Saint/Sinner

Chapter 10

“It’s him, the girl, and the woman. It’s an easy job. You’ll be in the country with no one around for miles. Maybe a neighbor or two. Maybe. It’ll probably be the easiest and most lucrative job of your life. When this is over, you’ll thank me.”

Jack grunted. Why did he ever think it was going to be that easy? Nothing about his life had ever been that easy. His childhood, his teenage years, even his twenties serving Uncle Sam.

And yet, and yet, when Walter had driven up in the car and the girl ran into the house, he had allowed himself to believe that yes, this time it could really be that easy. This one time, a job was going to wrap up all nice and tidy, and once they got Walter to do what they needed, he’d take the man outside while Jones dealt with the girl and Jerry took care of the girlfriend. He was just dealing with civilians, after all, not gun-toting mercenaries, or drug dealers, or private security.

It should have been simple.

Fucking idiot.

There were two of them — a big, broad-shouldered man standing next to a thinner but taller one. They were wearing suits, but only the tall one looked like his was tailored by someone who knew what they were doing. They leaned against the black SUV’s open front doors, the lights glinting off pistols clutched in their hands.

Two more men were using the white SUV as a shield. It was parked slightly behind and to the right of the black one, and instead of pistols, these two were wielding long-barreled submachine guns. Maybe Uzis with suppressors. Either way, they’d definitely come prepared, which boded poorly for him.

There were four outside in the front yard right now and at least two more at the back of the house. Or there were two more before he let loose with the Sig556. He probably shouldn’t have kept shooting long after the man disappeared in a shower of glass and wood and bullets, and Jack chastised himself for losing control even if it was just for a few seconds. He kept waiting for whoever was still out there to show themselves, either through the gaping hole where the back door used to be or along one of the back windows, but no one did.

It had been exactly a minute and a half since he fired, and Jack scrambled away from the door now, keeping his eyes on the back door and windows the entire time. He slipped into the living room then angled right, toward the bedroom hallway. He shot a glance at the second hallway further back to make sure it was empty before reaching his destination and slid up against the wall. He paused to take a breath before sneaking a look around the corner and, again, at the back of the house.

Nothing. Not a damned thing.

“What’s going on out there?” Walter called from the open guest bedroom door behind him.

“Everything’s fine, Walter,” he called back.

“Who’s shooting?”

“Stop talking and get back to work!”

He waited for a response, but didn’t get any. He also didn’t hear the tap-tap-tapping that he was waiting for, so Walter hadn’t gotten “back to work” as ordered. Jack guessed he couldn’t really blame the guy. The Sig556 made a hell of a racket, especially when fired inside a building on full-auto.

But Jack didn’t dare backtrack to convince Walter to resume his task. He couldn’t take his eyes off the living room, the back door and windows, or the foyer for even a second. There were no other ways into the house except through the two doors in front of him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were the bedroom windows, but they’d have to pry the burglar bars loose first to come through there.

He reached down with his left hand, the right holding the assault rifle just out of view of anyone looking in from the back of the house. He pressed the PTT and whispered into the throat mic, knowing the device wouldn’t have any trouble transmitting his words: “Jerry, come in.”

He waited for an answer, but like the last time he had attempted to contact Jerry, only silence came through the earbud.

“Jerry, goddammit, come in. You still out there?”

Still nothing, because Jerry was dead. That was the only explanation. There was no way he would run off, not without his share of the job. Jerry would never abandon a retirement package that would have finally made all the years toiling in the private markets for chump change, doing every two-bit dictator and asshole’s bidding, worth it. Because Jerry, when you got right down to it, was just like him.

“Hey!” someone shouted from the front yard. “Hold your fire!”

Jack didn’t answer. It was probably a trap, trying to get him to expose his exact location for another brute force attack.

I was born at night, but not last night, chump.

“Hey, you in there?” the man shouted again. Then, when Jack still didn’t answer, “Answer it!”

Answer it? Jack thought, when he glimpsed movement coming from his right — from the back of the house — and stuck out his rifle to shoot. A man in a cheap suit had appeared, but before Jack could pull the trigger, the man tossed something into the house. It was small, and for a moment Jack thought it was a grenade, but the shape was all wrong—

It bounced off the couch and landed on the carpet about five feet in front of him.

It was a phone.

One of those cheap brands almost identical to the burner cell phone he had in one of his pockets at the moment.

The fuck?

The man had darted away, flitting across one of the back windows. Jack almost pulled the trigger anyway, but the man was surprisingly fast, and the presence of the phone (Not a grenade, thank you, God) had thrown him off. He felt stupid letting the man get close enough to throw the phone all the way inside the house. If it had actually been a grenade, he’d be dead right now. Or, at least, minus one or two limbs.

If Jack had any doubts the thing in front of him was really a phone, it started to vibrate before playing a generic ringtone.

“Answer it!” the man from the front yard shouted again. “I promise it’s not booby trapped.”

Jack stared at the phone as it moved back and forth an inch at a time against the carpet. He shot the back windows another look, just to be sure.

“You’re gonna want to hear what I have to say!” the man shouted. “It’s either that or we come in with everything, and you get dead. What’s it going to be?”

Jack sighed. Shit. What the hell was going on here?

The phone stopped ringing and moving.

For about five seconds, anyway; then it started again.

“Go on, answer it!” the same voice shouted.

