When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (19 page)

Shaine pounded the concrete as she stalked the rows of visitor parking, her hand compulsively pressing the remote unlock on the car key. Her throat began to hurt from the cold air she sucked into her lungs in deep gasps.

She moved to the second floor, listening for the high-pitched chirp of the Mercedes.

She felt she could really do it, really kill Nikki. She hoped the long drive wouldn’t sap her desire to be rid of the nagging pull in her gut.

Even in the last few days when she pulled the trigger and ended another human’s life, it wasn’t the same. If someone was coming for you, you’d defend yourself. Now she found herself coming for someone else.

Like a faraway bird, she heard the car chirp. She moved quickly down the row, fearful Lars might tell Ford and he’d come looking for her. She reached the car, slid into the driver’s seat and reached down to the floor to hunt for Lars’s dropped gun.

Her hand came back bloody from the floor mats. The black interior hid the blood stains, but Lars had gotten almost everything on the right hand side of the car soaked. She didn’t feel a gun.

Shaine slid down from the seat and reached under, her cheek resting on the center console as she blindly patted the floor mats for her treasure. Her hand touched something cold, metal. She put her hand over it. A gun, the grip already feeling familiar to her. She straightened up, dropped the gun on her lap and started the car. She wiped the blood onto her jeans and drove for the exit.

Lars listened to the heart monitor announce his growing panic to the room. The beeps grew closer together as he began to imagine Shaine on her way to commit murder. And that’s what it was. The cold-blooded kind.

Never in his career had he been so sure of the difference. He’d committed murder, for sure. Many times. But all his bullshit about who deserved what, he could try to rationalize it because in his world everything was a shade of black. For Shaine, her record was like a soldier. She had killed in self defense or in defense of him.

Now she was on her way to kill out of anger, driving a road from which there was no return. A highway to hell.

And Nikki, the closest he had to a father figure. Things had been a little strained lately, but didn’t that make it even more like family?

Ford reentered the room, a tall paper cup of hot coffee in his hand.

“Where’s Shaine?” he asked.

“Had to step out.”

Ford sipped his coffee. “Y’know, I wasn’t so sure you were gonna make it last night.”

“Yeah, me either.” Lars searched for a way to stop Shaine without telling Ford what he knew she had planned.

“You know my wife says I should turn you in.”

“Smart woman.”

“I told her this would make a great chapter in my memoir. Not that I’m writing one.”

“Hey, Ford,” Lars said. “Come here. Can you adjust this pillow for me?” Off Ford’s look he said, “I know, me and all my favors.”

Ford smiled and set down his coffee on the nightstand next to a plastic pitcher of water. Lars leaned forward slightly and Ford reached behind him to move his pillows up higher.

Lars arrowed out with his hand, the IV line almost snagging on Ford’s open jacket. Lars lifted the gun from Ford’s holster. Ford leaned back slowly, hands up.

“I’m really sorry,” Lars said. He started removing the monitor devices from his body.

“Are you gonna explain, or am I supposed to just shut up and do what you say?”

“You gotta believe me, it’s for her.”

“I can help, y’know.”

“I need to stop her making a big mistake.” Lars realized his desire to stop her had nothing to do with Nikki being killed or not. He didn’t want Shaine to make a mistake she couldn’t undo. He’d groomed a girl who could defend herself, not a revenge killer.

“You need my gun for that?” Ford said calmly.

“I need your car.”

“You’re gonna drive?”

“I’ll damn well try.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on and I’ll drive you.”

“You’ve already done too much. This is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

“Seems like you’re doing more telling than asking.”

“Afraid so.” Lars swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had little confidence they would hold him up if he tried to stand. He had to give it a shot. “Back up,” he told Ford. Lars knew he was easy pickings if Ford wanted to take him down. The only thing to his advantage was with all the craziness and unpredictable behavior, chances were high Ford thought he was unstable and dangerous.

“I need you to get me outside,” Lars said.

“And if I say no?”

“I’m going anyway. Time is kind of critical here. We need to move.”

“Goddammit, Lars.” Ford said. Three months away from retirement. Keeping his head down, not bothering anyone. That’s what he was supposed to be doing still. Now he had his chance to be a hero, to take down a notorious killer. He might catch a bullet in the process, but that would only add to the legend of a short-timer who got in one last big bust.

