“Idiot,” he muttered. From the rear of the house, he could hear more breaking glass and bullets hitting wood. “One!” he called out toward Noah.
“Fuck you. I’m not playing,” Noah shouted in a playful singsong voice.
“No entrance through the basement,” JB announced when he jogged into the living room.
Rowe looked over his shoulder to find the man crouched down next to the big chair, using it as a bit of cover. He started to instruct JB to head to the back of the house and help Noah when the man raised his gun and fired off a few rounds. For a second, Rowe’s heart jerked to a hard stop and then rushed forward again when he heard pained cries from behind him. He looked around to find another man falling face forward through the front door in the same T-shirt and ski mask getup. Rowe hadn’t heard the guy’s approach. His attention had been on JB and the gunfire coming from Noah’s direction.
With a wide grin at Rowe, JB shouted, “One!”
“Fuck you both!” Noah sang out.
“Only one left, Noah,” Rowe called back, teasing.
With only three targets, it wasn’t much of a game. When he and Noah had been teamed up on missions, they’d played this game when their targets were well into the double digits. While he wasn’t particularly proud of turning their missions into a game, it was a way of coping with ending the lives of multiple people. The fact that those same people would have happily killed them if given the chance wasn’t always enough to let them sleep at night.
Rowe edged toward the front door, stepping over the outreached arm of the second dead man to look out the opening. The dark sedan with tinted windows still idled in the driveway. He couldn’t see the driver, but he had a feeling that the man was starting to panic. There was no question that he could see that two of his companions were dead in the front of the house. He had to be waiting for the third guy. Rowe weighed the idea of walking out to the car. There would be no sneaking.
But as he tried to formulate a plan, Noah shouted, “Got ’im!” and the car peeled out of the driveway in reverse.
“Come on, kids!” Rowe said.
The police had likely been called by one or more neighbors woken by the sound of gunfire. There was no reason to wait around for the cops to respond and answer a lot of questions they didn’t want to answer. They also didn’t have the benefit of having Lucas’s snazzy, sharklike lawyer on hand to smooth things over.
Dropping his gun to his thigh, Rowe led the way out of the house and across the lawn toward the Jeep. His head moved on a swivel, continuously swinging from side to side to make sure no one else was waiting in the shadows, but nothing moved. A quick glance at the houses surrounding Cate’s place revealed only a couple had turned on their lights, but he was sure that more had heard the shots. Those poor people were probably just hiding under their blankets, praying that the shooters left their street. They didn’t want to get involved, didn’t want to risk getting shot.
By the time he reached the Jeep, he looked over to find JB and Noah jogging across the lawn, also looking around the area with the same alertness. But there was no one. Erik was sorely underestimating them, and it was going to come back and bite the fucker in the ass. Rowe was almost insulted.
Jumping into the car, he jammed the key into the ignition and the engine roared to life. Noah and JB joined him in the Jeep and they tore off down the street, away from the approaching sirens. He was glad they’d removed the license plate before heading to Cates’s. It was unlikely anyone from the neighborhood would have written it down, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Before they returned to the penthouse, they would pull over at a twenty-four-hour fast-food joint to check over the truck for tracking devices. During the shooting, the driver could have placed a tracker on the truck. He didn’t think it was likely, but Rowe wasn’t going to risk giving away their hiding place just yet.
“Well, that wasn’t as helpful as I’d been hoping for,” JB said with an aggravated sigh. “I’m not saying that I feel bad for Cates. He deserved to die for what he did.”
“Disappointed you weren’t the one who put the bullets in his chest?” Noah asked.
Rowe looked into the rearview mirror to see JB give a little shrug as he continued to stare out the window at the blur of neon lights from the passing shopping plaza. “I don’t know. Not sure I could have done that. But I would have liked to beat the shit out of him before handing him over to the cops.”