by Erik Carter
He looked to the doorway a few feet away, the hallway beyond. Empty.
C.C.’s hands remained on her mouth. Her face had gone pallid, and her eyes were saucers.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her fingers.
Jake exhaled and gave her an understanding nod.
She lowered one of her hands, brought the other to her lips, chewed a fingernail. “I’m telling you, it’s something more. It started with one of my premonitions, yes, but I took action.” She paused. “I followed him.”
“Oh, god, C.C….”
“I was safe! I trailed him out to his beach house. There were men waiting for him. A pair of brand-new Maseratis. Out-of-state plates. New Jersey.”
Interesting.
The Farone family certainly had strong ties to the New York-New Jersey area, as the patriarch, Joseph Farone, had originally come from Manhattan, having a brief stay in New Orleans before ultimately ending up in Pensacola. But while Burton was a higher-up even before he formed the schism within the family, the Farones had never directly involved him in high-level matters.
So what were exotic vehicles from New Jersey doing at his place?
Jake didn’t have time to ponder it. He needed to figure it out.
A quick glance through the window, and he saw Burton, Glover, and McBride still in mid conversation, laughing, paying them no attention. Still, Jake turned his back to the window for what he was about to do.
He reached into his pocket at took out his small notebook, a NedNotes brand PenPal. All cops need a good notebook, but Jake hadn’t warmed to the traditional, top-bound variety so many police officers used. At five by three and half inches, the small PenPal suited his needs perfectly. But just as importantly as the size was the fact that the spiral binding was on the side, and since PenPals were one hundred pages thick, the binding was large enough to hold a mechanical pencil. The front covers were durable plastic and came in a variety of colors. This one was canary yellow.
C.C. had encouraged him to use his notebooks in other capacities. She saw them as a tool he could use to help organize his often confused brain space. Her primary recommendation was mind mapping, a diagramming system used to organize concepts visually and hierarchically.
Jake flipped the PenPal to the first clean page. While undercover, he wrote notes as infrequently as possible, and when he did, he used shorthand abbreviations that only he would understand. Just in case.
He took the mechanical pencil from the spiral binding and wrote: NJ vhcs Bn
The standard NJ for New Jersey and two of his abbreviations for vehicles and Burton.
“I need to swing by Burton’s,” he said as he snapped the notebook shut and stuck the pencil back in the binding. When C.C. started to object, as he had moments earlier to her own Burton investigation, he added, “Hey, if you’re gonna spy on him, I get to as well. I am the police officer here.”
He flashed her a smile.
She wasn’t amused.
She crossed her arms, pulling them in tight, as though to warm herself. “I’m telling you, there’s something not right about what’s happening tonight with the Rojas. I can feel it.”
Her chest raised as she took in a breath. She released it and moved closer. Her hands went to his chest, eyes looking up at him. At six-foot-three and five-foot-three, there was a perfect foot of height difference between them.
“You asked me to sell out my entire family, to never see them again. Sylvester is a monster, a psychopath, and I’m glad to do my part to bring him down. But I’m doing it for you. So indulge my quirkiness and don’t go to the hit tonight. Find an excuse. Say you ran out of gas; say your aunt died. Something. Just tell me you won’t go.”
She had a point.
C.C. was giving up everything she’d ever known. And since Tanner was undoubtedly going to pull Jake from his cover tonight, there was really no point in Jake putting himself in danger.
“I won’t go,” he said. “I am going to Burton’s, but, okay, I won’t go to the Roja hit.”
She exhaled, face losing its tension.
“Thank you.” Another deep breath. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Promise?”
“Do I promise that I love you?”
“No. Promise me you won’t go to the hit tonight.”
He nodded. “I promise.”
Chapter Eight
A normal man would have been crumbling under the pressure right about now.
Lukas Burton, however, was not a normal man.
His plan was huge, its scope staggering. But before he could fully coordinate with his new business partners, he had to completely break free from the traditional vestiges of the Farone crime family. So far, he had seven loyal men.
He’d given the other people in the organization plenty of time to join him, to join the winning side.
And now their time was up.
Yet despite the pressure that was building, Burton was calm as a windless sea. More than calm. He was excited. While the Farone-loyal contingent had dispersed as soon as Sylvester had given the instructions, Burton and his men had remained in the great hall, finishing their drinks, laughing, telling loud jokes and slapping each other’s shoulders for several more minutes before heading out.
McBride was the last of his troops—as Burton liked to called them—aside from Glover who was still there. He was a big Irish shit with a dirty red beard, lumpish body, and a tattoo on his right cheek, an inch away from his eye. After another rumbling laugh McBride clamped a hand on Burton’s shoulder—more tattoos on his knuckles—and lumbered away, enormous feet clomping on the hardwood.
This left only Glover and Burton.
Burton watched McBride walk off, and then his eyes traced across the living room on the far wall that looked out onto the darkened courtyard. Through the leaves and branches and bushes, he could see another window, a warm glow in the darkness.
The library with its walls of books and leather furniture. And two figures—Pete “Loudmouth” Hudson and Cecilia Farone. Speaking to each other.
