Hot-Blooded (4 page)

“What’d he do?” Blake glanced at the dead guy.

Scott leaned back and switched on his expensive, didn’t-work-for-shit air filter. He waved a girly hand through the haze. “Tried to sell me out to the DEA, the fucker.”

Priests were supposed to be the ultimate secret keepers, but tattling on a drug dealer like Scott for doing what he did best wasn’t necessarily grounds for neck-pretzeling by a hitman. “That’s it?” Blake frowned. “I’m gonna have to up my fee.”

Shrugging, Scott added, “He might have molested a couple little boys in confessional too.”

Blake took another long drag and released the miniscule tinge of regret that had caught in his throat with a heavy exhale. Good. Perverts like that deserved what they got.

“When are you gonna quit?” Scott gestured to the cigar and fake-coughed.

Blake stepped around the dead guy whose slumped body was making some hissing and creaky noises as it settled into its new role as a freshly decomposing life form. He took the seat next to the corpse, kicked off his flip-flops, and heaved his bare, tanned feet onto Scott’s desk.

“When are you gonna get therapy?” Blake said.

Scott grunted and rose from his seat. He wandered to the window, tucked his girly hands behind his back, squared his shoulders, and stared across the ocean. The top-floor view was breathtaking. Blake would miss it when he left for Vegas in a few days.

“I need a favor.” Scott’s cool voice echoed off the floor-to-ceiling glass.

“Hit me.” The cherry on the cigarillo glowed with another puff, and smoke burned his eyes. As Scott’s “assistant,” Blake was contractually obliged to do whatever his boss asked. As his long-time friend and confidant, he’d do it without question. Especially since he was about to bail on work to go on vacation and marry the grift he’d been banging the last few weeks. What the hell was her name? Candy? Yeah, like Brandy, but sweeter and with less bite. He didn’t even know her last name. Didn’t matter. It would be Murphy by the weekend.

“I got word there’s a new kid on the block on Maui.” Scott faced him, his expression neutral. Hidden drama soldiers battled beneath the surface, vying for a shot at breaking through the veneer of poorly constructed containment walls. “I’m thinking either a hostile takeover or a permanent shutdown is in order, depending on how cooperative they are. I’ll let you decide once you get a sense of who and what we’re dealing with.”

Blake stabbed out his cigar on the top of the Coke can on Scott’s desk and got to his feet. “I’ll handle it next week.”

Scott met his eyes with unyielding demand. “You’ll do it now.”

This alpha-dog game they played usually ended badly for Scott, but a twinge of guilt stopped Blake from tossing out a witty verbal smackdown. The one-year anniversary of Lori’s death was coming up, and the stress of life without her had clearly eroded Scott’s motivation. Again. Lethargy had set in. Blake had to cover Scott’s careless mistakes—forgetting important appointments, leaving home without protection, wandering around the beach alone. In this business, those kinds of foibles could get a guy like Scott killed.

“I got a trip planned for this weekend.”

“With your
girlfriend
?” Scott sneered. “Come on, Blake, the women you fuck aren’t even a dime a dozen. They’re buy one, get twelve free. Why do you bother giving them your number? The second you leave a girl’s house, you’re bombarded by the waiting line in the driveway.”

Blake held his tongue.
Scott can’t move on,
he reminded himself.
He acts like a jealous bitch because he forgot how to be a man a year ago and hasn’t refueled his balls enough to kick-start the bike yet.

“Candy’s loaded,” he said instead. “With cash, awesome drugs, and the best tits money can buy. Exactly the qualities a guy like me looks for in a future ex-wife. You’re not the only one around here who enjoys living in luxury. Float me a break, brah.”

Scott’s eyes snapped to his. “Candy’s a whore. And you’re
my
whore. Ditch her.”

