The Guilty (Will Robie 4)

everywhere: dirty clothes, two guitars, magazines, a rifle and two handguns, video game packs, dishes, empty beer cans and liquor bottles, a chin-up bar, some dumbbells. The walls were covered with posters with three basic themes: music, sports, and porn. Over the doorway hung a string of women’s colorful thongs.

Notches in the bedpost, twenty-first century style.

If there was a desk in here anywhere, Robie couldn’t see it under the junk. There was a pair of headphones lying on the bed that Robie had seen before in a store. They cost about a thousand bucks.

Then he saw it. He slipped across the cluttered floor and picked up the laptop with his gloved hand. The same password worked here.

He started going through files and downloaded to his flash drive anything that seemed relevant. He had just finished when he heard a door slam from downstairs.

He hadn’t heard a car drive up. But apparently Pete was home again.

Robie checked his watch. It was nearly four in the morning. Time had moved fast.

Robie stepped to the door and peered out. Pete would probably come up to his room and crash. Or he might not be alone. Then he might hit the hot tub with whomever he had with him.

Either way, Robie had to clear out of this room.

He slipped into the hallway, thinking that he would hide in another room up here and wait for Pete and whoever else might be with him to pass by. Then Robie would make his escape.

He had just stepped into another bedroom on the top floor and eased the door almost shut when he heard the footsteps coming up.

And then he heard the voices.

And with that, everything Robie had planned to do changed completely.

Chapter

30

PETE CLANCY INDEED was not alone tonight. But on his arm he didn’t have a half-stoned, half-naked girl waiting to get bedded.

There were three others with Pete. And all were men.

They wore slacks and jackets, but no ties. They were large, looked tough and probably were. Two of them were on either side of Pete, who was struggling to no avail.

“Let me go, please, I don’t know nothin’. I swear to God.”

“You’ll be seein’ God you don’t give us what we need.”

This came from the third man who was walking ahead of the other two.

He was a bit smaller than his two companions, and his suit looked more expensive. He also had a colorful pocket square. His face was lined and his hair had a touch of gray, while the other two were in their early thirties. They were obviously the muscle.

“Please, what do you want from me? I don’t know nothin’,” wailed Pete.

The third man turned around and threw a haymaker directly into Pete’s jaw.

Pete slumped, held up only by the men on either side of him.

As Pete began to cry and spit blood from his mouth, the man who had struck him said, “Well, you sure act like you know somethin’, dickhead. You send shit out and act like the big man, which makes it seem like you’re in the loop. So if you’re not, too bad for you, asshole. Lose, lose.”

They dragged him into the office but didn’t close the door behind them.

Robie checked to make sure there was no one else coming up the stairs, and then he slipped out, crossed noiselessly to the office doorway, and peered in.

They had forced Pete to sit down at the desk. The leader of the pack had his hand clamped around the back of Pete’s neck.

“Okay, little Petey, all you got to do is show us what you got. Or what your old man had. And then we’ll leave.”

“You…you mean you won’t hurt me?”

“Nah, why would we? You give us what we want, we’re outta here. No hard feelings. You go your way, we go ours.”

From the young man’s expression Robie realized that even Pete Clancy was not stupid enough to believe that.

Pete blurted out, “You’re gonna kill me, don’t matter what I do.”

“Gee, Petey, you got me there. But there are degrees of killin’, principally fast and painless, or the opposite. Which do you want? ’Cause your old man’s got a copper soaking tub in his ‘master suite’ that’s perfect for slow death by sulfuric acid bubble bath. There won’t be a drop of you left, boy, but you’ll feel all of it until you just can’t stand it anymore. I know ways to keep you conscious till your skin’s almost all gone.” The man slammed Pete’s face down on the desk. “You want that, huh, you little pissant?”

“Please, so help me, God, I don’t know nothin’,” pleaded Pete.

“Have it your way.”

The man drew a gun.

And that was when Robie stepped into the room, his gun pointed at the man’s head.

“Gun down. Step back, all three of you. Hands interlocked behind your heads.”

They didn’t do any of that.

The man lifted his gun. Or he tried to before Robie shot it out of his hand.

“Fuckit,” screamed the man, who hunched over, holding his injured hand.

The other two men now stepped back from Pete Clancy.

Robie eased farther into the room.

The injured man slowly straightened and looked over at Robie. “Okay, slick, I can tell that you know what you’re doing. So good for you. But why are you stickin’ your nose into our damn business?”

“I don’t know what your business is. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Why don’t you put down the gun and we can talk about it?”

“Pete, get over here, now,” said Robie, his gaze on the trio of men.

The injured man said, “Way I see it, there’s three of us and one of you. You might get two of us, but the last one will get you.”

“Well, why don’t I equal out the odds a bit then?” said Robie. With his left hand he pulled his spare Glock from his rear waistband and pointed both guns at the men.

“You got one dominant hand,” pointed out the man.

“I’m ambidextrous, just so you know. And at twelve feet or so, not so good for you.” He glanced at Pete. “Get over here, Pete.”

The man put his uninjured hand on Pete’s shoulder. “I think he should stay right here.”

“You act like you’re the one holding the guns.”

“Maybe I am.”

The man’s elbow hit the half-full can of beer that was on the desk. It spilled out and over the base of the desk lamp and its frayed power cord. There was a spark and the lights went out.

“Shoot him!” screamed the man.

Both his men drew their weapons and emptied their mags at the doorway. But Robie was no longer there.

The man on the right doubled over when Robie kneed him in the nuts. Then his right arm was wrenched up his back and Robie torqued it at an angle perpendicular to the man’s back, blowing out both the radius and ulna bones in his forearm, leaving it limp and useless.

And very painful.

The man screamed as Robie shoved him over the desk. The other man was reloading his weapon when Robie struck. He slammed the point of his elbow into the base of the man’s back. He cried out, jerked back, and managed to swing a fist at Robie. Robie took the hand, torqued the wrist back, and then wrenched it sideways, snapping the bone and then forcing it through the surface of the skin. He swung the arm around and jammed the exposed jagged wrist bone into the man’s gut.

The man dropped behind the desk.

The third man had knelt to the floor. When he rose he had a gun in his good hand.

Robie disarmed him with a two-stroke maneuver, a grip on the muzzle forcing the weapon down, followed by a forearm lock immobilizing the limb, coupled with a knee strike on the elbow, jamming it in a direction the bones normally didn’t go. The weapon once more fell to the floor as the man howled in pain.

Robie placed the muzzle of his Glock in the center of the man’s forehead.

“On the floor. Now.”

The man dropped to his knees.

“For Chrissakes,” exclaimed the man. “Who the fuck are you?”

Robie slammed the butt of his gun against the man’s temple, knocking him out. Then he gripped Pete by the hair and pulled him up.