The little girl stared at them with frightened eyes.
“Where’s my mommy?”
Moloch looked at Gorgon, then at the little girl, and then he stared down at the gun in his hand.
“Don’t, man,” Gorgon said.
“She’s seen us.”
“It don’t matter. She’s too young, and we gotta go now.”
Gorgon resumed walking towards the kitchen, but Moloch spoke to the little girl.
“What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer, but tears welled up in her eyes as she sensed that something was very wrong.
“Stay up there, kid,” Moloch called to her, as he ran to catch up to Gorgon. “The cops will be here soon. Just stay up there!”
***
They drove north, then east, and were two minutes from Andrea and the rest of the Demons when Gorgon let out a loud curse.
“What?” Moloch asked.
“Cindy, the little bitch still had the kilo of gold on her. I forgot all about it.”
“Shit, me too, and you know what?”
“What?”
“I liked her.”
“Me too, man, me too.”
“We still need two girls to trade.”
“Screw it, we’ll use some of the gold.”
“Why? Bitches are free.”
“Yeah, but they’re a lot of trouble. It’s because of that little Jenna girl that all this shit is happening in the first place.”
“What about her brother, Soldier-boy, you think he’s done with us?”
“I don’t know. All I want to do is get to Mexico and leave all this crap behind us.”
“Gorgon, don’t tell Andrea what I said earlier about me and her. Hell, she probably don’t even remember.”
“I won’t say anything, but we’re cool now, right?”
“Yeah, we’re cool,” Moloch said.
He then remembered that he had Andrea’s bloody dress in one of his saddle bags.
He decided he would hold on to it and hide it somewhere. Friends again or not, that dress might come in handy someday.
CHAPTER 22
Pierce awoke late the following morning after getting a good night’s sleep and found a note from Val, who had already left for work.
He was sorry he had missed her, but knew he needed the sleep. After shaving and showering, he called her at work.
Val worked for a former TV news anchor named Maria Romo. Romo had her own cable news show and Val was her assistant. Although the program aired at night, it was filmed during the day, and they usually recorded three shows at a time.
On the days they filmed, Val had to be at the studio early, but the rest of the week she could work from home, and had the summer months free.
When Pierce checked in with the station, he learned that the Demon he had wounded had died. As he told Val, he felt no guilt over the thug’s death.
Jimmy Drake showed up just as Pierce was starting on his second cup of coffee and Jimmy greeted him with a warm handshake.
“You faced some shit yesterday, Rick. I’m glad to see you’re in one piece.”
“I’m good, but I may be facing more trouble tonight.”
Pierce explained about the raid on the warehouse and how he, Jake, Stacey, and the two FBI agents Rogers and Abrams planned to crash the party. Jimmy said that Pierce could count him in as well.
“I know that area, Rick, and there’s an old road that leads in there. It’s covered with weeds now and I bet the Feds don’t know a thing about it.”
“Where’s it lead to?”
“An ancient shore road that was washed out by some tropical storm decades ago. There’s half a road there now. You can still access it by the A.C. Expressway, if you know how, which I do from working on a case. If we go in that way, we’ll be able to see the action without getting spotted by anyone.”
“All I want is the Bay Street Demons, and a woman named Andrea. Our witness says she’s a middle-aged blonde with a scar on her left cheek. We believe she stabbed Al to death.”
Jimmy blinked and then scratched at his beard.
“Andrea, why does that name sound familiar?”
“It’s not unusual; you must have heard it before?”
“Yeah, sure, but there’s something else, something nagging at me, but maybe it will come to me later. Right now, we need to talk.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s about Amy Lowe.”
Pierce sat his cup down. He was drinking coffee, but Jimmy had grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“What about her?”
Jimmy pointed up.
“Let’s go upstairs and sit on that great balcony of yours. I have a little story to tell you.”
***
They settled on the balcony that was adjacent to Pierce’s bedroom. It granted a view of the fields at the rear of the house. The farmer that rented the fields from Pierce was growing corn this season and the green stalks swayed amid a gentle breeze.
“So what’s this story, and what does it have to do with Amy?” Pierce said.
“She hired me yesterday. The case was easy and now she’s another satisfied client. As an ex-client, I’ll discuss her with you, but it goes no further than us, okay?”
“I don’t know what it is yet, Jimmy, but I don’t keep secrets from Val.”
“Smart man, and yeah, you can tell her.”
Pierce leaned forward in his seat.
“Okay, so why did Amy hire you?”
Jimmy smiled at him and Pierce looked back at him questioningly.
“What’s with the smile?”
“I’m proud of you. You didn’t ask me how she looked or if she mentioned your name. You really have gotten her out of your system, haven’t you?”
“Thanks to you and Dr. Jansen, yeah, Amy’s in the past. Val is my present, and my future.”
“Cool, and just so you know, Amy Lowe hasn’t lost her looks, but that is one screwed up lady.”
“Explain that?”
“She was being blackmailed by a student she’s slept with, a nineteen-year-old student. He had no proof, no video or nothing like that, but he wanted her to give him money or he’d talk to her husband.”