Blake bristled. He straightened and shook out his arms, then leveled his friend with a cut-the-shit scowl. “Just because you pay me doesn’t mean you own me.” Scott knew as well as he that they kind of owned each other. Scott might have been the brains behind their operation, but he’d be nothing without Blake’s muscle and charm. Their arrangement was mutually beneficial, and at times like these when Scott’s pussy meter got stuck in the red zone, he needed Blake more than the other way around.

Scott pursed his lips and glanced at his feet. “Okay, then, I’m demoting you. You can’t take care of business for me, then I can’t take care of you.”

He was trying to get a rise out of Blake. “Demoting me to what, asshole? I thought ‘assistant’ was as low as I could go. You banishing me to the mailroom? Janitor’s closet? I could teach
lei
making to the
keiki
in the little hut by the hotel pool. I’m told I have good hands for that shit.” He held them up and wiggled his battered, scarred fingers. “And look, no fucking nail polish.”

That earned a crack of a smile from Scott, and the tension between them eased by a hair. “I was thinking of sending you to man the babysitting room. That ought to be a strong enough punishment. Might keep the little shits from destroying hotel property and raising hell in the public areas.”

Blake almost laughed, but then an image of Jonathan lying on the pavement, blood oozing from the bullet hole, surprise-attacked his fun. He shook his head. He and Scott were a pair of pussies for the same reasons. Thank God no one else knew why.

“What difference does it make if I hit Maui now or next week? Give a hustler a break. You got time-sensitive shit to deal with? Who are these pricks, anyway?”

The humor left Scott’s face, and a barren expression swept any glimmers of mirth aside. “I have no idea who they are, but they’re encroaching on my business. My biggest distributor in Honolulu tried to cut me loose. Said he had a line on a cheaper, new strain of high-powered weed out of Maui and wasn’t sure he’d require my services anymore.”

“Why don’t you let me have that job instead? It’s closer to home. I can take care of it tomorrow, and I’ll have plenty of time to make my wedding,” he half-joked.

“Oh, I convinced him to stay on with us. Then he turned up dead this morning.”

Huh. Well, that was a problem. “Who did it?”

Scott shrugged. “You tell me.”

“Give me whatever info you got. I’ll track down the killer, make him talk, and then do my thing.” He tipped his head toward the vacant-eyed, not-so-holy man.

“Cooper’s on it. I need you on Maui at the heart of the operation. If they don’t want to deal, find out where they’re growing, and I’ll take it from there. I don’t like my guys making unexpected cameos at the coroner’s office.”

Neither did Blake. Especially since his costarring role with Scott might make him a target too.

But the lure of a new life away from all this shit screamed, “Do not pass Go.” Candy was ditzy and useless aside from what she provided in the sex department (even that was mediocre), but she had
money
. From her family.
Legitimate
cash that wouldn’t land him back in jail if anyone started sniffing around his tax returns. Marrying her might be his only chance to get out from under the blight of the choices he’d made and the treacherous path those choices had trampled. At least until she divorced him.

He could probably get alimony out of her.

He considered Scott for a long moment. Blake might have been a lowlife criminal, but he lived by a code of honor when it came to people who mattered. Scott was like the family he never had.

With a meth head mom doing time since he was a kid and no dad or grandparents to take up the slack, Blake could have ended up a lot worse than a personal “assass-tant” to a rich drug lord. Scott could have left him sitting in jail for cocaine possession right out of high school, but he took a chance on a friend, and it paid off for both of them.

Mostly.

Though Blake had to do ugly things to keep himself afloat the longer he stuck with his buddy, those things rarely bothered him. The hits were on people who deserved them, and he was well rewarded for his efforts. Never wanting for weed or pussy, Blake had it pretty fucking good.

But the promise of incarceration lingered everywhere he went like a smelly fart clinging to clothing long after the fan turned off and the bathroom door closed. He hated always looking over his shoulder for both himself and Scott. Fucking
hated
it. He was almost thirty years old and hadn’t had a single worry-free day since he got into this biz over a decade ago. Scott’s increasing paranoia mirrored his own.

