Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

a measure of uncertainty, which meant I wasn’t going in through the front door just yet. Last time I had been here seemed like a long time ago. Before the killing had started.

My assumption now was hostile intent. Even if Deckart and Willets had not pulled the trigger themselves, I was sure that they were involved in the arrangement.

I considered clemency for a moment. The guy named Jerry might be innocent of any wrongdoing. He might just be a roommate. But I’m not a judge, and the law I lay down is different from that of the courts. One way to look at life is as a bunch of choices. Not everything is a choice, but every choice is important. And Jerry had made choices, now he was going to have to face up to the consequences.

I climbed down. Made it to the yard and stayed behind another big spruce, about fifteen feet back in the woods. I hung the Remington by the strap from a branch on the forest side of the tree. I went into the smokehouse looking for supplies. I found what I needed.

In Alaska, TV doesn’t come from cables buried underground by a guy with a shovel. It comes from satellite dishes attached to rooftops and linked into electricity from the main supply. I found the link box around the back of the house and pulled out the cable. I stepped back into a dark spot. Jerry would need a minute to track the issue to the outside, which would be moving out of his comfort zone on the couch. He’d probably rather stay in there. But I figured he’d come out, eventually.

It had looked like a good game.

Three minutes later the kitchen door opened with a squeak. The screen door bounced back on the spring and rattled against the frame. Soon after that, Jerry came around the corner with a flashlight. He had the beam scanning along where the aluminum siding meets the concrete foundation. Looked like he didn’t know where the box was, and there wasn’t any good reason why he should have.

When he found the box, Jerry froze up, an understandable reaction. It isn’t as if a cable gets ripped out of a junction box by accident. Of course, by then it was too late. I had the point of my knife blade at the base of his skull. I spoke very quietly, but clearly, so he could understand the words and follow the instructions. My mouth was just behind his left ear. His shoulders hunched up tight.

I took the flashlight out of Jerry’s hand and turned it off and stuck it in my pocket. Otherwise, he was unarmed. I said, “We are going to talk, Jerry. Quietly. It won’t be pleasant, but you will survive if you are honest.”

Jerry’s head dropped down on his chest. His voice contained a quiver of fear. He knew that I was not going to be very nice with him. “I have nothing to do with this, with any of it.”

“With what exactly, Jerry?”

He didn’t answer. I walked Jerry over to the edge of the woods. “Where are you taking me, man?”

I said nothing. I needed to know a couple of things, and I didn’t have the patience to say please.

Thirty-Nine

The wire spool I had taken from the smokehouse rested at the base of the tree. The gauge had been good enough for the job of hanging fish to cure. The wire was thin steel and strong, and I figured it would be enough for another kind of job, similar, but different. Jerry saw it there, and I could see his head rotating on his thin neck, moving so that his eyeballs could trace the wire up to where it was looped over a branch, and back down again to where I had fashioned a noose. The Remington was hung close by, and Jerry’s eyes settled on that for a moment.

He started to rattle with fear. When I wrapped the wire twice around his neck Jerry went inert, total paralysis. My foot went into the little noose at ground level, stabilizing the rig. I said, “Jerry, get up on your toes, like a ballerina.”

He shivered. “What?”

I said nothing. He had heard me. Since he wasn’t doing it, I did it for him. I grabbed him one-handed by the neck and lifted him about four inches. I looked down and saw his toes just about brushing the ground. I stepped down on the wire wrapped around my foot, like the gas pedal in a car. It had the effect of tightening the steel wire around Jerry’s neck. Now, he was forced onto his toes. I split the balance between Jerry’s neck and my foot. Forty percent Jerry, sixty percent foot. The wire went taut and his head jerked up.

I said, “I stomp hard enough, your head might come off, no guarantees.” He couldn’t speak, so I released the bite a touch. He was swinging around a little too freely. I steadied Jerry’s body and turned him to face me. He flinched seeing me for the first time. I realized that I must have looked frightening to him, all big and malevolent.

He was shivering. “So now tell me about you and your friends. Tell it like a story that I can easily understand.”

“What did I do, man? I have nothing to do with them.”

I said, “Treat me like a child and start from the beginning. I need to get a feeling for your basic existence, simple as that may be.”

He looked at me wildly, not comprehending. He couldn’t move his head, so his eyeballs roamed freely in their sockets. I saw something like conscious thought going on in there. Then he tried to express himself. He said, “You mean like what we’re doing here, in this house, like who I am?”

I said, “Good place to start, Jerry.”

He said, “We’re waiting for the boat to leave. What do you think we’re doing?”

“Slowly. Take me through it.”

“The Emerald Allure. The