Whiskey and Wry (Sinners Series) (30 page)

“What?” He didn’t have to glance at the number to know who was calling him. Only one man had the means to contact him, and he seemed to take great delight in yanking on Parker’s leash to remind him how short it was.

“What the fucking hell have you done?”

His employer had never been one to mince words, but there was an edge of panic in his voice, some tingle of fear Parker’d never heard before. Parker swallowed the large mouthful of water he’d poured into himself and sucked at his teeth at the cramp forming in his side.

“What are you talking about?” There’d been a lot of things he’d done, none of them good. He’d left the rent-by-the-hour motel clerk with a second mouth across her throat once he’d finished stitching himself up, emptying the till to make it look like a random robbery. He’d already dismissed the car for the man’s anxiety. It was too soon for it to be traced back to his employer’s credit card, even if they could make out the VIN on the dash. He’d tossed the plates in the river before he’d set it on fire.

And despite the surprise St. John had given him, Parker was reasonably sure the man hadn’t seen his face, except….

“The knife. Fuck.” Caught in a web of pain, he’d forgotten about the knife and that he’d held it in his bare hand when he’d gone in for Damien’s little pet. At the time, Parker had longed to feel the hot rush of blood over his fingers when he gutted the young man. Now, he was cursing his damned ego for getting in the way of his kill.

“Yeah, the knife. You are a stupid-ass fucker….”

He let the man ramble. Parker had heard it all before. Nothing his employer said could come close to some of the things he’d been called. His attention snapped back to the conversation, and he jumped up, pacing off the carpet despite the pain clenching his side.

“What did you just say?” Parker growled. “Repeat that.”

“I said you’re done. We’re done,” the man spat into the receiver. “You’re not going to get another cent out of me. And if I were you, I’d suggest you start running, because for as long as you live, you’re going to have someone after you. Hope you enjoy the next few weeks looking over your shoulder, because as soon as I hang up here, I’m calling someone else in to take care of your fucking mess—”

Parker cut the man off before he could continue, taking great delight in punching the END button on his phone. Nearly crushing the plastic bottle in his hand, he forced himself to take a few deep breaths, his skin bunching and pulling at his makeshift stitches. Nodding, Parker caught sight of himself in the bathroom’s mirrored wall and was startled by the man staring back at him.

Bruised nearly beyond recognition, he no longer looked like the urban sophisticate he’d groomed himself to be. Battered around the eyes and marked with purple splotches beneath his skin, the long sleepless nights had taken a toll on him, carving deep lines into his cheeks and around his mouth. It was a shock to see his own father shaking with fury where he should have seen himself, and Parker turned away, slamming the water bottle against the bathroom wall.

“Fuck him,” Parker muttered. He wasn’t sure who he was swearing at—the revival of a man he’d left choking on his own blood or the man who’d just threatened his life. Laughing, he startled the businessman walking into the space, baring his teeth in a mockery of a smile. The man backed up and scurried out the door as quickly as he’d come in, Parker’s dark chuckle nipping at his heels.

“You think you can fire me, asshole?” he sneered at the phone. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with. Want to send someone after me? Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your piece of shit Mitchell. Just as soon as I’m done taking care of you.”

Chapter 17

Sucking on a razor’s edge

The blood in my mouth isn’t mine

Why does my heartache taste of you?

When you walked away just fine.

—
Dislocated

P
ARKER
drove the Jag carefully, keeping the powerful car at a decent pace but mindful of any black-and-white sedans he passed. The car swayed when he took a curve too quickly. The shimmy was due to the weight in the trunk rather than the Jaguar’s finely tuned suspension. Although, if he remembered right, the asshole who’d hired him let the Jag’s tires run nearly bald, and the winding road toward Muir Woods needed some sort of traction. The recent storms had washed away any residual oil slick from the asphalt. Hydroplaning in the wet after a long dry spell was always a danger on car-crazy California’s roads, especially with the Jag’s nearly treadless tires, and ending up dead in a ditch wasn’t the way Parker intended to go out.

