Wham!
He heard wood thud to the floor on the other side of the door. The barricade.
The wafting smoke was blacking out the room, making his eyes water.
“Come on, damn it!” Simone screamed. She attacked the door with a fusillade of savage blows: Wham-wham-whamwham-wham!
Finally, the door fell away and banged against a wall. Simone shrieked in triumph.
They unlocked their arms, and staggered through the doorway into the hall.
Hungry flames crawled up the walls and across the floor, most of them ahead in the foyer, but they were quickly spreading throughout the house. Fresh paint sizzled, bubbled, popped. Clouds of black smoke billowed in the air. The tremendous heat cooked the sweat on Corey’s face.
He put his shirt to his mouth and grabbed Simone’s hand. They shambled down the hallway, keeping clear of the overlapping tongues of fire.
The front door was like a blazing hoop in a circus, impassable.
“Kitchen!” Simone shouted, and tugged him in the opposite direction.
Smoke polluted the kitchen, snuffing out the lantern light. In the shifting veils, Corey glimpsed the cooler, the chair, duct tape, a stack of books, but no usable weapon. Damn.
A sliding patio door led from the kitchen to the backyard. They flung it open, the door screeching on the tracks.
The cool, damp air outside ballooned Corey’s aching lungs, tasted delicious.
They staggered across the muddy yard and into the cul-de-sac. Bent over, they pulled in deep, replenishing breaths.
In the house, fire lashed the sheets that covered the front windows. The acrid fumes had begun to taint the air outdoors.
“Gotta call 911,” Simone said, raspy-voiced. “It’s stopped raining. . fire might spread.”
“My phone’s in the car.”
He led the way. Todd’s Mercedes coupe was parked at the edge of the cul-de-sac. The car was empty, but the doors were locked.
“He’s gone to find Leon,” Corey said, remembering Todd’s taunts.
Simone shook her head. “I don’t care about Leon-I only care about our baby.”
The Oldsmobile was parked where he had left it at the corner. Simone didn’t ask any questions about the vehicle when she saw him open the door. They were past the point of explanations.
His BlackBerry lay on the passenger seat underneath his jacket, the battery and handheld separated. He plugged in the battery.
The other cell phone lay inside, but he didn’t want to so much as touch the damn thing.
Arms clasped over her chest, Simone turned around and around, calling for their daughter in a pain-wracked voice.
Corey called 911 to report the fire. He gave the approximate address, and ended the call without answering any more of the dispatcher’s questions.
“Now let’s go,” Simone said. “We’ve gotta start looking.”
“Hold on,” he said.
The phone’s voice mail indicator stated that he had messages. Could have just been Falco harassing him, but he had to be sure. He punched in the code to access the mail box.
One message was from Falco; he skipped over it.
In the next, he heard Jada’s voice. She was shouting, voice raw with terror.
“. . Daddy, and we need help, Daddy, we need you, I got away and I’m at a house on a lake, and there are dogs everywhere in here, and I hope you can find me, I’m with a disturbed man in his house on the lake, and I need you. . ”
“She’s at the lake!” Corey said. “A house on the lake, there are dogs everywhere, a house on the lake, she said. There’s a lake here, here, in this subdivision.”
Simone’s eyes were huge. “Where?”
The boom of a shotgun echoed from behind them. It came from the woods behind the safe house.
“There!” Corey said, and started running.
74
Leon heard the shotgun blast as he was picking his way through the woods with the flashlight, tracking the little deaf bitch. Buckshot took a big bite out of an oak not ten feet away from him, wood splinters arcing through the air.
Automatically, he dipped to the ground. He doused his flashlight and drew his Glock nine.
Who the fuck was shooting at him?
It couldn’t be C-Note, even if he and Clair Huxtable somehow had broken free of the cuffs and gotten out of the bedroom, they didn’t have a shotgun.
Couldn’t be Johnny Nabb, either, the law didn’t fire on you without first issuing a warning, and though some random, Negro-hating redneck might live in these boonies, that just didn’t feel right, either.
What felt right was The Todder. Good ole Kenny Rogers.
Leon’s lips curled. He had never really trusted that guy. Anyone who would make a major muscle move to force out his business partner couldn’t be trusted. Probably he was aiming to ex out Leon so he could keep all the currency for himself.
“Greedy motherfucker,” Leon spat. Of course, he might have done the same thing if he were in Todd’s high-priced shoes, but still. It was the principle of the matter.
Keeping low, he raced through the wet undergrowth, circling around, doing a flank maneuver.
Hidden safely behind a tree, he rose and peeped the scene.
There was The Todder all right. Revealed in a splash of moonlight, he wore a dark hooded jacket and gripped a shotgun, stalking through the forest like it was hunting season and Leon was the big game.
“Son of a bitch,” Leon muttered. “Gonna take me out, do you know who I am, huh, do you know what I’ve done, bitch, think you can whack the artiste, ice me, huh?”
The Todder was maybe thirty yards away, but he was looking in the wrong direction, a rank amateur, that’s what he was, didn’t he know Leon was the creme de la creme in this biz? You didn’t get to be a superstar on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Hoods List by being a schmuck.
So Leon burst from cover and ran up on him, firing one round after another, gunfire echoing through the woods, the Glock’s recoil snapping through his wrist, and by the time The Todder turned, he’d already been shot two or three times. He went down like a boxer dropped with a right hook, wasn’t getting up for the count, call the fight, good night, folks.
Leon took his time covering the rest of the distance between them. Swaggering like the Duke after smoking the bad guy at high noon.
He felt electrified. Killing always gave him that crazy hyped feeling, a delicious experience better than blowing a nut deep inside a fine-ass woman with a Ziploc pussy.
Giggling to himself, he came up on the Todder and shone the flashlight in his face. Blood pasted his black hair to his tanned forehead. But his eyes were open, and he was breathing in shallow, whistling breaths through a ruptured throat.
When he saw Leon, fear rose in his baby blues.
“You’re busted, disgusted, and shown why you can’t be trusted,” Leon said.
Blood dribbled from the guy’s lips. He said something in a whispery gurgle. It sounded like fuck you.
Leon smirked and lit a cigarette.
“I think I’ll stand here and watch you expire, pilgrim,” Leon said. He took a drag on his Newport. “I wanna see the chi fade out of your eyes, and then I’ll rifle through your pockets, get your keys, and go to su casa and see how much dirty gambling loot you’ve got socked away in there, ’cause you’re gonna pay me, hombre, one way or another.”
A roar from close behind made Leon drop his cigarette. It sounded like a bear, a tiger, something wild and inhuman and enraged.
What the fuck. .
Leon spun, groping for his gun.
Eyes blazing, Corey exploded out of the darkness and pounced on him.
75
When Simone and Corey reached the forest, they agreed to split up. Corey had gone after Leon, angling in the direction of the gunfire.
Simone went to find their daughter.