Allison Brennan
Sudden Death
“Let me not mourn for the men who have died fighting,
but rather let me be glad that such heroes have lived.”
“Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice.
Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.”
“If an injury has to be done to a man
it should be so severe
that his vengeance need not be feared.”
PROLOGUE
They had debated killing Duane Johnson when he closed his restaurant, or outside the VFW Hall where he drank and played cards every week, but ultimately they decided that his house was the ideal place.
This late at night they would be guaranteed privacy. Neighbors were too far to hear Johnson’s screams. She’d planned it down to the last detail. That was her strength. Planning the kill, executing the betrayer.
Karin’s ultimate plan was brilliant. Not that she had shared the end game with her partner. Ethan was a linear thinker, focused only on revenge. He wouldn’t understand that his pathetic vendetta was simply a means to end the life of her nemesis.
Her blood surged, the excitement rose, as she thought about destroying the one person who’d stolen everything from her. Giddy with anticipation, her face flushed. Murder was easy; vengeance was far more complicated and certainly more satisfying.
In Duane Johnson’s garage, the smell of gasoline in her nostrils, her partner put his gloved hand on her shoulder. He breathed into her ear. “You’re excited.”
He bit her lobe, a hot thrill shivered through her nerves. He grinned against her neck, probably thinking the kill made her horny. He had no idea.
“It’s almost time,” she whispered. “Get in place.”
He crossed the concrete like a cat, tall and too skinny, blending into the blackness, an enigma. She knew him … but didn’t really know him. Tonight he was fully engaged, but how long would it last? She couldn’t hear him move or breathe over her own pounding heart. 11:10. Almost time for Duane Johnson to come home. Almost time for Duane Johnson to die.
Almost time to start the ball rolling after thousands of days of planning and waiting and reflecting on the rightness of her kills …
If someone had told Karin that she was a serial killer, she would have laughed until tears ran down her face. She didn’t even think of herself as a “killer,” though she would acknowledge that she’d ended the life of those who deserved it. Those who had slipped through wide crevices of a pathetic, hypocritical justice system that cared more for the criminals than the victims. In fact, she’d often wondered if she was the reincarnation of the San Francisco vigilantes-the city would never have survived without that group of men dispensing law and order in their own way. Or better-Judge Roy Bean. Bean did it right, and when the law didn’t fit, he forced it.
She was a woman out of her time. The Wild West was much more her element than twenty-first-century America, the land of the weak and pathetic.
Frontier justice pumped her heart. Vigilante. Had she not made one stupid mistake, she would have been praised from the top of the Sears Tower, proclaimed a goddess from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge. A national holiday would have been named in her honor, and students of American history would study her life and philosophies and how she changed the system single-handedly for generations to come. Their teachers could only
They wanted to be her. Everyone wanted to be her, they just didn’t have the stomach for it. She did. She’d
When Ethan practically landed on her doorstep two years ago, Karin recognized she’d been handed the tools to finally destroy those who had deemed her a nonentity. A nothing. A mental case. In her forty-four years, she’d avenged every wrong committed against her … except one.
Her hands and jaw were clenched so tight that she almost didn’t hear the truck. She froze. Johnson had arrived.
Heart racing, she willed herself to control her excitement. She wasn’t supposed to have fun, this was business. An eye for an eye. But her mouth went dry and her vision sharpened. The trap had been laid, the hunt was nearly over.
The power,
Earlier, they’d disabled the lights in the garage, but the streetlamps still faintly illuminated its depths, casting dark shadows and narrow beams of gray light.
Karin didn’t personally know their victim. She knew his name, she knew why he deserved to die, she’d planned his death, but she didn’t know
Somehow that made the entire affair all the more exciting.
The truck turned into the driveway, the headlights turning everything an odd, sterile white. Country music twanged from the radio. She stood flat against the wall, in a blind spot they’d scouted earlier. Ethan was on the opposite side of the garage, waiting.
Dressed in black, her hair colored to match, with her gun in hand, Karin was ready to fire if the plan didn’t work.
The ignition cut out, and with it the music, but there wasn’t silence. The
Her eyes burned, her throat constricted, but her hands were steady as Johnson slammed the door shut. The car’s interior light stayed on for a beat as he walked to the door that led directly into the kitchen. They had already been inside; he didn’t keep that door locked.
Five years out of the military and he didn’t have decent security.
