Ruthless Read online

  ALSO BY JOHN RECTOR

  Out of the Black

  Lost Things: A Novella

  Already Gone

  The Grove

  The Cold Kiss

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 by John Rector.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle.

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com Inc. or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477827628

  ISBN-10: 1477827625

  Cover design by David Drummond

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957294

  For Zoe

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  PART II

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART I

  1

  I had time to kill, so I stepped into Mickey’s Pub to get out of the rain. It was a nice enough place, clean and warm with a dark cherrywood bar, and a long cut-glass mirror that reflected the soft amber light of the room.

  Mickey stood behind the bar. He had a paperback in his hand and thick-rimmed reading glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose. When he saw me, he closed the book and set a rocks glass on the bar in front of me.

  “Didn’t expect to see you tonight,” he said, reaching for the Macallan bottle on the shelf behind him. “Big plans this evening?”

  “Just waiting out the rain.”

  Mickey took off his glasses and folded them into his breast pocket. Then he uncapped the bottle and filled my glass. “Never seems to stop, does it?”

  “No,” I said. “It never does.”

  Mickey put the bottle back on the shelf, and I sipped my drink, silent. I could hear the whisper of a radio somewhere in the back room, Bob Dylan singing “Forever Young” in the distance. I thought about that as I drank.

  “How’s your old man doing these days?” Mickey asked. “Feeling any better?”

  “About how you’d expect.”

  “That’s too bad. He’s a good man.”

  I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.

  Behind me, the door opened and several men wearing off-the-rack suits came in, loud and wet from the rain. They stopped just inside the door, looked around, then muttered to themselves and walked out.

  “I was thinking about you the other night,” Mickey said. “My wife’s brother is putting a game together this weekend. I thought you might want a seat.”

  “Your brother-in-law?”

  “And his asshole broker friends,” he said. “They’re looking for an excuse to get away from their wives and kids so they can get drunk and—”

  “Lose their money?”

  Mickey smiled. “They’ll figure that part out later.”

  “What’s your cut?”

  “Twenty percent. Thirty if we do it together.”

  “Have you been practicing?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  I set the glass in front of me and ran my finger along the rim. “I take it you don’t think much of your brother-in-law.”

  Mickey leaned in close. “Tell you the truth, I can’t stand the son of a bitch, but my wife’s been on my ass to be nice to the guy, so . . .” He turned and grabbed a bottle from the top shelf and two shot glasses from the counter. “What can I do? He’s family.”

  He set the shot glasses between us and filled them both. “What do you think? Want to make some easy money?”

  I’d been around long enough to know that there was no such thing as easy money. Still, hearing the excitement in his voice made me smile. He was right about one thing: the game did sound promising—and I was broke.

  “What’s the buy-in?”

  “A grand.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll front you, help you build a new bankroll.”

  “Bad idea,” I said. “With the way my luck’s been running, I’m not a good investment.”

  He waved me off.

  “These guys are fish, Nick. Even if you’re off your game you’ll still walk out with more than the buy-in.” Mickey tapped the bar with his finger. “You could be out of the hole after one night.”

  “It’d have to be a hell of a night.”

  “One for the ages, my friend.” He held his shot glass up, waited for me. “What do you say?”

  “Let me think about it.”

  Mickey’s eye twitched, and his smile faded. “You need to think about it?”

  “It’s been a long time,” I said. “Things didn’t end well for me.”

  “I’ll need to know by Friday.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Mickey watched me for a moment longer. Then he reached out and touched his glass to mine, and we both drank.

  It burned in the best possible way.

  I set the shot glass upside down on the bar. “Wow.”

  Mickey was quiet, and when I looked up at him I noticed he was staring past me toward the front of the room. I turned and saw a woman in a black raincoat standing just inside the door. She was alone, shaking the rain from a half-closed umbrella and staring at me.

  I turned back to the bar.

  Mickey winked at me and walked away.

  “Are you him?”

  The woman stood a few steps behind me. She was older than me, blonde, and polished to a shine. There was a large designer purse over her shoulder, and she held it tight against her body. I’d never seen her before, but the way she looked at me gave me hope.

  I decided to play along.

  “That depends,” I said. “Are you her?”

