And so the dilemma. What could she do? He would never take her back, not after what she’d done. But he might still want to control her, to keep her as a toy. He knew all about her, he knew her habits, he knew her likes and dislikes — her crimes. He could have her arrested for her part in the attempted robbery. Technically she was guilty as an accomplice to murder a dozen times over due to the ever-increasing body count from Gatling Gams. More than enough to put her away for life, maybe even a death sentence.
A straight-backed chair sat by the wall. Cinnamon pushed it over next to the bed. She climbed up on it so she could look down on him. His breathing sounded regular. There were dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked thin and wan and sad.
Cinnamon Twist leaned over and kissed him on the lips; just the barest of brushings of flesh against flesh, like butterfly wings flitting and gone.
Sammy opened his eyes.
Now the tears would not be held back and for the first time since the night of her sixteenth birthday she let them loose. She fell on him kissing him and crying and begging him to forgive her. Telling him that she knew she didn’t deserve forgiveness, that he was right to hate her, but that she didn’t want to go on without him, that she needed him, that she loved him and wanted them to be together forever.
Her pride, her highly valued and much vaunted control melted away. She blubbered and wailed and told him her secret fears and how she knew she was nothing more than a freak and could never deserve a man like him.
And then Sammy squeezed her to him; hugged her tightly. Her lips found his.
“Can you forgive me?”
Sammy stared into her eyes. “According to young Dominic Elkins I have the ability to do just that. So yes — Cinnamon Spice — Sandra Lloyd — I forgive you.”
She kissed him again.
“I love you,” he breathed into her mouth, and she said it back to him over and over, crying and loving and holding.
Cinnamon tasted him, smelled him, felt him, and he felt and tasted and smelled like that which she had wanted and needed for so very long — freedom; and it was enough.
Part X
80
Chuck Creed
* * *
Spice of Life
* * *
Two weeks and a day passed since the events that took place at Gatling Gams. Chuck Creed sat at the roulette table at The Mills Casino and Hotel in Black Hawk. Nearly forty thousand dollars stood in neat stacks of different colored chips in front of him. This was the third day of a three-day gambling spree and sweat dotted his forehead. He’d won over a hundred and eighty thousand dollars and hardly slept a wink. He survived on coffee and adrenaline, but just barely.
The roulette wheel started its spin for the last time. After this it was home and the end of his gambling days. If he won. Not a million dollars, but it sure beat bopping thugs on the head and living outside the law. With proper investing, it would take care of the kids’ college, his bills and still leave a little for small unforeseen emergencies.
Not that Chuck held any great skill at investing, about as good at that as gambling which meant he sucked, but he would have help in that area.
Next to him sat Sammy Rothstein and his beautiful new fiancé, the midget who used to be a stripper. Over the last three days Sammy had instructed him when, where and exactly how much to bet. This was the final roll.
The wheel stopped its spin, the little ball landing on both his number and color. Chuck and Cinnamon both screamed in delight. Sammy just smiled. Cinnamon had wagered a bit herself, coming away with about fifty thousand. Sammy, of course, stayed out of the betting, acting as coach.
Chuck cashed in his winnings, a total of two hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars, after taxes. Sammy and Cinnamon met him outside. She smoked a cigarette and held Sammy’s hand. Chuck gave Sammy a big hug and thanked him profusely until the mousy detective blushed and shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment, but then he grew serious.
“This is the end of it; your word.”
Chuck nodded and held out his hand. “My word.” The two men shook hands. Chuck hugged Cinnamon, bending way down to reach her.
“So you’re done with gambling?” asked the incredibly beautiful woman.
“All done,” said Chuck.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a tough habit to beat.”
Chuck grinned. “Want to bet on it?”
They both laughed. Sammy didn’t.
Chuck watched as the two of them went to their car and started the long drive back to town. He checked his watch, a quarter to twelve, nearly the witching hour. He’d better start back himself or Lori would worry.
He breathed in the night air. The Vigilante Clubber hadn’t been heard from since the fire — and he never would be again. Chuck would miss the excitement, but his family was more important. Besides, he still had police work, even though a lot of a sergeant’s job was done behind a computer checking reports.
He took in the sounds that rode the night up here in the mountain gambling town. There were the cars and the sounds of people muted behind doors. Wind whistled lightly through trees and the music of night animals danced in the distance. It sounded nice; different from Gunwood in many ways. He didn’t know if he thought it better or not, but definitely different.
“Hey, old timer, hand over the bag.”
There were two of them; young, one muscular, the other fat. The fat one had his hand in the pocket of a light windbreaker like he was holding a gun. It didn’t look like a gun to Chuck; it looked like a fat guy’s hand trying to look like a gun.
“Don’t play with us, old man,” said the fat one. “I’ll blow your face off. Give us the bag.”
The muscular one must have thought Chuck was stalling or too drunk or too scared to react. He lunged forward, grabbing for the thick zippered moneybag in Chuck’s left hand. Only Chuck was neither stalling nor drunk nor scared. He was slipping the sap from his back pocket.
