Lethal

Chapter 14

Honor clamped her hands over her mouth to trap her scream and watched in horrified astonishment as Fred’s body fell face first onto the floor.

Coburn stepped over it and strode toward her.

On an adrenaline surge, she spun around and bolted down the hallway. He grabbed her arm from behind. As he brought her around, she swung her other fist at his head.

Cursing liberally, he caught her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides, and lifted her off the floor. He backed her into the wall with enough impetus to knock the breath out of her and positioned himself between her legs to make her vicious kicking ineffectual.

“Listen! Listen to me!” he said, his breath striking her face in hot pants.

She fought like a wildcat to get free, but when her limbs proved useless, she tried to bang her forehead against his. He jerked his head back in the nick of time.

“I’m a federal agent!”

She went perfectly still and gaped at him.

“Hawkins—that’s his name?”

Her head wobbled.

“He was the shooter at the warehouse. Him and his twin. Got it? He was the bad guy, not me.”

Honor stared at him with stark incredulity as she gulped in air. “Fred is a police officer.”

“Not anymore.”

“He was—”

“A murderer. I watched him shoot Marset in the head.”

“I watched you shoot Fred!”

“I had no choice. He already had his gun in his hand to—”

“He didn’t even know you were here!”

“—to kill you.”

She sucked in a breath and, after holding it for several seconds, exhaled it in a gust. Her swallow was dry. “That’s impossible.”

“I saw him headed this way in a boat. I doubled back. If I hadn’t, you’d be dead now, and so would your kid. I’d have been accused of two more murders.”

“Why would… why would…?”

“Later. I’ll tell you all of it. But for right now, just believe me when I tell you he would have killed you if I hadn’t killed him first. Okay?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t believe you. You can’t be a cop.”

“Not a cop.”

“Federal agent?”

“FBI.”

“Even more unlikely.”

“J. Edgar rolls over in his grave every day, but that’s the way it is.”

“Show me your ID.”

“Undercover. Deep cover. No ID. You have to take my word for it.”

She gazed into his hard, cold eyes for several moments, then stammered tearfully, “You spent the last twenty-four hours terrifying me.”

“Part of the shakedown. I had to be convincing.”

“Well, I’m convinced. You’re a criminal.”

“Think about it,” he said angrily. “If I was a killer on the run, you’d have been dead this time yesterday. Fred would have found your body this morning. Your little girl’s, too. Maybe floating in the creek out there, a fish buffet, if she hadn’t been eaten by gators first.”

She hiccupped a sob and looked away from him with revulsion. “You’re worse than a criminal.”

“That’s been said. But for the immediate future, I’m your only chance of staying alive.”

Tears of confusion and fear blurred her vision. “I don’t understand what I have to do with any of this.”

“Not you. Your late husband.” He let go of her with one hand and dug into the front pocket of his jeans, producing the folded sheet of paper she had noticed the day before.

“What is that?”

“Your husband was somehow linked to that killing in the warehouse.”

“Impossible.”

“This might help convince you.” He shook out the folds of the paper, then turned it around so she could read what was written. “Your husband’s name, circled and underlined and with a question mark beside it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Marset’s office. I sneaked in there one night. Found this entry in an old day planner.”

“That could mean anything.”

“Check the date.”

“Two days before Eddie died,” she murmured. She looked at Coburn with bewilderment, then tried to snatch the paper from him.

“Un-huh.” He yanked it out of her reach and stuffed it back into his pocket. “I might need that for evidence. Along with anything you can testify to.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“We’ll talk about that later. Right now, we gotta get you the hell out of here.”

“But—”

“No buts,” he said with a hard shake of his head for emphasis. “You’re getting the kid and going with me now before Hawkins number two shows up.”

“Doral?”

“Whatever the hell his name is. You can bet he’s speeding his way here.”

“The police are on their way. Fred notified them that you’d been here. I heard him.”

He released her so suddenly, she nearly slid down the wall. In seconds he was back, a cell phone in each hand. “His official phone,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “Last call, an hour ago.” He tossed that phone to the floor. “This phone. His burner.” His thumb busily worked the keypad. “Last number called three minutes ago. Not the police.”

He depressed the icon to redial, and she recognized Doral’s voice when he answered. “Everything okay?”

Coburn disconnected immediately. “So now he knows everything’s not okay.” The phone began ringing almost instantly. Coburn turned it off, crammed it into his jeans pocket, and nodded toward Emily’s bedroom. “Get the kid.”

“I can’t just—”

“You wanna die?”

“No.”

“You want your little girl to get snuffed? Wouldn’t take too long for him to cut off her air with a pillow over her face.”

She recoiled from the horrible image. “You would protect us. If what you say is true, why don’t you arrest Doral?”

“I can’t blow my cover yet. And I can’t turn you over to the police because the whole frigging department is dirty. I couldn’t protect you.”

“I’ve known the Hawkins twins for years. They were my husband’s best friends. Stan practically raised them. They have no reason to kill me.”

He placed his hands on his hips. His chest was rapidly rising and falling with agitation. “Did you tell Fred I came here looking for something?”

