When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (5 page)

Lars rushed forward, put the gun against Leo’s neck. “Did you pull the trigger?”

Leo gasped for air. His voice squeaked out over the pressure on his trachea. “Do I look the like the kind of guy who pulls the trigger?”

Lars pressed the gun deeper into Leo’s neck. “Don’t you fucking lie to me.”

Leo wheezed, but no words came out. Lars eased up on Leo’s throat. “Look, pal,” he said, seemingly aware his time was short. “In our family, we handle our own problems.” A gunshot sounded from downstairs.

“Goddamn it,” Lars said.

Lars lifted a pillow from the pile next to Leo, put it over his face and pulled the trigger. The old man’s body went stiff and he clawed at the pillow, flinging it toward Lars and exposing his ruined face. Lars grabbed at the pillow, wanting to cover Leo again and not have to look at the ragged hole below his right eye. Lifting the pillow he smeared his hand in blood but he didn’t need to use it twice. Leo went rigid, then limp as the last spasms of death ran through him. A stain began to spread across the sheet beneath his head as the cotton soaked in the blood.

Lars turned and headed for the door.

Lars pounded down the steps with little fear of what would meet him at the bottom. If it was the wife, he doubted her aim as much as he doubted the originality of her breasts, or her nose.

If the bodyguard had made it back inside, he could be a bigger problem. But Lars had faced problems worse than him while trying to protect Shaine.

He hit the bottom of the stairs, his feet slipping for a second on the polished marble. Another shot rang out to his right. The gun led the way as he moved into the sunken living room. Right away he spotted Shaine hiding behind the sofa.

A bullet split the wood beneath his feet on the single step down. Lars had been right about Mrs. Ramoni’s aim. Still, he retreated back into the entryway. From there he could peer around the double wide, doorless opening. He spotted Mrs. Ramoni popping out like a gopher from a doorway at the far end of the room.

Lars could see Shaine clearly. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said. Lars didn’t bother asking if she was scared. She’d never admit it, but she didn’t need to. He could see her eyes.

“How many shots has she fired?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think.” Maybe he should have been training her in some of the more minute details of the job, rather than sticking only to defensive shooting.

“Three, I think.”

Lars peeked around the corner again. She bobbed and weaved in the doorway, a snub nose revolver in her hand, identical twin of the one Leo had in his nightstand. Six shots, unless she reloaded. Must have gotten it from whatever room she was in. Leo was the kind of guy who had extra ammunition.

Behind Lars a heavy object hit the front door. He turned and a second later the door pounded again, the wood bending with the impact, but the lock held. The bodyguard, up and pissed off.

Lars needed to move quickly. He hadn’t intended to kill Mrs. Ramoni too, but if she insisted . . .

He peeked enough for one eye to spot her in the doorway. Her eyes were wildly scanning the room, waiting for her assassins to pounce.

“If you put your gun down, Mrs. Ramoni,” Lars said. “And let my partner walk out, we’ll leave you alone and no one else needs to get hurt.” A loud THUD behind him.

She screeched like a woman of her actual age, not the one grafted on top for people to see. “You fucking assholes. You’ll get yours for this. You can’t treat Leo Ramoni like a common—”

Lars had succeeded in luring her out in the open. He dipped a shoulder around the corner and fired. The sound of the gun cut her off, but his shot went wide, his blood-slick finger slipping on the trigger. He missed. There was a time when Lars never missed.

Behind him a thud and a crack of wood.

Both he and Mrs. Ramoni ducked back behind their barriers. Lars turned to Shaine. “Toss me that blanket.”

Shaine reached up and slid the requested blanket off the back of the sofa. She tossed the chenille throw over to him. Lars caught it with one hand and used it to wipe the blood from his shooting hand.

Behind him the door splintered under the attack from the bodyguard. Lars’s attention needed to be in two places at once.

“Still have your safety on?” he said to Shaine.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Switch it off.”

The door behind him broke open and Lars didn’t think, only reacted. He spun and charged the door. As the bodyguard fell into the house, Lars discovered he was in luck. The man remained tied with the scarf, clenching his wrists together and rendering his arms fairly useless except as a blunt club. Next time Lars would have to remember to tie his feet, too.

Lars grabbed the man from behind by his shoulders and spun him toward the living room. The bodyguard, disoriented from the crash through the door, didn’t have time to counter Lars’s move. Lars put himself behind the width of the man and pushed forward, steering him like a horse with the scarf around his mouth the reins.

He drove the man forward before he had time to react. Lars slid his gun under the man’s armpit, aiming out ahead of them while staying protected behind the man’s massive chest. Lars was driving a human tank.

He heard Mrs. Ramoni’s scream first, then saw the barrel of the shotgun, then finally saw Mrs. Ramoni come out from the room. She held the heavy artillery awkwardly and squeezed her eyes closed as she fired. A spray of buckshot tore hundreds of tiny holes in the bodyguard and broke an ornate glass lamp on a side table.

