Hard to Stop

by Wendy Byrne

  * * *

  Holy shit. Somebody was following him.

  Max felt the uptick in his pulse when he'd rounded the corner. The Shaw itch raced down his back, and he knew. The way that sixth sense kicked in was both welcome and terrifying. Immediately his muscles tensed, his reflexes readying for what might lie ahead.

  His street was deserted at nearly ten p.m. Counting the steps echoing behind him didn't shake the sensations warring inside. At least two people. Maybe three.

  His natural instincts had served him well many times before. Like at Heir Ricker's mountaintop home, where he'd almost died, he'd had that sense of déjà vu long before the attack came. He could almost feel it wafting in the air, whispering at him to be cautious.

  But it came out ugly and distorted and a vengeful conflux of hate, mistrust, and lies when the attack came back then. Jake had somehow blamed himself for what had happened, even though it had never been his fault. The blame lay upon Max's shoulders. No one else's.

  Just like this.

  Payback was coming to roost. Big time.

  And he had no control over it. So he needed to be prepared.

  What would they use? Gun? Knife? Their fists? He couldn't say for sure. So he'd have to prepare for any eventuality. Every possibility.

  Max stopped as if checking his phone and oblivious to what waited behind him. Their footsteps stilled. Definitely two people. The perception so acute that adrenaline flooded his synapses, making his brain go into red alert. Others might have dismissed the sensation, but not him. He knew better.

  They wore gym shoes, not street shoes, the sound different in a way only someone who'd become accustomed to these kinds of altercations would instinctively know. All of these outward signs would pass by most people. That was not the case with him. Especially not now.

  The timing had to be perfect. Two against one—hardly a fair fight, but one he'd won many times before.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  He twisted while bringing a sweeping roundhouse kick at his attackers. They evaded his strike without much trouble, leading him to believe he might be a little rustier than he thought.

  But they had knives.

  Crap.

  He should have seen that move coming. They weren't there to beat him up. They were there to kill him. Their first attempt had failed. Knives were more deadly than guns in close situations. It was a knife that had nearly killed him before.

  They circled, weighing each other in the way skilled opponents do while waiting for an opening. He waited for them to make their move first. The smaller of the two came at him, slashing the knife in a long arch while he advanced. Max struck the guy's arm with one hand while punching the guy's throat with his left. While the guy choked and struggled for breath, the other guy came after him. Max sidestepped and blocked the guy's attack, forcing back his arm. The knife went skittering to the ground a few feet away. Unfortunately, the first guy had already recovered and advanced. Max ducked and turned, driving him back with a roundhouse kick. Guy number one stumbled and looked shaken, but Max didn't expect him to give up.

  Keeping a visual on the two of them when they were both in his peripheral vision wasn't easy. Instead, he focused on the guy on the right. Even though he was bigger, his reflexes were slower, thereby making him an easier target. The guy on the left was smaller but more agile than the one on the right. And, more importantly, he had managed to retrieve his knife.

  Damn. If Max survived this, he was carrying his gun from now on.

  He sucked in a breath and strategized. He'd been in worse predicaments and survived. Time to get serious. They wouldn't come at him at once, because that would be counterproductive unless they could get him on the ground—something he was going to avoid at all costs.

  The bigger guy came at him first. He blocked the attack while simultaneously striking the guy with a chop strike to his windpipe. The wiry one now looked worried as the big one gasped for breath. Still, the littler one came at him. Max caught his arm at the shoulder, then easily twisted it behind his back, bringing him to the ground.

  "Who hired you?" he growled. When there wasn't an answer, he ground the guy's face into the cement sidewalk. "Who? Give me a name."

  "Don't know."

  "Bull. Who? I want to know who, or I swear I'll break your effin arm at the shoulder and not think twice about it. And it will hurt like hell."

  "They'll kill me."

  "And if you think I won't, you're mistaken."

  Before the guy could respond, sirens blared through the quiet night. Max released his hold, and both men took off running.

  Two police cars screeched to a halt in front of him. Officers came out of their cars. "What happened, sir? Somebody called in a fight."

  "Two guys tried to rob me. But ran when they heard the sirens." He pointed in the vague direction they'd headed. "I'm sure they're long gone."

  "Are you all right?" one of the officers asked as he pointed a flashlight in his direction. When Max nodded, the officer continued, "Could you describe them?"

  Max didn't want to get into something that would no doubt be fruitless, so he shook his head. Oh yeah, he could identify them. He'd burned their faces into his brain. And one of them was lucky to be alive after Max had paralyzed his trachea.

  "It was dark. There were two of them. That's about all I can tell you."

  "We'll take your statement. You can come to the station tomorrow and follow up with a detective."

  "Will do." He gave them his best smile and recited as little information as possible. "Now, if you officers don't mind, I'm going to get home and turn on the alarm. This is a pretty safe neighborhood, so didn't expect anything like that." He was laying it on thick, but he wanted them to think he was an average Upper East Side resident rather than one who knew ten different ways to kill a man without making a sound.

  * * *

  "What do you mean that guy's been hassling you? What guy are you talking about?" Of all the things Gia expected her brother to say, that was not one of them.