The deeper you dig, the harder it is to crawl out.

He swaggered over to the window. Blue waves slid onto the beach, lazily licking the sand. Those fuckers had it good. Roll in. Make a bunch of shit wet. Roll out.

He faced his friend. Concern darkened the creases in Scott’s forehead and the tiny lines around his eyes. On the phone—the only way Scott did business—he came off cool as the ocean outside, but Blake knew better. T-minus three weeks to the anniversary of Lori’s death meant Scott was heading for another breakdown. All the evidence supported Blake’s theory.

“I gotta check on some things. I’ll let you know tonight.” He smacked a fresh pack of Swisher Sweets on the heel of his palm, tore off the plastic wrapper, and opened the box. He thumbed another cigarillo between his lips and strode to the door, lighting it along the way. He paused and glanced over to the corpse. “And you might wanna call your cleaner. You seem to have a dead pervert carcass in your office.”

“You can get fined for breaking the smoking ordinance,” came Scott’s smart-ass words behind him.

Blake cranked up his middle finger and blew an extra long stream over his shoulder. “I’ll send the bill to your new assistant, dickhead.”

* * * *

Sunsets in Hawaii were legendary, and tonight’s was no exception. Blake stood before the grave and tossed a small bouquet of white flowers in front of the headstone. They landed just below the words:

Jonathan Williams

2002 – 2007

Five years together, in our hearts forever

Blake didn’t cry. Ever. Tears weren’t the products of monsters. They belonged to normal people. He wasn’t capable of mustering that much emotion for anyone, but when he visited Jonathan, he thought about it.

He slid two fingers across the cold marble, and vivid images sprung to life as they had earlier today in Scott’s office. A little boy sprawled on the pavement. A creeping red puddle. No screams, just wide, pleading eyes, begging for mercy.

To Blake, blood was nothing more than a colorful body accessory. It had no bearing on his state of mind at any given time, though it definitely seemed out of place where a child was concerned. No, what spiked his heart rate wasn’t the sight of the kid’s blood. It was those two voluminous brown orbs drenched in fear. Bone-chilling. Desperate. Wild amidst the slow-motion calm of a small, paralyzed body.

Innocence forced to grow up too soon was a real bitch.

Every breath you took put you one breath closer to death and one heartbeat farther away from life. Every second—whether wasted or fulfilled—nudged you toward the edge overlooking the greatest fall of all.

No one was safe. Not even little kids like Jonathan.

Blake rounded the headstone, sat down, and pressed his back to the rock. Legs bent, he lit a cigar and took in tonight’s organic laser show, handcrafted by Mother Nature herself: the death of the sun at the hands of the moon. Not so different from watching a kid die from bullet-wound body art, really.

Vivid. Forceful. Inevitable.

He flicked a clump of ash from the end of his cigar and waited out the rest of the drama. It ended as it always did. The sun expired and left behind a wash of color to mourn it. Night slithered in and commandeered the sky with choking finality. And Blake was alone.

He and Scott were more alike than either of them realized.

Blake got to his feet, stretched, and headed to his Jeep. Once inside, he dialed Candy. “Hey, babe, I can’t make Vegas after all. I’m real sorry, but something came up.”

“You mean, like, work or something?” She drew out the last word longer than the others. You could take the girl out of the Valley, but not the Valley out of the girl.

“Yeah.” He rubbed his forehead. “Like that.”

“So, do you wanna fuck tonight, or what?” Snaps of bubblegum popped in his ear.

“Nah, I gotta pack.” So not in the mood to be subjected to her inane bullshit about fucking designer purses and shoes.

Women. He really knew how to pick ’em. Scott had been right. Another reason he should blow this town.

“Okay, well, bye.”

He shook his head and ended the call. What a ditz.

He cranked up the engine and drove home. Work was back on. The marriage was off. Thank God he never bothered to propose to his already forgotten bride-to-be in the first place.

Chapter Four

Maui

Friday, September 26