Assassin P.I. (23 page)

Chapter 26

Angie crouched low, picking her way through the dense underbrush. It wasn’t easy in the dark, but at least she didn’t make much noise, barefoot as she was. Fortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the men who were at the moment combing the area for Jack. They called out to Jack, taunting him, their voices echoing off the landscape. They sounded close. Too close.

She paused to listen.

“I don’t see them anywhere, boss. Maybe they doubled back on us.” The voice sounded uncertain, like he’d lost faith in his mission.

“Torch the house. That should draw them out. Wallace, go finish off the old guys.”

Heavy footsteps led away from her. Angie let out a sigh of relief. They wouldn’t just leave without getting what they’d come for. Jack. But at least she knew what direction they were heading . . . away from her. With them occupied and out of the way, there was still a chance she could find Jack first.

To make him pay for his sins. All of them.

Jack wa
tched in horror as his father’s hunting cabin went up in flames. Smoke poured out of every window and up the stone chimney. The wooden structure never had a chance. Backlit by the fire, three men stood watching, waiting for some signs of life.

Behind him, a twig snapped.

Jack whipped around, his finger poised on the trigger of his gun.

Five feet away, Angie stared back at him, holding a gun of her own. Her nightgown billowed out behind her until she glowed like an ethereal ghost, come to haunt him.

“This isn’t like one of your silly comic books, Jack. You’re not Batman, fighting against fictitious forces of evil. This is real life.”

What was she doing here? Once they realized Jack wasn’t in the cabin after all, they’d come searching for him again. He stood. The need to go to her, to wrap her in his warm embrace, to protect her, rose up in him, choking him. “I thought I told you to stay put and hide.”

She laughed. “You always were the chivalrous one.”

“Keep your voice down. It isn’t safe out here.”

When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, but had hardened. She took a step toward him. “No one is safe around you. Not me, not Trevor, not Agent Shaw.”

Jack backed up, keeping the distance between them. If anything, the embers of her vendetta against him had been fanned, flaring up until she was smoldering in her want of revenge. “You’ve got to know I never meant for any of this to happen.”

The haughty laugh that erupted from her petite body chilled him to the core. “It doesn’t matter, Jack. Don’t you see? You’re a dangerous man, and dangerous men lead dangerous lives.”

As they tangoed around each other, one step forward, one step back, white flakes, a peculiar mixture of snow and ash, began to fall from the sky.

A shot rang out, not from either him or Angie, but somewhere closer to the front of the house. Saying a small prayer for his fallen comrades, he turned his attention back to Angie. He was truly on his own now.

“You couldn’t hurt me, Ang.”

“Couldn’t I?”

Chapter 27

From the mist and snowy ash emerged a shadow. “What do we have here? A lover’s spat?”

Jack had always known, deep down, that it would come to this someday. Forced to choose between the people he loved. People he thought loved him back.

“What do you want, Deluca? I’m busy right now.”

“I see that. I could kill her right now, and be done with it.” Deluca lifted his own piece and pointed it at Angie. “We could walk away and forget any of this ever happened.”

His heart raced.
Think, Jack.
There had to be a way out of this that didn’t involve bloodshed, but if there was, he wasn’t seeing it at the moment. The only vision he had was of a bullet ripping through Angie’s heart.

“I won’t let you kill her.”

“I figured you might say that. Want to do the honor yourself, huh?”

Flicking his gaze back and forth between Angie, whose eyes had gone wide with fear, and Deluca, whose demeanor resembled that of a lunatic’s more and more with every passing second, Jack searched for a solution. Until he’d been framed, he’d been the department’s best detective, a hotshot who always got his guy, always solved the case, a real maverick. He hoped he still had a bit of that guy left in him.

He took a step back, but was met with something cold and hard being pressed against his skull. “Going somewhere?”

His heart sank.

