Last Call - A Thriller (Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mysteries Book 10) (31 page)

T
hree hours into the drive, I got up to go to the bathroom, knowing Val was already in there. I waited for her to get out.

“Can we chat for a bit?” I asked her. “Alone?”

“Are you going to ask me about the crutches?”

“No. I figured if you wanted to tell me about that, you would.” Plus, I’d already heard about Val’s condition a while ago, via Harry. “I want to talk about
Dixon Hess
.”

My friend winced. “What about him?”

“You know what it’s like to have someone target the people you love.”

“Yes.”

“Would you have died to protect them? From Hess?”

“In a heartbeat.” Val squinted at me. “Where are you going with this?”

I tried to compose my thoughts in a way that made sense, which proved difficult because I wasn’t even sure what I was shooting for. “Being a cop has put a lot of my friends and family in danger. There doesn’t seem to be an end to it. So many people have gotten hurt, or killed, because of bad guys I spent decades trying to stop.”

“That was good work, Jack. Worthwhile. You’ve saved countless lives.”

“And what was the trade off? You ever hear that old moral dilemma? You have the power to save ten strangers, or one person you love. Who do you save?”

“The person you love.”

I nodded.

“But you can do both,” Val said. “You can protect society from the worst offenders, and also protect your family.”

“Like I protected Phin?” I made a face. “You know my history, Val. This is the sixth or seventh time something like this has happened. See? I’ve lost count. When I retired, I thought this would stop. But it hasn’t. How long before some maniac from my past comes looking for Samantha?”

Val folded her arms over her chest. “So what’s your solution here? You’re going to commit hari-kari in front of Luther Kite so he leaves your family alone? You know that won’t work. Monsters like Kite, and Hess, they’re always going to be around, preying on people. We can’t ignore them. We can’t hide from them. The only way to deal with them is to fight.”

My shoulders slumped. “Pull up one weed, two more spring up.”

“The answer isn’t to stop weeding. You stop weeding, the weeds take over and the whole garden dies.”

I knew Val understood my point, and agreed with me. She was just being stubborn.

“If someone went after your niece, Grace. And you could stop it by dying, you’d do it.”

“Jack, I know the amount of stress you’re under. Believe me, I know it as much as anyone. But you aren’t thinking clearly here.”

“Can you answer my question?”

“It’s a shitty question. That’s junior college philosophy class nonsense, not real life.”

“But you’d die for her.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

I let out a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m stressed out.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“What day is it?”

Val touched my upper arm. “When this is over, bring Phin and Sam up to Lake Loyal. We’ll drink some beer, ride some horses, have a cookout.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It
is
nice. Life is nice. It’s easy to forget that when you’re dealing with nutjobs.”

Tequila walked up to us, Fleming in his arms. Val and I let them pass, and they went into the bathroom.

“He took her to the toilet,” Val said. “That’s sweet.”

A rhythmic, pounding sound commenced, followed by female moans.

“That’s sweet, too,” I offered.

We left them to do their thing. I found an empty beanbag, and eased down into it. Herb Bacondict clopped over to me and put his fat face on my knees.

“Roll over,” I told him.

He didn’t move.

“Gotta use your cop voice,” Harry said. “Herb! Roll over!”

The pig dropped down to a prone position, and then ripped churro ass.

“No one light a match!” McGlade yelled. “That’s methane! The whole motorhome could blow!”

No one lit a match. But several people did put their hands over their noses. Val was not among them.

“Horses are worse,” she said, shrugging.

I got up and leaned over Chandler, who was on her tablet. I glanced at Katie, whose eyes were closed. She was still listening to music. Everyone else was watching McGlade’s flat screen TV, some series about monsters invading a town.

“Can I get data off a digital camera if it doesn’t have a battery?” I asked Chandler, keeping my voice down.

“Does it have an SD card?” Chandler anaswered without looking at me.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you check?”

“Not at the moment.”

Chandler glanced at me, then followed my gaze to Katie.

“Something wrong there,” Chandler said.

“Drugs.”

“Something more than drugs. You know how Val tactfully mentioned that I kill people?”

“Yeah.”

Chandler pointed her chin at Katie. “I’ll bet you even money she has, too.”

A
cord, a cord, my kingdom for a cord.

Ah, shitballs… now I’m doing that lame-ass Shakespeare thing.

Lucy couldn’t find another extension cord anywhere she looked. She’d gone through the mission, room by room, had asked every guard she’d met, and had even ventured into the underground holding cells.

It was as if the universe conspired against her.

Infuriating, because the concept was so perfect. Forcing Hanover to burn his own feet would show his determination and his resignation to his fate, it would prevent him from coming after Lucy when K was dead, and it would be funny as hell to watch. All wins.

But for lack of a cord…

Maybe there was a way to do it without the grill. Heat up a piece of iron? They still had those iron boots that hot lead could be poured into.

She frowned at the idea. That lacked the delectable irony of Hanover torturing himself for what he thought was the greater good. There was something almost poetic about the hot plate idea. Cell coverage was sometimes spotty at La Juntita, but along with several Katie Glente books, Lucy had been able to download that Alfred Hitchcock story with the electric grill,
The Agreement
. She’d read it with slowly boiling excitement, grinning as it got worse and worse, and laughing at the twist ending that had been sooo perfect. Maybe she would read it to Hanover, after he’d cooked himself. A cherry on top of the pain sundae.

