Michael Prescott - Mortal Faults

“From here.”

“The landline?”

“Yeah.” Dylan licked his lips and tasted blood. “I don’t like to talk business over a cell. Too many ways the call can be intercepted. What difference does it make, anyway?”

“It’s called evidence, Dylan. Records of those phone calls will link you with Shanker. But Shanker didn’t decide to pull this job on his own. He was asked to do it. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know shit about how it was set up. Shanker never tells us anything.”

“Do you know who Jack Reynolds is?”

Dylan knew. Everybody in the Scorpions had heard rumors about Jack Reynolds. He kept his face expressionless, or so he hoped. “Never heard of him.”

“He’s your congressman.”

“I don’t follow politics too much.”

“Reynolds is tight with your gang, isn’t he? He’s a player?”

“Telling you, I never heard-”

She drew back the gun, and although he hated himself for it, Dylan flinched. Flinched like a whipped dog. He couldn’t believe she’d reduced him to that.

“Tell the truth,” she said, and the terrible thing was that the words were spoken without anger, without any emotion all, as if she was feeling nothing and would feel nothing even if she battered his face into a bloody mask.

“Okay, I hear things. Reynolds, you know, he used to be the D.A. around here, a long time ago, and I guess he got in with the Scorpions back then, and maybe he still uses us sometimes for some, you know, odd jobs, but nobody ever talks about it, not out in the open, I mean it’s not like we ever say his name…” He was talking too much. All of a sudden he couldn’t stop talking.

“The job you did this afternoon was for Reynolds.”

“I don’t know about that. I just don’t know. They don’t tell me shit like that.”

“Do you even know the name of the woman you were hired to kill?”

“Never gave me a name. Just an address.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“What?”

“The gun you shot up the house with.”

“Threw it away.”

“Not likely. It was an expensive piece. Too expensive to toss. Besides, you’re not smart enough to toss it.” The muzzle of her gun was teasing the orbit of his eye socket again. “Where is it?”

Dylan thought about telling her to fuck herself. She would probably shoot him, but hell, it would be quick, bullet in the eye, right through into the brain, lights out. Better than what he could expect from Shanker. Or from Reynolds, for Christ’s sake. Word was, that guy was a straight maniac. He could save himself a world of hurt just by telling this cocksucking bitch to go fuck off.

“In my bedroom,” he said. “Bureau. Top drawer.”

She almost smiled. “I’m surprised this shit hole has a bedroom.”

Unaccountably, Dylan was wounded. “You said it wasn’t such a bad place.”

“I lied. I do that a lot.”

“So you got Shanker’s name and the gun and, I guess, the phone records. I gave you everything you wanted, right?”

“You cooperated. Eventually.”

“So what happens now?”

“That’s good question, Dylan. That’s the first really intelligent thing you’ve said. What does happen now?” She hadn’t removed the gun from his face, and that was a bad sign. “I guess I’ll have to give all this helpful information and evidence to the authorities.”

“Yeah. Except you don’t work for no authorities, do you?”

“Sometimes they work for me-without knowing it.”

“So you’re gonna have me arrested, is that the plan?” At the moment, being arrested didn’t seem like such a bad deal.

“Well, that’s the thing. See, if you’re in custody, you’ll talk. I’ve already discovered that it’s not too hard to make you open up. I didn’t even have to break any of your fingers.” Her mouth stretched briefly into a grin that scared him. “You’ll tell them all about me. Which will put me right in the spotlight. I don’t like the spotlight, Dylan.”

He swallowed. “You don’t?”

“I’m very private person.”

He was thinking fast, or trying to think, but it was hard, because all at once his mind was crowded with thoughts, a million thoughts, memories of the jobs he’d done, the people he’d killed, the wet smack of his bullets in their flesh.

“Maybe,” he said, fighting to control the tremor in his voice, “maybe you can give me a couple hours to haul ass out of town. Then they won’t pick me up. They’ll get Shanker because of the phone numbers. But Shanker don’t know nothing about you, so he can’t blow your cover. That’ll work out. Work out for both of us.”

She seemed to consider it. Dylan allowed himself to feel a thrill of optimism. Then her eyes narrowed, and he knew she had never given it any thought.

“What makes you think I want things to work out for you?” she asked, her voice dangerously gentle.

Dylan was silent. He had no answer to that.

He was in trouble, real trouble, the worst trouble of his life. This woman was a hard case. She was crazy, and she could blow him the fuck away without thinking twice about it.

She removed the gun from his face, but he took no comfort from that fact. Her expression was unchanged, and the coldness in her eyes was deeper than before.

As he watched, she took a pillow from the futon and wrapped it around the gun. He knew what that was for. To muffle the shot. She didn’t want his neighbors to hear it. She wanted to kill him and get away clean.

The pillow made it fully real-what was about to happen to him. His heart shuddered with an electric jolt. He felt his hands trembling and willed them to stop, but they wouldn’t stop. His stomach was sour, his bowels dangerously loose.

He had always figured he would go down fighting. Die like a man. But he couldn’t seem to control his body anymore. He couldn’t even muster the physical coordination to get off the futon. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

“Hold on, okay?” he breathed. “Just hold on.”

“The world isn’t going to miss you, Dylan. I can pretty much guarantee that.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“I think I do.” Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact.

“What I did in the Valley-it was a job, okay? Just a job.”

Her gaze drilled through him. He felt his pants getting wet and knew he had crapped in his shorts, and they would find him that way, and they would laugh.

“We’re both pros, you know?” He had to find a way to reach her. “I was doing a job. Like you.”

Something flickered beneath her surface calm. “I’m not like you.”

“Don’t do this. Please?” He heard the terrible whining quality in his voice, and it sickened him.

“Quiet, Dylan.”

“Don’t do it. God, please, don’t fucking kill me.”

“Quiet,” she said again, her voice so low as to be nearly inaudible. “Quiet now.”

Reynolds awoke in darkness, which resolved itself into the office at his home. Vaguely he was surprised to find himself there. Then he remembered the time he’d spent with Rebecca, and how he’d left her curled on the floor and shaking, her midsection and thighs and upper arms purple with bruises. Having released his frustration, he’d felt calm, almost sleepy, as he drove home. He hadn’t bothered going upstairs. He had retreated into his office for another Scotch, consumed it in the dark, and nodded off behind his desk.

The luminous clock at his desk read 3:13 a.m. And a phone was ringing.

His cell. He’d flung it into a corner after hearing from Shanker.

Maybe Shanker was calling back. Maybe he’d found a way to get the job done, after all.

He left his chair and searched the darkness until he retrieved the phone, then pressed TALK.