One Blood (27 page)

Everything was going fine until Kris stumbled into the party, disheveled and drunk. Lincoln felt a pang of sorrow for his friend, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to break the silence between them.

Kris, bolstered by his belligerence, was on a warpath. When he spied Lincoln, he went on the attack. “Hey, look at the big star everybody! Big Link Baker, number one draft pick. He’s a fucking coward everybody! Look at’m!”

Lincoln tried to ignore the venomous accusations pouring from Kris’s lips, but that only made Kris angrier.

He headed toward Lincoln. “Yeah! Fucking Lincoln Baker, the savior of Lake City! Everybody loves Link, right? He’s a fuckin’ fraud! You’re a fuckin’ fraud, Link, you hear me?”

Lincoln had heard enough. He attempted to remove Kris from the premises.

Kris swung at him. His punch landed just below Lincoln’s eye. Then it was on.

It took four football players to pull Lincoln off Kris.

Kris, bleeding from a busted lip, continued to scream as they escorted him away. “Bet I got your attention now, Link, huh? Bet now you’ll hear what I gotta say! You ain’t got any friends, Link! None of these people give a damn about you! You’re a joke, man. A bad fuckin’ joke!”

Lincoln nursed the cut under his eye and stared at Kris from across the sand with murder on his mind. As embarrassment and hurt set in, Lincoln couldn’t resist a final verbal jab as Kris left. “I shoulda let you kill yourself that day, Kris. You know that, you ungrateful motherfucker! I shoulda let you die!”

* * * * *

Chapter Forty-Three

Monday

New Roads, LA

Two knocks on the door interrupted Lincoln’s train of thought.

A heavyset nurse entered. “Times up, Ms. Deveaux. Please follow me.”

“
We just need a few more minutes,” Jhonnette replied. “Can we work that out?”

“
Let’s talk outside, Ms. Deveaux.”

Jhonnette followed the nurse into the hall.

“
Sorry,” the nurse said. “The police just called. They’re coming to move the patient.”

“
Where are they moving him?”

“
I don’t know, but he might be able to help you out.” She nodded at someone over Jhonnette’s shoulder.

Jhonnette turned just in time to see Snake Roberts enter Lincoln’s room.

* * * * *

The drug’s effects overtook Lincoln, helping him understand the hunger in the eyes of all those painkiller addicts he’d sold to over the years. Morphine was the shit. Not feeling any pain was a strange sensation.

The door opened and he looked up in anticipation, ready to share this revelation with Jhonnette.

“
Guess wha—”

“
Don’t you mean guess who?” Snake Roberts smirked.

* * * * *

Ok, this is it. You can do this.

There was only one way to ensure Lincoln trusted her enough to give her what she needed. Jhonnette pressed her ear to the door.

Poor Snake. He’d been an essential part of her plan, but had served his purpose. Still, a part of her ached at the thought of what she was about to do. Over the past few months, she’d developed a soft spot for the man. This was no time for sentimentality. She had to focus.

She removed a small handgun from her purse. After screwing a silencer onto the barrel, she opened the door as quietly as she could.

* * * * *

Chapter Forty-Four

Monday

Baton Rouge, LA

“
Governor! Governor!”

Someone shook him. Randy opened his eyes. One of his secret service guards, Jack, leaned over him with a look of extreme alarm.

Randy’s vision doubled for a brief second. He shook his head from side to side to remove the grogginess draped over his body like a rain poncho. He attempted to tell Jack he was fine, but nothing came out.

Something was inside his mouth. The something slipped a few notches as if in reaction to his thinking about it. Randy gagged in response.

Jack groaned.

Randy made the universal choking gesture.

Jack came to his senses and moved behind Randy. He wrapped his arms around Randy’s midsection and pressed on Randy’s solar plexus with his thumbs inverted performing the Heimlich maneuver.

Randy’s vision cleared dramatically upon the first pressure. He looked upon his surroundings in amazement. He sat before Huey P. Long’s tombstone in the southeast corner of the Capitol grounds—a good ten minute walk from the Observation Deck. He looked up at Louisiana’s first and only assassinated governor, and for a moment swore the statue was staring down at him.

Rumor had it Huey Long was actually killed by his bodyguards, not the dentist blamed for the crime.

A dark tint clouded his vision as Jack pushed again. Randy felt the first tickle of panic. Sane people didn’t lose track of ten minutes of time. They didn’t sleepwalk down twenty-seven flights of stairs.

Jack pressed a third time. Randy felt like his chest was going to cave in.

What’s happening to me?

Jack pressed again, with more force.

The object in Randy’s throat dislodged and blasted off into the open air. He took a few deep breaths, ignoring the pain coming with each inhalation. Then he looked at what he’d just expelled.

A blood red rose, wet and shiny with saliva, lay on the manicured lawn.

* * * * *

Chapter Forty-Five

Monday

Lake City, LA

“
Wake his ass up,” Red Wolf commanded Anvil Head. “We’re almost there.”

Their captive couldn’t take the tasering. He’d been unconscious in the backseat for over five minutes. Now he was convulsing.

“
He don’t look so good.”

Red Wolf looked at Amir in the rearview mirror and cursed under his breath. He pulled the car into the yard of a one-story red brick home.

“
Go straighten him out,” Red Wolf ordered.

