Wild Justice Read Free Page A

of cigarettes. Jack’s brand. Irish imports. I used to wonder if it really was his brand, or an affectation, like the slight brogue, presenting a fake background. He really is Irish, originally, at least. The brogue only comes out with those he trusts. Same as the cigarettes.
    He’s also usually careful about doing things like smoking in rental cars. It makes him memorable, like the cigarette brand. If Jack had a hitman motto, it would be “stay invisible.” With fewer syllables, and maybe a “fuck” thrown in for good measure.
    So smoking in the car meant something. So did the plastic drink cup lid overflowing with butts—he’s been down to a cigarette or so a day since I’ve known him. Jack was stressed. Worried I’d gone off the rails and now I’d do something stupid and put him at risk. He’d been driving around for hours, looking for me and working his way through a pack of cigarettes.
    I emptied the makeshift ashtray. I’m not good with messes. When I’m already anxious, I’m really not good with them. As I returned from the garbage, he was coming back.
    “I really should go home,” I said as he approached. “I’m fine. Crisis averted. If you’ll just take me to—”
    “Room twelve. Go.”
    I leaned on the car roof, looking at him. “I’m serious, Jack. I know you have better things to—”
    “Nope. Got nothing. Room twelve. Go.”
* * *
    Once inside I took off my jacket. Jack noticed my gun with a grunt of satisfaction.
    “Yes, even during a meltdown, I don’t wander empty roads unarmed.” I sat on the end of the bed. “I know you don’t want me to keep telling you I’m sorry, but I don’t know what else to say. You shouldn’t have had to do this.”
    “Didn’t have to. Chose to. Owed you anyway. You did it for me.”
    “At least you had the sense to stay in your motel room.”
    “No choice. Wouldn’t have gotten far.”
    Last May, I’d been the one getting a call from Evelyn. Jack had broken his ankle on a job and was holed up in a motel outside Buffalo. He was too stubborn to ask for help, so she wanted me to fetch him back to my lodge to recuperate. I’d walked into a room full of cigarette smoke, and thought something had gone wrong on a hit. It hadn’t. Jack only hurt his ankle in the escape.
    The problem was what it meant: that this was a job for young men and he was almost fifty. Retirement was coming. That was tough. A contact of his had retired too late, his reputation shot to shit by the time he went. Jack didn’t want that. Yet he understood the impulse to keep working. This was his life. There wasn’t a retirement plan.
    “So we’re even.” He pulled a chair toward the bed. “Wanna talk about it?”
    I shook my head.
    “Too bad.” He settled in. “You didn’t do anything wrong. What happened to his wife and little girl? His fault. Wilde’s. Not yours.”
    “I could have taken the shot. It was a failure of nerve—”
    “Not in front of the kid. Even at my worst, I wouldn’t have done that.”
    “I could have shot him after they left. If I hit the girlfriend, well, that’s her own fault for hooking up with a guy like Wilde.”
    He gave me a hard look that said he wouldn’t dignify that with a response. I would never have taken that shot.
    “I didn’t even call Paul until I was back to the car,” I said. “I phoned Emma first, and chatted away about the lodge while Wilde was going after his wife and child. Her father could have gotten there and saved her—”
    “Never left the house.”
    I frowned at him.
    “Paul called the father,” he said. “Told him what happened. Father phoned his daughter’s house. Left a message. That’s it. Wouldn’t have mattered
when
you called. Never left his goddamned house.”
    “Which means I didn’t explain the situation clearly enough.”
    “What situation? Same shit Wilde’s been pulling for years. Father knew that. You want to blame someone? Blame the idiot who gave her the weapon.
Here’s a fucking