Tom Piccirilli: The Fever Kill

Morena stepped in, her face blank, already in charge. She grabbed a dishtowel, leaned over him and pressed it hard against his belly. It hurt like a son of a bitch now, but he liked her hand on him, the fierce power of her body up against his. She'd followed him four hundred miles, riding his tail right to his front door.

"You don't want to die," she said.

"No," he told her, "I don't think I do."

"Hold on."

Maybe it was love, maybe not. Whatever it was, he appreciated having her here now. He tried to hold her close, to put his palm across her belly and feel the baby, but she was moving again.

She shouted at Joan, "Get more towels. Call an ambulance."

"Who are you?" Joan screamed. "What are you doing in my house?"

"Move! We need the towels!"

"Get out of my house!"

Stevie broke from his mother and stepped closer. The kid was pale and panting and sweating. From the floor, Crease held his hand out to his son. The kid stood there crying, which might be a good sign. Crease wanted to tell him to quit picking on the little kids, there was no reason to be shoving girls around, he was going to have a baby brother or sister soon. He had to learn to be nice, to pick his battles, to lay off the weak, to slap down the hoods and degenerates. Stevie stared at him. Cruez came around and started to eat the pie with his fingers, grunting with pleasure. Joan continued whimpering, and she was weaving side to side but she wouldn't come any closer. Morena had snatched up the phone but didn't know the address and she was yelling at Joan to tell her, but Joan wouldn't or couldn't do it. Teddy told him he was finished. Crease made it to his feet and stumbled to the table where he sat heavily. The table had been so white and he was getting it dirty fast. He managed to light a cigarette but felt too tired to even take a drag. He held his hand out to his son again, hoping the boy would take it soon.

Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at the new novel by Tom Piccirilli

The Last Kind Words

Available in June 2011

Visit www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com and send an e-mail to be notified when the book is available to order.

"Perfect crime fiction… a convincing world, a cast of compelling characters, and above all a great story." -LEE CHILD, New York Times bestselling author of 61 Hours

“For the first time since The Godfather, a family of criminals has stolen my heart. A brilliant mix of love and violence, charm and corruption. I loved it.” -NANCY PICKARD, New York Times bestselling author of The Scent of Rain and Lightning

"You don't choose your family. And the Rand clan, a family of thieves and killers, is bad to the bone. But it's a testimony to Tom Piccirilli's stellar writing that you still care about each and every one of them. The Last Kind Words is at once a dark and brooding page-turner and a heartfelt tale about the ties that bind. Fans of Lee Child will love this hard-boiled, tough-as-nails novel."- Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Fragile

“It's Piccirilli’s sense of relationships and the haunting power of family that lifts his writing beyond others in the genre. The Last Kind Words is a swift-moving and hard-hitting novel."

– Michael Koryta, Edgar Award-nominated author of So Cold the River

“A stunning story that ranges far afield at times but never truly leaves home, a place where shadows grow in every corner. It’s superbly told, with prose that doesn’t mess about or flinch from evil and characters who are best known from a distance.”

– Daniel Woodrell, PEN award-winning author of Winter’s Bone

"There's more life in Piccirilli's The Last Kind Words (and more heartache, action, and deliverance) than any other novel I've read in the past couple of years.”

– Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of The Lock Artist

"You're in for a treat. Tom Piccirilli is one of the most exciting authors around. He writes vivid action that is gripping and smart, with characters you believe and care about.”

– David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of First Blood

The Last Kind Words

Tom Piccirilli

“Fear and hope are alike underneath.”

– Richard Ford

“Can’t do it, simply cause underneath ’em is too ugly.”

– Billy Gibbons

I’d come five years and two thousand miles to stand in the rain while they prepared my brother for his own murder.

He had two weeks to go before they strapped him down and injected poison into his heart. I knew Collie would be divided about it, the way he was divided about everything. A part of him would look forward to stepping off the big ledge. He’d been looking over it his whole life in one way or another.

A different part of him would be full of rage and self-pity and fear. I had no doubt that when the time came he’d be a passive prisoner right up to the moment they tried to buckle him down. Then he’d explode into violence. He was going to hurt whoever was near him, whether it was a priest or the warden or a guard. They’d have to club him down while he laughed. The priest, if he was still capable, would have to raise his voice in prayer to cover my brother’s curses.

I was twenty minutes late for my appointment at the prison. The screw at the gate didn’t want to let me in because he’d already marked me as a no show. I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to be there. He saw that I wanted to split and it was enough to compel him to let me stay.

At the prison door another screw gave me the disgusted once over. I told him my name but the sound of it didn’t feel right anymore.

“Terry Rand.”

The fake ID I’d been living under the past half decade had become a safe harbor, a slim chance to better myself even though I hadn’t done much yet. I resented being forced to return to the person I’d once been.

The screw made me repeat my name. I did. It was like ice on my tongue. Then he made me repeat it again. I caught on.

“Terrier Rand.”

Expressionless, he led me off to a small side room where I was frisked and politely asked if I would voluntarily succumb to a strip search. I asked what would happen if I said no. He said I wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. It was a good enough reason to turn around. I owed my brother nothing. I could return out west and get back to a life I was still trying to believe in and make real.

Even as I decided to leave I was shrugging out of my jacket and kicking off my shoes. I got naked and held my arms up while the screw ran his hands through my hair and checked between my ass cheeks and under my scrotum.

He stared at the dog tattoo that took up the left side of my chest covering three bad scars. One was from when Collie had stabbed me with the bayonet of a tin Revolutionary War toy soldier when I was seven. I got a deep muscle infection that the doctor had to go digging after, leaving the area a rutted, puckered purple.

Another was from when I was twelve and my father sent me up the drainpipe to a house that was supposedly empty. A seventy-five year old lady picked up a Tiffany-style lamp and swatted me three stories down into a hibiscus tree. A rib snapped and pierced the flesh. My old man got me into the car and pulled the bone shard through by hand as the sirens closed in and he drove up on sidewalks to escape. The scar was a mottled red and thick as a finger.

The last one I didn’t think about. I had made an art of not thinking about it.

The screw took pride in his professional indifference, courteous yet dismissive. But the tattoo caught his attention.

“Your family, you’re some serious dog lovers, eh?”

I didn’t answer. One last time he checked through my clothes for any contraband. He tossed them back to me and I got dressed.