by Skye, S. D.
“This was a really good idea, Tony. I can’t see two feet in front me and the water pooling in my shoes is making my feet squeak.”
“The mission required us to get here before he did,” Tony said. “So, quit your yapping.”
J.J. chuckled as she followed him down the steps into the cabin. She almost had to catch her breath as her foot landed on the deck floor. Looking around, it was the picture of luxury—a bone-colored, J-shaped sofa covered in lamb-soft leather sitting to the left, a galley kitchen with granite counters and bench-style dining area to the right. Teak wood covered the floor of a narrow hall leading to the master and guest staterooms in the rear; each had its own bathroom—or as Tony called them—the heads.
“Man, this is sweet,” J.J. said. “Too bad it wasn’t bought with espionage spoils. We could seize it and buy it in an auction.”
“We?” Tony smiled. “Anyway, we'd better get into position. I’m gonna squat down here in the galley. You get back in the stateroom.”
“Why me?”
“Because I’m bigger than you.”
“And? I saved you.”
“Okay, I’m also bigger than him.”
J.J. shrugged. “Which is why it’s better for him to see me first. You can get the drop on him and he won’t even notice you’re coming.” She stopped and craned her ear toward the ceiling. “You hear that? The rain has stopped. Let’s move. He’ll be here soon.”
Tony rolled his eyes—as if he hadn’t just said the same thing.
J.J. crouched down in the kitchen area to the right of the stairway. He wouldn’t catch sight of her until he reached the floor. By then it would be too late for the piece of shit. Fury simmered in her belly, ready to bubble up and erupt with volcanic strength as she waited for Maddix’s arrival. She was pissed at him not only for what he did to his country, but also for what he did to Kendel. All J.J. needed was a reason, not even a good one, to fill him with more lead than a #2 pencil factory.
“Won’t be long now,” she said to herself.
In the instant she tried to settle her thoughts, the boat rocked and footsteps padded across the top deck. She leaned back against the cabinet doors, narrowed her eyes, and gripped the Glock with both hands. No sound could be heard except the lapping water…until the cabin door opened and her phone vibrated.
A text from her father.
Okay to cancel dinner tonight. Brunch tomorrow instead.
She rolled her eyes and mouthed the word “Fuck!” She knew Maddix had heard the reverberation. The entire eastern seaboard could’ve heard her phone’s rumble in the quiet of the early dawn.
The cabin door opened and a shadow appeared on the floor. That’s when she noticed her biggest mistake of the day. Water. She and Tony tracked it inside and forgot to wipe up behind themselves. The only question was how he would react.
“Bryer? You here?” he called out.
A rustling sound jarred her. She studied his shadow as he tipped down the stairs. He reached the last riser and the barrel of a gun protruded from the end of his outstretched arm, aimed and ready to fire.
She held her breath and waited for him to take the last step into full view. The sound of his heavy breath left the hair on her arm standing on end. His hard swallows betrayed his fear. He sounded scared and just twitchy enough to make a brash move that could get them both killed.
He took the last step down and his body appeared. From his black leather jacket to his deck shoes, he was Ralph Lauren clean. Although he still looked hot, his dark glasses and slicked back hair would not change his fate if he so much as sniffed the wrong way.
“FBI! Freeze! Put the gun down!”
He slowly turned his head toward her, took his finger off the trigger, and raised both hands in the air above his head. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“I said down, goddamnit! Not up!” J.J. yelled. “I know you saw me on the news last week. He was my friend. You’re nothing to me, you piece of shit.”
As he bent forward to put his weapon on the floor, Tony emerged from the bedroom and hurried to collect it.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “What did I do?”
“Amnesia much?” J.J. snapped. “You know exactly what the hell you did. You shady bastard. And at 9 am Monday morning, a federal judge will be using the information to deny bail.”
“You have nothing on me!”
“We have a federal agent who is prepared to testify.”
“Who Kendel?” Maddix asked.
