“You need a lift?”
“Nah. Got my Harley. Love that thing.”
Devine watched him every step of the way. He was seriously thinking of following him home when he spotted three large men, pool sticks in hand, staring dead at him.
When Devine left, so did they. The sounds of what might have been Dak’s Harley soared off into the night, leaving him alone with his three new Maine besties.
Wonderful way to end a long unproductive day.
Chapter 11
The body will not go where the mind has not been.
That was why most people were victims, Devine knew. They could not imagine themselves grievously injuring or killing someone else, for any reason, even in order to save their own lives. So they wasted time in attempting to flee or in pleading for mercy to men who had none to give.
Show a picture of someone attacking someone else and ask for a reaction, and 99 percent of the people will say they would be in fear of their life if that happened to them. The other 1 percent, the criminal element, have a different reaction. They will say, “I’d hit them harder.” This was because they never saw themselves as the victim, only the predator. Their minds have been there, and so their bodies were ready, willing, and able to go there too.
Yet all humans were built to be predators. Sharp, strong teeth, forward eyes that were far more efficient for hunting, opposable thumbs, and, most of all, the best brain of any animal.
And we all possess a latent primal ability to fight to the death.
Devine walked toward his Tahoe even as he heard the men follow. When he reached it he turned and faced them. They looked angry and puffed up. That was all he needed to know both of their intent and their being afraid of him. The ones Devine always worried about were not the giant red-faced screamers; they were secretly shitting their pants. It was the quiet, stone-faced scrawny guys that would suddenly gut you with a shiv or pop a bullet into your brain and walk, not run, away, disappearing into the night to do it again when someone else was stupid enough to underestimate them.
His senses did the preliminary calculation and ran it through the combat computer under his skull. Walking away from a fight, if you could do so safely, was usually the best answer. Looking at the three men, Devine knew that was not going to be an option. Unless he did something creative. And he didn’t want to fight them. Not because he knew he would lose; it was because he was certain he would win, and didn’t want to unnecessarily injure them.
And he was also wondering why they had decided to come after him in the first place.
“Can I help you?” he said.
The biggest one said, “Yeah, dude, you can get out of town. That’d be a good start.” He looked at his friends and grinned.
“Sorry. I have a job to do and it can’t be done remotely.”
“Then we got us a problem. Or more to the point, you do,” said the same man.
Devine glanced up and down the street. Not another living soul. Other than the bar, the storefronts were dark. The roar of the incoming tide along the harbor was really the only sound, other than the men’s collective breathing. They were all big and strong and pumped full of alcohol and who knew what else. Two of them were in short sleeves despite the chilly weather. He looked at the drug tracks on their beefy arms and came up with a plan.
He pointed at the man who had spoken. “I know you, don’t I?”
The man, in his late forties and taller than Devine by about three inches and outweighing him by thirty pounds, looked taken aback. “I don’t know you,” he snarled.
“You need to think again,” said Devine. He opened his jacket to show his Glock. The men saw it, and the dynamic instantly changed. He took out his cred pack with the badge and held it up for all to see.
“Homeland Security. But you already knew that. You talked to us about a domestic terrorist network operating up here and selling drugs to fund their operations. I never forget a face. We did the briefing over in Bangor so nobody would know.”
The man looked apoplectic. “I never talked to no fuckin’ feds!”
Devine watched as the other two men glanced suspiciously at their comrade.
“What’s your name?” asked Devine.
“I don’t need to tell you a damn thing.”
“That’s okay. It’ll be in our files. But from what I remember, you were a big help, so thanks. We nailed some local badasses because of you.”
The man suddenly realized his friends were staring at him, and not in a good way.
“He’s lying. I didn’t do any of that shit. You know that. You know me.”
Devine was not going to give up precious ground. “Well, that’s why we recruit people like you. You’re on the inside and you know everybody’s business.”
“You’re lying,” the man roared.
Devine touched the butt of his gun just as a reminder that it was there and had the means to kill all three of them with hardly any effort on his part. “Now, again, what can I do for you? No, scrap that, I don’t have the time. Any of you see Jenny Silkwell before she died?”
The men looked at one another, ostensibly flummoxed by another abrupt change in the direction of the conversation.
“We don’t know nothing about that,” said the second man, shorter than his friend, but thicker. The drug tracks on his left arm looked like the measles: swollen, nasty, and painful.
“I’m not accusing you of having anything to do with her death. But I need to find out why she was here and who she might have met and spoken with. Did you know her?”
The men seemed reluctant to say one way or another until the third fellow spoke up. He was younger than the other two, late thirties at most.
“I went to high school with her. I played football and she ran track and did gymnastics. And she was smart, too. Graduated top in the class. She was the... what do you call it?”
“Valedictorian.”
“Yeah.”
“So what was your take on her?” asked Devine.
“She... everybody loved Jenny, me included.” He glanced at his companions, clearly embarrassed at this frank admission.
“Did you see her when she was last up here?”
He nodded. “Saw her on the street. I waved to her and she waved back. Called me by my name, though I’ve changed some, gotten fat and lost most of my hair. But she remembered me.”
This was obviously a point of pride with the man.
“Did she seem... okay?”
“Yeah, I mean, I think so. She comes up here from time to time, but that was the first I’d seen her in a few years.”
“She comes to visit her brother and sister?”
He wiped his nose. “I guess so. I don’t really know. I’m not really tight with the family.”
Devine eyed the tats on the other two men. “You guys know Alex, or Dak? Looks like you both got inked by him.”
The smaller of them said, “Yeah, dude’s an artist. And fair with his prices.”
“He ever talk about Jenny?”
The one looked at the other. “No, not really,” said the man Devine had accused of being an informant. He scowled and added, “Hear she was a fed.”
“You know her sister? She’s an artist, too.”
“Alex is... different,” said the same man.
“Goes to the beat of her own drummer,” said the other. “Gorgeous gal, but... Hell, don’t know why she’s still here. She could go out to LA or somewhere and make a helluva lot of money.”
“Or marry some rich dude and fly around in a private jet,” said the man Devine had accused. “Not live in some spooky old house in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere.”