By the time he’d fought the traffic out of the city, his hands were tight on the steering wheel. Already revved up with anticipation, the shadowy cool of the forest line soothed Parker’s prickled, raw nerves, and he exhaled hard, ghosting the mirror with his misty breath. He’d chosen to divert, taking a drive through the woods themselves before heading to the house. It would be empty now, not like when he’d first been brought up to the multilevel chateau. Built into the side of a hill, the river-stone and wood house was surrounded by tall evergreens and a high privacy fence, the perfect spot for Parker to spend the next few days.

And considering what he had planned, he intended to take as much time as humanly possible.

The seasonal storms were still moving over the county, drenching the car in shadows, although they’d relented in their downpours for the time being. A sparkle of raindrops caught his attention when Parker turned down the driveway, a lace of water diamonds draped over the lavender blooming against the property’s metal-slat fence.

An access card on the Jaguar’s key chain opened the gate, its flat matte panels folding back wide enough to let him through, then closing behind the vehicle once he was halfway to the house. He got out to open the garage door, then backed the Jaguar in. A black Porsche roadster took up half of the cement slab, its once pristine paint speckled with a fine layer of dust. After shutting the garage, Parker turned the dead bolt switch, preventing its opening from the outside.

He’d left the door to the garage unlocked when he’d been there last. The knob turned in his hand, and the heavy frosted glass inset door swung open easily. Behind him, the Jaguar rocked on its tires as the passenger in its trunk fought to get loose. Parker wasn’t worried. He’d disabled the Jaguar’s internal trunk release with a quick shot to the spring mechanism, and if the man could work himself free of the layers of duct tape and zip ties, he’d be unable to undo the Kryptonite lock and chain connecting him to the car’s metal frame.

“Yeah, asshole.” Parker sneered at the Jag’s trunk. “You’ve got maybe two feet of chain. See how far you can fucking run.”

The house smelled musty, and after shutting down the alarm system, he moved slowly through the place, soaking in its rich furnishings and expensive art. It was too fussy for his tastes, although he liked the surrounding forest. The cold was a factor against it. His Southern-bred bones longed for a warmer clime, and he was fond of hunting, not something encouraged in the San Francisco hills.

He stopped in the kitchen long enough to fill a glass with water and pop another painkiller. While the swelling in his face was down enough for him to see, the tenderized skin throbbed every time he took a breath, and his stitches yanking every time he turned reminded him of what Mitchell’s best friend did to him. Another twinge took him, and Parker clutched the glass, riding it out. The pain was a good thing. He’d use it to push himself when he had time to deal with his ex-boss. With any luck, the man would eventually understand the suffering he’d gone through for such little reward.

With the pain pill swallowed and washed down, he resumed his tour. The chateau’s lower floor could have fit at least ten of the single-wide he’d grown up in, maybe more if he had time to figure the space out. There were parts of the house he’d not gone into. Avoiding the wine cellar had seemed like a good idea. He didn’t want to tempt himself to sit down and play house, but it seemed like a sin to let the place molder.

A wet bar in the study was another temptation. No crystal decanters with cheap-ass booze lingered on faux silver trays. Instead, a selection of prime and rare liquors took up three shelves behind the bar, each bottle spaced out and washed by a row of track lights set into the ceiling. He spotted an old Irish whiskey sitting among the others, and his tongue moistened at the thought of its peaty roll.

Murmuring to himself, Parker left the bar behind. Mixing a shot with the pill would be stupid, but the aching in his body wasn’t backing down from the painkiller. Spending an hour slung low in the Jaguar hadn’t helped his side any, and moving through the slightly chilled air in the house was making his face hurt more. “Maybe I’ll empty that before I go. Seems stupid to waste it.”

