AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“They’re quite good, too,” he said. “And completely relentless, of course.”
“Of course,” I said. He fell silent and I followed suit, using the time to ponder a little bit. Now I knew how Brian was funding his recent great flow of generosity. That didn’t tell me why he had been so helpful, but I was starting to get a nasty suspicion. I had already suspected that Brian needed my help for something unpleasant. It was starting to look considerably worse than unpleasant—downright lethal, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted any part of it, brother or no. While it was true that I have normally been willing, even eager to help out a family member in need, I had always understood that to apply to moving furniture, or providing a ride to the dentist. I didn’t think family ties had ever been intended to cover helping your brother survive the relentless attacks of an enraged drug lord.
But as I thought that, I realized that it was already too late for me to politely bow out. Raul’s men had been clever enough to trace Brian’s credit card rather quickly. They would certainly know the room was registered to me, and they would soon find that it was not Brian’s fake identity, and then they would be onto me. They would assume that I was connected to Brian in some important way, and I would become a target. In fact, I had already become a target just by being in that room. Although a mere unknown connection might not seem terribly damning evidence of anything to a rational being, I knew enough about the drug world to know that it has very few rational residents. They didn’t need to know a thing about me to decide that I had overstayed my time on planet Earth. I was now on their hit list, as sure as I sat here.
Another thought popped into my head, which was a very good sign that things were working the way they should. This thought whispered to me that if Brian truly wanted my help, he might well have sent Octavio there himself while I was out, knowing that he would run into the hit man. And I, faced with two corpses in my room and the certainty that I had been identified, would feel compelled to join Brian in his struggle. Even more—with Octavio dead, all that lovely money was presumably Brian’s now, and he had given me no reason to think that he liked Octavio—or anyone—more than money.
I looked at my brother. He was still frowning, squinting into the last rays of the sun that sank down past the horizon as I watched. He turned to me, shook his head, and said, “I’m afraid I have to ask a very great favor.”
“Did you kill Octavio?” I said by way of answering. “Or set him up to be killed?”
To his very great credit, Brian didn’t even pretend to be surprised or offended. “No, I did not,” he said simply. “Naturally, it had occurred to me that I might want to, sooner or later—but I needed his help to avoid being killed myself. And now…” Brian suddenly went shy and turned away from me. “As I said,” he said apologetically, “it’s a very great favor.”
“Yes, it is,” I said, and I admit I sounded peevish. “I don’t know how I can possibly—I mean, I am being watched, you know. By the police. And I may be dragged back to jail at any moment. What did yo
u think I could do?”
“Nothing strenuous,” Brian said, a little sulkily. “Some light and entertaining chores. You know, watch my back while I do the heavy lifting, and then join in for the fun part.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to point out that we needed to worry about more than the five or six heavily armed homicidal lunatics who were after us now. Even if we disposed of them, there was a large and ruthless organization behind them. And then I closed my mouth again as I realized that of course Brian knew that, and what that meant he was hinting at. The word hubris popped into my head, and just to show that I remembered even more big words, I tacked on overweening, because if what I suspected about the nature of his plan was true, overweening hubris was a huge understatement. It was grandiose conceited flamboyant stupidity on a colossal scale that exceeded all earthly boundaries, and I was sure it was exactly what Brian was contemplating.
I looked out the windshield in front of us at the milky water of the quarry. The surface shone brightly, even though it was completely dark now, which I thought was quite appropriate.
“Brian,” I said. “You don’t have any intention of trying to get away, do you?”
He showed me a great many of his teeth. They gleamed oddly in the darkness. “Why, no, I don’t,” he said happily. “What would be the point? They’d find me eventually.”
“But that’s insane!” I protested. “You can’t possibly believe that you can take out an entire cartel!”
“Not by myself,” he said sweetly. And he very wisely said no more, and cast no Significant Glances at me.
“Shit,” I said, and I meant it.
“Quite possibly,” Brian said.
“How in hell could you possibly eliminate dozens of armed, crazed drogas?”
Brian smiled modestly. “One at a time,” he said. “Raul is the only really hard one to get to. And as I said, he will show up to be in at the finish.”
“Shit,” I said again, quite aware that I was repeating myself, but unable to think of a better summation.
“I admit it’s challenging,” Brian said. “But with a little help—I mean, you know, the right help…” He sighed and shook his head. “Octavio was very handy in some situations, and he had some skill with a knife—”
“Apparently,” I said.
“But he was basically an accountant. This would have been far beyond him.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s beyond me, too,” I said.
“Oh, no, not at all!” Brian insisted. “It’s absolutely made to order! Aside from the gifts we share, you know about the law and cops and how they react. And you know a great deal more that may be important. As you have just demonstrated with my credit card?”
He leaned toward me and lowered his voice, as if afraid that Octavio might overhear us from his snug nest in the back of the van. “And in addition to all that, dear brother,” he said, with silky suggestiveness, “we could finally do something together. More than one something…”
I looked away. I knew that Brian had always wanted to play, him and me together, working in unison on the one thing we both liked and needed to do above all else. And quite honestly, the idea was not totally unattractive to me, either. It seemed like the closest I could ever hope to come to sharing a human experience with another living creature. That was a little ironic, of course, considering what that experience would be, but even so…
But no, it was madness to think about it. In my present circumstances I couldn’t even leave town. I was watched, maybe even tailed occasionally, and Brian wanted me to join him in a full-blown bloodbath. Worse than that, I was now involved whether I wanted to be or not. So if I wanted to stay alive—and I thought I just might—I had no choice but to go along with Brian. And if I wanted to stay out of jail—and I was quite certain I did—I had to help Brian create and dispose of dead bodies. At very best, this would clearly violate Kraunauer’s instructions to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. At worst, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“Brian,” I said at last.