  "You know, that stupid witness guy that thought we did something we didn't." Mick fidgeted as he stood by the counter in the kitchen while she stirred the gravy and plunked in the meatballs she had prepared the other day. Once again, he avoided eye contact with her.

  "Do you mean Mr. Shaw?" Her pulse rate escalated. The idea he was stalking her brother both enraged her and frightened her. What she couldn't say was that it surprised her. She had a feeling that whatever secrets his past held, they were dark. Maybe even ones she wouldn't want to know about.

  The real rub was she couldn't do much about it since being placed on administrative leave. Earlier she'd toyed with the idea of telling Mick about it but eventually decided to keep quiet.

  "He stopped me before school, then again at lunchtime." Her brother still wouldn't look at her, instead concentrating on giving her the impression he was doing his homework.

  She forced herself to remain calm. "What did he want?"

  Mick shrugged. "Just stuff like, what was I doing there, and did I do it, or did I know who did?"

  "You're saying he's interfering with a police investigation. Is that it?"

  He shrugged as if suddenly regretting what he'd told her. "I guess that's one way to put it."

  "I'm sorry—is there another way that I'm not aware of?" She threw the spoon into the sauce and tossed the pasta into the pot filled with water.

  "Chill, Gia. I can take care of this."

  "The hell you can." She pointed at her chest. "I'm the adult in this house. You cannot keep secrets from me. This is serious, Mick."

  "And I keep telling you I didn't do it."

  "But you were with Joey and Frankie, the two people I told you not to hang with. That's enough to get you grounded."

  "So you said about a hundred times." The surly teen with all kinds of secrets once again reared his ugly head.

  What in the hell was she going to do?

  CHAPTER SIX />
  Max had already visited the police station and had given them as little information as possible about what happened last night. The detective who took the report said little. Max was glad he didn't run into Detective Collini in the interim, or surely the whole dynamic would have changed.

  He was on his second cup by the time Jennings walked in the coffeehouse the following morning. Guilt, fear, and regret had kept him up nearly half the night. Trying to come up with a strategy kept him up the other half. The acid in his gut felt like it was burning a hole straight through. Things were escalating around him, but he had no idea about why everything was converging now, nor who was behind it.

  Jennings stopped at the counter to pick up a large cup before sitting down. "Got some info, but couldn't get it all."

  "What do you have?" He shuffled through the papers Jennings had set across the table. "Who is this guy you have circled?"

  "That's the address you gave me in Brooklyn. Anthony Falcone. As far as I can gather, he's peripheral to the mob. More of a wannabe than an actual player. Rumor has it he had some juveniles running numbers for him to the big guys in Jersey. He's definitely small potatoes, but I imagine he could scare a sixteen-year-old without too much trouble."

  "That fits with what I saw. He didn't seem to hurt the kid except for a bloody nose. By the time the police got there, the kid had left, and it looked as if nothing much happened."

  "But he's got to be involved somehow in this. What are your thoughts?"

  "I can't see it. The guys that came after me last night were trained. These kids and their ringmaster are amateurs, not hired killers for sure. But they know something." Max took a sip of coffee. "And what's the connection?"

  "Maybe none."

  "Are you thinking they're unrelated? The kids happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time, and someone else killed Damon?"

  "I got a copy of the ME report along with the juvie records of the other two kids. Outside of Mick, a.k.a. Michael Collini, the other two losers were destined for big-boy prison with their troubles. Everything from armed robbery to running numbers to selling drugs. And there was cocaine in Damon's system. He was stabbed, but that's not what killed him. Those boys were sent to detain him to make sure he didn't move—the stab might have been by accident. The kill shot hit him in the back and was from a high-powered rifle estimated to be about two hundred feet away."

  "What the hell. Cocaine? A kill shot is a hell of a lot different than a stab wound from some juveniles. Why didn't Collini tell me yesterday?" He never suspected Damon used cocaine and couldn't help but wonder how, or if, it fit at all into what happened.

  Jennings shrugged and took a bite of the pastry he'd bought. "Not sure about Detective Collini, other than I suspect you and she are in a good old-fashioned pissing contest. She's too good a cop to be fooled by your evasion techniques. All I do know is that someone's playing with you. They're probably sitting back enjoying you watch your shadow twenty-four seven."

  Flashes of Petrovich flitted through his mind. It's all a game of cat and mouse, Maxim. You exhaust them before you pounce.

  "Sounds like…" Max couldn't finish his thoughts, but Jennings's nod let him know he understood. Part of him wanted to purge his soul and unburden the guilt that was buried so deep it had yet to see the light of day. But still he couldn't.

  No one could completely understand how he felt responsible for what went down with his family. He'd made the decision to go with Petrovich, and in fact, had sought him out to help his sister, Sabrina. At the time, he had no choice. But in retrospect, had he made a mistake? Second-guessing is for losers. Another Petrovich adage slunk inside his brain.

  "Mick I only have sketchy information on. Juvenile stuff is hard to get, even for me."

  He passed a sheet of paper over to Max listing some petty crimes, including shoplifting, fighting, and truancy. "This isn't much. Do you know if there's more stuff the kid's been involved in and his sister buried or made go away?"

