Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5)

by Patrick Logan

  But Coggins drowned him out. He could barely even hear the chains creaking anymore.

  A biker stepped into the room, just poked his head around the corner, and Coggins didn’t hesitate.

  He fired.

  The man pulled back just as a spray of buckshot peppered the door jam.

  “Fuck! What the fuck!” the man screamed. A hand snaked blindly around the corner and three shots were fired into the room.

  Coggins immediately threw himself to the ground, scooting around the edge of the desk. One of the bullets struck the large television affixed to the wall, sending a shower of sparks over his head.

  As he leaned over the desk, hands clasped on the shotgun, he heard the Sheriff shouting again.

  “Coggins! Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  “I can’t! I won’t leave her!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

  A single eye peered into the room, and Coggins fired. Again, the biker pulled back in time and the spray struck nothing but the other side of the hallway.

  There was more commotion now, and before Coggins knew it, there were at least three hands firing blindly into the room.

  Coggins shot back. Then, as he jambed additional shells from his pockets into the barrel, he became acutely aware that the Sheriff was beside him. He glanced over his shoulder, and realized that Paul had laid Corina’s naked body in the closet. With her missing leg and bruised arms, she looked like a Spartan child who had failed inspection.

  An offering of the deformed to the gods.

  Sheriff White had both handguns drawn now, their barrels resting on the desk.

  Coggins shook his head.

  “No, you can’t stay here. You can’t. You need to save Corina.” His voice hitched, and then he ducked as another shot was fired into the room. This bullet thocked as it embedded in the side of the thick, oak desk. Paul put a large palm on Coggins’s head and pushed him down low, then he himself rose up.

  Sheriff White let loose a barrage of six or seven shots that sounded like thunderbolts inside Coggins’s head.

  “Jesus,” he said. His ears were ringing so badly that the word sounded like a bubble bursting underwater.

  Paul lowered himself, and then they both turned, backs against the desk, their breathing heavy, labored.

  “You can’t stay,” Coggins pleaded, popping his ears by stretching his jaw.

  Sheriff White looked skyward for a moment, and then tears began to streak his cheeks.

  “Everything I’ve ever had, I’ve lost. Dana, Mrs. Drew, Nancy… and now you. I can’t lose you Coggins. I just can’t.”

  Coggins sighed.

  Everyone in Askergan had lost, ever since the storm.

  Everyone.

  But there were still people that could save the County, no matter its state of disrepair. There were people that could save what little good seeped up from the fetid swamp of drug dealers, bikers, and the persistent evil that pervaded the cesspool of indignance.

  But Coggins wasn’t one of those people. He had known this fact during the time he had spent with Yori, driving around and collecting the drug money that fueled the war he now fought against. And if he was ever in doubt, the beatings he had given those Mexican gangbangers in the hallway of the old woman’s house sealed his fate.

  In the late Dana Drew’s words, he might have been ‘one of the good guys’ once, but not anymore.

  Now he was out for revenge, clinging to the thinnest tendrils of hope that Alice was still alive here somewhere.

  “Go, Paul. Save Corina, save Askergan.”

  A massive, thundering explosion suddenly erupted from somewhere outside the estate with enough force to make their teeth gnash together.

  It sounded as if a someone had tossed a grenade into the front entrance.

  The shouting outside the room, which had died down since Sheriff White had fired his rounds, redoubled, but they were now heading in the other direction.

  Like a child discovering a shiny new toy, the bikers had something more exciting to attend to.

  A hand came down on Coggins’s shoulder and he turned to face Sheriff White. He had slipped the backpack off his shoulder, and had pulled a garbage bag from within and was offering it to him.

  “What is it?” Coggins asked.

  “It might be the only thing that can help you get out of here alive.”

  Coggins swallowed hard and took the black plastic bag from his longtime friend, noting the areas where the hard angles stretched the plastic to the point of near tearing.

