A man said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
She watched Mutt turn to see what was happening and to swing his pistol around.
Someone shot him twice in the chest.
Darcy screamed and tried to turn to face her attacker.
That’s when she was clubbed on the head and the lights went out.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sunday, ten a.m.
Brack kept suppressive fire on the man with the submachine gun. With only seven bullets in a full mag, he had four left. Then it was on to plan B. In his case, run like the wind.
Boom. Pause. Boom. Pause. Boom. Pause. Boom. Click.
Empty.
Run.
Brack turned and caught a fist in the mouth. The next thing he knew he was in the air. Then a very hard crash into something solid. His already injured back erupted in pain. He crumpled to the ground, unable to move anything.
“So,” a voice said above him, “you’re the one causing all this ruckus.”
His brain scrambled to make sense of his situation. He couldn’t get up, couldn’t formulate words, couldn’t shoot. He was a dead man. So he did the only thing he could, physically. He spat in the direction of the voice.
“Aw, man!”
Then Brack heard another voice say, “Townsend sends his regards.” Next, a shoe kicked him. Hard.
He blacked out.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Darcy came to at the jostle of the floor beneath her. She blinked a few times and realized her situation. She lay in the back of a large SUV, her hands bound behind her back, her feet tied together.
The interior of the vehicle smelled like vanilla. Either the owner liked the scent or they’d taken Mutt’s vaporizer.
Brack lay facing her. She stared at him, thinking not about how to escape, but about their history together. The last time they were this close, she’d been shot and he was saving her life by stanching her blood loss. But even before that, when they’d first met, there’d been a connection between them—despite his having been so hard to get close to. It began as a lingering attraction, but she soon found herself needing to be near him. And she didn’t like that one bit, which is why she’d pushed him away. When he found comfort in the arms of another woman, she had bolted to Atlanta.
All of it one big mistake after another.
And now Mutt was dead and they were next.
At that moment, the SUV hit a pothole and Brack stirred.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brack opened his eyes and found himself looking at a bound and gagged Darcy. Her eyes were slate gray, a piece of duct tape stuck across her mouth. He realized he had tape across his own as well. His hands were bound behind his back. And his ankles were tied together. His back hurt.
Not good.
The floor bounced again. He winced. They lay in the very back of a moving SUV. Probably the Tahoe.
Really not good.
The interior smelled like Mutt’s vanilla vapor.
Brack tested the binds on his hands. Tight, but with some movement. Which was all he needed. Afghanistan taught him a lot. Like shoot first or die hesitating. Trust his instincts. And zip ties are less flexible than twine and far superior for binding legs and arms. He worked the knot at his wrists, tied by inexperience and twine, and wriggled free in thirty seconds.
Darcy watched him gain freedom of his hands and turned to give him access to her bound hands. But like the airplane stewards say during their safety instructions to passengers, first make sure you can breathe before helping someone else. So Brack knew he had to be a hundred percent unbound, ready to fight, before he could help Darcy.
The moment he freed his ankles, a man riding in the backseat turned. He saw Brack at the same time Brack saw him. In the man’s mouth was Mutt’s vaporizer. Before he could speak, Brack sprung, grabbed the man’s already turned head and twisted it further, breaking his neck.
The driver skidded to a stop.
Brack dove over the dead man in the backseat and shoved both the driver and the front passenger forward. Neither wore seatbelts. The driver’s head slammed into the steering wheel. His partner had more distance to travel so his forward motion smashed him into the windshield.
Before the driver roused himself, Brack punched him twice in the face, then turned to the passenger. The man was dazed. Seeing his own forty-five stuck in the man’s waistband, Brack pulled it out and cracked the man across the skull. He did the same to the driver.
Horns blew and Brack realized the SUV was stopped in the middle of busy Peachtree Street, holding up traffic.
Brack reached across the seat to the passenger door handle, opened the door, and shoved the man out onto the street. Then he opened the other door and did the same for the driver, got behind the wheel, and accelerated away.
When he reached Lenox Mall, Brack pulled in, parked in one of the garages, and freed Darcy. He also found Mutt’s vaporizer and put it in his pocket.
Without a word, they got out of the SUV, walked through the mall, and escaped out a side door.
A Marta station sign loomed across the outdoor parking lot. The three idiots in the SUV hadn’t taken Brack’s wallet, so he paid for two tickets and he and Darcy walked to the platform to wait for the next train.
Not until they made it to a bench did Darcy collapse, cry, and heave.
Brack stooped next to her. “Breathe...Breathe...Breathe...”
The small crowd on the platform stared but kept their distance.
She heaved a few more times. “Mutt—”
The train came.
Brack helped her up. “Tell me when we get moving.”
They boarded the train and found two seats away from the other passengers, several of whom kept an eye on the pair.
When the doors closed, Darcy took a deep breath and spoke. “They shot Mutt.”
“Did they kill him?”
She put her head in her hands. “I think so. They shot at him twice before they knocked me out and dragged me from the car.”