The floors were either high-gloss wood or polished marble, and the furniture ran to light hues or flashy embroidered spindly chairs he would be afraid to sit in. Overhead spots lit up the artwork on the wall, most of the canvases merely ugly splotches of color stacked under long darker lines or chopped-up segments of text overlaid with silkscreen prints of famous buildings. He stood in front of one square piece set in an alcove and stared at a duck constructed out of pieces of flags and covered in a heavy yellow shellac. Parker picked it up, liking the heft of its base if he had to bash someone’s head in, but the papier-mâché quality of the duck was iffy at best.

“Nope, not my cup of tea at all. God, this crap is ugly. Why do rich people spend their money on this shit?” Parker put the duck back and sniffed, finding a familiar hint of chemical in the air. “Ah, smells like soup’s done.”

Taking one last look around, he decided the large-screen television was fairly nice, and there were enough flashy knickknacks around that no one would notice if a few went missing. He made a mental note to get a rental truck from the city and strip the house when he was done, then walked upstairs to the chateau’s master suite.

The chemical scent was stronger there, nearly overpowering Parker. He worked a few of the windows open and headed into the suite’s bathroom, where he’d left his experiment.

He’d lucked out that his employer’s taste ran to the extreme, because the four-person hot tub in the master bathroom was exactly what Parker needed. The waterline in the tub had dropped some since he’d been there last, but it’d been set on a low heat, and he’d wondered if the temperature would be hot enough to do the job.

By the long shank bone bobbing up and down on the surface of the chemical soup he’d left behind, Parker decided he had to declare his project a rousing success. After rolling up his sleeves and tugging on a pair of pink rubber kitchen gloves, he reached into the tub and dug around in the smelly liquid. He grabbed at something round floating by, hooked his fingers into an edge, and pulled it up slowly, careful not to splash any of the frothy water onto his bare arm.

And stared down into the empty eye sockets of Phillip Damien Mitchell’s skull, his former employer’s older brother and his first San Francisco kill.

The sodium carbonate had done its job, far better than Parker’d expected it to. Stripped clean down to the bone, the skull retained most of its teeth, or so Parker thought until he examined it more closely. At some point Mitchell had implants drilled into his jaw, replacing his original set with rows of perfect brilliant whites.

“How much did that cost you? Your teeth?” Parker asked the skull, then turned it over in his hands, checking its bony plates. The lower jaw was somewhere in the soup, and he would have to dig it out later, but for right now, what he’d found would be good enough. “Did you use your son’s money? That’s what started this all, isn’t it? Your son’s money. You and your brother got greedy, and you were hoping to suck him dry like a tick.”

He set the tub to drain and ran hot water over Mitchell’s de-fleshed head, pulling off a stray tendon from its jaw juncture, then picking off any scraps of meat still clinging to the bone. Satisfied it was safe to touch, he stripped off his gloves, then used one of the bathroom’s enormous towels to dry the skull off, wiping his hands as he went. Working seemed more of a help than the painkiller. He’d felt nothing as he cleansed Phillip Mitchell’s skull, but once he was done, the throbbing pinpricks were back.

A final check on the hot tub satisfied him that the drain was sucking down any gelatinous bits but leaving the smaller bones behind. He was willing to risk losing the fine pieces of the hands, but the jawbone and any loose teeth were his priority. There was too much to do still. He wanted to get started on his next project. Drowning the pain in booze or pills would have to wait.

“You were my first million dollar kill,” he informed Mitchell’s hollowed sockets, bouncing the skull in his palm. “I want to save you.”

Parker took the steps downstairs two at a time, invigorated by his success. He left Mitchell’s skull on a low glass table in a lounge area, headed out to the garage, and lovingly ran his hand over the Jaguar’s trunk. The pounding from the rear end continued, weaker than when he’d come into the house but still with a good amount of fury. Leaning over, Parker rested his cheek against the sun-warmed metal, stroking the Jaguar’s smooth paint, and whispered softly, hoping the man inside could hear him.