When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) by Eric Beetner Page B

“When we first met I told you this is what life would be like with me. When we got on that plane, I tried to warn you. We’ve been lucky and you haven’t seen a whole lot of it since we got away, but you have to know—I wasn’t kidding.”
    “I know who you are, Lars.”
    “Yeah, but being back here. I’m afraid you’ll see who I was.”
    “Well,” she said. “The job is over, right? We can go home?”
    “Yeah. I guess we can.”
    Shaine looked at his arm. Blood made a tiny spot on his T-shirt sleeve. “Did you do anything about that yet?”
    “Like what?”
    “Like clean it out? Disinfect it?”
    “It’s fine.”
    Shaine stood. “No, it’s not. We have to clean it.” She put a hand under his arm.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Taking care of you. Come on.” She led Lars over to the minibar and lifted a palm-sized bottle of Jack Daniels from in between a jar of macadamia nuts and a can of Diet Coke.
    “Hey, those are expensive.”
    “Unless you have some other disinfectant, this will have to do. Besides, isn’t Nikki paying for all this?”
    “I guess so.”
    Shaine pointed to the bathroom. “Then get in there and dump this over your arm. And tear one of those towels in half, wrap it up.”
    “Who put you in charge?”
    “You have your things, I have mine. We’re partners, right?”
    Lars had never worked with a partner before. With her, he liked the feeling.
    “Yeah. We are.” He took the tiny bottle of whiskey and marched toward the bathroom. “Whatever you say, partner.”

12
     
    Nikki woke up with a gun in his face.
    “Get out of bed, you fuck.”
    Nikki didn’t recognize the voice, or the face at first. He thought he was still dreaming because it looked like Leo was telling him to get out of bed. But Leo from forty yeas ago, back when they both ran street whores and poker games. Always trying to one up each other, cutting into the other one’s business a bit. The start of a beautiful rivalry.
    Here it goes, thought Nikki, I’m cracking up. Seeing faces from the past.
    “I said get the fuck up.”
    Nikki was brought back to the present. He wasn’t staring down Leo’s gun. The man behind the barrel was Bruno, Leo’s son.
     
    Nikki needed his oxygen tank. He sat on the edge of the sofa, trying to keep his spine straight and let his lungs fill as much as they could with each breath. Still he struggled.
    Bruno had brought six men with him. Nikki’s two house guards were no match.
    Think, Nikki, think. Plausible deniability.
    “Look, Bruno,” Nikki said. “I don’t know what you think happened—”
    “You sent him to kill my parents. That’s what happened.”
    Bruno was intimidating. His slicked back hair reminded Nikki of a film star in the fifties. He was tall, taller than his old man. Hard around the eyes, too.
    Bruno waved the gun in Nikki’s face again. “Where is he?”
    The gun in his face reminded Nikki why he needed FBI protection in the first place. He kicked himself for not planning on Bruno. Nikki should be safely tucked away by now, but he’d gotten the timing wrong. Now chances were good this would be his last day. Even if that turned out to be true, at least he wouldn’t spend it in jail.
    “Where is who?” Nikki asked.
    “You think we don’t have security cameras around the house? You think I can’t see him clear as day on those tapes?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nikki needed to stall, to think of something.
     
    ***
     
    It was Bruno’s mom who tripped the silent alarm. When she was inside Leo’s office rifling through his gun rack and deciding on the shotgun. She reached under his desk and pressed the button, rousing not an alarm company, but her son and his own personal army.
    But by then it was already too late. She was seconds away from death. Not before she got off a few shots, but she went down to Lars’s bullets all the same.
    Bruno watched it all in HD. He’d been through the angles from upstairs, he’d seen