Arctic Fire (12 page)

Jack stared over the desk as the old man went quiet. He couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

He stood behind the bedroom door, focused on his breathing, on regulating it as he’d learned to do long ago. The front door had just slammed shut, and the sound had sent an explosion of adrenaline bursting through his system.

He heard the footsteps on the stairs come closer; heard the man’s humming grow louder; saw the figure flash past him through the crack between the wall and the door; and watched the man toss a jacket onto the bed and go into the bathroom, still humming happily.

Then he stepped from his hiding place and silently closed the bedroom door. The man wouldn’t be humming much longer.

“
What the—
” The man whipped around as soon as he saw the reflection in the mirror over the sink. “Who the hell are you?”

“Death.” It was what he always said at this moment, and simply uttering the word sent another mad rush of near-ecstasy-inducing adrenaline searing through his system. “Justice.”

The man’s eyes bugged out of their sockets as he stabbed in the air. “Get the hell out of my house right now, asshole, or I’ll kill you!” he yelled. “I swear to Christ I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands, you little shit.”

For a split second Shane Maddux caught his image in the mirror behind the man and he had to smile. No wonder the man wasn’t intimidated. The guy in the mirror
was
a little shit. Five-six and 140 pounds dripping wet, with a face only a father could love. Only his father hadn’t loved him. And maybe that was
ultimately why he’d grown so fond of the deal he’d forged with Roger Carlson. One of the reasons, anyway.

“Do you have any last words?” Maddux asked calmly.

The man rushed toward Maddux before he’d even finished, screaming wildly as he tore across the bathroom floor.

Maddux delivered a wicked chop-kick to the man’s left kneecap, then stepped smoothly aside as the man collapsed to the floor, writhing and screaming in pain.

Maddux’s eyes narrowed as he stared down at the man struggling on the floor. The guy was a confirmed sex offender who four years ago had raped two young boys in the next town over. He’d admitted to everything during his initial interrogation with the detectives, but he’d gotten off when his case had finally come to trial because of a technicality and a young prosecutor’s inexperience. In fact, he’d laughed about the prosecutor’s mistakes in front of a crew of reporters on the courthouse steps a few minutes after the judge had been forced to let him go.

Maddux pulled a pistol from his pocket, pressed the barrel to the man’s forehead above his terrified eyes, and fired.

The order Carlson had given him in that envelope had been executed—and justice had been served. The system didn’t always work. Sometimes it needed help. Maddux was happy to provide that assistance.

He stared down at the dead man. Blood was pouring down the guy’s face like a stream racing down the side of a steep mountain. Maddux had always wanted to do the same thing to that priest who’d assaulted him four times in less than two weeks when he was a kid. He’d always wanted to put a bullet through the bastard’s head.

That priest was retired and living happily outside of Chicago. Maddux took a deep breath. Maybe it was finally time for a trip to the Midwest.

The moment he was past the doors of the First Manhattan building and out onto Wall Street, Jack lit a cigarette. After a week of warm weather, it had turned cold again in the Northeast. The temperature was down into the thirties, and the wind was whipping through the steep canyons formed by lower Manhattan’s tall buildings and narrow streets. But Jack wasn’t inhaling the smoke to warm himself up. He was doing it to calm himself down.

He wasn’t Troy’s adoptive brother after all. In fact, they were half blood brothers. He was a member of the Jensen family. At least, a lot more of one than he’d thought he was ten minutes ago.

It was so much to process, and his mind was still reeling. Who was his real father? Was he still alive? And why had Bill chosen that particular moment to drop the bomb? Was it simply that he was so weak because of Troy’s death that he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer?

Jack shook his head as he walked. Bill was a strategic and deliberate man. He usually had an obvious agenda for everything he did—and at least two more hidden ones. As far as Jack knew, Bill had never done anything out of weakness in his life.

He took a long drag off the cigarette as he headed up Wall Street toward the old Trinity Church. Well, to hell with Bill and this new information and to hell with trying to figure out why the old man had picked ten minutes ago to drop the bomb. The answers to all the questions would still be here when he got back from Alaska. They’d been waiting for thirty years. They could wait a little longer.

He was going to Alaska no matter what, he promised himself as he reached Broadway and stopped at the curb, waiting for the light to turn so he could cross. Something was calling him up
there, something he couldn’t ignore. And nothing was going to stop him from going.

