DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) (35 page)

More to the point—would he even try?

“Admit it,”
the man said, closer now, in Sean’s face. Close enough that I could hear his breath.
“You were too arrogant to think that anyone would grieve for him. That anyone would wish to avenge him. Too arrogant to care.”

“No,”
Sean said.
“Your brother was the arrogant one.”

Another stinging blow reverberated through my earpiece, less metallic this time. I imagined a back-handed slap. An insult, as it was intended to be.

“Don’t speak of—”

“He
was the arrogant one,”
Sean repeated, slow and precise as if speaking through stiffened lips.
“He saw I had the drop on him and he still thought he could beat me. He tried. He failed. One round centre body mass to put him down, one round to the head to make sure he wasn’t getting up again. End of story.”

“And you expect me to believe this?”

“It’s the truth. I told you you weren’t going to like it.”

“Maybe yes,”
Castille said.
“Maybe no.”
His voice turned away from the mic again.
“So, is that how
you
say it happened?”
and I knew the question was directed at Baptiste.

“Pretty much.”

But there was something in Gabe Baptiste’s voice that hadn’t been there before. Something I recognised as just a hint of relief.

Whatever had happened that night, I realised, Sean had come close to the truth without telling the whole story.

So what had he added? And what had he left out?

A sudden sharp sound made me jump. For a second my brain translated it into a gunshot, heart rate leaping into panic mode.

Then the sound came again. And again. I realised someone was clapping, loud and slow and mocking.

“An excellent story, my friend,”
Castille said, his voice deadly soft now.
“But just that—a story. A fabrication. You see, you are leaving out one small but very important fact in all this.”

“Which is?”

“That after you had shot my little brother in the back as you say, you did not immediately shoot him in the head, as you claim. You waited a few minutes. A few long minutes for him to bleed and to suffer, hmm?”
The voice snapped from fake warm to instant freeze. Cold enough to burn.
“And then you picked up his own gun and you executed him. Like a dog in the street.”

Sean said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

Somewhere near him I heard Baptiste give a low moan, an almost unconscious expulsion of breath and hope.

Take them up,”
Castille said now, louder—an order.
“When they have bled—when they have suffered—then perhaps we will finally hear the truth before they die.”

The sudden silence in my ear was deafening. I took a second to react to it.

A whole wasted second.

Then I was moving towards the stairwell, pushing open the swing door just a fraction, listening.

I heard multiple bootsteps, not fast, not slow, but on the way up. I let go of the door and spun back to meet three pairs of bewildered eyes.

“Blake, Tom—either side of the door,” I snapped. “Where are those clubs?

Dyer baulked. “Charlie, I can’t—”

“Yes you bloody well can. Move!”

I grabbed Jimmy’s arm, shoved him towards the bar. “Grab some of those bottles.”

“W-what?”

“You heard.” I picked up the nearest of the bottles we’d liberated from the optics behind the bar—a half-empty bourbon—and grasped it by the neck. It had an effective weight to it, just heavy enough to get some speed behind.

I had just a moment to rue abandoning the Maglite over the side. Instead I took out the pen I’d taken from the crewman’s cabin, gripped it like a blade.

Not much of a weapon against armed opposition but it would have to do.

Across in the stairwell, the approaching men were nearly up to the level of the bar deck. If they kept going I was screwed—and so was Sean—but they had no reason to. If all they wanted was to be outside this was the quickest route.

I slipped behind the bar with Jimmy. He was half crouched, frozen, with a bottle in either hand like he was making the world’s most bizarre cocktail.

The footsteps grew louder in the stairwell. I glanced across to the doorway, where Tom O’Day and Blake Dyer were in position. Both men had golf clubs readied in a classic driving grip. I mouthed, “Get ready,” at them.

The only noise was the trembling throb of the
Miss Francis
engines somewhere beneath us.

The door from the stairwell pushed open. Two men came through holding Colt M16 submachine guns with the stocks retracted for close-quarter work.

Then came Gabe Baptiste and Sean.

Behind them were two more men. Prisoner escort. The door started to close behind them.

I shouted, “Now!” and lobbed the bourbon in an over-arm throw, smashing it down at the feet of the front pair. Snatched another off the bar and followed it up with a third as fast as I could throw them.

As the bottles smacked down onto the hard wooden deck the glass shattered into fragments, slopping the raw spirit everywhere.

Momentarily blinded by the spray of stinging alcohol, the foremost man reached automatically for his weapon. Too late. I was out from behind the bar and already on him.

He tried to bring the gun up but I swiped it aside and got in close. The pen was in my fist. I stabbed the tip of it into the side of his throat, ripped it free. He gave a roar but didn’t drop. Without switching my grip I adjusted my aim and went for his right eye. He howled, out of the fight. I wrenched the gun from his hands and kicked his legs out from under him.

I targeted his knee with a brutal sideways stamp. Felt the joint let go with a graunching pop of cartilage and muscle under my heel. Knew he wasn’t getting up again.

Dyer and O’Day had stepped out behind the rear guards but I saw Dyer hesitate at the last second, as if he couldn’t bring himself to strike. Tom O’Day had no such qualms. He attacked like a man in a bad temper in the rough. His club arced through the air with a whistling zizz of sound, impacting knees and shins with devastating effect. Both men went down like they’d been axed. As Dyer stumbled back, O’Day waded in and kept hacking.

I spun for the second front man, but he was already down with Sean standing over his body. The man’s M16 was in Sean’s hands but there had been no shots fired. Instead, the dead man’s neck was twisted at a wholly unnatural angle. I didn’t need to ask what happened.

