Dead Reckoning (34 page)

Cursing beneath his breath, he hit the voice message button and entered his password. An instant later a gravelly male voice came on the line. “This is Jack Gamble. Call me. It’s urgent.” He left a number and hung up.

Curious, Frank punched in the number. The PI answered on the first ring. “Gamble.”

“This is Frank Matrone.”

The silence that ensued made Frank crane his neck and hold the phone closer to his ear.

“We got a mutual friend and she’s in trouble,” Jack said.

“Are you talking about Kate?” Frank gripped the phone tighter. “What happened?”

“It’s not what’s happened. It’s what’s
going
to happen if someone doesn’t stop her.”

“Stop her from doing what?”

Gamble hesitated. “She’s as good as gold, Matrone. As good as they come. I care about her like she was my own daughter. I’d do anything to keep something bad from happening to her.”

“Maybe you ought to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Can I trust you to keep this under your hat? Because if you can’t, I’ll handle this myself. My way.”

Frank didn’t like the sound of that. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to keep her safe,” he said, not exactly sure what he was promising.

Gamble sighed. “She’s about to ruin her life. I need for you to stop her. I’d do it myself, but you’ve probably realized by now my bullet-dodging days are over.”

“Did you say bullet?”

“She’s got a gun. I’m pretty sure she’s going to take care of the son of a bitch who hurt her eleven years ago.”

“Aw, man. Shit.” Frank yanked jeans and a shirt off hangers. “Where?”

Gamble rattled off the Grand Prairie address. “You hurt her and I’ll come after you.”

“I’m not going to hurt her, goddamn it.”

“I just pray to God we ain’t too late.”

“So do I,” Frank said and sprinted toward the door.

 
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 8:33 P.M.

The apartment where Danny Lee Perkins lived was a single-story stucco dump with six apartments. It was located in a downtrodden neighborhood on a street laden with potholes and trash. A beat-up Dumpster squatted beneath a row of cedar trees on the west side of the gravel lot.

Kate drove past the place twice. She couldn’t see Apartment 6 from the street, so she assumed it was at the rear, which suited her purposes just fine. Lights were on in two of the front apartments. The one on the end looked vacant.

She parked a block away beneath the shadows of a massive live oak tree and shut down the engine. Pulling her cell phone from her bag, she dialed Perkins’s number from memory. He answered on the third ring with a hostile, “Yeah.”

“Is Danny there?” she asked.

“This is Danny. Who the fuck wants to know?”

Kate disconnected, turned off her phone, and let out a long, shuddering breath as she clipped it to her belt. It registered somewhere in the back of her mind that she had recognized his voice. Even after eleven years she remembered the tinny belligerence. But she didn’t let herself dwell on that too long. Tonight wasn’t about thinking or feeling. It was about acting. Evening a score. Getting justice for her and her sister.

Danny Lee Perkins was home.

Kate was armed and on her way to see him.

The nightmare was going to end here and now.

She had visualized this moment a thousand times. She’d always thought she would be prepared. That she would be able to disconnect her intellect from the thin ribbon of darkness that ran through her soul. She hadn’t counted on the edgy fear that had begun to slither along the back of her neck.

Her legs were shaking when she got out of the car. She could feel the press of the gun against the small of her back. Her heart pounding out of control in her chest. The night around her was so quiet she could hear her breaths hissing in and out of her throat.

It took a full minute for her to get herself calmed down enough so she could walk to the apartment. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she took the sidewalk to the rear of the building. She walked by Apartment 4. The windows glowed yellow. She could hear a television inside. A dog barking somewhere in the distance. The middle apartment was dark. No curtains hung in the windows and she assumed it was vacant. Just as well, she thought as she continued down the sidewalk to her destination.

Apartment 6 was dimly lit. The porch light was off. She could hear the base pound of music coming from inside. Kate was breathing heavily again. She could feel her entire body shaking, and she was angry with herself. How the hell was she supposed to finish this when her hands were shaking so violently she could barely hold the gun?

“Calm down, damn it,” she whispered into the darkness.

She blew out several deep breaths. She wiped her hands on her jeans, then put on her gloves. Another deep breath and she rapped her knuckles hard against the door.