Except money.

Bill was right. He didn’t have much saved, and the trip was going to cost at least five grand, probably more. He’d been hoping Bill would offer to help, but that possibility had been flushed down the toilet right away. Bill wasn’t going to give him a dime, even though he’d been proudly funding Troy’s worldwide joyride for the last six and a half years.

When the traffic light at Wall and Broadway turned, Jack took one more drag from the cigarette, then flicked it away and stepped off the curb.

“
Hey, buddy
!
” someone shouted from behind him. “
Hey,
look out!
”

Jack’s eyes flashed to the right. A white van was racing down Broadway straight at him.

J
ACK TOOK
several deep breaths, then knocked. It had been thirty minutes since the van had run the light on Broadway and almost killed him. But he still hadn’t completely calmed down, he realized as the door opened in front of him. He still had that irony taste in his mouth from his lungs pumping so hard, and his fingers were still shaking.

“Hi, Jack,” the young woman murmured from inside the apartment.

“Hi, Lisa.”

Lisa Martinez was a twenty-year-old first-generation Puerto Rican-American who lived with her three older sisters on the third floor of this run-down project that was in one of Brooklyn’s poorest neighborhoods. She stood slightly over five feet tall and weighed just over a hundred pounds. She had large, brown,
almond-shaped eyes; lovely full lips; and caramel-colored skin. And her beautiful face was framed by long black hair.

“It’s good to see you, Jack. Come in.”

“Thanks,” he said, following her into the apartment. “Are your sisters here?”

“No, I’m by myself. Except for the baby, of course.”

“Of course.”

She led him to a rickety dining room table, which stood in front of a grimy window. The window overlooked a row of basketball courts littered with trash and broken glass. They were used more for closing drug deals than anything else.

As they got to the table, Lisa gave him a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek, then pulled back and motioned for him to sit down. “Coffee?” she asked in her heavy Spanish accent. “It’s really good. We just got it.”

He liked her accent and the way she always waited a few moments to give him that hug and kiss every time he visited. It was as if she was nervous and had to find her courage to do it. “That’s OK.” He eased onto one of the four metal chairs ringing the small table. After just a few seconds of being with her he’d already started to relax. She had this soothing effect on him he didn’t understand—but loved. “But thanks.”

“Cherry Coke?”

He shook his head. “It’s really OK, sweetheart.” It was obvious that she wanted to please him, and he was thirsty. But he didn’t like Cherry Coke, and it seemed like that was the only thing they ever had to drink here besides tap water. “I’m fine.” He searched her dark eyes for clues to how she was really doing. She hid her emotions well for a young woman, though he wasn’t sure she was trying to. It always seemed to him that it was a natural gift, that it wasn’t anything she’d perfected. “Are you OK?”

She looked wonderful for having given birth only two months ago, maybe even better than she had when they’d first met over
a year ago. She still had that pregnancy glow about her, but the extra weight was gone. In fact, she looked slightly thinner to him than she had before she’d conceived.

Lisa shrugged. “All right. You?” she asked as she eased onto the chair beside his.

“I’m fine.”

He kept gazing at her. She was so nice and so beautiful, and he understood why Troy had been so attracted to her.

He let his chin fall slowly to his chest and took a deep breath. Troy…he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing at all.”

“Are you sure? It looked like you were going to say something bad.”

“I was just thinking about this guy I need to call,” he lied.

“Oh.”

He wanted to tell her about the terrible thing that had happened. But now that he was here and he was gazing into those soulful eyes and that vulnerable expression, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t make himself break her heart. He knew how much she loved Troy.

He reached into his suit coat and pulled out an envelope. It had five hundred dollars inside, and that was all he could spare right now. He figured he was going to need the rest of the money he was pretty sure he’d scraped together today to get to Alaska. In fact, he’d probably need more than that when it was all said and done. But he’d work that out later on the fly, while he was in the middle of everything.

“Here.” He held the envelope out for her. “Take it.”

Lisa caught her breath and put a hand to her chest when she saw the cash. “Ay dios mio!” she shrieked, springing out of her chair to give him a huge hug.

“Don’t get too excited,” he said when she finally pulled back. “It’s just five hundred bucks. I’m sorry that’s all I can give you right now.”

“You’re so good to me. Why?”