Double Shot to the Heart (Brewed Moon Book 2)

by Critch, J. Margot

  Juliana’s hair stood on end, her skin prickled and she knew something was wrong. Still standing in place, she looked around. The front door was still locked, and she knew that she was alone in the building, but the chill that ran down her spine told Juliana that something terrible was afoot. Despite the bright, warm, light of the sun that shined on her through the windows, she felt cold. Holding her breath, she strained her ears, and then she heard it again.

  Voices. Low, dark, menacing voices coming from the other side of the delivery door. There were people outside in the alley. She couldn’t make out anything they were saying, but as she got closer to the door, she could tell the voices were angry and threatening, there was also a distinct crying sound. Juliana flattened against the door and cautioned a look out of the peephole that she’d had installed for the safety of herself and her employees.

  Peering through the small glass circle, she gasped quietly when she saw three men in the alley. Two standing, and one on his knees before them. Juliana struggled to hear, she couldn’t exactly make out the words that they were saying to each other, but she didn’t need to. The face of the kneeling man was etched with terror, crying and obviously pleading, with his knees in the snow and slush in the alley. Evidently the men standing over him weren’t convinced, when one of the men reached into his jacket and drew out a handgun.

  Juliana, frozen in place, watched helplessly as he pulled the trigger of the gun and, with an unexpected quiet pop, the bullet exploded from the gun and into the kneeling man’s chest. A small cry escaped her lips as she pulled violently away from the door, and backed up to the wall next to it, placing her shaking palm across her lips. After a beat, she cautioned another look. She was the witness to a crime and, for the victim, she needed to remember all the details she could.

  She returned to the peephole in time to watch the shooter put his gun back in its holster under his jacket, now silently regarding the man he’d just killed. She tried to commit his face to her memory, but she couldn’t see anything distinctive about him through the fisheye lens of the peephole. Her eyes went to the other man, the one who had just stood by as a murder was committed. He remained stoic, and when the second man offered him a cigarette, he accepted it, putting it between his lips, lighting it. He pulled the collar of his jacket higher against the cool of the morning, and shot a quick glance at the door that stood between him and Juliana. As if he could see her, Juliana jumped back quickly, holding her breath. As her nerves danced she worked up the determination to look again. When she returned to the peephole, he was still looking at the door, and it felt like his gaze went through the glass peephole and landed squarely on her. Juliana watch him as he puffed on the cigarette between his lips, and he finally looked away from the door to focus his attention once more on the body lying on the ground. Snarling at the dead man, he kicked it once for good measure and stepped over it, gesturing for the other man to follow him down the alley.

  Juliana finally released the heavy breath that she’d been holding, and sank against the door. Oh God. Her hands trembled violently, as she dug into the back pocket of her jeans and took out her cell phone. She crouched low, so as not to be seen through the large windows in case either of the men had stuck around. Her breath was shallow and her heart pounded as she dialled.

  “Hello 911, what’s your emergency?”

  Juliana tried to speak, but her voice was caught in her throat.

  “Hello?” the 911 operator asked again. “What’s your emergency?”

  Juliana forced herself to snap free of her daze, and to focus at the task at hand. “Um, uh, hi… hello,” she stammered, still unable to form anything resembling coherent words.

  “Ma’am, what’s your emergency?” she asked again.

  Forcing herself to focus, she tried again. “I… uh, he’s dead.”

  “Who is dead?” the operator asks me.

  “I don’t know him. But he’s outside my café… They killed him.”

  “Ma’am, where are you?”

  “I-I…”

  “The address?”

  “I’m at my café. Brewed Moon,” she gave the dispatcher the address.

  “Okay, we have police and an ambulance en route. Help is on the way.”

  Help is on the way? Juliana stood slowly and looked through the peephole again. The man’s lifeless body was still sprawled in the middle of the alley. His limbs askew and his eyes seemed to stare into her own, as his blood still poured from the wound in his chest.

  Help was already too late.

  The ringing broke through Mitch’s sleep, and accustomed to moving quickly, he shot up in bed and grabbed his cell phone from his bedside table.

  “Swanson,” he answered.

  “Mitch?” the quiet voice on the other end was soft, vulnerable, familiar.

  “Juliana?” he asked, already pushing back his covers and getting out of bed. A small part of him hoped she was looking for an early morning booty call, but he immediately knew that if she was calling him, it was because there was trouble, and she needed him. Naked, he strode quickly to his walk-in closet, and he grabbed the first articles of clothing he could find, a pair of boxers, a t-shirt, and a pair of jeans. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, uh, no, I don’t know,” she responded. Mitch was already pulling on his jeans, zipping them up, and pulling on the white t-shirt. “I mean, I’m okay, physically, that is. But something just happened. Were you asleep?”

  Mitch had been up late the night before, and every night for more than a month, and was planning on taking a personal day to get on top of some work, so yeah, he was in bed. “Don’t worry about it,” he told her. “What’s wrong?”

  Mitch’s blood ran cold as she described what she had just witnessed. “I called 911,” she told him. “But nobody’s here yet.”

