Authors: Bryan Smith
Jade sneered at the crying woman. “Time to die, Kate.”
She shot Kate.
She glanced at Keely. “And now your turn.”
Jade aimed the gun at Keely.
But the sound of shots ringing out somewhere else inside the house made her hesitate. Keely shifted her hips and swept her legs at Jade’s ankles. The move was well-timed, but Keely also benefited from her adversary’s temporary distraction. Jade lost her grip on the gun and it flew into the air as her legs went out from under her.
Knowing she wouldn’t get more than the one chance, Keely acted fast, rolling over and getting to her hands and knees as she scanned the floor for the gun. She spotted it an instant before Jade did. It was by the body of the plump woman in a puddle of her blood and brains.
Both women scrambled toward the gun.
Keely got to it first.
Her right hand closed around the handle in the same moment someone kicked the door open.
The first floor of the ranch house was utterly deserted as John came inside through the back door. The emptiness did not strike him as haunting, despite how different it was from the bustle of activity that had formerly characterized the place. This house had never been anything more than a kind of way station, a temporary spiritual oasis his inner circle inhabited on their way to somewhere even better.
The lights were off in most of the bottom floor rooms, save for a lamp here and there. John opted to leave them that way as he made his way toward the foyer. The darkness enhanced the impression of the house as a transitional place that had served its purpose and was now being left behind.
He had reached the bottom of the spiral staircase when he heard voices outside on the porch. He stood with a foot planted on the first step up and listened a moment. The voices were female. Detecting this was easy because they were not attempting to be quiet. John glanced up the staircase and wondered whether he should head on up there anyway or go to the door to see if he could learn more about the intruders. Whoever they were, they had gotten past the remaining guards at the gate, which could only mean their intent was hostile. Whether they were police—unlikely—or vigilantes out to avenge some portion of the night’s events was immaterial.
The remnants of his inner circle were waiting for him.
It was time to join their brothers and sisters in the afterlife.
He took another step up the staircase.
And that was when multiple shots from a large-caliber weapon blew the lock off the front door. John tugged his gun out of his waistband as someone—he glimpsed the silhouette of a woman with the legs of a goddess—kicked the ruined door open and stood framed in dim moonlight.
John fired several rounds from his gun.
The woman staggered backward and fell off the porch. There was a scream of rage coupled with anguish and in a moment someone else out there returned fire. John also experienced rage. He would not be shot down before he could reach the last of his faithful and depart this rotten world in their company.
He fired another shot at the door and took off up the stairs as fast as he could go.
John Wayne de Rais came into his quarters with a look of panic on his florid face. This shifted to an expression of surprised anguish as he took in the carnage.
He shook his head at the two still-living women on the floor. “Why?”
Keely almost said something about how Jade had lost her mind and started shooting everyone in the room, but she was distracted by the sound of footsteps outside in the hallway. Jade made a grab for the gun in Keely’s hand in the same moment, but she did it from an awkward position and her hand slid over the barrel without grasping it.
Keely rolled away from her, sat upright and aimed the gun at her.
Jade’s eyes went wide. “No.”
Keely sneered. “How’s it feel to be afraid?”
John pointed his gun at Keely. “Don’t you—”
There was a boom from the hallway and John’s body lurched as a bloom of exit wound red appeared at the center of his chest. Two more bullets made a wreck of the deluded old scam artist’s head. His now-lifeless body did a crash-landing atop the corpse of the guard.
Keely stared past the bodies at Jade. Even at this late and apparently hopeless stage of the game, the woman had a look of cold calculation in her eyes. She was still as deadly as she had ever been and now John’s gun was in grabbing range.
She made a dive for it.
Keely put a bullet through the top of her head and let out a breath so big she felt like she had been holding it for years. Her head snapped up as someone else came through the door. She frowned. “Echo? What are you doing here?”
Echo’s face was wet with tears as she kicked at John’s body. “
Son of a bitch!
” She pointed her gun at the dead man’s back and squeezed the trigger until it was empty. “
Son of a bitch!
”
She let go of the gun and dropped to her knees, sobbing into her hands.
Keely opted to hold on to the gun when she heard more voices out in the hallway. She still had no sense of what was happening here, beyond the happy facts of the deaths of the big bad wolf and the fucking wicked witch. Echo’s arrival on the scene was a thing she could never have predicted, incongruous enough that it bordered on surreal. She couldn’t even begin to guess how it had come about. Then more people were streaming into the room, scary-looking guys who looked like soldiers. They had lots of big guns and exuded enough testosterone to make the makers of Viagra weep.
And then came Casey.
Looking like some kind of fucking commando.
Keely laughed. “Casey,” she said, wiping away tears. “You look ridiculous.”
He sighed. “Yeah. I know. Are you okay?”
“I want out of here.”
A bald-headed older man also dressed like a commando came into the room, winking at her as he lit up a cigar. “Don’t you worry about a thing, darlin’. We’ll all be out of here in less than five minutes. Wouldn’t do to still be around when the law shows up.”
Casey set his rifle aside and dropped to his knees next to Echo. “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”
Echo sniffled and looked at him through bleary, red-rimmed eyes. “Dez is dead. That son of a bitch de Rais killed Dez.”
She pressed her face against Casey’s shoulder and resumed sobbing.
Keely felt genuinely bad for her. She had always liked Echo and had been sorry to see her disappear from Casey’s life. But her empathy for her old friend’s loss couldn’t dampen her own happiness. She was going to get her second chance after all.
