Racing the Light (Elvis Cole #19; Joe Pike #8)(81)

Ryan jumped to his feet.

“Shit!”

Josh startled as if he’d been struck by lightning.

Bo looked slowly from Josh to Ryan to Josh. He gestured with the pistol.

“Get your fat ass up. Quickly now.”

Josh felt his crotch grow warm as his bladder emptied. His entire body trembled.

“No. I’m not going anywhere. Go away. I’m not going with you.”

Bo seemed to consider this. Then he pointed the pistol at Ryan and fired.

Josh shrieked.

Ryan staggered and made a gulping sound. He looked down at the dark stain spreading on his shirt like a blossoming rose. He looked at Bo. He looked at Josh. He fell into the table and slipped to the floor.

Josh pushed to his feet.

“Ry!”

Donghai An Bo hit him in the face with the pistol. Bo hit him hard three times in the head and the face. Josh covered his head but Bo kept hitting him. Then Bo twisted Josh’s hand behind his back and shoved him into the hall and through the bungalow and away from his dying best and only friend.





63





Elvis Cole



I pulled up beside Ryan’s car and left my Corvette in the street. Pike hadn’t arrived, but I wasn’t going to wait. The bungalows were peaceful. The street was quiet. I was at the bottom of the steps when I heard a muffled crack like a baseball bat striking cardboard. A smarter person would have waited. A wiser person would have set up an ambush at the bottom of the steps. A better person would have gotten there in time. None of those people helped.

A few windows were lit from within, but the steps were unlighted and dark. I drew my gun and ran toward the sound as Leon Karsey shouted.

“What’s going on over there?”

When Karsey shouted, a man passed through the light from Karsey’s window. The man was watching Karsey’s and the other bungalows in case a neighbor tried to interfere. I angled to his blind side and crept through heavy shadows to the corner of Josh’s bungalow. His door was open and the lights were on.

Karsey shouted again.

“I’m warnin’ ya!”

Karsey’s outside light snapped on, washing the space between his and Josh’s bungalow with a dim ochre glow. The man outside stepped back and raised a stubby black automatic toward Karsey’s door, ready to cut loose if Karsey came out. The man had a bum nose and club ears and the build of a mixed martial arts welterweight.

A shadow moved in Josh’s door and the gardener with the ponytail stepped out. He carried a stubby black automatic like the welterweight. Maybe stubby black automatics were the new thing and I had missed the memo.

Josh came out next with the meatball riding his back. Josh’s head drooped and dark smears striped his face like fingerpaint. The meatball seemed to be holding him up and steering. I didn’t see Ryan.

The gardener started down the steps and saw me. He stopped right in front of me and dropped into a clumsy crouch. The welterweight and the meatball saw me and the welterweight ran forward three steps and covered me with his gun. The three bad guys were focused on me. They thought I might spring into action and watched for a sudden wrong move. They were looking at me, so they didn’t see Joe Pike slip past the blue bungalow above. Pike was a silent shadow within the dark.

The meatball spoke quietly but firmly.

“Lower your weapon and walk away. Walk away and I’ll let you leave.”

Pike’s shadow moved again. Coming closer.

The welterweight edged to the side.

If they wanted Josh dead they would’ve killed him. They wanted to know what Rachel had given him and they wanted it back. They wanted Josh to tell them what those things were, and produce them, and they wanted to destroy them. They would ask him the way they asked Rachel and they wouldn’t stop asking until they believed Josh had told them the truth. He’d be dead by then.

I said, “Leave Mr. Schumacher and walk away. Walk now and I’ll let you go.”

Leon Karsey’s shout echoed from his window.

“Meatball fuck! Last warning!”

Josh finally saw me. His drooping head came up. His eyes were vague and glassy and maybe it took him a moment to recognize me, but he met my eyes and did.

I said, “It’s going to be okay.”

No one else saw his face change. Veins bulged beneath the blood streaks on his forehead. His eyes shrank into furious knots. His face grew dark and large as if a volcanic pressure was building within him, and then the volcano erupted.

Josh threw himself backward into the meatball with a guttural grunt. He drove himself back, huge legs pushing and pumping, grunting as he pushed, unh-unh-unh. He slammed the meatball into the wall, then bucked and spun like a rhino trying to toss a rider so he could gore him to death.

The gardener and the welterweight hesitated, unsure what to do, then the gardener ran to help his boss and grabbed Josh. Joe Pike flashed from the shadows and hit the welterweight so hard he dropped as if he’d been shot in the head.

I slammed into the gardener’s side. The meatball scrambled away, dropped to a knee, and raised his gun. Maybe Josh didn’t see it. Maybe he didn’t care. He charged forward as I grabbed the meatball’s gun and pushed it aside. I was trying to hold on when Josh hit us like a runaway bus. The meatball and I hit the ground together and grappled for the gun. The gardener reappeared beside Josh and slammed him in the head with his pistol. Josh staggered and fell, and Leon Karsey shouted a final time.