Loose Ends (20 page)

She gave him a look that said he could eat worms and die and immediately starting fishing the cartridges out of her purse.

“What about my knife?” she said, very genteelly leaving off the implied “you jerk.”

He pulled the pearl-handled beauty out of his front jeans pocket and handed it over. She knew how fast he was. He figured she wasn’t going to try to shank him or shoot him. No, they’d had some kind of personal relationship. She was on his side.

The light changed, and he pressed on the gas, letting the GTO rumble and crawl down the road, keeping just under the speed limit.

Despite her babbling on, Jane was a smart girl, too. Once he drove off, it wouldn’t take her too long to put her weapons in order and figure things out, and then she’d go home. Tonight would just be an odd entry in her Dear Jane diary. By the time she woke up in the morning, he’d be halfway to South America or on his way to Bangkok.

Either way, it didn’t matter to him. He just needed to stay on the move, working his mission, and getting Wild Thing out of the car was the next step.

Three streets down, he found what he’d been looking for and pulled to a stop in front of a stucco building. A bright blue neon sign of a howling wolf graced the building. The place was about halfway down the block, midway between a stretch of bars and clubs, and it looked busy, with lots of people inside.

“Mama Guadaloupe’s?” she asked, giving him an incredulous look he didn’t quite understand, like maybe it was a strip joint in disguise.

Glancing up through the windshield, he read the words flowing in pink neon script above the blue wolf, then checked the clientele through the window. It was family night in there, all the way, not a strip club.

“Yeah,” he said. “This looks good.”

“It is good,” she said, her tone very sure. “The best Santa Fe gourmet in the city.”

Well, great. Maybe she could get dinner while she was waiting for her ride—and that was that, time for good-bye, the big
adios
, time to exfiltrate her out of the front seat. He’d take her inside, get her settled in Mama’s, and she’d be fine, a whole helluva lot better off than she was with him—and he hated having to admit that.

“Slow down. I see the car up ahead, in the next block, parked on the right,” King said. A blond bruiser, he weighed in at one ninety-eight, all muscle, with a “recon” high-and-tight haircut. Dressed in civvies, a pair of jeans with a gray T-shirt and a double-X brown hoodie, he looked like the biggest and cleanest-cut hoodlum ever to hit the streets of the west side. His face was hard and chiseled, lantern-jawed, and devoid of expression. His boots were pure military issue, flat black and lace-up, and he had a reputation for getting the job done, whatever the job.

“The woman is still with him,” his partner said. Rock was driving the Jeep SUV Lancaster had rented for them at the airport. Rock’s head was completely shaved, and he was far more comfortable in a combat zone, any combat zone, than he ever felt in a city not under fire. At two hundred fifteen pounds, he was the bigger of the two, a muscled, flat-faced, square-headed war-fighter wearing desert tan cargo pants and a long-sleeved Corps T-shirt with an unbuttoned gray shirt over the top.

Both men carried .45-caliber pistols in paddle holsters concealed on their right sides and sheath knives on their left, with razor-edged folding knifes in their pockets.

“You take the woman,” King said. He didn’t care if they were after the damn-near-mythical Conroy Farrel
or not, it wouldn’t take the two of them to take the man down. Farrel was a Bangkok boy, just like them, but they’d had better juice, the Gen X soup. If Lancaster had sent them in the first place, instead of all those now-dead CIA agents, Farrel would be ancient history by now.

“
Shit,
” Rock whispered, and King knew it wasn’t because of being stuck with taking the woman. Farrel had gotten out of the car and was going around to the passenger side. “This just got messy.”

He was right. Farrel and the woman were going inside the restaurant, a place called Mama Guadaloupe’s. Extracting two people from a car on the street was one thing. Getting them out of a crowded restaurant, when at least one of them had the potential of putting up a helluva fight, was another.

“I’ll take a black syringe with me,” he said. Doping the bastard was the best bet. The trick would be getting him out of the restaurant before he collapsed. He and Rock could always bring Farrel around once they got him to Lancaster’s suite at the Kashmir Club.

Rock pulled to a stop two cars behind the GTO, and they both got out of the Jeep. As they passed the Pontiac, Rock bent down and slashed the tires—standard operating procedure.