  The woman exhaled and glanced back toward the door. Her body seemed to relax and grow tense at the same time, and for a second I thought she was going to walk out, but she didn’t. Instead, she set her purse on the bar and slid out of her coat.

  The move looked practiced, as if for effect.

  It was a good effect.

  “You’re early.” She draped her coat over one of the bar stools and sat next to me. “I was hoping to have a drink before you showed up.”

  Her voice was slurred, and the smell of alcohol rolled off her in waves. It was obvious that I had some catching up to do.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “We said eight o’clock.” She looked at her watch. It was a gold Rolex. “It’s a quarter till.”
<
br />   “I’ve never been good with time.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “A joke.” I shook my head, motioned to Mickey. “Forget it. What are you drinking?”

  “Vodka martini.”

  I repeated the order to Mickey. He nodded and took a martini glass from the back shelf, set it on the bar, and then reached for the vodka. When he finished the drink he speared an olive with a plastic sword, dropped it in the glass, and set it in front of her.

  “How about you?” Mickey said. “Ready for another?”

  I nodded and pushed my glass across the bar toward him. He refilled it and pushed it back.

  The blonde was quiet until Mickey was gone, then took the speared olive out of her drink and tapped it on the rim of her glass.

  “I’m not entirely sure how this works,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like this. I’m a little nervous.”

  “It’s easy,” I said. “All you have to do is lift your glass and drink.”

  The blonde stared at me. “Another joke?”

  “Apparently not.”

  This time I thought I saw the hint of a smile.

  “You’re cute,” the woman said. “I didn’t know what to expect when I came here, but it certainly wasn’t a sense of humor.”

  “Are you disappointed?”

  “Intrigued more than anything.” She lifted the speared olive to her mouth, pulled it away with her teeth, chewed. “I don’t meet men like you every day.”

  “Men like me?”

  The woman nodded, then took a paper napkin from the stack on the bar and touched it to the corner of her mouth. “I’m a little out of my element.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be gentle.”

  She laughed, soft but genuine.

  “I may be out of my element, but I’m far from delicate.”

  “Then I take it back.”

  “Are you saying you won’t be gentle?”

  I felt a low buzz at the base of my spine, and I smiled at her.

  She smiled back.

  Part of me knew the game had gone on long enough and that I’d taken it too far. Eventually, she was going to realize her mistake and leave, embarrassed. I knew that drawing it out was a shitty thing to do, but it’d been a long time since I’d shared a drink with a beautiful woman, and I didn’t want it to end just yet.

  “Tell me,” I said. “What were you expecting?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “I’m curious.”

  The woman took a deep breath, then turned and leaned in, studying me. Up close her eyes were dark, and the skin around them was puffed red, as if she’d been crying.

  I stared back, waiting for her to answer.

  A moment later the softness in her eyes faded, and she pulled away.

  “What I was expecting isn’t important,” she said. “All that matters is that I can trust you.”

  “Trust me?” I made a dismissive noise and took a drink. “Oh, you can trust me. Just ask around.”

  “Believe me, I have.”

  There was something in her voice that I didn’t like, and for the first time since she sat down a warning light flashed bright in the back of my mind.

  I ignored it.

  The woman lifted her drink and finished it. She set the empty glass on the bar and reached for her purse. I thought she’d finally had enough of me and had decided to leave, but then she opened her purse and took out a thick manila envelope.

  I watched her, not looking away.

  She held the envelope in her lap, staring at it as if trying to decide. Then she set it on the bar and slid it over to me.

  “What is this?”

  “Everything you wanted.” She stood and shouldered her purse. “It’s all in there, including half the money. You’ll get the rest when she’s gone.”

  The words seemed to hang in the air.

  “You have one week.” The woman took her raincoat from the stool and started for the door. “Not a day longer.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What are you . . . ?”

  My voice cracked, and the woman kept walking.

  I looked down at the envelope and tried to tell myself that I hadn’t heard her right. Either that or this was some kind of joke.

  Except I had heard her right, and it wasn’t a joke.

  A small voice in the back of my mind whispered through the noise, telling me that there was still time. I thought if I hurried I could catch her, but when I turned, all I saw was the door closing behind her as she walked out into the rain.

  I grabbed the envelope and flipped it over and fumbled with the metal clasp on the back, feeling the weight of the situation settle around me.

  I opened the envelope.