“You brought this on yourself, you know. Always meddling. Always had to be the good ol’ boy, just like your daddy was. The good cop. You should’ve just left it alone, like I told you to. Should’ve walked away from the case, from her, while you still had the chance.”

His father wasn’t a dirty cop like Sweeny’d said. It was nothing more than a ruse to rile him up, get under his skin until he slipped up. And he’d played right into their hands.

“It wasn’t a mistake, was it? Trevor’s death? You knew it was him I’d be killing, not some lowlife gangbanger who’d raped your daughter. Just like I bet it wasn’t some kid who shot my father, either. Am I right?”

He was antagonizing the man, but banking on the fact that Deluca had an ego as big as the Pacific. As long as he kept talking, he could get him to drop his guard, and hopefully his gun.

Deluca let out a string of expletives. “So what? Just because he wasn’t a gangbanger, doesn’t mean he wasn’t a lowlife. Maybe he didn’t rape my daughter, but he was raping me of my money. Feeding you some cockamamie story was easy. You ate it up, just like I knew you would.”

Jack’s mind raced while Deluca rambled. Ten minutes ago, there had been three dirty cops. Deluca and Sweeny were both here, holding them at gunpoint. Where was the third guy? Was he hidden somewhere nearby, watching and biding his time?

“. . . too drunk to shoot straight.”

Scanning the surrounding woods he saw no one. Four guns, two aimed at him.

“. . . cleaned up your mess. I was the one . . .”

Wait. What? Jack cocked his head to the side. Had he heard that correctly? “What did you do, Deluca? You were the one to do what exactly?”

“What do you think? I was there that night, too, sitting right beside you, though I have no doubt you’ve forgotten all that in your drunken haze. You were too blitzed to even shoot straight, so I had to issue the kill shot. It was me, not you.”

For all the remorse in his voice, he might as well have admitted to killing a bothersome fly buzzing his head, not confessing to a heinous act of murder.

Was there nothing Deluca held sacred? Certainly, not family. The man watched his family walk out on him, yet couldn’t bring himself to swallow his pride and gravel for their forgiveness. He’d let them go, as if they mattered not.

Even their deep-seated friendship meant nothing unless it served some purpose to Deluca, but Jack was done being a pawn. His hands might not be completely washed of blood, but a weight lifted knowing he wasn’t the one who killed Trevor.

“He was blackmailing you. Why?” This from Angie.

Jack took in her stiff stance, the way her chin jutted defiantly. She needed answers. Needed to know why Trevor had been marked for death.

Her eyes flicked to his, like golden rays of sunlight. Maybe there was still hope there, but her weapon hadn’t strayed from its mark. It was still aimed right at his heart. If she’d heard Deluca’s confession, she didn’t care. In her eyes, he would always be a killer.

Deluca scoffed at her apparent stupidity. “Why do you think? He knew. He knew that I was the one who’d stolen that money from the drug bust.”

Understanding dawned. Jack felt his stomach twist and turn in response. “It was you all along. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

His own best friend had set him up, let him take the fall for a crime he
knew
he hadn’t committed and then turned him into the vigilante killer that he was today. “But I loved you like a father.”

The man shrugged. “In my defense, I didn’t intentionally frame you. I just didn’t bother to correct the mistake.”

How could the person who professed to be protecting him be the same man who’d been using him as a personal puppet? “You turned me into a hired hit man. You used me!”

His voice had risen to a fevered pitch, echoing. The snowy ash falling from the sky had grown thicker, the air colder despite the raging fire that threatened to spread. Angie was shivering now, her skin pale, her lips purple. Her gun wavered ever so slightly. But the anger flashing in her eyes had not dimmed.

“Come on, Jack. Don’t be so righteous all the time. You were destined for this life. Who do you think gave you all those comic books in the first place? You were so cute, always dressing up like Batman. All I did was make you a real-life superhero.”

“I should shoot you right here and now,” Jack growled.

“You don’t have the balls to pull that trigger. Besides, the moment you so much as flinch, sweet cheeks there, will put a bullet in both you and this pretty lady here.”