A grin spread across his lips as he swung and the sap connected with the side of the muscular boy’s head. The kid dropped like a sack of coins.
The fat boy jumped back, eyes wide, a surprised squeak escaping his lips. He pulled the gun from his pocket as he ran, stretched out his arm, aiming the barrel straight at Chuck’s face and fired. But as Chuck’s training and experience had clued him, it wasn’t a gun — it was only a fat boy’s finger and a series of girly sounding gunshots that the boy must have recited from muscle memory from his days of playing good guys and bad guys when he was a youngster.
Chuck was no spring chicken, and most mornings these days his joints popped and clicked like a bowl of Rice Krispies, but he was still in pretty good shape and it would take him no time at all to run down a stumbling fat kid trying to shoot him with a finger.
Maybe life wouldn’t be so dull after all.
81
Dominic Elkins
* * *
New Beginning
* * *
Dominic sat in his apartment; head in his hands. It had been a little over three weeks since the events at Gatling Gams. In that time a lot had happened. Sergeant Creed received several medals for his heroism. Detective Rothstein was also decorated and flew off on a vacation to Hawaii, the first vacation he’d ever taken. Even Kid Kong had gotten a medal and tons of press coverage for his part in saving people from inside the burning club. He’d also dropped his lawsuit against the City of Gunwood and Dominic.
The mayor and even the governor heaped praises on the police department for its prompt and excellent handling of the attempted robbery and massacre at Gatling Gams, as well as ending the career — and life — of the world’s most notorious assassin.
K9 Timmy was the true hero of the day and received commendations from twenty-nine different animal organizations. A fund was started in his honor to buy bullet resistant vests for police and law enforcement dogs throughout the nation. The fact that he had not been shot or even shot at didn’t seem to matter to anyone.
; The FBI griped a little over the unusual manner of Enrico’s death and threatened to open its own investigation, but backed off when Timmy’s partner, Rex, received eleven million hits in five days on YouTube after commenting to a video blogger that he’d been finding pieces of the assassin known as ‘Death’ in Timmy’s stool for the last week and the FBI was more than welcome to come and investigate his samples. He said they should be sure to bring adequate forensic tools with them, which would need to include a poop scooper and doggy-poo bags.
Officer Quinn Taylor received a purple heart for being shot in the chest, and recovered completely. He no longer took his badge off when going outside, but instead was rumored to have taken up wearing one even off duty.
Sarah did a complete one-eighty. She was happy all the time and had accepted Dominic’s proposal of marriage. She’d even agreed to stop trying to defile him before their wedding day, although she’d gotten quite frisky on more than one occasion. But Dominic stayed firm; in the best tradition of the United States Marine Corps he wanted their wedding night to be always faithful, for both of them. To her credit Sarah actually seemed to warm to the idea calling him her knight in shining armor.
Of course all that had happened before today. Today everything changed. Today he’d been fired. Well, technically he’d resigned, but it had been that or be terminated and that would have kept him from being hired with most, if not all, law enforcement agencies in the state.
It seemed like a bad dream or worse a flashback to his last days in the Corps. The only two jobs in the world that he cared about and both had been stolen from him.
He’d been called into the chief’s office bright and early. There’d been rumors he was to receive a medal for his part in stopping the robbery, as well as helping to catch Enrico Da Vinci and helping to rescue Detective Rothstein and numerous civilians from the burning building. Instead he was sat down and told by the City Attorney that he was being let go. That he was still on probation and in the Field Training Program and that the City of Gunwood and the Gunwood Police Department were within their rights to terminate him for any or no reason at all. And they had a reason. The City of Gunwood held a strict non-fraternization policy that forbade a supervisor and a subordinate from romantic involvement. The only options were for them to end the relationship or for one of them to resign. The City Attorney took the time to explain that Sarah wouldn’t be able to be hired as a cop anywhere else because of her psychiatric history.
The news hit him like a butt stroke, but he knew what he had to do.
Sergeant Creed was waiting for him outside the chief’s office. “Don’t worry about it, Kiddo. I’ve already got another job lined up for you.”
“What kind of job?”
“What kind of job.” Chuck shook his head. “There’s only one job for guys like us.”
“Where?”
“The only town wilder than Gunwood — Combat City.”
“You’re serious?”
Chuck grinned. “It’s all set up. You meet with their HR people on Monday.”
And that was that.
Sarah opened the front door without knocking. It was the first time she’d ever been to his place. She slammed the door behind her.
“They have no right to do this!” she screamed.
“Yes they do,” said Dominic. “It isn’t right, but they do have the right.”
“I’ll quit…”
Dominic stood up, went to her; hugged her in his arms. “No,” he said. “No you won’t. You love the job.”
“I don’t care,” she cried into his shoulder. “I won’t let them do this to you!”
“It’s already done,” he said.
She wept into his chest. “It’s not fair! I know how much this means to you.”
