Hot Pursuit (5 page)

Ben nodded. “I’ll definitely let you know when I find him.” He looked around his apartment. “I’ll straighten up here a bit, then head out.”

“You leaving tonight?” Greg asked.

“Yea. The first postcard came from Santa Clarita. It’s less than an hour’s drive north of here.”

“Why the hell would he run and then stop once he was only an hour away?” Greg asked, frowning.

“I figured they stopped at a gas station somewhere and decided to buy the card and mail it to me to let me know they were gone, then they probably hit the road again.”

“Maybe,” Greg said, rubbing his chin the way he did when he was trying to think something through.

“Where is the second postcard from?”

“It was postmarked out of a town called Zounds. I had to look on Google Maps to find out where it was. It’s a good ten-hour drive north of here and on the ocean.”

“How long ago did you get the second postcard?” Haley asked.

“A month or so ago,” Ben told her, glancing from one of them to the other as he shifted his weight. Already he was anxious to get on the road and warn Micah.

“Head on out then,” Greg said, and slapped Ben on the arm. “Be safe, and remember that cocky bastard aims and never misses. If they are hiding out in some small town up north, Micah will always be alert.”

“Don’t worry,” Ben said, holding his hand up and smiling. He was looking forward to finding his old friend, no matter if he was a notorious assassin. “I know Micah. And although I’d love the challenge of sneaking up on him and pulling it off, I do like living.”

Haley rolled her eyes, then gave him a big hug. “You call us and check in, young man. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mom,” he muttered, rolled his eyes dramatically, then endured the punch she gave to his arm before hugging her again. He would really miss these two and knew in his heart he wouldn’t be seeing them again anytime soon.

Chapter Four

Wolf sat on the edge of his bed in his motel room in Santa Clarita. He was too wired to go to bed yet. He pondered over the two postcards he’d found in Ben Mercy’s apartment. The guy had done little to personalize his apartment, which meant he was never there. Wolf hadn’t found any mail lying around, which told him Mercy took care of his business the moment he had something to take care of. Yet there had been these two postcards. A girlfriend or family member or even a mild acquaintance would have written something on the postcard. Yet both of these postcards were blank.

Ben and Micah, the Mulligan Stew assassin, had worked side by side for four months. Ben Mercy probably didn’t suspect a thing about his co-worker until the day the assassin made his very first mistake. It was the mistake that sent him running—and running fast. Micah probably pulled out of town that very same day.

Wolf mused over why the assassin would have made this mistake. He had at least fifty kills under his belt that authorities thought they might be able to pin to him. He’d never made a single mistake, not once. Yet he shot a man who was trying to get out of going to court over bounced checks. And that had been the assassin’s fatal error. The guy the assassin shot was a nobody. He sure as hell didn’t fit the profile of absolutely every other man and woman the assassin had allegedly shot and killed.

So why would the assassin, who had a perfect track record up to that point, make such a fatal mistake, shooting a man with the same gun he had used to kill the CIA agent?

“Because of a girl,” Wolf muttered, and pulled up the picture of Maggie O’Malley that he’d printed off his computer. “They are the only poison that makes a man stupid.”

He could certainly relate to that poison. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on Rebecca, though.

“Pretty lady,” Wolf said to himself as he stared at Maggie O’Malley instead of thinking about Rebecca Cleary, the only woman he’d been stupid enough to fall in love with. “Can’t get much more Irish than a name like O’Malley.”

“You know, sweetheart, your brother seemed really concerned about you.” He stared at Maggie’s picture and shoved Rebecca, whom he’d forbidden himself to ever think about again, out of his head. “When I talked to him at the door, he was quite anxious about you. And by the way, you had an incredible home. Your parents don’t live there anymore. They’re in a retirement community. Are they failing because you disappeared on them? Your brother really wants to hear from you, sweetheart,” he whispered, and ran his thumb down the length of her chin in the picture. “I sure hope Micah is worth what you’ve done to your family.”

Wolf didn’t know a lot about family. Once he had turned eighteen and freed himself of the system, he’d tried looking up his birth mother. He wasn’t sure why he had. She had obviously hated him, since she’d named him Waldorf, then given him away as soon as he was out of her.

