Isabella sighed again. “Yes, yes, you can bring him.”
“And I want a month, before I start,” I told her. “One month. Then you can have me for as long as you need me.”
Isabella pressed her lips together in a tight line and nodded at Sean. “This one said on the phone that you needed the money to save your sister. That she’s sick. Is that true? Or was that another trick?”
I looked right into her eyes. “That’s true,” I said.
She stared at me for a long time, searching my face for any hint of a lie. I stared right back at her. And at last, after the longest time, I saw the briefest flicker in those ice-cold eyes. “Family,” she said, “is very important.”
Then she slipped her sunglasses back on and she was back to brutal efficiency. “Transfer the money,” she told Francisco. “Load the drugs,” she ordered the men. They scurried to do her bidding. A measured nod of farewell to us...and she was gone, her heels clicking across the runway to the plane.
Francisco pulled out his phone and muttered into it in Spanish. After a few minutes, he scrawled something down on a piece of paper and then passed it to me, pointing to each line in turn. “The name of the bank in Switzerland,” he said, “your account number and yourpassword. Six hundred thousand dollars is in there now. Call them and they’ll transfer it anywhere you want.”
Six hundred thousand dollars.It hit me that Isabella hadn’t haggled. We had a hundred thousand dollars more than we needed. I took the piece of paper and folded itvery, verycarefully into my jeans pocket.
By now, the men had loaded the drugs into the plane. We watched as Francisco boarded and the steps were pulled up. Moments later, the plane taxied and roared off down the runway, then climbed towards the sun.
I turned to Sean. “Is that...it?Did we do it?”
He nodded slowly, then pulled me close. He gazed down into my eyes, dumbstruck.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“Just...you,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my cheek. “You’re amazing, you know that?” And he kissed me.
67
SEAN
The truck wasempty but it still stank of weed and we decided we’d probably used up our quota of luck and then some. So we played it safe, taking the truck to a scrapyard and then buying a couple of cheap plane tickets to LA. For the first time in a long while, money wasn’t an issue.
What was still an issue was Malone. And I needed to deal with that on my terms. Louise had solved one half of our problem with brainpower. Now it was time for what I did best: brute force and intimidation.
Fortunately, Malone was predictable. Every Sunday, he ate lunch at a fancy restaurant downtown. He was driven there and back in a huge, glossy black BMW that I suspected was tricked out with bulletproof glass. But that was fine: I wasn’t going to use bullets.
I’d picked out a spot: the exit of the restaurant’s parking lot. As the car cruised towards the exit, I could see Malone in the back, taking up most of the rear seat. A guard was with him, a second guard in the passenger seat up front, and then there was the driver. All three guards, and possibly Malone, too, would be armed.
As Malone’s driver paused to wait for a gap in the traffic, I steppedout from behind a wall...and, with all my strength, swung the sledge hammer down into the center of the car’s hood.
The whole car sank on its suspension a few inches and an airbag went off inside. The hood caved in and the engine died instantly as it took the full force of the blow.
It took the men in the car a few seconds to react. Their first instinct was to open the doors, but the restaurant entrance was narrow: a concrete wall blocked the doors on the driver’s side. And just as they started to open the other set of doors, I slammed the hammer into the pillar between front door and rear door, caving it inward enough that the doors couldn’t open. Another airbag went off and the men inside shied away from the doors, coughing and choking on the smoke the airbag released.
“Shoot him!” I heard Malone yell. Two of the guards drew their guns.
“Good plan,” I snapped. I nodded behind the car. There’d been a line of cars waiting to leave the restaurant behind Malone’s car, but now their owners were panicking and screaming and clutching their cell phones to their ears as they called the cops. “The cops arrive and I’m lying here dead...and you’re sitting there holding the murder weapon.”
The guards hesitated, looking at one another. They were starting to realize that I’d turned their safe, secure car into a prison...potentially, a tomb.
I jumped up onto the hood of the car and swung the sledge hammer again, aiming for the very front of the roof. It bent down and the windshield shattered. Another swing did the same at the back. The men huddled together in the center of the car as the space inside got smaller and smaller. When I jumped down behind the car and looked through the hole where the rear window had been. Malone was twisting around to glare at me...but there was panic in his eyes. He wasn’t sure whether I was going to just keep going and flatten the whole car like a pancake, with them inside it.
I leaned close to him. “Here’s what’s going to happen, if you touch one fucking hair on Louise’s head,” I growled. “I will come and I willfuck. Your. Shit. Up.Every business you’ve got an interest in. Every house you own. That boat you keep in the harbor. Every one of them: destroyed. And then I’ll findyouand do the same to you. I’ll smash you bone by bone, you fucker, and I won’t put you out of your misery for a good long while.” I indicated the car. “I can get to you. Remember that.”
He scowled at me...but he was scared. For years, he and people like him had thought he could control me: I was a dangerous attack dog, but they held the leash. Now I’d slipped my collar and that terrified him.
There’s nothing scarier than a man with a big hammer.
I knew it had worked. I could see it in his eyes. We weren’t going to have any more problems from him. But he couldn’t back down completely. “You’re finished in this business,” he spat. “No one’s going to hire you again, not afterthis!”
