. “Ready to go nab us some bad guys?” he asked.
Dana unbuckled her own seatbelt and nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Let’s go do this.”
She paused as she gathered up her things. Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Try not to get us killed out there, OK, Agent Blankenship? I’d like to live long enough to actually see my next birthday, and I just might have somebody out there who’s depending on me to stay alive.”
Blankenship smiled grimly at her. “That’s weird. I was just about to tell you the same thing myself, Agent Whitestone.”
CHAPTER 15
Angel paid for her coffee and forced herself to not analyze Malachai’s parting shot as she left the store.
No matter how much she loved the asshole – or thought she loved him – he just wasn’t worth her time anymore. Besides, she had other, far more important things that she needed to worry about at the moment. One little slip-up and it could be curtains for her. Hasta la vista, baby. Sayonara, sweetheart. All that stupid shit. Razor Diggs and his boys didn’t fuck around.
Although Razor Diggs usually had a battalion of murderous gangbangers watching his back at all hours of the night, none of them ever rolled their sorry asses out of bed before noon, so Angel felt reasonably confident about her chances of catching him alone.
She shook her head in confusion while she drove over to the east side of Cleveland. Much as it would have made things easier on her, though, she had trouble believing that even a shitbird like Razor Diggs would stoop low enough to kidnap his own daughter. What would be the point? What purpose would it serve? Jelani Diggs had said he didn’t even know that Sasha was his.
Still, he represented the most logical place to start.
Razor’s turf lay just east of downtown; a hard, threatening area of the city that seemed a million miles away from where she and Granny Bernice lived on the west side. It was also an extremely ugly place; cold and gray even in the middle of yet another record-breaking summer of soaring temperatures.
The tenement apartment buildings lining both sides of Razor’s street pulsed with a malevolence you just couldn’t find anywhere else in Cleveland. Nobody ever paid rent in this section of town. The slumlords – all of them white – would’ve been paid in bullets if they’d ever
dared ask. They never did, of course – which probably constituted a smart business move for them if they were in the business of actually staying alive.
To the untrained eye, Razor’s building appeared almost indiscernible from all of the other square gray buildings surrounding it, but his mint-condition, cherry-red 1964 Impala marked his territory every bit as effectively as the “Tara” sign in Gone With The Wind.
A pair of dented silver trashcans overflowed with rotting garbage on the curb out front, dozens of fat black flies buzzing around them as they enjoyed an insect version of a Chinese buffet. Shattered windows smiled out from the unattractive face of the structure like a hockey player’s broken teeth. The few stray patches of brown grass that remained on the lawn were in the process of being strangled to death by the aggressive weeds moving in. A case of the environment taking on the personality of its inhabitants, Angel supposed.
One thing that wasn’t rundown, however, was Razor’s car. Not by a long shot. It looked totally out of place in the midst of all this crippling poverty – all chromed out and equipped with hydraulic shocks to make it bounce up and down while he weaved his way through the city streets like a conquering king. Angel doubted the vehicle was even locked, though. Everybody knew whom the car belonged to, and that was a bigger deterrent to thieves than any Lo-Jack system ever could have hoped to been. After all, a fresh new ride just wasn’t worth having your entire body riddled with bullets, now was it?
Parking the Cabriolet directly behind the Impala in an effort to block the gangster’s exit should he try to make a run for it, she exited her own vehicle and walked the few feet across the barren lawn to a front door that was hanging by its last remaining hinge. She opened the door carefully, trying to minimize the creaking as she stuck her head inside, surprised as hell to find that the door didn’t come off in her hand.