Her heart threatened to explode in the seconds she waited. This was the moment when a hundred things could go wrong. This was the moment when she had to stay cool. Keep her head. Concentrate on doing what she’d come here to do and forget about everything else.

The door swung open. Danny Lee Perkins stood before her, glaring at her with red-rimmed eyes and a hostile sneer. Eleven years ago he’d been thin with long hair. The man in front of her had gained fifty pounds. His hairline had receded. But the eyes were the same. Kate would never forget his eyes. The way he’d looked at her. The way he was looking at her now.

He was wearing a flannel shirt that was open down to his belly button. A gold chain glinted between his flat male breasts. Even from two feet away she could smell beer on his breath, the cigarette smoke on his clothes.

“Who the fuck ’r you?”

For several seconds Kate couldn’t answer. All she could do was stare at him, the memories slamming into her like steel fists. She could feel the swell of hatred, like a pustule festering inside her, oozing poison until she thought she would burst.

Then it was as if she left her body and it was someone else standing at Danny Lee Perkins’s door. His eyes widened when she brought up the pistol. Fear flickered in the depths of his gaze when she pulled back the slide and put a bullet in the chamber.

“What the fuck is up with this?” he asked, his voice rising.

Wanting to get out of the sight of potential witnesses, Kate leveled the gun at his chest. “Unless you want a bullet in your heart, you’ll back into the apartment. Now.”

His hands went up. “Whatever you say. Jesus!”

“Get inside. Keep your hands up.”

Relief skittered through her when he complied and backed into the room. She closed the door behind her. Lynyrd Skynyrd belted out a song about That Smell from mismatched speakers. A hockey game was on the color television, but the sound was turned down low. From where she stood she could see into the dining room. On the dinner table was a scale, a pile of plastic bags, a convection oven, and a dinner plate piled high with white powder. The stench of marijuana hung in the air.

“Who the hell are you?” he snarled. “What the fuck are you doing here? Did John send you? Well, you can tell that motherfucker I’ll pay when I get my money.”

“Get on the floor,” she said. “On your belly.”

“What?”

“Get on the floor!” To make her point, she squeezed off a shot. The silencer
plunked!
and a bullet tore a hole in the wood floor just a few inches from his right foot.

“Okay! Fuck! You crazy bitch!” He dropped to his knees, then laid down on the floor, raising his head just enough to maintain eye contact with her. “If you want the dope, just fuckin’ take it!”

“I don’t want your drugs, you worthless son of a bitch.”

He looked confused for an instant. “Well, then, why are you here?”

“I’m the girl you raped and left for dead eleven years ago, you piece of shit.”

“I never raped no one, lady. You fuckin’ got me confused with somebody else.”

Kate saw red. Her finger jerked as if of its own accord. He screamed when a bullet tore through his foot. “Fuck! Fuck! You shot me!
God! Oh, God!
”

“Do you remember now?” she snapped.

“Yes! It was a long fuckin’ time ago.” He grasped his foot. “Fuck, it hurts!”

“My sister sustained permanent brain damage that night,” she heard herself say. “You beat us and left us for dead. But guess what? You underestimated us, you filthy bastard, and now here I am.”

“It wasn’t my idea!” he shrieked. “It was all Eddie. He fuckin’ made me do it.”

“Eddie Calhoun is dead,” she said calmly. “That leaves you and me.”

She had visualized this moment going down a thousand different ways in the last eleven years. Shooting him in the forehead. Gouging his eyes with her nails. Slitting his throat. Severing his penis. But while the scenarios changed, the end result was always the same. She killed the evil son of a bitch responsible for devastating her and her sister’s lives. She made him pay for what he’d done. She removed him from this earth so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Kate wanted to hurt him. She wanted to kill him. She had him in her sights. Her finger was on the trigger. A bullet was ready in the chamber. It was the perfect scenario.

But this moment was nothing like she’d envisioned. She hadn’t expected her stomach to go queasy. Her arms to quiver like taut bows. Or her legs to threaten to collapse.

