Matt Hilton - Judgement and Wrath

'I'll speak to her again,' I repeated.

Rink stood up. Walked along the hall. He checked the door to the secondary stairwell. Still locked. He walked back to the head of the main stairs. Peered down them. Turned and came back. It made sense to stay vigilant, but Rink was conducting a patrol just to be doing something. It wasn't like him. Rink could sit in the same position for hours on end without giving any signs that he was anything but an inanimate feature of the landscape. On seek and destroy missions we'd often be dropped miles from our targets. We'd make our way in, find an observation point, then sit tight while gauging enemy strengths and weaknesses. Once we were conducting surveillance on a terrorist training camp in the deserts of Libya. Rink took point and dug himself in less than twenty yards from the enemy base. He was there undetected for seventy-three hours before we launched our assault and wiped the bastards out.

His unease had nothing to do with our current mission.

'You shouldn't be here, Rink.'

He looked down at me. 'None of us should.'

'You know what I mean, buddy. You should be in San Francisco with your family.'

He nodded slowly, his gaze staring off to somewhere very distant. 'You're family, too.'

'OK.'

I didn't say another word on the subject. The decision was Rink's.

'Maybe we should draw on a few contacts, see if we can find out who this hit man is. We know him, we know his MO. We'll have a better idea of how to stop him.'

'I'll get Harvey on to it.'

Harvey Lucas was our friend out in the Midwest. He was an ex-Army Ranger who now ran his own private investigations outfit in Arkansas. He'd been an invaluable ally during a case we'd been involved with last year. He'd backed us up when the bullets were flying, and he'd got the job done. He was also damn good when it came to gathering the kind of information not generally in the public arena.

'I'll leave you to it. I'll go and speak to Marianne again.'

Rink brought out his mobile phone and hit a hot key.

I knocked on Marianne's door.

She answered it immediately. Almost as if she'd had her ear to the door. Her hair was pinned up again, and she'd changed her clothes. Tight blue jeans and a pale yellow sweater that bared her shoulders and the upper swell of her breasts. Her neck made a long sweeping curve towards the cream skin of her chest. I couldn't help a quick glance.

Marianne caught my look and she stirred uncomfortably.

'Come in.' Her arms folded, and I couldn't help but notice they went above her breasts this time.

'Mind if I ask you something?' I said as I followed her into the room. It was a well-appointed room, but I was more conscious of the delicate perfume that hovered in the space. The scent of her shampooed hair and freshly scrubbed skin. She'd been showering again. I felt a little awkward. A little like a father who is used to walking into his young daughter's room unannounced, until that day when suddenly he realises that this isn't a child any more. She's a woman that I don't recognise! After that he always knocks and hesitates in the doorway, shucking off the offer to enter.

'What would you like to know?'

'Your necklace,' I pointed out. 'I noticed it was missing.'

Her hand crept up to her throat, fluttered there like the beating wings of a butterfly.

'In the photographs you were wearing a small cross on a chain.'

'My mother's necklace,' she offered. I saw a shadow flit behind her eyes.

'You aren't wearing it now.'

'No,' she said. Her voice went to a whisper. 'It got broken.'

'It couldn't be fixed?'

'I… I don't have it any more.'

She didn't want to speak about it. I guessed it had been torn from her throat during the assault. A sore subject that she didn't want to acknowledge, let alone revisit. Quickly, I changed tack. 'It's not safe to stay here, you do realise that?'

'I'm not leaving without Bradley.'

'Bradley can come with us, but I think that it would be safer to take you somewhere that isn't associated with the Jorgenson family.'

'Not home.'

'No, Marianne, not home. Somewhere that can't be connected to you.'

'Why is this man after us?'

'Truthfully? I don't know.' I wondered how much of my suspicions I should lay on her. Decided that she had a right to know. 'There's been a suggestion that some of Bradley's family resent the fact that he's been named as sole heir to the business.'

'He has the right,' Marianne said. 'His father handed it on when he was too ill to continue, just as his father did before him.'

'I've no problem with that. But from what we've been able to gather, his father had two brothers. They also have children. They believe that they have been as instrumental in building the family business as Bradley has. They think that it should have been shared equally among them.'

'I know all of his cousins. Jack and Simon are brothers. Then there is Petre. He's the eldest. I can't believe that they would have anything to do with harming either Bradley or me.'

'Petre would stand to inherit the business if anything happened to Bradley?'

'Yes… but…' She shivered involuntarily.

'Envy among family members is nothing new,' I told her. 'Under the surface even the closest of siblings can be concealing a deep-seated hatred. It can stay hidden for life and taken to the grave. Sometimes it erupts into anger and violence. Especially where huge amounts of money are concerned.'

'And you think Petre may be responsible?'

'Petre doesn't like you, does he?'

'No.' I saw her fiddle again with the non-existent cross. Wondered why she wouldn't just come out with it. She asked, 'Do you think Petre would really go that far?'

'Could be any one of the cousins. Or all,' I said. 'Maybe I'm wrong and it's none of them. Regardless, there is a man who has tried, and will try again, to kill you and Bradley.'

'When he came to the house last night, he shot Bradley's father. He didn't know who Valentin was. That doesn't sound like someone working for any member of the family.'

'Maybe he knew,' I pointed out. 'But he just didn't care.'

'But why kill the man whose wealth is the bone of contention? Surely that only speeds up the process of dropping it into Bradley's lap?'

'Good point,' I conceded. 'Perhaps the killer has nothing to do with any of Bradley's family. Maybe it's got nothing at all to do with the business. Can you think of anyone else who would want the two of you dead?'

'No,' she said, but I could tell she wasn't being truthful. Something about the way her fingers again went to her throat, seeking solace from the missing crucifix, told me so.

Dantalion was under the same bridge on the same beach, but the family with the crabby kid had long gone. The sun was a bloody slash on the western horizon. Out to the east, the first stars were twinkling in the purple evening. Above him the sky was a brown-yellow colour where day fought night, but was rapidly losing ground. Dantalion wished that night would get on with it, sucker-punch day, and then stamp it into surrender. He needed the darkness. It was his greatest ally.

He was sitting on a hummock of grass, his feet sunk in sand. Around him lay the flotsam cast up by the sea, sun-bleached twigs and the cast-off shells of crustaceans. There was also the ubiquitous plastic bag, dropped by someone careless. A soda can, ferrous-red around its lip, was buried to the shoulders in the sand. Between Dantalion's splayed feet was the backpack delivered to him by Gabe Wellborn.

From the bag he pulled out the sound suppressor. The one he had used last night was useless now. Suppressors didn't have an infinite lifespan, each successive shot robbing them of their effectiveness. He screwed this fresh one into place on his specially adapted Beretta. He disengaged the magazine from his gun, inserted a new one, slid the loading mechanism to place a round into the firing chamber. He then fed a round into the magazine so that he had the full seventeen-round load ready to go.