Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [119]
Shit, shit, shit. Mouth dry, heart racing, I sidled to the edge of the barn and peeked around the corner.
A scene from a horror movie played out in front of me.
Anna’s .45 H&K combat pistol dangled by her right side, J-Hawk’s knife in her left. The redheaded guy was lying on the ground. Hands tied behind his back. A bloody hole where his belly used to be. A chunk of his left thigh was gone. Exit wounds, which meant she’d shot him from behind.
An ear-shattering screech sounded. Not coming from the guy she’d just stabbed in the gut, but from the blond, who was being forced to watch as Anna thrust the knife into his friend.
Then Anna loomed over him. “Is this how you did it? Did you laugh as you stabbed him with his own fucking knife?”
The redheaded guy wheezed, and blood bubbled over his lips.
She smacked the blond in the ear with her gun. “Answer me.”
“Leave him alone.”
She buried the knife in the redhead’s right leg and said to the blond, “Start talking, or I’ll make you watch as I make him a Columbian necktie.”
“No! I told you. We were high!”
“High on what?” Anna demanded.
“Tweakers. We wanted to come down. Then that bitch in Clementine’s wouldn’t sell beer to us—”
“Be careful who you’re calling a bitch,” she warned. “Why him?”
The kid said something that froze me in place. “It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t because it was him! It could’ve been anyone!”
That outburst caught Anna off guard. “What?”
“That oil guy had bought us beer before. A couple of times. After that b—chick wouldn’t sell to us, and no one else would even fucking talk to us, we saw him leaning against his car at the back of the parking lot, so we asked him to buy for us. He just laughed and said no.
“Then he turned his back on us. Like we were nothing. Like we were just loser punks. Me ’n’ Tyler knocked him down and he still laughed at us. Tyler shot him. But instead of shutting up, the guy kept going on. Said if we were gonna do the job, not to do it half assed like a bunch of fuckin’ pussies. To do it all the way. Said he was as good as dead anyway. Said he’d rather go out with a bang than a whimper. It was like . . . he was daring us to kill him. So we did.”
I briefly closed my eyes and leaned against the barn.
Goddamn you, J-Hawk. You made a bad situation worse.
“I think we went a little crazy after that. We shot him a couple more times. Picked up his knife and stabbed him with it. Then we grabbed the stuff and took off.
“When I woke up, I thought it was some crazy crank dream. Until I saw the blood all over my hands and my clothes. Tyler’s hands were worse than mine. I found the dude’s wallet and his knife in my pocket. I had to get rid of it. It was like a bad luck charm.”
“A lucky charm for me, because you ditching it for cash led me straight to you.”
The kid sobbed.
Nothing drove Anna to the trigger faster than false remorse. The kid never said he was sorry. He justified taking a man’s life by being drugged up.
Anna laughed and kicked the redhead’s prone body. “Well, looky here. Your buddy gave up the ghost.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Means he’s dead.”
“Tyler?” He scooted closer on his ass in the dirt.
She eased the knife out of his body, and it made a horrible wet sucking sound. After Anna wiped the blood from the blade on her pant leg, she clicked the thumb release and pocketed it.
“Ty? Ty?” Each repeat of the name got louder and more hysterical.
Anna cuffed him in the mouth. “Shut the fuck up. Jesus. Show some dignity.”
Enough. When I moved closer the back of my shirt got hung up on a nail, releasing a loud riiiiip.
“Show yourself, whoever you are,” Anna said.
Shit. I tried to press myself deeper into the wood.
“I know you’re there, and if you don’t come out, I’ll use the shrieker here for target practice.”
I rounded the corner, weapon drawn.
“Mercy. Guess I’m not surprised to see you.”
My gaze dropped to the mutilated body at her feet. Guilt punched me in the gut. If I’d turned her in to Dawson last night, that kid would still be alive. “Put