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“If you mean your 100 kilos of methamphetamine, don’t worry. It’s in good hands. Mine,” Charlie said.

Charlie’s lack of indiscretion was the cherry on top for Damon’s already dismal mood, though there was little he could do about it. The little bastard had him by the short hairs, and he almost drooled at the idea of getting his hands on him. “What do you want for it?” Damon asked.

“What?”

“That’s what this is about, right? Some kind of ransom, you stealing my stuff and wanting something for it? So what do you want?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Charlie said, “but I’ll tell you what. How about if you and I meet up somewhere so we can discuss it?”

“What kind of game are you playing? I’m not into games, motherfucker, and I want my shit
now
.”

Again, there was silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you finished?” Charlie asked. “Because the way I figure it, I’ve got all the time in the world. Your clock, on the other hand, is running out. When’s your deadline anyway?”

Damon had every intention of making Charlie pay, but he knew he needed to work him for a while first. “An hour.”

“Hmm. In that case, I suppose we should rendezvous somewhere close.”

“Where are you now?” Damon asked.

Charlie laughed. “Nice try, chief. Where are you?”

Damon thought for a moment. “What’s to say that if I tell you where I am, you won’t send the police after me or something?”

“If I wanted the police to come after you,” Charlie said, “it would have been a huge mistake for me to kill Rook.”

Damon did a double-take. “You…you killed Rook?”

“Does that upset you?” Charlie asked. “Because he didn’t exactly seem that fond of you. He seemed more interested in getting this stuff out to some rest stop. I wish I knew which one, but that was all I could get off his guys.”

Damon stood there thinking about it all. Had Rook been planning a double-cross all along? It made sense. He was a smart guy who managed to get close, so he’d know all the details. That fucker had planned a double-cross the entire time. Of course he had, but he needed Damon’s contacts to make his play.

“From your silence, I take it your meeting place wasn’t at a rest stop. Man, who can you trust these days?”

“Yeah,” Damon said. “Who can I trust?”

“I wish I could say me, but let’s face it. I haven’t exactly been a supporter of your cause.”

Damon heard what sounded like a siren in the background. “What the hell is that noise? You don’t plan to bring the cops in here to storm my castle, do you?”

“Calm down. It’s a fire engine,” Charlie said.

Damon put his hand over the phone and smiled diabolically. Finally, he had the bastard. “Petey,” he whispered, “get on the scanner and find out where a fire’s going down.” Damon put the phone back to his ear as Petey left the room in a hurried waddle of a run. “All right,” Damon said, “you obviously aren’t just stealing my drugs. What do you want?”

“I was thinking something along the lines of a partnership,” Charlie said.

“I’m not interested in taking on a partner,” Damon said.

“Considering I have a third of your shipment, you might want to open up to the idea. Besides, we’re practically family.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Kay was my sister.”

Kay? Damon thought about the name, and it took a moment for him to remember her face. That bitch had a brother? He hadn’t thought about her since they’d dumped her off the week prior. He had liked her well enough for a whore, and at one time, she’d been the real deal, but meth became the priority. She’d been pretty useful, except for that crap about her claiming that North Dakota was her idea. That made her a pain in the ass, and she was constantly ranting about how she deserved free shit because it was all her idea. He’d had to give her hard reminders a few times about who really ran things, but she was always ready to give him lip service, and not enough of the good kind. “Your sister, huh?” Damon said. “So that means you’re enterprising? Maybe all of this is just a little payback? Yeah, I bet. People are too damn predictable when it comes to family. Let me guess. You caught wind that your little sister was dead, so you decided to teach the big, bad man a lesson, get a little revenge. Now, though, you’re getting a little greedy, realizing you can make some money out of it too.” Damon turned his face and laughed directly into the phone. “I bet that’s it, isn’t it? You forgot all that family business as soon as the dollar signs appeared. Ain’t that just like family?”

“Something like that,” Charlie said.

Damon slowly stopped laughing. “You must be pretty good at what you do to take Rook down. He wasn’t too bad for a black guy. What are you, some soldier home from the war or something? Maybe a dirty cop?”