And then there was the girl. Ford couldn’t be sure if Lars wasn’t just using her as an excuse, but if he was telling the truth . . . letting harm come to the girl after all this time would be worse than any glory in his career could balance out.

“You’d think after thirty-five years, I’d learn to listen to my wife.”

“I told you, she sounds like a smart woman,” Lars said.

“What do we do?”

“Just get me downstairs. Anyone asks, you’re taking me out on your authority.” Lars slid off the bed and set his feet on the tile floor. His knees bent and he thought he might keep going all the way down, but he stood straight, grateful he didn’t get shot in the legs. His right arm hung in a sling, his hospital gown made no decent kind of outerwear and his feet were bare. But he had to work with what he had.

“Let’s go.” Ford stepped out of the room first.

The farther north Shaine drove, the more grey the sky turned. A thick smear of clouds spread overhead gave the world a look of being sealed in concrete, ready to be thrown off a bridge.

The names of the towns were all unfamiliar, the landscape generic and dull. Nothing stood out, nothing guided her way. She had the GPS on, but the tiny map only showed where she was, not where she wanted to go.

She saw a gas station and decided to ask for directions. She parked, thought about how absurd it was to ask for directions to go kill someone.

She went to hide the gun in the glove compartment, but something about it in her hand felt comforting, made her braver. She needed all she could get. She pushed the gun into the waist of her jeans tucked neatly in the small of her back. When she started walking she felt certain everyone around could tell she’d hidden a gun there. She moved awkwardly, like she wore a back brace or two left footed shoes. She scanned the small parking lot. Only three other people, none of them looking her way.

She pushed into the small minimart, the door made an electronic ding. Three short rows of driver’s staples like beef jerky and mini bags of chips alongside motor oil and antifreeze. The counter sat wedged in between display racks that had seen better days. The young guy working there looked like he was being squeezed out in favor of a rack of scratch-off lottery tickets, chewing tobacco, cheap, thin-looking gloves and brightly colored BIC lighters.

“Help you?” he asked, though he didn’t seem like he wanted to offer any help.

“I’m trying to get to White Plains,” Shaine said.

“Keep going the way you’re going. You know what exit?”

“Not by name. I’ll know when I see it.”

“Well, you’re almost there. About seven miles down is the first exit.”

“Okay, thanks.” Shaine realized she hadn’t eaten. Nothing in the aisles appealed to her, but her stomach made a gurgling sound telling her something was better than nothing. She browsed the selection of unnaturally colored chips and pre-packaged baked goods with expiration dates well into next year.

The electronic door dinged again.

A man in his twenties came in, moving fast in that New York way. He rubbed his hands together against the cold. Shaine veered away from him and moved on to the selection of vacuum-wrapped muffins and fruit pies.

“Twenty on number two and a pack of Marlboro Lights,” the man said. The attendant rang him up without a word.

Shaine found a blueberry muffin and bent over for it. It looked like it was made of papier mâché, but it beat starving. She looked over her head to a large convex mirror, the kind to let the attendant know if anyone was shoplifting without ever leaving his precious seat. But it worked both ways and Shaine saw the two men speaking in a whisper and the customer pointed toward her.

Shaine spun. The two men acted caught. They stiffened.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the attendant said.

Shaine knew. She’d turned her back to them. The gun was as obvious as she thought when she bent forward and her coat lifted in the back. Leave it a couple of guys to be looking at her ass in the first place. 

“Me either,” she said. She took a small step toward them. The customer cringed and shrank away to the edge of the counter. “No,” she said. “I’m only here for directions.”

The attendant nearly hyperventilated. She could see pages of the training manual flash over his eyes.

“I swear,” she said.

His hands came up from behind the counter, a long silver barrel pointing at her. It was the shiniest gun she’d ever seen, like he’d just unwrapped it on Christmas morning. She could turn and run, but there were two rows of snacks and a rack of ice scrapers between her and the door. The way he held the gun reminded her of her first time.

“I’ll use it!” he said. His nervous fingers said otherwise.

Shaine had her gun in hand faster than even she knew she could. She started backing away down the aisle past the motor oil. “I’m not here to rob you. All I needed were directions, I swear to—”

The customer broke and ran. The flash of movement overwhelmed the attendant and he swung his arms right and fired. The customer caught a bullet in his shoulder and flailed his arms out in front of him, tackling the rack of ice scrapers as he went down.

