Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay by Gordon Carroll (tools of titans ebook .TXT) 📗

the back bedroom. Both were skinny, one wearing jeans and a Wife-Beater shirt, the other in Tripp pants and a sleeveless “T”. Both held guns.

I shot the first one twice in the chest, double-tap, the slugs stopping him cold, his eyes growing big and scared; his mouth trying for a scream that would never come. The other kid was already pointing his gun at me, his face determined. I braced myself, knowing I would be hit at least once before I could return fire, and re-targeted, swinging my sights to center-mass. I saw a familiar reddish-brown blur and held my fire. Max’s jaws clamped down on the guy’s face, wrenching his head to the side and dragging him to the floor. He tried to scream, managed a muffled gurgle, before Max really went to work. There was no time to linger. The punk had played a vicious game and now he would have to pay the price.

I taught Max to always check for a scent article when the door popper activated. That’s why I keep the leather key-holder on my belt and why I dropped it when I first got out of the car. Max located the scent article and tracked me here.

I headed up the stairs. Tom was wrestling with two men. One was Pimples — he had blood squirting from his neck, I must have grazed him, the other was a stranger with full sleeve tattoos painted up each arm.

Tattoo Man was trying to get Tom’s gun from him, while Pimples punched at Tom’s head with one hand. The three of them rolled back and forth on the floor like writhing snakes.

I took two long strides and slammed the heel of my shoe straight down onto Tattoo Man’s ear. His head bounced off the wood floor with a sound like a splitting melon. Pimples stopped fighting when he felt my gun against the back of his skull. Tom got loose and jumped to his feet. He pointed the Ruger at Pimples with shaking hands.

“Where’s my daughter?” he screamed. I stepped away from Pimples. If Tom started shooting I didn’t want to get hit.

“You might want to answer him,” I said to Pimples, “he looks mad.”

He clutched a hand to his neck, blood pooling between his fingers and running down his wrist. “I’m bleeding to death. I need a doctor.”

“You’ll bleed worse if he shoots another hole in you,” I said.

I saw a room at the end of the hall with the door closed, and one on either side with doors open. “Watch him,” I said to Tom. “I’ll check these other rooms.” I went quickly through the rooms on the sides; both empty. I kicked open the door to the last room and ducked to the side. I could still hear Tom screaming at Pimples to tell him where his daughter was. I pied the room, stepping back and out, checking it in slices from outside the doorway. It looked empty except for a few syringes littered in a corner. There was a nasty old mattress on the floor with some bunched up sheets and a ratty blanket. No pillow. Something huddled under the sheets.

A cold nose touched my forearm and I nearly jumped. Max. I sent him into the room.

He ran the walls, then turned to the crumpled sheets. I gave him the down and he obeyed, eyes locked on the mattress, ears high. I entered the room, darting to the side, my gun out front. The closet was open and empty. I looked down at the humped sheets, grabbed a handful and pulled them away.

The girl looked to be around seventeen. She was Hispanic and naked. A fine line of drool stretched from the corner of her lips to the mattress. The insides of her arms were bruised and dotted with needle marks. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked at me, smiled, drifted back to her drug induced sleep.

I tucked the sheet up under her chin and hefted her onto my shoulder. She was as light as a puppy. I felt her thin bones through my shirt. I carried her back to where Pimples sat trying to hold his blood inside his neck with his hands.

Max heeled automatically.

Pimples looked up at me, dark circles under his sunken eyes. “Please don’t let me die.”

“You see this dog? Tell me where the girl is or I’ll let him use you for a chew toy.”

“I told him,” he said looking at Tom from the corner of his eyes, “I don’t know. We’re just small potatoes, dude. The big guy doesn’t tell us nothing.”

He was too scared to lie, besides, the thought of a cool character like Mr. Spock confiding anything important in a slug like this didn’t compute. Still, I hoped to salvage something. “What’s the big guy’s name?”

“We just know him as Mr. Black. The other dudes are Mr. Pink and Mr. Green. You know, like the dudes in that movie, Reservoir Dogs.”

I thought back to my conversation with Pimple’s friend who Max found hiding under the deck, the one with the giant gauges in his ears. He’d said they were in on some kind of computer video slot scheme. “What kind of computer scheme is Mr. Black running?”

“I don’t know, dude. I don’t know nothing. Just that it has something to do with a game or something?”

“What kind of game? Gambling? Some kind of new slot machine?”

“I don’t know… maybe. Some kind of video game or something. I heard him talking once to Mr. Pink about it, saying the game was going to sweep the market. That’s all I know.”

“Market? What kind of market?”

He shook his head, obviously scared. “I don’t know, dude. I swear.”

“Who is this girl I’ve got here?”

“Some chick we picked up for some fun, that’s all. She was hitch-hiking, dude.” Like that was an excuse for raping her.

“I’ll kill him,” said Tom. “I’ll kill him.”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” I said. “He doesn’t know anything else.”

“He deserves to die.”

“Yeah, I suppose he does.” I