John Sandford - Storm prey

Lucas said, "Oh, God. I'm so tired, too."

"Poor baby," she said. "Let me help you with your shirt."

Another thing that Lucas liked about Weather, right from the start, was that when it came to sex, she knew what she wanted, and how to get it, and one thing she didn't want was excuses. So they rolled across the bed, talking and sometimes laughing, stroking this, pulling on that, and Weather wound up on top, straddling his hips, and said, like she might say to an overanxious horse, "Steady, boy," and "Whoa, slow down," and "Easy, there," and she rode up and down and up and down, chewing her lower lip, still wearing the shirt, but now rolled up above her breasts, moving like she wanted to, until she got to the orgasm part, and then she made a sound like a tiny steam whistle from a miniature paddle-wheel boat, urgently signaling a need for more firewood, Ooo, Ooo, Ooo, Ooooooo…

Then, after a few moments of lying with her head on his chest, with some aftershocks, she said, "Okay, go ahead. Pay no attention if I look at my watch."

"You're in no shape to read a watch, even if you were wearing one," Lucas said, rolling her onto her back. "Brace yourself, Bridget…"

When they were done, she asked, "You think it's a bad sign when you're funny when you're having sex?"

"Depends on what you're laughing at," Lucas said. "That wouldn't apply to myself, of course."

"I'm serious."

"I'm too screwed to be serious. So, why don't you shut up? Or, tell me something."

"What?" In the dark, turning toward him.

"Are you really not scared?"

"Background scared. But I'm not going to dodge. I'm going to do what I do."

"Not gonna fight it, not going to play us."

"No. I'm going to think about the twins, I'm going to take care of them, I'm going to put everything else out of my mind, and I'm going to let you guys take care of me." CAPPY WAS asleep when he heard the knock on the door. He came awake in a rush, startled-nobody ever knocked for him, or even knew where he lived. It didn't sound like a cop's knock-or what he thought a cop's knock would sound like. He looked at the clock: after eleven.

Another knock.

He rolled out of bed, went to the door, left the chain on, opened it, and peeked out. Joe Mack was standing in the hallway with a sack.

"Got a sack for you," he said. More bourbon breath.

Cappy looked at him for a moment, then closed the door far enough to take off the chain, opened the door and backed up. Joe Mack stepped inside, looked like he might say something like, "Nice place," but the place was such a shithole that the comment would have been absurd, so he swallowed it and instead said, "Here."

He thrust the bag at Cappy, and Cappy took it, felt the weight, knew what it was.

He took it out: a Taurus Judge.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Up here, they got anything you want in the way of guns, if you look around. This was stole from over in Minneapolis. So it's hot, but if the cops chase you down, you say you bought it from a guy on Hennepin Avenue, you know, for self-defense, because you live in such a dangerous place."

Cappy nodded, asked, "You want a smoke?"

Joe said, "Nah, I gotta run. Got stuff to do." He left, leaving behind a cloud of alcohol breath.

The boy had it bad, Cappy thought. He got back in bed with the gun, happy, turned the cylinder, popping out the shells, dropped them on the floor, slipped the gun under his pillow. He lay awake for a few minutes, listening to the zzzzz of the electric clock, then drifted away, the hard lump under his head, relaxed and comfortable as a woolly sheep.

Joe Mack leaned close to Lyle Mack and muttered, "Will you look at the tits on the-"

"Shut up, for Christ's sake. And stop fuckin' staring at them," Lyle Mack said. "You'll freak them out."

"They're freakin' me out." And Joe Mack couldn't stop staring.

Joe and Lyle Mack were out of their comfort zone, wandering through the University of Minnesota's student union, baby blondes all over the place, sweaters and wool slacks, rosy cheeks. They were… dewy, with tits. But it wasn't just that: it was that there were so many of them.

Joe Mack had never done dewy. Ever. Or, as far as he could remember, ever been on a college campus.

Like trolls in a sorority house, the Macks traipsed through the first floor and down to the basement food court, where they found Barakat sitting in a corner, nursing a cappuccino. He was wearing a white dress shirt, buttoned to the top, and a scowl, and he shivered occasionally, though his forehead was shiny with sweat. An Arctic-level parka was sitting on a bench seat beside him.

Lyle Mack pulled up a chair and leaned forward and said, "This wasn't necessary."

Barakat leaned toward him and pitched his voice down, and snarled at them. "I'm going to tell you a one-minute story. My father, my family, is Christian, in Lebanon. This means nothing to you Americans, but to us, it meant that we had to struggle in a sea of Palestinians and Syrians who hate us. We had to defend ourselves."

Lyle Mack said, "Yeah, yeah…"

Barakat wagged a finger at him. "Listen: I know about your silly fucking motorcycle gangs. Your Seed. Sometimes you kill one person, or two persons, these Outlaws. When I was five years old, in Lebanon, there was fighting in Beirut. Our people took a company of Hezbollah, from the basement of a department store. They gave up, or we would have burned them to death with gasoline from a tank truck, so they gave up. Huh? You understand? They surrendered. They thought, a few days in a prison camp until a cease-fire. So we, the Christians, took them out three at a time, shot them in the heads, threw them in a hole. Sixteen men. I sat on my roof eating Armenian apricots and watched. My father, my uncles, my cousins. It was like directing traffic: stand over here, stand over there, bang-bang-bang. You know what I did? I ate the apricots and laughed.

"We are here in the United States now, and start businesses. This and that. Some hard businesses. I have called my cousins, and I have told them that I have some business trouble, and that if I disappear, or if I am killed, you will kill the brothers Joe Mack and Lyle Mack from Cherries Bar. You got that? They understand business trouble; and they will do it. I told them, be safe, do it any way you can, but if you can, make it hard for them. One of my uncles, Timor, claims he once got the entire skin off a Hezbollah fighter before the man died, using nothing but a straight razor as a skinning knife. I don't know if I believe he succeeded, but I believe he tried to do it."

They sat staring for a minute, then Barakat said, "I deeply hope you believe me, because it is true. Because you stupidly killed this man in the hospital, I think that you might try to eliminate me as a witness against you. Do not do it. I promise you, there are worse things than prison."

Lyle Mack's eyes were popping out. He said, "You're telling us that somebody else knows about the job? Maybe a whole bunch of people?"

"No, no. They don't know why they will kill you, only that they must," Barakat said, shaking a finger at them. "For the family."

"Ah, crap, Al, we weren't gonna hurt you," Lyle Mack said, leaning back in the booth, putting on his best Bible-salesman's smile. "I mean, you're in as deep as we are, so we don't have to worry about you talking. If the cops crack this, we'd all go inside for the rest of our lives."

"Yes. Well, I didn't take the chance." Barakat leaned forward again. "Now: I would not sell the merchandise here. In Minneapolis. The police will be looking for it everywhere, I am thinking."

"Let us worry about that," Lyle Mack said. "First of all, we've squirreled it away-"

"Squirreled? What is this?"

"We've hidden it. Really good. Second of all, we have clubs all over the country. We'll repackage the good stuff in a couple months, when the heat's died down. Move it along to three or four different places, tell them to take care when they push it out on the street. Nobody'll know where it came from. It's not a problem."