‘Come sit with me.’ Etienne picked up the boy and took him to a chair in front of the stove. The door of the stove stood open and Luke could see rags smouldering inside. The rags looked wet and darker red than the flames. Luke wanted to pull out of Etienne’s grasp, but he was both repelled and comforted by the man’s arms. Etienne ran a callused palm over the boy’s head, ruffling his unkempt hair. ‘Your mother was never very good to you, Luc. She cared only for herself and for her next drink. You know that,
oui
?’
Luke nodded dumbly.
‘Your mother, she is gone. She has run away. She has left us both, young Luc. But do not be afraid. I will be your daddee from now on.’
Etienne turned Luke on his knee, so that they were staring into each other’s eyes. ‘We do not need your mother. We do not need
any
woman. They think they are better than us, Luc, but we will show them. Together, we will show them that no woman is better than a man. I will teach you how.’
Twenty-eight years on, the adult Luke Rickard remembered the coldness in his gut at Etienne’s words. He could see the pale boards on the floor, the freshly scrubbed floor, a couple of darker spatters that Etienne had missed. He had looked up at the big unshaven face that filled his vision and he had spoken a single word. ‘Yes.’
He was a child back then, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew that his mother hadn’t run away, but she had abandoned him. Her drunken rages had pushed away Luke’s real father and a succession of other surrogates before Etienne arrived on the scene. Luke hated her. She was cruel and unloving. She thought her needs came before all others, and she had been ready to show Luke how he got in her way with the flat of her hand or with the green stick switch she kept by the front door. Well, Etienne had stood up to her, and now he was showing his true side, a kindness to a boy who’d never known its like.
The cold feeling in Luke’s belly had roiled and squirmed. It felt like he would be sick, but he wasn’t. Saliva had invaded his mouth, as though something pushed up from inside seeking release, but that was as far as it went. He’d swallowed down, then leaned into the embrace that Etienne offered.
And there the serpent was born and his education began.
They moved from Oregon to North Carolina, exchanging one remote home for another that was even further removed from prying eyes. Luke loved the woods and the mountains, but he always held on to a yearning for the sea which he’d only ever seen on TV. Someday, he’d told Etienne, he would be rich and he would own a house overlooking the ocean. Etienne had laughed at him, told him that he’d better find a way of making good money. And then he’d shown him how.
Etienne Pagnon had been a warrior before he was a drunkard. Being Canadian and around before the events that formed JTF-2, the modern Canadian Special Forces, he had first been recruited into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Special Emergency Response Team. Etienne had been a sniper and that was not good for a man who had begun imbibing strong liquor. Released from duty, he’d spelled for a tour with the
Légion étrangère
, but had found his tastes more suited to that of a freelance mercenary. He had been in demand as a sniper but his desire for alcohol let him and his sponsors down. Having nowhere to turn but to crime, he’d embraced his new profession, working for a succession of low-life gangsters, first in Canada, then Seattle. Burned out and feeling the daily shakes, he drifted south to Oregon where he’d hooked up with Luke’s mother. He was a shadow of his former self, but he had much to share with his willing student.
From Etienne, Luke learned everything about stalking and killing men. He also earned a secondary education: Etienne showed him that women were below them and were things to be used and abused. At thirteen Luke took his first woman, paid for by Etienne, and Etienne had made sure that the woman earned every cent. She was the first person Luke killed.
Luke was a good apprentice. His surrogate father wasn’t always the best teacher, his way of ensuring that the growing boy learned his lessons well was to beat the idea into him. Always afterwards he would hug the boy and tell him he was proud of him. The beatings were a necessary evil he said; they would make the boy into a strong man. Luke took the licks until he was eighteen years old. Then Etienne wasn’t capable of hurting him any more. When he was drunk and Luke sober, he’d struck at the younger man’s face. Luke caught the man’s chin in the crook of his elbow, gripped his opposite bicep and placed a hand to the back of Etienne’s head. He constricted the life from the man, while remembering that patch of pale wooden floor in the cabin ten years earlier. Luke hated women, he’d hated the bitch that had birthed him, but when it came down to it, Etienne had it coming.
