Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Decker
“I need to make some calls—one to my handler. And since you’re still living back at home, why not call your dad? He might know what’s happened to Regi since that fucked up day with Teke,” I suggested.
Krew shook his head. “Dad’s useless. Trust me. After I got out of prison, I looked for her. All he told me was that she ran away, and her parents didn’t bother lifting a finger to find her.”
“You keep saying jail—you mean juvie,” I corrected, watching as Krew’s face shut down.
“No. I mean prison. Specifically, Chillicothe Correctional Institute,” he bit out through clenched teeth.
“That’s not right?—”
“What’s not right is you telling me what happened when you weren’t even there.” Krew turned his back to me. His shoulders slumped, as though a two-ton weight had dropped on them.
Slack jawed, my mind fought to understand what had happened to Krew. When he mentioned jail earlier, too much shit was happening around us at the time for it to sink into in my skull. I’d just assumed he meant juvie. But Chillicothe?
It might be a medium security prison, yet something had happened inside there for Krew to be tight-lipped about his time.
My heart revolted against this knowledge.
Those demoralizing pricks had put Krew in with convicted felons doing hard time.
And for what? He’d only been trying to do the right thing and not rat out his brother.
Instead, he’d marginalized his own innocence and gone down for the theft of that damn car.
I wanted to reach for Krew, pull him into my arms, but pity and remorse seemed to be the last things he needed right now from me. “Tell me what happened.”
“Some other time. Right now, we need to stop the killers from coming after us.” Krew dismissed me like I was a gnat. He went back into the motel room, and quietly shut the door.
I stood there for a long moment, mentally ticking off the minutes until I could put a bullet in Teke’s brain and then bury his sorry ass in a shallow grave as payment for what he did to his own brother. I pulled out a cigarette, needing the nicotine, lit it and took out my cell phone.
“Yo, bossman,” Sabrina chimed in.
“You’re not funny,” I grated out, then glanced at the closed door of the motel room. I took the metal stairs down to the parking lot. “What do you have for me?”
“Word’s out that you’re in the game, and you’re not gonna be happy about the players involved,” she said, as rapid tapping echoed from her end. There was no doubt Sabrina was digging deep into the search for whoever put out the contracts on Krew and Regina.
“Who are the players and who threw my people under the bus—I want to know specifics. Those are the three things I need to know,” I demanded, climbing into my truck and leave the door open. I glanced up at our room and saw an edge of the closed curtains move.
“Hold on. I text you the list of who the heavy hitters are, but…” More frantic tapping on reached my ears. “Shit, this doesn’t make sense,” Sabrina muttered.
“What doesn’t?” I dragged in a deep inhale from the cigarette and let the smoke fill my lungs before I released it into the chilly air.
“From the information you gave me on your friends, I don’t understand why these two are targeted.
They grew up together—you already know that.
What I’m not seeing is any connection between them for at least ten years.
There’s nothing on the radar that’s bad.
There’s no connection to any criminal organizations.
They aren’t friends with any scumbags who need their faces rearranged. ”
“That doesn’t give me much, Sabrina,” I huffed out, and climbed into my truck.
“Hold on bossman?—”
“Will you stop calling me that?” I slammed my fist down on the dash, as frustration fueled the need to do some damage.
“Chill. Ever think about alternatives to nicotine or coffee? Caf?—”
“Sabrina,” I hissed in warning.
“Sor-ry. Okay, I… wait.” More vigorous tapping met my ears. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“You already said that.” I barely refrained from yelling at the infuriating woman.
“You’re not understanding me. I just pulled up the original contracts again, making sure I got all the details correct, and there are new images attached, replacing the ones from before. I’m sending you those photos now.”
My phone pinged and I tapped on the screen. “Is someone messing with us?” I slid my fingers up and opened the images Sabrina sent me.
“It looks like it. The original photos and names attached to the contracts matched the images of your friends that you sent me earlier. These new photos are now attached to those contracts, but the names remain the same. The men look nothing alike. But the female… she looks almost exact to your Regina.”