Although the idiots hadn’t taken his wallet, his iPhone was fair game. Not that they could have done anything with it unless they broke his passcode. Darcy didn’t have either her purse or her phone.
Brack said, “We need to call Brother Thomas.”
They rode the gold line to Five Points Station, the heart of Atlanta, and exited the Marta system. Brack bought them two Cokes, breaking a twenty to get change, and found something of a relic: a phone booth.
Darcy called her news office and spoke to someone named Dana. Apparently the word was already out about their little O.K. Corral gunfight. Their captors had left her car, and Mutt, at the scene.
“Mutt’s alive?” she yelled into the payphone. “Where is he?”
A tightness in Brack’s chest lightened. His friend lived.
Darcy told Dana, “We’re going to the hospital. Tell Ben when I get an Emmy for this, he’s going to double my salary or I quit.” She hung up. “The police are looking for us.”
“I’m not ready to talk to them yet.” Brack called Brother Thomas and told him where Mutt was.
Darcy and Brack rode the Marta train to the East Point stop and walked to the hospital.
Mutt was in the ICU. One of the two shots to his chest punctured a lung, which had the doctors worried.
Brack pulled the vaporizer out of his pocket as if to show Mutt he’d recovered it.
Shortly after he and Darcy arrived, Brother Thomas rushed into the waiting area. “You all got some explaining to do.”
The last thing Brack wanted to hear was how Brother Thomas thought they’d screwed up. They were doing what they were supposed to: trying to find Regan.
He said, “No, we don’t.”
Brother Thomas stopped in his tracks and looked at Brack.
Darcy a
lso looked at him.
“Before you start,” Brack said to his friend and pastor, “I want to say that I wish it were me lying in that bed there instead of Mutt. I wish we hadn’t gotten into a gunfight that ended the lives of at least two bad men. I wish I hadn’t put Darcy’s life in danger. Again. I wish a lot of things. We did the best we could. Mutt got hit. And that’s that.”
Brack walked from the room, went down the hall, and rode the elevator to the ground floor. Outside, he figured out how to operate Mutt’s vaporizer and got ready to vape for the first time. And realized how upset he really was at seeing his friend in the hospital. He meant everything he’d said to Brother Thomas. He needed only to get it out.
Resting his hand against a post in a covered area designated for smoking, he took a few puffs off the vaporizer. The jolt he got told him Mutt had really dialed up the nicotine. His fingertips and toes tingled from the vapor.
Two women sitting on a bench at the opposite end smoked real cigarettes.
Brack felt an arm on his shoulder and turned. It was Darcy. She didn’t say anything. He put the vaporizer in his pocket and faced her. She kept her eyes on his and tears streaked down her face. He wiped them with his hands. She moved in close and rested her head on his shoulder. He held her in his arms for the first time in two years, since when she’d been shot, and let her cry some more.
After enough time for a slow dance, she said, “Thanks for getting us out of that alive.”
“We were set up real good today.”
“Yes, we were.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
She pushed herself gently away. Still looking at him, she said, “I want some payback for what they did to Mutt.”
“Me too,” came a voice from behind them. Brother Thomas added, “I’m sorry, Brother Brack.”
Still looking at Darcy, Brack said, “Me too.”
“Let me finish,” he said.
Brack turned to meet his gaze. “Okay.”
“I wasn’t trying to accuse you of anything except not callin’ me.”
“Then you might have gotten shot too.”
“True,” he said. “But maybe I could have said a few prayers for us all, mm-hmm.”
“Still can.”
“Already have,” he said. “What we gonna do now?”
Darcy said, “Let me make a few calls. Though I no longer have my speed dial.”
Within the hour, Detective Nichols came and took their statements. He said three men had died in the alley. All were Vito’s men. They’d found the Tahoe parked at the mall with the dead guy in the backseat, his neck snapped. And the police had lifted Brack’s and Darcy’s prints from the interior, plus several others, and were trying to match those. The dazed driver and his passenger, whom Brack had kicked out onto Peachtree Street, alive, were nowhere to be found.
After visiting hours were over, Brack spent the rest of the night sitting in a chair in the waiting room. Brother Thomas sat in a chair facing him. Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say. Brother Thomas knew that Brack, as well as Darcy, who’d gone home to clean up and get another phone, would go after those who’d shot Mutt. But he said he didn’t want them to. The pastor and Brack and Darcy were at an impasse.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Monday, seven a.m.
For the second day in a row, Brack’s morning sleep was interrupted. Except this time it was by Cassie.
He’d slouched in his chair in the hospital waiting area and used the magazine table as a footrest, the closest to horizontal he could manage. On waking, his foot knocked a stack of magazines onto the floor.
“Brack,” she said. “Mutt’s awake. He asked for you.”
Rubbing his eyes, Brack said, “What are you doing out of bed?”
