Yeah, Dirk thought that a private screening might work; appeal to their elitist nature.
Or maybe it was something even simpler; maybe the residents just felt that something was wrong, that the cloud of evil and the devil motes that perpetually hovered over Askergan had finally spread into Pekinish. Either way, it had been over an hour since Dirk had seen movement in any of the windows or a light flick on.
He was mulling these scenarios over in his head, considering what he might do if he were in the Sheriff’s shoes, when a Ford Tempo, rust clinging to every seam, started to rattle down the street that led up to the estate. The interior was dark, the windows tinted pitch, but the way it moved, slowly, as if the driver were checking street numbers, was a dead giveaway. That, and the fact that it was the only car that he had seen in the past hour, was a dead giveaway. This was no lost camper looking for a hostel or a rebellious teen desperate to score pot. The Tempo’s engine was obnoxiously loud, punctuated by knocking that announced its final journey like a metallic death rattle.
This could only be one thing: the distraction.
Dirk glanced quickly to the bikers, who were preoccupied polishing the chrome on their bikes or smoking cigarettes. He counted seven men in sleeveless jean jackets, but knew that there was easily five times that number inside the estate. At first they appeared too absorbed to notice the sound of the Tempo, but as it drew nearer, a biker he knew only as Clap—a man whose lips and chin were always covered in oozing cold sores—stopped polishing his engine and looked up.
A second later, he tapped the man beside him on the shoulder and mouthed something that Dirk was much too far away to hear, and yet he knew exactly what the man said.
‘You hear that?’
Dirk glanced back to the car, and realized that his heart was beating hard in his chest.
Too early, they’re too early.
Sheriff White had told him that they had an hour before the cartels were to arrive, and yet only a little over half that much time had passed.
The front window of the Tempo started to roll down infuriatingly slowly and Dirk watched with nervous trepidation. Just as he thought he saw movement from inside the vehicle, something else caught his eye.
The Tempo steered slightly to the left, not much, just enough to move the vehicle from the right-hand lane to the center of the street, but if it hadn’t been for that movement, Dirk would never have seen it.
The yellow headlights illuminated a large oak tree near the base of the mound on which Dirk crouched, and when they did, he caught a glint of something metal.
It was Pike; he was only there for a split second before sliding behind the tree and out of sight, but Dirk was sure of it. He recognized the man’s stiff collar, his bowtie.
What is he doing here?
As far as he knew, the Sheriff’s instructions to Pike had mirrored those to Dirk: set the plan in motion, then stay the hell out of the way.
And none of that could be misunderstood for crouch behind a tree not forty yards from Sabra’s estate with guns drawn.
The problem was, Dirk realized, that the Sheriff was out of his league; he didn’t know Pike or Father Carter. Shit, he didn’t even know Dirk and yet he had armed him with both a handgun and a shotgun.
Sheriff Paul White was so far out of his league that he wasn’t even playing the same damn sport.
As Dirk squinted at the spot where Pike had disappeared moments ago, he tried to understand his motives, the noisy Tempo and its occupants momentarily forgotten.
All those years ago, Dirk had known the man as Peter Glike, a feared brawler who had some connection to Tony that ran deep.
Remind him of the time in the rain.
As an undercover agent, he had been commissioned with the task of identifying where Tony Mastromonaco was getting the heroin that flooded Askergan from.
But Tony had his own problems, ones that were perhaps even more dangerous than having an undercover police officer infiltrating his ranks. He needed cash, and he needed it badly to hold the cartels at bay. Because if he didn’t provide the capital to up the distribution, then someone else—Sabra—would. And that’s were Dirk came in; he had told Pike to throw the fight, and to make sure that he did, Dirk had given him a key of heroin.
The heroin… where did it go?
His mind turned to the brawl that ensued when Pike didn’t go down in the third, which set about a chain reaction of Sabra and his men taking control with an iron fist.
Did it get lost in the melee? Stolen?
Dirk couldn’t be sure. But he thought that whatever had happened to it, it hadn’t been forgotten. After all, the cartels had been there that night during Riot 7, they had teamed up with Sabra to oust Tony, and they must have known about the drugs that Pike had been given to preside over. In fact, that had been Tony’s point; convince Pike to go down, but if he was weary, give him the heroin. Let him know that if he didn’t oblige, Tony would send a little birdie out to the cartels letting them know the name of the man who thought it was okay to steal from them.
But if that were the case, why were the cartels helping Pike now?
There was something deeper going on here, something that didn’t feel right to Dirk.
He shook his head, trying to focus.
It didn’t matter.
The only things that mattered were Lauren and Timmy; what mattered was revenge.
More men were stirring inside the gates now, some of them trying to peer over the fence to get a look at where the horrible racket was coming from.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dirk spotted a man sporting the ubiquitous Skull Krushers uniform appear at the end of the street opposite the approaching vehicle. He was struggling to light a joint that hung from his lips with a match, but the thing kept going out before he could get it lit. The man appeared so obsessed with this task that he didn’t even notice the din of the car.
Clearly, this joint wasn’t going to be the first illicit product he had indulged in this night.
