When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (11 page)

Earl Walker Ford rarely worked on a weekend. The new case forced on him by that kiss-ass Qualls, though, it had to be the most interesting thing to cross his desk in two decades.

When he finally got around to opening the files Qualls sent home with him, he began reading through it like a spy novel.

When he finally got to the surveillance shots of the man they suspected to be Lars exiting Nikki Pagani’s estate, it was the girl with him making Ford’s heart race.

Ford’s wife, Denise, came to the door of his rarely used home office.

“Never seen you so intent on a work project,” she said.

Ford never hid anything from Denise. Mostly his openness boiled down to angry complaints about the tediousness of the job or the frustrating slowness of the bureaucratic system. But Denise also knew about the one case of unfinished business in Ford’s entire career.

“I think this is her,” he said.

“Think it’s who?”

“The daughter. Mitch Kenney’s daughter.” Ford held up the grainy image. It was inference, mostly, but Mitch Kenney’s daughter Shaine had never been seen again after Mitch was killed on his front lawn. Ford had proposed the theory that Lars had taken her, but there had never been any evidence to back him up. Until now.

Lars stood frozen mid-stride in black and white, eight-by-ten, with what looked like a teenage girl behind him. She didn’t appear to be a prostitute. She appeared the right age for Shaine.

“I do, I think it’s her.”

His phone rang, the special line on his desk reserved for company business. Ford answered. It was Qualls. He explained the plan.

“I’ve got a team headed to you to intercept our suspect. They’ll be there in fifteen, way before him.”

Ford slapped down the photos, furious. “You used me as bait?”

“Nikki sent him. All we’re doing is reacting. We’ve got him, Earl. We’ve really got him this time.”

Ford stared at the file, the blurry photo. The only blemish on his record, the only open file of his career could be closed. He set aside his anger at Qualls. “Is she with him?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s her, Qualls. It’s the Kenney girl.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“I’ll advise the team. He’ll get a shoot to kill, but she’ll get a free pass.”

“I want him alive,” Ford said eagerly.

“So do I. In case, I’m saying. Meanwhile, I’d get your wife and daughters out of there.”

“Yeah,” Ford said, trying to look into the eyes of the blurry photo. “Yeah, I will.”

He hung up and looked to his wife who watched him expectantly. “Well?”

“You need to go,” he said.

The drive to Massapequa would take an hour. They made good progress on the highway, but once they got onto surface streets things slowed down as Shaine tried to navigate and Lars tried to read the streets signs on the alarmingly generic streets. The whole neighborhood seemed like a photocopy of itself printed over and over, block after block.

Rented car, borrowed gun, last minute hit. It all made him feel very uneasy. He enjoyed a little planning. Without a bit of leg work behind it, pulling up to a street corner and shooting a man wasn’t much more than a crime of passion committed by a dispassionate third party.

“I don’t like this,” Lars said. “It’s too quick.”

“See?” Shaine said. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Okay, I didn’t say that. I don’t want to get into it again.”

“Go back and say you did it. Just lie to him, get out of town and what’s the damn difference?”

“The difference is I didn’t kill the guy.”

“By the time Nikki knows, we’ll be long gone.”

“And he said the guy knows me.”

“Yeah, but he knows you here, not in Hawaii.”

“They can find me if they really want to.”

“Then why haven’t they yet?”

Lars thought, frustrated that he had no response. “He’ll stop the payment.”

“We can move the money the second we land in Hawaii. Besides, by then he’ll be off in protection somewhere.”

“I don’t take money for a job not done and I don’t lie.” Lars was definitive. He had standards, still. No matter how long he’d been away from the game, or how much he wanted to be done with it altogether, the same standards applied or his entire career until that point would be washed away. Every job where a body had never been found would be questioned. Did he even really kill the guy? His legacy, decimated. What remained of it.

Lars knew the possibility Nikki was the only person left who even knew his name.

Lars hated feeling like he’d wandered into a goddamn French movie, all existential crisis and shit. He credited the looming half century mark for giving him an added perspective on life he didn’t possess in his twenties when he started killing for money.

Then there was the promised money – two million. He hadn’t earned it, but the lure of so many zeroes had done in stronger men than him. That much would leave him set for the rest of his life, and Shaine wouldn’t be too bad off even after he was gone.

“Look,” Shaine said. “I’m not gonna tell you what to do—”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

Shaine immediately took the tone that reminded Lars she was still a teenager. “Hey, I’m trying to help you out, okay? If you don’t want to hear what a piece of shit Nikki is, then fine.”

