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

I said, “Let the computer fall off.” He shrugged the laptop off and let it tip to the floor. I saw the screen, in motion. A crowd of Vikings were running across a glacier.

“Weapon?” He nodded. I said, “Where?”

He said, “I’m sitting on it.”

I said, “Sit up slowly on the bed and let me see.”

The giant swung his legs over to the side of the bed. He was wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. The gun was lying there on the sheet. It was a Smith & Wesson special .357 magnum with a fancy blue grip. I kept the Glock on him and reached for the S&W. His eyes were dull, locked on mine. I stood back and put the weapon in my jacket pocket, right in there with the Remington rounds. The big guy made a sound, like kissing teeth. He said, “My uncle gave me that gun.”

Nice gun. Five round capacity. Air-weight revolver with punch.

I said, “Sorry pal, I’m concerned about your welfare. If you got tempted to use this on me, I might have to take you down. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

He said, “I had nothing to do with Deckart and Willets yesterday. Those aren’t my people.”

“Why the gun?”

“Because I’m living with psychopaths is why.”

I said, “Who’s the psychopath?”

He said, “Alaska. People like you. You know how it is up here. Constitutional carry state. No registration or permit required, and no background check. Everyone can open carry and nobody gives a shit. Which makes me feel like it’d be a good idea to carry a gun. Okay?”

I said, “The girl the other night. What were you doing to her?”

The giant had long eyelashes, lined up in a horizontal half moon behind the reading glasses. Good-looking guy. He said, “What about the girl?”

I said, “What were you planning on doing to her, before I put you to sleep?”

I expected him to blink, to be surprised that it was me who had put him down. But he was not surprised, didn’t blink. He said, “Shit. That was you? I wasn’t doing anything. It was a warning was all. I was bluffing her, trying to get her scared.”

“I guess that wouldn’t be too difficult for you.”

He shook his head again. “Not my fault I was born like this.”

I said, “Tonight. What happened?”

“No idea what you’re talking about. I’ve been watching movies all night. Half naked in bed. Before you came in and started ripping and robbing that is.”

“Chinese food?”

“I don’t eat that shit.”

I said, “Healthy living?”

He said, “I’m a pescatarian.”

“What’s that?”

“I only eat vegetables and fish.”

I said, “Watch the game?”

The giant shook his head. “That’s Jerry, I don’t like sports.”

I said, “If you don’t like sports, what do you like?”

He said, “I was watching Norwegian TV just now. Before you came in. There’s a series about Vikings. You wouldn’t understand, it’s in Norwegian.”

“You’re Norwegian.”

“That’s right.”

I found his wallet on the dresser. California driver license. Not a veteran. Name of Jakob Hagen. I studied the picture. No glasses. He looked frightening. But speaking to him was different. I tried it out. “Jakob Hagen.” Hagen looked at me. He nodded. I said, “You don’t look like a Jakob.”

He said, “You’d get used to it.”

I said, “Where are the others?”

“Out getting drunk, like a bunch of idiots.”

“Tell me about your crew.”

He said, “Hardly a crew. We’re stuck here for the last week waiting for the damn boat to leave.”

I said, “Security work.”

“Cruise ship gigs pay good.”

“Who asked you to scare the girl?”

“Deckart.” He looked down at his knees. “I didn’t know she’d get so offended.”

“What did Deckart tell you?”

“He said the girl pissed him off. Wanted her to shit her pants. Whatever, I guess I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what Deckart said. He said he didn’t know anything about that.”

The big guy shrugged.

I looked at him carefully. He was hiding something. It wasn’t quite so straight forward. All that overt confidence was masking something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I looked again at his driver license. I put it back in the wallet. Then I put the wallet back on the dresser. On my way out of the room I said, “I’m keeping the gun.”

Hagen made no response. He looked like he wanted to say something.

I stepped back in. “What is it?”

He shook his head and blinked. “Nothing.”

I took another look at him. Top to bottom. Big and muscular guy with almost no clothes on. Something was bothering me, and then I realized what it was. No tattoos. In every other way Hagen looked like a guy who would have tattoos, but he didn’t. I looked at him for a long moment, before figuring that a lack of tattoos was not exactly a capital offense.

Back in the living room, the couch didn’t contain a hog-tied ex-marine. It contained nothing but the wire, unraveled and untwisted. The kitchen door was wide open. I figured Jerry had managed to get loose and was gone. Maybe back to Fresno. That would be the right call, as far as Jerry’s health and well being was concerned.

I went out and stood on the deck looking across the yard at the dark woods. Nothing moving. Nothing happening. Just animals staying silent and alert until they could relax once again. I came down the skeleton staircase to the yard, then walked around the side of the house and looked out front. Willets’ Subaru was gone. There was an old pickup truck parked nose-in. Maybe a Ford. On the other side of it was a second vehicle. Not a truck, a recent model Nissan. A practical car, white and very dirty. The vehicles would belong to Jerry and the Viking. Except for the tourists and the hikers, people in Alaska don’t tend to walk very much. I couldn’t see the front of the vehicles because the drive was blocked by a line of low bushes.

Forty

I crossed the yard and retrieved the Remington. I got about forty feet deep