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Prologue
“Sorry man, but business is business.”
“He could have at least heard what I was proposing.”
“It’s clear he wasn’t interested.”
“How about you? You interested?”
The man smiled and shook his head. “Come on, bro, we both know there’s nothing you can propose that will come close to the scratch we’re making from them.”
Mal had nothing to say to that. He certainly didn’t want to tell the man he was right.
“You know if I go with you, I’m going to go slow, right?” Mal asked.
“What do you mean ‘go slow’?”
“I mean when he kills me, he’s going to take his time about it. He’s going to torture me.”
Mal could tell the man in front of him, the oldest of the group, couldn’t care less. The kid behind him though? He looked concerned.
“Don’t look at him,” the big man directly in front of him said, “he’s not going to help you. The question is, do you want to walk out of here like a man on your feet? Or do you want us to carry you out like a little bitch?”
“Is there a third option?”
“Not really.”
Mal nodded and hung his head like he was sad about his impending demise. True, he wasn’t happy about it, but that’s not why he’d taken the stance.
“Is he going to cry?” one of the trio of would-be abductors asked.
“I hope not,” the big man standing in front of him said. He bent down so he was eye level with Mal and lifted his chin before he said, “Come on, man. I didn’t figure you to be the type to get all weepy.”
When Mal lifted his head, he’d taken the little twenty-five caliber pistol—what they used to call a Saturday Night Special—out of his boot. It wasn’t something he advertised, but he’d been carrying the little cheap five shot pistol there ever since his days as a cop.
He put it under the big man’s chin and growled, “I’m not crying. Even if I was, it wouldn’t be for me. I’d be crying for you because you and your boys need to do what I say or you’re a dead man and you don’t really look like the type who can follow directions.”
“Come on, man. What are you going to do with that little peashooter?”
“Send a bullet through the bottom of your chin and up through your brain for starters,” Mal said as he stood up.
The man with the gun under his chin stood up with him. Mal remembered that, when they had come in, the big dude had snatched his Glock 21 from the nightstand and stuck it in his belt. Mal took the gun and pointed it at the man behind him on the left while he kept the gun under the other man’s chin.
This did nothing to stop the man to his right from drawing his gun and pointing it Mal’s way.
“You sure you want to do this?” Mal asked him. “Once the shooting starts in this kind of situation, things tend to go bad for everybody.”
The man didn’t lower his gun.
Mal pulled the trigger on the Saturday night special as the man with it under his chin tried to grab it.
As Mal predicted, things went back for everybody. Some worse than others.
Chapter 1
Margot didn’t think much about the motorcycle making noise in the parking lot below her apartment. Plenty of tenants had bikes. She was too busy reading a book and sipping on a glass of Maker’s Mark over ice to be concerned about a neighbor whose motorcycle needed a new muffler.
She thought about it, though, when there was a knock on her door soon after the sound died down. Instead of using the peephole, she took a peek from behind the curtains on the front window. Marv, wearing his normal uniform of a leather vest with a Devil Racer’s MC patch on the back over a tee-shirt and blue jeans, was standing by the door waiting patiently for her to answer.
Marv was Mal’s older brother. They looked a lot alike, Mal was taller but Marv was thicker. Though no one would call Mal fashionable, he was the better dresser. Margot couldn’t think of a time she’d seen Marv wear anything but a variation of his current outfit. Both brothers liked tattoos. Marv’s right arm was completely covered and his left was getting there.
Margot considered whether or not she should answer. It wasn’t like she and Marv were friends. Mal got along with his brother about as well as Margot and Mal were getting along these days, which was not at all. Marv, being five years older and already deep into the outlaw biker gang thing, had been angry when Mal became a cop. He was even more upset when Mal got himself kicked out of the police. Marv was an ‘if you start something you finish it’ type of guy even when it came to things he didn’t like his brother starting in the first place. As far as Margot could tell he never liked her much either. She didn’t figure this was a social call.
“I see you looking through the curtains, Margot,” he said to the door. “I’ll just keep coming back.”
Margot didn’t think, despite his animosity towards her, that he was here to do her harm, but after recent events, she didn’t trust her instincts as much as she used to. She slung her purse over her shoulder and undid the zipper so she would have quick access to the weapons she kept in the big pocket. Depending on the threat level, she could snatch a can of mace, a telescoping baton, or a short-barreled S&W forty caliber.
r /> Margot opened the door. “What can I do for you, Marv?”
“You still favoring that Makers over ice?”
“I am, but I doubt you stopped by for a drink.”
“I didn’t. but that doesn’t mean I don’t want one. I know you don’t like me much, but I was hoping to ask you some questions and I figure if we keep it friendly I’ll have a better chance at getting answers.”
“Maybe if you give me an idea of what you want to ask me about and I’ll consider offering you a drink.”
Marv shrugged before he said, “I wanted to ask you about my brother.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you, we aren’t on the best of terms right now.”
“I heard. When was the last time you saw him? Or talked to him?”
“Why?”
Marv didn’t like being questioned. It was clear he wanted to be the one asking the questions, but he seemed to remember what he’d said about keeping it friendly and replied, “He’s missing. I’m worried something happened to him.”
“Did things change between you two? Last I checked, you weren’t communicating enough to know if he was missing or not.”
“No, nothing really changed, I suppose. He reached out to me. We might not get along, but we’re still family. If he asks for my help, I’ve got his back. He wanted help and I said yes. When it came time to get that help, he was nowhere to be found. He isn’t answering his phone and he ain’t at the house.”
“I don’t suppose you can tell me what kind of help he wanted?”
“I can.”
