Epitaph Page 2
He screamed falsetto.
I walked down the hall in a crouch, and a bullet zinged over my head and buried itself in the ceiling. I kissed the floor, looked left, and saw the shooter in the bathroom; the guy who had held my other arm and laughed every time I got smacked.
I stuck the Glock in my jeans and reached behind me, unslinging the Mossberg.
He fired again, missed, and I aimed the shotgun and peppered his face.
Unlike lead shot, the gray granules didn’t have deep penetrating power. Instead of blowing his head off, they peeled off his lips, cheeks and eyes.
He ate linoleum, blind and choking on blood.
Movement behind me. I fell sideways and rolled onto my back. A kid, about thirteen, stood in the hall a few feet away. He wore Latin Kings colors; black to represent death, gold to represent life.
His hand ended in a pistol.
I racked the shotgun, aimed low.
If the kid was old enough to be sexually active, he wasn’t anymore.
He dropped to his knees, still holding the gun.
I was on him in two steps, driving a knee into his nose. He went down and out.
Three more guys burst out of the bedroom.
Apparently I’d counted wrong.
Two were young, muscular, brandishing knives. The third was the guy who’d worked me over the night before. The one who’d called me a bald son of a bitch.
They were on me before I could rack the shotgun again.
The first one slashed at me with his pig-sticker, and I parried with the barrel of the Mossberg. He jabbed again, slicing me across the knuckles of my right hand.
I threw the shotgun at his face and went for my Glock.
He was fast.
I was faster.
Bang bang and he was a paycheck for the coroner. I spun left, aimed at the second guy. He was already in midjump, launching himself at me with a battle cry and switchblades in both hands.
One gun beats two knives.
He took three in the chest and two in the neck before he dropped.
The last guy, the guy who’d broken my nose, grabbed my shotgun and dived behind the couch.
Chck chck. He ejected the shell and racked another into the chamber. I pulled the Glock’s magazine and slammed a fresh one home.
“Hijo calvo de una perra!”
Again with the bald son of a bitch taunt. I worked through my hurt feelings and crawled to an end table, tipping it over and getting behind it.
The shotgun boomed. Had it been loaded with shot, it would have torn through the cheap particleboard and turned me into ground beef. Or ground hijo calvo de una perra. But at that distance, the granules didn’t do much more than make a loud noise.
The banger apparently didn’t learn from experience, because he tried twice more with similar results, and then the shotgun was empty.
I stood up from behind the table, my heart a lump in my throat and my hands shaking with adrenaline.
The King turned and ran.
His back was an easy target.
I took a quick look around, making sure everyone was down or out, and then went to retrieve my shotgun. I loaded five more shells and approached the downed leader, who was sucking carpet and whimpering. The wounds in his back were ugly, but he still made a feeble effort to crawl away.
I bent down, turned him over and shoved the barrel of the Mossberg between his bloody lips.
“You remember Sunny Lung,” I said, and fired.
It wasn’t pretty. It also wasn’t fatal. The granules blew out his cheeks and tore into his throat, but somehow the guy managed to keep breathing.
I gave him one more, jamming the gun farther down the wreck of his face.
That did the trick.
The second perp, the one I’d blinded, had passed out on the bathroom floor. His face didn’t look like a face anymore, and blood bubbles were coming out of the hole where his mouth would have been.
“Sunny Lung sends her regards,” I said.
This time I pushed the gun in deep, and the first shot did the trick, blowing through his throat.
The last guy, the one who made like Pavarotti when I took out his knee, left a blood smear from the hall into the kitchen. He cowered in the corner, a dishrag pressed to his leg.
“Don’t kill me, man! Don’t kill me!”
“I bet Sunny Lung said the same thing.”
The Mossberg thundered twice; once to the chest, and once to the head.
It wasn’t enough. What was left alive gasped for air.
I removed the bag of granules from my pocket, took out a handful and shoved them down his throat until he stopped breathing.
Then I went to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Time to go. I washed my hands, and then rinsed off the barrel of the Mossberg, holstering it in my rig.
In the hallway, the kid I emasculated was clutching himself between the legs, sobbing.
“There’s always the priesthood,” I told him, and got out of there.
* * *
My nose was still clogged, but I managed to get enough coke up there to damper the pain. Before closing time I stopped by the bakery, and Ti greeted me with a somber nod.
“Saw the news. They said it was a massacre.”
“Wasn’t pretty.”
“You did as we said?”
“I did, Ti. Your daughter got her revenge. She’s the one that killed them. All three.”
I fished out the bag of granules and handed it to her father. Sunny’s cremated remains.
“Xie xie,” Ti said, thanking me in Mandarin. He held out an envelope filled with cash.
He looked uncomfortable, and I had drugs to buy, so I took the money and left without another word.
An hour later I’d filled my codeine prescription, picked up two bottles of tequila and a skinny hooker with track marks on her arms, and had a party back at my place. I popped and drank and screwed and snorted, trying to blot out the memory of the last two days. And of the last six months.
That’s when I’d been diagnosed. A week before my wedding day. My gift to my bride-to-be was running away so she wouldn’t have to watch me die of cancer.
Those Latin Kings this morning, they got off easy. They didn’t see it coming.
Seeing it coming is so much worse.
* * * * *
Author Biography
J. A. Konrath has sold more than three million books in twenty countries. He’s written twenty-four novels and over a hundred short stories in the mystery, thriller, horror and sci-fi genres, winning multiple awards for his work, including the Love Is Murder Award for best thriller. He lives in Chicago with his wife, a few kids and dogs. Visit him at JAKonrath.com.
Be prepared to be thrilled as you’ve never been before…
Discover more thriller stories that will tantalize and terrify. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business.
James Penney’s New Identity by Lee Child
Operation Northwoods by James Grippando
Epitaph by J. A. Konrath
The Face in the Window by Heather Graham
Kowalski’s in Love by James Rollins
The Hunt for Dmitri by Gayle Lynds
Disfigured by Michael Palmer and Daniel Palmer
The Abelard Sanction by David Morrell
Falling by Chris Mooney
Success of a Mission by Dennis Lynds
The Portal by John Lescroart and M. J. Rose
The Double Dealer by David Liss
Dirty Weather by Gregg Hurwitz
Spirit Walker by David Dun
At the Drop of a Hat by Denise Hamilton
The Other Side of the Mirror by Eric Van Lustbader
Man Catch by Christopher Rice
Goodnight, Sweet Mother by Alex Kava
Sacrificial Lion by Grant Blackwood
Interlude at Duane’s by
F. Paul Wilson
The Powder Monkey by Ted Bell
Surviving Toronto by M. Diane Vogt
Assassins by Christopher Reich
The Athens Solution by Brad Thor
Diplomatic Constraints by Raelynn Hillhouse
Kill Zone by Robert Liparulo
The Devils’ Due by Steve Berry
The Tuesday Club by Katherine Neville
Gone Fishing by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Lock the doors, draw the shades, pull up the covers and be prepared for these stories to keep you up all night.
* * *
Did you know that Harlequin My Rewards members earn FREE books and more?
Join
www.HarlequinMyRewards.com
today to start earing your FREE books!
* * *
Connect with us on www.Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/Newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com
ISBN-13: 9781488094392
Epitaph
Copyright © 2006 By Joe Konrath
First published as part of an anthology of works entitled Thriller in 2006.
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com