Sandra Brown - Ricochet

So from the time he could reason, Savich had understood that he must create a dominion that was solely his. A man didn’t achieve an egotistic goal of that caliber by being a nice guy, but rather by being tougher, smarter, meaner than his peers. A man could do it only by evoking fear in anyone he met.

Young Robert had taken the dire experiences of his childhood and youth and turned them to his advantage. Each year of poverty, abuse, and alienation was like an additional application of varnish, which became harder and more protective, until now, he was impenetrable. This was particularly true of his soul.

He had directed his intelligence and entrepreneurial instincts toward commerce-of a sort. He was dealing crack cocaine by the time he was twelve. At age twenty-five, in a coup that included slit-ting the throat of his mentor in front of awed competitors, he established himself as the lord of a criminal fiefdom. Those who hadn’t known his name up to that point soon did. Rivals began showing up dead by gruesome means. His well-earned reputation for ruthlessness rapidly spread, effectively quelling any dreamed-of mutinies.

His reign of terror had continued for a decade. It had made him wealthy beyond even his expectations. Minor rebellions staged by those reckless or stupid enough to cross him were immediately snuffed. Betrayal spelled death to the betrayer.

Ask Freddy Morris. Not that he could answer you.

As Savich wheeled into the parking lot of the warehouse from which he ran his legitimate machine shop, he chuckled yet again, imagining Duncan Hatcher’s reaction upon finding the little gift that had been left in his refrigerator.

Duncan Hatcher had started as a pebble in his shoe, nothing more than a nuisance. Initially his crusade to destroy Savich’s empire had been somewhat amusing. But Hatcher’s determination hadn’t waned. Each defeat seemed only to strengthen his resolve. Savich was no longer amused. The detective had become an increasingly dangerous threat who must be dealt with. Soon.

The gradual introduction of methamphetamine into the Southeastern states had opened up a new and vigorous market. It was an ever-expanding profit center for Savich’s business. But it was a demanding taskmaster, requiring constant vigilance. He had his hands full controlling those who manufactured and marketed meth for him. He was equally busy keeping independents from poaching on his territory.

Any idiot with a box of cold remedy and a can of fuel thought he could go into business for himself. Fortunately, most of the amateurs blew themselves and their makeshift labs to smithereens without any help from him. But as relatively easy as it was to produce, meth was even easier to market. Because of its various forms of ingestion-snorting, smoking, injecting, and simply swallowing-there was something to suit every user.

It was a lucrative trade, and Savich didn’t want Duncan Hatcher to bugger it up.

The machine shop on the ground floor of the warehouse was noisy, nasty, and hot, in contrast to the cool oasis of his office suite upstairs. The two areas were separated by a short ride in a clanking service elevator, but aesthetically they were worlds apart.

He’d spared no expense to surround himself with luxury. His leather desk chair was as soft as butter. The finish on his desk was satin smooth and glossy. The carpet was woven of silk threads, the finest money could buy.

His secretary was a homosexual named Kenny, whose family had deep roots in Savannah society and, unfortunately for Kenny, longevity genes. Kenny was waiting impatiently for his elderly parents to die and leave him, their only son and heir, his much-anticipated paper mill fortune.

In the meantime he worked for Savich, who was dark and mysterious and exciting, who was anathema to his stodgy parents for every reason thinkable, and who had won Kenny’s undying loyalty by slowly choking to death a violent homophobe who had waylaid Kenny outside a gay bar and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

Their working relationship was mutually beneficial. Savich preferred Kenny to a female secretary. Invariably women got around to wanting a sexual relationship with him, the depth of which depended on the woman. His policy had always been to keep romance and business separate.

Besides, women were too easily swayed by flattery, or even kindness. Cops and federal agents often used this feminine weakness as a means of getting information. They’d once tried that tactic in the hope of incriminating him. It failed when his secretary mysteriously disappeared. She’d never been found. He’d replaced her with Kenny.

Kenny shot to his feet the instant Savich crossed the threshold of the office suite. Although his well-coiffed hair remained well-coiffed as he nodded toward the closed door to Savich’s private office, it was apparent that he was in a state of excitability.

“You have a visitor who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said in an exaggerated stage whisper.

Instantly alert to the danger of an ambush-his first thought was Hatcher-Savich reached for the pistol at the small of his back.

His secretary’s plucked eyebrows arched fearfully. “It’s not like that. I would have called you if it was like that. I believe you’ll want to see this visitor.”

Savich, now more curious than wary, moved to the door of his private chamber and opened it. His guest was standing with her back to the room, staring out the window. Hearing him, she turned and removed the dark sunglasses that concealed half her face.

“Elise! What an unexpected and delightful surprise. You’re always a sight for sore eyes.”

She didn’t return either his wide smile or his flattery. “I’m glad to hear that because I need a favor.”

Duncan’s rank as detective sergeant afforded few benefits above those of his colleagues, but one of them was a private office at the back of the narrow room that was home to the Violent Crimes Unit.

Duncan nodded at DeeDee as he walked past her desk. He had a doughnut stuck in his mouth, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, his sport jacket hooked on a finger of the other, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He stepped into his office, but before he even had a chance to sit down, DeeDee, who’d followed him into the closet-sized office, laid a folder on his desk with a decisive slap.

“His name was Gary Ray Trotter.”

Duncan wasn’t a morning person. Hated them, in fact. It took a while for him to warm up to the idea of daylight and get all his pistons firing. DeeDee, on the other hand, could go from zero to sixty within a few seconds.

Despite their late night at the Lairds’ house, she would have been up and at ’em for hours. Other detectives had straggled into the VCU this morning, looking already sapped by the cloying humidity outside. DeeDee, not surprisingly, was by far the most chipper of the lot and was practically bristling with energy.

Duncan raised his arm and let the newspaper slide onto his desk. He draped his jacket over the back of his chair, set down the coffee, which had grown hot in his hand despite the cardboard sleeve around the cup, and took a bite from the doughnut before removing it from his mouth.

“No ‘good morning’?” he asked grumpily.

“Dothan got to work early, too,” she told him as he plopped into his desk chair. “He fingerprinted the Lairds’ corpse. Gary Ray Trotter was a repeat offender, so I had the ID in a matter of minutes. Lots of stuff on this guy.” She indicated the folder lying still untouched on his desk.

“Originally from Baltimore, over the last dozen years he’s gradually worked his way down the East Coast, spending time in various jails for petty stuff until a couple of years ago he got brave and expanded into armed robbery in Myrtle Beach. He was released on parole three months ago. His parole officer hadn’t heard from him in two.”