by Erik Carter
Behind, the alley was open.
Charlie leaned across the center console and looked at the screen on Jake’s cellular. “Three minutes to go, and still none of Burton’s men.”
For several minutes Charlie had prodded himself along with forced enthusiasm, nervous laughs. Now, his brow was knitted. His intertwined fingers skittered over themselves, looking through the rear window, the windshield, back to the rear window, then the windshield again.
Jake took a breath. Held it. Released. C.C. had taught him breathing techniques, ways of centering when he felt the tingle of tension coursing through him, when his heartbeat was unpleasant, almost painful.
He felt the breath at his center, what C.C. called his “core.”
Released it.
Then he looked out the window to the brick wall beside him as he’d been doing every thirty seconds.
This time he noticed something new.
A figure.
Just visible in the darkness of a window.
His eyes flicked to the side, the next window over.
Another figure, this one holding a rifle.
His heart jackhammered.
And an immediate realization came to him.
“Burton…”
“What?” Charlie said.
Jake turned on him. “We gotta get the hell out of here. This is an ambush!”
“What?”
“There are snipers in these buildings, Charlie! Burton set us up.”
Charlie looked out his window, squinted. “I don’t see nobody.”
The cellular phone rang. The number on the screen was Tanner’s.
Jake pushed the END button—the termination of the call was the agreed-upon signal that the message was received.
“Shit!” he said. “The truck’s nearly here.”
Charlie leaned over the steering wheel, looked through the windshield, squinting. “What are you on about, Pete? The truck’s not here yet.”
Jake’s mind flashed on what Burton had said.
You stole from me, so I’m going to steal something from you.
Then Jake’s heart pounded harder as he remembered the next part of Burton’s statement, the ominously cryptic part.
When I do, I want you to remember something—everyone will be involved, and we’ll take our time.
“Back out of the alley!” Jake shouted.
Charlie’s face drooped, his eyes going sad in that childlike manner of his. “Pete ... man, are you going chicken?”
“Charlie, goddamnit, we’re sitting ducks! Go!”
“But…”
Jake pulled his gun, pointed it at Charlie. “I’m a cop! Go! Now!”
Charlie’s face sank even lower. “You’re a ... a cop, Pete?”
Something in Jake’s periphery. He turned. Ahead of them, beyond the other two cars, a tractor trailer pulled into the abandoned school parking lot. Fast. It came to an abrupt halt that smoked the tires and made a screech that sounded all the way across the parking lot, echoing off the walls of the alley.
The truck was black. The trailer was green with GARRISON POWER TOOLS emblazoned down the side in tall, white block letters.
In the alley, doors flew open on each of the two cars ahead, and the Farone men poured out, guns in hand, darting for the parking lot.
Instantly, the alley erupted with gunfire. Flashes from the upper floors of the buildings on either side. CRACKS reverberating off the walls.
Two of the men were struck and collapsed to the ground. The others return fire to the windows as they dove back into the relative safety of their cars.
“Back out!” Jake screamed.
Charlie, panicked now, grabbed the shift knob.
A bullet tore through the windshield.
Charlie’s head fell back to the seat. Eyes open. A line of blood snaked from his forehead to his nose.
Chapter Twenty
Tanner grabbed the armrest on the door as the SWAT truck clipped the corner of a curb, and a jolt of energy struck him like an electric shock. He lifted out of his seat.
The truck flew toward the alley on the opposite side of the street that fronted the abandoned school parking lot.
Flashes of muzzle flare lit the alley. The CRACKS carried over the distance, audible even through the thick construction of the armored truck. Shots came from the second-floor and from the trio of cars below, a firefight, an ambush with the poor souls in the cars pinned in a crossfire.
Tanner looked to the mirror bolted on the outside of his door.
Behind, a second SWAT vehicle swerved to the right, going for the semi-truck parked in the center of the otherwise abandoned school parking lot.
THWACK!
A round glanced off the roof of the truck. Shouts from the men in the bench seats in the back.
Ahead, the flashes of gunshots ceased. Both groups of men—those in the buildings and those trapped in the vehicles—were criminals and sensed the threat of the oncoming police raid.
Hispanic men flooded from the buildings’ exits, three from each side, all with firearms, some taking potshots at the SWAT truck and the men in the cars. One man held a MAC-10 at waist height, stabilizing it by a suppressor, and sprayed a burst of rounds into the first Farone vehicle. The windshield exploded, shattering into a crystalline latticework, and blood splattered it from the inside.
With the front vehicle immobilized, the middle car was pinned and the only operational vehicle was an old Ford Taurus at the rear. A man was motionless behind the steering wheel, mouth open, a rivulet of blood running down his face from a hole in his forehead.
And beside him, crouched low beneath the dash, was Jake.
The SWAT truck came to a screeching halt. Tanner threw the door open, exited, took cover behind the door, both hands on his weapon.
SWAT team members flooded out of the back of the vehicle and stormed the alley in a single-file line, a snake. The situation they were running into was a logistical shitshow, and tactics quickly turned into chaos.