The impact to Lars’s human shield knocked both men to the floor. They landed with the bodyguard on top of Lars, his chest had an open bowl carved into it deep enough to serve chips. Lars held what little air he had left in his lungs and aimed up at Mrs. Ramoni who towered above him, swinging the shotgun barrel around the room like she held a fire hose on full blast.

Lars wondered if Shaine would step up and take the shot, but he hoped she had the sense to stay down rather than catch a face full of buckshot. Lars fired twice. First a clear liquid ran from her chest, the saline from her implants, then a flow of red followed. Mrs. Ramoni joined her husband in death, then joined her bodyguard on the floor.

Lars pushed out from under the dead weight and got to his feet.

“You okay?”

Shaine poked her head up from behind the sofa. She nodded.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

Lars obeyed the monotone woman in the GPS as he breathed in and out, slowly finding his calm center again. There was little or no traffic on the way back to White Plains.

Leo was dead. A man Lars didn’t know he wanted dead twenty-four hours ago. He struggled to find the relief he knew he should have felt. It didn’t come. He rolled the killing around in his head, not something he usually did after a job. Maybe it was having Shaine there. He’d been distracted. But the result was the same. Justice for Lenore. It was justice, right?

And Lenore, pregnant? They’d never spoken of kids, but when Leo said the words the thought flashed in Lars’s mind—that kid was supposed to be mine. He’d be about as old as Shaine right now.

Shaine—who hadn’t said a word since they got in the car. He could tell the kid was shaken. The idyllic, if lonely, life they led on Hawaii let her forget the days of being on the run. They let her put that week of violence and death into a box like a rented movie and not take it out again. But now Lars had brought her directly into the sequel.

He knew he should have left her at home. She’d proven herself capable of dealing with an intruder, but when she needed to be able to step up with Mrs. Ramoni, she froze. She wasn’t ready, which meant he hadn’t prepared her. But he wasn’t trying to. Lars started to get angry at himself for leaving her in a limbo state of knowing how to use a gun, right up until it’s pointed at someone. She lived in a paper target world. Maybe he needed to show her everything.

But then she’d be as cold as him. No, nothing about this felt right. There was no resolution, no satisfaction. Had he really changed so much?

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

Lars turned to her. Shaine reached out and touched the fabric of his sleeve right below the shoulder. Three spots of blood stained the shirt over three tiny holes. Buckshot. He didn’t even feel the cuts.

“It’s fine.”

Shaine turned back to her fogged-over window. “Is that what it’s like? The job.”

Oh, Jesus, the kid and her questions. “No,” Lars said. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”

“But you got him, right?”

There was a reason he sent her out of the room before. He didn’t want her to have to confront certain aspects of the job. Like the killing part. “Yeah. I got him. But still, not the way I should have.”

“Is it because I was there?”

Lars wanted to change the subject. Things were getting a bit too personal in the confines of a small car. Sorry had always been one of his least favorite words. Probably from the years of listening to guys plead for their lives telling Lars to tell Nikki they were sorry.

Lars handed his phone to Shaine. “Can you figure out how to call Nikki on this thing?”

Shaine sighed. Lars had grown accustomed to the sound, the slight exasperation at his constant battle with technology. She knew he knew how to work more gadgets than he admitted to, and he knew it too. Still, handing her the phone would get them onto a different subject.

She handed it back to him, ringing. Shaine sat in silence and listened to Lars.

***

Normally Nikki would answer a phone call at this hour with a string of obscenities for the caller, but this time he knew it was Lars.

“It’s done,” Lars told him.

“I knew I made the right call to bring you in.”

“It got a little messy.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were collaterals.”

Shit. But Nikki wasn’t about to start picking over the details of the last hit he’d ever order. With Leo out of the way, his plans could go forward. Deals could be finalized. The looming prison doors would close while he still stood on the outside.

“Don’t sweat it. What’s done is done. I’d thank you, but I think the money I’m transferring into your account will say it better than I could.” Nikki chuckled. Lars did not. “You at the hotel yet?”

“Almost.”

“Nice place. Enjoy. You need a girl, I’ll have one sent up.”

“No, thanks.”

Nikki felt like a heel. The whole night Lars must have been brooding over the girl, Lenore. Nikki forgot about the bait he used to get Lars here, only focused on his own reasons for wanting Leo gone.

“Did he admit it?” Nikki asked. “About Lenore.”

“Yeah. After a bit.”

“Do they ever come clean right out of the gate?”

“Guess not. I wouldn’t.”

“I guess you’re right. But you got him. You got the man who did it. Gave him what he deserved.”

Lars remained silent.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Nikki hung up then flipped through a small notepad on his desk. He found a phone number. No name beside it, no initials, only digits. He called.

Qualls answered, sleep masking his annoyance. “Yeah?”

