Deadly Pursuit (25 page)

How do you like that, Kareem?

The brother didn’t like it at all. For one brief second it was all naked on his face:

Shock, rage and, yes, fear.

The unmistakable light of truth: Kareem had, in fact, hired the killer.

The hard edge of Kareem’s determination to do whatever he had to do to stay free.

And then Kareem blinked, and all that raw emotion disappeared, leaving only a beleaguered businessman being harassed by an overzealous fed.

Kareem shrugged, looking politely puzzled. “I’m not sure why you’re telling me all this, but I do appreciate the personal attention. If you’re finished—?”

“Actually, I think I
will
have that coffee now. Thanks.”

Ignoring Kareem’s hand, which was outstretched toward the foyer, Dexter strode to the wet bar, poured some coffee and sipped appreciatively. That drug money sure could buy the best. He put the cup down with regret and headed for the door with Jayne on his heels. He’d just passed Kareem and Radcliffe, noting their stupefied expressions with satisfaction, when the one thing that could ruin his triumphant moment happened:

Kira Gregory appeared.

There was no
click-click
warning of approaching high heels, no door slam or “Honey, I’m home,” to tell him to play it cool. All he knew was that one second she wasn’t there and the next she was, hurrying around one of the billion corners in this McMansion.

Shit.

Hadn’t he scheduled this meeting at a time when she was supposed to be at class? Hadn’t he and Jayne waited outside in his parked car until Kira drove off before they approached the house?

What the fuck was she doing here?

After nearly plowing each other down, they both pulled up short. Since Dexter was the one with his back to Kareem, he gave her a sharp warning look and saw in her bright clever eyes that she was already right there with him, pulling her story together.

“Special Agent Brady.” Cool as a frozen cucumber, she gave him a look he imagined she’d use on a
puddle of vomit on her floor. “What are you doing in my house?”

They’d officially met before, of course. On that unforgettable night nearly two years ago when they arrested Kareem.

“He was just leaving, baby.” Kareem sauntered across the room, his speculative gaze evenly divided between Dexter and Kira. “What’re you doing back here?”

“Forgot my book.” She pointed to a ten-pound textbook on the kitchen table.

When he got to his wife’s side, Kareem wrapped his hand around her back, settled it on the curve of her ass and reeled her in for a kiss. On the lips. As though he hadn’t seen her in five years.

Dexter watched because he’d been forced into the designated audience role whether he wanted to be there or not, and tried to pretend he didn’t hear the sudden angry rush of blood in his ears or feel every nerve in his body stretch to near invisibility.

Then they pulled apart and Kira smiled up in her husband’s face, visibly melting the man on the spot. And Dexter kept his features neutral and wondered how the face of an angel could hide a soul that treacherous.

“You haven’t seen Brady since the last time he was here, have you, baby?” Kareem asked, paranoid down to the last electron in the last atom in his body.

And Kira, without blinking, looked bewildered and said, “No.”

Dexter suddenly felt a million years old, as though he was just a day or two away from disintegrating into a pile of dust and then blowing away with the breeze. For the first time in his life, he thought that maybe
he wasn’t cut out for this work. For the first time in his life, he didn’t want to do this work.

“I’ve taken enough of your time,” he said.

He thought he was talking to Kareem, but his gaze was drawn to Kira. To her defiance, her flushed skin, and those unfathomable eyes that hid more secrets than a password-protected computer at the CIA.

“A pleasure seeing you,” he told her, adding, because he seemed to need the reminder, “Mrs. Gregory.”

She didn’t meet his gaze.

Kerry Randolph got there first, a little early.

He had a bad feeling about this meeting with the boss, but bad feelings and Kareem Gregory went together, like peanut butter and jelly or guns and drugs. If you saw one, you expected the other. Kareem had summoned Kerry here, to “the place,” an isolated field at the end of an isolated dirt road that branched off a two-lane highway thirty miles north of Cincinnati and, like clockwork, Kerry’s gut started churning with a whole bellyful of bad feelings.

What did Kareem want now?

Another loyalty pledge? The simple pleasure of terrifying his men for no good reason? Someone to hold his dick while he peed and his tissue while he blew his nose?

You never knew with Kareem.