“Why do you have this bug up your ass about Nikki?”

“Gee, I don’t know, maybe because he paid to have my father killed. Maybe because he’s the reason we had to go on the run in the first place. The reason my dad lied to me for his entire life. The reason mom left. Is that enough for you?”

Shaine folded her arms and stared straight forward.

Lars sighed, let his shoulders sink. “Shit. I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget how we met. I’m a little mixed up right now, okay? I shouldn’t have said—”

Their car jerked forward, a harsh grinding of metal coming from behind them. Lars turned to see a black Mercedes bearing down on them again, ready to give a second hit to the trunk of the rental.

They were still in suburban Long Island, a long way from anyone who knew them. Lars had no idea who was behind the wheel of the sedan intent on ramming them.

“Hold on,” he said to Shaine a second before the car rocked again from another impact.

Lars stepped on the gas, the rows of cookie-cutter houses sped by faster.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

The Mercedes swung into the oncoming lane and accelerated until the front bumper of the car came even with Lars’s rear bumper. Lars swerved, seeing the tactic coming. The Mercedes angled to fishtail his car, but Lars had slipped out of range.

“Think you can shoot out his tires?” Lars asked.

“I have no idea,” Shaine said.

“Guess we’ll find out.”

Shaine drew her gun, went down her checklist. The Mercedes stayed on the driver’s side.

“How am I supposed to hit him from over here?”

“Climb in the backseat.” Lars swerved to dodge a slower car in their lane.

“I’d really rather not take of my seatbelt right now,” Shaine said. Lars knew she was right.

“Okay, gimmie.” He held out a hand for her gun. She slapped it into his palm like a nurse delivering a scalpel. Make sure he’s got all of it before you let go.

Lars powered down his automatic window and felt the bite of winter air on the left side of his body. He braked hard and brought the gun even with his left shoulder. Better to shoot across his body than try a left-handed shot. The Mercedes came into his peripheral view and he fired three quick shots. He didn’t actually expect any of them to land, but it made the Mercedes brake hard and fall behind.

The pace of the car following them told Lars he hadn’t hit any of the tires. He handed back the gun and powered the window up.

He urged the mid-sized rental forward, passing a sign for Levittown. No doubt about it, the Mercedes had a bigger engine. And apparently a bottomless budget for body repairs. The black sedan hit Lars’s back bumper again and pushed forward.

“Shit,” Lars said. “Hang on tight to that gun.” Shaine nodded as she white-knuckled the door handle. Lars knew he didn’t have much time for a refresher course, but he also knew whatever skills he had taught Shaine were about to come into good use. “Remember what I told you about body mass. Don’t try for a head shot or anything fancy. Find the biggest part of their body and aim for the middle.”

“Right,” she said. Lars heard no confidence in her answer.

“And watch your ammunition. Don’t start spraying the air. We might need everything we’ve got.”

His last two words were drowned out as the Mercedes forced the rental into a spin, pushing off as the car aimed toward a ditch so thick with a mulch of dead leaves Lars had no idea how deep it was.

The front end of the rental found out and banged up into the air. The already dented back bumper scraped the icy ground and Lars heard a tire pop. He tried his best to steer the car in for a softer landing, but the momentum of the car made the attempt futile. The front end came down and scraped a new scar into the dead grass as it grabbed the hunk of metal and brought it down from sixty miles and hour to zero in under fifty yards.

Lars felt his seatbelt strain to hold him in, bruises already building under the nylon strap across his chest. Like a good dad, he put out a hand to hold Shaine in her seat. An ineffective, useless hand. A hand he kept three inches away from her body in case he accidentally touched her breast.

The car came to a stop, debris sounds surrounding them still, and Lars gave a command, “Get out, now.”

He unclipped his belt and rolled from the car, slipping down into the ditch for a few feet before gaining his footing and making it around to Shaine’s side of the car. She was closing the door behind her as he made it, putting the car between them and the braking Mercedes on the shoulder. Lars already had his gun out.

“This ain’t a showdown. Get it out of the holster.” Shaine drew her gun from where she stashed it for the impact. “Stay here,” he said. “Hopefully you won’t need it, but remember, body mass. But only if you have to. And when all else fails—run.”

Lars heard the first door open on the Mercedes and he rolled. His spry, tightly muscled body tumbled easily over the hard ground. He came to a stop a few feet beyond the front bumper, paused, waited to get his bearings and sight his first target.

His shooting hand was unusually unstable. An adrenalin tremor, he attributed it to, but those were unusual for him. The cold perhaps? Or simply his age.

