Heart of the Hunter (76 page)

The lock popped with a small explosion, about as loud as a firecracker, and the alarm didn’t trip. The guards would have heard it, but the guards were at the donut shop.

I opened the door and immediately began counting down from sixty in my head. The alarm would trip sixty seconds after that door opened if I didn’t disable it first. The access panel was in the corridor. I found it and quickly opened the screws on the cover with a screwdriver. Then I rewired the circuit board for the alarm system, based on schematics I’d downloaded from the alarm company’s own website. It wasn’t easy to do with my gloves on and I prayed the circuit worked.

With ten seconds to go, I took a step back and waited, counting down silently in my head. At zero, the alarm tripped, but the circuit didn’t engage, and the rest of the system had no idea there was a break in it. If I’d screwed up that part, I’d have had four minutes to get out before the loan company’s private security contractor showed up. But everything seemed okay. I listened for the secondary alarm and it didn’t trip either. I was good.

I went down the corridor, past the guards’ post, and into the safe room. I could have picked the safe, but not in the fourteen minutes I had available to me. Instead, I attached more plastic explosive to the bolt engagement mechanism, wired them to a detonator, set the timer for forty seconds, and went back into the guard post, shutting the door behind me.

The explosion this time was louder. The building shook. If anyone had been there, they’d have realized what was going on. But the guards were still blissfully unaware, munching on their frosted donuts and sweet coffee.

I went back into the safe room. The door was intact but I was able to retract the bolts manually and it swung open. Inside were hundreds of personal checks. This was the way people paid for the loans, with post-dated checks. I gathered them all up, put them in a steel bin, poured fuel on them, and lit them on fire. All those people could keep their paychecks this month. It might give them a chance to get out of the cycle of debt they were in.

Then I took out the loan ledgers, with the details of the people who’d taken out small loans during the past few days, and added them to the fire. It was as simple as that. They were poor people, unfortunate, but tonight they were catching a break. They were all off the hook for the money they’d borrowed.

Then I loaded wads of cash into my backpack. This was the money the company loaned out, and it was in neat, ten-thousand dollar stacks, delivered freshly by the bank. I counted sixty of them, six-hundred-grand. Not bad for a night’s work.

There was a computer on the desk by the safe and I opened the login terminal. I had the username and password from my surveillance and I ran a search for Rob Crawford. I shook my head when I saw the search results. The prick owed the loan sharks two and a half million dollars. He’d never be able to pay that back. He’d bankrupt himself, and Lacey, trying to buy off the debt collectors. Even his plastic surgery business wouldn’t be enough to get him out of that hole. I wondered what it was that got him into such a mess. A gambling addiction? A hooker addiction? Drugs? I shook my head. I printed out the record so that the loan sharks wouldn’t lose it. Then I wiped their records, immediately erasing the debts of all the people who’d ever taken a payday loan from the company. They were all free. All of them except Rob. I didn’t feel like extending him the same courtesy. Besides, the loan sharks weren’t about to forget a loan that big, even if I had deleted the record.

I counted out six thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills and left it on the security guard’s seats. They were going to lose their jobs over this. Six grand would be enough to get them and their families through until they were able to find new jobs. Then I left the building, got on my bike, and burned rubber out of there.

I didn’t go home. Instead I went straight to Rob’s overpriced, luxury condo. I admired the architecture of the place, and the perfect landscaping, as I knocked on his front door. I had to admit, he did have taste. His only problem was that he couldn’t afford it. He was paying for it all with borrowed money.

Rob answered in his underwear. I’d left my bag and helmet with my bike. I was probably the only guy in the entire city who had the nerve to leave that much cash unguarded, but I was too afraid I’d be tempted to use the gun on Rob if I brought it with me. When Rob saw me he tried to slam the door in my face, but I kicked it in. He fell backwards as the door slammed into him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he said, rising to his feet.

“Honey,” a woman’s voice said from upstairs, “who is it?”

“Who’s that?” I said to Rob, a look of complete disgust on my face. “Your secretary?”