I blew out an irritated breath. “The photos are grainy. I can’t decipher the images,” I admitted, trying to enlarge the pictures, but the faces blurred even more. “Who am I looking at?”
“Give me a second. I’m going to try to clear the images up.”
“I’m racking my brain over this. How can anyone change a contract kill that’s been out for over twelve hours? And why would anyone change the headshots—no pun attended—on a contract, but not the names?” I took another deep inhale, wishing for answers.
“Whoever took out the original contracts fucked up royally and tried to correct it, or someone is fucking with us. It looks like—what the hell—wait a second.” Fast clicks over on Sabrina’s end had me grinding my teeth while I impatiently waited for her explanation.
“I don’t have all damn day,” I grated out.
“Two more contracts just came out, and you won’t believe who they are for.”
“Tell me,” I demanded and closed the door. More cars entered the parking lot and parked around my truck. The last one was a white work van, but I paid them no mind. My eyes trailed back to what Sabrina was saying.
“Same exact details, but different names. Same images as the grainy ones I just sent you. And these marks do have connections to Kane Maxwell.”
“Who are they?” I was so pissed that it hadn’t dawned on me until now that there were four contracts on the table.
“The female’s name on the second set of contracts is Maya Darvy?—”
“Fuck me,” I barked. I Hers was the last name I expected to hear.
“Damn it, I’m losing my frickin’ touch,” Sabrina rumbled in frustration.
“The new mark has the same address as your girl—shit. And, wait for it… the bitch is dating Jess Duncan. He’s the other new mark.
This Jess Duncan is—well, was connected to Kane, and his not-so clean associates. Frickin’ A, I need to fire myself.”
I wanted to throw my phone through the windshield.
Instead, I gripped it tight and took another drag on my cigarette to calm my temper.
“Where’s Maya and Jess now?” I clipped, as rage tipped into my bloodstream.
Never would I have guessed that Regina’s best friend from school was a part of all this.
I hadn’t trusted her back then because she was jealous of Regina, but our girl had never seen Maya in the same light as Krew and I had.
Whenever Regina wasn’t around, Maya had offered herself up to me and Krew—especially to Krew. Her desperation to get into my guy’s pant was nearing stalkerish. And every one of Maya’s advances had been rejected with prejudice.
“I’m sending you those new contracts,” Sabrina said, drawing me out of the past. I opened the jpeg, and immediately recognized the guy’s face. He had been standing next to Kane at the fight. And Sabrina was correct when she said that Jess bore no similarity to Krew.
With Maya’s short hair, her height and build, it was uncanny how much she resembled Regina. Right down to the color of her brown hair.
“Give me today and I’ll track her and that Jess guy down, along with who’s after yours,” Sabrina promised before all I heard was dead air. Merrick complained once that she never said goodbye, Sabrina just hung up on him—and I was beginning to see his point of irritation.
I dropped the phone in my lap and took the last drag of the cigarette and tossed it out the window.
I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that Maya—Regina’s best friend, was involved. The way she and Regina looked alike… “Shit.” Was that done on purpose?
Then I remembered Regina at the fight. The woman next to her…
“Fucking hell.” I threw my head back, banging it on the headrest, pissed at my own lack of focus.
My sole attention had been on my girl, that Maya wasn’t even in the periphery. I had blinders on before I shifted my sights on killing Kane.
Frustration cut through me and my concentration had been off from the moment I’d caught sight of Krew and Regina at the fight. Though, not enough to separate myself from them.
The guy… Jess—he was standing next to Kane in the ring. They must have been partners—and if that was true, then why hadn’t there been a a contract on Jess’s head at the same time as Kane’s? I could have done a two for one.
Where did Maya fit into all of this? And now there were four kill contracts out—one for Maya, one for Jess, one for Regina with Maya’s grainy picture, and one for Krew with a crappy image of Jess.
