by Liz K. Lorde
Gabriel smiled, “I think that’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl, from the prettiest soon-to-be mother in the land.”
“Oh cut it,” I joked.
Gabriel pressed his lips against mine, and we both felt our little Josie kick. He broke the kiss first, but we both looked to my belly with happy, rounded eyes.
“I guess she approves,” I pointed out, and we shared a quiet laugh. I turned onto my side and Gabriel snuggled up against me, stroking my belly and kissing on my neck.
We fell into a peaceful nap, and all the worries and woes of life washed away with our love.
Epilogue: Darkness Broods Over Sequim
There was a winter’s breeze in spring, and I couldn’t shake this bad feeling in my gut. Weight. Terrible, thick, and heavy. Every joint in my body ached with this… unease. Walking through the courtyard at night, there was only the silver moon and a few orange lights, like beacons in the overwhelming dark, to guide my way. Nobody could know who I was meeting here.
Not that I couldn’t leave a trail of ash and smoke in my wake if someone did.
The soles of my boots thumped against the smoothed out pavement of the lavish courtyard. Several darkly colored benches peppered the location, and a fountain of resplendently decorated angels spewed out water; the liquid trailed from their wings, like beautiful feathers from a granite crow. Out in the distance, as I approached, stood the man with the plan. The perimeter had been secured by his people, and the cameras were always being watched. Everything and everyone was accounted for.
Tonight, we were two ghosts sojourning in a place where I did not belong.
Closing the distance, the man had a silvery pompadour head of hair. He did not smile, no, the man never did. I stopped in front of him, produced a pack of smokes from my jacket, cherried a cigarette and pushed the smoke from my nose.
My boss watched the smoke lazily travel, “Phoenix,” he said.
“Boss.”
“I don’t see a patch on that jacket,” he said.
I had another drag, “Nope.”
“I am not a patient man.”
“Neither am I.”
“If you need help,” the boss gestured openly with a hand, “I can help. Trust me, you’ll want my help.”
“I’ll get there.”
“You had better,” the Boss stepped forward, invading my private space. “Thirty days, John. I expect a patch.”
Like a stone falling from some cliff, my gut dropped. This man has got to be certifiably insane. “That’s not poss—“
“Thirty days,” he repeated, jabbing a finger at me. The lines of his face grew hard, and he graced me with a scowl, “every day that I wait. Every hour that I stay awake at night. I cannot take it, John. Have you lost a daughter?”
I cleared my throat, and went to take another drag.
The boss smacked the cigarette from my hand, causing ash to burst through the air and the cancerous stick to fly and fall next to the fountain. Adrenaline, a small bit of it, rushed through my system – and a rush of heat pricked at my chest. I recoiled a step and locked eyes with the man, pissed off like a hell hound freshly let off his leash.
Acting without thought, just on pure instinct. I whipped out my pistol and aimed it right at the fucker’s head.
He stepped forward again, so that the barrel kissed his scrunched up forehead. “I asked you a question.”
I breathed hard through my nose and kept my gun steady on his head.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, “you wouldn’t know the pain of it. The grief. The goddamned regret.” The anger gleamed in his eyes, and that strange, cold wind, licked at the back of my neck. “Everything that he has. I want. I want it dead and gone. Thirty days, John. Contact me to accelerate things if you can’t do it yourself; if you fail, I’ll find someone more willing to succeed.”
“That a threat? You’re the one with a gun pointed to his head.”
“Killing me won’t stop you from having a long, painful death,” the man susurrated. “Mutually assured destruction,” in an instant, he snatched the gun from my hand and in the blink of an eye he geared up to hit me with his shoulder. Shocked at his surprising alacrity, I tried to position myself in such a way to defend against the attack, but he was too quick. His shoulder rammed against me, and the full weight of that old bastards body crashed into me. We both grunted at the altercation, and I fell back against the pavement, a sharp pain blooming in the back of my skull.
Immediately I half groaned, half snarled. Every gear in my body was working overtime, the winds of anger filling my sails; I started to shoot up from my position, except I could only make it to my knees before the gun was hovering above me. Looking up at Rochester, his dark brown eyes stared at me with the cold gaze of death itself.
“These streets are gonna run red again with the whispers of vengeance. Bleed for me, or die with the rest of them.”
THE END
If you got it this far, thanks so much for reading the bonus novels. They are my third and fourth novel’s respectively, and I do hope that you enjoyed them. If you want to read more of my books, I encourage that you join my newsletter, bookmark my website, or just follow me on Facebook/Amazon.