The seagulls began screaming, and something pinged off of the café railing, sparks flying up from the thick metal. A sharp report echoed across the pier’s walk, and chunks of brick from the pub’s outer wall blew out, shards and mortar dusting the air. Another blast ripped through the awning’s edge, shredding the green canvas into ribbons, and for the first time since he’d quit his old job, Sionn found himself instinctively reaching for a gun that wasn’t there.
He grabbed Dee’s arm and yanked the man down, flipping one of the café tables up onto its side to use for protection. He heard another shot go off, and the padded chair Dee’d been sitting in spat out tufts of stuffing from a bullet going through its back. Covering Dee’s lanky sprawl with his own body, Sionn counted off another three shots before a long, still silence fell over the pier.
The ringing in his ears was loud, nearly deafening, but not so loud he couldn’t hear Leigh screaming his name from inside the pub. Shouting back at her to call the cops, he ran his hands down Dee’s trembling body, checking for injuries as he tried to coax the man to turn over.
Dee’s eyes were wide and shell-shocked, his pupils nearly swallowing up any hint of blue around them. Panting heavily, he tried to sit up but was trapped under Sionn’s thighs, his own legs tucked up under Sionn’s. Far off in the distance, a siren wailed, drawing closer and echoing off the surrounding buildings. The sound seemed to jerk Dee out of his trance, and he fought Sionn’s hands, trying to pull free.
“Hey now, Dee.” Sionn cupped the man’s face, forcing Dee to look him straight in the eyes. “Calm down. You’re okay. It’s going to be all right.”
“No, it’s not.” His lashes were long, brushing against Sionn’s thumb when he ran it over Dee’s cheek. “You’ve got to let me go. Before the cops get here, Sionn. Please. Before he kills you too. I can’t… I don’t want to lose you too. Not when I’ve just found you.”
“WHAT do you mean, you lost him again? What the hell are you doing out there, Parker?”
The boardwalk was no place to have a discussion with his employer, but Parker wasn’t ready to let his target out of his sight. Whoever was with the kid apparently had some pull with the local cops. The pier was now crawling with uniforms.
The response had been quick and heavy—so quick that Parker nearly didn’t have enough time to stash his gun. When the first cruiser pulled up, it irritated him so much he’d debated shooting the officer in the head when the man pulled off to the side of the pier and got out of his vehicle.
When the second cop car slid up out of the fog and parked behind the first, Parker reluctantly trudged over to the side of a nearby building and surreptitiously flung the Beretta into the bay’s murky waters. He’d miss the gun. When he finally found Damien Mitchell, Parker would take his sweet time killing him, just to make up for the loss of a good gun. Knives, he reminded himself. He preferred knives anyway. Up close and personal, a man could feel when death took another man. From now on, he’d just stick with a good knife.
“Parker, just answer me! What the hell do you mean you missed him?” The man on the other end of Parker’s cell phone snapped, letting loose a string of profanities hot enough to rile Parker’s nerves. “How damned hard is it to kill one crazy man? Why didn’t you get him at Skywood? He should be rotting someplace on the side of that mountain.”
“I told you. Mitchell bolted. Lost him in the forest for a bit, but then some asshole in a truck almost ran him over. Mitchell must have given him a sob story because he got a ride off the mountain. That’s how I lost him. If I hadn’t had to stop and get rid of the handler for you, he wouldn’t be a problem now.” Parker swung his body around until he got a clear view of the law enforcement going in and out of the pub’s glass doors. “As for today, I couldn’t get a good shot at him. Another guy stepped in and grabbed Mitchell. They were down before I could get a clear hit. That other guy might be a problem.”
“Why is your problem mine all of a sudden?” The man shouted over the phone. “Do you think I give a shit about that?”
“No, sir,” Parker murmured, looking over his shoulder as another EMT team arrived on the scene. The whole situation was becoming ridiculous. From what he could see, he hadn’t even clipped his damned target. “It isn’t your concern. I’ll be taking care of him along with Mitchell, just like I did your guy at Skywood.”
“The handler needed to die, anyway. I wasn’t going to shell out half a million dollars for him to drag the boy out to a fucking garden.” The gruff-voiced man grunted. “What’s your ETA on taking care of the boy?”
“I don’t know. Soon.”
“Did you at least take care of those damned actors before you headed out there?”