Violet Darger (Book 4): Bad Blood

by Vargus, L. T.

  Sensing now that things had gone too far, Darger tried to reel it back in.

  “Of course I feel that way about you. You’re blowing this out of proportion. I don’t even know what we’re fighting about.”

  “I feel like I’ve been pretty clear. I don’t know how else to say it,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Look, I’m picking up the boat tomorrow morning. If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow evening, I’ll assume you’re not coming.”

  “So you’re giving me an ultimatum now?”

  “That wasn’t my intention, but I guess if that’s how you want to take it, then so be it.”

  Darger felt herself at a loss for words, and he hung up before she could say anything more.

  Tears stung her eyes, and her chest felt tight.

  How had that gone so wrong?

  She picked up the phone, ready to call back. To fix it. Then she stopped herself. She wasn’t the one being unreasonable, was she? Owen was the one doling out ultimatums.

  And how would he like it if she’d done that to him? Mr. Freedom and Nonconformity. He’d fucking hate it.

  Anguish turned to anger. Who was he to tell her what to do? He’d never seemed controlling before this, but maybe she’d been blind to it. He had no regard for her work, that was for sure. And he knew how important it was to her.

  She sat there for some time with her fingers wrapped tightly around her phone. A subconscious stranglehold. And then Jaworski appeared. The giant man swatted the screen door out of the way and strode over to his Explorer.

  Darger wiped the tears from her eyes, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, and got ready to do her job.

  Chapter 41

  Jaworski’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. Muscles flexing. Knuckles curling.

  He forced his hands to relax, stretching his fingers and wiping his palms on the legs of his pants one by one.

  The afternoon heat swelled to smother downtown Detroit, radiating up from the asphalt in spectral waves that seemed to bend all light just above the street. The sun had spent all morning preheating this little slab of the concrete jungle, and now, at long last, the city was ready to bake.

  Sweat beaded along the hitman’s hairline, gave him that swampy feeling where each of his limbs connected to the trunk of his body. Soggy and miserable.

  He tried to block it out. Focus on the impending kill. Ride that wave of animal aggression in his subconscious through another conflict.

  He’d cranked on the AC upon climbing into the vehicle, and now his fingers checked the vents out of habit, tips brushing along the little plastic dividers between him and the source of the cool. The air conditioner whirred inside, making a heavy-breath noise like an endless Darth Vader exhale, but so far it shared none of its cooling powers with him.

  Now his eyes flashed to the rearview, picking through the traffic to find the one he meant to kill. She was there still, flitting between the lanes behind him. Good. He licked his lips. Good.

  He would lead her out of the city. Lead her someplace secluded. And there he’d take care of it. Finish it.

  But the journey would take time. The streets were clogged. Every major intersection so jammed full of cars, lines of them stretching for blocks, trailing from each traffic light.

  Rush hour flushed cars out of every nook and cranny in the city and poured them into the downtown sector until the streets seemed on the verge of overflowing. A flash flood of people and machines rolling through the strip.

  Too many people. Rush hour proved the notion daily so far as he was concerned. There were too many fucking people.

  Again, his eyes snapped to the mirror, found her back there. Closer this time. Just two cars back.

  He could make out her face a little, the stern lines of her mouth and brow. He wondered what she was thinking now.

  So far the plan seemed to be working. He’d worn sunglasses and kept his head angled forward, sneaking little glances at the mirror out of the corner of his vision, hoping to prevent her from reading his eyes, from knowing that he was watching her.

  He hoped it was working, anyway. Hoped this whole thing was blindsiding her. Hoped she thought she was tailing him undetected, getting the better of him. This could make sense — probably did make sense — but he had a hard time accepting it. Deception this sophisticated made him uncomfortable. The indirect approach was not one he employed often.

  It didn’t feel right to work this way, to let her follow him. Acting like the prey instead of the predator felt wholly unnatural, didn’t quite sit right in his gut, even if it was only pretend, a way of drawing her into his trap.