Damon heard a dinging in the background, but he didn’t say anything about it; he recognized the noise as a railroad warning.

Petey came back in the room and whispered that there was a car fire by the high school, which was just a mile south of the tracks.

Damon now knew exactly where Charlie was. He smiled and whispered to Petey to find out whose territory the high school was and ordered him to get cars out there right away to look for either Rook’s SUV or The Baker’s truck.

“Hello?” Charlie’s voice came through the phone loudly. “You still paying attention over there, or am I boring you? Still interested in getting your drugs back?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Damon said as he watched Petey grab his cell phone and head out of the room again with a couple of other guys. Damon knew he just needed to keep the asshole busy long enough for the boys to hunt him down, and that wouldn’t be hard in a town so small. “How do you wanna do this?” Damon asked.

“We’ll meet at a neutral place, someplace where I can see you coming from a long way out.”

“Sure, sure,” Damon said, his voice slowing a little to let it all draw out. “Got a place in mind?”

“Flat and deserted shouldn’t be too tall of an order around here.”

“Right. Well, what about this partner stuff?” Damon asked as he sat back on his couch, feeling a lot better about things for a change.

“I figure 20 percent of what I’m hauling would be fair,” Charlie said.

“Why not 50?” Damon asked.

The line was cold and silent for a moment, and Damon wondered if he’d inadvertently let on that he was just jerking Charlie around. He needed to pull it back.

“Fifty percent might get me killed. I figure your 300 keys are worth about fifteen million, right? That means what I have is worth five million. Twenty percent of that is an even million. Call it a finder’s fee.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’d better think fast.”

No, Damon thought, you’d better think fast, you little prick. “Where’s The Baker?”

“Probably where I left him, but that was a while ago now. He might not be doing too well at the moment.”

“Where did you leave him?”

“That doesn’t matter right now, does it? After your deal goes down, I’ll let you know, and you can go on working with him and have a long, loving relationship. You two can take moonlit walks on the beach for all I care.”

“This is getting old,” Damon said as he grabbed a cigarette from the coffee table in front of him.

“I agree,” Charlie said, “so why don’t we finalize this and stop j—”

Charlie was cut off by the sound of squealing tires, crunching metal and broken glass, a sound Damon appreciated. 

“Are you still there, Charlie?” Damon asked, his voice riddled with sarcasm, a smile curling his lips as he lit his cigarette. “Charlie, please tell me you didn’t get into an accident while you were talking on your phone.” Damon walked around the room listening to the noises and yelling on the other end of the line. He couldn’t make out all the voices, but he heard some groaning and figured it was Charlie. There was also a
thud
, followed by a rattle that he was sure was Charlie being pulled out of the car and the cell phone hitting the pavement. “Anyone there?” Damon asked.

Next came the sound of the phone being picked up. “It’s Luther,” said Damon’s lieutenant on the north side. He had been Johnny’s handler, up until the moment when Damon had put a bullet in Johnny’s head, just to prove a point. “We got the guy, and he was wearin’ one of those porkpie hats. It’s The Baker’s truck, and the bed is loaded with the stuff, all 100 keys, from the looks of it.”

Damon took a deep drag off the cigarette and let the smoke swell his lungs. “Good. Bring it to the meeting place.”

“What do you want us to do with the guy?”

Damon thought about that for a second. He wanted to make an impression on the boys, and he knew Kay’s brother could serve as a good example. “Bring him too,” Damon said, “and bring that stupid-ass hat along.”

It was late when Perez got the call. He picked up his desk phone and listened to a voice on the other end, talking without explanation or pause. Perez slammed his phone down as he bolted up from his desk. He yelled for Nikki and anyone who could hear, ordering them to get their tactical gear, full autos, shotguns, and anything else they needed and get mobile. “We’ve got a huge deal going down,” Perez yelled. He didn’t know where the deal was, though, but the voice on the other end had assured him he’d call back. 

“What do you mean he’s gonna call back?” Nikki asked.