J.J. rolled her eyes. “Your mama!” almost slipped from her lips but she suppressed the urge. “Yes, Kendel Phillips. You know…your former fiancé, the one whose $250 grand helped finance this boat?”
He blew out a hard breath and smirked. “Hmph. You haven’t heard? There is no more Kendel.”
J.J.’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. She glanced at Tony whose mouth was gaped open.
“The fuck are you talkin’ about?” Tony growled. “She’s in federal custody.”
“Afraid not,” Maddix sneered. “She was released under her own recognizance. And as she was leaving, she was struck in a hit and run accident, killed on impact.”
“Oh my God!”
“Shame,” he said with a broad reptile-like smile. “The crack head might’ve made someone a decent wife once she cleaned herself up.”
J.J.’s body shook, trembling with anger. “You son of a bitch!” she shook her head in utter astounded amazement. “How could you?”
He shrugged and snidely said, “Easy. Pressed on the gas and kept the steering wheel straight.”
With no forethought, her finger increased the pressure against the trigger. Another eighth of an inch and his blood would be splattered across the pristine white lambskin leather couch. A volcano roared inside her; the lava finally reached its peak. Her cheeks burned like hot charcoal briquettes. She didn’t necessarily want to kill him. But in her most primal sense of justice, where eyes were for eyes and teeth were for teeth, she wanted him dead.
The idea of allowing Maddix to walk the earth while Kendel was under it left J.J. brimming with the urge for revenge.
Then something inside her snapped. She couldn’t tell you the moment it happened but her motive was clear.
“Where’s his gun, Tony?” J.J. barked. “I want it, now!”
Maddix’s nose crinkled in confusion. “What’re you doing?”
J.J. had already rested her Glock on the countertop and was squeezing her hand into plastic gloves retrieved from her pockets seconds earlier.
“What are you doing?” Maddix asked again.
When Tony hesitated to give it to her, she tromped over to Tony, pulled Maddix’s gun from the small of his back, and fired two shots at the hull, right in the spot where she’d taken up her original position.
“Are you crazy?” Maddix yelled.
“Yep,” she replied. “As a motherfucking fox. Stand up right now! Stand up!” she ordered.
Terror filled Maddix’s eyes as they followed her every move. “She’s gonna kill me and make it look like self-defense!” Maddix turned to Tony. “Are you gonna let her do this?”
“Do what?” Tony asked. “I’m in the bedroom. I can’t see a thing.”
“You’re just going to leave me defenseless in handcuffs?” he whined, sweat pouring from his brow.
“Oh, no,” J.J. said, her voice Mary Poppins sweet. “I’m going to take them off after you’re dead so I can put your gun back in your hand.”
She laid his gun on the counter and lifted hers, shifting her aim from his head to his chest, and back to his head again. She cocked it to put one in the chamber and asked, “Now, how do you want to die?”
Maddix shook his head feverishly. “No, please. Don’t do this, please!”
“At least I’m giving you a choice,” J.J. said. “That’s more than you ever gave Kendel. This is my last time asking. How do you want to die?”
“You don’t even understand what’s going on.” He stopped as his v
oice got choked up. “You don’t want to do this!”
“Oh, I so want to do this. Nothing in my life has felt better than the prospect of ending you!” she growled.
Tony chuckled at Maddix’s pathetic pleas. “All of the sudden this guy’s Chatty Cathy. The fuck are you talking about?”
“Stop! I—I give up I’m responsible. It’s all my fault,” Maddix yelled. “Please! Just put the gun down!”
The crotch itch struck, permeating through her back and legs, leaving her knees wobbled. It couldn’t be. This was the truth. Yet, her body told her it was a lie. Maddix admitted fault and yet his statement was untruthful. He wasn’t completely responsible after all, as all evidence she had access to at present suggested.
A paper doll.
He was a cut-out protecting the true culprit. Before she could figure out how to explain to Tony, her mouth opened and words slipped out.
“You lying son of a bitch! Who are you covering for?”
Tony’s head whipped toward J.J. and he threw his hands up in confusion. “J.J., are you freakin’ nuts?! The man just confessed! Isn’t this what we wanted?”