Cursing, Kerry cut the engine and climbed out of his BMW to wait for Kareem’s arrival, which could be three minutes or four hours from now.

The weather wasn’t helping his feeling of approaching doom. The sky was the kind of heavy slate
gray that was perfect for funerals and ten inches or more of wet snow. The temperature was somewhere down in freeze-your-balls-off range, and his breath hung in the air, almost turning to ice before his eyes.

Nothing good ever happened on a day like this.

The location wasn’t exactly good for morale either. If Kerry had to pick a place for, say, shooting someone in the back of the head and getting away with it, this shitty little hidden spot would be high on the list.

Overgrown with weeds, surrounded by trees, accessible only by that little groove of muddy tire tracks that would need at least a million-dollar upgrade before it could be called anything as grand as a road, this spot would never be a contender for scenic getaways.

Which was why Kareem had chosen it for meetings. The DEA couldn’t creep up on you out here, and Kerry was positive that if he pulled out his phone right now and tried to get a signal, the phone would laugh at him.

The low purr of an expensive car’s engine cut across his thoughts. With the reassuring weight of his Beretta strapped to his leg, he turned, expecting Kareem’s Land Cruiser, but it was a Lexus.

Yogi, then. One of the other lieutenants.

Good. Misery loved company and it was always good to have another body or two around to absorb Kareem’s malice once it started flowing.

Yogi parked next to the BMW and grunted a greeting as he climbed out. He looked as pissed off and vaguely anxious as Kerry felt. “The fuck is going on?”

Kerry shrugged. “No idea.”

They both leaned against the BMW and Yogi crossed his tree-trunk legs at the ankles. The would-be
casual gesture didn’t fool Kerry; the man was like his brother and Kerry could tell: he was rattled.

The sound of a new car crunching on the gravel made them jump.

They both looked around and saw Kareem. In the Land Cruiser. Alone.

Usually he rolled with a couple of his boys with him, just in case. He didn’t like being alone and vulnerable and hated driving himself somewhere when one of his boys could chauffeur him around like Tony fucking Soprano.

But he was alone now.

They straightened and stood at attention, watching while he parked and climbed out with that grim,
don’t mess with me
face, partially hidden with his favorite black-ass wraparound sunglasses. His black topcoat flowed around him as he walked, like Darth Vader’s cape.

There was no greeting for either of them. Through his growing unease Kerry wondered where Hector, the third and final lieutenant, was. Why wasn’t he here for this little summit meeting?

“How’re you coming,” Kareem asked Yogi in a flat, other-side-of-the-grave voice, “with that little roach-killing project I gave you?”

Yogi winced and his brown skin went pasty. To his credit, though, Yogi kept his chin up and his voice steady. “It’s coming,” he said.

Right. If things were coming along as swimmingly as Yogi wanted Kareem to believe, they wouldn’t be standing out here in the muddy middle of no-fucking-where, freezing their dicks off.

“Coming?”
Kareem asked. “Really?”

Yogi fidgeted.

Bad move. Kareem had shark’s blood running through his veins, and he could smell a drop of sweat from a mile out and a drop of blood from ten miles. And a man had a better chance talking a great white into showing some mercy than he did with Kareem.

“It’ll take a little more time.” There was a faint wheedle in Yogi’s voice now. “But it’s all under control.”

“Under control?”
Kareem walked a couple steps away and then came back, his thoughtful face turned up to the gray sky. This was what Kareem did. He played with his victims. Terrorized them. “I’m wondering how things can be under control when the exterminator is dead.”

“What the fuck—?” Yogi’s jaw dropped, nearly hitting the ground with his shock.

“I’m wondering how things can be under control,” Kareem continued, “when I’ve had to answer questions about a dead roach exterminator I didn’t know a damn thing about.”

Yogi, whose wide eyes now showed white all around the pupils, had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. Or maybe he was too scared to speak.

An obscene smile lifted one corner of Kareem’s mouth. An open grave was warmer than that smile; a grizzly on a killing rampage was more merciful.

When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter. “And I’m wondering why your roach exterminator, the one you hired—God rest her
stupid, incompetent
soul—took care of the wrong damn roach before she died. You got any explanation for that, Yogi, my brother? You got any explanation for why you couldn’t handle a basic assignment? Anything to say on your own behalf?”