“Do you really want to argue the conversation points now, Nikki?” Perez barked for full-body armor and a friendly judge on the line. It was all in the space of a moment. Time stretched between infinity and real time in slow motion. It was a call he’d been waiting on for years, the call that would finally see Damon put away. The deal was happening, and he was going to be there for it, no matter where it was.

Chapter 26

The first punch hit Charlie in the gut with a
thud
, but he barely moved; he only let out a short exhale as he stared back at Petey Wheeler. “You punch like a little girl, Petey,” Charlie said. “Put your body into it.”

Petey threw another punch, and that one connected with Charlie’s floating rib.

Charlie twisted against it and shook his head. “Maybe there’s a YMCA around where you can take a cardio kickboxing class and work on that—”

Another punch cracked across Charlie’s chin, and his head snapped to the side.

Charlie smiled and spit a wade of blood onto the ground. “Better, but still—”

Jimmy grabbed Petey by the arm. “Damn it, Petey. Damon said not in the face. He doesn’t want him knocked out.”

Charlie laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

Jimmy turned and landed a shot on Charlie’s chest.

Charlie felt that one enough that it forced out a cough. “That’s better.”

The Wheelers only had a few minutes to work Charlie over before the side door to the large barn of a room opened and a damn big guy with a shaved head and a tank-top walked through. Charlie knew it had to be Damon. Charlie had been fairly groggy when they’d thrown him into a car and had taken him from the scene of the crash, but the trip felt familiar. He was almost certain they’d dragged him back to the same farm he’d stolen the drugs from in the first place. Charlie’s life certainly wasn’t without its own circularity.

“Ah, the man in the porkpie hat.” Damon wagged a finger at him. “You’ve been no end of trouble for me. Do you know that?”

Charlie didn’t say anything to the man responsible for his sister’s death; he didn’t exactly feel the urge to at the moment, with his arms being held and his current role as a human punching bag.

“And what has it all gotten you?” Damon asked. “Nothing. No money, no drugs, and no sister.”

Charlie stared coldly at Damon.

“Well? Don’t you have something to say?” Damon asked. He walked close with a little limp, his body slightly tilted to the side. Even still, he was a large, imposing man, tatted up with a shaved head and Fu Manchu.

Charlie still didn’t say anything.

Damon licked his lower lip and cocked his head to the side, away from his limp, giving him a strange, cockeyed look. “Do you have any idea what I plan to do with you?” Damon walked over to a table in the corner of the room and returned with a ball-peen hammer, holding it close to Charlie’s face. “Something like this.”

With that, Damon swung the hammer hard to the side and smashed it against Petey Wheeler’s skull. Petey’s body stiffened as blood sprayed from the wound across Charlie’s chest. Petey’s body crumbled to the floor. Jimmy turned his head to Damon, frozen with fear, and watched the entire swing as Damon crashed the hammer down on his own skull. Both Wheelers slumped to the floor, blood pouring from their heads. They let out a strange, screaming moan as Damon stomped around them.

“You pieces of shit. You got your asses kicked by this guy not once but twice. Then, of all things, you don’t tell me my own man is looking to rip me off? Your own handler, and you think I wouldn’t find out about it?” Damon took turns swinging the hammer down back and forth between the two men. The hammer was a blur of fury until their skulls had splintered apart. The only sound that remained was the
thud
of metal on whatever remained of their heads.

When he was done, his forearms and biceps bulging from the force of impact, Damon threw the hammer down and told someone to get him a towel so he could get the blood off his face. The air was dense with the must of sweat and the metallic tinge of all the Wheeler blood that was pooling on the floor. The hay scattered around the barn was old and odorless, but that that didn’t mean animals weren’t around, because Damon sure as hell wasn’t human. Meth-head Sherry ran out of the room and came back with a few packets of moist towelettes.

Damon looked down at the packets and hit her with a backhand. “Useless,” he muttered as he wiped himself off, trying to cleanse the blood that had sprayed across his wide chest and shoulders. “And you,” Damon said, looking up at Charlie. “I’m gonna make a special example of you, but I got business to do first. After my guys come in, test the junk, and give me my money, I’m gonna beat you to death in front of them, just to show ‘em who they’re dealing with.”