J. Black - The Shop

Jolie slid out and touched her feet to the asphalt. Gently closed the door to the Ram.

“Maddy! You’d better come to the door! I mean it!”

Crouched low, Jolie crab-walked to the corner, using bushes and trees for concealment. The camera hanging from the strap looped around her neck, Jolie was glad for the telephoto lens. The plan was to take photos of the two of them out front, then tail Amy. Amy would be the one with the money.

The door opened and Maddy stepped outside. Jolie was concentrating so hard on getting a good shot, she didn’t hear the truck turn onto the street until it accelerated past her in a pall of blue smoke.

She would think afterward that it was like watching a movie. It happened that fast.

The truck slowed to a stop in front of Maddy’s house, idling rough. Both women turned to look. Jolie let the camera fall to her chest and reached for her weapon. There were two loud cracks. Maddy bent down as if to pick something up from the porch floor.

Jolie brought up her weapon. Shouted, “Police!”

Three more cracks, rapid succession. The shriek of tires. Both women down, pushed over like dominos.

Something whizzed past Jolie’s ear. She heard the crack, like firewood exploding. Was she hit?

No time.

Get into a shooting stance. Double-grip, slow it down, breathe! Aim for the tire, squeeze off the shot.

She missed. Heart racing in overdrive. Ear stinging like a son of a bitch. Blood trickling down into her collar.

A light snapped on in the house across the street, a man in pajamas running outside. She couldn’t risk the shot. “Police!” she yelled. “Go inside! Go inside now! Call 911!”

The truck accelerated. The passenger banged the side of the truck, yelling, “Go-go-go- go !”

Man in his pajamas, just staring at her, in the line of fire.

“Police! Inside, now !”

The man backed toward the door. Still didn’t have a clear shot. Switch gears . Pointing the camera one-handed, she clicked a photo just as the truck hit the corner to the alley. The truck skewed sideways, back panel whacking a reflective pole hard.

Accelerated in a funnel of dust.

Gone.

Jolie sprinted toward the Akers house. Both victims on the ground. They looked like discarded clothing under the porch light. She punched 911 into her cell. Identified herself as police, gave the code for officer needs assistance, and told them to send an ambulance.

Description? Truck. Concealed license plate. Color? Muddy under the streetlights—maybe red. Or brown. Seventies GMC or Chevy. Two men with a rifle.

A rifle?

Yes, a rifle. Driving north, alley off Jackson.

The phone dangled from her hand. The next thing she knew, she was standing over Maddy Akers as if she’d been teleported there. Maddy appeared to be dead. Her neck and jaw had been taken out, one large clot, shiny black in the lamplight. Amy was dead too—shot to pieces.

Sirens.

CPR . Not Maddy, her neck was blown out. Amy. As she stepped in Amy’s direction, her foot almost skated out from under her.

The porch was slick with blood.

25 FRANKLIN

PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA

The former attorney general of the United States, Franklin Haddox, throttled back the twin Yanmar 480 HP diesels and piloted his boat, Judicial Restraint , through the pass into St. Andrews Bay.

Today was the one bright spot in an otherwise miserable week. He would finally meet his distant cousin, the author Nick Holloway, for the first time—just the lift he needed.

The vague worry that had plagued him since Memorial Day weekend had hardened into dread in the last couple of days. But he wouldn’t give in to it. He couldn’t. You needed a steady hand on the tiller in situations like this. Frank knew Mike, and even his own wife thought he was weak. Both of them confused weakness with caution.

In truth, Mike Cardamone was the loose cannon. He was the one who didn’t think things through. Maybe it was because he’d been in the CIA for so long. Mike thought like a spook. That incessant desire to snip every loose end, even if doing so could lead to a complete unraveling.

Frank didn’t want to think about it, but it kept digging its way into his thoughts. Where would Mike stop? For God’s sake, was he going to go after everybody ?

The thought chilled him.

Frank was fairly certain Mike didn’t know about Riley and that crazy, hostage-taking asshole, Luke Perdue. Mike lived in DC. He hadn’t been down here in months. Still, he had an uncanny way of finding out things.

There had been no hint of anything like that in their phone conversations. Mike did talk about the standoff at the Starliner Motel. He talked about the surveillance they’d put on Luke’s sister Amy, but he never mentioned Riley.

Frank’s gut clenched. Mike was a spook at heart. He wouldn’t tip his hand. If he knew that Luke Perdue and Riley were sleeping together, he would have logically made another assumption: that Luke could have showed Riley the photos.

A couple of days ago, Frank had taken Riley out on the boat—just the two of them, on the pretext of a day out together. Riley’d acted like it was a big drag to go out with her dad, but Frank knew she was actually happy about it. That was the thing about Riley. Every emotion showed on her face.

He told her he knew about Luke. As always, she was defiant. “He was my choice! We loved each other! You don’t even know what real love is.”

Riley had a point there. Sometimes he and Grace seemed more like co-conspirators than man and wife. They spun scenarios, talked tactics well into the night, didn’t touch one another in public. But there was another side to their marriage.

“It was over, okay?” Riley said, her face stormy. “He broke up with me. And now he’s dead! That should make you happy!”

It was embarrassing. His daughter making a fool of herself over a pot-smoking loser. Frank managed to get the truth out of her: Luke told Riley he was going to get some pot from his truck, and then snuck off into the night. Probably couldn’t stand all the drama—Frank could relate to that.

But the thing was, it happened that night. The night in question. Frank could not let that go. But Riley wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell him anything more. She did manage to rub Frank’s nose in it about the pot. “Yes, Daddy, we smoked pot. We had sex, too. Lots of sex—I could tell you the positions, all the things we did.”

He almost slapped her, but didn’t. She was still the fruit of his loins, and he owed it to her to protect her. Even if she was dumber than Pontoon, their goofy Irish setter.

Riley had to make everything a fight. She thought her behavior was shocking. But she couldn’t even be shocking consistently. Riley had always lacked focus. It was difficult to take her tantrums seriously.

She was needy, and that kind of neediness made him recoil—the reason he avoided her as much as possible.

He was sure Riley had not seen the photos from that night. It wasn’t just wishful thinking on his part. There was a certain logic at work here. If Luke left and never came back, if he refused to see her, then he didn’t get a chance to show her the photos.

The problem was, so much was open to conjecture. When they recovered Luke’s phone, the first thing Mike did was have forensics done. Turned out to be a throwaway phone. There was nothing on it. The phone had never been programmed, which meant they’d been outwitted by a meth-using, leaf-blowing redneck.

Luke’s real phone was still out there somewhere. Frank knew it and Mike knew it, and all this uncertainty could lead Mike to think of Riley.