Rob nodded sheepishly.

“You scumbag,” I said.

“I don’t have any money here,” Rob said, as if I could possibly be there to rob him. I laughed at the thought. I had more money in my checking account than his entire life was worth. And I’d never rob someone in their home, no matter who they were. That went against my code. I only stole from corporations.

“You’re cheating on Lacey with your secretary?” I asked.

“It’s not like that,” he said.

“You’re damn right it’s not like that. Because I’m not going to allow it to be like that.”

“Who do you think you are?” Rob said.

“You know who I am, Rob. I’m Grant Lucas. My job, my only job, is to look after Lacey Eden. If you were the right man for her, that would be one thing, but you’re nothing more than a scumbag piece of shit.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, fuck me,” I said. “I know about your plan to rip her off, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your little debt at the loan company. What is it? Two million and change?”

There was a look of complete shock on his face. “How do you know about that?”

“Let’s just say, I think they’re going to be pressuring you a lot harder for their money in the near future.”

“What?”

“And you better come up with a new plan to get it for them, because Lacey is off limits.”

“Lacey is my fiancée.”

“No she’s not, you piece of shit. You had your chance with her, and you blew it.”

“So what? You’re going to tell her who she can and can’t marry.”

“No. You’re going to call off the engagement, Rob. And if you don’t, I’ll make it so that your life won’t be worth living.”

The woman’s voice called out again from upstairs. “Rob, what’s going on?”

“Just a minute, Cassie,” Rob said. “It’s just some business.”

“Should I call the police?” I said.

“No,” Rob said. Then he went quiet. He looked at me. “What do you know about my debt?”

I shrugged. “What’s to know? You’ve got some addiction you’ve been financing by borrowing money from them. I don’t need to know the details.”

Rob laughed. “You think you’re real clever, don’t you, Grant. Coming in here, telling me what’s what. Forbidding me from marrying Lacey.”

He was standing next to his desk and in a single, fluid motion, his hand reached for a drawer. Instantly, I leapt toward him, but I wasn’t fast enough. He grabbed a gun, a nine-millimeter, and pulled the trigger. I was diving for him, in midair, when the bullet tore through the flesh of my left shoulder, sending me into a spasm of agony.

I landed on Rob and grabbed his gun arm before he could fire another bullet. I brought him to the floor, the gun sliding across the ground away from him. I punched him once, hard, in the face, and a second time in the gut.

“That’s for Lacey, you son of a bitch. If you ever go near her again, I’ll kill you.”

He looked up into my eyes, my blood flowing down my arm and onto him, and he knew I meant it.

“All right,” he said.

“You call her, make some excuse, and tell her the engagement is off.”

“All right,” he said again.

“And Rob?”

“Yeah.”

“If she asks if you cheated on her, don’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t deserve to hear that shit again. Not from you. She’s been through enough already.”

“All right,” he said, clearly terrified.

I don’t know if it was the punches that knocked the fear into him, or the fact that he’d pulled the trigger of his own gun and put a bullet in me, but he was scared now. I wouldn’t have any more problems from him. He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who’d ever shot someone before, and it might have been the shock of seeing how small an effect the bullet had had on me, but I knew he’d back down. When it came to Lacey, it would take a lot more than a bullet to stop me, and he could see it in my eyes.

“You’re not going to hurt me?” he said, as I climbed off him.

“Not unless you shoot me again,” I said, a small smile on my face.

“You seem to be taking the fact that I shot you pretty well,” he said as he climbed back to his feet.

“Well, Rob, the way I look at it, as much of a dirtbag as you are, I owe you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because until you came along, I never realized just how deeply I needed Lacey. I always thought I could live my life without her. Now, thanks to you, I realize that without her, my life is nothing. So for that, I’ll always thank you, even if you are a complete prick.”

“I showed you all that?”

“You showed me that there’s no one out there who will ever come close to loving her the way I do. Not even close. I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. And that’s the kind of love she deserves.”

“So you’re going to go home and ask her out?”