Inside the restaurant, he and Rock found a place at the end of the bar, ordered a couple of beers, and started looking around. It didn’t take long to spot their targets, even in the crowd. The pair was getting settled into a table, the woman sliding out of her coat and hanging it on the chair, the hostess still chatting them up and handing them their menus. For dining purposes, their location sucked. For what King had in mind, it was perfect. The table was back by the kitchen, where everybody and their dog was swinging by, toting food out and dirty dishes in.

“
Hot damn,
” Rock said.

King concurred. The woman was a stunner, like a fashion model, the way she was dressed, all sexed up in a short-short gold dress and hot little black boots, her hair so long and dark, so silky shiny. And her face.
Christ
. He’d laid a woman like her once in Dallas, a girl too rich and beautiful for her own good who’d just wanted a walk on the wild side.

He’d given it to her.

“I think we’ll just mosey over there, Rock, and let Farrel see that you’ve got a gun on the woman. My guess is that he’ll want to go real peaceful-like. Come on.”

He stood up, and he and Rock started across the room. It didn’t take Farrel long to spot them, either, and as soon as he did, King lifted the right side of his hoodie, just enough to give Farrel a glimpse of his .45. Next to him, Rock let his hand graze the outside of his shirt, letting his pistol print for a brief second, with the added gesture of pointing at the woman.

Farrel would get the picture real quick—any sign of a fight, and the girl was a goner. Rock’s first shot was for her.

Cretins
, Monk thought, watching King and Rock weave their way across the restaurant dining room, flashing weapons and telegraphing threats against the woman with Conroy Farrel. He could see it all through the front window, feel it all, and he’d have expected better of men working for Randolph Lancaster.

They had what he wanted more than anything, and they didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve their position in Lancaster’s life.

It made him sick in his heart.

Threats were for weaklings. If he’d wanted the woman dead, he’d have killed her. One good backhand would take her head off, damn near literally. There’d be none of this mincing around with guns.

Mama Guadaloupe’s—he glanced up at the sign, squinting even behind his sunglasses. It was no accident that he’d found Farrel here. Monk knew everything about Farrel and his former life in Denver as J. T. Chronopolous, all the places he’d liked to hang out, the houses and apartments where he’d lived before moving into 738 Steele Street. Monk knew where he’d gone to school and what recruiting office he’d gone to when he’d enlisted in the Marines. He knew some of the women he’d been with and where they were now. He knew what cars J.T. had owned and a few that he’d stolen, and he knew Mama Guadaloupe’s had been his favorite restaurant, a home away from home. J.T. had been a legend here, and Monk had mapped out a route of J.T.’s most important places, putting his reconnaissance plan together while he’d still been in Bangkok, spreading his maps and schedules and data across Dr. Patterson’s desk while chewing on the good doctor’s bones.

He’d tasted like chicken.

Monk wasn’t a cannibal. He was a survivor, an animal in every vicious, feral sense of the word, an animal with a human’s brain. He was exactly what Lancaster had promised him he’d be, the ultimate warrior, with no boundaries, no barriers, no conscience. When he succeeded in his task, Lancaster would welcome him into the fold, into the inner sanctum of his most loyal and fearsome soldiers.

And there, in the light of Lancaster’s rising sun, Monk would shine like the unholy terror he was.

“We’ll take them out the back, through the kitchen,” King said, crossing the dining room, heading for Conroy Farrel and the woman.

Going through the kitchen might cause a bit of ruckus with the staff, but it was the quickest way out and beat the hell out of maneuvering two hostages at gunpoint back through the crowded dance floor.

“Con,” he said like they were old friends, coming to a stop in front of the table where Farrel sat with the woman. He smiled warmly, cocked his head a little to one side, and relaxed his shoulders. “I remember you from school. East High, right?”

Actually, he knew everything about Conroy Farrel, from his blood type to his shoe size. He knew the day he’d been born, where he’d been baptized and where he’d been busted, where he’d graduated, when he’d enlisted, and King knew the day he’d “died.” In truth, he knew more about Conroy Farrel and where he’d come from than Conroy Farrel did. King knew he’d started out life as John Thomas Chronopolous. He knew why the SDF boys had snatched Scout Leesom, why they wanted Farrel back, and he knew, whatever he was called, exactly when the man would die for the last time—finished, smoked, ain’t no never coming back.

