Wicked Prey Read Free

motherfuckin’ head.”
    “What are you talking about?” Whitcomb asked. “What are you doing in my house?” He rolled across the room to Ranch and jammed the foot-plate on the wheelchair hard into Ranch’s ribs: “You alive?”
    Ranch groaned, twitched away from the pain. The door slammed in the kitchen. Dubuque jumped and asked, “What was that?”
    “Woman runnin’ for the cops,” Whitcomb said. “She knows who you are. You’re fucked.”
    Moline looked at the front door, then asked, “Why you running Jasmine down my street?”
    “Jasmine?” Whitcomb sneered at him. “I ain’t seen her in two weeks. She’s running with Jorgenson.”
    “Jorgenson? You pullin’ my dick,” Moline said.
    “Am not,” Whitcomb said. “Juliet’s all I got left. Jasmine got pissed because I whacked her lazy ass with my stick, and she snuck out of here with her clothes. The next thing I hear, she’s working for Jorgenson. If I find her, she’s gonna have a new set of lips up her cheek.”
    Dubuque said to Moline, casually, “He lying to us.”
    “Juliet knows us, though,” Moline said. He was the thinker of the two.
    “I’m not lying,” Whitcomb said.
    Moline stood up, pulled up his shirt, stuck the .22 under his belt and said, “Get the door, bro.”
    Whitcomb figured he was good: “The next time you motherfuckers come back here . . .”
    Dubuque was at the front door, which led out to the front porch, which Whitcomb never used because of the six steps down to the front lawn.
    “We come back here again, they gonna find your brains all over the wall,” Moline said, and with two big steps, he’d walked around Whitcomb’s chair, and Moline was a large man, and he grabbed the handles on the back and started running before Whitcomb could react, and Dubuque held the door and Whitcomb banged across the front porch and went screaming down the steps, his bones banging around like silverware in a wooden box.
    The whole crash actually took a second or two, and he wildly tried to control it, but the wheels were spinning too fast, and there was never any hope, and he pitched forward and skidded face-first down the sidewalk, his legs slack behind him like a couple of extra-long socks.
    Moline bent over him. “Next time, we ain’t playing no patty-cake.”
    Juliet showed up three or four minutes later, crying, “Oh, God, oh, God. Are you all right, honey? Are you all right? The cops are coming . . .”
    Whitcomb had managed to roll onto his back. Most of the skin was gone from his nose, and he was bleeding from scrapes on his hands and forearms and belly.
    He started to weep, slapping at his legs. He couldn’t help himself, and it added to the humiliation. “Davenport did this to me,” he said. “That fuckin’ Davenport . . .”
    * * *
    BRUTUS COHN didn’t have much to unload. He tossed his suitcase on the motel bed and said, “I need to take a walk—haven’t been able to walk since I got on the train in York. You get the guys together. See you in a half hour.”
    Cruz nodded and picked up a pen from the nightstand and handed it to him: “Write my room number in your palm. Remember it.”
    Cohn wrote the number in his palm and Cruz led the way out, and he said, “See you in a bit, babe,” and gave her a little pat on the ass. She didn’t mind, because that was just Cohn being Cohn, no offense meant.
    So Cohn took a walk, looking up and down the street. They’d gotten off at Exit 2 in Wisconsin, a major fast-food and franchise intersection outside the built-up part of the metro area.
    From the front of the motel, straight ahead, he could see a Taco Bell, which made his mouth water, and a McDonald’s, both a block or two away. Closer, an Arby’s, Country Kitchen, a Burger King, and a Denny’s. To his right, across the main street off the interstate, a Buffalo Wings, a Starbucks, a Chipotle, and a couple of stores. To his left, a supermarket, a liquor store, some clothing stores, a buffet restaurant. Behind