Shouted commands. A flurry of arrests, men thrown to the ground, both Rojas and Farones. Others slipped away into the night, cops in pursuit.
Tanner proceeded along the wall. Pace appeared behind him, nodded.
The gunshots subsided. The firefight was quickly dying off. Scumbags had a tendency to run when the cops showed up. Go figure.
Tanner and Pace inched toward the corner of the building, and Tanner squinted through the smoke and debris at his objective—the Taurus in the back.
There was Jake.
Sprawled across the center console, trying to free the dead driver from his seatbelt.
Tanner turned to Pace. “There he is. Let’s get our man outta here.”
They advanced toward the car, weapons aimed.
“Freeze, Hudson!” Tanner shouted.
Jake looked up, spotted them.
He made eye contact with Tanner.
And he shook his head.
There was something serious in Jake’s eyes, even more serious than the situation surrounding them. Tanner knew him well enough to know that something was wrong.
Something was about to happen.
He wasn’t going to let them take him in.
Jake continued to shake his head, and he shouted, “No!” though Tanner couldn’t hear it.
Pace turned to Tanner. “What the hell is Rowe doing?”
CRACK!
A piercing sound. Debris fell on Tanner’s head, bouncing off his helmet.
The shot had come from the second floor of the far building. A remaining Roja man, one who hadn’t fled like the others. He held a Ruger AC556 Carbine—a nasty piece of work, a full-auto hell-bringer.
The Rojas had come fully prepared to slaughter the Farones.
After pushing Tanner and Pace back, the Roja man swung the rifle to his left.
Bringing it in line with the Taurus at the back of the alley.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jake fumbled with Charlie’s body as he tried to pus
h it out of the car. He periodically ducked beneath the dash as bullets punched through the sheet metal. Glances out the windshield showed Tanner and the FBI agent, Pace, approaching fast, guns drawn.
Another glance. Tanner was screaming.
He gave Charlie’s body another tug. It wouldn’t move. One of Charlie’s dead hands clenched the steering wheel.
He grabbed Charlie’s wrist, pulled.
A bullet struck the door, shattering the window.
Jake crouched again as glass rained down.
He glanced up.
Tanner and Pace were almost upon the car, close enough now that he could discern their screaming.
“Pete Hudson, step away from the vehicle!” Tanner said.
The fed leveled his pistol. “Hands up, asshole!”
Jake took hold of Charlie’s hand again, yanked hard, breaking its grip on the steering wheel. He threw the body out the door. It rolled once, coming to a halt face up.
Charlie’s open, blood-splattered eyes stared into the dark sky, still showing a bit of that saddened, betrayed expression he’d worn just before the bullet crashed through the windshield.
Jake’s mind flashed to the recent events in New Orleans that had indirectly caused this. He owed Charlie his life after what happened in Louisiana.
And now he was abandoning his dead body in an alley.
“I’m sorry, Charlie.”
He slammed the door shut.
A bullet struck the front quarter panel, a large round from a high-powered rifle. The piercing metallic shriek made his ears ring.
Staying low, beneath the horizon of the windshield, he jockeyed his body into position. Legs over the console, to the pedals. Left hand on the wheel.
A glance to the side. Tanner and Pace. Feet away. Screaming. Guns aimed.
He made eye contact with Tanner.
Tanner’s shoulders dropped. His brow released its pinched tension. And his mouth fell open into a look not unlike the one Charlie had given him a few minutes earlier when he found out Jake was a cop.
A look of betrayal.
Tanner had sensed what Jake was about to do, that he was going to flee. Jake could see it in his eyes.
Burton’s words came to Jake again, quelling the momentary guilt.
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.
Hurry.
A bullet hissed past the car, and Jake dropped farther below the dash. He pressed the clutch pedal, threw the stick shift into reverse, then did a quick shuffle of his feet, dropping the clutch and smashing the gas pedal.
The Taurus’s tires screeched, and it flew back. Jake gritted his teeth as he clenched the steering wheel and guided the car blindly from his crouched position.
SMASH!
He struck the wall. A shower of sparks illuminated the cab.
A few feet away, a bullet smashed into a dumpster.
To the end of the alley. A gust of wind blew in through the shattered window. He cleared the threshold and made it to the street.
He immediately yanked the wheel to the side, bolted up in his seat, threw the stick into first.
And barreled off.
Heading for the Farone mansion.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jake burst through the front entrance of the Farone mansion. His shoes squeaked on the parquet floor.
“C.C.!”
His Colt was in his hand. He’d cleared the door, his technique piss-poor and reckless, emotion overtaking him. His academy training was now distant and staticky, lost in the swirling storm of his chaotic mind.
The house felt empty, humming with nothingness and the quiet aftershocks of violence. There was an earthy smell, something raw and natural overpowering the warm scents normally associated with the home.
Sprinting. Through the foyer, across the expanse of the great hall, down the dimly lit hallway toward the library. His footsteps echoed to the second-floor balcony, off the wainscoting and the coffered ceiling.
He halted. His shoes screeched again.