Her vision tunneled on the man’s face. Pale blue eyes. Greasy skin pitted with acne scars. Portwine-stain birthmark on his cheek. And for an instant she saw him as she’d seen him eleven years ago. An evil monster laughing at her pain and terror. Cruelty glinting in pale blue eyes as he grunted and sweated and made her feel so dirty she wanted to die. She saw the other man kick her sister with a booted foot. The sound of a steel-toed boot against flesh. Cries in the darkness. Sweet, innocent Kirsten who hadn’t wanted to leave the house. Only Kate had cajoled and threatened and pouted until she’d agreed . . .

Her pulse was pounding so hard it drowned out all other sound. She raised the gun and aimed it at the bridge of his nose, where a bullet would kill him instantly and end her pain once and for all.

Or would it?

The question came at her out of nowhere. Kate stared at the man lying on the ground in his dirty clothes and greasy hair, and she hated him. He was a drug dealer and a rapist and a would-be murderer if things had gone differently that night eleven years ago. He was a wretched excuse for a human being and deserved to die.

Kate tightened her grip on the gun. Her palms were sweating. Her hands were shaking. Her finger squeezed the trigger. Tighter. Tighter . . .

“Kate!
Don’t!
”

The earth tilted beneath her feet. She turned her head to see Frank Matrone come through the door. A hundred thoughts struck her brain at once. A split second to act because she knew he was going to stop her.

Turning back to Danny Lee Perkins, she pulled the trigger.

TWENTY-FOUR

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 9:00 P.M.

The next instant passed in a blur. Kate felt the gun kick in her hands. She heard the
thwack!
of the silencer. Danny Lee Perkins screamed. In her peripheral vision she saw his body convulse. He clutched his thigh, a string of expletives spewing from his mouth. The bright red spurt of blood as it bloomed on his jeans.

Then Frank’s hand was around her arm, tight as a vise and jerking her toward him. She felt the gun being pried from her grip.

He shook her with enough force to snap her head back. “What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?”

Even through the haze of emotions, Kate saw the disbelief in his eyes. Dark brows riding low over eyes black with fury. She felt those same emotions screaming inside her, colliding and exploding until she was so overwhelmed she could do nothing but choke out a sob.

“I’m fuckin’ shot, man!” Danny Lee Perkins’s high-pitched wail sounded behind her. “She fuckin’ shot me!”

Kate turned to see him sitting up with his right leg stretched out in front of him. His face had gone pale, but his cheeks were bright pink. His forehead was shiny with sweat. He leaned forward and his hands wrapped around his right thigh. She could see blood coming through his fingers.

“That fuckin’ bitch tried to kill me!” he screamed.

Frank’s eyes slid from Kate, to the man on the floor, to the drugs and paraphernalia on the table. “Damn,” he muttered.

Kate felt as if she were watching the scene unfold from within a transparent plastic box. Her senses felt as if they’d been dulled by some mind-altering drug. Her thoughts were disjointed. Her vision had gone black and white.

“Did you touch anything?”

Frank’s voice came to her as if from a great distance. Belatedly she realized he was gripping her biceps and shaking her gently. “Kate, damn it, did you touch anything?”

Danny Lee Perkins groaned. “I need a fuckin’ doctor, man. I’m bleeding!”

“No,” she heard herself say. “I wore gloves.”

Frank looked down at her hands. “Okay.” He shoved the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and looked around. Lynyrd Skynyrd had moved on to “Sweet Home Alabama.” Danny Lee Perkins was lying on his side in a pool of blood the size of a turkey platter.

“Let’s go.”

The next thing she knew Frank was shoving her toward the door. She could feel his hands on her shoulders, pushing her out the door and into the night. Behind her she heard Danny Lee Perkins curse them. And then the door slammed.

On the sidewalk Kate stumbled and would have gone to her knees, but Frank caught her. “Easy, I’ve got you.”

She didn’t know how she made it to the parking lot. She was vaguely aware of their shoes crunching through gravel. Cold against her face. They entered the tree line and followed a darkened path that took them up a small hill and into an alley. Then Frank was hustling her toward the street. Beyond she could see the rental car parked curbside. Behind it was Frank’s truck.