You're Next

A roar.

The blast of light from the balcony illuminated Shep’s emotionless face behind the barrel of his gun, safely back out of the security camera’s range. Before Mike could blink, the space beyond the open door had vanished into darkness again, taking Shep with it.

The side of Graham’s neck went to red and white, a tailed dollop of blood rising like syrup, then falling with his body to land in a slash across his cheek and chest. The gun flash had seared into Mike’s retinas, and he stood there a moment, breathing cordite, his eardrums on tinny vibration. Staring down at the bone and exposed flesh, he felt nothing. He recalled a dinner not so long before with some parents of Kat’s friends, roast chicken and Chilean Shiraz, how they’d all chatted and chewed and wiped their lips, resting happily in their assumption that they were decent, civilized folks.

What his father had gone through to protect him. The fear coming off him in waves that morning in the station wagon. The torn-open grief of losing a wife and leaving a son.

Just John. Just John.

Mike blinked himself back to life, returned to Graham’s study, and downloaded the security footage from the bedroom onto a flash drive. He replayed the digital recording, double-checking that it had copied. Graham’s face, clear as day: With the money McAvoy had invested, he couldn’t leave a loose end like your mother out there.

Then Mike wiped the security files from the hard drive. As he was turning to go, he noticed a business card in the otherwise empty metal tray at the desk’s edge. Brian McAvoy, CEO. On the backside he’d written new cell and a phone number with a Sacramento area code.

Mike stared at that number for a good long time, then withdrew his disposable phone and dialed, his gloved hand tightening around the receiver as it rang and rang.

A sleep-muffled ‘Hnuh?’

Mike said, ‘I got you dead to rights.’

‘How’d you get this number?’

‘That’s the least of your concerns.’

‘Who… who is this?’

‘The guy who owns your casino. I have footage that will destroy you.’

‘Footage?’ A moist swallow, and then a breath blew across the receiver. ‘How much do you want?’

‘There is no sum.’

‘Then why…?’

‘You’re going to back off my family or I will bury you. Do you understand me?’

‘Your family?’ A whistle of breath. ‘You sure you know who you’re calling, son?’

Now that Mike considered it, the voice sounded a bit gruffer than he’d anticipated. ‘Brian McAvoy,’ Mike said.

‘McAvoy?’ A booming laugh, rich with age and tobacco. ‘From the sound of you, you’re probably the only person who hates that son of a bitch more than I do.’ The man chuckled a bit more, fading out into a dead-serious silence. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Is this… is this Michael Trainor?’

A long pause. A ceiling vent blew dry and steady on the back of Mike’s neck.

‘Sue Windbird’s great-grandson?’ The voice filled with relief. ‘I can’t believe you’re alive.’

Mike’s fingers were cramping around the phone. He bent over, squeezed his forehead. ‘Who is this?’

‘I’m Chief Andrew Two-Hawks of the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok. I’m the CEO of a casino, but not the one you’re gunning for. You and I sit need to sit down, son.’

‘Why would we do that?’

‘Because our interests align.’

Chapter 49

Andrew Two-Hawks had a jelly gut and a fish mouth, a goatee hiding the weak chin. He met Mike at a rear door behind his casino, his smile as broad as his handshake was firm. A leather vest overlaid a patterned button-up, the open collar looking lonely without a bolo tie to string the whole getup together. At Two-Hawks’s side stood a guy nearly as wide as the doorway, a no-foolin’-around Indian with weathered skin and a crisply pressed black suit, his shaved head shaped like a blob of shaving cream swirled onto a palm. He began patting Mike down, and Mike shoved him away before his groping hands reached the.357 tucked into the back of his jeans.

Two-Hawks tugged at his face, the wrinkles pulling smooth, then nodded a dismissal at his bodyguard. ‘Mike here’s on our team.’

The bodyguard scowled and withdrew, keeping a junkyarddog glare trained on Mike.

‘Forgive Blackie there,’ Two-Hawks said. ‘The boy’s so dumb he could fall into a tub of tits and come out sucking his thumb.’ He gestured. ‘Walk with me.’

The good-ol’-boy demeanor and his appearance, that of a Texas oilman who had enough money to dress better than he bothered to, caught Mike by surprise. What had he been expecting? A chieftain bearing tom-toms? They moved down a carpeted hall, the whirl and clang of the casino visible but muted by a wall of tinted soundproof windows. The place, a bit rundown, was considerably smaller than Deer Creek Casino.

Mike found himself sneaking glances over at the man.

‘What?’ Two-Hawks said.

Mike said, ‘Nothing. You look…’

Two-Hawks grinned. ‘As white as you?’

Over the phone Mike had conveyed the basics of his plight – the splintering of his family, the stakes for his wife and daughter – and Two-Hawks had listened patiently, issuing empathetic rumbles from somewhere deep in his throat.

‘First thing you need to know,’ Two-Hawks said now, ushering Mike around a turn, ‘is that Deer Creek Tribal Enterprises, Inc., has staked a fraudulent claim to our historical tribal land.’ He pointed down at the carpet. ‘This land.’

‘They can do that?’

‘No. But they are. And through the techniques perfected by Brian McAvoy’ – a curl of upper lip at the name – ‘they are in the process of turning that claim into law.’

‘How?’

‘Every tribe, you see, has gotta be formally recognized by the federal government to enjoy certain basic rights and protections. A couple of well-positioned politicians – backed, of course, by McAvoy – are claiming that our status was illegitimately shoved through under Jimmy Carter’s appointees when the procedures were more ad hoc. They’ve put our tribal recognition under review, official arguments to begin early next year. If we lose, guess who’s in primo position to take over our land?’

‘And if McAvoy gets your land, he gets your casino.’

‘Bingo.’

‘That’s why you’ve been looking for me. If another heir to Deer Creek was alive, you could use him to outflank McAvoy.’

‘With you we have a chance to cut the man off at the knees.’ A flicker of disgust crossed the shiny dark eyes. ‘He and I are mortal enemies. I have quite a few these days. Does that make you nervous?’

Mike said, ‘I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t have enemies.’

A smile rippled that close-shaved goatee. ‘Then you’ll love me.’

They stepped into a well-appointed office, Two-Hawks gesturing to a broad leather sofa behind a glass coffee table. ‘Sit down. Put your feet up. You can’t break the shit, and if you do, they make more of it.’

But Mike remained standing, crossing his arms as if bracing against the cold. A few sad relics adorned the walls – a frayed granary basket, a feather dance skirt, and a pair of tiny moccasins. Mike couldn’t help but wonder if he was taking in the entire preserved history of the Shasta Springs Band of Miwok with a sweep of the eyes. Quite a contrast to the theme-park tribal shrine that Deer Creek had polished to a high gloss.

Two-Hawks set a cell phone on his desk blotter and stared down at it as if it were a half-crushed insect he