  When he looked up, Paul was once again holding something out for him. Only this time, it was his large hand. Coggins shook it. Then the big man nodded and started to crab-walk toward Corina and the closet.

  As he watched him go, Coggins was suddenly drawn back in time.

  They were younger then, naive, playing poker while waiting for Dana to arrive and to chew them out for… well, for getting on each other’s nerves.

  Despite the tears streaming down his face, Coggins started to smile.

  “Hey Paul,” he whispered, just loud enough for the man to hear. His friend turned slowly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who’s the only NHL player to score a goal in every way possible in the same game—power play, short-handed, empty net, even strength, penalty shot?”

  Paul’s face screwed up.

  “Hockey trivia? Now?”

  Coggins shrugged.

  “You really are magnificent, aren’t you?”

  And then he leaned down and scooped up Corina’s body before ducking into the closet.

  Coggins watched him go, the smile now a near permanent fixture on his face.

  Paul had done his homework. The only player to have completed that feat was Mario ‘The Magnificent One’ Lemieux.

  Chapter 43

  Smoke.

  Thick, caustic smoke filled Dirk’s eyes, nose, mouth, and lungs. It was as if he was bathing in the substance the way it flowed over, and in, his entire body.

  He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t—there was something sticky gluing them together. He tried to cough next, but only managed a dry wheeze.

  Dirk attempted to use his right hand to wipe the blood away from his face, but couldn’t manage to do that, either. The limb simply refused to respond. His left, however, was moderately less obstinate and with considerable effort he managed to clear enough of the red paint to open his eyes to the equivalent of the squint.

  Smoke attacked his corneas, causing his eyes to water, which served to thin the blood on his face and in a few seconds, he managed to open his eyes to half-mast.

  The smoke was pervasive—that much he already knew—but in the rare spots that it thinned, it was replaced by the same bright light he remembered from before the crash.

  Evidently, the end of the road extended a little further before coming to a dead end.

  Dirk groped blindly with the one hand that retained function and by some miracle managed to find the door handle.

  Grimacing at the pain that wrapped his entire body, he took a deep breath, preparing to shove the door open.

  This was a mistake.

  The acrid smoke that filled his lungs set off a coughing bout that made every nerve ending in his body ignite as if he had swallowed a cattle prod.

  An incredible dizziness struck him as he struggled to breath again, and a thin stream of bile spilled from the corner of his mouth.

  Gasping, trying desperately to override his body’s desire to take another full breath, he gripped the door handle and pushed.

  With a metallic groan, the door opened and Dirk’s body spilled out of the car with all the gore of a full-grown babe birthed from an artificial womb.

  He military crawled for what felt like miles, but couldn’t have been more than a foot before he collapsed and allowed his hypothalamus to take over.

  Cool, night air, tinged with the scent of burning hair and charred aluminum, filled his lungs, and with it chased away some of the fog that clung to his br
ain.

  After several more breaths, he felt a modicum of strength return and somehow managed to flip onto his back and stare up at the wreckage.

  The Mercedes had been destroyed, the front end forced through the wrought iron fence of Sabra’s estate like soft, unripened cheese through chicken wire. The fence itself was askew, pushed back at a sixty degree angle. The light, Dirk realized, was not some celestial beacon, but a light pole that had been downed in the crash, but had somehow remained on.

  An intense pain wrapped his entire right side, and his body spasmed then locked, as if suffering from tetanus. Dirk’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he felt darkness closing in. Then, the moment before he passed out, the pain unexpectedly subsided.

  Teeth gritted, he glanced down and was greeted by the sight of gleaming bone from his upper arm, the jagged end having torn not just through the flesh, but through his shirt as well. He sucked in a breath, then looked to his stomach next.

  His shirt and vest were thick with blood, like maple syrup coating his entire torso.

  This is it, Dirk thought. Perhaps it was that he was surprised to still be alive, or maybe it was that he had finally completed his mission, but this revelation lacked impact.