What. A. Clusterfuck.
It seemed that the contracts on Regina and Krew might have been a case of mistaken identity, or someone had been purposefully messing with the contracts, like Sabrina suggested.
Nothing mattered at this point. Because as long as the contracts were out there, some hitman would chase the pot.
And I was going to make damn sure not one bullet harmed either Krew or Regina.
With a last drag from the cigarette, I lowered the window and flicked it out. As I was raising up the glass, I caught sight of the white van. It was parked two spaces down from me. The more I stared at the vehicle; there were similar scratch marks and dents on the driver’s side of the van.
It looked like the exactly like one that sat in front of Regina’s apartment building this morning.
From my vantage point, I could see that the engine was running, and the guy in the driver’s seat was fixed on the second floor.
I snagged my phone and texted Krew to stay away from the window.
Then I slowly reached for my glove box and retrieved my Ruger and silencer.
This was a shitty area, and the sounds of gunshots would not be uncommon, but I didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention.
Especially unwanted witnesses. Or the cops.
When the driver looked down, I carefully slipped out of the truck, left the door ajar, and dropped to a crouch position. I got to my truck’s taillight and glanced around, making sure nobody was nearby.
Cleared to go, I dashed to the back of the van. Surprising the fucker was my goal, since he was on the driver’s side and in case he had a gun ready. I had no room for error.
If it was me, I’d have the doors locked—not every hitter thought like I did, though. If I had to, I’d shoot through the glass.
After I took a slow even inhale, screwed on the silencer, and slinked to the passenger side. I didn’t hesitate—I reached for the handle and yanked the door open.
Luck was on my side because the idiot hadn’t locked the doors. The driver snapped his head in my direction and audibly gasped.
“Surprise, dumbass.” I aimed my gun at his head. “Oh, no, you don’t. Keep your hands where I can see them, unless you want to find out just how fast I can splatter your brain all over the window.”
The hitman’s gun was on his lap. And from the fury boiling in his pale blue eyes, the hitman wasn’t about to listen.
“Final warning,” I said evenly, giving no clue to how trigger happy I was feeling in that moment.
He must have seen that I wouldn’t give two shits about putting a bullet in his brain. He slowly raised his hands and sneered, “What do you want?”
“Just warning you that you’re going after the wrong people. Those two up there aren’t the ones you’re looking for. I just confirmed it with my handler. So if you want to stay alive, I suggest you leave.”
One side of his lip curled up and the coldness in his eyes revealed everything I needed to know. He didn’t believe me. In a flash, he reached for the gun in his lap. He was fast, but not faster than me.
I pulled the trigger, nailing him in the right eye. On impact, the back of his head bounced against the driver’s side window and he slumped over. Blood oozed from the now-hollowed-out orifice, and his brain matter dripped down the cracked glass.
I waited a moment, listening intently for the sounds of any commotion around us. There was nothing except for normal parking lot noise.
I climbed into the van—keeping the gun pointed at his head, I checked his pockets for identification. I pulled his wallet from his coat pocket—a sure sign of his inexperience, and glanced at the driver’s license. “Thomas J. Malone,” I uttered in a snort before shoving the wallet back in my pocket.
I then manipulated the dead man’s hand to turn off the van and I climbed out. Using my shirt, I manually engaged all the door locks and wiped my prints off the door handle.
This place wasn’t safe anymore. Eventually someone would discover the dead body in the van and they’d call the cops and report it.
I had to get Regina and Krew out of here before another killer showed up. Though, that was the simple part. Telling them about Maya’s involvement, and the screwed-up contracts wasn’t going to be easily explained.
There was no clear-cut way to break the news to them gently. I was pretty sure Krew would take it well. But Regina? Based on her reactions so far, she wouldn’t handle it well.
I returned my gun to the glove box, locked the truck, and rushed back up to the room with only one purpose, to get my friends out of there. Instead, I ended up walking into chaos, with Regina and Krew screaming at each other.