  "Hard to say for sure, but my guess is no."

  "She seems genuinely involved in his welfare, from what I can tell. Maybe overly involved at times," he muttered, more to himself than Jennings.

  He never knew about Jennings's past or how he came to head up The Alliance. It was one of those mysteries that seemed better off hidden in the dark recesses of the mind. Not unlike his own stuff that nightmares were made of. The past wasn't discussed easily or often between them. That felt like a whole other lifetime, as far as he was concerned.

  Going from begging for food and then waiting for the other shoe to drop once they were in Petrovich's stronghold, it was impossible to dismiss his responsibility for where they'd ended up. But that was ancient history. He needed to consider the current situation and not get caught up in the past.

  "So let's hypothesize that at least Joey and Frankie were paid to hassle Damon—or him masquerading as you—enough so that the sniper had a chance to take his shot. Who knows if they knew the real reason why they were doing it? Based on what I see from Joey and Frankie's juvie records, they would be up for that challenge, but I'm not buying the detective's brother knew what was going to go down. I'd bet those two took him along for the ride because they thought it would buy them some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card if they got him on board that crazy train."

  "I've got to agree. He might not have been there willingly, but he knows something or has an idea of something, enough so that the heat's up on him."

  "What was your read when you tracked them down?"

  "The three of them were arguing, or at least talking really loudly. I can't remember the words thrown around other than the F-bomb, but"—Max drew his fingers threw his hair—"now that you mention it, it seemed like it was two against one, which is how I caught up with Mick rather than the other two."

  "What if they're holding something over him that he can't see a way out of? How does that spin things?"

  Max sighed. "He kind of alluded to something when I caught up with him last time. I wondered if he's worried about his sister. At the time I was so focused on him trying to get away with something, I kind of pushed it to the side. I'm pretty sure he won't confide in his sister. But with enough reassurances, I might get him to trust me." The idea coalesced slowly. "The cocaine is definitely the red herring in this equation. I'll check around about that, but I don't think there's a connection now that I know about the sniper shot."

  "It makes sense that Mick got roped into something, especially since it seems like he might have changed things around over the last year. It was like maybe he decided to sit up and fly right and then got sucked into trouble for some reason. I don't know about you, but that kind of thing makes me real curious."

  Max nodded. He had respect for Jennings's instincts. While Max was rusty in his skills, his siblings were working for the good guys and figuring this out on a daily basis. And both were involved with people in the business. Jake's girlfriend was a CIA operative, and Sabrina's boyfriend, Kane, worked undercover for the FBI.

  Max sighed. "Do you have anything on Cleo's whereabouts? Since she tried to kill Jake, she's gone off radar. I'd still like to know how she ended up with my mom's ruby locket. I half expect her to pop out of my hall closet one of these days and wouldn't put it past her to be behind this whole thing."

  "I suspect she's lying low now that she's on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list after her part in the plot to destroy that navy ship in the gulf."

  "I'm not sure if I should be relieved or terrified. She's like a chameleon. Never looks the same twice."

  "My feelings exactly. Your family somehow piqued her plot of revenge, and I have a feeling it has little to do with the death of her brother." Jennings drank the last of his coffee and stared at Max. "You know what I have to ask you."

  Max closed his eyes and suppressed the shudder. "This is a one-time deal only. I'm not interested in getting back into the life." Besides the fact it had nearly killed him, it bothered him even more that he'd enjoyed it so muc
h.

  "What you did in the past doesn't make you a killer. You know that, Max, don't you?"

  He nodded noncommittally. Jennings was sugarcoating the truth. He was a killer. He always would be one in his heart. The real burn was that he'd taken his siblings into his venture into hell.

  "The offer is always open for you to come work for me. I hope you know that."

  "I never say never, but I—"

  "I get you've got a lot of misplaced guilt to wade through, but when you're ready, I'm always there to talk." Jennings looked him in the eye. "And if you ever decide to take a pay cut and come work for The Alliance, I'd love to have you on board."

  Max gulped back the wad of emotion clogging his throat. Thoughts of going back to the life were both intriguing and terrifying simultaneously.

  * * *

  Gia had already decided she wouldn't bother to fight the suspension. A blemish on her spotless record was not going to get her to her goal of being the first female lieutenant in her precinct.

  But she didn't want Mick to know, so she was going to play like she would be working from home for a while this morning. She needed to make her time worthwhile, so while he was getting ready for school, she was preparing scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast. Now that she was officially on leave, following him to school might give her a clue as to what was going on in her brother's life. She could only hope she wouldn't want to kill him after the day was over.

  "Late start today, sis?" He kissed her on the cheek as he grabbed his backpack and slung it over her shoulder.

  If she didn't know better, she would have sworn the kid didn't have a care in the world. But she knew Max Shaw had connections, and through those connections, the heat was on to solve this case. While she had no doubt her brother didn't do the stabbing, he could still be charged as an accessory if they could prove it was him that Max saw.

  "Yeah, I've got a late meeting so thought I'd hang out for a while. Do you want a ride to school? Don't want you to be bothered again by the guy who shall remain nameless."