“How did you handle that?”
“I made him understand that ratting out my client would be a bad idea, a very bad idea.”
“I guess Amy’s marriage is on the rocks,” Pierce said.
Jimmy grinned.
“Oh, the marriage is as fine as it ever was, for now. But when I explained the facts of life to the kid and made sure he wouldn’t bother her again, he gave me some news.”
“What news?”
“Our professor Amy has a thing for the young ones, and her blackmailer knew three other students that she’d been with. They’re all adults, eighteen and over, but the lady definitely has a preference for youth.”
“If that’s true, then why did she dump me for an older man?”
“Money, son, good ol’ money. She told me that she needed to keep her husband in the dark at least until his father died. It seems that she believes that Arthur Lowe is about to inherit big bucks.”
Pierce nodded.
“Yeah, I remember now, Lowe came from old money, but it’s back in England. Is his father ill?”
“The old man is dying, and he’s doing it in one big ass house near London. I have a friend over there who’s an ex-cop, and he checked things out. The money is gone, Rick. That huge house belongs to the bank. When the old man dies and the will is read, your Amy is going to be one disappointed gold digger. Another contact told me that Amy and her husband are deep in debt. I guess they’ve been spending above their means and counting on that inheritance.”
“Amy has been with Arthur Lowe since college. Are you telling me that was all about money?”
“Think about it, Rick. Didn’t she dump you after your father nearly gambled away everything?”
Pierce stood up and leaned on the railing.
“Son
of a bitch, she dumped me for Lowe because of my father? She must have hooked onto me in high school after seeing this house and the land.”
“Yeah, that’s my bet. Amy Lowe is a woman with some issues, and God help the next man she gets her hooks into. Amy dumping you was a Godsend. You dodged a bullet, Rick. Hell, you dodged a cannon ball.”
Pierce turned and stared at Jimmy. He then began laughing so hard that he had to sit and hold his sides. When he finally stopped, he wiped tears from his eyes.
“Oh God, what an idiot I was, and for so many damn years.”
“That woman is poison. She’ll dump the professor too, just you wait and see.”
“Jimmy, I don’t give a damn what she does, and oh yeah, Val and I are getting married soon.”
Jimmy grinned.
“Good, I know she doesn’t like me, but that woman is the best thing that ever happened to your skinny ass. She loves you, I can tell.”
“We don’t have a date for the wedding yet, but will you be my best man?”
“You’re damn straight I will, Rick. Thanks for the honor.”
Pierce laughed again.
“Jesus, all those mornings I sat in that parking lot watching Amy through binoculars... I must be an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot, you were just in love with a woman who didn’t exist.”
“And now I have Val.”
Jimmy raised his beer can in a toast.
“Life is good.”
***
Miles away, Gorgon and Andrea lay in bed and played with the gold coins he and Moloch had stolen from the safe at Cindy’s house.
The Bay Street Demons were crashing in a home that one of them knew would be empty. The owners were clients of the Demon’s mother, a cleaning woman. She had given them the alarm codes so that they could hide out there while the owners were off on vacation in Hawaii.
When Gorgon returned early in the morning, he woke Andrea by tossing coins at her one after the other. She came wide awake when she realized what they were.
She told him the story of digging up Jenna Raines, and he told her the story of how they got the gold.
“This girl, Cindy, was Moloch really gonna hook-up with her?” Andrea said.
“If she said yes, hell yeah, she was a tasty little thing.”
“She sounds like she would have fit right in, but the last thing we need is another Darla.”
Gorgon rose from the bed and stretched.
“I’m gonna grab us a place on the beach when we get down to Mexico.”
“What are we gonna do down there?”
“We’ll hook up with the cartel we sell the guns to and start making some fat bucks with them. Hell, we should have done that instead of this girls for guns then drugs bullshit in the first place.”
“We couldn’t, remember? We had no money to get our foot in the door. At least with the girls we could trade them to the Salvadorans for weapons.”
Gorgon scooped up a handful of coins.
“We got money now, baby, but I’m not doing shit for a while. I just want to lay on a beach with you for the next few weeks. While I’m doing that, I’ll make some contacts, and then we’ll be players again.”
Andrea stood and walked over to him naked.
“That sounds great, and hey, how many coins are there?”
Gorgon shrugged.
“I didn’t count ‘em. There was no time.”
Andrea kissed him and began pulling him towards the bathroom.
“We’ll count them after we shower.”
Gorgon let her pull him along, knowing by Andrea’s smile that he was in for more than a shower.
***
Minutes later, when the sounds coming from the bathroom told her that Gorgon and Andrea were occupied, Darla snuck into the room.
She had been listening at the door, as she often did. She wasn’t the sex-starved airhead that everyone took her to be.
If Gorgon didn’t know how many gold coins he had, then he sure as hell wouldn’t miss the five she grabbed off the bed. When she was halfway out the door, Darla returned and grabbed a sixth coin, and then a seventh.