Shaine did not shoot back. The look of terror on the attendant’s face told her he didn’t have another shot in him. Not today.

The customer wailed on the ground, the harmless shoulder shot was surely painful, but not life threatening. Shaine backed out the door, not feeling a shred of guilt for these two jackasses. The junior Barney Fife and his Goober would make the evening news, be lauded for thwarting a robbery attempt and surely neglect to mention that the big, bad assailant happened to be a girl.

She didn’t even feel bad not paying for the muffin.

Lars had no idea how long it would take Ford to phone in the brief abduction and the stolen car, or if he would at all. It was almost too much to ask for Ford to do Lars another favor. An APB would be out for the car and the highway patrol would be all over his ass, he felt sure. The risk was worth a shot, anyway.

Lars turned the heater on HIGH. The flimsy hospital gown and lack of shoes left him shivering by the time he reached Ford’s black SUV. Lars promised to return the vehicle unharmed, and the gun unfired – if he could help it.

“You have any idea how much shit I’ll be in if you kill someone with my gun?”

“You’re right. I know.” Lars thought about it, his ass in the seat and the motor running, Ford standing in the parking garage helplessly. He held out the gun to Ford. “Know what? Keep it,” Lars said. What did he plan to do, shoot Shaine? He didn’t need a gun.

Ford took his government-issued pistol and looked at it like it fell from the sky. Lars partly expected him to turn it on him and stop Lars from going, but he didn’t.

“What about the car?” Ford said.

“I’ll bring it to you. I know where you live.”

“When you say it like that it sounds like a threat.”

“Didn’t mean it to be. I gotta go.”

“For her?” Ford confirmed, still a little dubious in his question.

“For her.”

It wasn’t about saving Nikki’s life. Lars realized all the things he hadn’t told her. For all the time he spent putting a gun into Shaine’s hand and pointing down the beach to a coconut or a soda can, he hadn’t taught her a damn thing about what it meant to kill.

She’d been asking, fishing for answers about what it meant for Lars to kill Leo and then Bruno. What it meant to kill any of the hits during his career. What he didn’t say, what she needed to hear, is that none of them made him feel any better. Not Leo, not anyone. The money felt good, pasted over any feelings of remorse. His cold heart, deadened by an unloving father and a screeching, abusive home growing up, felt nothing. And it never felt more after someone who deserved to die met his end by Lars’s hand. Each death he caused made another tiny hole in the world, and you can’t fill a hole with another hole.

Even the nagging doubt of Lenore’s killer, lingering behind a curtain for nearly two decades, none of it went away after Leo’s head exploded under a pillow. The painful memories only receded deeper into shadow. It got so Lars felt his insides were more shadow than light. The only thing to truly make him feel better about things would be to stand on the beach outside of their shack on the island and watch her surf. To see the object of his salvation, the one he saved. The one to undo all the others.

He didn’t want Shaine to have to spend her life searching for her own salvation.

He thought how she’d been hinting that Nikki had to go. How callous he’d been to bring her into the home of the man who banished her father, then hunted him, then had him killed. Lars forgot after all the years of his finger on the trigger, that someone else, in the end, did the pulling.

Why the hell hadn’t his father taught him his trade? Why the hell couldn’t he have brought young Lars with him as he fixed pipes, installed sinks, did all the everyday heroic tasks of a plumber in Queens? Why did he let Lars drift away and fall into a line of work no one could have predicted he’d be so good at?

Too late for that now. Not too late for Shaine. Lars accelerated. Highway patrol be damned.

***

Ford called his wife.

“Denise, is Tisha home yet?” he asked.

“No, not yet. Something go wrong with dropping off the car?”

“No, no. I just need her to come back and pick me up.”

“From where?”

“I’m still at the hospital.”

“And where’s your car?”

“Can you have her pick me up, please. No arguments.”

“Earl, if this has anything to do with that man—”

“Denise. Please send Tisha to get me.”

“I’m calling Qualls,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Earl, you need to tell me what’s going on.”

“If you want me to retire, if you like my pension, if you’d like to keep me out of prison, you won’t call anyone. You need to trust me.”

Ford endured a long pause filled with the light static of the cell phone signal traveling through frozen air.

“When do you retire?” she asked.

“Soon,” he said.

“Not soon enough.”