As he neared the gate, the shouts from one of his comrades finally drew his gaze. The man raised his head, which unlike most of the other bikers, was completely shaved, but as he did, the joint fell from his lips and he immediately bent down to pick it up. A shout loud enough that this time Dirk heard it clearly—”The car! Look at the car!”—startled the skinhead and his head whipped around.
Only he didn’t turn in the direction of the Tempo; instead, he turned the other way and for the briefest of moments before Dirk buried himself in the tall grass, their eyes met.
Fuck. He saw me—he fucking saw me.
Breathing in shallow gasps now, Dirk tried to remain as still as possible. When nothing happened for what seemed like the longest minute ever experienced on this earth, he slowly began to convince himself that maybe the smooth-headed biker hadn’t noticed him after all.
Maybe he was too high to see me.
But their eyes had met—like the invisible laser from a security system completing the circuit, they had locked on each other.
Dirk wanted to slip the shotgun from his back to his chest, but doing so would almost definitely give him away, if his cover hadn’t been blown already. Instead, he opted for the pistol in the holster on his belt. He unclicked the buckle slowly, and then froze again, listening closely to hear if the sound of the snap unfastening had drawn any attention.
Still nothing, Dirk—you’re being paranoid.
He snaked his hand over the butt of the gun and slipped it from the holster. Only now, feeling the cold hard weight of the pistol in his hand, did he dare glance up.
His eyes narrowed and his heart skipped a beat.
The biker with the joint was gone.
Where the—
Grass crinkled to his left, and as Dirk started to turn in that direction a shot rang out.
It was a good thing he had been slow to react; if he had rolled completely, the bullet that whizzed by his ear would have plunked him just below his right eye.
; Dirk instinctively squeezed off a round, aiming blindly in the direction that the bullet had come from.
He was lucky; for once in his adult life, Dirk Kinkaid, aka Tristan Devon Owens, had gotten lucky.
The bullet he fired struck the shadowy figure in the stomach and he grunted, staggering backward.
Dirk jumped to his feet, trying to make out who had attacked him. At first blush, it appeared that the man was wearing a bowtie.
“Pike?” he asked tentatively.
The response was another shot, only this time the bullet didn’t miss; it struck him in the stomach, sending searing heat outward from the point of impact as if his entrails had been set alight.
Dirk screamed and wrapped his arm around his midsection, hot, sticky blood immediately soaking his forearm.
Resisting the terrible urge to double-over, knowing that if he did, he was as good as dead, he gritted his teeth and strode forward.
Without thinking, he squeezed off three more rounds.
This time when the man went down, he stayed down.
Dirk, tasting blood with every wheeze, shuffled forward and used the toe of his boot to lift the man’s head.
It wasn’t Pike; it was the bald biker with the joint. Only now he had a smoldering hole in the center of his forehead, a third, non-seeing eye.
A shout drew his gaze away from the dead man at his feet.
“Fuck,” he swore. There were three bikers running toward him, sprinting through the now open gate.
Dirk looked quickly to where Pike had been standing moments ago, but either he was still hidden out of sight, or he had fled.
And that was when the Tempo rolled up to the estate, the windows rolled all the way down now.
Well, Dirk thought, grimacing at the pain that seemed to wrack his very being, if Sheriff White wanted a distraction, then a distraction he shall get.
He slipped the pistol back into his holster and rolled the shotgun on the strap from his back to his front.
One helluva fucking distraction.
Dirk pumped the shotgun handgrip and strode forward.
Chapter 30
“Help me,” Donnie croaked, barely capable of getting the words out. But the man with one eye either didn’t hear, or didn’t care. He stepped over the unconscious bodyguard’s body that had spilled into the room without even looking over at him. “Seth, please.”
Still nothing.
Seth walked directly to the desk, and pressed the button hidden beneath to lower the bodies hanging from the ceiling. As the chains whirred, filling the room with a mechanic lullaby, Corina slipped down Donnie’s back and the grip on his neck loosened. Not much, but enough for him to jam a hand between her thigh and his throat. With a sudden jerk, and a twist, he managed to break free of Corina’s grasp.
She cried out, but Donnie, rasping now, crawled away from her. He made it to the desk and then pressed the button to send her back to the ceiling.
“No!” Corina yelled. Donnie turned to look at her. Her face was red from exertion and she was thrashing her leg and stump madly. “No! Let me down! Let me down!”
Gritting his teeth, Donnie held his finger to the button, while at the same time cursing himself for being so stupid.
If Walter ever finds out about this…
His eyes whipped over to Seth, who was in the process of unchaining Alice even as she ascended.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted over the sound of Corina’s shouts and the chains ratcheting. Donnie, still out of breath, turned over and sat, leaning up against the large desk that used to be Sabra’s. “Seth, what the fuck are you doing? Seth!”
The man didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead, he continued to untie the unconscious woman. She fell free just as the chains pulled her out of reach. She slumped forward, and he caught her over one shoulder.
Donnie, his heart racing now, confusion washing over him, looked to the guard lying on the floor next. The man he had given a teener of heroin was lying face down, his nose leaking blood, his mouth twisted in a toothless smear.
