“Is it always this empty down here in the morning, Nick?”
“Yes, except on the weekends. I usually walk down around five-thirty in the morning on weekends. Weekdays, I seldom see anyone until nine out here, except a couple joggers.”
“Are you going to write me into your next book?” Rachel watched Jean poke into a tide pool while Deke romped around her, expecting something to be dislodged from the water.
Nick shook his head, snorting derisively.
“Why don’t I just surrender myself to the law while I’m at it? This writing gig is supposed to be a cover for us not an autobiography.”
“Don’t you write Diego’s adventures using your own hits as a template of sorts?”
Nick stared at Rachel as if she had sprouted a horn out of her forehead until Rachel started laughing.
“Okay, I’m stupid. Tell me why.”
“Think about it, Rachel. How many plots using real life hits would it take before someone saw a pattern? I thought you were an up and coming psycho. Now, I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with simply being the decorous wife cover.”
“That’s so cute. You were going to train me to be a psycho like you.” It was Rachel’s turn to stare grimly at Nick. “Don’t law enforcement people figure out a connection when you arrive somewhere supposedly doing research and someone ends up dead? Forget I asked. This is where you say I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Let’s just say I’m a bit more devious. When the mark arrives where needed, I’m staying on the same continent. You can cross many borders in a short space of time in Europe, especially when some very strong strings get pulled. Intel is the key, coupled with area familiarity. It helps if the mark won’t be missed by anyone important, and doesn’t get discovered until I’m far away. Having you and possibly Jean along, staying where I’m researching, will allay virtually all local suspicion.”
“Do you ever kill anyone in the US?”
“Tanus was my first here, and he wasn’t sanctioned. I’ve had business offshore though.”
“I could get used to the in-betweens around here.” Rachel clasped Nick’s hand. “Maybe I do have some psycho in me.”
* * * *
They sat together in silence for a moment, watching Jean and Deke. Nick patted her hand.
“Nah, you’re a survivor,” Nick looked up toward Ocean View Blvd. He saw Carol and Dan walking toward Otter’s Point. “Here come a couple old friends of mine you and Jean will like. I was hoping we made it down here early enough to see them. They know nothing about me other than I’m a novelist.”
“You have friends?” Rachel’s face dropped comically into open mouthed wonder, drawing laughter from Nick. “You’re a more personable psycho than you’ve led me to believe.”
“Repartee is a dual-edged sword, Kimmy,” Nick retorted, standing and helping a now growling Rachel to her feet.
“I…hate…that…name!” Rachel whispered through clenched teeth as Dan and Carol descended to the beach area waving animatedly.
“Well, damn. What the hell have you gone and done, boy?” Dan asked gruffly, shaking Nick’s hand while smiling brightly at Rachel.
“Dan!” Carol cringed before holding her hand out to Rachel. “Hi, I’m Carol Lewis and big mouth here is my husband Dan.”
“Dan, Carol…I’d like you to meet Rachel Hunter.” Nick caught up on the introductions. “The little girl over there is Jean and the mutt is named Deke.”
“Very happy to meet you,” Rachel shook Carol’s hand, happy to hear her real name after so long.
“Did Nick order a family from an on-line catalogue without telling us?” Dan smiled at Rachel, taking her hand in both his weathered ones. “You do realize you’ve taken up with a serial killer, right?”
Nick grinned, noting as Rachel nodded gamely, covering up for the split second of utter confusion that rolled over her.
“Why yes, I believe he did mention something about being a cold blooded murderer. That’s why I brought the family down to visit.”
Oh, that was good, Nick thought approvingly, laughing along with Dan and Carol.
“You’re okay, Rachel.” Dan pronounced between laughing and warding off Carol. “So, you’re down from Pleasanton to stay at the big house, huh?”
“I told them I’d met someone while researching up in Pleasanton,” Nick filled in when Rachel looked at him questioningly. “Carol thinks I need more romance in my novels. I figured I’d better get some experience if I’m planning on giving my assassin, Diego, a love life.”
