“Just the girl,” said the voice.
“Where is she?”
“Running back down the street the way she came.”
“Did she see you?”
“Nah, probably couldn’t get a clear shot and decided to circle around back. Want me to switch positions, see if I can locate her again?”
“No, just come down,” Ghost said. “We don’t need a body on the street. This won’t take long.”
I heard the ceiling creak above my head, then heavy footfalls on the staircase behind me. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t have to. When I heard him hit the landing, I hung my head and shook it slowly from side to side.
“So much for liking the way it felt to do something good for a change,” I said. “You’re a piece of shit.”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Rick,” Joey said as he slipped between me and Robert into the front room, picking up my gun off the chair. “You know how the game is played. Morality don’t pay the bills.”
I thought of the phone call he took the other night, the one he said was just some crazy bitch from a bar. “How did she track you down? Trish call you herself, or did she have some lackey do it?”
“You’re not the only one who has my number,” he said with a grin that I wanted to slap off his face with a baseball bat.
“What’s she paying you?”
“More than you can afford. Not just a one-time thing, either. You weren’t wrong, Rick. These are some serious players. They have enough work to set me up for life.”
“Think this through, Joe,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm. “You’re nothing but another loose end. After you serve your purpose, you have no life. You’re as dead as the rest of us.”
“Wrong,” Joey said. He walked over to Ghost, who pulled a second silencer from his jacket and handed it to my former friend. His gun hadn’t moved from next to Maggie’s head. I imagined rushing Ghost, ripping the gun from his hand and emptying it into him and Joey, laughing as their blood splattered my face.
“I’m more than just a loose end,” Joey said as he screwed the silencer into the barrel of my Glock with a gloved hand. “I’m the guy that’s going to testify about how you recruited me and Erica to come here and help you take out the guy who was investigating the human trafficking ring you and Leon were running.”
“What?” Robert said.
“It’s bullshit,” I replied, my eyes fixed on Joey.
“It’ll make for great headlines. The family angle will really sell it. How the same cop was engaged to your ex-wife, and in a fit of rage you took out her and both your kids before turning the gun on yourself.”
I could feel Robert next to me, his body tensed and ready to spring. He’d be dead before he made it two steps and he knew it, but a big part of him still wanted to try. I know because I felt the same exact way.
“I’m going to rip your fucking throat out,” Robert snarled, and Joey laughed.
“So what,” I snapped, “you’re going to shoot all of us, then put my prints on the gun? You’re not that kind of guy, Joe. You’re not a monster.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” He finished screwing the silencer into the Glock.
And handed it to Ghost.
“But he is,” he said.
Ghost stepped back from Maggie, lowered his other gun and lifted the Glock. My Glock. This time, it wasn’t just a threat. This time, he meant to pull the trigger. My daughter would be killed with my gun.
Maggie screamed, “Daddy!”
I made a sound that was supposed to be the word “No!” but wound up being something much more guttural, primal.
Denise cried out for Robert, who decided it was now or never and sprang toward Ghost, but Joey was standing in the way.
All that happened at the same time. None of us noticed the room fill with bright light or the roar of the engine coming fast from outside. When Erica drove her minivan through the front door and crashed it into the banister, though, that got everyone’s attention.
The explosion of wood and glass and other assorted debris—including a brass door knocker with the name Whitehead engraved on it—distracted Ghost just enough to alter his shot by an inch, give or take. Enough that the bullet grazed the top of Maggie’s head, carving a little gash in her scalp but doing most of its damage to the couch behind her.
Joey caught Robert’s charge and wrapped his arms around him, both of them stumbling into the antique end table against the back wall.
Ghost was a professional who never missed twice and quickly drew another bead on Maggie’s forehead. But Denise was a mother, and you don’t fuck with them either. I once watched her chop a five-foot long black snake in half with a shovel when it came out from under our backyard shed and went after Maggie, who was playing in her sandbox. She launched herself at Ghost’s knees and sent him to the ground, his second shot punching a hole in the ceiling.
I was on him before he could reset for a third try. If I was smart I would have grabbed Robert’s gun off the chair and ended it all right then, but I wasn’t thinking, just reacting. I landed on Ghost and immediately began hammering his ribs and midsection with my right fist, while my left pinned his hand holding the gun to the floor. Above me, Robert and Joey continued their brawl, destroying every piece of furniture in their path. They were in the dining room now, by the sounds of it, and one of them had just broken something glass over the other one’s head.
Beneath me, Ghost was finally starting to go limp. A few more blows and I’d make a move to take his gun with both hands. Before I got that far, I felt a sharp, hot pain in my right leg. I looked down and saw the handle of a knife sticking out of my rear upper thigh, just below my ass. Ghost had his hand wrapped around it and drove it in as far as it could go, the tip scraping against the edge of my femur. I screamed and dropped my elbow into his chest with all the force I could muster. I thought I heard something snap, hoping it was a rib, but I couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, it hurt enough for him to let go of the knife but not the gun. I pulled the blade out and sat back on my knees, blood quickly soaking through my pants. I looked up in time to see Ghost lying on his side, his right hand still holding his gun.
That hand never made it off the floor, though. Erica stepped on it and fired two shots into his head. Ghost’s skull exploded, splattering brain and bone fragments onto the carpet Denise had installed sometime within the last ten years. I was breathing too hard to thank her, so I found her eyes and nodded instead.
As I tried to get my breath under control, I caught a strong, acrid stink of urine. Ethan, who was closest to me, stared at Ghost’s body, not blinking. His mouth hung open around its gag, and there was a dark stain spreading on the front of his sweatpants. When another shot echoed from the kitchen, followed by the thud of Joey’s body hitting the ground, he convulsed and began screaming. A high-pitched, frightening sound that I worried would tear his throat to shreds.
“Ethan!” I said, wrapping him in my arms. “It’s okay, bud. It’s okay.” I started to rock him like I did when he was a baby, but when he turned and saw my face, his screams turned even higher-pitched and faster. His hands were still tied behind his head so he had to wriggle his whole body in an ugly, awkward spasm to break free from my grip.
But when Robert came over and took him from me, cradling his neck into his shoulder, the screaming stopped and the spasms subsided. He felt safe.
And I no longer felt the knife wound in my leg. Watching Robert console my son hurt worse.