“What the fuck is going on? You can’t… you can’t leave, Seth. And not with her! If Walter—”
And yet Donnie failed to rise as Seth approached.
It was his eyes—his one eye; there was something wrong with his eye. It was too dark. Black, even, with no whites.
Donnie swallowed hard.
“You can’t—”
But the rumbling sound originating somewhere outside the estate stopped him mid-sentence. Donnie squinted, unsure of what he had heard, and tilted his ear upward. Seth, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice. He just kept on trudging with Alice still slung over his shoulder like a suckling pig ready for the spit.
And then someone yelled, which was quickly followed by another shout. Donnie pushed himself to his feet and turned toward the door.
A biker ran by, one he didn’t recognize. The man had thick bushy eyebrows that were knitted in concern. He paused by the entrance of the room, clearly surprised that the door was open. He opened his mouth to say something, but then he saw the body of his friend lying on the floor.
“What the fuck happened to Carl?”
When there was no immediate reply, he turned to Seth.
“Where the fuck you going? Where’s the Crab?”
Donnie finally pushed himself to his feet while at the same time massaging his raw throat.
“Not here,” he said simply.
More gunshots rang out, and the hallway was suddenly filled with the bodies of a dozen men.
“The cartels!” someone yelled. “The fucking cartels are here!”
The man with the bushy eyebrows’ face quivered.
“Shit,” he grumbled. He swung the automatic rifle that was slung across his back forward and held it out in front of him. “If you see the Crab, tell him that the time has come. Tell him… tell him to bring the evil!”
The man sprinted from the room, and that was when Donnie heard another sound. It first he thought it was Seth, that he might be humming as he left the room and headed in the opposite direction that the other men were running.
But the noise persisted even after Seth was gone.
It was Corina.
She was laughing.
“What the fuck are you laughing at?”
Corina continued to cackle.
“The cartels? The cartels? Oh you guys are right fucked now. You think your band of misfit bikers and your crackhead of a brother are tough? Wait until the cartels get their hands on you. A head in a bag? A head in a bag? They’ll fucking grind you up while you’re still alive and squeeze you into those itty-bitty bags you sell your dope in! You guys are right fucked!”
Corina broke into a fit of laughter that made the chains above her rattle.
Donnie grimaced.
She was right; they were in no way prepared to start a fucking war with a Mexican drug cartel. Shit, the American government had spent tens of billions of dollars on such a war and they hadn’t won.
How could the Wandry brothers fare any better?
His grimace became a scowl and he narrowed his eyes at Corina, observing her naked body, the dark blue stretch marks leading from her wrists all the way to the sides of her small, pale breasts.
“And what the fuck do you think they’re going to do to you when they come in here and find you?” he spat.
Corina stopped laughing.
“Yeah, that’s right. They’ll take you for a ride, that’s a guarantee. And let me tell you, the destination is not the fucking war amps, you murderous cunt.”
Chapter 31
Sheriff White stopped and raised his chin.
“What the fuck was that? Did you hear that?”
He looked to Reggie, whose tanned face looked ghastly by the illumination from the light clipped to his pocket. The man squinted and shielded his eyes.
“Sheriff,” he replied, to which Sheriff White responded by tilting his barrel chest away form his deputy.
Pop,
pop, pop.
The sounds came again; it was like listening to popcorn popping inside a tin can.
“There—you hear that?”
Coggins nodded in his periphery and Paul spun in that direction.
“Coggins, what time is it? We haven’t been in here—”
“They’re early. The cartels came early,” Deputy Williams whispered in response to another series of shots somewhere high above them.
“Fuck!” Sheriff White swore.
They couldn’t have been walking in the three-inches of foul-smelling water inside the sewer for more than fifteen minutes.
Ten minutes to get to Main and Highway 2, five to get inside, twenty-five to get to Sabra’s estate, leaving us twenty minutes to get ready.
It seemed that his plan had been far too conservative.
“Lights on,” he hollered, “Let’s get fucking moving!”
Sheriff White didn’t wait for them to reply. Instead, he turned sharply and strode forward, his feet splashing loudly in the foul water.
“Hurry!” he yelled over his shoulder as he broke into a jog.
Images of the cartels dead or gone while the bikers lurked with their weapons drawn in the sewers washed over him.
And that terrible fire, the fire outside the closet as someone pushed down on him, forcing his chest to the floor.
Cooooommmmmeeee
Something furry brushed up against his ankle, and Sheriff White’s foot instinctively shot out. A rat squealed, and he caught the sight of its body—thick as a football—as it scurried out of sight.
“Fucking hate rats,” Reggie muttered behind him, a comment that angered Paul.
Rats? We’re about to be ambushed and murdered inside this metallic bowel and he’s worried about rats?
Sheriff White shook his head and increased his pace.
The blueprints that Williams had brought to the station had shown the massive sewer pipe leading to directly beneath Sabra’s Estate and end a little ways past it, in case someone else wanted to piggy-back onto it in the future.
Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5) Page 13