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“You know what—just fuckin’ go.” Mickey took out the key remote to the car they’d left up on the county road. “Wait for me like a pussy, while I do the work.”
“I’m not leaving you.” Evan shook his head. “I know nobody thinks nothin’ of me, but this guy, he’s dangerous. There’s something wrong with him.”
“He’s just another one of Uncle’s enforcers.”
“No, he’s not. And you brought me ’cuz you know nobody else would come with you.”
No, Mickey thought. He’d brought Evan because nobody else listened to the guy. But trading that kind of go-nowhere-gossip for what was supposed to be halfway decent backup wasn’t working too good.
Punching the remote into his cousin’s chest and holding it there, Mickey leaned in. “I’ll handle this. Like a man. You go wait in the fucking car. Like a goddamn child.”
Lightning fanned out across the base of the cloud cover again, andin the icy blue reflection, the fear on Evan’s face was like a third person standing between them.
“Go on,” Mickey ordered as his own resolve wobbled. “You’re so fuckingweak.”
“I had a dream last night—”
“I hope she was good-looking.” Mickey pushed the car fob into the front pocket of his cousin’s parka. “In real life, you’re only pulling shit.”
“You’re gonna die, Mickey.”
“Great. At least then, I’m not dealing with you.”
“You don’t have to prove yourself to Uncle, you know. You’re enough as you are—”
Mickey shoved at his cousin’s shoulders, knocking him backwards into the snow. “Fuckingasshole. I don’t have to prove myself to nobody.”
It was a goddamn relief to turn away—until he realized he was making a lot of noise with his heavy breathing, and that wasn’t the smartest move. He was also letting the pissed-off get the best of him, and that was not only dangerous, it put him on Evan’s basement-level, low-fi operating mentals. He was better than that.
He was the son of the rightful head of the family—
As movement registered in his peripheral vision, he glanced over his shoulder again. Evan was up on his feet, snowpack falling from his ass in clumps like he was taking a shit and it was coming out in black and white. With his hands tucked under his chin like he’d seen the boogeyman and his eyes all anime-tragic, Mickey was reminded that just because you were related to someone didn’t mean you had nothing in common with them.
Leaving his cousin, he needed to keep his focus where it had to stay so he put his hand into the front pocket of his snow pants. The USB drive was right where he’d stashed it, ready to be used in the second half of this operation. A gun to the head of some techie had gotten the job done, a fake data trail created on the blockchain making it look like bitcoin had been stolen on a large scale from the family’s digital wallets. He didn’t need to understand how or what was being typed on that fuckingkeyboard or scrolled on that monitor. All that mattered was that his instructions as to the outcome were followed, and he knew they had been: He had the IT guy’s wife tied up in his secret apartment on 21st Avenue—and hey, he was gonna let the Mrs. go, as long as his uncle came to the right conclusions when Mickey “found” the drive and turned it in—
A shot of paranoia had him glancing around, and he expected to see Evan trailing after him like a beat-down dog.
Nothing. Other than the gnarled trees, looking like they were an unholy army sprung from contaminated ground.
Fine, at least he didn’t have to worry about the dummy.
With the storm’s light show and grumbling guiding him, he kept going, pushing branches out of his way. When one snapped back and caught him in the ass, he wondered why the bastard he was going to kill tonight wanted to live out here in the fucking sticks. Then again, “Nathaniel”—chrissakes, what a street name to pick—was fucking weird. Never said much. Didn’t mix with nobody. Didn’t fight for the good jobs. Youda think he wouldn’t be no problem, but Uncle liked the guy too much for his being an outsider. Hell, for being anybody. Natty-whatever-the-fuck was getting assigned the eliminations, the real work, not the banging-on-doors, nickel-and-dime runs.
Mickey hated to admit it, but the slick SOB knocked people off and got away with it like nothing no one’d seen. Last seven years or so? There was no counting the bodies, and there were ones who hadn’t been found, no doubt. Most of the wet work had been done in Caldwell, but there had been some in NYC and Boston. Rumor had it that Uncle had asked him to go down to Florida and South America, but he’d nope’d the out-of-town trips. It was like he didn’t want to get too far away from the core of the business, and sure, it could be ’cuz he had the Caldie cops in his pocket and that was how he’d evaded complications for so long.
Except it was more than that. Mickey could sense something just wasn’t right, and he was done fucking worrying about it. Time to solve this problem and look like a hero to Uncle—
Up ahead, a ratty old log house appeared in a clearing, and talk about dumps. The place needed to be condemned, the roofline bumpy, one of the chimneys collapsed, shutters with evergreen cutouts hanging like bad teeth in the mouth of a suck-ass MMA fighter. The windows were boarded up, there was no car in the shallow drive, and the barn out back wasn’t in any better shape.
If Mickey hadn’t been one hundred percent sure of his intel, he wouldn’t have believed anybody lived here, much less a hired killer. Then again, keeping a low profile was something Uncle appreciated in his contractors.
“But this shit is frontier land,” Mickey muttered, his breath drifting off like he was vaping.
Fucking. Weird.
And not something he needed to think about. At the moment, Nathaniel was downtown with Uncle. Mickey was sure because he himself wasn’t invited to the Thursday-night hangouts. So he was going to get in this crappy cabin, wait for good ol’ Natty to get home, and then one bullet later, he was going to take the USB drive to Uncle and provide proof that the golden boy wasn’t so golden, and Mickey was a fucking family hero who deserved respect—
His body stopped on its own, no conscious thought involved in the lockdown, every survival instinct he had starting to scream.