It hadn’t been hard to track her down. He had been born in Grove, Oklahoma. It was just over a thirty-minute drive from Vinita. Wolf liked to think of the experience as his first investigation. At the age of eighteen, Wolf had stared down at the grave site where his mother was buried. She had died from a drug overdose when Wolf had been three. He would have been an orphan even if she hadn’t given him up. One of the ironies in his world.

“Okay, Maggie, talk to me,” he said, focusing on her picture. “Why is such a pretty lady like you with the Mulligan Stew assassin? Your priest is worried about you, too, you know. Although he did imply you are with Micah by choice.”

There was a clammy flush that spread over his skin when he thought about the fabricated story he’d told the priest at Holy Name church. Wolf needed something—a bite, a lead—something to give him a jump-start in the right direction. Father Charles had been politely close-lipped. He’d mentioned Maggie always had a family with her church. It was the only thing the priest had said that led Wolf to believe Father Charles knew Maggie was with Micah.

Wolf sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and stood. He put Maggie’s picture down next to his duffel bag then he stared at the mirror on the wall as he stretched. The longer his brown hair got, the more curls there were. He didn’t have time for a haircut right now and really didn’t care how he looked. More than one person had told him it was time to settle down and quit running around the country. The way he looked right now no woman would look at him twice.

Running around the country was how he made his money. There weren’t any criminals in Vinita who would bring in the bounties he’d collected over the years. When he was twenty-five, he made a thousand dollars capturing a convict wanted in Oklahoma. That got Wolf hooked, and he’d never looked back. At thirty-five he was now going after the largest bounty of his life. He would capture the Mulligan Stew assassin or die trying. Wolf didn’t care where he had to go. Traveling light made it easy to move from location to location. And location led to another question that was bugging him.

“Why Santa Clarita?” Wolf walked over to the window in his motel and pulled back the curtain. There were cars and a few trucks parked throughout the parking lot. Across the street, lights from businesses and fast-food restaurants glowed in the clear, black night. “Pretty town. Clean and quiet,” he mused.

But Santa Clarita wasn’t that far from L.A. If Micah was getting the hell out of Dodge, why did he stop here? Why wouldn’t he and Maggie have driven as far away as they could get?

“Was it because he believed everyone would think he would go as far away as possible?” Hiding under everyone’s noses had worked for criminals in the past. “Or, was there someone here you wanted to see?”

Wolf dropped the curtain and returned to his duffel. He pulled out the file he had placed at the bottom of the bag and opened it. All of the information he had gathered on the Mulligan Stew assassin was in there.

“Assassin, or may I call you Micah?” he added wryly.

Those little bugs were damned expensive if you wanted one where you could actually hear what was being said without it being all muffled and staticky. He’d hit the jackpot with this one, though. It hadn’t surprised Wolf that the information gained by planting the bug in the KFA office would come within minutes of planting it there. It’s what was said in those first moments of outrage over Wolf sauntering in and out of their office. Nor had it surprised him when the Kings found the bug and destroyed it.

Wolf had taken everything he’d known about Greg and Haley King and had decided lying or pretending to be someone he wasn’t wouldn’t get him far with those two. Wolf respected King as a bounty hunter, and one who had paid his dues in the business. Therefore, Wolf had taken the direct approach. In order to learn anything, though, because he’d known before entering their office the Kings wouldn’t tell him a thing about the Mulligan Stew assassin regardless of what they might have known, Wolf had decided to put a bit of a punch in it.

The Kings hadn’t gone after the assassin. They hadn’t been interviewed. They’d refused comment when asked if he’d been their employee, which had been the only reason speculation rose that he had worked for KFA. That told Wolf that the Kings had liked the Mulligan Stew assassin, maybe had even respected him. The guy might be the nicest person anyone would ever meet. With a million-dollar bounty on his head Wolf didn’t care if he were the son of God.

It had taken about as long as Wolf had figured it would. He hadn’t been inside the KFA office more than five minutes. And he’d run to his car, barely able to get the earpiece in his ear, when he’d heard that precious first name.

“Micah,” he whispered.