I laughed. “No, Rob.” I said. “I’m not going to ask her out. I’m going to go home, and I’m going to fucking claim her. I’m going to make her mine, and she’ll never even think about a guy like you again.”

Chapter 36

Grant

F
ROM ROB’S PLACE, I INTENDED
to ride straight home, but I was losing so much blood from the gunshot wound that I had to see a doctor. I knew I couldn’t risk showing up at a hospital, not after pulling off a robbery the same night, so I dropped by a twenty-four hour pet clinic on the edge of town and walked in.

A receptionist in a cute nurse’s outfit greeted me.

“How can I help you, sir?”

She glanced at my hand, which was dripping blood, and then at the bullet hole in my leather jacket at the shoulder. Calmly, she took in the rest of my outfit, my gloves, my helmet, and my backpack. Her hand moved toward the phone.

“I know how this looks,” I said. “I’ve been shot, and I can’t go to the hospital because they’ll ask too many questions.”

“Yes,” she said, uncertainly. “Criminals come in looking like you.”

“What if I told you I’m not a bad guy?”

“They all say that,” she said, “and then they pull a gun on me.”

I looked around the waiting room. No one was there apart from her and me. I took my backpack from my shoulders and handed it to her. “The gun’s in there,” I said.

She took the pack and looked inside.

“Look,” I said. “I understand that you’re supposed to call the police, and I understand that you don’t know me, and don’t know what kind of man I am, so I’m just going to be straight with you.”

“Please do.”

“I do break the law from time to time.”

“No kidding.”

“But I don’t hurt people.”

“I’m sure,” she said.

“And I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“I see.”

“But I am asking you for your help. I got shot tonight, by a man who’s engaged to get married.”

“That doesn’t sound like a situation in which you’d usually get shot.”

“Well, he’s engaged to
my
girl. The woman I’m supposed to marry. Do you understand that? She’s the love of my life, she’s the air I breathe, and she was going to marry him. She’s
my
girl. I swear it.”

“Does
she
know that?”

“I think she does.”

“Then why is she engaged to the other guy?”

“Because I’ve been a fool. I hesitated when I should have made a move. I’ve been in love with her my entire life, but I didn’t have the balls to tell her when I should have.”

“That’s pretty stupid.”

“Yes, it is, but I’m fixing it now,” I said. “Step one was to tell her fiancé he couldn’t have her.”

“And he didn’t like that?”

“He put this bullet in my arm,” I said, “if that answers your question.”

“But how am I supposed to know that you’re the one she’s supposed to be with, and not the other guy?” the nurse said.

“I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Because I’m truly in love with her. I’ve been in love with her since the moment I set eyes on her, and that was a very long time ago. I’m thirty-eight years old, but I first met her when I was twenty-one. Her father took me in, trained me in my trade, and we both grew up in the same house.”

“So that’s why you never told her you loved her?”

“Yes, because we were supposed to be a family. But in my heart, she was always the one. I just couldn’t see it. I didn’t allow myself to see it. And I let her go from man to man, always selling herself short. None of the guys she was with were ever good to her. When I confronted her fiancé tonight, he was with another woman. His secretary.”

“He was cheating on her?”

“Yes.”

“And they aren’t even married yet?”

“That’s the God’s honest truth,” I said.

“And what are you going to do about it?”

I thought for a second. “Well, for a start, I’m going to tell her what a fool I’ve been. Then I’m going to make it up to her for everything that I’ve done wrong in the past seventeen years. Then I’m going to give her the life she deserves.”

“That’s a lot.”

“But I can’t do it while I’m losing half a quart of blood per hour,” I said, raising my arm.

She looked at my shoulder, then at my face. She sighed. “All right,” she said, “but you can’t ever tell anyone about this. My boss would lose his license if it got out.”

“I won’t be telling anyone,” I said. “Is your boss here?”

“No, he only comes in if there’s an emergency. I can take out the bullet and patch you up.”

“All right,” I said.

I followed her back to the operating room. There was a sedated dog on the bed, asleep.