  Smart or not, it felt like weakness. Turning his back on his foe. Giving ground. Retreating. He much preferred crashing into his enemies face first. Taking the fight to them. Leaping straight for the goddamn jugular.

  Doing it this way felt less adversarial somehow, less like conflict. It felt, at least for this little while, like a shared experience. They drove these streets together, didn’t they? Cut the same path across the city. Went on this journey together.

  Block after block blurred past. Pedestrians out in thick droves along the sidewalks. The city thrashing with life all around them.

  The skyscrapers hovered somewhere behind them now, the final remnants of their shimmering glass and steel fading out of sight in the mirrors.

  Soon. They’d be there soon.

  Chapter 42

  As Darger steered through the streets of Detroit, she collected herself. She had to leave the argument with Owen behind. It was time to concentrate on the work.

  She inhaled, long and deep, and then let the breath out through her mouth.

  The rest of the world became a blur. The only thing in focus was Jaworski’s Explorer.

  The mechanics of the pursuit became automatic. She maintained a discreet distance, keeping at least two cars between herself and Jaworski at all times.

  Once again, she trailed Jaworski out of the city and into the suburbs. But this time the suburban sprawl of strip malls, chain restaurants, and subdivisions gave way to truly rural scenery.

  They sped past fields of corn and wide green expanses of forest. The houses were older and set back from the road. Some had barns and horse pastures. Others were concealed completely by stands of evergreen trees. Darger noted that some of the crossroads weren’t even paved.

  She tried to imagine Vinny the Bull hiding in this wilderness, the head of the Detroit Partnership holed up in an ancient farmhouse out in the wilds of Michigan, pictured him splitting wood with an axe and pumping water from an old-fashioned well. Of course she was sure that even out here in the sticks they had modern amenities like heat and running water, but it still wasn’t what she envisioned when she thought of a mob boss. Maybe that made it perfect.

  And if Jaworski wasn’t coming out here to meet Battaglia, she had no idea what he could be doing.

  Chapter 43

  Sitting at a stoplight, Jaworski slid on his leather gloves. Pressed the space between each finger with care, snugging the things to his mitts as tightly as possible. He flexed his hands a few times, making sure to keep them low and out of sight, between his knees.

  Even sitting still at a red light, his eyes flicked to the rearview in little fits and starts, watched the image of Agent Darger’s car shimmer there, currently three rows back in the opposite lane. For now she kept still, maybe, but she’d been crafty about tailing him. Slippery.

  Her car had lurched and weaved between lanes on the sly, always moving its position in the pack, sometimes falling as far as six or seven cars back before bobbing back up close like a buoy. Sometimes it had taken a second for him to find her, to pick her gray sedan out of the mess of traffic like finding Waldo, but she was always there. Every time he looked, she was there, hurtling forward.

  Driving straight into his trap.

  His gloves now comfortable, he checked the bulk in his waistband, fingers digging under his shirt to find the metal, feel the texture of it. G
ood.

  He glanced at the second bulk resting under a flap of newspaper on the floorboard on the passenger side, something a little bigger and meaner there. Something he could carry out in the open without drawing notice.

  The light turned green, and the cars all surged forward once again. He eased out among the others, fought the urge to tailgate, to weave into oncoming traffic to get ahead of the pack, to end this anticipation here and now.

  He would get there in time. There was no need to hurry.

  A sour taste lingered in his throat, coated the back of his tongue, acidic like spaghetti sauce. The taste of anxiety, he thought. His version of that flavor, at least. Disgusting, really.

  Never could he remember feeling so uncomfortable headed into a kill, so jumpy and vulnerable and… odd. That was just the word for it, he thought. He felt odd.