First and last name would have been better. He wasn’t complaining, though. “What’s in Santa Clarita, Micah? Why run and stop an hour later?”

After arriving in Santa Clarita, Wolf had driven around the city. It was nice, clean, with lots of new additions. He’d walked through a mall and their downtown, enjoying the drop in temperature after dark. He hadn’t expected to learn anything, but he enjoyed seeing different cities. Now, holed up in his motel room and not ready for bed, he paced and brainstormed.

He had a running theory with no way to back it, but possibly there had been someone here in Santa Clarita. With Micah hiding out in L.A., which Wolf was sure he’d been doing, possibly anyone working with him might have been hiding nearby. A CIA agent was a much bigger kill than anything else the Mulligan Stew assassin had ever done. It was a shot straight through the heart, which fit his MO. But it made sense he would lay low afterward. So, Micah was in L.A., but who was in Santa Clarita? Did the Mulligan Stew assassin work alone? Or was there someone in the background taking his calls, doing his research?

Wolf had no doubt Micah spent time learning about each man or woman he killed. None of them had nationwide attention at the time of their death. But all of them had been scum.

Someone knocked on the door. Wolf glared at it.

“Wrong door, buddy!” he called out, although not too loudly. He wasn’t at the cheapest place in town, but it was far from a four star hotel. Wolf didn’t waste his money. All he asked for were clean sheets and a pillow.

Whoever it was knocked again, this time firmer and with more determination.

Wolf sighed and put the file back together. He slid Maggie’s picture on top, then tucked the file underneath his clothes in his duffel. There were several more knocks, much louder.

“Someone needs to teach you some manners,” he mumbled, zipping the bag, doing a quick glance around the motel room, then walking over to the door.

He looked through the peephole but saw no one. There was nothing but darkness outside. Opening the door, Wolf had less than a second to react before Ben Mercy’s fist headed straight for his face.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed, ducking but taking a few knuckles across his cheekbone. “It was nothing personal, Mercy,” he informed the kid, and returned the greeting in kind.

“My home is personal!” Mercy yelled, and did a pretty good job of dodging Wolf’s fist, although it sent him back a few paces.

Wolf had his key card on him so let his motel room door close and lunged into Mercy. He didn’t take lightly to being followed or being hit. Nor did he ever back out of a good fight.

“Get over it!” he snarled, and tried again to lay a good one on the young brute’s pretty face.

This time Wolf connected, but Mercy knew how to fight. His fist made contact with Wolf’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

Wolf doubled over, and Mercy was on him, shoving him into the brick wall in between the motel room doors. Mercy was good sized, six feet if not taller. Wolf might not have been blessed with height, but he had muscle and knew how to use it. In his line of work not knowing how to hold his own in a good brawl was a death sentence.

Wolf growled as he shoved the kid off him, then charged when Mercy stumbled backward. The kid lost his balance at the end of the sidewalk and stepped sideways off the curb into the parking lot. Wolf came at him, returning the gut punch and doing his best to angle it so Mercy didn’t fall against his Escalade.

There was a motorcycle next to it. Mercy howled from Wolf’s punch hitting his stomach and bent over the bike.

“Give back what you took or I’ll beat your face into the ground!” Mercy roared, and came at him like a mad bull.

The two men fell onto the sidewalk, throwing punch after punch. Wolf didn’t try getting up until he heard yelling. He’d be damned if he’d spend the night in jail when he was on a hunt. Apparently, Mercy was thinking the same thing. The kid scrambled to his feet and away from Wolf when two women and a man were running toward them yelling in Spanish.

“It’s cool,” Mercy told all of them, holding his hands up in the air. “No need to call the police. We’re done.”

Wolf cursed under his breath, and Mercy glared at him. Apparently, the kid could cool his temper pretty easily, but Wolf still seethed. Mercy had a six-pack that was as solid as a brick wall, and Wolf’s knuckles stung worse than if he had scraped flesh to the bone. The two women held back, but the man, who had been at the front desk when Wolf checked in, puffed his chest out and stuck his hands at his waist.

“You both get out of here, now,” he said in perfect English. “There is no fighting at my motel.”