Yogi defended himself, but it was a pitiful sight that
made Kerry want to turn away. The dignity was gone. The bravado was gone. Yogi looked sweaty, sickly and scared enough to fall over backward in a dead faint.

He looked like a terrified and terrorized brother begging not to be punished.

And make no mistake, there would be punishment. There was always punishment, and with Kareem, anything was possible.

“I’ve got other people, man.” Yogi held his hands out, palms up, but he may as well have dropped to his knees. “I can work this shit out.”

Behind those black wraparounds, Kareem’s face was expressionless. “How’re you going to do that, Yogi? When we don’t even know where the roaches have gotten off to? You got a magic wand I don’t know about?”

“I’ll get it figured out, man,” said Yogi.

“So you think I should give you another chance?”

The light of hope flipped on in Yogi’s face, a layer of brightness over the ugliness of desperation. “Hell, yeah, man.”

Kareem stared at him, trying to look puzzled when what he really looked like was a cobra poised to strike and strike hard. “But you let me down when I trusted you with something important. Don’t you need to be punished?”

Yogi took so long to answer that Kerry began to wonder if he was saying his prayers. “Naw, man,” he finally said. “Let me make this shit right.”

Kareem stared; Yogi sweated it out; Kerry tried to become invisible and backed up a step or two to facilitate the process.

And then, suddenly, Kareem smiled and shrugged in a
what’s all the fuss about?
gesture. There was an
arrested moment during which Yogi seemed unable to believe his luck, and then he grinned.

The sudden turnaround seemed too good to be true, but then Kareem was like the weather in Cincinnati and underwent a complete reversal every fifteen minutes or so.

“We—we cool then?” Yogi asked.

Kareem held his arms open. “My man.”

Yogi walked forward and the two gripped each other, slapping backs and laughing. This went on until Kareem pulled back, patted the fleshy side of Yogi’s face, and kissed him.

“What did you think I was going to do?” Kareem put his arm around Yogi’s shoulder and steered him toward Yogi’s car. Kerry, who wasn’t sure what his role was in this love fest, stayed where he was. “I know you’ll never let me down again.”

“You had me going there for a minute.” Yogi shook that big head and laughed again. “I was a little—”

Kareem dropped his hand while Yogi kept on walking and talking. Kerry sighed, looked up at that gray sky and worked his shoulders up and down, trying to get rid of some of the kinks. He wondered why Kareem had dragged him along for this odd little crime and punishment scene. Then he wondered when they could wrap this up and head back for some lunch.

And then, out of the corner of his disbelieving eye, he saw Kareem reach into the left breast pocket of his overcoat, pull out his forty-five, and shoot Yogi in the back of the head with it.

Kerry saw Kareem’s arm rise and saw the gun in his hand. Heard the lightning-bolt crack of the weapon’s fire. Witnessed the cloud of blood and gore and the sudden disappearance of Yogi’s head. Saw the hesitation
of Yogi’s body, the slight pause while it decided whether to keep walking or collapse to the ground. Saw it crumple into a sickening heap.

He saw it all and he still didn’t believe it.

And then he did.

“Jesus,” Kerry whispered. “Oh, sweet Jesus, please, God, Kareem, no—”

Kareem stood over Yogi’s body, the picture of regret and sorrow for this unnecessary loss. He even hung his head the way Kerry had seen him do at funerals.

Kerry liked to think that he was calm in a crisis, that he knew how to handle himself and could get out of any sticky situation, but he’d never seen one of his closest buddies get his brain blown out before, and the words poured out of his mouth in an unstoppable stream.

“Jesus, God, Kareem, why did you do that to Yogi—?”

Kareem looked up at last, and damn if there wasn’t sadness in his strained face. “Do you think it’s easy being a leader, Kerry? Making the tough decisions?”

“Jesus, man—”

“Do you think I wanted to do that to Yogi?”

“Why did you do that, Kareem, why did—”

“What should I do when one of my men—one of my closest advisors, one of my
lieutenants
—doesn’t do his job and snitches on me? Turns me in to the
feds,
Kerry. Should I let that go?”