Shoot to kill, Sweet cheeks. Shoot to kill.

The phrase Shamus had recently taken to squawking, clicked into place. Everything made sense now. Deluca had been planning this from the very beginning. All of it. From his father’s death, to setting
him
up, to the final shootout. It was what Shaw died trying to tell him.

Angie’s quiet voice broke the silence. “Let me. I want to do the honor.”

So this was how he was going to die. At the hand of his one-time lover. Better her than a dirty cop.

In the end, nothing matters—not the women you
’ve screwed, the balance in the bank, or the fast cars you’d driven. When that time comes, and you find yourself staring down a bullet with nothing between you but one last shred of courage . . . nothing else matters except how you choose to die. Some days are just fucked up like that right from the start.

Jack took aim. He wasn’t going to be the only one to die here.

With both hands, Angie gripped the gun, her gaze infused with pure steel. But there was something else there, something he hadn’t seen before.

Love.

Trust.

And forgiveness.

Like synchronized swimmers, they fired at the same time. The bullets, moving in opposite directions, found their marks, dropping the two dirty cops before either one knew what was coming. Neither of the men had been able to squeeze off a shot.

Jack checked each man for signs of life while Angie tossed their service weapons into the woods. Relief flooded Jack as he gathered Angie into his arms. They were finally safe. For a moment, neither one moved. Instead, they reveled in the warmth and listened to their combined heartbeats, proving once and for all that they were indeed still alive.

He tipped her head up, and lowered his mouth to hers. When he drew back, he said, “I thought you were going to shoot me.”

“Maybe I should have.”

Sweeping her into his arms, he carried her out of those woods, away from all thoughts of crime and corruption.

Epilogue

Jack raised his glass to those who had gathered for a makeshift memorial. As he looked around the sandy shore at his friends, he couldn’t help but count his blessings.

“What makes someone a hero?” he began. “Courage?”

Every head nodded in agreement.

“Sal fought courageously. All the way to the end. Or does self-sacrifice make you a hero?”

“Here, here!” a voice shouted out. Though Knuckles Moura sustained a bullet to the chest, he’d somehow survived and even managed to take down Officer Wallace. Once a fighter, always a fighter. As Jack’s gaze landed on Knuckles, he raised his beer in thanks.

“Frankie sacrificed himself for me. For us.” Jack paused to tamp down the overwhelming grief that threatened to swallow him whole. He brushed it off and continued. “What about a willingness to seek justice at all costs? Or is a hero born of something even simpler than that? FBI Agent Nick Shaw had faith in a greater good and was willing to lay his life down to help others. May he rest in peace.”

“Oh hell, you know Shaw isn’t going to rest until that boy of his is grown and into college! He’s going to be so tired he’s going to
wish
he had died,” Mo shouted.

The crowd laughed. Though Shaw had sustained some pretty serious and life-threatening wounds, he’d managed to drag himself out of the house before it was torched. And his brother-in-law had come through for him, sending a squad of reinforcements to the cabin, in essence saving all their lives.

Mo and Vito had successfully kidnapped Jack’s mother from her home and helped reunite mother, son, and Shamus a few weeks later. Jack chuckled and turned to leave.

“College? Think again. You know what they call kids these days? Boomerang kids. They keep on coming back home until you’re finally forced to up and move to Bora Bora.”

It felt good to laugh again. It didn’t erase the fact that two of his friends laid down their lives for him that night. But it helped.

“Saved you a seat,” Angie said, her voice soft and inviting. One eyebrow rose mischievously as she patted the wooden lounge chair. In her hands, she held up two mai tais. For better or worse, she was his.

Shamus strolled up and climbed onto the arm of the chair. Jack reached out and stroked his pet’s head. The bird was thoroughly enjoying the warm, balmy Costa Rican air and had even picked up a few new words while living in the Tropics.

“Adios, amigos!”