Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (29 page)

Mike’s gun had landed on
the hardwood floor a few feet away from his dead body.

Morrison bent down to
retrieve it. He switched hands with his other gun. Then he stared down the
hallway.

There were lots of rooms
in this house and more than one way to reach the second floor. From his
position, he was blocking the front creaky staircase. But he didn’t control the
quiet one in the kitchen. Couldn’t even see it.

Now, if the blond guy had
half a brain, he’d realize that Laura was his best form of leverage. If the bum
managed to put his hands on her, he could neutralize Morrison. That was why
Morrison couldn’t afford to stay put. He had to protect her. Thank God, at
least he had been able to slip her a gun. But it was meant as a last resort
thing. No way did he want her to have to use it.

He pointed both guns down the
empty hallway.

Held his breath.

Listened hard.

He scanned the airwaves
for the slightest sound that would give away the blond guy’s position.

But he didn’t hear
anything.

Either the guy was lying
still or he was moving about very carefully.

Morrison had to make a
quick decision.

For all he knew, the blond
guy was in the office. Mike had probably told him to bring the duffel bag
there. But there was no way to be sure.

Besides, Morrison had seen
that there was another door in that office leading to a sitting room. Could the
guy make his way to the kitchen from there without using the hallway? He wasn’t
sure. He had been in that kitchen only twice and hadn’t paid too much
attention. Maybe. Maybe not. He had no idea.

But he couldn’t just stay
there.

The blond guy knew where
he stood. With each passing moment, he was becoming more vulnerable.

He couldn’t use the
staircase to go to the second floor either. The creaking steps would give him
away. If the blond asshole was close enough, Morrison would become an easy
target for him, without any cover in the middle of that long flight of stairs.

So Morrison did the only
thing he could. He braced himself and crept ahead to the hallway on the balls
of his feet.

Slowly.

Meticulously.

His senses alight.

His guns ready to fire.

On his left-hand side,
there was a spacious living room abutted by a small bathroom, all the way down at
the end of the hallway. On his right-hand side, there was first a small TV
room, then Mike’s office, a sitting room and finally the open kitchen and
dining room space.

The door to the TV room
was open a crack. Morrison peered in.

He doubted the blond guy was
in there. But if he was wrong and just went straight past, the asshole could
gun him down through the door.

So he had to check the
room.

With his back to the wall,
he extended his right leg toward the door. Then he gave a sharp kick and stood
back.

The door slammed open with
a bang into the inside wall. Nothing else happened. No sudden hailstorm of
bullets. No excited cries.

He just heard a few muted
thumps nearby. Three or four, tops. They vaguely came from Mike’s office. Or from
the sitting room next to it.

The blond asshole had used
the opportunity to move.

Was he still in the office?
Had he managed to make it to the sitting room?

Morrison had no idea.

But he knew the asshole
was close.

Blood rushed in huge
gushes through his temples. His heart pounded like a pneumatic drill in his
chest. He told himself to focus and crept past the TV room. Drew closer and
closer to the office door.

There was a problem.

He couldn’t do the same
thing here. The door was closed, and the handle was on the far side. Morrison
pushed himself off the wall. Craned his neck to have a peek at the next door.
The one for the sitting room.
Shit.
It was also closed.

He pressed his back to the
wall again.

Think, Morrison. Think.

The blond asshole was
either in the office or in the sitting room. Both doors to the hallway were
closed.

If he had to bet, he’d go
with the sitting room—the one closest to the kitchen and its staircase. That
had to be the blond guy’s main objective, if he had half a brain. And Morrison
knew he had.

The kitchen …

Morrison had an idea.

The doorway to the kitchen
was twenty feet down. He took a long hard look at the hallway. It was so quiet
right now. But also so dangerous.

There was no way to avoid
it.

He had to get to the
kitchen.

So he pushed himself off
the wall and positioned his feet so that they were perpendicular to one another.
In full contact with the floor. A steady position to launch a massive sprint.

He darted ahead.

In two strides, he passed
Mike’s office.

The third one made him
clear the sitting room door.

When he initiated the
fourth one, two shots were fired in quick succession from inside the sitting
room.

The blond guy must have
seen his shadow obscure the finger of light under the door.

As he rushed into the
kitchen, Morrison patted himself on the chest, on the arms. He wasn’t hurt. At
least he didn’t think so.

The blond asshole had reacted
a fraction too late.

Morrison skirted around
the island. Ducked for cover behind it.

His heartbeat thundered in
his head, as loud as a helicopter on take-off. He was as high on adrenaline as
he’d ever been.

He pointed his guns ahead.
Rested the butts on the cold granite countertop, covering the spacious room
with an open angle as he took a sweeping view.

