Chapter 5
Frank
I kept my back flat against those kitchen cupboards with the rum bottle still in my grip, my heart doing its best to kill me before the assholes outside got the chance. I strained to listen. Nothing. What the hell are they waiting for?
The stupid light over the dining table was on. I could fix that. I’d just act like everything was normal. Just a bloke heading to bed.
Keeping my breathing steady, I flicked the light off and walked down the hallway like I was done for the night. I turned on the bedroom light. Pulled the curtains. Then, remembering which floorboards creaked, I picked my way back to the kitchen and eased up to the window.
The base of the lemon tree was empty.
They’d moved.
The back door wasn’t locked. Too late now. I doubted a lock would stop these blokes anyway.
I’d always figured they’d find me eventually. My undoing had to be my dumb-ass trip to the shops. Someone had clocked me and passed the word along. I should’ve stayed put. Then again, I wasn’t about to starve myself to death just to stay hidden. A man had limits.
Maybe tonight, the Grim Reaper had finally stopped messing around.
Well, screw him. I still wasn’t going down without a fight. Those bastards were in for one hell of a surprise.
My shotgun was propped against Willy’s La-Z-Boy chair in the living room, right where I’d left it the day I’d moved in. Loaded. Ready. Hadn’t touched it since.
Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about using it, but a shotgun was loud. Real loud. And Willy’s street was quiet enough that a blast at ten o’clock at night would bring the cops in five minutes flat.
Then again, maybe the bastards outside were cops.
Wouldn’t be Bob, though. Bob never did his own dirty work. He paid people to get bloody. Always had. And I had absolutely no doubt about what the men crouching behind that lemon tree had been paid to do.
However, they had no idea who they were dealing with.
I just needed to keep one of them breathing long enough to give me answers. I needed to know if it was Bob who’d sent them.
A knife block sat in the corner of the bench. Willy’s big carving knife was still in it. The blade’s German steel and wooden handle weighed well in the hand. Good for gutting something. Or someone.
I crawled to the bench and grabbed the block, glancing out the window as I did. Still couldn’t see them.
What the hell are they doing? Have they gone around the front?
I sat the block on the floor and pulled out all five knives. Then I crawled to the wall behind the back door and laid them out where I could reach them fast, keeping the carving knife in my right hand and the paring knife in my left. I pressed flat against the wall and waited.
The back stairs creaked. The handle turned. The door inched open.
My heart boomed like a damn thunderclap.
The door swung wider, and the felt strip beneath it scraped across the linoleum. A man stepped into the room, showing me his back.
Christ, he’s a big bastard.
The second man stepped in behind him, greasy hair sticking out in all directions.
Oh hell. That’s Wayne Henderson.
Which meant the big one was Bruce.
Shit, they’re armed. Bruce had a gun in his right hand. Wayne had a length of chain looped around his fist.
They hadn’t come to talk.
The moment Wayne’s back boot cleared the threshold, I stepped out from behind the door and shoved it hard, slamming it shut. Both brothers jerked and stumbled forward into the kitchen. Bruce swung his gun wide.
I drove the carving knife into his side before he got me in his sights, hard and upward, same way I put down a wounded beast. Bruce made a sound I’d only ever heard from livestock. The pistol skittered across the linoleum and disappeared under the fridge.
His legs buckled, and he went sideways, crashing into Wayne, and the two of them tangled together on the kitchen floor. The chain clattered across the floor.
“Fuck. Bruce. Bruce, you okay?” Wayne heaved his brother off him and came up off the floor faster than a man his size had any right to.
I grabbed the paring knife off the floor and went for Wayne’s shoulder. He twisted away. I still got him, but the blade didn’t go deep enough.
His gaze swept the kitchen floor, maybe looking for the chain, the gun, or both.
I kicked the chain hard. It skittered into the corner behind me.
Blood oozed from Wayne’s shoulder, but it did nothing to slow him down. He straightened to his full height, and in Willy’s tiny kitchen, the walls seemed to shrink around him.
“Bruce. Get up, man,” Wayne said.
“He ain’t getting up,” I growled, raising the knife, wishing it was a hell of a lot bigger.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you.” The rage in his eyes was past thinking. Pure animal.
He swung.
I whipped the knife toward him as I ducked. His fist caught me across the ear, just missing my temple. My skull rang like a struck bell, and I went down on one knee. He grabbed my shirt, and I drove the paring knife into his right forearm.
Wayne roared and released me. Blood spattered across the floor.
