Assassin P.I. (19 page)

Chapter 19

After three hours at the pool hall, a reluctant camaraderie between Agent Shaw, Angie, and the boys had been forged, helped in no small part to free-flowing alcohol. As the minutes ticked by, narrowing the twenty-four-hour window he’d been given, barbed jabs had given way to friendly game wagers. To the casual observer, they were the best of friends. No one would ever suspect the precarious state of their association.

“This one’s on me.” A rousing cheer went up as Jack made his way to the bar. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved a gold money clip, unfurled the cash it held, and removed two hundred-dollar bills. He placed them on the bar.

The bartender ignored the cash and crossed his arms. “Tell your girlfriend over there, no more knife tricks, or I’m cutting you guys off.”

“Sure thing.” Jack pushed the money across the counter. “Another round.”

The man’s eyes flicked down to the cash in front of him, and back to Jack. He didn’t waver.

Jack blew out a frustrated breath and took out another hundred. “Fine,” he said as he slapped the money onto the bar. “Another round, please.”

Breaking into a grin, the bartender scooped up the money, pocketing part, and depositing the rest into the till. He got to work preparing the order for Jack’s friends.

By his calculation, he had about twenty hours left. Still plenty of time to take care of Benicio Acevedo, clean out his office and house, and be halfway to Mexico by morning light. Dipping his hand into his right coat pocket, his fingers brushed against the gun Deluca had given him days ago. Casting a last glance at the motley crew he’d gathered, he bid them a silent farewell, and slipped out the back door into the bleak and drizzly night.

Nick scanned the room for Jack. Just a second ago, he’d been at the bar ordering drinks. Now he was nowhere to be found. Nick’s pulse quickened. Where the hell was he?

Around him, Jack’s friends continued to regale each other, and many of the other drunken patrons, with stories about their days walking the beat. Fiercely loyal to Jack, he had no doubt they would do whatever it took to protect the man they thought of like a son. Even if it meant helping a fugitive on the run.

Angie cast a glance at Nick. She’d been surreptitiously keeping an eye on him since he walked in the door. She didn’t trust him. When it came to protecting Jack, he’d be willing to bet Angie would be first in line wielding her trusty dagger.

If the men didn’t notice Nick’s absence while he went to search for Jack, Angie certainly would. Fishing for his phone in his pocket, he held it up and smiled apologetically. “Gotta call the missus or she’ll get worried.”

As far as excuses went, it was plausible and one no one would question or fault him for.

She gave a wry smile and nodded, dismissing him as she turned her attention back to the cocktail she’d be nursing.

His wife picked up the call on the third ring. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

“I’m fine. Just got tied up with a case,” he said.

“I called the office. I know you haven’t been going in to work. Where are you? Are you with her, that girl?”

He could hear the panic mingle with anger in Sara’s voice. With only days left until the baby arrived, he should be home with his wife, ready to whisk her away to the hospital at the first sign of labor pains. Instead, he was helping a man, who he was fairly certain had killed his best friend, face off against a corrupt police department.

Suddenly a new thought occurred to him. What if she’d been trying to reach him to say she was in labor? “Is the baby okay? Have you felt any labor pains?”

After she reassured him she was fine, and he’d promised to head for home in a few minutes, he hung up. As soon as he skirted the deserted bar, he pocketed his phone again and headed for the men’s room. Ducking inside, his nostrils were assaulted with the foul stench of vomit and urine. Ugh. He covered his mouth and nose. The row of urinals was empty, as were the two stalls. Exiting the restroom, he sucked in a deep breath of stale air.

Damn. Nick slammed his hand against the bathroom door. Given the open floor plan of the place, there was no other conceivable location where Jack might have gone. There was no denying it. He’d been given the slip.

Maybe if he’d been more seasoned at his job, he might have noticed. Might have had the wherewithal to keep Jack in his sight at all times, to follow him. But beating himself up over the mistake wasn’t going to help him find Jack.

