The Reckoning Read Free Page A

Kellermans, nice people—a tad vulpine and smug, but pleasant enough—were away on a Viking river cruise down the Rhine.
    They had, however, left the keys to their beach house with their youngest son, Nathan, a second-string fullback at Notre Dame and a first-string pain in the ass. Nathan was now living up to his hard-earned reputation.
    The bass beat from the Kellerman place was getting powerful enough to rattle Coker’s windows, and in the middle of the blaring music and the drunken crowd noise Coker and Twyla could hear breaking glass and the sound of a girl screaming, cut off suddenly.
    Twyla sat up, stared down the beach. “God, Coker. Should we do something?”
    Coker leaned over, gave Twyla a gentle kiss on the cheekbone, and shook his head, the firelight glinting in his pale eyes.
    “No, Twyla, we should definitely
not
do something.”
    More glass shattering and a burst of hooting male laughter, a dim-witted mass braying like a jackass choir. Twyla stood up, her hands on her hips—she was a pugnacious woman with a short fuse.
    “I’m going to call the cops.”
    Coker got to his feet. He was about six-one, muscular and lean, hard as a hickory cane, with short-cropped silver hair and a face that could be—and often was—considered flinty and intimidating.
    “Twyla, you know the rules. We do
not
draw attention. We do
not
call the cops. You have to remember who we are.”
    “I know who we are, Coker.”
    “Okay. Let’s review. Who are we?”
    She simmered a bit, listening to the bass beat hammer the planet. She made an effort to shake it off. “We’re the Sinclairs. You’re Morgan and I’m Jocelyn. I’m your third wife. You made your money in currency trading, you’re retired, and I’m—”
    At that point there was a chorus of chanting, followed by a crescendo of bass that bordered on painful and the sound of expensive things breaking. And another piercing female shriek.
    Twyla gave Coker her death-ray glare.
    “Dammit, Twyla,” he said, hesitating.
    She kicked the death ray up to STUN . Coker knew the next level well. It was VAPORIZE , and you did not want to stand in front of that one.
    “Okay. Okay, I’ll call the cops.”

Career Choices for Caligula
    Nick Kavanaugh was a detective with the Belfair and Cullen County Criminal Investigation Division. Early thirties, maybe six feet, he was heavy-shouldered, flat-bellied, hard-boned, and quick, with gray eyes and close-cropped black hair going silver at the sides. He was wearing a navy blue suit, Italian cut, a white shirt, no tie. He had a blue steel Colt Python in a Bianchi holster on his right side. Nick was leaning, hip cocked and arms folded, on the edge of a beaten-down plywood desk in Lacy Steinert’s office at the Probe—what Tin Town people called the Belfair and Cullen Counties Parole and Probation Service.
    Lacy Steinert, a sport model with her motor running, had a secret thing for Nick but so far hadn’t gotten a chance to show it to him, Nick being married and all that happy-sappy domestic horseshit. So the meet was all business and the business was a seventeen-year-old part-time car thief named Jordan Dutrow.
    Nick was pretty sure that late last night Jordan Dutrow had dropped in on a couple by the name of Thorsson, who had a nice rancher in Long Reach, one of Niceville’s more upscale neighborhoods.
    While in attendance there, Nick believed that Jordan had officially graduated from the occasional impulsive car theft to Home Invasion, Unlawful Confinement, Aggravated Rape, two counts of Felony Homicide, and Grand Theft Auto. Jordan Dutrow was one of Lacy’s juvenile clients, out on probation after getting popped in possession—while blind drunk—of a stolen Jaguar. Nick was reasonably sure that Lacy Steinert might have an idea where Jordan Dutrow could be on this rainy Friday night in Tin Town.
    Lacy folded her arms, shook her head. “I’m gonna need some assurances from you.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like if I help you find