Chapter 4
EDDIE
The bang was so loud my ears were ringing. Warm blood dripped down my face while the scent of copper choked me. In disbelief, I bounced my attention from the gun on the floor to Mike.
The gun.
Mike.
Ah, hell, then to the gun one more time. Why not? Guilt immediately began to hammer me, even though I hadn’t really done anything.
“What the hell happened? A guy is dead, that’s what happened. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.” I spit as the tang of blood hit my tongue. “Ew!”
The door opened and my gut dropped all the way to Antarctica. Tyler took a few steps forward, then stood there gaping. His bags fell to the floor with a loud clunk. My heart did weird arial acrobatics where it soared, then splatted near my toes. A tremor racked my body.
I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be happening.
“Oh my fuck. What happened?” Tyler shuffled farther inside, unsteady on his feet, but who could blame him?
He goggled at the carnage for a few seconds, then closed the door with a bang that made me flinch.
He had more common sense than I did because he quickly flipped the sign on the door to Closed.
It took him two tries to pull down the cheap old roller blind. Seconds later, the lock clicked.
This wasn’t how I’d expected my day to go. Not by a longshot.
I’d tried to come here this morning, but believe it or not, apparently a pawnshop didn’t keep regular hours.
There had been a note.
Mike will be back around three, motherfuckers! He has shit to do!
I’d attempted to find the other people on Tyler’s list to ask how they knew him, how his life had been while I was safe in California, but the only one I could locate for certain was Dad. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in a hot blue hell I wanted to tangle with him today.
Screw that.
Holidays were bad enough. I didn’t need to add extra days I saw the asshole. I couldn’t believe I’d eaten Chinese food at Thanksgiving with someone who’d done that to Tyler.
So, I’d run some errands while checking my phone repeatedly, killing time till three.
A stupid, ridiculous part of me hoped Tyler would simply call me and I could ask him about the list. No such luck.
When I arrived back at the pawnshop, the lights were on and the Open sign was facing front, so I went in.
Biggest mistake ever. The heat was cranked too high and a smell like someone’s moth-ball infested closet mixed with a gut-wrenching Eau de Cat Piss slapped me in the face. “Wonderful. Just what I wanted to do with my Saturday.”
There were too many shelves packed into the small space.
The aisle through the middle made me feel the need to suck in my gut to walk through.
Each shelf was jam-packed with random crap.
A pile of fur coats took up the bottom of one shelf, and I tried not to get too close. I swore I saw a flea jump off it.
“Hello?” an irritated male voice called from farther back in the shop.
I made my way through the shelves until I was in a holding cell in front of a long case smudged with fingerprints. Jewelry, cell phones, and other electronics were behind the sturdy glass, apparently too expensive to float free with the rest of the trash.
“Who are you?” The man came through a door and stopped behind the counter with his nose wrinkled.
He was about my height and had a button nose and blond curls, which should’ve softened his face, but the multitude of divots from what appeared to be a lifelong acne problem didn’t allow that to happen.
Of course, his harsh scowl didn’t improve the situation.
“Uh, hi. I’m here because I’m looking for someone.
” I fished in my pocket for the list, but the man, presumably one of the Shanahan brothers, pulled a gun from inside the glass case and shoved it in my face.
It was big. Gray. Shiny. And I was sure it was going to be the last thing I saw on this stupid earth.
I gasped and my hands flew in the air without directions from my body. Points to me. I knew how to be held at gunpoint without anyone explaining the rules.
“I’m not in the business of handing out names.” Shanahan gestured at himself, then the junk on the shelves. “You a cop?”
I shook my head so fast I was a little dizzy when I stopped. “Who would be a cop? Not me, that’s who. Fuck the police, that’s what I always say!” My nervous laughter made me feel a bit sick.
He cocked his head and wriggled the gun at me. “What’s your name?”
“Eddie!”
He huffed and his eyelashes fluttered. “You and six of my cousins. Last name?” He raised his eyebrows and stared into my soul.
“Wheelright.”
His expression closed down as he came around the counter to threaten me more personally. He poked my chest with the tip of the gun.
My balls practically ascended to heaven. “Ouch.”
“You’re just here for a cop, then. Doing a cop’s fucking dirty work. That’s worse. Detective Wheelright’s related to you? There aren’t any other Wheelrights around New Gothenburg.” He jabbed my chest so hard with the gun that I grunted.
“N-no, I’m not!” I couldn’t run now. Perhaps I’d messed up and Tyler’s list was of bad people to avoid like a brand-new plague, but a stupid part of me couldn’t let this go.
“How do you know Tyler? I’m worried about him.
I want to help him. Please.” I cupped my hands under my chin and begged harder than someone in the front pew of a church on Sunday morning—after Saturday at a whorehouse.
Shanahan blinked and snorted, slapping the gun down on the corner of a nearby shelf so he could rub his face with both hands. “Tyler White or Pretty Boy Tyler?” He gave me a nasty grin.
Anger churned in my gut along with another heaping helping of guilt. Perhaps if I’d taken Tyler with me, assholes like this wouldn’t think they were better than him. “He has scars. He’s sweet, though.”
“My name’s Mike, and Tyler’s about as sweet as a rabid dog’s kiss. You want to stay away from that one. The guy might suck cock like it’s an Olympic sport, but he’s got a screw loose.” He twirled his finger beside his head, and my anger spiked.