There was a closed door between
the kitchen and the sitting room after all.

That’s where the blond guy
was headed. He knew it.

With one gun still
pointing at the sitting room, Morrison opened the cabinet door under the sink.
He took a quick peek. There it was. What he’d hoped for: a chemical fire
extinguisher. A pretty big one. Twenty-five pounds. No wonder there’d be one, with
the big gas stove that was outfitted in the kitchen.

He tucked one of his guns
back under his belt and took the fire extinguisher with him. Removed the safety
pin.

Then he moved in silence
to the left of the sitting room doorway, stuck the tip of the hose under the
door and pressed on the handle.

Morrison felt the
tremendous rush of densely packed chemicals explode out of the red cylinder
into the sitting room.

A loud cry rose from
inside, accompanied by heavy fits of coughing.

Half a second later, a
mighty sound of shattering glass followed, with some scraping and bumping.

Morrison waited two
seconds.

Then he let go of the
extinguisher and pushed open the door to the sitting room.

There was white dust
everywhere but no trace of the blond guy.

He had broken through the
window and fled the room.

Morrison cupped his left
hand over his mouth and rushed through the white cloud to the window.

The blond asshole was running
away in the grass.

Morrison fired three shots
in his direction. Not to hit him. Just to make him run faster.

After that, he left his
position to go back to the hallway, and he sprinted to the front door.

There, he saw the blond
guy come around the corner of the house and reach his Navigator. He let the
asshole get into the car, start the engine and get it in gear. Then when he saw
the SUV start moving, he opened the front door and took some further shots at
him.

Again, he didn’t want to
hit him.

Just to make him go away.

As the Navigator started
barrelling down the driveway at full speed, Morrison stopped shooting. He took
his prepaid phone and dialed Sheriff Sanford’s number. She was expecting his
call.

“There’s a blond guy
leaving Mike Palmer’s property in a black Navigator right now. He will be on
the main road in about three minutes. He has just killed Mike,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “Now
tell me where the other dead body is.”

He had already mentioned
the dead slicked-back hair guy to her in their previous conversation, but he
had withheld the important details. Now he was ready to reveal them. He told
her the exact location where Mike’s guy had been executed and buried.

For Sanford, this would be
a great operation. Her county would be rid of a big drug trafficker, and a
dangerous criminal would soon be locked away and charged with two counts of murder.
All thanks to her investigative skills and sheer dedication to the job. Not a
bad result. Not a bad result at all in the eyes of the public. Especially with
the elections just a few weeks away.

Morrison hung up and
rushed back inside.

He called out for Laura.
“It’s safe, Laura! You can come out of the room! Bring your things and join me
in the kitchen!” He didn’t want her or the baby to see Mike’s dead body in the
foyer.

He took the gun he had
used to kill Mike and wiped his prints off it. Then he dropped the weapon in
the hallway and dashed to the office.

There was six point seven
million dollars left on the table: his duffel bag along with Mike’s and Tommy’s
cuts. He hurried and stuffed part of their money in the duffel bag, used
another bag for the rest and left the room.

In the kitchen, Laura stood
at the foot of the steps with her baby. She had a black tote bag in one hand.

“Quick,” he said, “let’s
get out through the back.”

They went out through the
patio door. As usual, the Jeep was stationed in the back. He loaded the money
into it and helped Laura with the tote bag. Then he started the engine and put
the Jeep in gear. “Brace yourselves,” he said. “It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

He gunned down the Jeep at
maximum speed along the packed dirt path. Since he had gone down that way and
back a few days before, he could anticipate the sharpest turns and the worst
bumps. But still, it was a very rough ride.

He knew that the path led
to another quiet county road at the other side of Mike’s property. He pushed
the Jeep as hard as he could push it without crashing. He reached his
destination in a little less than ten minutes.

When he joined the
two-lane county road, he saw Cowgirl’s white van and pulled up to her. Then he
stopped the engine and turned to Laura.

“I’m going to leave you
the Jeep and Mike’s cut from our last operation,” he said. “That’s two point
four million right here. Plenty of money for you and your daughter to go away
and start a new life.”

Laura’s haunted eyes
suddenly lost some of their gravity. Her face seemed to relax a little. A thin
smile crept up from the dark shadows.

She had found her way out.
She was just starting to realize it.

“I don’t know how to thank
you,” she said. “I just don’t.”

Morrison opened the door,
picked up the duffel bag and stepped out. Before he aimed for Cowgirl’s van, he
leaned into the Jeep and said, “Hop in the driver’s seat and go away. That’s
how you’ll thank me.”

She nodded.

He smiled to her and her
baby. “And have a good life.”

The next two days were
very busy.

