Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

laughter that went on for several seconds. When she stopped, she let out a long breath and smiled her priceless smile again. “Oh, Rimes, for a while there you had it all figured out, even without proof. But not the family part.” Her smile disappeared and her jaw tightened. “What you don’t know, couldn’t know, is that we all hated Quentin Cuthbert Griffin, especially Mama. He was a snotty, cowardly, selfish little bastard who thought the sun rose and set on his narcissistic little ass. Quentin Cuthbert Griffin—he used to introduce himself just like that, like he belonged in Fuckingham Palace. The oldest child, so everything had to be his way. Right? A bully who hit us whenever he felt like it. Took our stuff because it was there. That psycho even took tooth money from under our pillows. One day when I was about nine, he punched me right in the mouth, just to see how much I would bleed.”

“Where were your parents through all this?”

“Mama would have done something but our daddy woulda beat her. We didn’t learn the whole story until after he was dead, after he drank himself into his grave from grief. Pop, you see, fussed over Quentin because the little shit reminded him so much of the dead sister he loved.” She paused, closing her eyes and taking a long breath before she continued. “The dead sister whose bed he shared when they were teenagers, whose bed he visited now and then even after they were married to other people.” Loni smiled again, icily. “That’s right, Rimes. I had two brothers, but the day after Quentin Cuthbert Griffin knocked out my tooth, my Dante pushed the fat bastard in front of a car. Now I have only one.”

Just then I heard a car engine shut off and heavy doors slam shut. I sprang to my feet and looked toward the sunporch. Through the sheers, I saw an SUV had parked behind Tito’s F-150—large enough and dark enough to be Dante’s Navigator. I spun back to Loni just as she plunged her hand between the cushions. Lunging, I grabbed her right wrist before she could pull the .38 revolver from its hiding place and wrenched it out of her hand,

It was a camo-colored Charter Arms Tiger II. I pointed it at her. “Upstairs,” I whispered.

Clutching the banister, she pulled herself up just as heavy footsteps hit the porch. Two large men in winter coats appeared through the sheer curtains covering the door glass. I heard a key slide into the lock.

Already at the landing, Loni screamed, “Dante, QC, he’s got a gun!” and ran the rest of the way up.

I didn’t hesitate to press the advantage of surprise. My first shot, from the .38, took out the leaded glass. I heard somebody cry out, “The fuck, man!” That left ten bullets, four in the .38, six still in my Glock. A gun in each hand, I went toward the front door at an angle, firing steadily, calmly at the billowing sheers, forcing the men to scramble off down the steps. I knew at any moment they would return fire—or Loni might come downstairs with another gun. But I needed all of them off balance for just a few seconds, long enough for me to reach the door.

And the alarm panel.

When I jabbed the panic button that made the alarm service connect directly to the police, the Tiger II was empty so I dropped it on the carpet. I had two rounds left in my Glock. One for each of them if they ignored the otherworldly screech of the alarm siren and waited for me to come out the side door.

42

Peeking through the partly opened side door, I waited as Dante Cuthbert and whoever was using the QC Griffin identity backed the Navigator out of the driveway and took off. Then I pushed open the door and ran through the snow in the back yard. The second alarm I tripped in less than a week shut off just after I made it over the first fence. Having assumed the men on Tito’s porch would run from the siren, I was not surprised his lover had the password and could silence the system. But I had got what I needed, a way out.

After the second fence, I paused to look around before emerging from another driveway. No Navigator. I went out to the street and climbed inside Phoenix’s RAV4. I started it and took off before it could warm up. Knowing what I knew, my next step would be alerting Chalmers and Piñero. They would know whom to push for an official investigation. All I had to do was watch my own back because Dante Cuthbert was coming for me. It would have helped if I had got a good enough look at him to recognize him later.

But first things first.

When my phone rang through the car’s sound system, I was crossing Main on my way to Elmwood and my apartment building.

“Hey, G, it’s Raf.”

“You at your desk? I’m heading your way after I make a stop. Give me thirty.”

“Good, because shit is starting to pile up in front of the fan. Hey, wait a minute. You sound like you’re in a car. Your ride was totaled. What are you driving?”

“Phoenix’s RAV4.”

“Okay, turns out you were right. We checked Surowiec’s autopsy pictures. The senior criminalist and the ME himself both say those gashes and weird figure-eight bruises coulda come from the ring. It’s being processed right now. But Butch says he didn’t do it.”

“Course he does,” I said. “Why would he lie?”

Piñero laughed. “He might be telling the truth. That ring? It’s custom made for a biker gang outside Jamestown. The Immortals. That stretched out eight is—”

“An infinity symbol,” I said.

“With a tiny inscription. Ride free. Die free. Forever free. Dennis Quinell at the News did a piece on them last year. Protection. Prostitution. Gunrunning. Murder for hire.”

“Drugs?”

“Of course. Licit and illicit. The meth mama whose