  He was a dead man; a dead man who had only to confirm his kill before leaving his wasted body behind.

  Carter… where are you, Carter…

  Dirk raised his chin and saw more than a dozen bodies lying motionless on pavement splattered with bloody pillows, and several more on the long drive leading up to the estate. The Mercedes must have clipped the Tempo that the Mexicans were hiding behind, because it was no longer pulled up in front of the estate. Instead, it was in the middle of the road, the rear bumper smashed, the hood pointing away from the house, perpendicular to the small hill. The three Mexicans, including the one who Pike had shot, were lying on the ground around the car.

  When the Mercedes had clipped the car’s bumper, it must have spun violently, throwing them aside like rag dolls. If that hadn’t killed them, then one of the bikers had.

  The Mercedes started to tick, drawing Dirk’s gaze back. Now that he was used to the bright street light, he noticed that a small fire had started beneath the trunk.

  Instinctively, Dirk used his good arm to slide backward, away from the vehicle.

  “Carter! Where are you Carter!” he tried to shout, but the words came out in a dry croak. He strained and yelled again. “Chris fucking Davis, where are you!”

  As if on cue, the driver door opened and a man stumbled out.

  Dirk’s heart sunk.

  “No,” he moaned.

  Disoriented, blood spilling from a gash on his forehead, Father Carter Duke was battered, confused, but very much alive. The man tilted his chin upward, acknowledging the sirens that had filled the night air not as dull cacophony, but as distinct sounds.

  They were getting closer.

  Dirk tried to scramble to his feet, intent on strangling Carter while the man was still numb.

  But his battered body let him down.

  He collapsed to the ground and uttered a series of unintelligible groans, the last of which drew Carter’s attention.

  The man limped over to him.

  “Who are you?” the priest asked.

  Dirk shut his eyes. Tears started to roll down his cheeks, but they clotted when they hit the thick coating of grime that surrounded his mouth.

  “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

  Carter staggered until he was now hovering over Dirk. Maybe he was concussed or was just honestly trying his best to remember, but there was a queer expression on his face.

  “No,” he said simply after a moment of contemplation. “I don’t.”

  Dirk began to sob.

  “You took my wife, my son. My fingers! How the fuck can you forget that?” Another bout of pain struck him and he cried out. Through gritted teeth, he somehow managed to continue, “You told Tony about me, about an informant—an undercover agent.”

  Father Carter spat a glob of blood onto the ground beside him.

  “Yori?”

  “Yori?” Dirk repeated, confused. He remembered the lanky fucker, the bastard who had been Tony’s right hand man. He had never liked the man. “What do you mean, Yori?”

  What were left of his stomach muscles clenched into a tight wad and Dirk moaned in agony.

  The man waited before answering. When Dirk’s breathing regulated, he continued.

  “Yori was FBI, I told Tony about Yori—I had no choice. It was him or me, and Yori was a fucking creep.”

  Dirk’s eyes snapped open all the way and he surveyed Father Carter’s face intently. His heart was thudding away in his chest, its final, stochastic crescendo.

  “Wh—what? What?”

  “I don’t even know who the fuck you are. I knew Yori was an informant—I heard him talking outside the diner. But you were there? A second undercover agent?” he whistled. “Well, shit, Tony must have figured you out himself. Or maybe Yori gave you up to save his own ass.”

  Dirk thought back to his days with Yori and Tony. Everything from that time had degenerated into a greasy blur; everything that happened before he had burst through the open door of his house to find Lauren and Timmy lying dead, was a confused mess.

  And yet he did recall that there was someone else in Tony’s crew, an undercover who had vouched for him. But he had never been told who it was. Could Yori had been FBI?

  No. It was him; it was this fucking priest, fucking imposter.

  But there was something else, too. A fragment of a memory of something Tony had said to him.

  Some of us have lives, families, even children. Others only have business.

