The drive to Devil’s Hook Island was all kinds of hell, and not just because of the weather. She kept flashing on Alec Dante’s face just before he hit the water. That stupidly surprised expression.
In the past she never would have been haunted by a thing like that. She had done her job and moved on. Now it was different. After Pascal, she knew what it was like to be in the crosshairs. What it was like to be hunted. And if she’d been in danger of forgetting, tonight’s little tea social had served as a timely reminder.
She didn’t like these thoughts, these issues. She didn’t like feeling damaged and scared and—hell—guilty, even. But while she might not be happy about it, she didn’t know what she could do.
Except quit. Or die.
The first wasn’t an option. The second—well, that one was very much in play.
Cohawkin Bridge was impenetrably blocked. She wasn’t surprised. The population of Devil’s Hook had been cleared out, and the police didn’t want anyone sneaking onto the island to loot the empty houses. Still, there might be another way in.
She swung around to the island’s southern tip, where a second bridge allowed access from the mainland. It was an ancient, narrow structure barely wide enough for two vehicles, and while she didn’t think the authorities would have forgotten about it, she hoped they’d made less of an effort to blockade it.
She reached the bridge. Inexplicably, the entry was clear. No barrier at all.
Weird. There should have been something.
She slowed the Jeep, suddenly wary. She had learned not to trust good fortune.
Close by, a big SUV was parked sloppily on the dirt shoulder. The side window was broken.
She parked behind the vehicle, got out, and took a look inside. A mess of wires hung below the steering column. Someone had hotwired the ignition. She didn’t think they had taken it for a joy ride. Her guess was that the SUV had been parked at the entry to the bridge, straddling both lanes. Someone had moved it out of the way.
If so, she wasn’t the first one to trespass on Devil’s Hook tonight. The other visitor could be a looter, of course. But she wasn’t counting on it.
She returned to the Jeep and crossed the bridge, uneasily aware of the whitecaps sloshing at the girders. From here it was only a short distance to Alec Dante’s cottage. Most of the streets were awash; her tires jetted up hissing plumes of spray. Nearing the house, she killed her headlights. Dangerous move in a storm, but she had her reasons.
She glimpsed the driveway as she coasted past. The Porsche Boxster, Dante’s car, was still there; but another car had joined it. She was willing to bet the new arrival had everything to do with the hotwired sport utility.
As before, she parked the Jeep in the woods. She retrieved the .45 from under her seat. Through a whirl of windblown leaves, she made her way to the edge of the woods, where she crouched low, hidden by holly bushes, studying the driveway.
Two figures were visible through the rain. One leaned into the Porsche, while the other stood watch.
She had a pretty good idea of who had sent them, but she needed to be sure. When the sentry’s back was turned, she sprinted across the open lawn to a row of arborvitae fronting the house. She slid behind the hedges like a runner sliding into third and listened for any indication that she’d been seen.
The one pulling guard duty was talking. “… So the manager says, ‘That’s great, but you gotta be bilingual.’ And the dog says, ‘Meow.’”
The guy in the car laughed. “Heh. Fuckin’ meow.”
“Hurry it up, will ya? I’m gettin’ soaked out here.”
“It’s not as easy as the SUV. The security system in this thing is state-of-the-art.”
“Just shake a leg, for Chrissakes.”
A cell phone chirped. The sentry answered.
“Hey, Frank. It’s Lou … We had a little trouble getting onto the island. Cops replaced the prowl car you bulldozed with a big-ass SUV. Too big to push, so we hadda hotwire it … The Porsche? Same deal. Paulie’s working on it now … We looked, but the keys weren’t in the house, at least no place we could find. It’s pitch dark in there … Don’t sweat it, Frank. We’re getting it done.”
Two of Frank Lazzaro’s people. Sent here to move the Porsche. Something Lazzaro wouldn’t want to do unless he knew about his nephew. The only reason he would go to all this trouble to conceal someone else’s crime was that he didn’t want the police involved. He was treating Dante’s death as a personal affront, and he meant to handle it himself.
“I’ll let you know, Frank,” the one named Lou said. “Ciao.” He ended the call.
“Still no word on what’s going on?” the other man, Paulie, asked from inside the Porsche.