  Nerves aside, he felt good. Rested and alert. He’d managed a few hours of sleep after they’d dumped the body, which surprised him some. He’d expected to find himself on edge, restless, thrashing against the sheets. Instead, he was out quickly. Dropped into the depths of slumber with violent abruptness as though thrown off a bridge. Dreaming about Urszula and blood and death and the choppy water of the river.

  The gravel lot of the storage unit approached on the right, the ramped driveway sliding closer in the pane of windshield glass that framed his vision. Jaworski licked his lips at the sight. This was it.

  He’d killed here before, in this parking lot, and now he would kill here again.

  The memories blazed in his head, the swirling pictures unfurling like a flag in the wind, images sharp and prickling with electric current.

  The small body folded up, arms and legs and torso wadded together and shoved into a Rubbermaid storage bin, a gray-blue thing about the size of the cooler his parents had lugged out for picnics when he was a kid. The lid snapped shut on top of it, closed the tiny casket, hid the body from his view, and right away it seemed impossible that an adult corpse could fit in there, all balled up or not. Like this particular murder was no longer real as soon that lid closed. It couldn’t be.

  He’d locked the little bin into one of the cinder block cells housed in this lot. Even still, that was where the body lay, probably reduced to worn clothes wrapped around bones now. A folded-up skeleton. A few strips of flesh like beef jerky clinging to the thing, perhaps. Dried and preserved, hardened like a seashell.

  From what he’d been told, the unit, rented in the victim’s name, had been prepaid five years.

  Sitting. Waiting. Shriveling into something small and dry. It’d be a long, long time before anyone would find that one.

  At last, he twisted the vehicle into the driveway. The gravel crunched under him, gritty as hell. Rough going. The tires jostled over the rocky surface, the vibrations thrumming through the whole vehicle, little shaky feelings transmitted into his legs and back and hands.

  Low concrete structures sprawled out before him. Multiple rows rising up out of the gravel. Metal garage doors etched repeating gray rectangles into each long tube of concrete blocks — rolling steel service doors, heavy duty, the metal all pleated.

  He checked the mirror again, but his angle was no good, so he wheeled his head around to look out the rear windshield.

  Scanning. Finding.

  Darger’s vehicle lagged behind as usual, still a ways back. It was perfect.

  He jammed on the accelerator and sped into the rows of concrete structures, out of her line of sight.

  Jaworski smiled. A little puzzle for her to solve. A chance to really get the jump on her, to set up the kill.

  He steered the car over near one of the storage unit doors and slammed on the brake. Gravel peppered the undercarriage, tinkling out a few violent blasts of melody not unlike music from a steel drum.

  This was it.

  He parked. Checked the gun in his belt with the heel of his hand out of habit.

  And he peeled back that sheet of newspaper on the passenger side floor and retrieved the bulk there, it’s glittering length jangling as he lifted it.

  Chapter 44

  Goosebumps crawled over Darger’s arms when she saw where the red glow of Jaworski’s taillights had headed.

  A+ Storage — We Store Your Stuff!!, the sign said.

  Darger only had bad feelings for storage facilities. James Joseph Clegg had kept his kill room in such a place, and she still remembered waking up on the cold concrete floor, bound and bloody. She inhaled deeply and pushed the memory away, trying to hold out hope that Jaworski really was meeting Vinny Battaglia out here.

  It would make for a suitably remote rendezvous point, especially since it looked like the type of place with fairly lax security. There was a fence, but no gate. Anyone could come and go at any hour. She did note some cameras on the premises, but she suspected management only made use of that in the case of a theft. As for any other illegal activities that may or may not be happening on their property, they likely turned a blind eye.

  Her heart beat a little faster as his car disappeared among the storage buildings. She resisted the urge to accelerate, to keep him in sight. Forced herself to keep her foot off the gas. The last thing she wanted to do right now was to arouse suspicion.

  Beyond a line of wire fencing at the front of the facility, Darger saw rows and rows of boats. Speedboats, pontoons, sailboats. She couldn’t help but think of Owen and of their argument. An unpleasant mixture of regret, guilt, and hurt churned in her gut.

