Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(40)

“She ever tell you about herself? Her family?”

“As a rule, El didn’t talk about herself. But let me give you a warning, friend. The last time she was here she pulled a gun on me because I told her if she dressed up a little and acted a teenyweeny bit feminine, me and her might have a good time. I mean, some dinner and drinks and wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and all. I saw the look in her eyes. She would’ve blown my damn head off without a second thought.”

“Goodness, and after you had expressed yourself so eloquently to the woman.”

“Exactly.”

“Thank you for the advice. I will watch myself when I find her.”

“If you find her.”

“No doubt that’s what I meant.”

He got the address of where Cain had last lived. He drove over there to find a fence erected around the property and guarded by security who could tell him nothing of the people who had once lived there.

“They’re all gone now,” the guard said. “And good riddance. They were all lowlifes.”

As Buckley got back into the car his phone rang. It was the hospital. He listened carefully, thanked the person, and said he would take care of all arrangements.

He didn’t start the car. Buckley stared out the windshield into the darkness as he thought about what the doctor had just told him. An undetected and now ruptured brain aneurysm. Nothing they could do. Ken was gone in under a minute. They weren’t sure if it was connected to his recent beating, but they couldn’t rule that out. In any case, they were very sorry.

Buckley started the car and put on his seat belt harness. So now he had to bury another brother.

This was no longer a matter of putting El Cain into the hospital.

It was now a matter of putting the woman into a grave.





CHAPTER





27


BUCKLEY CHECKED INTO AN UPSCALE HOTEL and ordered a late dinner from room service. He made phone calls and sent emails and texts while he ate his meal and drank his wine and thought about the details and decisions ahead of him. Ken would be cremated. There would be no religious ceremony; such spectacle would have been wasted on both brothers.

Buckley would scatter his youngest brother’s ashes at the site of their father’s brutal attack by the government. From human being, to a corpse, to residence in a jar before being sent headlong into the winds. All in the matter of the blink of an eye, really. It gave one pause, thought Buckley. Or it should.

His room was immaculate and comfortable, having all the expected high-end accoutrements. Buckley had grown up with none of these things, for his parents, despite the money coming in from their disciples and assorted business dealings, insisted on living simply, and thought that any largesse spent on their children was out of bounds strictly on principle. Buckley had resented that as a child. But he had come to agree with his parents’ philosophy that people needed to earn what they had. However, the living simply part was not something he had adhered to.

Buckley had acquired the ability to purchase such luxuries not all that long ago. These included multiple residences, luxury cars, a yacht, and a private jet. It had been a hard slough, but he had gotten there in the end. But these were just toys at the end of the contest. Prizes, nothing more. The real thrill was in gaining the money, in acquiring the power, in beating others out for it. The rest of it left him uninterested, even depressed.

He had been nearly killed four times, starting from the shootout at the family compound—a DEA-fired round had embedded itself in the wall an inch above his head as he lay on the floor—plus three other instances when he had been an adult and was forging his own path in life. And each time, he had never felt so alive as when he had been minutes, or even seconds, from death.

He took out an envelope from the drawer, and put five twenties in it for the maid the next day. He made a habit of taking care of working-class people because he related to them more than he did the folks with whom he did business. Many of these people had been delivered into the world already on third base and thought it was their own effort that had gotten them so close to scoring. They believed themselves entitled to the best because they had, through no effort of their own, always been given the best of everything. That made it all the sweeter when he outsmarted this “elite” class of what really turned out to be overentitled simpletons far out of a league they stupidly believed they owned.

He liked the power that money provided. He liked to make as much of it as possible because he wanted as much power as possible. But he had started making money because he had siblings to feed, and the only thing between them and starvation was . . .

Me.

It made a man careful. It made a man think before he acted. Because one mistake could be fatal, on any number of levels. But having thought things through, you were more willing to take a risk, because it was a highly calculated one.

El Cain, though he’d never met her, struck him as that sort of person, based on all he’d learned about the woman. Under different circumstances, he might have hired her to work for him. She seemed like a downtrodden person who had risen above all that life had thrown at her. He believed she would be interesting and resolute and capable of great things, given the chance. But she would not be given the chance, if he had anything to say about it. Ken had to be avenged. If Buckley let that pass, what next? Before long, he would have no principles left.