I hoped like hell I didn’t regret this decision.
Chapter 5
Frank
* * *
I kept my back flat against those kitchen cupboards with the rum bottle still in my grip, my heart doing its best to kill me before the assholes outside got the chance. I strained to listen. Nothing. What the hell are they waiting for?
The stupid light over the dining table was on. I could fix that. I’d just act like everything was normal. Just a bloke heading to bed.
Keeping my breathing steady, I flicked the light off and walked down the hallway like I was done for the night. I turned on the bedroom light. Pulled the curtains. Then, remembering which floorboards creaked, I picked my way back to the kitchen and eased up to the window.
The base of the lemon tree was empty.
They’d moved.
The back door wasn’t locked. Too late now. I doubted a lock would stop these blokes anyway.
I’d always figured they’d find me eventually. My undoing had to be my dumb-ass trip to the shops. Someone had clocked me and passed the word along. I should’ve stayed put. Then again, I wasn’t about to starve myself to death just to stay hidden. A man had limits.
Maybe tonight, the Grim Reaper had finally stopped messing around.
Well, screw him. I still wasn’t going down without a fight. Those bastards were in for one hell of a surprise.
My shotgun was propped against Willy’s La-Z-Boy chair in the living room, right where I’d left it the day I’d moved in. Loaded. Ready. Hadn’t touched it since.
Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about using it, but a shotgun was loud. Real loud. And Willy’s street was quiet enough that a blast at ten o’clock at night would bring the cops in five minutes flat.
Then again, maybe the bastards outside were cops.
Wouldn’t be Bob, though. Bob never did his own dirty work. He paid people to get bloody. Always had. And I had absolutely no doubt about what the men crouching behind that lemon tree had been paid to do.
However, they had no idea who they were dealing with.
I just needed to keep one of them breathing long enough to give me answers. I needed to know if it was Bob who’d sent them.
A knife block sat in the corner of the bench. Willy’s big carving knife was still in it. The blade’s German steel and wooden handle weighed well in the hand. Good for gutting something. Or someone.
I crawled to the bench and grabbed the block, glancing out the window as I did. Still couldn’t see them.
What the hell are they doing? Have they gone around the front?
I sat the block on the floor and pulled out all five knives. Then I crawled to the wall behind the back door and laid them out where I could reach them fast, keeping the carving knife in my right hand and the paring knife in my left. I pressed flat against the wall and waited.
The back stairs creaked. The handle turned. The door inched open.
My heart boomed like a damn thunderclap.
The door swung wider, and the felt strip beneath it scraped across the linoleum. A man stepped into the room, showing me his back.
Christ, he’s a big bastard.
The second man stepped in behind him, greasy hair sticking out in all directions.
Oh hell. That’s Wayne Henderson.
Which meant the big one was Bruce.