Lucy already planned to hit him with a one-two punch after K died. The first; that Luther had no idea who his wife and son were, so this had all been for nothing. The second; that Lucy was going to kill his family anyway.

That would be even funnier than watching him keep his feet on a burner for ten seconds. She basked in the absurdity of it. What kind of idiot would do something like that for their family?

Family, Lucy knew, was nothing more than a group of incompetent strangers that you were forced to live with. Love was bullshit. Caring was a way to manipulate others so you could get your way.

When she’d been young, Lucy thought that love was Daddy visiting her room at night, giving her toys in exchange for touching her.

That hadn’t been love. That had been abuse. Daddy had taught her that the strong should take advantage of the weak, and it was a lesson that Lucy had taken to heart.

Did Hanover do that to his child? Creep into his room at night with a toy truck or a stuffed bear and a jar of Vaseline, exchanging gifts for sick secrets?

Probably. All people were abusers. The American nuclear family was nothing more than a breeding ground for victimizers and their victims.

Lucy knew the truth, and anyone who said otherwise was a liar. No good came from caring about someone else. People hurt you when you were with them. And they continued to hurt you when they were gone.

Lucy would teach Mr. Hanover that lesson. Even if it took days.

But first, she needed to find a damn extension cord. It would have been so much easier if Hanover was in the playroom, which had plenty of electrical outlets.

Oh, snap.

Why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Put him in the playroom. Duh.

Lucy allowed herself to feel stupid for a few seconds, and then her mood brightened as she went to fetch some guards.

It was time for Hanover to prove how much he thought he loved his family.

W
hen we met with Chandler’s contact fifty miles outside the Vizcaíno desert, practically everyone was asleep. Katie, both Herbs, Tequila and Fleming, Val. I’d had an insomnia problem for decades, and sleep was my constant enemy. Chandler seemed equally antsy, tapping her foot in spurts, flexing and stretching various body parts in some kind of isometric exercise.

McGlade stopped the RV when Chandler told him to, and then she put on some night vision goggles and hopped outside.

I stared through the open side-panel door, but all I could see was the black Mexican desert and a million billion stars in an equally black sky.

I heard faint conversation. A man with a Mexican accent. Then a slap.

I took out my gun, stepped out into the night. Noises, coming from the rear. Clanking, a rattling of chains.

“Chandler?” I whispered.

Chandler materialized out of the darkness like a magic trick.

“It’s okay. Heath is almost done hooking up the equipment to the trailer hitch.”

“Did he bring gas?” McGlade, from the front seat. “I’m on my reserve tank.”

“I have gas,” someone said, walking up to Chandler’s side. A man in his thirties, Latino, handsome, wearing fatigues and a black leather eyepatch. “Where on this giant American global warming abomination is the gas cap?”

“I’ll do it,” Harry said. “I need to drain the lizard.”

“I see a pig in the vehicle,” said the man I assumed was Heath. “Is there also a lizard?”

“Yeah, and it’s huge.” Harry climbed out and walked past. “Keep a safe distance away.”

Chandler folded her arms across her chest. “Jack, this is Heathcliff. Heath, Jack Daniels.”

He bowed, clasping my hand and gently touching his lips to my knuckles. “I am honored, and enchanted, to be in the presence of someone so lovely, yet so obviously competent.”

“If you have muck boots,” Chandler said, “now is a good time to put them on.”

I gave Heath a quick once-over. He had a stance, a bearing, that was recognizable. “You’re an operative. Like Chandler.”

“There is no one like Chandler,” Heath said. “
Mi bonita
is like the rare
Cosmos atrosanguineus
flower. Only one exists, and can only be replicated by clones.”

Chandler scowled. “I’m a septuplet. Not a clone.”

“Perhaps. But none of your sisters can compare to your passion and beauty.”

“You’re begging to get slapped again.”

Heath winked at me. “Her foreplay, it is rough. But it makes the coupling so much sweeter.”

Their flirting reminded me of my husband, so I climbed back in the RV to get away from it.

“Who’s here?” Val asked, opening her eyes.

“Pepé Le Pew,” I told her.

Chandler came inside, followed by Heath. He smiled at Val. “Chandler, please do me the kindness of introducing this lovely creature.”

Neither Chandler, nor Val, said anything.

“I see,” Heath said. “So sad for anger to exist between two such beauties. Is it jealously?”

I needed to diffuse this before someone got slugged. “Heath, this is Val. Val, Heath.”

Heath kissed Val’s hand, and Chandler made a big deal out of not noticing.

“Val, I can see by your lovely ring, you are engaged. Is this what causes your friction with Chandler? You have shared the same man?”

“Chandler and I have a history.”

“The problem,” Chandler said, “is that I live in this century, and Val lives in a little house on the prairie.”

“Having morals and values isn’t restricted to any given time period, Chandler.”

Heath shook his head, sadly. “Please, lovelies, no more bickering. This is all so snarled and complicated and
telenovela
. The only solution I see is to make love to you, Val, so we’re all on even footing.”

“Do I have any say in this?” Val asked.

“You do not. But I shall take extra care to put your needs before mine.”