When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (12 page)

“What the fuck reasons could you have for killing my father and mother?”

“Your mother wasn’t supposed to happen. She got in the way. Your dad, well, I’d think you’d want him dead too.”

Bruno took three steps forward, put the gun barrel on the bridge of Lars’s nose. “Why in hell would I want my own father dead?”

“Because of what he did to Lenore.”

Lars watched as the ghost of the woman they both loved moved over his face. The fierceness in Bruno’s tight jaw loosened and confusion set in.

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?”

“Spit it out. What about her?”

“He killed her.”

A bullet hit the back windshield. Lars cringed and spun his head. Bruno flinched too, unsure if it was friendly fire. Lars saw the gut shot man standing like a zombie, listless and slack jawed and bleeding from his stomach. Then the man’s head was only half there. The other shot reached Lars’s ears and the man was already falling, one eye sleepy and one eye gone.

Lars saw Shaine standing by the rental car, gun out in a practiced two-hand grip. He knew Bruno would be seeing the same thing. Lars turned, leading with his elbows.

One caught Bruno’s gun hand, the other came around and cracked Bruno in the chin. Lars put a hand on Bruno’s gun and got zero resistance as he tore it from the loose grip. He hit Bruno once more for good measure, then spun him to flop positions and held the gun under his chin, the same way he had done to Leo.

Lars waited for Bruno to grasp what had happened. By the time Bruno came around, Shaine joined Lars by his side, gun at the ready.

“Now I want you to answer some questions for me,” Lars said.

Lars felt around under the notch above the license plate, found the release and opened the trunk. He put Bruno’s hand on the edge between the body of the car and the open trunk, spread his fingers until his pinky draped over the gap. He set a hand on the trunk lid, hovering over Bruno’s hand like a guillotine.

“Tell me again you didn’t know about Lenore.”

“I didn’t. I swear,” Bruno said.

Lars brought the lid down. The latch caught and the finely machined German bodywork held tight, Bruno’s pinky finger trapped between two pieces of steel. Lars reached down and opened the trunk again.

Bruno tried to keep from screaming. Did a decent job of it, too. Lars saw how painful the broken finger must have been when he adjusted the twisted pinky out of the way and set Bruno’s ring finger in the same position. Bruno let out a small cry when Lars touched the twisted finger.

“How could you not know?” Lars asked.

“I loved her.”

Lars brought the trunk down again. This time Bruno cried out.

Shaine took a step back. She hadn’t seen this side of Lars before. Something about this girl had pushed him too far.

Lars moved Bruno’s middle finger into place, held the lid in striking position again.

Lars continued to spit accusations. “He said she was pregnant.”

“She was,” Bruno said. It became hard for him to speak. Breaths caught in his throat, electric shocks of pain ran down his arm from his two broken fingers. “I told . . . I tried to tell her to get rid of it, but she wouldn’t. She wanted to keep it. We were working it out when . . . when she was killed.”

“By your father.”

“No. It’s not possible.”

Lars brought the trunk down. A car passed on the road, didn’t slow down for what looked like two men changing a tire if you didn’t look closely. If anyone did look closely they’d see the man being tortured, the guns, the dead bodies, and they’d keep driving anyway.

The third of Bruno’s fingers came away twisted and bleeding. The nail on his middle finger was torn almost completely off. Bruno made a low guttural sound like a wounded animal. To Lars, that’s all he was.

Lars set Bruno’s index finger on the gap.

“He wanted to shut her up,” Lars said. “He had her killed to make it easier on you, you spoiled little fuck. Little Bruno gets in trouble and daddy has to come in and take care of everything for him.”

Bruno was crying now. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

“But you knew about Lenore and me.”

“You left. She got tired of waiting. What am I supposed to do?” Bruno struggled to keep his footing. “I loved her.”

Lars slammed the trunk. “You don’t get to say that.”

Shaine stepped forward. “Lars, stop.”

He gave her a look that backed her off. His eyes sent a chill through her colder than the wind.

Lars positioned the trunk lid over Bruno’s thumb. Bruno’s head nodded, the pain bringing him to the verge of unconscious. Tears flowed from his eyes, but Lars could see they came less from the pain in his hand than from the realization of the truth behind Lenore’s death.

Bruno mumbled through his tears. “My baby . . . that was my baby.”

Lars felt a sobering shudder move through him. He believed Bruno. The torture to the man’s hand was nothing compared to what his own father had done to him.

Lars couldn’t kill him. He couldn’t kill someone who loved Lenore, maybe more than Lars did. He’d left her behind to fall into the arms of another man, how could he be surprised by it?

