Andrew Peterson: First to Kill

His cell interrupted them. He reached over to the nightstand.

“Nathan? It’s Karen. That big guy’s here again. He’s got Cindy!”

“I’ll be there in seven minutes. Can you make it out to the patio?”

“I think so.”

“Do it. Turn off all the lights.”

Two minutes later he was striding through the hotel’s lobby with Mara in tow. Once outside the automatic glass doors, he sprinted over to his Mustang. Mara’s heels clicked on the concrete as she hurried to keep up.

After turning west onto Hotel Circle North, he accelerated to fifty. Mara fastened her seat belt as he swerved into the oncoming lane to pass an SUV.

“I thought it was over with that guy.”

“Apparently he didn’t understand my warning.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Give him a stronger warning.”

He ran the red light and smoked the tires merging onto I-8. Within ten seconds he was doing eighty miles an hour as he screamed under the Morena Boulevard overpass. He followed a minivan down the I-5 north on-ramp before punching his Mustang up to 110 miles an hour.

Four minutes had passed since Karen’s call. A lot could happen in four minutes. He forced the thought aside and concentrated on driving. His phone rang. Seeing his business partner’s name on the screen, he answered it. A call this late at night raised concern. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” said Harvey. “Yeah.”

“I can’t talk right now.”

“Are you okay?”

“Ten minutes.”

“You got it.”

Nathan felt additional pressure because Karen called him, not the police. She could’ve dialed 911. He suspected the police knew about her escort service, but her women were high-class and low-key. Karen’s women weren’t hookers who trolled for twenty-dollar tricks to feed meth or heroin habits. They were escorts, sophisticated corporate types. Expensive. Besides, her operation was small and no one had blown the whistle. Karen had also called Nathan because of his relationship with Mara. He looked out for her and the other women. Several years ago, he’d personally installed a high-tech security system in Karen’s house.

Nathan looked at his watch as he exited the freeway. Six minutes. Too damned long.

After slowing for a stop sign, he accelerated to sixty miles an hour.

“Nathan!”

He saw it.

An orange cat darted out from the left. It skidded to a stop in the middle of the street and froze. Shimmering in the headlights, its bluish-green eyes looked like tiny flashlights. Nathan executed a smooth adjustment of the wheel to the right and hugged the curb.

“Did we hit it?”

Mara whipped her head around. “No. It’s still there.”

Nathan eased away from the curb and braked hard for the next turn. Half a minute later, he parked fifty yards north of Karen’s place and left the engine idling. It needed a cool down after being worked so hard.

“Stay here. Turn the engine off after a couple of minutes.” He reached across Mara, popped the glove box, and grabbed his Sig Sauer P-226 9-millimeter. Climbing out, he jacked a hollow-point round into the chamber and lowered the hammer, using the pistol’s de-cocking lever. He tucked the weapon into his blue jeans at the small of his back and sprinted up the sidewalk. Several houses distant, a dog barked three times, then went silent. Beneath orange cones of streetlight, chest-high recycle bins were stationed in the street like sentries.

An off-road pickup sat in Karen’s driveway. It was hyped with oversized tires and augmented with floodlights mounted on a roll bar above the cab. Nathan shook his head. Everything oversized and out of control, just like its owner. He paused in Karen’s yard and listened, then placed an ear against a dark window. No music. No sounds of a struggle. Nothing.

At the side yard, he reached over the top of the gate and unlatched the locking mechanism from its cradle. The gate swung silently. He advanced to the corner of the house and peered over a planter full of barrel cactus. Karen looked cold, hugging herself in the damp air. He issued a low, warbling whistle. She hurried over.

“What’s the situation?”

“He’s inside with Cindy.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Has he hurt her?”

“I don’t know!”

“My Mustang’s down the block.”

“I can’t leave Cindy.”

“I’ll handle this.”

“Nathan-”

“Karen, please. Get going.”

Anger begin to stir as he pictured Cindy being brutalized by the guy. It tightened his body with adrenaline, threatening to overwhelm him. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and relaxed his hands. When he’d calmed his mind, he removed his shirt and dropped it to the deck. He didn’t want to give his opponent anything to grab.

He pulled his handgun and followed the rear wall of the house, his movements precise and silent. At each dark window, he paused and listened. All quiet. No sound at all. Working his way through the maze of potted plants and patio furniture, he approached the sliding glass door. Detecting no movement, he slipped inside.

He heard it right away. A man’s voice. Muffled, from down the hall behind a closed door.

Another surge of adrenaline swept through him, this time under his command. A smile touched his lips. Nathan McBride, in his environment.

The next sound banished the smile, an unmistakable sound of a hand slapping flesh. Nathan kicked the door so violently it tore away from its hinges. Fully clothed, Cindy cowered on the floor in a corner, her legs tucked against her chest. The left side of her face showed a fresh impact.

The man leaning over her whipped around and squinted. “You.”

“Yes, me.”

Just as Nathan recalled, this guy was solid muscle and huge, taller by an inch or two. With his shaved head and hourglass torso, he looked like a bouncer. To anyone else, he might’ve looked intimidating. To Nathan, he was three hundred pounds of hamburger with an amphibian’s brain attached.

Nathan stepped forward and slapped him with his free hand, a wet, meaty impact on the man’s cheek. He moved back and waited for the reaction he knew was coming.

He looked Nathan in the eyes, looked at the gun, and then looked him in the eyes again.

“What, this?” Nathan tossed the Sig Sauer onto the carpet at the man’s feet.

His expression confused, the bouncer looked down at the gun and unconsciously wiped his nostrils with his thumb and forefinger. Cocaine.

If this guy had any sense of reality, he would’ve surrendered right then and there, because he was now face-to-face with a shirtless opponent, covered in menacing scars who looked like he belonged in a bare-knuckle, cage-fighting match on an alien war planet. But this man wasn’t thinking straight. No doubt he was accustomed to winning fights. Well, that was about to change.

Ignoring the gun at his feet, the bouncer lowered his head and charged.

Nathan saw it coming.

He sidestepped and shoved the man into the wall. The guy’s head struck the drywall and left a cereal-bowl impression in its surface. Nathan kicked him in the ass, making the impression deeper. The man grunted, cursed, and yanked himself free.

Nathan stepped back. “It’s a little cramped in here,” he said. “Shall we finish this in the living room?”

“No problem.”

Nathan gestured toward the door and moved aside, allowing the bouncer to exit the bedroom first. He pointed at Cindy. “Stay here.” Following at a safe distance, he sensed his opponent disappear around the living room corner more than he saw it. Then he heard a metallic sound and knew what it was.

The fireplace iron.

Nathan took loud, deliberate steps down the hall and stopped four feet short of the corner. The poker’s black form whooshed and penetrated the wall where he would’ve been had he kept going. He kicked the bouncer’s arm, pinning it to the wall, and had the satisfaction of feeling the mid-ulna and radius bones snap. The hand released the iron and fell away.