For the longest time, their relationship had been a poorly kept secret. They’d given up on that and now communicated freely and openly. Usually they were all laughs, smiles, playful flirtations. Tonight, though, their conversation appeared deadly serious. Burton watched the silent drama playing out before him—short, jerky movements, terse swipes of hands, punctuating their words, knitted brows. Burton had never seen them like this.
“Look at that, Glover. Trouble in paradise,” Burton said without taking his gaze away from them.
Glover scoffed as he smoothed a strand of his dark blond hair back into its combed-back position. “Hippie bitch. Hot piece of ass, don’t get me wrong, but could you imagine dealing with her? Hudson’s an idiot for getting involved with that chick.”
Burton felt a pulse in his forehead.
He turned on Glover. “That’s why Hudson’s an idiot? How about he’s an idiot because he stole from me?”
Glover’s lips parted. He cleared his throat. “What happened in New Orleans? Of course, but I mean … he can be an idiot for multiple reasons, right?”
Burton glared at him for a moment. “And don’t call Cecilia a bitch.”
He turned back to the window. Hudson and Cecilia were hugging, a long deep embrace. All was forgiven. Then they parted, still facing each other, two hands interlaced, arms stretching out, a few final words. Then the fingertips broke their bind and Hudson turned and walked out.
Burton walked off too.
“Where you going?” Glover said behind him.
“Shut up.”
Around a sofa, through the center of the great hall, past the kitchen—where Sylvester was seated at the island and looked up from his wine with a goofy, wet-lipped smile and greeted Burton with a Hey, buddy boy, which Burton ignored—and to the dim, sconce-lined hallway that led to the foyer.
As Burton turned the corner, Hudson approached from the opposite direction.
Hudson slowed, ever so slightly and only for a moment, before continuing toward Burton, a pathetic attempt at posturing. Hudson was just that sort of guy, a man who thought too much of himself, a man whose posing had landed him somewhere he never should have been.
Burton wasn’t sure how Hudson had landed among the Farones, but this car thief had arrived only months earlier and done so with quite a splash, impressing both the old man and his psychotic son. And, of course, he’d ultimately impressed the daughter as well. The irony of it—the hair-yanking, anger-pulsing frustration of it—was that Hudson somehow managed to thrive while maintaining a frame of righteousness.
Righteousness.
In a criminal organization.
Insane. Just absolutely absurd.
This was one of many reasons Burton was restructuring the Farone crime syndicate: they recruited idiots like Pete Hudson.
He stepped into the hall, and Hudson continued in his direction, only slowing when they were a few feet apart. More of that unspoken pissing match.
They looked at each other.
What a big, goofy idiot. Hudson’s gee whiz face was long with a prominent nose and bright green eyes. Olive skin, dark hair, and a defined but unassuming jawline—all of which gave him an everyman handsomeness that was surely the reason Cecilia had overlooked his dork persona.
“Taking off, Pete?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, you relax for a bit. It’s gonna be a big night for us. I mean, taking down the Rojas? Whew!” He gave a little disbelieving shake of the head, a long exasperated sigh. And a slight malicious grin at the corner of his mouth.
Hudson saw right through it, stared back into him. Stone-faced.
Burton lessened the grin, maybe fifty percent, and let dark sincerity pour from his eyes. “You don’t think I’m going to forget what you did to me in New Orleans, do you?”
Hudson didn’t reply.
“You stole from me, Pete, so I’m going to steal something from you. When I do, I want you to remember something—everyone will be involved, and we’ll take our time. Two things are going to happen. One will happen tonight; the other will happen down the line. A chance for me to reconnect with my roots, with Daddy. A real homecoming. Know what I mean?”
Hudson narrowed his eyes.
Good.
Burton had wanted his statement to be cryptic. It wasn’t supposed to make sense.
Not yet.
The only disappointment was that Hudson didn’t reply. Burton wanted a What the hell does that mean? He wanted to frustrate Hudson even more, to engorge his confusion to a mouthwatering level.
But Hudson just looked back at him for a moment longer, then stepped past, went to the door, and exited without looking back.
Burton watched him leave.
Chapter Nine
Waves crashed on the sand that, in the daylight, was touted as “the world’s whitest.” Bathed in bright moonlight, it took on a cool gray hue.
Jake was far beyond the condo towers, in an area of beach houses, moving to the far end where the properties were more spread out and the houses larger, grander. A moist breeze blew off the water. Few people were out.
As he rounded a curve, Burton’s house crept into view, an ultra-modern amalgamation of lines and right angles with an off-white facade and long stretches of glass. A grid of handrails traced the staggered balconies. There were two proper floors, and a third was built into the slope of the beach, fronted by a trio of concrete stilts and a zig-zag staircase that descended from a sprawling porch on the floor above.
All those mammoth windows were dark. Nobody home.
Still, Jake needed to approach this situation very carefully.
He stopped walking and sat in the sand, brought his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, looked out to the waves, a typical nighttime beachgoer reflectively studying the sea. He felt the coolness of the sand on his butt through his chinos. He let a few moments pass then took a pair of compact binoculars from his pocket, looked to the waves and slowly, casually turned his gaze toward the beach, swinging the binoculars slightly upward until Burton’s house appeared.
He wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for, but if C.C. was right about the vehicles she’d seen that could mean—
Jake brought the binoculars to a halt.
A busted-out glass door.
On the lowest level, beneath the overhang. A few jagged fangs of glass outlined the doorframe, but most of it lay in shards on the brickwork, leaving a huge open void into Burton’s house, a space easily large enough to accommodate a grown adult.
He got up and strode as briskly as he could toward the house without breaking his character of the casual nighttime beachgoer.
Easing his trajectory away from the waves, he climbed up the grade toward the house. He took out his Colt, peered through the busted door from the far side of the concrete slab porch. Saw nothing. Just shadows and glimpses of Burton’s high-end decor.
He ran along the side of the darkened house, up the hill, shoes sinking in the soft, unpacked sand, to the driveway. No out-of-state Maseratis. No vehicles at all.
Back down the embankment to the broken-out door. He avoided the shards of glass as he stepped inside, then halted, listened.
Nothing, just the crashing waves beyond.
Gun at the ready, he swept through the house, room by room, closet by closet, finding nothing.
He went to the office. As with the rest of the house, there were modern, chic touches—a lot of polished steel, a couple abstract sculptures. A wall of windows looked upon the moonlit water, the waves.
He sat at the desk, flipped on the small desk lamp. The desktop was clean, organized, a stack of paper in the center. He picked it up, flipped through the pages, unimpressed. Nothing significant.
To the side was a cherry, two-tier letter tray. He grabbed a stack of envelopes, flipped past the first two.
And stopped.
The Personal Manifesto of Delbert Patterson,
or Musings on the Transmogrification of Societal Frustration
What the hell?
He began reading.
Societies rise, and societies fall. A natural order. Now technological advances impede this earthly rhythm, and therefore it must also be technology—in the form of heavy armaments—that restore the order.
America refuses to come to a natural end. And so I, and others like me, will bring it to an end.
Jake had to stop for a moment. When he’d left the mansion, he’d expected to find something strange at Burton’s, and that feeling had been amplified when he saw the broken glass door.
But an anarchist’s manifesto…
Nothing could have prepared him for something like this.
He continued to read.
This is not an exercise. This is not a warning. This is certainly not a cry for help. Soon, I will attack all means of American infrastructure that have not yet…
A sound behind him.
He turned in time to see someone lunging from the shadows, a quick glimpse of a silhouette in baggy jeans and a baseball cap. He threw up an arm, partially blocking the punch, but it struck him with enough force to send him into the desk, knocking the lamp to the floor.
The lightbulb popped, and the room snapped back into near darkness, just reflected moonlight coming in through the massive windows.
Jake rolled over the desktop and landed in a crouched position on the other side of the desk. He immediately went for his gun, but the man delivered a swift high kick, knocking it from his hand.
It clattered on the tile.
He looked up in time to see another kick already in motion and got a quick glimpse of the man’s silhouette against the moonlight—he was about six-foot seven, and very small, his baggy-style jeans even baggier than their intended look.
The next high kick clipped the side of Jake’s face as he tried to stand, sending him rolling across the floor toward the glass wall.
The man rushed
in his direction. Jake stretched for a footstool on casters, a few feet away, and shoved it hard toward the guy.
It smashed into the man, bringing him to the floor.
Jake leapt forward, and the man immediately flung him away, using his own weight against him, some sort of grappling move Jake wasn’t prepared for.
The man straddled him, got a hand around his throat, raised a fist...
And now, closer to the glass wall, in the moonlight, Jake saw who it was.
Christie Mosley.
“Christie?”
Chapter Ten
The garage was a massive stretch of subterranean concrete. Mottled twelve-foot walls surrounded a contrastingly smooth, traffic-polished floor that was marred by tire tracks and glistened with oblong patches of white shine from the fluorescent lighting. The damp air carried the scents of vehicle exhaust and rubber.
Behind Tanner was a line of SWAT trucks. He felt their massive, riveted, sharp-edged presence looming over him.
In front of him, seated in folding chairs interspersed among massive pillars and squad cars—which looked diminutive in their proximity to the SWAT trucks—were a dozen men in black tactical gear, sitting tall in their seats, facing him, awaiting his instruction.
Tanner adjusted an elbow pad. He wore the same gear as the others. His eyes moved over the faces looking at him. Most bore steely resolve, but several of them could hardly contain their excitement. Their muscles twitched, knees bounced. Satisfied smirks. Ready for action. The SWAT team didn’t assemble often in a sleepy city like Pensacola.
As for Tanner, he’d long ago lost his taste for explosive moments of violence. He couldn’t wait to strip this armor off and get back into normal clothes. A pair of his pajamas would be nice. Yes, the red pair. He’d slip into those bad boys and climb into his warm bed with Martha.
But first he had to get Jake out of his undercover assignment. It had been a long time. Too damn long. The guy was a protege, and Tanner couldn’t help but feel like he’d treated him like a workhorse.