“I’m a research project?” Rachel entertained Nick with enough credible outrage to worry Dan and Carol until she started laughing. “Just kidding. I’ve never read his books, so I wouldn’t know if he were researching a project or not.”
“You and Nick make quite a match.” Dan nodded speculatively.
“Are you two stopping at the Café on the way back, or going there now?”
“Neither this morning, Nick,” Carol answered. “Dan has his annual check-up in an hour. They have to keep checking each year to make sure all his blood hasn’t turned to vinegar.”
Nick saw Jean and Deke approach the laughing adults together before waiting with impatience for the hilarity to subside. After introductions, during which Nick made Deke sit and shake hands with Dan and Carol, irritating Rachel to no end, the older couple continued home. Deke, sensing something different in Rachel’s attitude began hopping around snapping at Rachel’s heels, grabbing her pant leg and pulling.
“Why you…no good…ungrateful cur…call your damned dog off, Nick!” Rachel ordered.
“C’mon, let’s go get coffee and hot chocolate at the Café. We’ll get them to go, so you can grab an application, and Deke won’t get into trouble tied up outside.” Nick whistled a short two-tone come on to Deke, who immediately ran over, sat down, and waited for his leash to be attached.
“You’re lucky you’re already fixed, traitor.” Rachel shook an angry finger at Deke’s perpetually smiling face. “Maybe we can get the vet to do a follow up just to be sure.”
“Mom!” Jean ran over to hug the docile Deke. “Don’t you dare!”
Nick, who had been viewing the interaction with intense amusement, leashed Deke. “We’d better move along, Dawg, before Rachel goes postal on your hairy butt. Did you like the beach, Jean?”
Jean nodded in the affirmative, but immediately qualified her answer. “Are there ever any kids around here my age?”
“We’ll find some,” Nick promised, taking Rachel’s arm.
Chapter Six
Road Trip
“Bring him in, Nick.” Joe beckoned from the counter as Nick poked his head in after holding the door to the Monte Café open for Rachel and Jean. He held Deke within sight on his leash. “It’s a slow morning, and a good thing, too, since Nancy’s still out. Where’d you pick up the strays, Hemingway?”
Nick chuckled. “Up North, along the side of the road. This is Rachel Hunter, her daughter Jean, and Deke the dog. I don’t want you to get into trouble for having Deke in here, Joe.”
“Glad to meet you, Rachel, Jean, and of course, Deke.” Joe gestured at the first table by the window. “I’m the owner of this establishment, Joe Montenegro. Now, if you see anybody come in, act like Deke’s your seeing-eye dog, Hemingway.”
“I have my sunglasses right here,” Nick agreed instantly, holding them up. “Two coffees and a hot chocolate, please Sir.”
“Coming right up.” Joe left to get their order.
“Another friend?” Rachel needled Nick.
“Any more out of you, Kimmy, and I’ll have Deke herd you up to the house.”
Deke gave out a short ‘grumphf’ in agreement and on cue.
“Okay, for you, Hemingway,” Rachel retorted as Jean giggled.
After collecting an application from an eager Joe, who offered to hire Rachel on the spot, the four walked up 12th Street to Nick’s house as sunlight streamed through the dissipating
clouds. Nick saw that Rachel kept glancing over her shoulder at the ocean’s colorful transformation under the sun’s rays.
“It’s gorgeous when the sun comes out,” Rachel noted, as they stood on Nick’s porch.
“Yep, it’s nice. We can go up on the balcony. I’m working on my outline for Diego’s next adventure.” Nick disabled the alarm system, propping the screen open, and kneeling down to check over Deke. “You didn’t collect much sand, Deke. I guess we don’t have to give you a bath this time.”
Nick opened the front door. Jean skipped over the stoop and a huge hand grabbed the little girl up. Nanoseconds later Deke clamped onto the wrist with snarling ferocity. Morris cursed, dropping Jean, while pivoting to the right, swinging the attached Deke with him. Rachel scooped up Jean and Nick stomped his booted right foot into Morris’s left Achilles tendon. Morris collapsed, gritting his teeth against the blinding pain while trying to swing his silenced automatic toward Nick. With Deke out of the way, Nick swung his left boot up in a roundhouse kick which smashed into Morris’s face like a jackhammer. Morris’s weapon clattered to the hardwood floor. Morris pitched over on his back, blood gushing from his shattered nose. Nick had the automatic pointed at Morris in the next split second. He kicked the front door closed.