She showed him the cane she’d been practicing with for the last couple of days and had used to help her walk to Mutt’s room. “Don’t you worry about me. Go on and see him.”
Brack stood, stretched, felt his back complain, and twisted his head from side to side. Then he walked into the room where Mutt lay. Tubes following surgery still stuck out of everywhere. But he was off the respirator and conscious.
He watched Brack approach.
“Opie.” He coughed. “I heard you got a few of ’em.”
He held out his hand and Brack took it in both of his.
“We both did,” Brack said, “but I missed a few too.”
“How you think they got onto us?”
“The john spotted me taking his picture at the airport. Or the talkative chauffeur was a plant. Either way, it was downhill from there.”
“What’s the next plan?”
“For you to get better.”
Mutt coughed again and winced with pain. “I’m sorry I’m gonna have to sit the rest of this one out.”
“Don’t worry,” Brack said. “I’ll make sure you get regular news updates.”
His eyes met Brack’s. “Don’t you go and get yourself killed now. Hear?”
Brack nodded but didn’t reply.
“Regan ain’t worth all this trouble.”
He was thinking the same thing.
Brack took a cab back to his room to get his things and moved into Mutt’s house because he was tired of the hotel. After a shower and some breakfast, he sat on the patio, Mutt’s portable phone by his side, and called Darcy’s office to get her the message where he was since he didn’t have a number for her new phone yet.
As he cleaned his gun, Darcy drove up in a brand-new Range Rover and parked in the driveway.
“Old Hondas not cutting it for you any more?” Brack asked.
“Very funny. This is Justin’s.” She sat down in a chair next to him on the patio.
Being reminded of the peckerwood was not what Brack wanted at the moment. He concentrated on wiping the oil residue off his forty-five.
Mutt’s landline rang. Brack, with no cell phone of his own, knew to pick up. It was Brother Thomas asking, “You seen Cassie?”
In that instant, Brack knew the situation had plummeted from bad to worse. “No.” At least he thought he answered. He felt dazed.
Darcy focused on his face and he shook his head.
Brother Thomas continued, “She checked herself out of the hospital against her doctor’s orders and hasn’t been seen since.”
Brack said, “What comes to mind is that she’s going after her sister.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’,” he said. “We got to find her before she do something stupid. Whatever that is.”
Brack thought he had a monopoly on stupid. But anger and fear and overconfidence apparently had similar effects on the judgment of others at times. Like right now. Cassie’s decision to confront her sister, if that’s what she planned to do, was straight-out suicidal.
Darcy said, “This is a trap.”
“Of course it is,” Brack said. “Vito probably assigned someone to keep tabs on Cassie since she landed in the hospital, if not before. But what choice do we have?”
“We can call in the police.”
“Good idea,” Brack said. “We’re going to need them.”
Brack sensed that Darcy might not believe he was sincere, so he pulled out his wallet, found Detective Nichols’s card, and dialed the number on the landline.
Nichols answered and Brack explained that Cassie was missing and why he feared trouble.
The detective said, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
A recurring theme. Sometimes Brack listened to reason. And he tried real hard to make this one of those times.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Cassie knew she didn’t have a lot of time before people started looking for her. She had managed to dress and check herself out of the hospital without much of a fuss. A cab ride back to her house to get her car and now, noon, she was o
n her way.
As she drove she mentally kicked herself, not for the first time, for calling Brack at all two weeks ago. He was a sweet boy, and damn if he warn’t fine. All it took to get him here was a few white lies. She knew if Brack thought Mutt was in danger he’d come runnin’. It was true. Mutt was in danger. But she let on like she didn’t know about his juke joint.
She shoulda handled this with Regan herself.
Cassie had an address from, of all things, the society papers. She’d seen a picture of Vito hosting a cocktail party at a lavish West Paces Ferry home and figured her sister was probably there.
Brack and the others didn’t need be involved any more than they already was, she thought. All she’d wanted was her sister back. Mutt, bein’ who he was, Cassie figured would be dead within a week if he went looking for her alone. It took her less time than that to find out about his bar and get her friend Tara to work there and keep tabs on him.
With Nina dead and Mutt in the hospital, Tara, Brack, or Darcy could be next. Enough was enough. She would go get Regan herself, snatch that tramp up bald-headed if that was what it took.
Cassie pulled into the spacious drive, stopped at the gate with a keypad, and pressed the intercom button.
A voice said, “May I help you?”
Cassie yelled, “I’m here for Regan.”
Chapter Forty
Another fundraiser was taking place. Even in an off-election year, this city was filled with them. Darcy, of course, would be there with her fiancé. Brack needed backup, but Mutt was in the hospital. The cost was a cool five grand for two tickets, whether Brack used both or not. So he visited the bank once more and showed up with Tara to his second black-tie function in less than a week.
He’d had to replace his favorite, and only, tux with a new one since it didn’t survive the explosion unscathed. To pay for it, he’d decided to use his credit card. He hoped that would confuse Vito when he discovered the charge.
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