  Could it be that Tony knew he was undercover all along, but in his desperation used him anyway? Did he know that Sabra was going to come down hard, and that having an undercover agent working for him might actually come in handy? That it would make sure that nothing happened to him?

  Dirk shook his head.

  “No,” he gasped, “No, you’re lying.”

  Carter spat again, revealing a gap in his front teeth. The white of his left eye was also completely red, blood having spilled into it from an unseen wound. But other than that and the cut on his forehead, he didn’t seem that bad off, considering the state of the Mercedes.

  “Does it look like I’m lying?” Father Carter asked. “I really, truly, don’t know who the fuck you are.”

  “Please,” Dirk whispered.

  His whole life had been a lie.

  No.

  “Fucking hell, Dirk,” someone whispered, and Dirk opened his eyes again.

  A man had stepped into view, a thin man with a long black ponytail, the barrel of a gun held out in front of him glinting in the bright light from the street lamp.

  “Shoot him, Mickey. For fuck’s sake, kill this imposter.”

  Mickey’s brow furrowed.

  He had asked Dirk for help getting out of this life, and now Dirk was offering him that chance.

  All he had to do was put a bullet in Father Carter’s head.

  Mickey turned toward Carter, who grunted as he raised his hands in the air.

  “Dirk, man,” Mickey said, his voice almost forlorn. “Kill an unarmed priest? I mean, fuck, would you—”

  A shot rang out and Dirk instinctively blinked hard.

  “Fuck,” someone groaned.

  Dirk’s eyes snapped open when he realized that it wasn’t Carter’s voice, but Mickey’s.

  His biker friend stumbled backward, his eyes glaring down at a spot of blood on his jean jacket, right above his heart. Then his eyes rolled backward and he fell on the ground where he remained motionless.

  A grimacing Pike exited the car door that Dirk had fallen from, leading with the smoldering muzzle of his pistol.

  Dirk’s face went slack.

  He should have known; after all, he had followed these men for more than five years.

  He should have known that it would have
taken more than a car accident to kill them.

  They were chameleons, they were impostors.

  They were survivors.

  And evidently, Dirk was not.

  “You need to get out of here,” Pike said to Father Carter with a grunt. The sound of sirens pierced the night air. They were close now; really close. “Inside. It’s the only way. Go inside the estate.”

  Dirk opened his eyes in time to see the wounded priest nod, then turn toward the estate before hurriedly limping up the drive.

  Revenge, oh how it nibbles at the very fabric of thy soul.

  Pike raised the gun, aiming it at Dirk’s forehead.

  “I remember you,” the man said. “You gave me the dope, told me to throw the fight.”

  Dirk squinted at Pike. And in that moment before death, Dirk suddenly realized why the man before him was so indebted to Father Carter.

  It was because Father Carter had stolen the heroin that Tony had entrusted Pike with and then he had somehow managed to get the man off the hook with the cartels.

  It was the only thing that made sense.

  “Peter, there is something you need to know,” Dirk gasped.

  The man tensed, and at first Dirk thought that he was going to pull the trigger. But then he hesitated, and Dirk told him about Carter, about how he had stolen the heroin, had set them both on the path that had led them here.

  Pike’s face contorted, but then relaxed. His final response was unexpected, and Dirk was reminded of the conversation with his son on the beach at Martha’s Vineyard.

  “I know, Daddy. But what makes the bad people you catch bad?”

  “Well, someone is defined by the things they do, I guess. So, in a way, if you do bad things, then you’re probably a bad person.”

  Pike shrugged.

  Then a shot rang out, and Dirk Kinkaid, aka Tristan Devon Owens, joined his wife and son in the land of the dead.

  Chapter 44

  For a long while, nothing seemed to happen; Coggins was simply alone in the room with Greg’s dead body, and that of the still uncoscious biker who had been there when he had arrived.

  He had reloaded the shotgun, then did an inventory of the all the shells he had left.