  Damn it. She had to focus.

  She coasted past the fence and eased her car around a wide deck boat covered in a layer of plastic shrink wrap to protect it from the elements. She needed to sneak in and find Jaworski in the maze of buildings. She’d get eyes on Jaworski just long enough to see what he was up to. If he was indeed meeting Vinny Battaglia, she’d hoof it back to her car and get set up to follow him to his hidey-hole.

  Slipping out of the car into the fading light of twilight, Darger eased the door shut, pocketed the key fob, and scuttled along behind the boats.

  She proceeded on foot up the dirt drive toward the long gray buildings. The place was bordered on one side by marshy land dominated by cattails and milkweed. She heard crickets and the broken banjo string twang of a bullfrog. Overhead the sky was a deep purple streaked with pink.

  She’d just rounded another fence and reached the first concrete rectangle of a building when she heard the distinct crunch of gravel under car tires. Someone else was heading into the facility. Whomever Jaworski was meeting? Or was it someone else? There were hundreds of units in this place, and it could just as well be the owner of any one of them.

  Darger tucked her gun in the holster concealed beneath her hoodie and approached the nearest roll-down door. She grasped the padlock securing the door latch with her hands and pretended to fiddle with it. She was just an anonymous patron of the storage facility, that was all. No one to pay much attention to.

  Inside, she was the opposite of calm. Her heart thundered in her chest. A tangle of panicked voices screamed in her head, all telling her to hurry the hell up, to find Jaworski, but she ignored them, keeping her head down, her face impassive.

  The three dark figures in the vehicle seem utterly unconcerned with her. Probably looking for their unit. The car rolled to the end of the row and turned right, the rumble of the engine receding as it moved out of sight.

  She let out a breath. She needed to locate Jaworski. Now.

  She jogged to the next building, flattened herself against the cement block wall, and peered around the corner. She had her gun drawn and held at her side. But this section was empty.

  She moved onto the next row, repeating her stealthy moves. This time, when she peeked around the end of the building, she was rewarded. Jaworski’s car was parked at the far end.

  Jerking back into a concealed position, Darger double-checked her weapon and took a breath. This was it.

  She glanced down the wide alleyway between buildings again, squinting at Jaworski
’s car for longer this time, taking a moment to analyze the scene. The dome light in the car illuminated the interior with a dim yellow glow. It was empty.

  She waited, thinking he could be ducked down, getting something off the floor perhaps. But no. The longer she watched, the more she was certain he wasn’t in the vehicle. Where had he gone?

  Into one of the units, seemed the most likely answer.

  She needed to get down there, quickly. If she caught him inside one of the storage units, he’d have nowhere to run.

  The adrenaline hit hard, making her arms tremor like mad.

  She counted to three in her head, and then she was off, jogging to the car, doors passing by on her right in a blur. Sidling up next to the Explorer, she peeked inside. Nothing. A flap of newspaper on the floor. Otherwise empty.

  She swiveled, eyes scanning the seemingly endless rows of gunmetal gray garage doors staring at her. All those cinder block cells concealing God knows what. Which one?

  Eenie meenie miney moe.

  She shuffled to the one nearest the vehicle. Listened. No sounds came from the other side.

  Her eyes fell on the closed padlock on the door. That settled that. He couldn’t possibly be inside.

  She took two steps back and studied the units in sight. They were locked as well. All the units she could see were still locked from the outside.

  Shit.

  He had to be around the corner then.

  She scrambled further down the row, feet light on the gravel to stay soundless. Her head rotated back and forth, eyes scanning over everything and seeing no movement at all.

  Finally, she approached the corner, her pace slowing. Just the sight of it upped her nerves again. A surge of electricity thrummed and whooshed like a light saber in her skull. She adjusted her grip on the gun, cupping her second hand underneath for extra recoil support.