Shay squatted next to the guy and considered her options. Taking him out would be easy enough, but she sensed that Brownstone wanted the guy alive for some reason. There was no way the bounty hunter wouldn’t have finished the Harriken off otherwise. Brownstone had broken down a door using a man’s body. Restraint in the application of violence didn’t seem to be one of his virtues.
Gonna interrogate this bastard later, Brownstone? Is that the idea? Should have pinned a note on his back so I didn’t waste my time.
The Harriken moaned again.
“It’s either your lucky day,” Shay began, “or the worst fucking day of your life. You’ll find out later.” She kicked him hard in the head to knock him out again.
A charnel house awaited Shay inside. Bodies littered the crimson-soaked floor and stairs and blood dripped a slow and steady beat to the floor from some of the corpses on the stairs, a metronome of carnage. One poor fucker was half-embedded in the wall like some bizarre wall decoration.
Salvador Dali meets Ed Gein.
“Jesus, Brownstone. How did you even get him through there?”
No pity pricked her heart for the dead Harriken. They’d pissed off the wrong man, and now they were paying the price. Any halfway decent criminal organization knew who to poke and who to leave alone. She hoped whoever was responsible for Harriken intelligence was lying in this room or on the stairs.
Organized crime was like any other business. Cost and benefit needed to balance, and the executive committee meeting on this fuckup was something she would pay big money to listen to.
Shay swept the room and a few other connected rooms, her gun ready, but spotted no active enemies. She headed back into the front room. The walls on the opposite side were perforated with dozens of jagged holes, some small, some large.
It’s a goddamn warzone.
The treasure hunter took a few steps forward, looking down at the bodies on the floor. She didn’t lower her gun. One surprise Harriken ambush and she could end up dead.
Shay furrowed her brow and thought about every piece of evidence she’d seen so far.
Let’s see... No shell casings outside. The guards’ guns hadn’t even been drawn, which meant they hadn’t shot. Brownstone must have walked right up, and they had probably talked some shit back and forth. Didn’t use anything but his hands, most likely.
The big guy entered through the front after bashing it open with a Harriken guy’s body. Killed these guys on the floor. No gun, all knives and fists. Damn could that guy hit hard. What the hell was he?
Shay blinked and looked up at the large dent in the ceiling.
Seriously, Brownstone? How did you hit a guy all the way up there?
The fight in Peru had taken place in too small a space and over too short a time span for her to witness Brownstone’s true strength. She exhaled slowly, glad that the guy seemed calm most of the time. She could only imagine what would happen if he decided to go from being merely an asshole to a murderous asshole.
Shay’s focus shifted back and forth between the bodies and the bullet-riddled walls. Brownstone had obviously used the walls for cover. She doubted the shooters had engaged him until after the first wave of men had died at his hands.
That made sense. The Harriken must have banked on the men on the first floor outnumbering their enemy, but sometimes quantity didn’t have a quality all its own.
Shay didn’t spot any throwing knives in the stair bodies. Large holes marked the bodies, mostly around the chest. She walked to the bottom of the stairs and rolled one of the bodies over. Smaller entry wound in the front, bigger exit wound in the back—she’d seen that before.
Brownstone took cover behind the swiss cheese walls of death there and started taking these guys out…with what? Probably a large-caliber pistol with hollow-points. This wasn’t just defense. He wanted to make sure he took the guys down. Definitely not trying to take a lot of prisoners. Also meant that Brownstone didn’t think he was going to have to shoot through a lot of walls.
Shay chewed on that thought for a few seconds. Brownstone had assaulted the headquarters, motivated by vengeance. He might have wanted to see his enemies die in front of him.
Not unexpected.
She padded toward the dining room, keeping her gun ready. No bloodstains or bodies presented themselves on the floor, but .45-caliber brass shell casings lay all over. She performed a quick count.
Had to change mags at least once in here. Probably only once, though.
A small amount of blood stained a side wall. Shay looked between the hole-pocked walls and the wall with blood, aiming her gun to help her visualize the line of fire.
Brownstone took a hit. Not enough to take him down, obviously.
Closer inspection of the wall led Shay to spot a small bullet hole.
He took a hit, but the bullet passed clean through. Good for him, and lucky the Harriken weren’t using hollow-points too.
Shay shook her head as she headed back toward the stairs. Violence was an art in and of itself, and the gory scene at the house proved that Brownstone was the fucking Jackson Pollock of ass-kicking.
A few quiet moans sounded from the stairs. Shay rushed into the front room, hurrying behind a couch, gun drawn. A sprint to a chair followed. No Harriken popped up to shoot at her as she approached the source of the moans. Two survivors.
Sloppy, Brownstone. Then again, these guys are obviously gonna bleed out.
“Help...me,” one of the men groaned. “Can...pay...you. Earn...respect of the…Harriken.”
“Yeah, about that…First, I just got a big paycheck today, so I’m not as impressed with money. Second, it doesn’t make much sense to help out the