He took a second to scrutinize his location. If Jack walked out the front doors, someone, likely Little Frankie, would have noticed and questioned it. But no one had. That meant he’d used a secondary exit. Scanning the hallway, he noticed a service entrance, invisible from the main room. Perfect for making a quiet getaway.

Nick slipped through the doorway, thankful when no alarms sounded. Only a handful of cars lined the parking lot and, hidden from the street, it wouldn’t have taken much to simply disappear into the dark night. Jack’s car was still there, right where he’d left it. He had to be on foot.

Walking to the sidewalk, Nick’s head swiveled from left to right. Which way would an intoxicated man on a mission go? To the left was the business district. To the right, a maze of residential streets.

Where the hell could he be going at this time of night?

Nowhere good,
that’s
for damn sure.

The cool night air did little to
clear Jack’s conflicted mind. Twenty hours to kill or be killed. Was that truly all his life had boiled down to? Some shitty-ass choice between death and more death?

“Nothing is ever that simple, Jackie-boy. I taught you better than that.”

Jack’s head whipped to the right. An older man in dress blues matched his stride. A trail of cigarette smoke wafted into the air, swirling around the man’s head. Jack couldn’t help but stare.

“Christ, kid, stop staring at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ghost? No. Hallucination, yes. His father had been dead and buried for years, yet effortlessly his mind was able to conjure up an image of him. The man had been haunting his dreams for months now. Maybe it was time to stop and listen to what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

Jack stopped walking and turned toward the apparition. “You aren’t real. You’re dead.”

His father guffawed. “Of course I’m dead. And so are you if you go through with this. See?”

A newspaper materialized in his father’s hands, stamped with tomorrow’s date. The top headline read, “Former Detective Killed, Suspected of Murder.”

“I know.” The only thing worse than seeing and hearing your hallucinations, was talking back to them. Jack turned up the collar on his trench coat, tugging it tight around his body. The February air had a distinct bite to it, a chill that cut to the bone. Reaching into the coat pocket, he produced a lighter and a cigarette of his own, lit it, and took a drag. A nasty habit that he’d tried to quell in recent months, but the familiar act had a calming effect on him. He resumed walking. It was no coincidence that Benicio Acevedo’s house was within spitting distance of the pool hall. He blinked back the haze that invaded his mind and tried to focus on the mission at hand.

As he walked, his mind began to drift, flitting back and forth between the Fed, Angie, and his father. With a body functioning on little more than alcohol and adrenaline, sleep-deprivation hallucinations were bound to happen, but it would make shooting a target a bitch to accomplish.

When it came right down to it, they were all in the vigilante justice business. No better, no worse than him. The Fed, barely more than a kid really, was only following the trail of a killer. He was doing his job. It wasn’t his fault that the trail led straight to Jack. And what about Angie? She wanted justice, too. But her vendetta against Jack had started long before her pretend lover died.

He never meant to hurt them. Any of them. But he would if they got involved in his business. It was up to him to put an end to it. Alone.

There was a tug on his coat and a small hand slipped into his. “Hey, mister? Are you going to kill that man like you killed me?”

Jack sucked in a breath and stopped.

“Well, answer him, Jackie-boy,” his father urged. “You did kill him, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know about the kid, but he sure killed me.” A ghostly image of Trevor materialized in front of him.

Eyes squeezed tight, Jack shook his head, trying to clear his mind. But when he opened his eyes and peered down, an innocent child stared up at him, earnestly waiting for his honest answer. Jack dropped to his knees beside the child. Bitter tears filled with regret flowed down his cheeks.

“I’m trying to stop the killing.”

But was he, really? Wasn’t he on his way to do just that? Kill again?

The child, another ghost from his past, implored him, “Then why did I have to die?”

It was like a knife to the heart. He’d been asking himself the same thing, over and over again since he’d botched his last job.

“I don’t know, buddy. I don’t know. Accidents happen, I guess.”

“You killed me.”