  There was a banded stack of hundred-dollar bills inside, along with a silver flash drive and a photograph of a young woman in a yellow dress standing on a white pier overlooking the sea.

  I took the photo out and held it in front of me.

  The small voice in the back of my mind was still talking to me, telling me that I needed to do something to fix this before it was too late.

  Except this time it wasn’t a whisper.

  It was a scream.

  I dropped the photo back into the envelope and headed for the door. When I stepped outside, the rain slapped cold against my face, sobering me. There were people everywhere, huddled under umbrellas and moving in a steady wave along the sidewalk.

  I stood in the rain, scanning the crowd as the seemingly endless flow of bodies pushed past.

  I didn’t see the woman anywhere.

  2

  How’d it go?”

  I sat back on the stool and reached for my glass. I finished what was left of my drink, then set the envelope on the bar and tried to think about what I needed to do next.

  “Not good, I take it.”

  I looked up at Mickey. “What?”

  “The blonde.” He pointed toward the door. “I saw the way she ran out of here. I’m guessing it didn’t go the way you expected.”

  “No,” I said. “It didn’t.”

  Mickey laughed under his breath. “Don’t let it get you down, Nick. When you lose one there’s always another waiting on deck.”

  Mickey kept talking, but I barely heard a word of what he was saying. I was still trying to make sense of what’d just happened, but I couldn’t do it.

  I flipped the envelope over, opened the flap, then took out the photograph and held it up in the dim light. The girl in the yellow dress was beautiful and several years younger than me. Her skin was smooth and tanned, and her hair was sun-streaked blonde. There were no worry lines on her face—at least not yet—and her eyes looked clear and happy.

  And yet someone wanted her dead.

  I turned the photo over.

  There was an address written in black ink on the back. I made a mental note of it, then slipped the photo back into the envelope and took out the flash drive. There were no markings on the surface, and no hint of what might be on it.

  All that was left was the money, but I didn’t touch that. If I had to guess, and if all the bills in the stack were hundreds, then I figured there was at least ten thousand dollars inside. I wouldn’t know for sure unless I counted it, but Mickey’s wasn’t the place for that.

  Also, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  What I needed to do was call the police and explain what had happened, but I’d been around enough cops in my life to know exactly how that would go. While I didn’t like the idea of spending the rest of my night answering questions, I didn’t see any other choice.

  It was the right thing to do.

  I sat for a while longer, finishing my drink and letting the idea of calling the police sink in. Then I opened the envelope and dropped the flash drive inside.

&nb
sp; This time, curiosity got the best of me.

  I reached in and flipped through the stack of bills. They were all hundreds, and there were a lot more than I’d originally thought.

  I can pay Kara back.

  The idea came to me all at once, and when it hit, it hit hard. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t my money to spend, but it was too late. The idea dug into my brain like a tick, making it impossible to ignore.

  “Ready for another?”

  I looked up and saw Mickey holding the bottle over my glass, waiting.

  “No, I’m done.” I set the envelope on the bar. “What do I owe you?”

  Mickey replaced the bottle on the shelf. “Tonight or total?”

  “Total.”

  He told me.

  I looked down at the envelope for a long time, then I reached in my pocket and took out my checkbook. I flipped to a blank and started filling it in.

  “Do me a favor and don’t cash this for a few days.”

  Mickey nodded, silent.

  I tore the check out and handed it to him. He looked it over, then tried to hand it back.

  “You can get me later,” he said. “After the game, when it won’t sting so much.”

  “I never said I’d play, only that I’d think about it.”

  “We both know you’ll play.” He set my check on the bar and pushed it across to me. “But either way, don’t worry about this today. I know you’re good for it.”

  “Take it anyway. It’s yours.”

  Mickey shook his head, walked away.

  I left the check sitting on the bar, and I didn’t say anything else about it. Then I picked up the envelope, closed the flap, and fastened the metal clasp on the back.

  “Can I use your phone? I left mine at home.”

  “If you want privacy, use the pay phone up front.”

  The walk from the bar to the pay phone seemed long, and the envelope felt heavy in my hand. I knew calling the police was the right thing to do, and usually that would be enough, but this time something was different. This time the answer wasn’t as clear.

  When I was a kid, my father told me that sometimes opportunities came in unexpected places, and that a smart man knew how to spot them and take advantage.