him when entering the compound undetected. He winked up at me, said, ‘If I was a betting man, I wouldn’t have wagered a cent on us pulling this off.’
‘So long as you’re not a sore loser.’ I winked back. Then I covered for him as he rolled out from under the chopper and climbed inside. Rink clambered into the cockpit next to him while I dragged Petoskey into the rear compartment. I left the door open so that his henchmen were reminded of where blind shooting could get them.
My Special Forces training didn’t extend to flying helicopters. I was more used to rappelling from them, or parachuting into bandit country from a high-altitude airplane. The flying was left to those who knew what the hell they were doing, so the routine Harvey went through to get us off the ground was lost on me. All I know is that the blades cut the air, there was a lot of high-pitched engine noise, and we were up and away, drifting on the night breeze like a fleck of lint.
We banked right, then soared up into the sky. Below us in the grounds of the mansion, gunmen aimed useless weapons at us.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ Petoskey asked.
‘Depends.’
‘Just tell me what you want. I swear to God, Hunter, I’ll give you it.’
I considered his offer for a split second.
‘Call Tubal Cain off my brother.’
Petoskey made big eyes at me. ‘I would, but…’
‘But nothing,’ I told him. ‘Do that and I’ll let you go. Call off the contract.’
‘I can’t,’ Petoskey yelped. ‘Cain isn’t doing this for me. He’s working for Kurt Hendrickson. Your argument is with Hendrickson, not me! ’
Shaking my head slowly, I stared into his eyes. I pictured Petoskey lifting his gun to the back of Louise Blake’s head. That innocent girl had suffered enough because of Hendrickson. Then, on the bastard’s behalf, Petoskey had put a bullet in her head.
‘You’re right. There’s no argument for what you did to Louise,’ I said.
Petoskey’s face fell. There was resignation there, but it was far outweighed by fear.
My fist connected with his throat. He gagged, bending over, and I grabbed and spun him round. I stamp- kicked his buttocks and Petoskey was propelled out of the open door. He screamed as he fell.
There’s this urban legend about a man falling for thousands of feet, landing on his feet and walking away uninjured. We were only five hundred feet up; so maybe Petoskey would get lucky.
Chapter 20
As emotionless as driftwood, Baron watched Petoskey plummet from the sky.
The Arkansas mobster screamed all the way down then went deathly silent as he struck the roof of the house. He smashed through tiles, made it through the support beams and ended up in the attic space. The blood pouring down the steepled roof was an indication of what would be found when Petoskey was retrieved from the wreckage.
Setting his mouth in a tight line, Baron reached into his pocket and took out his cellphone. He pressed a speed dial number. The phone rang three times before it was picked up.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid, sir,’ he said into the phone. ‘Hunter and Rington have escaped.’
He tolerated the shouting in his ear, knowing that this was nothing compared to what was coming.
Then he said, ‘It’s worse than that, Mr Hendrickson. During their escape, your business partner was killed.’
Hundreds of miles away, Kurt Hendrickson screamed blasphemous threats down the phone.
‘Yes,’ Baron acknowledged. ‘I will do everything in my power to stop them.’
He quickly disconnected to avoid a further berating, slipped the phone back in his pocket then turned to the men standing next to him. He indicated the shattered roof. ‘Come on. We’d best go and see what’s up there.’
‘It’s not going be pretty,’ one man said.
No, Baron thought, and neither is our future if we don’t stop Hunter.
The phone chimed again. Sighing at the intrusion, Baron pulled his cellphone out. The screen was blank. He heard the tone once more and slapped at his other pocket in confusion. He dug out a second phone. This one’s screen glowed with a cold blue colour. As it rang it vibrated softly in his hand. Baron nodded to himself. It was the phone taken from Hunter when they’d snatched him off the street in Little Rock. On the screen the caller’s name was displayed.
IMOGEN BALLARD
Baron pressed the green button. ‘Hello?’ he asked, deliberately muffling his voice with his free hand.
‘Is that you, Joe? I… uh… I’ve been thinking. Things shouldn’t end like this between us. We need to talk, Joe… I was just wondering if you’d come back to Maine when you’re finished there.’
Baron breathed into the mouthpiece.
‘Joe? Are you there? Can you hear me?’
Baron switched off the phone and dropped it back into his pocket. Maybe his future wouldn’t be so grim after all, not now he’d found a new way to control Hunter.
Chapter 21
Some might say that my treatment of Sigmund Petoskey was excessive.
That would be a valid point of view, but I didn’t look at it that way. Cold-bloodedly shooting an innocent woman in the back of the head is murder. The way I saw things, I was totally justified in executing him for his crimes. Pro-lifers would undoubtedly argue otherwise, but I wouldn’t lose any sleep over Petoskey’s violent death.
My friends didn’t know about Louise’s murder, so their reaction to me throwing Petoskey out the helicopter was stunned silence until I told them what he had done. Then both lamented that I hadn’t saved a piece of his ass for them. With no time for ethical debate, I put the miserable bastard out of my mind and turned to something far more important to me. ‘How are you holding up, Rink?’
‘Still ticking, brother,’ he said.
Rink has the type of mentality that should he lose all his limbs he’d still try to rip an enemy’s throat out with his teeth. But he was only human, and despite his desire to go down fighting, he barely had the strength to keep his eyes open.
Leaning into the cockpit, I peeled back the dressing on his shoulder, concerned by what I might find. Luckily it wasn’t a bullet wound as I’d first feared but a rip in his flesh. It was raw and angry looking. Someone had slapped on the rudimentary dressing, but it didn’t look like the tear had been cleaned or treated. I could feel the heat radiating from Rink’s body and knew that he was feverish.
‘It’s nothing, Hunter,’ Rink said, pressing down the bandage to cover the wound. ‘I ran into a goddamn tree branch, is all. Goddamn fool’s trick, you ask me.’
‘How’d they manage to get you?’
‘That slimy little punk, Baron. There was a group of ’em that ambushed me, forced my Porsche off the road and into the swamp. Managed to take out some of them, but then Baron came from nowhere, hit me with a goddamn Taser. Before I could recover from that, a couple of others had me down and had my weapons stripped from me. I fought back, got free and ran full tilt into a freakin’ tree. Almost impaled myself… was hung up there while Baron gave me another blast or two of his Taser. Then I must’ve been given a shot of somethin’ ’cause the next I knew I was in that cellar having my ass kicked all over again.’ The heat radiating from him now came from a different source.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Rink.’