Luke struck out on his own. Taking his original father’s surname, he’d offered his services to the highest bidders. For eighteen years he’d been in the trade. He’d earned his house overlooking the ocean, riches that a mountain boy could never have imagined, and a wife who was his very own slave. Until that bitch had betrayed him and he’d been forced to leave his dream behind.
Jimena Grajales, just like his mother, was another bitch who’d cared only for her selfish needs and thought that he could be slapped aside, but he’d shown her who she was messing with. No stinking whore used and then abandoned him.
Especially not his wife.
Chapter 41
‘Sleep well?’
‘Yes.’
Rink eyed me with his mouth downturned. ‘Sure doesn’t look like it.’
In truth, my sleep had been disturbed by dreams of Jimena Grajales and her boy dying in the street. When I tried to help them, Jimena sat up and riddled me full of bullets. I’d woken lathered in sweat with the sheets twisted between my fists.
‘I only got my head down for a couple hours,’ I admitted.
‘Here.’ He passed me a waxed-paper cup the size of a bucket. ‘Just the way you like it: sump oil with an extra shot of espresso.’
I accepted the take-out coffee gratefully, taking a sip. It was scalding hot and tasted as bad as it looked, but it was just what I needed.
‘That stuff’s gonna kill you.’
‘Beats a bullet in the skull,’ I told him, thinking again of my nightmare.
We were in a nondescript government car. It wouldn’t fool any criminal worth his salt, or Luke Rickard, but it didn’t matter. The car was only a means to an end. Rink drove to allow me both hands to control my super-sized caffeine fix.
The Cedars Medical Center, part of the University of Miami Hospital, is situated in the heart of the city, a full service facility providing acute care to over five hundred patients. Alisha had been rushed there after Rickard shot her, but she’d been moved since. There was no way on earth that the FBI Hostage Rescue Team could protect the building or its occupants from an attack by a determined and resourceful killer like Rickard. There were far too many variables to contend with. Many people would die, thousands of dollars’ worth of damage would ensue, and possibly millions in lawsuits would follow. Instead, the seriously injured woman had been taken to a private medical centre on the outskirts of Florida City, and a stone’s throw away from the Everglades National Park. Smaller location, smaller numbers, easier to defend, that was the thinking behind it all.
We took the South Dixie highway out of the city all the way down past Homestead to Florida City and on to Palm Drive. I missed the twists and turns after that as I concentrated on the last dregs of coffee. Once one base need was seen to, I attended to another. While cooped up in the gilded prison of my hotel room I’d been busy rebuilding my SIG from parts gleaned from other weapons. It would probably have made sense to ditch my old gun and familiarise myself with a new one, but I’d used the modified P226 for so long that it had become an extension of my hand. My palm was familiar with the contours of the grip and anything else would have felt a little alien. While Rink negotiated the roads leading out into the wilderness, I dismantled the gun and put it back together again, checked the slide and the progression of the trigger. I unloaded and then reloaded the magazine, chambered a round. The gun had survived being shot and blown up by a grenade: we had a lot in common. It seemed the injury to my hand had been superficial and I’d held the swelling under control by way of an ice pack. There was some residual pain, but I could live with it.
We followed a road that wound through groves of live oak and bald cypress trees, Spanish moss hanging like old men’s beards from the branches. It was daytime, but even then the spidery growths lent a Gothic air to the scene. It reminded me of stories I’d read of haunted swamps and witch-women mumbling curses over animal bones. Myth says that a beautiful bride-to-be was killed by Cherokee warriors, and as a warning to other interlopers on their land her hair was hacked off and thrown in a tree. As time passed, her hair grew grey and withered and spread from tree to tree. The story said that if you tried to remove the hair it would leap away and defend itself with hordes of beetles. Fanciful stuff, but like a lot of soldiers I’m superstitious and felt a trickle of unease at the thought of being eaten alive by a swarm of insects. Of course, there was only one roach I was concerned about.