A flash of something terrible. Through the doorway of the office. Unmistakable death. Blood.
The leather chair behind the desk, out of place, by the left corner and resting against the back wall. Sylvester. Slouched. Arms splayed off the sides of the chair. Mouth open. Eyes open. A massive patch of blood on his shirt.
“Shit…”
Jake glanced to Sylvester’s chest. Not moving. The blood on Sylvester’s shirt was going dark, congealing.
Jake took off.
His breathing was detached. Tingling in his forehead. A flush of cold over his moist skin.
Around the corner, into the library.
The sofa. The gap beneath it showed the floor beyond.
C.C.’s calf. Her green leggings. The bottom of her dress. Motionless.
A wet puddle, glistening in the library’s warm lighting.
Jake’s hand went to the sofa. He whipped around the corner.
The blood was a pool, and she lay in the center, on her stomach.
A sucking noise from his throat.
She was completely still, as dead as her brother.
Not at peace.
Violence had twisted her body. Perfectly motionless but with the appearance of movement, like unmoving action evoked by a talented painter.
Her left arm reaching up, fingers splayed.
Right arm behind her back, hand cupped.
Legs staggered, bent at the knees.
Dress off her right shoulder, a tear in the side.
Motionless motion, trying to swim out of the blood.
Her face was unrecognizable. Half of it was no longer a face.
Long, curly, black hair fanned in a circle, matted in the blood. There was a hole in the back of her head. Black. Red. Wet.
Jake stumbled. The gun dropped from his hand, clattered away.
The sucking noise in his throat crackled.
He fell forward, right knee, left knee, onto his stomach. His palms went forward, splashing in the deep puddle of her blood. Not cold. But not warm. His fingers squished into the rug.
He tried to say her name.
C.C.
Popping sounds from the back of his throat. No words.
I love you.
Nothing. Not even the popping sounds.
He lifted his hand out of the blood, shaking, reached for her.
And quickly brought the hand to his face. Vomited. Bile shot through his fingers. He felt her not-warm blood on his cheeks, his lips.
He saw her face. Not her face. Bulging, contused. Half of it skinless. Underlying tissue.
The light feeling swept over his skin again.
Into his head.
Cold.
Bright.
He fell.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Echoing sounds somewhere in the distance.
Small taps. Little pops. Coming at Jake, circling closer, through a tunnel he felt but didn’t see.
Brightness, somehow, even with his eyes closed. He opened them.
The tunnel was a brighter area within an expanse of haze that was light and filled with a thick mist that felt both cold and warm, dry and moist, so dense that he saw only inches in front of him.
All of it bright. With that spot of brighter bright in front of him. Where the popping noises were.
He reached out, saw his hand before his eyes, details obscured by the haze.
The hand gave a small sense of scale, putting an object between him and the orb of brighter light, which seemed now like a searchlight in the fog, somewhere in the distance.
It was too far away to touch. He’d need to approach. Which meant he would have to stand.
His hand went down, to push himself up, and sank into a doughy, airy surface.
Then he was downtown. Shops, boutiques, cafes. A bright day, the sky a pure, blazing, Florida blue. C.C. wore sunglasses. She was laug
hing, and he wondered why. On his arm. Saying something.
His hand slid forward in the dough. The mist tickled his cheek. The light was before him.
My God! What—
A flea market, off U.S. 98, outside Pensacola on the way to Destin. A big, permanent setup with open-air shelters shading row after row of vendor tables. The musty smell of twenty-year-old toys and forty-year-old furniture.
C.C. held a yellow dress, black flower print, daisies or something. She’d skipped away from him when she spotted it. She held it to her chest, spun in a circle, hopped.
—God! What have—
The mist. The tapping sound. From the brightness.
Tap, tap, tap.
C.C. there now. In the mist. Before him. Blocking his view of the bright spot he was trying to reach. Why would she stop him? He needed to see it.
But suddenly he didn’t care anymore. Not with that ethereal face. Her dark brown eyes mellow with contentment. The light now illuminated her from behind, tracing her outline, tinting the edges of her black hair a deep crimson.
She smiled.
Then screamed.
The left side of her face boiled. Pink, purple, shiny. The right side exploded, flesh flying off. The mist turned pink.
Loud footsteps. Vibration in Jake’s side, through the floorboards, through the blood-soaked rug.
The taste of vomit, on his gums, burning the back of his throat. The copper smell of blood. Moisture on his arm, his face.
His eyes snapped open.
Someone was rushing toward him from the library’s doorway.
Saunders.
Red, sweaty, rage-filled face.
“My God, what have you DONE?”
Jake’s eye’s flicked to C.C. Inches away. Her destroyed face.
He looked away, couldn’t look at her, back to Saunders.
The old man’s barrel chest looked ready to rip out of his three-piece suit. His teeth were bared. Feral.
It was only then that it became clear to Jake—Saunders thought he’d killed C.C.
The notion had been so ludicrous it hadn’t immediately gelled in his mind.
He tried to speak.
It wasn’t me!
Nothing. Popping sounds from his throat.