The light wasn’t good, but he scanned the darkness for movement. Twenty feet away, he saw a flash of white fur waddle into the underbrush and released his breath.
Possum.
Cracking his neck, he peered through the scope again.
Something rustled behind him.
“Come on,” he hissed out loud.
He pointed the rifle at the trees and stared through the scope. It didn’t help. He didn’t see anything, but he knew his answer.
He was sitting in a forest in Florida at night.
The place is crawling with critters.
The forests in the northeast had wildlife, too, but other than the occasional bear, none of it might kill him.
He sniffed and turned back to his business.
I hate this godforsaken jungle state.
He grimaced when he heard the next rustle, but refused to look.
“They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” he muttered to himself.
A Florida swamp forest was no place for a boy from Queens—
Through the scope he spotted movement through the restaurant’s blinds. The meeting had broken up. People were leaving.
Finally.
The front door opened and people spilled into the parking lot.
Declan appeared, his girlfriend at his side, a good-looking young lady.
Shame.
He heard something behind him and bit down, steadying for his shot.
Not now, possum.
He let out a breath and squeezed the trigger.
His head exploded with pain.
Vince heard the rifle shot, but knew there was little chance he’d hit anything. The pain came with force, and he now lay on his side, blinded and blinking.
With effort he rolled onto his back, trying to make sense of his predicament. His vision returned to reveal a woman standing over him, dressed in tight black clothing.
She pulled a black balaclava from her head, a spill of blonde hair visible by the street lights just beyond the forest’s edge.
“Hey,” she said.
He blinked hard. “Jamie?”
As soon as he said the word, he knew he was wrong. The woman looked like Jamie, but no. She was younger. He blinked again, confused.
The blonde held what looked like a thick branch in her hand.
Did she hit me over the head with that?
He tried to get up but his elbow slipped.
“Don’t get up,” she said, and there it was, a gun in her hand where the branch had been.
Uh oh.
A decade earlier he’d stumbled on one of his guys in the act of dying, a bullet hole in his chest. With seconds to live, the kid looked at him and smiled.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he’d said.
Then the light in his eyes died.
Vince thought it a strange last thing to say at the time, but it made sense to him now.
He smiled at the girl, knowing soon he’d be out of that damn forest.
Out of Florida.
As she raised the gun, he swallowed and spoke.
“Live by the sword, die by the—”
She finished his sentence a second before he heard the blast.
“Beretta M9A3.”
Chapter Twenty-One
After the crash of glass, Declan turned as a string of gasps, yelps, and one good, solid curse filled the air outside Angelo’s Pizza Pit. The parking lot felt darker.
“Are you okay?” he called to Charlotte on the opposite side of the Jeep.
“I’m fine. What was that?”
Declan spotted glass at the bottom of the lamppost outside Angelo’s. The glowing globe once sitting on top had gone missing.
He moved to the back of the Jeep to meet Charlotte there, both of them staring at the pile of glass. A gust of wind swung Charlotte’s ponytail.
“Was it the wind?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That, or maybe the bulb exploded? I heard something pop.”
He turned to look across the street, finding nothing except a clump of trees beside a plowed, empty lot, earmarked to become a new housing development. He scanned the tree line and pointed. “It almost sounded like the pop came from across the street,” he mumbled.
“It’s lucky no one was standing under there,” said Charlotte, her attention still on the lamp.
Nothing moved in the trees and Declan tried to shake his uneasy feeling. He wasn’t in the jungles of South America fighting guerrillas anymore. In Florida, as a rule, there weren’t snipers hiding in the forests. Shrugging, he headed back towards the restaurant. “The crash probably echoed off the trees. We should see if everyone is okay.”
They joined the group standing outside the restaurant, everyone chattering about how they’d nearly been killed.
“Is everyone okay?” asked Charlotte.
“I’m going to sue these people,” huffed Penny, who hadn’t been anywhere near the lamp. Declan had watched her return from her car when everyone screamed.
Always the peacemaker, Charlotte made an attempt to calm Penny down before her litigious thoughts swept through the rest of the group.
“Accidents happen. Would you want Pineapple Port people suing you every time something broke?” she asked.
He loved the way she always thought she could fix things.
Though with this group...
Penny’s eyes flashed, but before she could answer, her sister appeared beside her to wink at Charlotte.
“You ought to sue Penny for having such a subpar development.”
Penny redirected her escalating anger toward her sister and Charlotte used the opportunity to touch Declan’s arm.
“I think they’re all fine. We should get out of here while we still can.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
Back in the Jeep, they pulled out of the lot to make the ten-minute drive back to Pineapple Port. With Charlotte’s direction, he navigated to Gryph’s house and parked on the curb.
“Handy he lives so close to you,” said Declan, opening his door.
“Where are you going?” asked Charlotte.
He smiled. “I’m your shadow, remember?”
She rolled her eyes.
The grinding gears of