“Take Jean and Deke upstairs, Rachel.” Nick directed, watching Morris roll around in misery.
Rachel carried the stunned Jean upstairs, pausing only to call Deke.
“Go on, Deke. Thanks for the save, mutt.”
Deke gave out a sharp bark and ran after Rachel and Jean.
Nick waited, keeping his distance from Morris. Morris coughed up blood after rolling to his hands and knees. He tested his left leg, falling on his right side with a grunt of pain. Getting back to his hands and knees Morris looked up at Nick sullenly.
“You’ll hav’ to call. The tendon’s busted,” Morris said nasally.
“What the hell are you doing here? Frank and I have a deal.”
“You ain’t got a deal with me. If not for that Goddamn dog, I’d –”
Nick fired two shots into Morris’s right temple and one more into his forehead after tipping the shuddering man onto his back. Nick went into the kitchen and pulled out two black plastic garbage bags and his duct tape. After pulling Morris into a sitting position, Nick covered the head and upper torso with doubled black plastic bags, duct taping them tightly into place. It took Nick twenty minutes longer to clean up the blood spatter. He retrieved the satellite phone and made initial contact. Fifteen minutes later the phone vibrated.
“Clean up on aisle seven.”
“What the hell did you do now?”
“Morris went rogue on you, Frank.”
“Did you have to kill him?”
“That was rhetorical, right?”
“You’ll have to find a way to speed up the flash drive retrieval, Nick. I’m going to have some trouble fixing this without them.”
“I talk to the Marshalls tonight. I’ll try and get them on board with a family trip within the week.”
“The best I can do is two hours for clean up.”
“Call me before they get here. Morris is next to the front door. It’s strange, Frank. If Morris wanted me dead, why didn’t he send a long range postcard? He knew we had a deal; but he tried to get leverage against me like he wanted to barter. You wouldn’t know what he would’ve been bartering for, would you, Frank?”
“You could have asked him.” Frank’s nonchalant tone was not fooling Nick at all.
“He was bleeding all over my hardwood floor. It would’ve been a noisy question and answer session. As you know, I have company.”
“I’ll ask around.” Frank disconnected.
Sure, you’ll ask around. Nick put the phone and weapon up on the hutch inside his dining room. He walked upstairs and knocked on Rachel’s door.
“Come in.”
“We have a problem,” Nick stated, seeing Rachel, Jean, and Deke huddled up on the bed together. There’s an understatement. “I don’t think my insurance is enough. I may have overestimated my value. The man downstairs was trying to get you and Jean. If not for Deke, he would have. I played dumb with my boss, but we need a new plan.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Road trip.”
“All of us in your Chevy? How soon?”
“We have an hour. Any longer and we’ll be cutting it close. I have something a bit more comfortable for us to travel in. Sorry we didn’t get much time to rest up. We’ll call Grace and Tim after we’re on our way. I’ll tell them we had to leave because we spotted trouble. I think we may have to use your nest egg to deal with them, Rachel.”
“You’re screwed, aren’t you?” Rachel wrapped her arms around Jean.
Nick shrugged. “Hey, new choices mean new gambles.” You sell this, you should get into the movies next, killer. “Grace and Tim will not be happy with this decision, especially since they’ll have to stay in the dark until we finish our scavenger hunt.”
“Are…are you going to stay with us, Nick?” Jean asked.
“I’m stuck, Jean. Deke saved my bacon. A life for a life, little one. If your Mom and me manage to find the right owner for your nest egg we might even make it back here soon.” Right after I kill a few people. “Get packing if you want aboard Nick’s Adventure Express. Otherwise, we call Grace and I deliver you three to them right now.”