“How do you know him?” All the junk was closer to me. My skin tingled. Teeny bugs must be crawling on me. Don’t think about flea-ridden fur coats. Oh God, are they far enough away? I need to shower.
“You’re standing in my place of business.
” He shrugged a shoulder and glanced around with his chest puffed out, and I was baffled that he really was proud of this dump.
“That idiot used to try to bring in cop shit he stole. Then would complain when me or my brother paid less due to the risk we were taking. Like I needed that dickhead detective sniffing around and taking a bite out of my ass.” He snorted and wiped his nose with the side of his hand.
“Plus, he used to give out bjs in the alley behind my place. Pretty sure that ass got a workout, too. If I’m going to take a risk, it sure won’t be for a whore. ”
Fury set me on fire. I didn’t think, just shoved him. We scuffled for a few seconds. He slapped my face, and I tugged his ear. He shrieked, then his shoulder hit the shelving and the gun dropped.
My stomach became a void.
The gun was falling.
Falling.
Falling.
For seven eternities.
I flinched as the bang drove off every sense of peace I’d ever had. In the same instant, blood splattered my face and chest, hot and damp. The gun clattered across the floor.
Mike crumpled, a big part of his forehead missing. He went down harder than a tree. I had to assume he was already dead. I stared morbidly, noting the hole under his chin. I supposed the police would call that the “entry point.”
The gun would become the “murder weapon.”
That would make me . . . .
Guilt and horror made the room spin. “Fuck! Just . . . what the fuck?”
Then, next thing I knew, Tyler had joined the shit show.
And here we were, staring at each other with a fresh corpse on the floor.
“Why would you come here?” he shouted, barreling toward me. Despite his words, his gaze darted down my body, as if making sure none of the blood was mine.
With a shaking hand, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and brought up the picture of the list to point out Mike’s name, smearing blood everywhere.
“How did I get blood on my hands? Shit! I wanted to know who these people were to you. I guess one of the only good things I got from my dad was curiosity.”
He groaned and hung his head. “They’re fuckers I wanted dead, Eddie! Which you must’ve guessed since you killed him!”
“But . . . . But I’m on the list.”
Tyler shrugged. He seemed less stressed about this than I’d expected. There was no crying. No shrinking away in fear.
Instead, he just seemed pissed I’d caused a mess.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I hadn’t meant to kill Mike, get my alibi started, but since he thought I did do it—for him no less—I didn’t.
Guilt took a swipe at me, but I kept my mouth firmly shut.
I couldn’t help it, though. The horrible humor of the situation got to me, and a dark chuckle escaped into the air between us.
“So, you’re saying I did you a favor?” I asked.
His mouth fell open. “Are you okay?”
“No, but at least you’re here.” Warmth tickled me because he cared enough to ask, but it was swiftly followed by a thousand terrible emotions. “At least I’m not alone with . . . .”
He stepped forward, and I was shocked when he hugged me, blood and gore and all. His arms were wiry but solid. He radiated strength I was missing right now. It was just what I needed.
“Fuck, I missed you.” Hell, perhaps I was the one having a meltdown. I sniffled and sagged against him.
“I thought maybe you didn’t go to California.” He gave me a squeeze. “Thought maybe your dad had killed you, especially after what he did to me.”
I nodded, too choked up to speak for a minute as our situation hammered me. Wham! Like a baseball bat wielded by a psychopath in a serial-killer movie. My emotions were all over the place and my fingers twitched. “We could call the cops?”
He stepped back and his jaw tightened. A glimpse of his old self shined through. He’d always been a happy-go-lucky guy with a ton of common sense. He glanced down at Mike. “If we do, what’s to stop your dad from using this to finish cleaning up his mess? The electric chair would do it just fine.”
When I cocked my head and frowned, he pointed at his face.
“Oh. Oh fuck!” My stomach flipped, doing its own version of a highwire act. “I don’t think New York still has capital punishment, so we’d just get life in prison.”
He lowered his head and stared at me.
“You’re right. That isn’t better. So, how do we do this?” I asked, forcing a cheerful tone.
He scowled. “I know a guy who can help.”
“Call him?” My stomach churned because Tyler knew a guy who could help clean up a fucking murder. That wasn’t good. What sort of people had he been hanging around with since I’d left?
He sighed and bent over the corpse. I wasn’t sure what he was doing until he stood up with a key ring he’d obviously lifted from the body and shook it at me. “Does calling someone from the scene of a murder seem smart to you?”
“Oh. No.” I shook my head. “To be fair, I’ve never killed anyone until today.
” What was I doing? This was going to be a lie that came back to bite me on the ass—perhaps forever—and I was telling it why?
Because I wanted so much to make things up to Tyler?
Shit, this was insane, but I didn’t open my mouth to tell him it was an accident, either.
“Come on.” He headed toward the back of the shop, as if he knew where he was going.
My stomach felt wobbly. Did he really service men behind this rundown junk shop? Was that my fault because I never checked on him? “I’m sorry for leaving—”
“Don’t talk.” He glared over his shoulder at me. The fluorescent lights overhead made red bruises on his neck stand out. Were those finger marks?
“Those weren’t there earlier. What happened?” I asked, brushing my fingers on my own neck when he glanced back again.
He huffed. “Don’t. Talk.”
A cold blast of air hit me as he shoved open the back door. Since I had no fucking clue how to fix this, I figured I’d better start following some orders.
I slapped a hand over my mouth.