Racked (A Lt. Jack Daniels / Nicholas Colt mystery) Read Free

something terrible happened.



THE PRIVATE EYE
    2:26 P.M.
    P olice,” Jack shouted. “Open the door and walk out slowly. Backwards. Hands laced behind your head.”
    Rey Aquino was up by the bar, lying on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. He’d told us that the bad guy was in the manager’s office with Molly. I’d called 911, and help was on the way. In the meantime, Jack had stopped the bleeding with some pressure dressings fashioned from bar towels and Saran wrap. She said Rey’s wounds were superficial, but his agonized expressions screamed excruciating pain. They say that about buckshot. They say it hurts like hell.
    Jack and I were in the storage area that led to the office now, kneeling behind some cases of Budweiser stacked two-deep.
    We waited. After a couple of minutes, I said, “I don’t think he’s coming out.”
    “Let’s just hope he doesn’t come out shooting.”
    “I’m not worried. It’s a known fact that beer makes you bulletproof.”
    “Shut up, Colt.”
    Jack and I had really hit it off. People usually don’t tell me to shut up until an hour or two after they’ve met me.
    My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. It said Kelly’s Pool Hall. I answered, put it on speakerphone.
    “This is Colt,” I said.
    “I know. I saw your business card sticking out of Molly’s pocket. If she’d have told me there were people upstairs in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. I would have hightailed it right away.”
    “What do you want?”
    “I need a clear path to the door,” he said. “If anything happens to me, Molly dies.”
    His voice sounded muffled, and I could hear clanging in the background. Metal on metal. The clanging stopped. The caller said something incomprehensible, and then I heard some sort of ripping sound.
    “The police are on the way,” I said. “SWAT team, the whole nine yards. You need to give up now, or this is not going to end well for you.”
    “If it doesn’t end well for me, then it’s not going to end well for Molly, whose neck is being taped to the barrel of my shotgun as we speak. After I tape her neck to the barrel, I’m going to tape my hand to the stock. So, in essence, Molly and I are going to be a single unit. Two peas in a pod. A team. Kind of like we’re married, you know? Till death do us part. We’re going to climb into my car together, and then I’m going to put some distance between point A and point B. I’ll let her go somewhere in between. That’s the deal, bro. What say you?”
    I looked at Jack. Her eyes and her gun were trained on the office door.
    “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said to the caller. “We can talk this out. There’s no need for anyone else to get hurt.”
    “Who are you?”
    “Lieutenant Daniels, Chicago Police Department.”
    “Chicago. A little out of your jurisdiction, wouldn’t you say?”
    “I’d say you picked the wrong day to rob a tavern, bro . What Mr. Colt said is true. There’s a SWAT team coming, and those boys don’t play. So we can either—”
    “I don’t play either, bitch. I’m coming out in thirty seconds. When I do, I want to see both of you face down on the floor with your hands behind your head. If that’s not what I see, then Molly is not going to have a head. Understand?”
    He hung up.
    “I don’t like being called a bitch,” Jack said. “I’m liable to get angry.”
    She kept the .38 aimed at the door, rock steady.
    I put the phone back in my pocket. “Don’t you think we should do as he says?”
    “Is that what you think?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Wrong answer,” she said. “If we let him go, he’ll kill her anyway.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “He’s a criminal. He’s already shot one person. Why would he let Molly live? So she can identify him in a lineup? So she can testify against him in court?”
    “So what’s the plan?” I said.
    “I’m going to take him out as soon as he opens the