Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Fifty-Two

Tate and Raney gave up on the office. The file was gone, or it was in the safe, and Tate didn’t have the combination to that. Either way, they weren’t getting it.

So they might as well get the money, they decided.

Tate led Raney past the cells. There was someone in the first cell at the start of the corridor, away from the money. Some homeless drunk, from the look (and the smell) of him. He seemed more like a pile of rags on his cot than a person. But he didn’t move, so Tate assumed he was sleeping or passed out.

“I could shoot him,” he said to Raney.

Raney gave him that look. The one Tate was getting really tired of, to be honest. Like he was some kind of idiot.

“Can he get out?”

“No,” Tate admitted.

“Then let’s get the money,” Raney said.

“Just trying to be sure,” Tate said.

“Whatever you say, killer.”

Delivered in that same superior tone. Tate was really sick of that, too. He might not be a big-time contract hit man like these guys, but he knew he was going to add at least one more body to his count before this was over. He could damn well guarantee that.

Tate entered the code on the keypad for the final cell, the farthest from the exit door, where the duffel bags sat on the cot.

The cell door opened. They both hesitated.

Tate didn’t want to go in first, leave his back open and unguarded with Raney behind him.

Raney grinned at him, probably thinking the same thing.

“You want to do rock-paper-scissors for it?” Raney said.

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll go.”

“Wait,” Tate said. “Why should you get the money?”

Raney rolled his eyes. “So do you want to go in there?”

Tate was torn. Either way, there were disadvantages.

“Clock’s ticking,” Raney said.

“Shut up, I’m thinking.”

“Because we have that kind of time.”

“I said shut up.”

Tate thought for a moment. Either way, he was taking a chance.

“What’s going on with Elliott?” he asked, stalling.

“It doesn’t matter,” Raney said. “Elliott can handle himself.”

Elliott watched the cop stagger and fall backward to the floor.

After all that, the great Jesse Stone died like pretty much anyone else.

But then, nobody died well, in Elliott’s experience. There was no such thing as a good death. He took a second look to make sure Stone wasn’t getting up.

Then he turned to put his next shot into the café owner. Time to clean up and move on.

But to his surprise, she wasn’t a quivering wreck anymore.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, her arm swung up from her position on the floor. He caught a glint of steel in the murky light.

Then it vanished as she buried the knife deep in his thigh.

He’d been knifed before, but this time it felt like she really knew what she was doing. She pulled the knife out and stabbed it back in three more times before he’d finished screaming. She twisted and carved and dragged. It was like fighting a bobcat with metal claws. He felt steel dig into him in his back, his gut, and his arm. He couldn’t get free.

It was all he could do to swing the .357 around and club her in the head.

That sent her sprawling on the floor. Elliott struggled to stand up and pointed it at her.

She looked at him with defiance. Not scared at all.

Good for her, he thought, and prepared to squeeze the trigger.

Then something — someone — belted him hard in the back of the head and grabbed his arm.

Elliott saw spots. He managed to turn and saw — impossible — the dead cop. Stone. Very much alive, his hands wrapped around Elliott’s arm, trying to get the gun away from him.

Elliott had had about enough of all of this. He was bleeding and outnumbered. The cop didn’t know enough to stay dead.

He twisted his wrist as far as it would go and fired another shot in the cop’s direction.

At this distance, he was deafened and half blinded. But the cop let go. There was a lot of blood. Elliott assumed most of it was his, but maybe he got lucky.

He grabbed the file with the papers and photos, then ran out the back door.

He was finished. He didn’t even care about the money or Mulvaney anymore. He just wanted out of this goddamn town.

Daisy could hear the guy with the gun winding himself up. Maybe Jesse couldn’t. Maybe with all his cop experience, Jesse had never heard this particular routine before. Daisy had. Daisy had been caught out late at night more than once by guys who took her existence as an insult. They had to talk themselves into it. They needed to grant themselves permission, to paint themselves into a corner where they could say they really had no choice.

So they asked questions, like this guy did. There were no right answers. There was only one end to the conversation.

Daisy tried to warn Jesse. But the guy told her to shut up.

And Jesse, big fucking idiot that he was, wouldn’t stand down, wouldn’t turn away. Just stood there with his chest out, proud and stupid.

Daisy slid the knife into her hand and waited for her moment. And waited. She knew the guy would turn the gun on her immediately as soon as she lunged. Maybe that’s why she waited too long.

She was still frightened.

But when she saw Jesse go down — the flare from the muzzle burned into her retinas and the sound of the gunshot ringing in her ears — she somehow forgot to be afraid anymore. Suddenly she was a teenager, a young woman in her twenties again, fighting those guys who came after her and her friends in the streets of Boston, no matter that they didn’t have a chance of winning.

She found her rage. The bastard had killed her friend.

She stabbed him over and over in the leg. She was a chef, and the muscles and bones in a human leg aren’t really that different from a big joint of meat. She sliced and carved, going deep, hoping to get an artery, the puny little paring knife going as far as she could force it.

The guy hit her with the gun again, and this time the world went a little black around the edges. She didn’t care.

When she could see straight, she saw he was aiming at her. She was on the floor. And he was going to shoot her.

Daisy didn’t want to die. But she wouldn’t let him see that.

He smirked at her.

Then, somehow, Jesse Stone rose from the floor and tackled the gunman, slamming him into the nearest table.

Daisy sat there, stunned. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

They struggled for the gun. Daisy tried to rise, but found she had trouble getting her legs out from under her, and the room was still spinning.

Then the world exploded again, and she realized the guy had fired another shot. It was like another punch to the head.

A second later, she sat there with Jesse, on the floor, both blinking.

For a moment, she thought she’d been shot. But she realized she was only aching and sore from the kick to the chest.

She looked around the café. The man was gone, fat drops of red blood leading toward the kitchen and the back door.

And there was Jesse, somehow, miraculously, not dead.

They were both breathing heavily. Jesse got to his feet and extended a hand to her. Daisy took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, still gaping at him.

“How are you alive?” Daisy asked Jesse.

Jesse pulled open his jacket completely, then his shirt. Underneath, his bulletproof vest was punctured by two shots. One dead center in the chest. The other off to the side.

Jesse tapped the vest.

Daisy’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know he wouldn’t shoot you in the head?”

“I didn’t,” Jesse said.

Daisy thought about that for a second. Jesse let a man shoot him. For her.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You are such an idiot.”

Jesse took a deep breath, then bent over and retrieved his gun from his ankle holster.

“Stay here. It’s not over yet.”

Before Daisy could say anything else, he loped out the rear kitchen door, following the trail of blood.