He needed to get away from Bruno’s whimpering, from his pain. Lars couldn’t get over the overwhelming feeling Bruno’s pain should have been his. It should have been his child, should have been him grieving for her, but Lars didn’t even know until months after the fact. He’d waited nearly two decades to see her grave. And now he’d forced Bruno to relive her death for a second time.

Shaine’s hand on his shoulder brought Lars out of his fog. He eased Bruno down to the ground, his thumb unscathed. Bruno cradled his twisted hand as he sat on the cold ground.

Lars bent down close to his ear as he set Bruno down, quiet so Shaine wouldn’t be able to hear. “I loved her too.”

Bruno went into a fetal position, clutching his hand to his chest and weeping.

Lars motioned his head to the Mercedes and Shaine followed him in. They drove away leaving Bruno alone with three dead bodies in the ditch, and one firmly planted in his memory.

The inside of the surveillance van felt like a prison cell to Qualls. His foot tapped, his underarms were moist. The gum he chewed with a jackhammer pace had lost its flavor an hour ago. The other two agents in the van with him wanted out simply to get away from him.

“That motherfucker,” he said over the open communications link.

Ford’s voice crackled in. “Yeah, it doesn’t take this long to get here from White Plains.”

“A fucking setup,” Qualls said, angry at himself for trusting Nikki.

“What for?” asked Ford. “What’s his angle in it?”

“I don’t know. Get Lars out of town? Make me look like a douche?”

“He can say he stuck to his end of the bargain. He sent Lars to us. If he didn’t make for some reason, it’s not his fault. He’s trying to have his cake and eat it to. In protection.”

“You got any open spots in Iceland or some place?”

Ford chuckled. In defeat, the two men could actually get along.

“We can’t stick to the bargain, can we?”

“The higher ups want him too bad. If I let him go at this point, it’s career suicide.”

“You’ll be the one in Iceland.”

“No shit.”

Qualls gave the order to stand down. His big fish would live to swim another day.

“So what are we gonna do,” Shaine asked.

The Mercedes sat idling on the street across from Nikki’s place, a steady cloud of steam exhaling from the tailpipe like a chain smoker.

“You’re right. We need to leave. I did my job. Let him take back the extra money, I don’t care.”

Lars didn’t put the car in drive. Going into that house and telling Nikki he wouldn’t do the last job would be like telling his own father he was leaving and fuck him if he was disappointed. As he thought about it, those were almost the exact words he used to his own dad when Lars left home at seventeen.

“I don’t know about you,” Shaine said. “But I’m getting damn tired of all these near death experiences.”

Lars smiled at her. “You did great, by the way.”

“Thanks. Kinda late to the party.”

“Nah, perfect timing. Fashionably late.”

“I hate saying it,” she said. “But it was a little bit easier.”

“Yeah.” Lars turned away from her. “It gets too easy.”

They sat in silence for another minute, then Lars drove up the driveway.

***

Nikki fumbled open the center drawer on his desk when Lars walked in. The .38 he kept close by hid under a stack of papers, lists of names and dates of criminal activity he’d made for Qualls. His diary of remembered crimes and criminals that would lead him to safety and away from all this constant paranoia. If he could only make it to Monday.

“You’re back,” Nikki said. He pushed the papers aside, trying to act casual as he made for the gun. The damn sheaf of documents was so thick and unstapled the more he pushed the more he made a protective layer covering the gun.

“I didn’t do it,” Lars said. Shaine stood by the door, arms folded in front of her.

“What do you mean you didn’t do it?” The search for the gun stopped. If Lars wanted him dead, he’d be dead.

“Bruno ran us off the road, tried to kill me.”

“That little fucker again?”

“Yeah. Had issues with me going to Lenore’s grave. And for killing his parents.”

“Well, at least you finally got him taken care of. Let me tell you, nobody’s gonna cry over that greasy-haired fuck. Lot of people are gonna wear red to his funeral.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Nikki left his hand in the drawer, moved some papers with the tips of his fingers, being subtle. “Why not?”

“He didn’t know about Leo.”

“How could he not fucking know what his own father did to his girlfriend?”

“I guess Leo was protecting him. You didn’t tell me about Lenore, y’know.”

“That’s different.”

Lars took off his heavy winter coat, exposing his shoulder holster. He draped the coat on the arm of the sofa. “How?”

“Because you weren’t fucking her anymore. And you were a few thousand miles away on a job for me.”

“And the job was more important?”

“Yes. Y’know, I don’t really like your attitude right now.”

“I’ve been told it’s bad before.”

Nikki could sense losing control over Lars. After all these years having a faithful dog to do any trick asked of him, Lars, at fifty, had finally grown a spine.

“I paid you, didn’t I? Let you take your time like you said you needed? How many other people do you think would have been so patient?”

“Not many.”