  Dressed, Mitch grabbed his keys from the table near the door. “I’m on my way,” he assured her. “Are you out of view of the windows?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, stay where you are, and don’t move until me or the cops get there, alright?”

  Chapter 4

  Mitch wasted no time arriving at Brewed Moon. He’d sped through morning traffic, run red lights and called his team to meet him at Brewed Moon. When he neared the downtown café, the squad car and the ambulance that had been dispatched was arriving just as he did. He scowled, and parked. “What took you guys so long?” he reprimanded the officers, as they casually got out of their squad car.

  “Sorry Detective,” one of them responded. “We were all the way in the West End,” he told him.

  Mitch rolled his eyes at the coffee cups and food wrappers in their car. Eating breakfast, no doubt, Mitch thought with scorn.

  “What brings you here?” the other officer asked him, as Mitch walked up to the front door and knocked. “Juliana,” he called to her. He turned back to the officers. “The witness, the owner of the café, is a friend of mine. She called me.” He saw her peek her head around the corner, and she ran to the door.

  She unlocked it, and before he could step inside, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him to her, seeking comfort from him, while he tried, with every fiber of his being, not to bury his face in her hair and inhale deeply.

  “Where?” he asked, surprised by how soft his voice was with her.

  “Out back,” she said, pressed against his chest. “I saw everything.”

  “Do you think if I showed you a picture you’d be able to identify the gunman?”

  “I know I can.”

  He heard one of the officers clear his throat behind him and he reluctantly pulled away from Juliana. With an annoyed scowl, he turned to the men. “I’m taking lead on this. The vic is in the rear alley, I’m going to secure the scene. I called my team, and when they get here, send them back too. Take her statement in the meantime.”

  As he stepped back outside to go around alley, Juliana reached out, her hand on his bicep squeezed tightly. “You’re leaving?”

/>   “I’m just going to look at the crime scene. Talk to these officers, okay? Tell them everything you saw. I’ll be close by.” He bowed his head in front of her so that she was forced to look in his eyes. “I promise.”

  Juliana’s hazel eyebrows raised with the words crime scene and he wanted to do anything he could to make the blank stare leave her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered. Then she looked up at him, and he was glad to see a little of the sharpness and clarity return. “I’m going to put on some coffee.”

  “That’s a good idea. I’m looking forward to a cup,” Mitch said as gently as he could. He pointed to the officers behind him. “But why don’t you talk to the officers first? Tell them everything you saw, okay?”

  She nodded and turned away from him, guiding the officers inside.

  Mitch walked around the side of the building to access the back alley. The paramedics were standing near the body. He could tell that they had tried to help the victim, but a quick glance at the body told him there was nothing they could have done. The body was lying in a pool of his own blood, his chest sporting a gaping hole.

  “Is the M.E. on his way?”

  “Yeah,” one of the paramedics responded.

  “You guys can go. There’s nothing you can do.”

  Mitch took a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and crouched next to the body. He turned the victim’s head to face him and sighed, instantly recognizing him as Matty Connor, a member of the Irish mob. “Shit,” he muttered. This body confirmed what he’d feared - someone was killing off the remaining higher-ranking members of the Irish mafia that had flourished under the leadership of Dylan and Colin O’Connell. Mitch and has team had put an end to the brothers’ reign by killing one and jailing the other, and the remaining Irish mobsters in town had scrambled to regain control, but with no capable leadership, they faltered and then they started turning up dead.

  This call for the dead body was the tenth that the team had investigated since the fall of the O’Connell crime family. Ten dead men. All formerly high-ranking Irish mafia members. There was a shift in power happening in the city, and Mitch had a hunch that Yuri Petrova and the Russian mob were behind it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be taking the day off?” Mitch heard a voice behind him. Mitch looked over his shoulder at the voice and saw Peter, Steve and Joe standing in the alley. It hadn’t taken any of the men long to get to the café, dependable lot that they were.

  “Juliana called me,” he said simply, by way of explanation.

  Peter accepted that. “Who’s the vic?”

  “Matty Connor,” Mitch told them.

  Peter said nothing, but Mitch knew that his brother was letting the implication sink in. “Another one.”

  Mitch stood and nodded “It looks like someone is cleaning house. Laying waste to the rest of the Irish that were left standing after we took out the O’Connell’s.”

  Steve was making notes in his phone. “And Juliana witnessed it?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. She said that she can probably ID our shooters from a picture. So, we need to round up some mugshots,” he looked to Joe. “Go get the description. Then check the databases. Start with all males known to have mafia ties. I don’t care which family. Get hundreds of pictures if you need to.”

  “I’m on it,” the large, quiet man responded, jogging back to the front of the store

  Mitch stood and looked at his assembled team. “You guys look around out here, see if you can find anything in the alley and out front. Expand your canvas outward, see if they dropped anything along the way, talk to people. You guys know the drill.”

  Without saying a word, Peter and Steve split up. Good partners, going on instinct. His entire team worked like a well-oiled machine, and when he’d been tasked with forming the specialized team to fight organized crime, and he’d chosen men well-suited for the job, and not a day had gone by that he wasn’t grateful for them.

