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

and home in on target. As I closed in, their headlight beams reflected off my Land Cruiser and I saw Deckart and Willet’s faces congealed in a single ghastly white-strobed impression of terror, a millisecond before the end.

The Toyota was an older model with a steel body. A heavy utility vehicle designed to withstand anything that man and nature could throw at it. Three and a half tons of military grade steel exploded into the Subaru’s fiberglass shell.

No contest.

The front end of the Subaru shattered into thousands of pieces as I drove the vehicle in. The block exploded right through the Subaru’s smaller engine, dislodging it from the shell and thrusting it through the dashboard and into the cab, crushing everything in its path.

The crash took less than a quarter of a second. That quarter-second absorbed all movement and it was suddenly deathly still. Only the sound of hissing from severed tubes and crushed electrical work remained. The impact happened at an angle, so the majority of force punched through into the passenger side. I came out of the Toyota with the Glock ready.

In the passenger seat, Willets was a pulverized mess. Like someone had introduced a strawberry pie to a stump grinder. Around the other side, Deckart was alive, but not doing well. I came up to his window, shattered into half a million pieces all over him. His head was lolling on a broken neck. The mustache had somehow remained connected to his upper lip.

I said, “Did you do that to the moose?”

He was just about alive enough to look at me with one eye. The other eye didn’t seem to be working, but this one worked just fine. He was shocked and fatally damaged, but he might have had an hour of life left in him. Who knows, these days medical know-how can perform wonders.

I said, “Answer my question. The moose.”

He looked at me again with that one eye, confused, but largely coherent. I realized that he couldn’t speak. Maybe his brain was attempting to make words, but the rest of him just couldn’t understand what the brain wanted, couldn’t get the message because the wires were cut. Which meant that Deckart wasn’t going to answer my question, so I put a 9mm bullet through his head. Not a fancy shot, just a single round into the forehead.

I recalled mentioning to Ellie that Deckart wouldn’t last the week. Sometimes you just know things about a person.

A phone rang from somewhere in the destroyed car.

I looked at Deckart. Wasn’t coming from him because I’d taken his phone. I looked at Willets. There wasn’t much to look at, more like some kind of birthday party accident. But the ringing was coming from over there. I went around to the passenger’s side, caved in and collapsed into what used to be a human form. The phone rang, insistent and annoying. Not to mention loud. I looked in. There it was, a rectangular plastic thing, somehow intact. I guess whatever had been around it was softer than the phone, which had survived. I reached into the gore and plucked it out.

I pressed the button. When Willets had been alive and breathing and talking, he’d had a whiney voice, the few times I’d heard it. I tried to do an impression.

“Yeah.”

A woman said, “You’re on speaker. The board is here. We wanted to get a status report.”

A man’s voice cut in. “Is it done?”

I said nothing. I was listening. Two people so far, but I had the impression there were more.

The woman said, “Can you hear us?”

A third male voice. “They might be out of reach in the woods. Maybe we should hang up and call again, get a better connection.”

I said, “It’s done. Now I’m coming for you.”

Silence on the other side. Then the woman speaking urgently and quietly. “That’s not Deckart. Not the other one either.”

There was a frantic round of whispering that I couldn’t understand. Then the woman’s voice once again, not fussed to whisper. “It’s the guy. Keeler. That right?”

I said nothing.

A fourth male voice spoke quietly in the back. “Means the others are dead, so don’t finalize the gift card credits.”

The woman sighed. She said, “Keeler. We admire your work. It doesn’t need to go any further. Will a cash payment do? We can probably reach six figures.”

I said, “There is no price. I’m going to drink your blood and then spit it out so the sharks can feed.”

Silence. The third guy’s voice came, quiet in the background. “Does that mean he’s near the water?”

The woman said, “You’re making a mistake, Keeler. We’re very well protected here. Really. You can’t buy better protection than what we have.”

The second guy said, “You won’t last the hour, Keeler. Just take the money. Cash, wire, crypto. You name it and we can handle it. Otherwise, it’s just a shame. One more body to add to all the rest. Unnecessary, unfortunate.”

I said, “You can’t buy protection from me. Nobody can. If I were you, I’d consider some kind of collective suicide. I hear there’s euphoria before communal death, except for the last guy or girl left standing. They get lonely. Maybe you’d be best off drawing straws or rock paper scissors. I don’t know for sure if suicide is the answer, maybe there is no answer to your problem.”

The woman said. “That’s bullshit. You won’t make it past the first perimeter. But let me ask you something, Keeler. What is it all for? Why the useless crusade?”

I said, “That’s a good question. I’ll ask myself that once it’s over. But right now it’s game on and I’m starting to enjoy myself.”

The fourth guy spoke to the others. “So, he’s just insane.”

There was silence and the phone line crackling. I pictured a conference table, oak or maybe teak. Four executives gathered around. Maybe they had a tray of sandwiches and a coffee machine, bottled spring water and chocolate chip cookies. And then I pictured a package of Mister Lawrence cookies. I hadn’t