Anvil Head got out and opened the back door. Not taking any chances, he trained the taser on Amir while ducking into the backseat.

Red Wolf got out on the other side. They were wasting valuable time here. “Hurry up,” he barked.

As traffic flowed past him, he heard a strange guttural noise. Drawing his gun, he bent down to get a better look inside the car. His eyes widened as he witnessed the scene in the backseat.

Blood spurted from Anvil Head’s ruptured jugular, painting the window red. Then the driver’s side door burst open, catching Red Wolf in the forehead. He rocked on his haunches and fell backwards into the busy avenue, dropping the gun in the process. Immediately aware of the danger of being run over, Red Wolf rolled until he was safely out of the road. As soon as he made it onto the grass, someone grabbed his neck. Expert fingers pressed and squeezed his windpipe as if it were an accordion

Red Wolf tossed his head around until he was staring into the face of an adolescent white girl with jet black hair. She had a pretty face and creamy unblemished skin but wore a distressed expression.

Anvil Head’s blood dripped into Red Wolf’s eyes from the girl’s clenched ruby red lips. He bucked in an attempt to knock the girl off him. She rolled with him but maintained her death grip.

As the life drained from Red Wolf’s body, the girl smiled sweetly at him. He heard her voice in his head.

“
It will all be over soon. It’s better on the other side. Follow the sound of the drums.”

Drums? What drums?

Then he heard them—soft pounding beckoning in a slow rhythm that matched his declining heartbeat.

Who are you?

Her name came.

Melinda.

His phone chirped. He barely heard his men advising him that they had arrived at the hospital. He was too busy staring into Melinda’s angelic face. He felt no pain; she had taken his pain away. Until the girl’s face morphed back into the face of Amir.

A crushing sensation collapsed his lungs.

Amir stood up, got into the Crown Victoria, and drove away.

With no breath left, Red Wolf’s eyes lost focus and glazed over as he expired.

* * * * *

Chapter Forty-Six

Monday

Baton Rouge, LA

“
Sorry about earlier. Here.” Shaw untied Coral and handed her an ice pack.

Coral pressed it against her busted lip. Of course it wasn’t cold enough. This guy couldn’t get anything right.

“
We got off to a bad start,” Shaw said. “Of course you’re angry. But nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

“
A little late for that, don’t you think?” Coral snapped. “You, your brother, and Larry have committed a capital offense. And that’s not even the worst part! You kidnapped a teenage girl and forced my husband to pardon a convicted killer. The man who killed my son. Oh man. You guys are gonna fry.”

Shaw paced before her. She could almost hear his mind working.

“
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

“
What do you mean? You didn’t mean to kidnap my daughter and me? Just like you didn’t mean to slap the Governor’s wife?”

“
Look. What do you want from me? I got these medical bills. Something got into me over there in Iraq. Some bad shit.”

“
And Snake promised to take care of everything, right? All you have to do is hold the Governor’s wife in your place of business for a few days. Well I’ve met your brother—he’s worked for my husband for a long time. Never did strike me as a guy playing with a full deck.”

Shaw put his face in his hands. “Aw man. Aw man. Shit. What am I supposed to do?”

Coral knew it was now or never. She stood and placed her hand on Shaw’s shoulder. “Listen to me. You didn’t think this through. Let me help you. If you let me go now, we can forget about this whole thing. We can act like this never happened.”

Shaw looked at her with tears in his eyes. She almost felt sorry for him.

“
I can’t do that. Snake’ll kill me. Oh God.”

“
Where is he now?”

“
He went to take care of that Baker kid. At the hospital in New Roads.”

“
You got him pardoned just to kill him? That doesn’t make much sense.”

“
No. Not kill him. He has to live.”

Coral was confused. “Why?”

“
She needs him for something.”

“
Who’s she?”

Shaw ignored her question.

Coral should have known Snake Roberts couldn’t have planned something like this on his own. “What if I told you I could take care of everything?” she offered. “Your medical bills, get Snake off your back. Everything.”

“
How you gonna do that?”

“
Well, the medical stuff is easy. My husband is Governor, remember? And Snake? Snake may just have an accident. What do you think?”

Shaw nodded with understanding. “What do you need from me?”

“
Well to start, a car and a gun.”

And a prayer!

“
What do you need the gun for?”

“
We have to make it look like I escaped…” Coral detailed her plan as Shaw nodded in agreement. It was a long shot, but her plan just might work.

* * * * *

Chapter Forty-Seven

Monday

Baton Rouge, LA

Randy sat in the back of a sedan en route to Baton Rouge Municipal airport where his chopper was waiting. The car abruptly slowed to a crawl and Randy observed a line of cars in the fast lane with their hazard lights blinking—a funeral procession.

The lead car was a hearse decorated with vibrant red roses. He groaned. Randy never wanted to see a rose again.

A large black bird landed on the back of the hearse. A phrase came to his mind:

Crows are the carriers of the dead.

The bird shook and flew off to Randy’s delight. He popped two Advil. He’d given himself a headache trying to get back those precious minutes between seeing the ruffian (
Kristopher...it was Kristopher!
) in the rose garden and waking up in front of Huey P. Long’s tomb.

Okay, say it was Kristopher. What now? Am I supposed to believe that my dead son came back from the grave to kill me?