Lou shrugged. “He’ll tell us what we need to know, when we need to know it.”
So Frank was playing it close to the vest for now. Good. That was better than having the whole organization on the case.
Bonnie crept closer, staying behind the shrubbery. She was within fifteen feet of the men on the driveway when Lou asked, “The name Parker mean anything to you?”
She froze, a small, huddled shape hidden in the shifting hedges.
“Parker? Nah. Should it?”
“I thought I heard the Chang kid say something about somebody named Parker. And Frank was gettin’ real interested.”
Okay, so Lazzaro had already talked to one of the Long Fong Boyz and gotten her name. That had to be why Chiu had spared her; Lazzaro’s actions supported her story. That was the upside. The downside was that Lazzaro would be gunning for her. He might be doing it on his own, without bringing his men up to speed, but he was still doing it.
“I don’t know no Parker,” Paulie said. “Okay, I think I got it.”
The Porsche’s engine revved to life, and the headlights flashed on. With the car parked at an angle, the beams sliced directly into the stand of arborvitae where she was hiding. Instinctively she pulled back.
“Hey,” Paulie said. “You see that?”
“See what?”
“I think something moved in those bushes there.”
Shit.
In a situation like this, the old saying definitely applied: He who hesitates is fucked.
Bonnie didn’t hesitate. She plucked the .45 from her purse, aimed it at Lou, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Misfeed.
She racked the slide and squeezed the trigger again. Nothing happened.
A gunshot cracked like a whip, blowing into the aluminum siding at her back.
The bad guys’ guns were working fine.
On hands and knees she retreated along the front of the house, using the hedges as cover. While on the move, she ran through the procedure for clearing a jam. Slap the bottom of the magazine to seat it firmly, pull back the slide, and fire. Tap, rack, bang.
No good. Goddamn slide was stuck.
“There!” Paulie yelled.
Another shot sounded, spraying her with bits of pine needles from the closest hedge.
She ducked behind the corner of the house, pushed herself to her feet, and broke into a run, fighting to keep her footing on the sodden ground.
She was betting the pistol’s malfunction was a double feed—two live rounds trying to occupy the chamber at once. She could probably clear it, but not while she was running for her life.
Behind her, the first pursuer rounded the corner.
“Holy shit”—Lou’s voice—“I think it’s a woman!”
He took a shot, but she’d already swerved to throw off his aim. The bullet didn’t touch her, and then she turned the corner and found herself at the rear of the house, where the battered remains of the patio butted up against a flat expanse of beach and crashing surf.
She wasted a second trying the back door. Locked. She kept running.
If they caught her alive and saw her ID, they would know she was the Parker their boss was after. Then she would take a trip to see Frank Lazzaro, whose methods would make the Long Fong Boyz look like amateurs.
A bullet would be better. But staying alive would be better still.
As she rounded the far corner, it occurred to her that Paulie might have doubled back to cut off her escape. If so, she was running into an ambush.
But no one was there. She had a straight shot to the driveway if she wanted it. She could jump in the Porsche and take off—
And they would gun her down before she could back out of the driveway. In the car she’d be an easy target. Like Clyde and Bonnie, she thought distractedly. Shot to pieces in an automobile on a rural road.
Halfway along the side of the house, she nearly bumped her head on the broken branch that had speared the kitchen window and started the flood in the cellar. The window had been smashed, and whatever stubborn shards might have clung to the frame had been swept away by wind and rain.
She grabbed the branch, hoisted herself up, and slipped through the window feet first, landing on the wet floor.
Outside, she heard Lou shout, “She went in the window!”
They weren’t giving up. But she had the edge now. They were in full cry, not thinking clearly. They had sized her up as prey. They weren’t expecting her to fight back.
She retreated to the cellar stairs, sinking into a crouch, and went to work on the gun. She locked back the slide and tugged at the magazine. It wouldn’t budge.
Lou appeared, swinging a stubby leg over the window sill.
She slammed the magazine against her thigh, hard enough to leave a bruise, but it still wouldn’t pop free.
His other leg was over the sill now.
She slammed the magazine down again. This time it loosened. She stripped it out. Two crushed cartridges spilled onto the steps.