I scrambled to the counter, seized the rum bottle by the neck, and spun back to face him.
He ripped the paring knife from his forearm and aimed it at me. But he was holding it all wrong. He switched it to his right hand, then back to his left like neither hand wanted it.
He’s right-handed. And I’d just put a blade through his right forearm.
He wasn’t gonna be lethal now. Good.
He looked down at Bruce. Willy’s carving knife was still buried in his side. The blood spreading across the floor beneath him was as black as oil in the dim light.
“Bruce. Hey. Buddy.” Wayne’s voice had gone up half an octave. The rage stripped back to something rawer underneath.
“He’s dead, dickhead.”
He came at me, and as I swung the rum bottle, I tried to dodge his charge, but the kitchen was too small.
The bottle thumped into his shoulder as he hit me like a charging bull.
I flew back into the cupboards. Something cracked—the shelving, or my hip, I couldn’t tell which.
The bottle flew from my hand and shattered on the floor, glass skidding everywhere.
Wayne punched my gut. Pain ripped up my spine and stole the breath clean out of me.
I slammed my palm into his face, grinding his nose.
He bit my little finger.
The bone crunched, and pain shot up my hand so sharply it wiped out every other thought in my head. I screamed and tried to yank free.
He clamped harder and bit clean through.
Fuck! My little finger was gone from the knuckle down.
I made a sound I didn’t recognize. The agony tried to drag me under, and I fought it with everything I had. Can’t go down. Not yet. Not yet.
Wayne punched again, driving hard into my kidney.
Pain detonated through my insides. I gasped, my vision graying at the edges, legs trying to give out beneath me.
Fuck. I’m in real trouble.
Gritting my teeth hard enough to crack them, I rammed my thumb into his eyeball. Digging in. Pushing hard.
He shrieked and jerked away, stumbled over Bruce’s legs, and went down to his hands and knees.
I grabbed the saucepan off the stove and swung it into the back of his head with everything I had left.
The sound it made was not good—for him, anyway.
Wayne went face-first onto the floor and sprawled across his brother. Still.
I stood over him with the broken rum bottle neck aimed at his face, heaving air in and out. Gut on fire. Legs going crazy, wobbling and shit. The kitchen smelled like rum and blood and still smelled like Vegemite.
Bruce was dead.
Wayne was breathing. Unconscious, bleeding from the back of his head, but breathing.
I shook so hard I could barely think straight. Those dumb bastards were twice my size, and they’d come armed, and it still hadn’t been enough. It turned out sixty-three years of hard living counted for something.
The pain in my hand caught up with me.
I looked down. The end of my little finger was gone from the first knuckle, and blood was sheeting down my hand and dripping onto the floor. I stared at my finger for a moment. It was like it belonged to someone else.
Then my brain caught up. DNA. My fucking blood was everywhere. I’d watched enough NCIS to know what that meant. My blood was on the floor, the cupboards, probably the damn walls. Might as well be a signed fucking confession.
I grabbed a dish towel off the oven handle and wrapped it around my hand, pulling it tight with my teeth. It soaked through almost immediately. I grabbed another and tied it over the first.
That’d have to do.
I grabbed the length of rope I’d found in the hallway closet weeks ago.
Hog-tying a man Wayne’s size was damn hard, especially one-handed, with pain tearing through my other hand. But I’d hog-tied steers heavier than him, wrists behind his back, ankles pulled up and lashed to his wrists. I added a loop around his neck, too. Tight, with no slack.
I peeled the top dishcloth off my hand and shoved it into Wayne’s mouth. My DNA was already all over this kitchen. There wasn’t any point in trying to control it now.
I stood up, breathing hard, and looked down at him. That’d hold the big bastard.
I grabbed a fresh rum bottle and downed a long swig, trying to settle my nerves and dull the agony crippling my body.
After confirming Wayne was still out cold, I checked the front of the house.
The street was empty. No car I didn’t recognize.
I checked the yard again, front and back.
Nothing. Just that damn mutt up the street still going at it.
Dumb brothers had come alone. Thought I’d be easy pickings.
Bet they don’t think that now.
I had time to have a shit and pull on a clean shirt before Wayne started coming around.
Then I went to sort out my finger. Blood was pissing everywhere.
I raided Willy’s medicine cabinet, which was about as useful as an empty shotgun—ancient antiseptic cream, a few Band-Aids that weren’t going to cover a damn thing, and medical tape, but no bandages.
I did what I could and finished the job with the dishcloth wound tight around my hand again.