Sean himself was bloodied and torn. From the eavesdropping I’d been privy to, I’d expected that. What I hadn’t expected was the wild eyes, the shock, as he surveyed the man he’d just killed. As if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just done.

“Sergeant!” I snapped. “You with me?”

He shook himself, beginning to surface. “Yeah, of course,” he said, but his voice was not so sure. He extended the stock and settled the gun into his shoulder.

Tom O’Day stepped back, breathing hard, to reveal the two men who’d been at the back of the group. They lay groaning on the floor of the bar. If they moved at all, it was slowly and painfully. Tom O’Day had nudged their guns out of reach. Now, he laid aside his club and picked up one, handling it like a man putting on a half-forgotten piece of once-favoured clothing.

Blake Dyer stumbled back, his own club slack in his hands. I glanced at him, worried. He was a man teetering at the far reaches of shock.

Gabe Baptiste, meanwhile, had dropped into a defensive crouch the moment we’d launched our attack and was still curled on the floor, hands clamped tightly around the back of his head. When I tapped him on the shoulder he flinched, tried to squeeze his limbs together even more.

“Get a grip, Baptiste,” I said roughly. “Come on, up!”

He uncoiled himself, his movements annoyingly sluggish. I saw his eyes were shut. The first thing he saw when he opened them was the man Sean had killed, lying maybe half a metre away and staring sightlessly right at him.

“Jesus Christ!” Baptiste yelped, scuttling backwards. That brought him into contact with another of his erstwhile captors. This one let out a moan at the contact. He was clutching a bloody shin.

I reached over, grabbed a handful of Baptiste’s jacket and hauled him out of the way. He made an involuntary noise in his throat, almost a squeak.

I let go in disgust, rounded on Sean. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“Castille,” I said. “The man whose brother
one of you
is supposed to have killed.”

Tom O’Day and Blake Dyer gaped at me. I had to remind myself they hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation, didn’t know what had just taken place down in the casino.

“I don’t know,” Sean said, shaking his head. “He was just—”

“—behind you,” said a new voice.

The door from the stairwell pushed open wider and Castille revealed himself. He was not obviously armed, but he had the look of a man who did not need to be. The kind of power he wielded was present in his body, his voice, and especially in his eyes. Close to, I felt it even more strongly than out on the deck when I’d watched him kill Ysabeau van Zant with his bare hands.

Sean came together in a split second, crouching and turning all in the same move, bringing the M16 up to fire, sighting by muscle memory and reflex alone.

Castille let the door swing closed behind him and stopped, spreading his hands. He looked around very carefully. At his fallen men, at the blood on my hands, at O’Day and Dyer. At Jimmy O’Day half ducked behind the bar, and Baptiste still cowering. And finally at Sean. He ignored the weapon clasped in Sean’s hands, looked at the man behind it instead as if seeing him for the first time.

Then he nodded, as if he’d played his hand and lost and he accepted that was the way the game went.

“So, will you tell me now what happened to my brother?” he asked. His voice was utterly calm. Only the stillness of his body gave away his intensity.

Sean didn’t speak, just gave a fractional shake of his head.

“Why?” the man asked. “You have nothing to gain by silence, my friend. You think I will go to the police?”

Baptiste straightened. It finally seemed to dawn on him that the balance had shifted, that his life was no longer about to be snuffed out like a guttering flame. He stabbed a finger, keeping his distance. When he spoke his voice was harsh with tension and bravado. “No, you can go fuck yourself!”

I stepped closer to him. I knew now was not the time to ask questions.

But somehow I recognised there would also never be a better time.

“Tell him,” I said.

Baptiste wheeled, disbelief in his face. “What? You gotta be shitting me.”

“Tell him,” I said again.

“No!” Baptiste said. “You gonna threaten me, too? Yeah, right. Besides, your guy already told him what happened.”

I shook my head. “No, he didn’t. He told a convincing story that fits the facts as he knows them. But you know as well as I do, Gabe, that Sean has no idea what went on that night.” I paused, let it settle on him. “Only you know that. And—one way or another—you’re going to tell us.”

“Well, lady, that ain’t gonna happen, so you can just go fuck yourself as well.” He started to turn away, flapping a dismissive hand.

I caught the hand as he moved—his right hand—in a pinch grip, my fingers and thumb spanning the back of his knuckles. The grip was a good one. I squeezed the bones of his hand tight together.

“Hey!” He went rigid, then started to shift his body round as if to take a swing at me with his left. Instead of moving back out of the way I went closer, twisting his hand upwards as I did so. Compressing and rotating his arm as it folded, first at wrist and then at elbow.

By the time he realised the severity of the lock it was too late. I had him immobile, his whole arm under tension to the shoulder.

He froze again, but this time he didn’t try another swing. He was a professional athlete, one who trained hard enough to recognise when muscles and sinews strained to danger point. He knew when things were about to get very painful. When recovery would be prolonged, and frustrating, and doubtful.

I waited until I saw the fear in his eyes and knew I had his absolute attention.

“You made the wrong threat before,” I said over my shoulder.

For a moment Castille didn’t respond. Then: “Please—enlighten me.”

“My boss tells me I will never be accepted as a native in this country until I understand the national obsession with baseball, but it seems I understand the men who play it better than you,” I said. “You threatened his legs, but Baptiste is a pitcher—with the potential to be one of the greats—isn’t that right, Gabe? And great pitchers are not all about the legs.”