Lou’s feet thumped on the kitchen floor.
She shoved the mag back into place and cranked back the slide to cycle a new round into the chamber—hopefully without a misfeed this time. She couldn’t be sure, though.
Lou took a step forward, squinting in the dark.
If the mag was defective, the gun still might not fire. There was only one way to find out.
Bonnie stood, took aim, and squeezed the trigger twice.
The .45 was a big gun, and it made a big noise. Lou went down in a clumsy heap.
There had been no other sound. She hadn’t given him time to scream.
She moved forward, the gun in both hands, and glanced out the window. Paulie wasn’t there. She was wondering what happened to him when she heard the thump of the front door swinging open, probably caught by a gust of wind.
Reaching down, she took Lou’s piece, a K-frame Smith .357 Magnum with three rounds left in the cylinder. The .45 went into her purse. Until she knew why it had malfunctioned, she couldn’t trust it.
She left the kitchen and approached the living room, hugging the wall. In the darkness she heard footsteps and ragged breathing.
Then a whisper:
“Lou? You get her?”
“He didn’t get me,” Bonnie said, and gripping the gun in the Weaver stance, she fired twice into his center mass.
He fell backward and didn’t get up. She closed on him and checked him out. He was alive, though just barely. Like a half-crushed cockroach, he twitched feebly.
She took him out with a head shot. The .357 did a vicious job, opening the man’s skull like a cantaloupe.
Her wrists were numb. The Smith had a wicked kick. But it had done the job.
Kneeling, she pried the pistol out of the dead man’s hands. In his pocket she found a spare magazine. She checked him for an ankle gun, but he wasn’t carrying one. Too bad. She could have used a new ankle gun.
The driver’s license in his wallet identified him as Paul Belletiere of Jersey City. She wondered if he’d been married, had kids. Probably. The thought didn’t reach her, didn’t mean anything.
She was feeling okay. More than okay. She’d beaten them in a contest of life and death—beaten them cleanly, by speed and skill. They were bona fide bad guys, probably made men in the organization, which meant they had killed before. She had no regrets, no second thoughts. Not now, anyway. Those thoughts might come, but not this soon.
She returned to the kitchen. The second man, thankfully, did not require another bullet. One of her shots had caught him in the face, wiping out most of his forehead and all of his nose. She took a speedloader from one pocket and his cell phone from another, depositing both items in her purse. Then she checked his ID. Louis Rocca, also of Jersey City.
Two dead mobsters. Working for Frank Lazzaro, a man who knew her name.
At least she didn’t have to worry that the shots had been heard by the neighbors. The whole island had been evacuated. Even if anyone had stayed behind, the noise of the storm would have drowned out the gunfire.
In no hurry to leave, she took the time to wipe down any surfaces she’d touched. There was a good chance these killings would be covered up the same way Alec Dante’s had, but if the police did investigate, she wasn’t giving them any leads.
She was on her way out the front door when it occurred to her that Alec Dante was the type of guy who just might keep a few guns of his own lying around. Right now she needed to rebuild her arsenal, and she wasn’t choosy about how she did it.
If he was anything like her, he’d want a gun in his bedroom. She always took the gun from her purse and slipped it under her mattress at bedtime. She’d found this policy made for sweet dreams.
Detouring into the bedroom, she conducted a quick search by flashlight. In the nightstand drawer she found a nice shiny Walther .22 with eight rounds in the ten-round magazine and one in the chamber.
The missing round might have been the one that killed Joey Huang. A careful assassin would have disposed of the murder weapon, but Alec Dante hadn’t been careful.
She dumped that piece into her purse also. As she was turning to go, her flashlight’s beam shifted to the wall over the bed. A painting hung there, a stylized interpretation of a wolf on a rocky bluff, the moon big at its back. Lambent eyes swirled with miniature whirlpools. Silver fangs gleamed. Other wolves shimmered in the background, ghostly shapes, a silent army. More and more of them came into focus the longer she looked, until she was left with the impression of a limitless horde materializing out of the darkness—predators everywhere in an unending parade of death.
Bonnie stared at the painting, and stared and stared. It said a lot of things to her, and none of them was good.