She hesitated before giving one bob of her head.

“That’s why Fred would have killed you. The Bookkeeper would have ordered it.”

“You mentioned this bookkeeper last night. Who is it?”

“I wish I knew. But there’s no time to explain that now. You just gotta believe that since Fred can no longer kill you, Doral will.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is.”

He stated it as fact, without mitigation. Two words. It is.

Still she hesitated.

“Look,” he said, “you want to stay here and wring your hands over divided loyalties? Fine. But I’m leaving. I’ve got a job to finish. You’d be helpful to me, but not necessary. All I’m trying to do is save your skin. If you stay, you’ll be at Doral’s mercy. Good luck with that.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me.”

“The hell he wouldn’t. If he thinks you’ve got information, he’d hurt you plenty, you or your kid. Make no mistake about that. And then, whether you’d told him anything useful or not, he’d kill you. So stay and die, or come with me. You’ve got to the count of five to make up your mind. One.”

“Maybe you’re not lying, but you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. Two.”

“I can’t just leave with you.”

“When Hawkins gets here, I’ll be gone, and you can explain—or try to—how his dearly departed twin wound up with a bullet hole in his head. He probably won’t be in a very receptive mood. Three.”

“Doral wouldn’t raise a finger to me. To Emily? Eddie’s child? Out of the question. I know him.”

“Like you thought you knew his policeman brother.”

“You’re wrong about Fred, too.”

“Four.”

“You’re telling me you’re the good guy, and I’m supposed to believe it simply because you said it?” Her voice had gone raw and ragged with emotion. “I know these men. I trust them. But I don’t know you!”

He stared at her for several beats, then put his hand around the front of her neck to hold her head still. He moved his face close to hers and whispered, “You know me. You know I’m who I say.”

Her pulse beat rapidly against his strong fingers, but it was his piercing gaze that held her pinned to the wall behind her.

“Because if I wasn’t, I would have fucked you last night.” He held her for several seconds longer, then dropped his hand and backed away. “Five. Are you coming or not?”

Doral Hawkins hurled an armchair against the wall, then, angered because it hadn’t busted up like they do in the movies, he whacked it against the wall again and again until the wood splintered. He punted a thick New Orleans Yellow Pages through the living room window. Then, standing amid the shattered windowpane, he clasped a double handful of his thinning hair and pulled hard as though wanting to rip it from his scalp.

He was in a state. Part agonizing anguish, part sheer animal rage.

His twin lay dead on the floor of Honor’s house with a bullet hole bored through the center of his head. Doral had seen worse wounds. He’d inflicted worse. Like the time a guy had bled to death, slowly and screaming, after Doral eviscerated him with a hunting knife.

But his brother’s lethal wound was the most obscene of Doral’s experience because it was like looking at his own death mask. The blood hadn’t even had time to congeal.

Honor wouldn’t have killed him. It had to have been that son of a bitch Coburn.

During their last phone conversation, Fred, speaking in a hushed and hurried voice so Honor wouldn’t overhear, had told him that their quarry, Lee Coburn, had been making cozy with her all the while they’d been chasing their tails through the pest-ridden swamp looking for him.

“He’s there now?” Doral had asked excitedly.

“We’re not that lucky. He’s split.”

“How much head start does he have?”

“Minutes, or could be hours. Honor says she woke up, he was gone. Took her car.”

“She all right?”

“In a tizzy. Babbling.”

“What was Coburn doing there?”

“The whole house is torn up.”

“He knew about Eddie?”

“When he put in on this bayou, I got a sick feeling, and, yeah, looks like.”

“How?”

“Don’t know.”

“What did Honor say?”

“Said he was after something that Eddie had died protecting.”

“Fuck.”

“My thought exactly.”

After a short pause, Doral had asked quietly, “What are you gonna do?”

“Go after him.”

“I mean about Honor.”

Fred’s sigh had come loudly through the cell connection. “The Bookkeeper didn’t leave me a choice. When I called in that I was going to check out Eddie’s place… Well, you know.”

Yes, Doral knew. The Bookkeeper took no prisoners, and it wouldn’t matter if it was a family friend, or a woman and child. No loose ends. No mercy.

Fred had been torn up about it, but he would do what he had to do, because he knew it was necessary. He was also aware of the severe consequences suffered by anyone who failed to carry out an order.

They’d ended their call with the understanding that he would take care of the problem, so that by the time Doral joined him at the Gillette place, they could report to the sheriff’s office the horrifying double murder of Honor and Emily.

They’d chalk up the homicides to Coburn, who was sure to have left his fingerprints all over Honor’s house. There were muddy, blood-stained clothes left in the bathroom, which would prove to be his. Law enforcement personnel would be galvanized. Fred knew the buzz words to use with the media so they’d take the story and run with it. Soon the whole state would be salivating for a piece of Lee Coburn, only suspect in the warehouse massacre, woman and kid killer.

It had been a good plan, now shot to hell.