King gave it six more hours tops, definitely before
sunrise. He and Rock would kill Farrel first, then the woman, dispose of the bodies, and they could all get back to the twisted ways of a corrupt world and doing what they were really good at: making money by helping people.

That’s the way King thought of LeedTech, the most humanitarian assholes on the planet. Humanitarian, that was, if you were the folks with the money, the firepower, and the political desire to straighten your world out, maybe have a few of your problems smoothed away.

If you needed a war, LeedTech could deliver one to your door. If you just needed some personnel shifted, LeedTech could shift them straight out of your life and into their next one. Got some enemies strutting around, threatening your ass and your assets? LeedTech would bury the limp-dicked bastards—for a price.

Needless to say, business was good. It was always good, recession proof.

“King Banner,” Farrel said, something settling in his eyes, something more than just recognition, something hard, and King figured he knew what Farrel had recalled.

He and Rock had a reputation, signed, sealed, and delivered on a deal in Paris four years ago. Some guys balked at killing a woman, but King and Rock hadn’t hesitated for a second to take the job of wringing the life out of a Liberian minister’s ex-mistress in her five-star hotel room.

“Yeah,” King said. “An old friend of yours sent us. He’s going to be damn glad to see you again. It’s been a while.”

Farrel didn’t say anything, just continued to hold his gaze, cool and calm, until Rock came to a stop close behind the woman. She’d taken off her black leather jacket and draped it over the back of her chair, and King really
had to wonder if he’d ever seen a prettier pair of shoulders. Her skin looked flawless, silky creamy.

He and Rock were going to have a lot of fun with her.

“She’s not part of this,” Farrel said, his voice as calm as his gaze.

The hell she wasn’t, King thought.

“Leave her out of it, and we won’t have any problems.”

“Oh, we’re not going to have any problems,” King assured him, still smiling. “We’re just going for a ride, that’s all.”

Next to him, Rock put his hands on the woman’s shoulders, up real close to her neck, like he was giving her a friendly little massage, which King could guarantee he wasn’t. The woman’s face paled, and he saw Farrel’s gaze narrow ever so slightly.

Tsk, tsk, tsk
, he thought. Weakness, pure and simple, and the reason he never got involved with a woman. They were weakness for a man, a soft spot where he could get gutted, and Farrel was looking right at it. The fashion queen was absolutely frozen in place, no doubt understanding that she was only a thought and a twist away from having her neck snapped by one of the world’s truly great neck snappers.

“This will go a lot smoother if you boys leave the woman out of it,” Farrel said, still so calm.

Oh, this guy was a riot, King thought.

“Smoother for who?” he asked with a short laugh. “She’ll be fine, Con old buddy, as long as you hold up your end. Nobody’s out to hurt the woman, so let’s just get going.”

It was a lie, but so what? Once he got Farrel outside, he’d hit him with the black syringe. Rock could bring the Jeep around into the alley, and they could load the guy up with the woman and head out.

Or if there was a problem, he’d hit Farrel up the instant he sensed it and not an instant later.

King was nobody’s fool. He hadn’t really expected the snatch to be easy, and he wasn’t convinced it was, but Farrel had made a couple of mistakes he’d never made before, and both of those mistakes were female: Scout Leesom and the long-legged fashionista.

“Jane,” Farrel said, ignoring King and looking at the woman. “These guys are two of the worst bastards on the face of the earth.”

King let out a laugh and had to stop himself from thanking Farrel for the compliment.

“Don’t worry, Jane, honey. Things really aren’t as bad as Con here thinks,” he said. They were, but fuck Farrel, and fuck the girl. He and Rock were in charge.

Farrel didn’t seem to get the message.

“I want you to get up and leave,” the man said, still looking at the girl. “Now.”

“No.” Rock tightened his grip on her, and she gasped, probably with damn good reason. Rock had a hundred holds he put on people, none of them less than punishing. “The woman is part of the deal.”