“Damn right. When I send you out on a job I’m sending you to take care of somebody who needs to go away. I’m not doing this for my own entertainment.”

“Does that include my father?” Shaine asked, arms crossed.

Nikki looked up at her, having almost forgotten she was in the room.

“Yes. Especially him. Now shut the fuck up will you? The men are talking.”

Shaine started forward, her arms coming uncrossed. “I will not shut up.”

“Shaine,” Lars said.

Nikki’s hand dug in the drawer. He no longer tried to hide it.

“You ruined our fucking lives!” she said, coming at him fast. Shaine reached across the desk and grabbed Nikki’s oxygen line in her hand and yanked. The clear plastic tubing ripped from his head, pulling down at his ears as the loops were torn away.

Nikki sat stiff in his chair, stunned. His hand froze with two fingers on the gun. He wasn’t sure exactly what happened or what the girl’s next move would be.

Lars stepped in and held Shaine’s arms from behind her, gripping her biceps and pulling her back a few steps.

“Bastard!” she screamed.

Nikki’s hand came out of the drawer with the gun.

 Lars stepped in front of Shaine and batted Nikki’s hand away. After he swatted at the gun his own hand went to his pistol in the holster. He stopped when it got there, hand on the butt, gun still in the leather.

Everyone froze.

“You have to check your temper,” Lars said.

“Which one of us?” Nikki asked.

“Both of you.”

Lars eased his hand away from the gun, put a shoe over the dropped .38 and slid it away where it went under the sofa.

“As I was saying,” Lars said in his most calm voice. “I didn’t think Bruno deserved to die. And I don’t think this Ford guy does either. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? You can’t leave. You didn’t do Ford.”

“That’s right. Not everyone is worth killing.” Lars stared an ice pick through Nikki. He’d never gotten a look like it from Lars. He knew how deadly he could be, but had never seen it directed at him. Nikki felt like he’d faced down a hooded cobra and not gotten bit.

“But you have to kill him.”

“Why?”

Nikki swallowed, his breathing labored. He reached out weakly for his air hose. Lars turned to Shaine who accepted his silent call to stay put. Lars stepped around the desk and gathered up the twisted tubes, straightened them and handed them to Nikki who strung them around his ears again and fed pure oxygen up his nose once more.

He took several deep breaths before speaking again. “Because he knows about Hawaii.”

Lars stood still, a storm of anger inside. “How?”

“I had to tell them something.” Nikki’s shoulders slumped. “They were gonna call off the deal, you don’t understand.”

“You stupid fuck,” Shaine said. Lars did not try to calm her down this time.

“I knew you’d go kill him and then problem solved,” Nikki said. “How am I supposed to know you suddenly grew a conscience?”

“Who else knows?”

“Nobody, just him.”

“He could have told people. Washington.”

“On a weekend? Not these bureaucratic fucks. He’s the only one who knows. That’s why you’ve got to take him out.”

Lars couldn’t deny it—he wanted to shoot something. He wished he’d been stronger on the phone before he ever came back to this place.

This time his heart wasn’t cold at all. He felt a hot rage at anyone who would try to take away what he’d fought so hard for—his anonymity, his seclusion. And he knew they’d take away Shaine. If Lars went to jail, that would be one thing, but Shaine would be sent to some government program, or cast out on her own since she was over eighteen. Her world would be destroyed a second time.

He decided to use his anger and turn it toward the man trying to take everything away from him.

“Can you two play nice until I get back?” he asked.

“You’re going without me?” Shaine asked.

“You stay here,” Lars said. He pointed to Nikki’s desk. “Get on the computer and book us flights. As soon as I get back, we’re headed to the airport.”

Shaine sneered at Nikki. “Fine.”

Lars turned to Nikki, loomed over him. He noticed the fading bruises on Nikki’s head. The yellow edges rimming a dark purple center, the skin around it so thin it looked like he could see bone beneath. Lars had an idea and drew his gun. “And Nikki . . .” He put the barrel of the gun between Nikki’s eyes. “You ever pull a gun on her again and I won’t stop. You hear me?”

Nikki nodded. Lars reared back and struck him across the temple, placing the butt of his gun in the center of the bruise. Bulls-eye. Nikki went down.

“Get to work. I’m doing this in record time and then get me the fuck out of this place.” Lars bent down to where Nikki lay sprawled out on the floor beside the desk. He took the clear plastic air tube from the oxygen tank and fitted the hoses below Nikki’s nose, making sure the man he K.O’d got enough air while he lay unconscious.

“He’ll only be out a few minutes,” Lars said. “He shouldn’t give you any more shit, though.”

“Thanks.”

Lars crossed the room and left to go kill himself an FBI agent.