J.J. shook her head no. “We want the truth! This doesn’t end if we don’t get the truth,” J.J. yelled. “You’ve got to trust me on this one, Tony. He’s lying. He’s covering for someone else.”
Maddix stood there in shock…and then he got cocky. “Shoot me and you’ll never know the truth.”
J.J. walked over to him and pressed the tip of her gun to his temple. “Wanna bet? An investigation of your accounts, assets, phone contacts, and emails will tell me everything I want to know about you, you piece of shit,” she dragged the tip of the gun from his temple to his lips and wiped the metal across so he could taste death. “I don’t need your confession. But if you want to see tomorrow you will give it to me.”
Maddix’s breathing was short and labored. Sweat poured from his forehead and burned his eyes, causing him to blink nervously. He pondered her proposition as if he had a choice as if he had a real decision to make. Then he cleared his throat and began to speak. “He wanted access and help cleaning the evidence. I gave him access and cleaned up the evidence. That’s all I did.”
“Who?”
“Gary…Gary Mosin,” Maddix said, rolling over on his partner like a dog playing for treats. “You know him…he goes by Hawk.”
J.J. and Tony glared at one another. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she exclaimed. She gasped and her mind began to replay their every interaction. In the Sit Room, at the entrance. His seemingly unjustified bitterness toward her. Always in the right place at the most opportune time. And Hawk was telling the truth when Kendel said he was locking the Sit Room after the fire alarm went off. He knew he’d ordered Maddix to clean it up before ERT arrived. Of course, it was Hawk, the one person off her radar. The one person who was so unassuming that they’d never have ID’d him as a key cog in Lana’s network. People like Hawk made the best spies because they were the least suspected.
“Where is he?”
“Half way to Russia by now.”
“Of course,” J.J. said. “Left you here as bait while he escaped. I’ll bet you were the one who set off the alarm in the West Wing and sanitized the Sit Room so we couldn’t find any evidence, didn’t you?”
He looked away. “I … I had no choice. He threatened to expose me, said he would kill me if I didn’t.”
“What’s he got on you?”
Maddix dropped his head. “It’d be easier to tell you what he doesn’t have on me. Drugs…and many other less than legal activities. I was looking at twenty years.”
“Well, now you can double that and subtract the parole,” J.J. said.
“Fuck you!” he spat. “Kendel’s dead. It’s your word against mine. You’ve got nothing!”
She pressed the mic button beneath her shirt and said, “Hey Money, you get all that?”
“Loud and clear!” he responded, the volume high enough to be audible to the room. “Digitally recorded for posterity…er, I mean prosecution.”
“You were bluffing the whole time? You set me up!” Maddix yelled, stunned that his ride with the devil had just landed him in jail.
“No,” J.J. said. “I just pressed the gas and kept the steering wheel straight.”
“All right, WFO is on the way,” Tony said. “Listen, you think you could wrap this up on your own? I need to make an important stop before we meet Director Freeman.”
Chapter 54
Saturday Evening – Irving Street
Santino cradled his cell phone in one hand while sipping a Campari and soda from the high ball glass on his nightstand. He wrangled with the urge to call Tony and invite him over for a chat about his roommate every time he looked at the screen and didn’t see a call or a text from “Katherine.”
“Where the fuck is she?” Santino mumbled as he stood to his feet again. He’d nearly paced a groove in the floor between his chair and the bedroom window. With his initial reluctance now justified, he’d loaned his car to Katherine hours earlier and now felt like a fucking moron for trusting that she would ever keep her word. His momentary stupidity left him vulnerable in a way he’d never allow if he didn’t owe Nicky Mumbles 25 Gs by Monday; apparently he was wrong when he assessed she needed him more than he did her. Just as he pressed his hand against the first cell phone button, he heard a car pull up in front of the house. He exhaled and walked to the window and grumbled.
“Mother-fuck!” he yelled as he tamped out his cigar in the ashtray. He stuffed the cellphone in his pocket, tromped down the steps and opened the door before his unexpected guest could knock.
