Lethal

“Doral wouldn’t raise a finger to me. To Emily? Eddie’s child? Out of the question. I know him.”

“Like you thought you knew his policeman brother.”

“You’re wrong about Fred, too.”

“Four.”

“You’re telling me you’re the good guy, and I’m supposed to believe it simply because you said it?” Her voice had gone raw and ragged with emotion. “I know these men. I trust them. But I don’t know you!”

He stared at her for several beats, then put his hand around the front of her neck to hold her head still. He moved his face close to hers and whispered, “You know me. You know I’m who I say.”

Her pulse beat rapidly against his strong fingers, but it was his piercing gaze that held her pinned to the wall behind her.

“Because if I wasn’t, I would have fucked you last night.” He held her for several seconds longer, then dropped his hand and backed away. “Five. Are you coming or not?”

Doral Hawkins hurled an armchair against the wall, then, angered because it hadn’t busted up like they do in the movies, he whacked it against the wall again and again until the wood splintered. He punted a thick New Orleans Yellow Pages through the living room window. Then, standing amid the shattered windowpane, he clasped a double handful of his thinning hair and pulled hard as though wanting to rip it from his scalp.

He was in a state. Part agonizing anguish, part sheer animal rage.

His twin lay dead on the floor of Honor’s house with a bullet hole bored through the center of his head. Doral had seen worse wounds. He’d inflicted worse. Like the time a guy had bled to death, slowly and screaming, after Doral eviscerated him with a hunting knife.

But his brother’s lethal wound was the most obscene of Doral’s experience because it was like looking at his own death mask. The blood hadn’t even had time to congeal.

Honor wouldn’t have killed him. It had to have been that son of a bitch Coburn.

During their last phone conversation, Fred, speaking in a hushed and hurried voice so Honor wouldn’t overhear, had told him that their quarry, Lee Coburn, had been making cozy with her all the while they’d been chasing their tails through the pest-ridden swamp looking for him.

“He’s there now?” Doral had asked excitedly.

“We’re not that lucky. He’s split.”

“How much head start does he have?”

“Minutes, or could be hours. Honor says she woke up, he was gone. Took her car.”

“She all right?”

“In a tizzy. Babbling.”

“What was Coburn doing there?”

“The whole house is torn up.”

“He knew about Eddie?”

“When he put in on this bayou, I got a sick feeling, and, yeah, looks like.”

“How?”

“Don’t know.”

“What did Honor say?”

“Said he was after something that Eddie had died protecting.”

“Fuck.”

“My thought exactly.”

After a short pause, Doral had asked quietly, “What are you gonna do?”

“Go after him.”

“I mean about Honor.”

Fred’s sigh had come loudly through the cell connection. “The Bookkeeper didn’t leave me a choice. When I called in that I was going to check out Eddie’s place… Well, you know.”

Yes, Doral knew. The Bookkeeper took no prisoners, and it wouldn’t matter if it was a family friend, or a woman and child. No loose ends. No mercy.

Fred had been torn up about it, but he would do what he had to do, because he knew it was necessary. He was also aware of the severe consequences suffered by anyone who failed to carry out an order.

They’d ended their call with the understanding that he would take care of the problem, so that by the time Doral joined him at the Gillette place, they could report to the sheriff’s office the horrifying double murder of Honor and Emily.

They’d chalk up the homicides to Coburn, who was sure to have left his fingerprints all over Honor’s house. There were muddy, blood-stained clothes left in the bathroom, which would prove to be his. Law enforcement personnel would be galvanized. Fred knew the buzz words to use with the media so they’d take the story and run with it. Soon the whole state would be salivating for a piece of Lee Coburn, only suspect in the warehouse massacre, woman and kid killer.

It had been a good plan, now shot to hell.

Doral spent a critical ten minutes in rage and grief. But, his fit having subsided, he wiped the mucus and tears from his face and forced himself to put personal feelings aside until he could indulge in them properly, and instead to evaluate the present situation. Which sucked. Big-time.

Most troubling was that Fred’s body was the only one in evidence. There was no sign of Honor and Emily, or of their remains, in or near the house. If his brother had dispatched them, he’d hidden their bodies very well.

Or-and it was a really troublesome or-Coburn had popped Fred before he’d had a chance to dispatch Honor and her daughter. If that was the case, where were they now? Hiding until someone came to their rescue? Possibly. But that meant that as soon as he found them, he’d have to kill them, and the thought of that made him queasy.