Jack closed his eyes. The grief and shame he’d tried so hard to keep bottled up emerged, wracking his body with sobs. Even if he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he’d killed an innocent child all the same. It didn’t matter why or how it had happened, though he’d replayed his actions over in his mind a hundred times or more, unable to comprehend how the boy wound up in the crossfire. It happened, and a child died. Because of him.

“It should have been you who died,” all three voices taunted together. “It should have been you.”

When he opened his eyes, he was alone again. Swiping away the tears, Jack stood. He knew what to do now.

Tailing a dark figure on an even darker night was asking fo
r trouble. Even though he carried his sidearm with him at all times, Nick’s heart still raced. At the intersection he’d loped across the street where he could follow safely hidden in the shadows. For two blocks he’d followed Jack, watching the man stumble his way toward an unknown destination. Periodically he would stop, talking to himself. Jack was far drunker than Nick had realized, making him more dangerous than when sober, especially if armed. Or perhaps the man had finally snapped, suffered a psychotic break. Either possibility left a sour taste in his mouth.

Nick drew his gun and dropped back, placing more distance between him and Jack. It wasn’t until they turned onto Sunburst Drive that Nick figured out what Jack was up to.

By then, it was too late to stop him.

What only minutes before had been a light mist had turned into
free falling drops, cleansing the filth from the streets, drenching Jack as he stumbled along from street lamp to street lamp. “Oh, the web we weave . . .” a voice taunted, a whisper with claws that tore at his soul.

“What’re you gonna do, Jack? Shoot to kill? Better get it right this time.”

One after another his demons mocked him, a veritable merry-go-round of failures come back to haunt him, from which there was no escape. His twenty-four hours were dwindling, the walls closing in on him.

Common sense would dictate that if you planned to assassinate a man, especially one you’d been hired to kill, you’d spend quite a bit of time planning out the details of the hit. Catch the victim at an inopportune time, off-guard, in order to gain the upper hand in the situation. Be nothing more than a shadow on a wall, a whiff of scent lingering on the breeze.

But whatever common sense Jack once had, had been fleeting. By the time Benicio Acevedo’s house came into view, he’d lost all sight of right and wrong, justice and lawlessness.

Disregarding the late hour, Jack knocked on the front door, a bold and brazen act considering he was here to kill the master of the house, a reported drug dealer, though he’d never actually verified the accusation as truth. Despite that, Jack drew his gun and held it at his side, ready for whatever life threw his way.

Long seconds passed.

At last, the door opened, but rather than come face to face with a man marked for death, Jack found a young girl peering up at him through a screen safety door. Pocketing the gun, he stooped down until he was eye level with the child. “Is your daddy home?”

Loose curls bobbed as the girl nodded, her sleepy eyes wide, expression solemn. Benicio’s wife, a lovely woman all of mid-thirty, came rushing down the hallway, panic in her eyes. She swooped the child up into her arms, with a stern admonishment. “You know better, Gracie.”

Did she know about her husband’s indiscretions? About his philandering ways? In truth, he felt sorry for her. No matter how things went down, her life would never be the same.

“May I help you?” She set her child down and shooed her back to bed.

“Mrs. Acevedo, I am so sorry to have disturbed you at this late hour. I have some business with your husband that I’m afraid can’t wait. Is he around?”

The wary gaze in her eye gave her the appearance of a woman who’d seen enough to know a visit in the middle of the night was anything but innocuous. Did she suspect she’d soon be a widow? She cast her eyes down and gave a curt nod as she turned to leave, shutting the door behind her.

The seconds ticked by, punctuated by puffs of breath crystalizing on the cold air. If it hadn’t been for the pounding of his heart, he might not have been caught off guard. He might have heard Benicio’s stealthy approach.

But he hadn’t. The thudding of his heart so loud it masked all sound, except the cocking of the gun aimed at his head. He could feel the barrel hovering, its aim true.

When the man spoke, his accent thick and threatening, there was no fear in his voice, no anger, only intrigue. “So you’re him, huh? The one they paid to kill me. Oh, that’s right, I know all about you.”