  They were all good, tough cops, who were dependable and trustworthy, each selected for what they brought to the team. His younger brother Peter was one hell of a cop. He was shrewd, smart an he knew how to read people. It didn’t hurt that he also knew how to dismantle a bomb, break into a safe, and manipulate appliances and electronics for any use he saw fit. Steve Parker was the team’s tech guy. He could code, and hack into encrypted files and programs. Mitch had never seen a man so proficiently with a computer. Joe Callahan was an American who had immigrated to Canada. He was a former marine turned police officer, who was specially trained by the US government for covert military operations. Mitch had seen his heavily-redacted file before hiring him for the team, he was one tough son-of-a-bitch, but much of the man’s past was still a mystery.

  Mitch stepped back from the body, and he hoped that they would finally be able to find a piece of evidence to tie the Russian mafia boss to the murders. This time, however, they had a witness. Mitch peeled off the latex gloves and let the Medical Examiner go about his work, heading back inside to see Juliana.

  Mitch went back into through the café’s front door and saw that Joe was already sitting at a table with Juliana. He was gently talking her through her memory of the event to get physical descriptions of the men she’d seen. For a large, intimidating man, Joe was always one of the gentlest detectives he’d ever worked with. They were both drinking coffee, and Mitch didn’t miss the way Juliana’s hands shook when she raised the cup to her lips. His mind flashed back to the last time they’d met up at Leather & Lace. Her hands had also been shaking then, when she’d reached out to touch him in the dark room. Now the tremors in her hands weren’t from desire but fear, and they were so bad that when she lowered the cup to the table, it slipped from her fingers. Luckily it was nearly empty, so there was no worry of her getting burned. The clatter of the paper cup caught her attention. Flustered, she tried to cover the shaking by folding her hands in her lap.

  Mitch approached the table and Joe stood, retrieving the notes he’d taken. “I’ve got a pretty good description of both guys,” Joe said. “I’m going to head to the station and get those mugshots together.”

  Mitch nodded, and inhaled the scent of the coffee that she’d brewed. It was blissful. He rubbed his heavy eyes, and remembered that he hadn’t yet had a cup. But that could wait. Juliana’s gaze was fixed on something in the middle distance, and Mitch could tell that she’d been reliving the experience that had shaken her that morning. She looked vulnerable, yet beautiful. “So, what’s going on?” she asked him.

  Mitch sat heavily, tired already, and the sun was barely up. “Peter and Steve are canvassing the neighbourhood. And the medical examiner and crime scene techs are going over the alley for evidence.”

  “And what about… him?” she asked carefully.

  “The body is still out there,” he told her bluntly, not bothering to gloss over it. “And it will be for a bit longer yet. They’ll want to document the scene before they remove it.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, her mouth forming a small O.

  Mitch was quiet. He had no idea what to say to her. During his career, he’d comforted people in the worst, most devastating moments of their lives. But they were never his friends, and certainly not a woman he’d been intimate with. So, he did what he did best, and went back into cop mode. “And you say you’ve never seen either of the men before?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve already answered all of these questions. The officers already asked me, and so did Joe.”

  “Well, answer it once more for me.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “No. I’ve never seen him. Either of them. I know that I see a lot of people in the run of a day, but I’ve got a pretty good memory for faces.” She looked down at her coffee cup. “Oh, would you like a cup of coffee, or something?”

  Mitch wanted nothing more than a cup of coffee. “I would,” he said standing. “I’ll get it.”

  Juliana held out a hand, stopping him. “Let me get it. I insist. I need to make myself busy,” she explained. �
�And plus, no offense intended, it looks like you really need a cup.”

  “I certainly do,” he admitted, trying not to watch her ass as she walked behind the counter and poured him a cup.

  “Black, right?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Juliana smiled at him and he grinned back like an idiot. “Good man,” she said.

  Mitch would have been lying if he said that her approval of his coffee preference didn’t make him happy.

  “Anything else in it just hides the taste. And I don’t bring in the finest coffee in the world just to cover it up with cream and sugar.” She joined him at the table again, carefully placing the mug in front of him.

  “Thank you.” He put the mug to his lips and drank. “That’s amazing. But it’s not the one that you were serving yesterday though, right?” He usually stopped by Brewed Moon on his way to work every morning. The coffee was good, some of the best in town, but that wasn’t the only reason he made a point of visiting, as he considered the beautiful café owner seated across from him.

  “Yeah, it’s one of my favourites. It’s Indonesian. You’ve got a good tongue,” she said with a single nod of her head.

  Mitch smirked. He knew Juliana wasn’t using innuendo, she just liked talking coffee, but, to be fair, it wasn’t the first time she’d complimented his tongue. The simple phrase brought back a rush of heat that threatened to derail his thoughts. So, he took another sip, trying to get back on track to the reason he was there and not in his bed. “So, you’ve had an interesting morning.”

  That brought her back, and her pink lips dipped into a frown as her eyes cast even lower. She drummed her fingers on the side of her coffee mug. “Yeah,” her eyes darted briefly to the back door, where she’d witnessed the murder. “You’ve really got that right.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I don’t know. I’m mostly numb, I think.”