And I’m damn well gonna make the best of it.
She smiled and finally let go of the gun.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Synchronicity
The memory of it kept coming back at random moments. The three of them on the porch. Lana shooting the lock off the door with her commandeered rifle and Dez kicking the door in seconds later. Then Dez’s head snapping backward as a bullet punched through her cheek. The end of everything the three of them had been together right there in that moment, over and done too fast to fully comprehend until later.
It had only been a day since the assault on the de Rais compound and the reality of her friend’s death was still hard to grasp. She missed the crazy bitch more than she ever could have imagined. The only thing distracting her from her grief was the weirdness going on with Casey. Something was bothering him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. All Echo had been able to surmise was it had something to do with Cora Wilkinson. Ted’s sister kept dragging her boyfriend off for private talks. Casey returned from each of them looking more troubled than before. According to Cora, she had a business venture she hoped to involve Casey in, but Echo knew that was bullshit.
For one thing, what kind of business venture requiring that much private discussion could have arisen in the brief time the two had known each other? Especially given everything else that had been going on? As cover stories went, it was one of the most cynical Echo had ever heard. Casey had no business background or acumen whatsoever. He was a mechanic. A good one, yes, but bending a wrench was really all he knew.
Echo mulled all this over as she paced the floor in room 2035 at the Renaissance Hotel late that afternoon. Cora had shown up again only moments ago to whisk Casey away to yet another “meeting”, this in room 2040, one of the other suites Big Ted kept on permanent reserve at the hotel. This time it was eating at her more than ever.
If Dez had taught her anything of any real value, it was to never let anyone take you for a chump.
Fuck this.
She grabbed her handbag off the table and started toward the door. Lana, lying on the bed nearest the window, looked up from the iPad Ted had given her. “Where are you off to?”
“I’m taking care of business.”
Echo walked out of the room and stalked down the hallway to room 2040.
Once they were inside room 2040, Cora ordered Casey to remove his clothes. By now he knew better than to resist. The only thing keeping Echo alive was his compliance with Cora’s wishes. The bitch had armed thugs awaiting her orders in room 2036. One word from her and they would pay Echo and Lana a visit.
Casey still hoped to find a way out of this crazy predicament. There had to be something he could do to neutralize the woman’s intense interest in him.
But time was running out. They were scheduled to catch a flight to Tampa early in the morning. If no exit strategy presented itself before then, he might have no choice but to accompany her to Florida and hope he could figure something out once he got there. The drawback to that was the likelihood of losing track of Echo’s whereabouts for another longish period of time. He doubted she would stick around the area for long once he was gone. That would be regrettable, but it would be better than rebelling now and condemning her to death.
He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. Cora licked her lips and eyed his buff physique with a lustful expression. He unbuckled his belt and began tugging it free of the belt loops. He considered wrapping the belt around Cora’s throat. Though killing her would solve the immediate dilemma, a host of other complications would immediately ensue, starting with what to do about Big Ted and the assassins-on-retainer in room 2036. There were just too many obstacles to overcome to make it a viable way to go, at least at this juncture.
On the other hand, it was possible having the guts to act now and take his chances might be the only way he could be with Echo again for the long haul, which was something he wanted very much. Now that he no longer had to worry about Keely, a lot of things had become clearer than ever to him. If he wanted something difficult bad enough, decisive action was necessary to make it happen.
Cora removed her own top and approached him. She smiled in a naughty—and smugly superior—way and cupped the crotch of his jeans with a soft hand. His cock responded instantly to her touch. This was something he couldn’t help. The thing had a mind of its own. And, despite his hatred of her, Cora
was
very attractive.
She pressed her breasts against his bare chest and made a hungry sound low in her throat. “Your bitch will be dead by the time I’m done making you come.”
Casey frowned. “What?” His hand tightened around the buckle end of the belt. Her words repeated in his head, the meaning penetrating more emphatically this time. There would be no reprieve for Echo. The assassins weren’t just a contingency plan. “You bitch.”
Cora laughed and tugged at his zipper tab. “You’ll get over it.”
Casey began to raise the belt.
Gunshots boomed in the hallway. Bullets blasted the door open. Cora screamed and reeled away from him as Echo stalked into the room with a raised Glock and an expression so furious she looked like rage incarnate. Casey recognized at once there was no chance of soothing that fury fast enough to avert catastrophe.
But that didn’t stop him from trying.
He raised his hands and showed Echo his most beseeching expression. “This isn’t what it looks—”
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, fuck you.
This variation on the old saying was something her dad used to say a lot when she was little. It had stuck with her all these years and today it seemed more apt than ever.
She fired twice at Casey.
The first bullet clipped the side of his neck, making his body jerk backward. The next bullet went between his eyes and ended his life. Cora had her back against the room’s big window, her slender form outlined against the city skyline. Echo shot her once between the boobs. There was a bright splatter of blood on the window when she slid lifelessly to the floor.
Voices out in the hallway.
Big Ted’s booming baritone.
Other male voices Echo didn’t recognize.
She stepped back out of the room and saw Ted to her right—his cowboy hat perched cockeyed atop his head—and armed men to the left. She dealt with the armed men first, putting each down with a single bullet. She had no idea who they were or where they had come from, but instinct told her they were connected in some way to Cora and Big Ted.