‘You’re sure he’s coming, huh?’
‘No doubt about it, Rink. When Jimena told him that Alisha survived . . . I don’t know . . . it was like I could feel the anger radiating from him.’
‘What’s his goddamn problem, anyway? I’d’ve thought he’d lie low for a while, maybe set himself up a new identity. Who’s gonna hire an asshole like him when he can’t be trusted any more?’
‘The way I see things, he’s a complete maniac. He isn’t acting rationally; he’s being led by more than the lure of money. Always has been, probably.’
‘Imogen said the punk would’ve raped her given the chance. You think he’s a sex beast?’
‘Yeah, and the contract killing is just a sideline. My guess is that the money has never been that important, it’s always been about him fulfilling his sick fantasies.’
‘Dirty motherfucker.’
‘I’m with you there, buddy.’
‘Doesn’t explain why he’s so proficient with weapons.’
‘Never did get to the bottom of that,’ I agreed. ‘But it doesn’t mean a thing now. I know Harvey, though: he won’t stop looking until he finds out. Personally, I don’t think we’ll ever know.’
‘Not unless we make him tell us.’
‘He won’t have the opportunity. First chance I get, I’m putting him down.’
‘Not if I beat you to him.’ Rink grinned at me. Then he nodded ahead and I saw the outlines of a white building through the trees.
‘That the hospital?’
Rink looked at a printed page folded on the dashboard of the car. It was a map of the area that Harvey had supplied us with. ‘Outer administration buildings, the hospital’s a bit further back. Maybe a little over a mile into the swamp.’
‘OK. This is as far as we go.’
Rink pulled the vehicle off the road and down a beaten track. The Spanish moss scraped along the roof of the car. No beetles attacked, but there were plenty of tiny gnats knocked from the branches scuttling down the windscreen. Rink hit the wipers and tiny streaks of blood made rainbows on the glass. ‘Hope you fetched plenty of Deet,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you need to worry about that, Hunter. The mosquitoes drink your blood, they’ll probably be struck dead by all the caffeine.’
‘Either that or they’ll be hooked and head off to a Starbucks for their next hit. Both are OK by me.’
‘Amen to that,’ Rink laughed.
We were engaged in nonsense. It was usually the way we prepared for impending violence. Pretty soon, it would be time for silence. Rink would grow fidgety, I’d go sullen, and then we’d both slide into the calmness more befitting the task ahead.
Anhinga Key Medical Center was a heavy slog through the swamp away from us. Would have been easier by the road, but Hubbard’s men would be watching the main approach, and probably many of the lesser trails. We would have to move in via a route unlikely even for someone intent on murder. The plan was to go in, set up a lying-up point and then wait for the inevitable arrival of Luke Rickard. Then we’d kill him. Or at least try to.
His arrival at the remote AKMC was inevitable for two reasons: he wouldn’t stop coming until he’d killed Alisha and we had Harvey on the case ensuring that he’d be sent directly to her. I’m not known for placing women in the way of harm, but this was different. Rickard was hell-bent on killing his wife, so it made sense to use her as bait. Harvey was currently hacking into the records at The Cedars so that a simple check would send the killer our way.
Rickard believed that I’d been eviscerated by a fragmentation grenade; he wouldn’t expect me to be waiting for him to arrive. However, the proliferation of feebies and cops at the scene would put him on high alert. Wouldn’t stop him coming, but he’d be prepared for war. That was all supposing that he’d survived the events in Colombia and was now headed here. If not, we could have a few uncomfortable days squatting in a swamp to look forward to. But Rink and I were up to it: we’d spent many days and nights waiting in even less appealing locations throughout our careers.