EXCERPT

Chapter One 

He no longer felt the blows. But he had felt the bullet.

There had been no mistaking the pain as the nine-mm shell pierced his gut, forcing him down to the bed of the truck and rendering him impotent and defenseless. He had remained defenseless as he watched them destroy the only thing that he had ever truly loved without reservation or doubt. Part of him died in that moment. Perhaps the best part. And then they came to finish the job.

They dragged him to the ground, took up their weapons and vented their rage and their frustration. They rained their blows on his head, his shoulders, his back, his legs—nothing was immune to their evil. Evil.

He had always suspected as much, but now he knew for certain. They were evil. Both of them.

Goddamn them. He should hate them. He should but he didn’t. Perhaps it was the looming specter of death that put it all into perspective. Hate was futile now. It served no purpose. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that, in truth, he was no better. He had more than his share of evil staining his soul. He had glimpsed it and seen its destructive force in his life. But, like a fool, he had refused to acknowledge it—had refused to purge it. There had always been time. But time had just run out.

He coughed and retched and felt the warmth of his blood against his cheek, against his chest. He heard rather than felt the crack of wood hitting flesh and bone and sinew. It was as if he were watching himself from another realm—watching his own death scene as it played out in vivid Technicolor. The unlikely finale to a cheap B-movie with a hideous villain and an questionable hero. He never thought it would be quite like this. He always knew he wouldn’t die old and decrepit in his bed, breathing in the fumes of Lysol and urine in some nursing home. He always knew he wouldn’t die warm and safe, snuggled up to a wife he had known and loved for fifty years. He always knew he wouldn’t live to see his grandchildren, but he had hoped to see his child grow and mature. He had hoped for so little.

He always knew he would die young—and violently—but somehow it was still too soon. Still too brutal.

The blows ceased. All he was aware of were the uncertain pounding of his heart and the erratic rush of air in and out of tortured lungs. Helpless for the first time in his life, but too weak to care, he resigned himself to his fate.

He felt himself being lifted and he caught one fleeting glimpse of blue—the searing blue of a sky he doubted he would ever see again. It was a deep blue. It taunted him with its beauty and its irony.

He felt himself fall. The blue gave way to black. And, too late, he understood.

* * * * *

“Christ, that felt good!” breathed Faye as she flopped back in the seat of the old Chevy truck.

Calvin sidled in behind the wheel and flashed her that wicked grin that never failed to send a rush of excitement between her legs. “You’ve got some of his blood on ya,” he growled as his eyes lingered on her breasts.

She looked down at the spatters that decorated her brand-new white silk T-shirt. The sight of his blood on her clothes sent a flood of adrenaline through her that she was hard-pressed to explain. “No shit,” she mused. “That bastard always could ruin just about anything. I just bought this.”

“I’ll buy you a new one. God knows we can afford it. He can’t ruin that anymore. Neither of them can.” Calvin’s voice was low and husky, just like it was after a steamy session of sex and cocaine. She wouldn’t be surprised if blood turned him on and killing made him come. She guessed he’d had a hell of a lot more experience at it than he’d let on, even to her.

She looked up at him from beneath hooded eyes—eyes still wild with her own greed and hate and bloodlust. “What are we gonna do with him?” She jerked her head backward to indicate the body in the bed of the pickup. A pool of blood had congealed beneath his head. His hair was matted with his essence, his eyes wide and sightless, the bullet-hole gaping and deadly.

She found it odd, but even in death he was still gorgeous. She felt the briefest pang of regret at the loss of two remarkable physical specimens. But the regret was soon swept away on waves of drug- and power-induced euphoria.

“Should we dump him here too?” She had difficulty dragging her gaze away from his bloody form.

“Nah. Better to separate ‘em. We’ll take him up the mountain a ways. I know another good spot with a two-hundred-foot drop. Nobody’ll ever find him there.”

For just a moment a sickening thread of worry laced through her. She glanced at the cliff where they had just dropped their other victim. “You sure he’s safe down there?”

In a flash, her partner’s eyes turned hostile and threatening. “You questioning me, bitch? You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

She hurriedly reached out a hand to stroke and placate. “No. ‘Course not, honey. I’m just paranoid, I guess. It’s my first time, you know.” And despite the high, she desperately hoped it would be her last. “Of course I trust you.” Her hand dropped to the front of his jeans. Calvin might not be as attractive as either of their two victims, with his greasy black hair and hawklike nose, but he had a cock that could drive railway spikes, and a body that could stop a steaming locomotive. She quickly sensed his reaction to the deft movements of her palm against his ridge.

He closed his dark gray eyes and whispered, “There’s miles o’ nothing down there. And even if somebody finds him he’s got no I.D., and he’s too far from home. They’ll never identify him.” He opened his eyes and jerked a thumb to the back. “Him neither.”

She withdrew her hand and reached for her seatbelt. “Okay, then, let’s get this over with. I wanna get back and make sure Tanner is okay.”

But her cohort wasn’t quite so eager to leave. He grabbed her arm and wrenched her against him. Before she could catch her breath her blood-soaked T-shirt had been peeled off, and his mouth was sucking her breast hard enough to make her wince. But she knew better than to push him away. In fact, his enthusiastic and rough approach to sex was a welcome change from her usual fare. “Shouldn’t we wait until we get rid of him?” But the protest was feeble, and she lost more resolve as his hand reached inside her jeans. “It’s kinda creepy doing it right beside a dead guy.”

“You started it,” he muttered against her nipple. “’Sides,” and he lifted his head to meet her gaze, “I think it’s a turn-on.” His fingers slipped inside her and she arched against him, already swollen and eager for his thrusts.

“Turn-on?” she moaned, even though he was merely confirming what she already suspected. She began to wriggle out of her jeans.

“Yeah, baby. We did it. They’re dead. We killed ‘em both, and now there’s nothing to stand in the way of everything we dreamed of.” He undid his jeans and she mounted him, her fingers clutching at his shoulders as she rode him hard and fast.

“And Goddammit, it’s…“ He groaned as her fingernails raked across his back. He sucked in a breath and murmured, “It’s about time.”

She cried out in climax and her fingernails drew blood. Her eyes fluttered open and she caught a glimpse of the blood and death that lingered just a few feet away. As Calvin bucked and heaved in his own orgasm, she recalled the look on her husband’s face when his eyes had flickered open and recognition dawned.

She had betrayed him, and he had loathed her for it. Not that it mattered. She had a future with Calvin and the wad of money they were going to retrieve. She was well rid of Tate. She had never loved the son of a bitch, anyway—not that first night when he had rescued her from a crackhead john with a switchblade, not through the years as they had struggled to stay afloat in a sea of poverty and crime, and not ten minutes ago when she had pulled the trigger. He hadn’t been anything more to her than a means to an end. He didn’t beat her and he’d been a pretty good lay. If it hadn’t been for his damn obsessions maybe he would have meant something to her. But the fact was, he hadn’t. Calvin knew the score. He knew what was important, and how to get it. Tate had just never learned that lesson. Calvin had tried to convince him over and over, but Tate was stubborn as a mule and blind as a bat. Tate was at once smart and stupid. And he’d finally paid for his stupidity and his misdirected faith in his friends. He had paid with his life.

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