“So how do we do this?”

“Nikki?” Qualls came awake in an instant. “How did you get this number?”

“You can get my number, I can get yours. Now, back to my question. How do we do this?”

***

Lars and Shaine arrived at the hotel and checked in to their adjoining rooms. Lars took off his shirt and rolled his T-shirt sleeve up over his biceps. Two small pellets of steel fell out of his sleeve onto the floor. He wondered if the third had lodged in his arm. Lars went to the bathroom mirror to examine his wound. Three tiny circles, already scabbed over. He’d had pimples that were bigger and hurt more. He pressed on the area, the three spots making a triangle. He put a finger on each round hole and on the third felt something hard. He pinched the skin on either side of the tiny welt and out popped the third buckshot pellet. He let it fall to the carpet with the others. Let housekeeping vacuum them up in the morning. Better than rooting around on his knees with his fingers dug into dirty carpet.

He went down to his knees anyway, not to search, but to do a few quick yoga moves.

***

Shaine sat on the end of her bed and tried not to cry.

She’d almost gotten used to how quiet Lars was. He wasn’t the one to go to if she had anything serious to talk about. Luckily for her, nothing serious had come up since they moved to Hawaii. Nothing she couldn’t handle. But there were times when she needed to talk. The quiet reminded her too much of her father.

Growing up in a house of secrets, where so much couldn’t be said, made her dread the quiet of a crowded room. The unsaid. And tonight had been so momentous she needed to talk about it.

Lars was stretching on the floor when Shaine knocked on the common door between their rooms. Lars stood and answered.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For all that. For letting her get away. For getting you shot.”

“This?” Lars said. “This is not getting shot. You tend to notice it if you get shot. This is nothing.” He tugged on the bloody shirt to make his point.

“Still, I’m sorry,” she said. “I could have gotten you killed.”

Lars moved aside to let her in. Shaine walked past him and sat on the bed.

“You mean I could have gotten myself killed. As I recall, I walked in the door first. I drove us there. I came all the way here to kill him.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up about it. If anything, you should be pissed at me for sending you into a room with a psycho lady.”

“When she ran, when she tried to get away, I aimed at her. I squeezed the trigger.” Shaine looked down to the carpet. “But the safety was on.”

“Good,” Lars said, his voice dropping in volume, trying to fill it with sincerity. “I’m glad you didn’t shoot her.”

“But she almost got you.”

“And she didn’t. It’ll take a lot more than a screaming housewife to take me out.”

Shaine cracked a small smile.

Lars met her eyes. “You really tried to take a shot at her?” Shaine nodded, looked down to the carpet again. “How did that feel?”

“I was glad the gun didn’t go off.”

Her answer made Lars happy. “Shaine, you’ll find in life there are some people who deserve killing, and some who don’t. Like your dad—he didn’t deserve it, so I didn’t do it. Leo Ramoni? He deserved it. His wife didn’t deserve it. Until she did.” Lars watched her eyes closely to make sure his message was being understood.  “When she was up in the bedroom with you, she didn’t deserve to die. So it’s good you didn’t shoot her. When she started taking shots at me with a shotgun? That changes things.”

“I was only going to wound her. Get her to stop running.”

“Okay,” Lars said, sitting in the chair at the small desk. “That’s good.” He looked at the girl on his bed, practically his adopted daughter. An adult, in most ways. She certainly was no sheltered lamb, unaware of the realities of the world. She’d seen more reality than most people twice her age.

He knew he could talk to her frankly. “Shaine,” he said. “When we first met I told you this is what life would be like with me. When we got on that plane, I tried to warn you. We’ve been lucky and you haven’t seen a whole lot of it since we got away, but you have to know—I wasn’t kidding.”

“I know who you are, Lars.”

“Yeah, but being back here. I’m afraid you’ll see who I was.”

“Well,” she said. “The job is over, right? We can go home?”

“Yeah. I guess we can.”

Shaine looked at his arm. Blood made a tiny spot on his T-shirt sleeve. “Did you do anything about that yet?”

“Like what?”

“Like clean it out? Disinfect it?”

“It’s fine.”

Shaine stood. “No, it’s not. We have to clean it.” She put a hand under his arm.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking care of you. Come on.” She led Lars over to the minibar and lifted a palm-sized bottle of Jack Daniels from in between a jar of macadamia nuts and a can of Diet Coke.

“Hey, those are expensive.”

“Unless you have some other disinfectant, this will have to do. Besides, isn’t Nikki paying for all this?”

“I guess so.”

Shaine pointed to the bathroom. “Then get in there and dump this over your arm. And tear one of those towels in half, wrap it up.”

“Who put you in charge?”

“You have your things, I have mine. We’re partners, right?”

Lars had never worked with a partner before. With her, he liked the feeling.

“Yeah. We are.” He took the tiny bottle of whiskey and marched toward the bathroom. “Whatever you say, partner.”