He lifted her chin. “You mean more.” He kissed her and her tears tasted salty and hot. She kissed him back and it was hotter than her tears.
“I could quit — I really could.”
“If you do quit, some day, it will be because you want to raise our kids.”
She kissed him again.
82
Sarah Hampton
* * *
Excuses
* * *
After Sarah stopped crying Dominic went to the kitchen to fix some dinner. This was the first time she’d been to his apartment. He said it wasn’t proper for the two of them to be alone, that it might tarnish her reputation and he would have none of that. But today was different, filled with emotion. She’d stormed right over as soon as she’d heard and nothing — not even Dominic was going to stop her. And who knew, maybe she would be able to comfort him later — maybe she would be able to comfort him a lot.
She sat on the couch. The place was spotless, no surprise, and then she saw the small pet carrier in the corner by a lamp.
“I didn’t know you had a pet,” she yelled into the kitchen. “You don’t really seem like a pet kind of guy.”
“I always had pets growing up,” he called back to her. “Turtles, lizards, fish. But mostly I just loved dogs. We always had boxers. Then I went to the Corps and I figured if they wanted me to have a dog they’d have issued me one. Kind of like wives.”
Sarah laughed. “So what kind of dog do you have?”
His answer was drowned out by something frying loudly in a pan. She wondered what he was making; it sure smelled good.
They’d set a date for the wedding; December 10th. It would be a Christmas wedding and she hoped there’d be at least a little snow. Sarah loved white Christmases with all the trees and rooftops capped white and looking so pure and clean. She wanted her wedding to be like that. After all her knight and shining armor had rescued her, so why shouldn’t the wedding match.
Something moved to her left. She turned, expecting to see whatever kind of small dog he had.
She stopped.
Her breath caught in her chest. Her whole body went numb — dead.
It wasn’t a dog.
It was the cat. Not just any cat — the cat — the tabby — no longer ratty and matted, but with the same torn ear — the same ragged scar bisecting its huge almond eyes. The only thing missing was the severed piece of missing evidence.
The cats had been gone — completely gone since the day she had avenged John Doe. Her hand slowly drifted to the pancake holster inside the waistband on her right hip.
“That’s Queenie,” said Dominic from the doorway to the kitchen. He was drying his hands on a towel. “I found her the day I got into town. She was a mess. A car had hit her and according to the vet she even had an old bullet wound. It cost me nearly nine hundred dollars to get her fixed up. And I don’t even like cats.” He grinned, walked over and scruffed behind the cat’s ears. It rubbed against his hand, arching and purring. “Well, I didn’t like cats. Queenie changed all that. She’s something special.” He looked up at Sarah. “Like you.”
A timer sounded from the kitchen. “Oops, that’s the chicken. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared, leaving the two of them alone.
There had been no other cats.
She’d finished one part of her mission; she’d thought the other no longer important. Was she wrong?
Her fingers brushed the butt of her weapon, gripped it tight. She’d have to make up an excuse. This could ruin everything between her and Dominic.
The cat moved closer.
Sarah started to shake.
It came right up to her, stared into her eyes.
Sarah unsnapped the holster silently; pulled the gun free.
Queenie leaned in, sniffed — closed her eyes and rubbed her head into Sarah’s free hand. She turned over, giving up her belly.
Sarah’s breath unlocked and she took in air. She reached out and rubbed the cat’s tummy, feeling the gentle purr that vibrated beneath her fingers.
Maybe she hadn’t been wrong. Maybe John Doe paid the price and that was enough. Maybe this was the way it was meant to be.
She looked back toward the kitchen, her eyes wet and he
r heart soft. Maybe — just maybe — it would be all right. Time would tell.
And if not — well — there were always excuses.
* * *
The End
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Hardly anyone writes a book completely by themselves and I doubt that anyone has written a good book without help. I hope you, the reader, think of GUNWOOD USA as at least a good book, and I certainly couldn’t have finished it without enormous support (both technical, emotional, and motivational) from numerous people. First and foremost is, of course, my family. Without their support and enthusiasm this book (let alone the website, social media sites and soon to be published future works) could never have been finished. So thanks beautiful wife, wonderful children and adorable grandchildren.
Next I would like to thank Mark Ortler, my long time writing buddy and crime fighting partner who helped me clean up the mean streets of Colorado for decades.
Then there’s Joe VanHook, Deb Thompson, Anthony Vigil and James Perry.
Joe’s a fellow deputy and a veteran of SWAT, and Anthony’s a former officer in the U.S. Army. I relied heavily on both for up-to-date weapon’s systems information. However, any blame for wrong, outdated or misapplied information is wholly on me, either because it worked better for the story or because I messed it up.
Deb is a great, longtime friend (and as head supervisor for dispatch, has been giving me orders for nearly as long as my wife), and along with Mark, Joe and Anthony, read through terrible early editions of GUNWOOD, making corrections and advising me along the way.
Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set Page 104