Bone Dry

of Maria’s enchiladas.

Then he paused for a moment. What the hell was that? He thought he heard another engine. For a second he wondered if Vinnie was returning to the house. But no, he could tell it wasn’t Vinnie’s Camaro. It was a different vehicle, with an engine that sounded every bit as powerful-except that it needed a tune-up.

Vinnie could already feel the fucking adrenaline pumping through his system. That was something he had discovered about being a stone-cold killer. You could control the rush. You could shape it and mold it and make it work for you. He’d done it when dealing with Emmett Slaton, and he’d done it when he’d handled T.J. That was what made him different from some of the cugines back home, weaklings who didn’t have the balls to do what needed to be done.

Prowling in the night like this, dressed in black, mentally prepping himself for action-it excited Vinnie, and his crotch stiffened as he contemplated his plan.

Then he noticed headlights in his rearview mirror, another vehicle maybe a quarter-mile back, coming on quickly. Oh, shit, it was probably that damn Smedley. When Vinnie had pulled out of the driveway, he had seen the marshal’s car sitting on the shoulder of the road. But it had been empty when Vinnie’s headlights swept over it. Or maybe Smedley had been napping in the backseat. Who the hell knows? The marshals were pretty strange fuckers, showing up when you least expected it, just hanging around, watching. They said they were guarding their precious witness; but wasting tax dollars, that’s what it really was.

Normally, Vinnie didn’t give a rat’s ass what Smedley did. Hell, he could follow Vinnie around for days, who gives a shit? But not tonight.

Red caught up with the Camaro about a mile before it reached Highway 281, but now he had another concern on his mind. Headlights were bouncing along on the road behind him, gaining fast. Could that possibly be Sal? If sending Vinnie out first had been a trick, Sal would be stupid to show himself like that.

Smedley was pushing the cheap little sedan as fast as it would go, and now he had to ease up on the gas. He was forty yards behind an old Ford truck now, and he could see the taillights of Vinnie’s Camaro about fifty yards ahead of the truck. The highway was seconds away.

Vinnie reached the highway and had to come to a stop as an eighteen-wheeler roared past. There was no need to rush now. Whoever was behind him-and it wasn’t Smedley-was right on his damn bumper. Nothing to worry about, just some redneck’s truck. Old and red and ugly. Vinnie thought he recognized it from around town, but he didn’t know who owned it. Vinnie sat at the stop sign, idling, glaring into his rearview mirror. Looked like two guys back there, lurking in the dark.

Probably just some teenagers out for a cruise. Or it might be poachers. Hillbillies in Texas seemed to enjoy that sort of thing.

Then he saw Smedley’s sedan pull up behind the truck. Oh, fuckin’ great! So the marshal had been sitting in his sedan. The question was, was Smedley following Vinnie, or was the dumbfuck simply heading back to Austin?

There was one way to find out.

“He’s just sittin’ there, Red.”

“I can see that, doofus. What do you want me to do? Get out and knock on his window? Ask him where the body is?”

“Hell, I was just sayin’….”

A car pulled up behind Red’s truck. “Shit, we got company,” Red yelped.

Billy Don craned his head around. “It’s that sedan from outside the Mamelis’.”

Red peered into his mirrors and saw nothing but headlights. “Can you see who’s in it? Is it Mameli?”

Billy Don twisted around in his seat. “Naw, it’s just some fat guy in a suitcoat. He’s-”

The Camaro gunned it and laid rubber out onto the highway, fishtailing left, then gaining traction and zooming off into the darkness.

Well, shit. Red’s well-planned surveillance operation had obviously come to an end. Time to get serious. He popped the clutch, the truck’s big engine gulping gasoline, and took off after the Camaro.

Smedley watched the two vehicles scream away and tried to steady himself. Who were those men in the truck? They might be Vinnie’s friends, and they were all just heading out for a little late-night carousing. Could be as simple as that. But something nagged at him. The kind of friends Vinnie had wouldn’t be driving a truck like that. He had another idea that spooked him, something almost unthinkable.

It was a long shot, but could those two guys be button men for the mob, trying to pass as locals? After all, a couple of hitters would stand out-well, as much as Sal did-if they arrived driving a Lincoln, wearing double-breasted suits.

They might have come to whack Sal, saw Smedley’s car on the road, and decided to follow Vinnie instead. If they could manage to abduct Vinnie, Sal would do anything they asked, including having a sudden memory loss at the next trial.

Smedley gulped. It could all be happening right under his nose. Todd the Asshole would never let him live it down. Smedley could almost see his supervisor’s report now: “The suspects initiated their operation while Agent Poindexter was having intercourse with the Mamelis’ Guatemalan housekeeper.”

Smedley stomped the accelerator-and the sedan lurched to a stall.

Creeping up to 110 miles per hour now, Highway 281 as straight as a ribbon in front of him, Vinnie was leaving the truck in his dust. And he couldn’t even see Smedley’s headlights behind the truck. Yeah, like either of those assholes ever had a chance against his Camaro. Another mile or two and he’d be long gone. The rednecks had surprised Vinnie by chasing after him, but the teenagers living out in the boondocks liked to get out on the roads and raise hell on weekends. Nothing else to do around this fucking county.

Two minutes later, Vinnie smiled as the truck’s headlights faded from his mirror. A couple miles farther ahead he’d take a right on Miller Creek Loop, a narrow, curvy blacktop that wound north, back to Johnson City.

Red was pretty sure if he pushed his old truck any harder it might just come apart around him. It had been years since he had taken it up to a hundred miles per hour, and the thirty-year old vehicle groaned in disapproval. Up ahead, the taillights of the Camaro were becoming two faint specks on the horizon. Red slapped the steering wheel in frustration, then eased up on the gas, dropping his speed to ninety.

He was feeling miserable. His first full day as a vice president, and already he was a failure. God, what a screwup.

Then it struck him. At first, it was merely a germ of a thought. Then, unlike many of his other thoughts, it sprouted into a full-blown idea. Hot damn, he had it all figured out!

A bodyguard! The guy in the sedan was Sal Mameli’s bodyguard!

And when you’re a thug like Mameli, who would be more likely to take care of simple tasks for you-things like disposing of a corpse-than your hired muscle?

“We got the wrong guy,” Red muttered.

“We what?” Billy Don wailed, his arms still braced on the dashboard.

“We got the wrong guy!”

Smedley figured it was a lost cause. He had the gas pedal floored, but the sedan barely reached eighty-five. He crested a small rise and could now see a mile of highway before him. Nothing. Not another vehicle in sight.

But he pushed on anyway. The men in the truck-if they were wiseguys-might have Vinnie pulled over a few miles up the road. There might still be time for Smedley to catch them before they abducted Vinnie and took off again.

He covered the mile ahead and came to another small crest. He topped it-and what he saw next sent a thunderbolt of fear through his colon.

There, maybe forty yards ahead of him, was the red truck. It was parked broadside in the middle of the highway, a huge, steel, Detroit-made roadblock. It all happened so quickly, Smedley barely had time to react. He slammed on the brakes with both feet. From the corner of his eye he saw two shadowy figures standing on the median, waiting.

The men from the truck. They had outsmarted him.

Maybe that’s why they called them wiseguys.