Rage turned Eddie’s expression demonic. He punched Griff hard enough to split his lip, then hit him again. His head spun as he slammed into the wall and slid down onto the carpet.
“Little motherfucker. You’re lucky I don’t kill you.” Eddie kicked him in the ribs, and he groaned.
“Get up and get back in the bedroom.”
Griff swayed as he climbed to his feet and Eddie followed, shoving him across the carpet toward the bed. The handcuff locked into place around his wrist. Eddie went over and turned off the TV.
“And you can forget about food or water or anything else until I say so. You got it?”
Griff nodded. His eyes burned. He blinked to fight back tears he refused to let fall.
The last thing he heard was Eddie on his cell phone.
“Kid saw my face,” he said. “We need to get rid of him.”
The person on the other end of the phone said something Griff couldn’t hear.
“Yeah, well, we’ll get rid of his mother, too. Tie up loose ends.”
Griff’s stomach rolled and he clenched his teeth to keep from puking. He’d failed. Even worse, trying to escape might get both him and his mom killed. The tears he’d been fighting spilled over and slid silently down his cheeks.
Jason “Hawk” Maddox sat at a table in the corner of a bar called the Blue Cypress, a block off the water at Cross Lake. The place wasn’t much more than an overgrown shack with a long bar and scattered tables, but it had video poker and pool tables, and the locals loved it.
Jase had been there half an hour, sipping a cold bottle of Red River beer, waiting for a guy named Long Bailey. Long was even taller than Jase, who stood six-four, but unlike his two-hundred-twenty-pound frame, Long was thin as a rake. He was half Cajun, with wrinkled cocoa skin and a toothy smile.
Hawk had known him for years, always paid Long well for whatever information he gleaned, and they’d become friends of a sort.
Long pushed through the front door, spotted Hawk at the back of the room, and sauntered in that direction, pausing at the bar to order himself a bottle of beer and carry it over to the table.
The men shook hands, and Long sat down across from him.
“Sorry I’m late. Wanted ta be sure I got here clean of a tail. These are some bad boys you’re a dealin’ with, Hawk.”
“I gathered that from the dead guy, Lee Haines, they killed in Dallas. You able to get the shooter’s name?”
Long nodded. “Name’s Jeremy Bolt. One of the best in the biz-ness. Got a reputation of walking away clean, no evidence, nothin’—leastways not unless he left it there apurpose.”
“Looks like he set up Haines’s ex-wife to take the fall for the murder.”
“Sounds like Bolt.”
“You know where I can find him?”
Long sipped his beer. “Can’t help ya there. Bolt likes to gamble, hangs around the casinos. That’s all I know.”
“Anything else?” Jase asked, sliding a crisp hundred-dollar bill across the table.
“I get sump-un, I know how to find y’all.” Long picked up the money, shoved back his chair, and stood up.
“Good to see you, Long,” Hawk said. “Thanks for the help.”
Long just nodded and sauntered back toward the door.
Hawk finished his last swallow of beer, set the bottle on the table, and followed. As he walked out into the night, he spotted Long’s thin frame beneath an overhead parking light, sauntering toward his old beater Chevy pickup. Just as Long stepped off the porch, Hawk caught a flash of metal in the dense shrubbery at the edge of the lot.
“Gun!” he shouted an instant before a rifle shot echoed in the darkness. Hawk pulled his Kimber semiauto and fired as he raced toward his friend. The shooter was running, sprinting through the leafy foliage, rapidly disappearing out of sight. Hawk pulled off a couple more rounds, but his target was nowhere to be seen and Long was down.
Hawk veered off the path and raced toward his friend, lying in a yellow circle of light, his shirt covered with blood. Long’s eyes were open and he was breathing.
