AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty-Three
RICHARD
Itore into the parking lot Mark indicated, finding him standing outside his Jeep and watching the townhouse across the street. I jumped from my own seat almost before I had the car in park. It was time to win this.
“He’s in there?” I asked, popping my trunk. I had two shotguns on me, of course, but there was a specialized compartment for heavier weapons. A few SIG Sauers, an AK, a Bushmaster, a stash of pre-filled clips, boxes and boxes of ammo… oh, and grenades. Couldn’t forget the grenades.
Someday, I would get the chance to use those.
“And so is his rat,” Mark frowned, a quiet anger sitting like steel under his skin. I passed him a vest anyway.
“Two birds, one stone,” I said, darkly thrilled. “We’ll take them both out at once. Who is it?”
Mark’s aura darkened, and I stopped preparing to look at him questioningly. Mark was a level-headed guy, often a jokester off the field, and while he’d always treated a fight with the respect it demanded, I knew he was actually truly enraged. I met his eyes, and they were cold.
“Arthur.”
I took a deep breath as that settled over me.
Arthur. My father’s consigliere, the advisor to the whole organization, one of the only people who could whisper in the Don’s ear. We knew there was a breach in the upper echelon, but this still made me sick.
The image of Sandro flitted my mind unbidden.
Sandro had been the consigliere my whole life until his death a year ago, but to us, he was more like an uncle. He’d offered just as much guidance as my parents, and he was the person I went to when I was an angsty teenager and needed to get perspective on things I didn’t want to talk to my parents about. He was a confidant. His death left a hole in all of us, one that could never be filled, but dad had to appoint someone else to Sandro’s duties. No one could have ever lived up to him, as far as I was concerned, but I’d thought that Arthur at least was honorable.
That maggot had no right to stand in Sandro’s place.
My hand clenched and unclenched on the ammo belt I was preparing as I said, “Lethal force only.”
Mark nodded.
“How did you find out?” I asked, returning to my prep and passing Mark the spare Beretta. I was going to kill those fuckers, and I wasn’t going to take the chance of running out of bullets. I’d put every single round into them.
“Yesterday, a soldier mentioned that Arthur had a meeting this afternoon, but it wasn’t on the calendar. It wasn’t on his personal computer calendar either—he just put a little red flag on the day. Not a time or a location, just a flag. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have never thought twice about it.”
“So you grew suspicious and decided to follow him?” I asked.
“I can’t tail worth shit,” Mark said. Right, I’d forgotten about that particular shortcoming. “I went home and hugged my cat, then came back.” I grinned sharply. Arthur had a well-known cat allergy, not severe but enough to be decently uncomfortable. “I apologized, said I didn’t think about it, and told him he could get an allergy pill out of my desk while I changed my shirt. The only one I had was Benadryl.”
“You put him to sleep,” I realized, giddy.
“I was tempted to just poison him, but he could lead us to Baron so…” Mark shrugged. “He took a nap during his lunch break, and I helped myself to his car. I put a tracker in it.”
“Where?” I asked. “The man’s paranoid as all hell, he checks his whole car before he drives off every day.”
“I split the seams on one of his back seats, slipped the tag under the leather, and sewed it back up.”
“Smart,” I said. “Tedious, but smart.”
“Like you said, he’s paranoid. I couldn’t take risks.”
I clapped my best friend on the shoulder. “You did perfect,” I told him, grateful. “Is anyone else in there with them?”
“No external guards, four guards followed them in.”
“So, six shooters.”
“Yes, sir.”