“Wondered when you were gonna show up,” Santino said.
Tony stood silently with his eyes narrowed.
“So what?” Santino said. “You gonna let the grass grow under your feet or you comin’ in?”
Tony strode across the threshold and Santino closed the door behind him. Ten years had passed since their last meeting, but there they stood, face to face, mirroring one another in size and stature, staring each other down. With a lightning quick strike, Santino yoked Tony at the neck and jammed him up against the wall. Through clenched teeth he growled, “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up here, after everything that happened.”
Tony pulled out his Glock and pressed the tip into Santino’s temple. “You got two seconds to let me go or I will blow your fucking brains into Christmas.”
Santino tightened his grip as Tony put a bullet in the chamber.
“You’re lucky I don’t put two in the back of your head for Jimmy Toots,” Santino said, releasing his grip. “Make it quick. I was on my way out.”
Tony looked Santino up and down and narrowed his eyes. “Shorts and a T-shirt in November? Yeah, I can see that.”
“Who are you? Donatella Versace, you fucking rat?”
“You don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about! Bet you still believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny too, huh?”
“Hey, when only one side’s got the balls to do the talkin’ whadaya gonna do? What they have to say sounds a lot like right to me.”
“You know as well I do, nobody—not Jimmy Toots, not Nicky Mumbles, not even my father was going to listen to me after I became a Fed. They couldn’t hear shit over this badge,” he said, pointing to the golden metal dangling from his belt.
“That’s true,” Santino said.
“So what? I should do rectal gymnastics and jump through my ass tryin’ to make ‘em believe me? Hell no. I just steered clear,” Tony said, taking a seat on the steps. “But think about it, you’ve known me since we first caught the bus together to P.S. 128. You know what I know. You’ve seen what I’ve seen. I’m a such a freakin’ moron that I’m gonna target somebody in my own father’s family when there’s four other families I coulda hit? That’s crazy. Oobatz!”
“Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass how it sounds. This is how it is,” he said. “Why
am I in D.C. chasin’ Russians instead working undercover, trying to worm my way into the family? It ain’t like they didn’t ask. I’m not in New York because I made a choice not to be a part of that life…on either side.”
“He got pinched right after you left for the Academy and you’re tryin’ to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with it? I dunno, Ton’. The timing was awfully coincidental.”
“Was it?”
Santino’s eyebrow scrunched. “What’re you trying to say? We got a rat in the family?”
“Think about it—who gained the most by pinnin’ this shit on me? That’s the question you should be asking yourself. For my money, I say Nicky Mumbles. From what I heard, he moved up to capo when Jimmy Toots got pinched. All those fucking so-called Einsteins in the family, and yous couldn’t figure that one out?”
Santino sucked in a deep breath, scraped his fingernails across his scalp, and shrugged. Tony had a point. Everybody knew Jimmy Toots was gunnin’ to become capo regime. But even if Tony was a fed, it would take some pretty hefty stugats to pin the blame on the boss’s son. On the other hand, Tony had never been a liar.
“I dunno what to tell you. I ain’t got shit else to say.”
“How about you tell me what brings you to D.C.? Nothing significant in your world’s happenin’ here.”
“Needed money,” Santino said. “I was ordered to pay restitution to Nicky Mumbles. Owe him 25 Gs so I’m finding creative ways to pull the money together.”
“Restitution? What is he, Judge Judy? For what?”
“The boss made the deal. For…Rosa.”
Tony nodded, glanced around the room, and noticed a woman’s jacket hanging on the coat tree. “Who’s stayin’ here with you?”
Santino allowed the silence to linger before answering. The bus Santino had been waiting all day to throw Katherine under had just pulled into the station, primed and ready to thrust her body beneath it, the backstabbing bitch. “What business is that of yours?”
“Who is it?”
“My goomar. She’s visiting from Jersey. We’re heading back tomorrow,” Santino said. “Now get outta here. I’ve got some place to be.”