“There were two of them, Mel. Two men. They came here yesterday. They said they needed to talk to you. I told them to call your office. They said it was a personal matter. A medical problem involving their mother.”
“Tell me you didn’t buy their bullshit.” Yanking up Joseph’s other sleeve, Johnny exposed an even nastier set of bruises.
“Of course I didn’t.” Joseph sounded indignant. “I’m not a total ass. But I could see by the way they were acting that they weren’t going to let it or me go, so I said I’d call you for them. The beefy one pulled a gun and stuck it in my throat. He told me to get you out here, no questions asked. If I did that, they’d let me live. If not, I’d be dead in twenty-four hours. I tried to say no. I did say no. That’s when they got rough. They beat me, Mel. Kicked me and punched me and threatened to put a bullet in my leg for good measure. I’m sorry. I just… I caved. I said I’d do it. That’s when I called you and asked you to come out.”
“You could have warned us when we got here that something was wrong,” Johnny growled.
“I know.” Jerking away, Joseph appealed to Melia. “I wanted to, but I was so damn scared. I thought they might be listening. I didn’t know where they were when you showed up. For all I knew, they could’ve bugged the place. So I did what they told me to do. I was about to say something when Linda came out. Plus, Johnny was here. I swear, Mel, I didn’t know what to do, about any of it. What’s going on? Who are those guys?”
Melia glanced sideways. “Stop looking like you want to kill him, Johnny.”
“I do want to kill him.”
“But you won’t. And at the heart of it, you really don’t. You’re just pissed because you didn’t see a setup coming. But how could you have seen it?”
“His alleged injury, for a start. Fuck, he could have done more damage to his finger with a butter knife. And since when does Joseph work out? Three dances at our wedding reception, and he was gasping for air.” His phone rang, and with a final lethal look at her cousin, he swung away to answer it. “Yeah. Hey, Laidlaw. I need a favor…”
“What the hell is going on?” Joseph demanded in a hiss. “Two guys beat the crap out of me. I do what they want and get you out here. We hear gunshots, and now Johnny Soldier’s calling in the reserves. Did the bad guys bolt?”
“They’re dead.”
“Dead?” He gaped. “As in Johnny killed them?”
Melia nodded.
Joseph made a disbelieving sound. Then he appeared to think it through. “Actually, that might be good. Excellent, in fact. All I want to know now is what in God’s name any of this means!” His voice rose to a shout. Stabbing his bruised chest, he flung an arm toward the water. “This is not a normal afternoon for me, Mel. I lead a quiet, uneventful life. Where did this crap come from, and is its first name Johnny?”
“No. Yes.” She lifted both hands, palms out. “Kind of, but not really. Look, you had a rifle in the closet loaded and ready to use. I’m going to assume you were prepared to fire it if those guys tried to hurt me.”
“Well, duh, Mel. But then Johnny showed up with you and I thought, okay. Not perfect, but not as horrible as me having to shoot someone. I’ll admit I don’t like the guy, but he’s good with guns, so I figured everything would probably be fine, whatever went down. Except that what went down was worse than hell breaking loose.”
Melia tapped Johnny on the back. “Linda and Carl are coming. We’ll have to think of something clever to tell them.”
Acting quickly, Joseph covered up his bruises and smoothed his hair.
“Laidlaw’s en route. Gator poachers,” Johnny said to Joseph. “Tell Linda and Carl I caught them in the act. They shot at me, I shot at them. Problem solved.”
Melia sighed. “I don’t suppose it really is, though, is it? Solved, I mean.”
“No, but what I said will work as an explanation, because by the time your Sheriff Travers arrives on the scene, Laidlaw will have altered the scene and left it looking the way it should.”
“What about Carl?” she asked in a whisper. “Didn’t he see what happened?”
“He saw me shoot, saw two men go down. Story is they weren’t dead. As soon as we left, they dragged themselves out of the swamp.”
“Great. In that case, Laidlaw better leave some blood behind.”
“He knows what he’s doing.”
“What if Carl checked the bodies? Or Linda?”
A humorless smile curved Johnny’s lips. “Look at Carl’s face, Mel. That’s not the face of a man who just came back from checking the pulses on two corpses. I’m not sure he even knows he’s in Florida at this point. And all I’m getting from Linda is worry and fear.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Melia said. “Just make sure they don’t see Laidlaw… Linda? Carl?” Pressing her palms together, she prayed she didn’t appear as unnerved as she felt. “You seem a bit dazed. Let me tell you what Johnny thinks went down just now…”
…
It was a helluva wakeup call. Johnny had expected people to come at Melia from all sides, but not so many or so fast.
Satyr wasn’t wasting any time. He wanted the suffering to start. Still, if he could put his former comrade’s protective skills to the test first, so much the better. Nothing that took place in Deception Cove would be a serious disappointment to him. Not even the loss of his own men.
“You’re sure they were Satyr’s shooters this afternoon?” McCabe paced. He had a beer in one hand and his eyes on the diner visible some hundred-plus yards away through a stand of trees.
“They were Satyr’s,” Johnny confirmed. He perched on the bump of a cypress root and watched the water for movement. “Beat up the cousin, then used him to lure Mel to a place where they could off her and leave me to suffer in the aftermath. It’s got Satyr written all over it. In spite of the loss, he’ll be recreating a mental video of the scene and savoring every minute of it. He wants me to know and fully understand what’s coming.”
“You know Satyr better than I do,” McCabe conceded. “Mockerie’s always been my focus.”
“Obsession, more like.” Johnny took a long pull on his beer. “How far back do you two go?”
“We went to school together. I saw where he was headed years before anyone thought to question his behavior.”
“What behavior?”
“He stuck kids’ heads in toilets and flushed them. But not before the kids in question almost drowned. Rat him out, and he’d do worse the next time. He’d torment for a fee. He didn’t care who it was, why it was being done, or what the outcome might be. All that mattered was the bottom line: money.” A brow went up. “Sound like Satyr at all?”
“Nope. Ben Satyr’s into scams, conning people, and major revenge. After the two of us were captured in Iraq, he talked a guard into helping him escape. It didn’t work out the way he planned. Two of us used the diversion the guard created and got out. Satyr wound up getting tangled in some loose barbed wire and fucked himself. He was recaptured. We weren’t.”
“Did he go after the guy who escaped with you?”
“He didn’t have to. Morris stepped on a mine and blew himself up. I was the only one who made it all the way out.”
“I’ll assume that’s a nutshell version of the story.”
“It is unless you’ve got an hour or two to spare for the gory details.” For the first time since Istanbul, Johnny wished he had a cigarette. He quelled the urge with another mouthful of Bud. “That was seven years ago. I knew he’d come after me eventually. I didn’t know when or where until he started making threats against Melia. I still don’t know how long they kept him locked in that stinking Iraqi prison. Eighteen months at least, because that’s when Julie died.”
“And Julie is?”
“The woman he loved.” Something twisted in Johnny’s gut. Sympathy maybe? Of all people, he knew what it was to love a woman. “It was what you might call a tragic triangle. Satyr wanted Julie, but Julie wanted someone else. Unfortunately, that someone didn’t want her—or even realize she wanted him. The truth of that came out shortly after she died. She wrote a suicide note. Leave it alone,” he added when McCabe started to speak.