Doral spent a critical ten minutes in rage and grief. But, his fit having subsided, he wiped the mucus and tears from his face and forced himself to put personal feelings aside until he could indulge in them properly, and instead to evaluate the present situation. Which sucked. Big-time.

Most troubling was that Fred’s body was the only one in evidence. There was no sign of Honor and Emily, or of their remains, in or near the house. If his brother had dispatched them, he’d hidden their bodies very well.

Or—and it was a really troublesome or—Coburn had popped Fred before he’d had a chance to dispatch Honor and her daughter. If that was the case, where were they now? Hiding until someone came to their rescue? Possibly. But that meant that as soon as he found them, he’d have to kill them, and the thought of that made him queasy.

There was also a third possibility, and it was the worst-case scenario: Coburn and Honor had escaped together.

Doral gnawed on that. It portended all kinds of trouble, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was a hunter, not a detective, and not a strategist except when it came to stalking. Besides, it wasn’t up to him to determine what the next course of action should be. He’d let The Bookkeeper figure it out.

Like the Godfather in the movie, The Bookkeeper insisted on hearing bad news right away. Doral placed the call and it was answered on the first ring. “Have you found Coburn?”

“Fred’s been killed.”

He waited for a reaction, but didn’t really expect one and didn’t get it. Not even a shocked exclamation, certainly not a murmur of sympathy. The Bookkeeper would be interested only in hearing the facts and hearing them immediately.

As uncomfortable as it was to be the bearer of bad news, Doral described the scene at Honor’s house and passed along everything that Fred had told him before he was shot. “I got one more call from his cell, but as soon as I answered, it was cut off. I don’t know who placed that call, and when I dial his number now, I get nothing. The phone’s missing. I found his police-issued one in the hall. I don’t know what happened to Honor and Emily. There’s no sign of them. Fred’s pistol is also gone. And… and…”

“More bad news? Spit it out, Doral.”

“The house is torn up all to hell. Honor told Fred that Coburn came here looking for something he thought Eddie had squirreled away.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Both were thinking about the grave implications of Coburn’s search through Honor’s house. They certainly couldn’t dismiss it as a bizarre coincidence.

Doral wisely remained quiet and tried to keep his gaze from wandering back to his brother’s corpse. But he couldn’t help himself, and each time he looked at it, he felt a burning rage. Nobody humiliated a Hawkins like that. Coburn would pay and pay dearly.

“Did Coburn find what he was looking for?”

This was the question Doral had most dreaded, because he didn’t have an answer for it. “Who’s to say?”

“You’re to say, Doral. Find them. Learn what they know or retrieve what they have, then dispatch them.”

“You don’t need to tell me.”

“Don’t I? I told you and your brother not to let anyone leave that warehouse alive.”

Doral felt his face burn.

“And let me emphasize,” The Bookkeeper continued, “that there’s no room for another mistake. Not when we’re on the brink of opening up a whole new market for ourselves.”

For months The Bookkeeper had been obsessed with sealing a deal with a new cartel out of Mexico that needed an established and reliable network to provide protection as they trafficked their goods across the state of Louisiana. Drugs and girls going one way, guns and heavy weaponry the other. They were big players, willing to pay substantial sums for peace of mind.

The Bookkeeper was determined to get their business. But it wasn’t going to happen unless one hundred percent reliability was guaranteed. Killing Sam Marset was supposed to have been a swift and bloody resolution to a problem. “Make a splash,” The Bookkeeper had told him and Fred, tongue in cheek.

But although it would never be admitted, the mass murder had opened up a hornet’s nest. They were now in damage control mode, and in order to protect his own interests, Doral would go along. He had no choice.

“The next time I call you, Doral, it’ll be from another cell phone. If Coburn’s got Fred’s phone—”

“He’ll have your number.”

“Unless your brother did as told and cleared the log each time we talked. But in any case, I’ll switch to a new phone.”

“Understood.”

“Get Coburn.”

“Also understood.”

He and Fred had had a patsy in place to frame for the warehouse murders. But the dock worker who had managed to escape the bloodbath, this Lee Coburn, had made himself an even better “suspect.”

They had counted on finding him within an hour of the killings, hunkered down somewhere, shaking in his boots, praying to his Maker to deliver him from evil. Later, they planned to attest that he’d been fatally shot while trying to escape arresting officer Fred Hawkins.

But Coburn had proved himself to be smarter than expected. He’d eluded Fred and him. And even when being tracked by armed men and bloodhounds, he’d run to Honor Gillette’s house and had spent a lot of valuable time searching it. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist…

“You know, I’ve been thinking.”

“I don’t pay you to think, Doral.”

The insult stung, but he pressed on. “This guy Coburn burst onto the scene a year ago and worked his way into Sam Marset’s confidence. I’m beginning to think he’s no ordinary loading dock worker, somebody who accidentally got wind of the more lucrative aspects of Marset’s operation and decided to horn in. He seems—what’s the word? Overqualified. Not your average trucking company employee.”

After another weighty silence, The Bookkeeper said bitingly, “Did you figure that out all by yourself, Doral?”