It was all she could do not to laugh out loud.
CHAPTER 23
Pierce drove down to Atlantic City while alone in his car, but followed behind Jimmy Drake’s motorcycle.
Jimmy pulled off the A.C. Expressway and onto a service road for an electric company’s switching station. The tan brick building was sprawling and sat behind a chain-link fence that was topped with barbed wire. Not far away from it, on the other side of the building, Pierce could see a blue water tower shining in the sun.
The service road was older than the building and was only kept in good repair near the front, by the highway. Once you were past that and driving along the fence, you had to go slow because of the cracks and potholes.
Jimmy stopped his motorcycle along the fence and Pierce parked behind him and stepped out of his car.
“Why did you stop here?” Pierce asked.
Jimmy pointed to the road ahead.
“We go on foot from here because once you go around that bend there, Mother Nature has reclaimed half the road. I could make it on my motorcycle, but its too narrow for a car.”
Pierce nodded in understanding and they started walking. The disintegrating lane ran down to an equally ancient roadway that many decades past had been a thriving thoroughfare.
The second road was wider, with ruins on both ends. The nearest side of the road was dry, while the other side was submerged beneath the lapping water of the Barnegat Bay, as were the left and right ends of it, which both curved into the water.
What remained above the waterline was a weed-infested surface that was about the size and length of three basketball courts. Its surface, although mostly flat, had a substantial dip in one section and was lined with cracks and a couple of wide trenches ran along other parts of it.
In the distance, Pierce could make out the tops of several casinos and thought that the view would be better at night. There was trash all along the shore at the edge of the ruined road, but it was mostly debris from the bay.
Jimmy led Pierce on foot over the uneven ground to the far end, where there were the remains of a crumbled building. There wasn’t much left but the bottom part of one wall and a heap of debris.
When they walked around the wall, Jimmy stopped abruptly, and Pierce nearly ran into him, but then he looked over to see where Jimmy was pointing.
It was a wide patch of ground that sat beneath the shade of a few trees. In the sandy soil were numerous tire tracks from motorcycles, along with boot prints.
“The Bay Street Demons?” Pierce asked.
Jimmy shrugged.
“Maybe, and it would make sense for them not to pull up to the building on their bikes when they came to do business. That would sure as hell make people wonder what was going on inside.”
“If Homeland Security doesn’t know about this way in, then we might be able to take down the Demons first and have the element of surprise on our side.”
“I doubt Homeland Security has considered this route, and let me show you why.”
They walked away from the water to the end of the crumbling wall and found themselves looking at the side of a hill. When Pierce moved farther away from the wall, he saw that there was a concrete drainage ditch. The ditch was wide, but only about five feet deep. Jimmy pointed north, where the top corner of a brick building could just be seen.
“That’s the warehouse, Rick. If we moved down into the drainage ditch and walked a little ways, we could climb out near the warehouse’s back door.”
“Won’t Homeland Security place men near the ditch?”
“Near, but not in it. Their main concern is the terrorist they’re expecting to visit the building. That means their focus will be on the building. We don’t need to catch the Demons at the building. Hell, we don’t really need to go near the building at all. We can take the Demons down in the middle of the drainag
e ditch.”
“Are there places to hide down there?”
“Yeah, I remember there being other ditches farther along that feed this one. They’d be perfect for hiding in.”
“What if the Demons don’t come this way?”
“They may not, but it’s still a great place for us to view the action from. But I’ll tell you, seeing those tire tracks back there make me think that the Demons know about this route in.”
“How do you know about this area?”
“I was hunting down a casino embezzler a few years ago. When I followed the man he came here for a meeting with another casino employee, a security guard. The two were in on the theft together. I never did learn which one of them picked this spot to meet, but it was probably the guard, he grew up in the area.”
“I’ll bring Jake Collins and the others here later and see what they think, but it looks like a great place to set up. If the Demons do come in this way, it’ll also be a great place to spring an ambush.”
“I won’t be joining you here until tonight, but I’ll be around,” Jimmy said. “Feds give me the creeps.”
Pierce laughed.
“Rogers and Abrams are cool, and they want to catch Al’s killer as much as I do.”
They went down into the drainage ditch and walked hunched over until they were near the warehouse. On the way back, as they returned to the bay, something snagged Pierce’s attention and he pointed at it.
It looked like another dilapidated building but it was round and tapered. One side of the structure’s base sat in the water. Like the roadway, it was slowly being reclaimed by the bay.
“What is that, Jimmy, do you know?”
Jimmy squinted at it.
“It’s an old stone lighthouse, but the top section is missing all its glass.”
“Oh yeah, I can make it out now, and I bet that you can see quite a distance from up there. I guess there’s a lot of history behind these ruins.”
“Yeah, and I know the raid isn’t supposed to go down until midnight, but why don’t we get out of here before we’re spotted?”
“Good idea, but I’ll be bringing everyone back here soon to get a look at the area. If the Demons show up tonight, they’re ours.”
Demons (A Detective Pierce Novel Book 2) Page 9