After sending Laura and
her baby on their way, Morrison climbed into Cowgirl’s van and they immediately
drove away from Acton. Mike’s place would be swarming with deputies. There
would be spots of Sanford’s raid on the local news. Follow-up stories in the
papers. It was better to leave all of this behind, at least for a while. Let
things cool off.

On their way to Albany,
Morrison called up Harris to suggest he do the same. But he should have known
better. When he took his call, the wily old fox was already past Syracuse on
I-90, on his way to Buffalo, his money safely traveling with him.

Morrison and Cowgirl had left
Acton with more than six million dollars with them in the white van. Their own
personal cuts plus Tommy’s.

Over the following two
days, they set about stashing it away in a slew of safe deposit boxes all over
the state. They made multiple stops in Troy, Albany, Schenectady, then did the
same in Utica, Syracuse and Rochester.

They never left more than
one hundred thousand dollars in any bank. Safe deposit boxes were only so safe.
They knew this better than anyone else. Still, it was the most convenient way
to hide hot money—beat a bedroom mattress any day.

After all the tension and
the drama of the last few days, that was exactly the type of task they needed
to do. Something easy and mundane that kept the body busy without requiring too
much of the mind. It allowed them to gradually get off that high-adrenaline cloud
and get back to a form of standard reality.

Of course, they would
never experience everybody else’s normality. Theirs was a different world with
different rules and a different outlook. They had grown accustomed to it. It
had become their normality.

At the end of the second
day, their money was sprinkled all over the place. Their work was done. They
checked into a good hotel in Rochester with only a few thousand dollars each on
them.

Morrison spent a great
night with Cowgirl. They enjoyed a fabulous five-course dinner. Drank two wonderful
bottles of wine. Then they retreated more than a bit tipsy to their comfortable
room to make love. A great night. But also bittersweet. They knew it would not
be repeated any time soon. As they always did when they finished a job, they would
have to stay away from each other for a period of time. It was even more
important now that Mike was gone.

Morrison had not enjoyed
killing Mike. Not at all. Even though the man had turned into an obscene,
irrational and violent scumbag. Even though he knew that Mike had to die if
Laura and her child were to stand any chance of leading a safe, normal life. After
all, it had been two lives against one. Not even close.

Still. It rattled
Morrison.

He hated violence. He hated
having to exercise it even when it was completely warranted.

In the morning, they went
their separate ways, Cowgirl behind the wheel of the white van to Ogdensburg to
pay a visit to Tommy in prison. She was going to explain that his money was
safe. That they had stashed it for him. That she would provide him with all the
necessary details to retrieve it when he was released in a few months. She
would also explain why Mike had to go. What he’d done. And if he had a problem
with that, they would deal with it in time. Cowgirl, Harris, Morrison and
Tommy. All of them together. But Morrison wasn’t too worried. Tommy wouldn’t
spit on two million bucks. Not over a guy like Mike. Not a chance.

As for Morrison, he rented
a car and finally got to head to his destination.

The place he’d been
dreaming about every single day during his three years in prison.

He was going there alone,
so there was no need to keep his brass key hidden under the insole of his shoe
anymore.

Still, when he dressed up
in the morning, he didn’t want Cowgirl to see it. So he went to the bathroom to
extricate it and stowed it in his pocket.

It was a beautiful day.
Clear and sparkly like only spring can be. On the highway, he rolled down the
window of his nondescript white rental car and rested his elbow on the opening.
It was great to feel all that warm air rush into the cockpit. It was great to move
about so freely.

He drove on for hours,
stopping only for gas in Ticonderoga.

Shortly afterward, he
crossed the Lake Champlain Bridge into Vermont. Such a wonderful state. Whenever
he came here, he always felt like he was coming home, even though he’d never
lived here.

He continued to push his
way through a succession of quiet country roads, enjoying a lush scenery of green
rolling hills.

An hour and a half later,
he finally arrived in Ennis Falls, a small village nestled in the middle of Franklin
County. Way up north, near the Canadian border.

He checked into the
Hummingbird, a motel he had used a couple of times before. Paid for his room with
cash, like he usually did. It allowed him to dispense with the need to provide identification.

After he dropped his
clothes in room number seven—a good omen if he’d been superstitious, but he was
not—he left again and drove out of the village.

It took him only five
minutes to reach his destination.

Ennis Self Storage.

A small complex of two lowlying
buildings covered with corrugated steel. They housed rows of lockers back to
back.

He nosed into the lot. Drove
past the first building. Skirted around the second and then parked in the back.
His unit was approximately in the middle. Four feet wide, seven feet tall.

He got out of the car, fished
the brass key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock and rolled up the door.

The sight brought an instant
smile to his face.