“I want to stay with Nick.”
“This won’t go away,” Rachel said. “They have the Marshalls under surveillance. They know where we are and apparently the identities of the ones hunting us down may be
on those flash drives. Did I miss anything?”
Yeah, how the hell I managed to get myself into this.
“You forgot about my boss getting in the game and deciding a high value asset with very high blackmail potential takes second place to what’s on the flash drives. This goes beyond the network you compromised. Someone has managed to get into a position of power who knows what’s on the drives. Some players in this want you dead before anything surfaces, and others want the drives as leverage. My cavalier remarks about making people-adjustments according to what I found on the drives triggered somebody’s survival instinct – either my boss, or someone in on briefings he gives.”
“Gee, you have it all figured out.” Rachel grinned up at Nick to take the edge off her sarcastic tone.
“Not everything.” Nick smiled back, admiring the way she took the news. “I’d still like to know what made my boss think the guy downstairs could pull this off by himself.”
“You said except for Deke he would have got you,” Jean put in, reminding Nick they were debating this in front of a seven year old.
“Very true, smarty, but my boss assumed without divine intervention in the form of Deke the dog, I would have been handled. I surmise from that fact either I’ve dropped a few notches in the eyes of my superiors or they have less assets to send after us. I’m hoping for less assets, because two of them have already been retired.”
“Couldn’t they recruit others?”
“From where, ‘Psychos Are Us’? There are very few ‘no questions asked’ people working at my level. This conference is over, my dears. If you want aboard the Express, get packing.”
Nick left the room. He used the remaining time to gather weapons and gear he did not already have stashed in his hidden away Cadillac Escalade. After forty-five minutes Nick stored his own Heckler & Koch USP-Tactical with extra clips in the recessed compartment he’d built under the driver’s seat of his Malibu. He next set up his satellite phone and went in to help Rachel and Jean. Nick retrieved Morris’s Glock automatic with silencer from the top of his hutch. He took off his shirt and put on a black pullover sleeveless shirt with a sewn in weapon pocket. The Glock fit into the pocket. Nick put on a windbreaker jacket over it, then threw a blanket over Morris’s body.
“The Express leaves in five minutes,” Nick called out, jogging up the stairs.
Nick went into Rachel’s bedroom, where Rachel was hurriedly zipping up the two bags on her bed. Nick picked them up the moment she finished and headed to the car.
“Bring Jean and Deke. We have to go.”
Minutes later, Nick started the Chevy and drove around the block. He parked it.
“What’s going on?” Rachel asked with a bewildered look.
“I have to meet my guests, who will be arriving unannounced very quickly,” Nick told her, leaving the spare Chevy key in the ignition. “I’ll call your cell-phone when I want you to drive the Chevy around to the house again. From there, you’ll follow me in a vehicle yet to be determined.”
“What’s this about, Nick? Why don’t we just leave?”
“Mainly, this is about asset reduction. It’s also because I don’t want to be set up by having the other unmoving asset discovered inside my house. Plus…I don’t like being played.”
“You…you mean…the guys being sent over –”
“Yeah, sucks to be them.” Nick shut the driver’s side door with satellite phone in hand.
Nick jogged to his house, went inside and dragged Morris’s body into the entryway closet. He quickly retrieved his duct tape and another black plastic garbage bag. With a box cutter from his kitchen, Nick made a slit on each side of the bag, and put the bag over his head, carefully cutting two slits for his eyes. Nick put the bag and duct tape aside and then made sure Morris’s silenced weapon was operational with a full clip.
Nick’s satellite phone vibrated. “Find out anything useful?”
“No. Cleanup arrives in ten minutes. They don’t want any trouble, Nick, so wait upstairs. If they see anything move, they’ll spray everything in sight.”
“I’ll be upstairs in the back bedroom with the woman and her daughter. All they have to do is remove Morris’s body, wrapped in a black plastic bag, leaning against the wall to the right of the front door. They won’t even have to step inside the house.”
“Good, I’ll tell them. We’ll talk after they remove the body.”
Cold Blooded Page 7