Jack stared at the phone and thought about going into the guest bedroom and bringing Walter out to fetch the device. But that wouldn’t work, because he needed Walter. And from every indication, he wasn’t the only one. The guy shouting at him to answer the phone hadn’t come here for him. Oh no, it was all about Walter, all right.

Jack leaned the rifle against the wall, then got down on his hands and knees. He took a breath, let out a curse at his shitty luck, and quickly crawled forward and snatched up the cheap plastic phone. It had survived its toss mostly intact, though parts of the outer shell were cracked and missing small pieces. The screen, though, looked in one piece.

He reversed course and didn’t breathe again until he was back in the hallway and on his feet with the rifle in one hand. The phone had stopped vibrating and ringing when he got it, but he didn’t have to wait very long for it to start up again.

He pressed the answer button. “So talk.”

“My name’s Monroe,” a man said through the phone. It was definitely the same voice that had been shouting at him from the front of the house. “What’s yours?”

“Jack.”

The man chuckled. “Right. Jack.”

“You saying Monroe’s your real name?”

“It is.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want…Jack,” Monroe said.

“So what do you want, Monroe?”

“Oh, I think you know what I want. Who I want, to be precise.”

Jack glanced over his shoulder at the guest bedroom, the one with Walter inside. There was still no tap-tap-tapping coming out of it.

“Who are you?” he said into the phone.

“Same as you,” Monroe said. “Just some guy trying to make enough to keep the lights on.”

“Nice rides.”

“Thanks. You can have one, if you like. All you have to do is throw down your guns and come outside. I got the keys right here.”

“I don’t think so. I think we’re going to stay right where we are and pick your boys off one by one as they try to come in.”

“‘We,’ Jack? You telling me there’s more than just you in there keeping Walter prisoner?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t believe you. My man only saw you.”

“He needs to get his eyes checked.”

Monroe chuckled, though Jack thought it sounded just a bit too forced. “Saw a little blood around the car out here. You boys run into a little unexpected trouble?”

Understatement of the decade, asshole, Jack thought, but said, “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“I believe that. You guys are pros, after all.”

Jack wondered if Monroe really bought his tale about there being more than just him inside, or if the man was just humoring him.

“That’s right,” he said.

“So are we.”

“Monroe, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“That’s the idea. You should know a thing or two about that. We’re expendable, Jack. That’s why I don’t think this needs to get out of hand.”

“It’s already out of hand. You shouldn’t have tried to come in.”

“Had to give it a shot.”

“Your man would disagree.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the one who’s going to have to tell his wife how he died. I think I’m going to make up a story. Training accident, maybe. Something like that.”

“Hey, do what works for you.”

Another too forced-sounding chuckle. “What’s it going to take to convince you boys to hand Walter over to me without further bloodshed? How much?”

“There’s three of us,” Jack said.

“Tell me how much, Jack.”

“You authorized to make deals?”

“I am.”

“How much you have on you?”

“Not on me,” Monroe said. “But it can be arranged. You know how this goes. Untraceable funds in untraceable bank accounts. It’ll be waiting for you as soon as we come to an agreement. Direct wire transfers. All that good stuff. That sound good to you?”

He had to admit, it did sound good. The real money was finishing the job and getting paid by the client, but that was money he couldn’t spend if he was dead. Right now, right here, he’d take a sandwich if he could walk out of this house alive.

Of course, he wasn’t going to tell Monroe that.

“You still there, Jack?” Monroe asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Why don’t you and your friends talk it through, then get back to me.”

“How much time do we have?”

“How about till morning?” Monroe asked.

I won’t need that long, Jack thought, when there was a loud crash!

Jack looked out and toward the back door, just in time to see a figure barreling its way into the house, smashing apart the remains of the doorframe.

Lying sack of shit! his mind screamed, even as he lifted the Sig556 and pushed off the wall to get a good shot.

The man must have literally thrown his body into the door and lost his balance soon after, because even as Jack was lining up his first shot, the man thumped! against the floor face-first. He was attempting to scramble up when Jack shot him in the left shoulder — the biggest part of the body presented to him. The man grunted but kept rising.

Jack shot him again, this time aiming for the chest, but the suited man was surprisingly swift for someone of his size (the guy had to be well over six-two, and bulky), and Jack’s round hit him in the side of the neck instead. The man collapsed, the Uzi that was clutched in his hand clattering to the floor before he did.

There was no time for Jack to enjoy his success, because loud crashing sounds exploded from the front of the house as Monroe’s other men assaulted the door. Hearing the chaos, Jack wanted to laugh out loud. Not only at Monroe’s lies, but also at his own gullibility.

Jesus Christ, he had almost believed the guy there for a second!

As if it was going to be that easy. You idiot.

Jack switched the rifle back to full-auto just as two men staggered through the gaping hole that was the back door. They saw their dead comrade and one of them froze, which was a mistake, because Jack put three rounds dead center into his chest.

The second one was smarter and faster, and he ran forward and slid for cover behind the granite island countertop inside the kitchen. Jack sent a few bullets in his direction anyway, smashing the countertop and pinging! one round off the refrigerator, adding to the dent already there from when he tried to pick off Allie earlier.

A loud crash! as the front door gave under the assault.

Jack turned and fled into the back of the house even as he heard Monroe shouting, “Watch your fire! Watch your fire!”

Walter, Jack thought. They want Walter alive, remember?

Then:

I can work with that…