From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set (31 page)
Read From Manhattan With Revenge Boxed Set Online
Authors: Christopher Smith
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery, #Retail, #Suspense
She spit in his face.
“I wonder if that meeting will be as pleasant as what’s happening to you
now?”
He started to make an odd gurgling noise.
His tongue began to swell.
She knew she had only seconds to act
before she lost her chance.
She
reached into her pocket, removed her cell phone, and recorded the last few
moments of Iver Kester’s miserable life before it left him in one clotted,
rattling last breath.
She clicked off her phone and lowered her head to her raised
knee.
She was exhausted and in
pain.
She breathed deeply and,
looking down at Kester, whose face now was purple and without life, she
realized how thankful she was that she could still breathe.
“What do you plan to do with that?” Spocatti said.
She planned to send the video to the syndicate with a warning
that included all their information, but even though she knew now that Spocatti
treated her roughly for show because he knew about her shoe, she didn’t want to
talk to him.
She felt he took
things too far.
She messaged Liam
in Aberdeen and told him to stand down.
Now, all she wanted to do was to find Chloe.
That was her focus.
She walked away from Spocatti and into the center of the
warehouse, where she started to call out Chloe’s name, telling her it was safe
to come out, until she finally did.
The girl had crawled beneath one of the cars.
Since so many of the cars sat low to the
ground, it was an effort for her to release herself from it, but because she
was so slight, she managed to do so.
When she was free, she stood shakily to her feet and Carmen noticed that
her left shoulder was drooping.
It
was dislocated.
She saw the pain on
Chloe’s face as she ran toward Carmen with her gun still held in her hand.
“You’re hurt,” Carmen said.
Chloe slipped her right arm around Carmen’s waist, put the side
of her face against her chest and they embraced.
“It’s just my shoulder,” she said.
“I’ll be all right.”
“I’m sorry,” Carmen said.
She held her face in her hands, saw the bruises and the split lip, and
felt sickened by it.
She looked
down at Chloe’s gun and took it away from her.
“What did they do to you?”
“They hit me, but I can take it.
It’s not as if it hasn’t happened
before.
I also killed a man, but he
deserved it.”
She paused and looked
Carmen in the eye.
“They said
you’re an assassin.
Is that true?”
Carmen wasn’t sure how to proceed.
For years, she had tried to be a
positive influence on Chloe’s life.
But what was she to her now?
An assassin.
A
murderer.
She never wanted her to
know that this life existed anywhere but in the movies, but now Chloe knew
better.
She had blood on her own
hands.
She may have acted in
self-defense, but tonight she nevertheless killed a man.
Carmen knew that moment would be with
her for the rest of her life.
“This happened to you because of me,” she said.
“We’ll talk later about who I am.
There are things about me that you need
to know, but they can wait.
Right
now, we need to get out of here.
I
can fix your shoulder myself, but it will hurt.”
“So, you’re also a doctor?”
“I’m not a doctor, Chloe.
But I can fix your shoulder.”
Spocatti was at the garage door, waiting for them.
“Ready?” he asked.
Carmen, angry with him, nodded.
He lifted the door and when he did, Jake, whose real name was
Fred but who wisely went by Jake, was standing just outside the door, obviously
distressed, hatred in his eyes, blood spattered on his face, his gun poised at
Spocatti, which he quickly lifted to the man’s head.
CHAPTER THIR
TY-TWO
“Get back,” Jake said.
“Drop your guns.”
Carmen dropped her gun and took a step back with Chloe, holding
the girl behind her for protection while noting that the blade on her shoe was
still extended.
Her eyes flicked up
to meet Jake’s.
Was there still
poison on the blade?
Certainly
there was some, but how much did she need to kill him?
Spocatti started to move, but in an unexpected flash, his gun
tipped upward and the bullet he put through Jake’s jaw also nicked his brain
and sent him into another world.
Carmen watched, unbelieving.
It was so swift.
Effortless.
Jake fell to the floor and started to
twitch and convulse as life left him.
Vincent kicked his gun away and watched him for a moment before he took
a step forward and leaned over him.
“Came to make a big scene, did you?
Probably had it all planned, too.
Sorry about that, buddy.”
Blood bubbled up and started to seep out of the man’s ears and
nose.
His brain was
hemorrhaging.
Carmen looked beyond
him.
They were exposed to the
outside.
Dozens of cars were behind
them with their headlights on.
If
anyone saw them, they’d also see what was happening.
She quickly stepped forward, grabbed Jake by the back of his
collar and pulled him in so she could shut the garage door.
It closed with a bang.
Finished, she looked up at Chloe and saw
the horror on her face.
“I wonder what your speech would have been, Fred,” Spocatti
said.
“I’m sure you had one ready
to deliver to me and to Carmen.
Must suck that you can’t say anything.
Or, for that matter, that you’ll never
be saying anything again.”
Jake, or Fred, whose last name was unknown to them, struggled
in his last moments of life to look at Spocatti.
It was an unfocused look.
There was no longer hatred in his
eyes.
Instead, there was only the
fight to stay alive, which he was losing.
Spocatti moved toward the garage door.
He looked at Carmen, who was retracting
the blade in her shoe.
“I didn’t
come all the way from Capri for his bullshit,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
He opened the door and, before closing it, he turned back to
look at the man who had come to kill them.
“I’ll make sure they put ‘Jake’ on your tombstone, Fred.”
Then, to Carmen, he said, “I know I was
rough.
I apologize, but I had to
make it look real if he was going to come around and face you.
I knew you planned to use the shoe.
You did well by Alex.
And by Babe, whom I fear is dead given
the blood on Jake’s face.
I think
both would be proud of you right now.”
Carmen reached into her pants pocket and removed her cell.
Since she was alive, there was no need
to wait.
To her contact at the
NYPD, she sent him everything she knew about the syndicate, which was enough to
shut it down forever, and added a note that he should come here now if he
wanted to receive the promotion both knew he wanted and deserved.
“We’ll take our own cab,” she said to Spocatti.
“Are we good?”
“We’re in limbo.”
“We should talk.”
“Maybe in a year.
I
don’t have time for you now.”
Without another word, she put her arm around Chloe’s waist,
pulled her close to her and walked away, leaving him to close the garage door
behind them and to escape into the night, just as he had done so many times
before.
###
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