Four doors opened on the Mercedes and four men got out, the car still running and coughing white breath from the exhaust. Lars saw the slicked back crest of Bruno’s hair coming from the driver’s side. He was too far away and not Lars’s best target so he let him go, for now. At least he knew who was after them.

He put two shots in the man coming from the rear passenger seat. Both gut shots, not ideal. The man was on the move, as were the others, and the distance was far enough Lars still considered landing two a decent enough feat.

The man coming out of the passenger side door started firing at nothing but the fear of being shot. He wasn’t even looking at Lars, only heard the shots and saw his friend go down so he decided to lay down some suppressing fire. Scardey shots, Lars called them.

As he shot three, then four bullets, the man slipped on the frost covering a carpet of dead leaves and landed hard on his backside. Lars sighted him down, calmly exhaled and put one in his forehead. He still felt a slight tremor in his hand, but it started coming more under control now.

He’d lost sight of Bruno and the other man on the far side of the car. Lars watched the shadows under the car, saw movement and waited for the man from the back seat to clear the rear bumper. Lars knew he had to move forward, but if he did he’d be putting his back to his own car. A target suitable for framing.

Lars broke into a run. He went down the ditch and up the far bank putting his back on the Mercedes. All four doors were still open and he had to push the rear passenger door closed as he hunch-stepped over the body of the gut shot man and moved toward the back of the car. The man he sought popped out first, extending his neck above the trunk trying to get a good look down into the ditch.

Lars caught him once in the side of the chest and once in the neck. His head never had a chance to get around and find Lars closer than he thought possible. The man went down and the Mercedes got some paint detail in red on the rear panel as he bounced off.

Lars eased around to the trunk, slowly making his way to where he thought Bruno still hid by the driver’s door. Three down and he felt glad Shaine hadn’t been involved. Maybe he’d get her back to Hawaii without her being killed in the process.

Lars tried to take some deep breaths, but the clouds from the exhaust pipe clogged his lungs. He looked at the trunk of the car and saw in silver, the words Turbo Diesel. Breathing diesel fumes would not calm him down.

He nearly started coughing. He hunched down and put a firm hand over his mouth, not wanting the noise to give away his position. With his back to the bumper of the car, he waited a moment for the feeling to pass. He waited too long.

Slowly, but with the firm backing of a one ton vehicle, the car slid backward. There was no engine rev, no ricochet off the body panel, only a slow roll in reverse and Lars went down to his knees, then flat on his stomach as the car rolled over him. He kept his body straight, no arms or legs to get taken under the tires. After about five feet the car jerked to a stop again and Lars saw the shocks lighten as someone got out. Bruno. He must have put the car in reverse, let it idle, and then put it back in park.

Lars started scrambling, moving with his shoulders to shimmy his body out from under the car. When his head cleared the shadow of the back bumper, Bruno was there standing over him, a gun aimed at his face.

“We meet again.”

First he made Lars toss out his gun. Then he stood back and watched as Lars crawled the rest of the way out from under the car. He stood Lars up against the trunk.

“You went to her grave,” Bruno said.

Lars tried to read his eyes, see what he wanted in response. They were dead black. “Yeah. So?”

“You walked out. You don’t get to pay your respects. You got no respect for her.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know plenty about you.” Bruno spread his feet, settled his stance like he planned on being there a while. “But I want to know two more things, motherfucker,” Bruno said. “Did Nikki Pagani set you up for this job?”

“That’s only one thing,” Lars said. Anyone with hair like Bruno didn’t deserve a straight answer. The man looked like an extra in a dinner theater production of
GoodFellas
.

“Don’t make me ask twice.” Bruno raised the gun, aiming between Lars’s eyes. Even this dipshit couldn’t miss at this range. “Let me tell you how this is gonna go. I’m gonna ask you some questions, then you’re gonna get into this trunk and I’m gonna shoot you. That way I don’t have to lift your sorry ass once you’re dead.”

“I can tell you don’t do this a lot,” Lars said. “In the future, people tend to not want to do you any favors once you say you’re going to kill them anyhow.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to kill you out here and lift you anyway.”

“I hope you aggravate your bursitis.”

Bruno punched forward with the gun, hitting Lars on the nose and sending a rippling wave of pain through his skull. “Answer the fucking question.”

Best case scenario for Lars. He wanted to talk it out. Lars never spoke to a target. Every syllable you utter is another opportunity for something to go wrong. Lars wanted to keep this guy talking. “I had my own reasons.”