Blowback, p.2
Blowback, page 2
part #2 of Bear Logan Series
The light left her eyes a second later. She went still, her unseeing gaze looking past him. Bear didn’t have to turn around to know she had been searching for Derek. Bear checked her pulse just in case, but she was gone.
Instincts kicked in. Bear grabbed the pistol a few feet away and made his way to the door. He counted to three to ready himself, then pushed the door open and scanned the street outside. Deserted. There wasn’t a ton of foot traffic on the outskirts of town, but you could always count on seeing one or two lost tourists or an older couple bickering on their way back from the market. The shots must’ve sent the stragglers scurrying.
The gunman was nowhere in sight. Bear could’ve gone after him—the island wasn’t that big—but he looked down at his hands. He didn’t remember touching Sophia anywhere other than her neck, but her blood was everywhere. And now his fingerprints were on the handgun.
So Bear fought against the instincts that had initially told him to track down the shooter and kill him, and instead listened to the ones that were telling him to go back inside and wait for the authorities. If he made a spectacle of himself by waving a gun around town, it would only make matters worse. No one knew who he was, but that didn’t mean getting arrested wouldn’t increase the chance of a red flag being raised. For all he knew, Frank was just waiting for him to screw up so he could send in the dogs.
It took the authorities ten minutes to get to the scene of the crime. Bear had calmly walked back inside to see if anyone needed any help. The place was deserted, all except for the two bodies. No one else had been injured, it seemed, or if they had, not so bad that they couldn’t get away.
Bear wanted to close Sophia’s eyes and pick up Derek from his awkward position at the table, but he resisted. He would already have plenty of questions to answer about the blood on his hands and the firearm with his fingerprints. The last thing he wanted to do was make it worse by tampering with the crime scene just because he couldn’t stand to see his friends looking this way.
He cursed at himself and felt a flare of anger so hot and deep that it drove him to his knees. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in this bar. Not in this town. Not on this island. He should’ve disappeared somewhere remote like Jack had told him to. Get off the grid. Keep your head down. Wait until we know our next move.
They still had to find Thorne and figure out what he was really up to. Their last meeting with the man, when they had tracked him to New York City, had proven that Thorne was better than they had given him credit for. With several snipers bearing down on them, Jack and Bear had only gotten away because Thorne had allowed them to. It hadn’t sat well with Jack. God knows neither one of them liked to be outmaneuvered. But it proved that they were in over their heads. They needed to take a step back for a while. Maybe something would come to them.
So Jack went left and Bear went right. He ended up in St. Lucia. It was meant to be a stopover on his way to anywhere else, but one night turned into two and two nights turned into six weeks. He blamed it on the sun. And the beer. And Sophia and Derek’s kindness. Bear had felt almost normal for the first time in forever, and that had been his downfall.
No, he thought, looking over at Derek and Sophia’s dead bodies. That had been their downfall. They’re the ones who paid the price for your stupidity.
Bear wasn’t sure how long he’d been on his knees like that before both the back and front doors flew open and several officers filed in, guns raised, shouting at him in accented English.
“Drop your weapon! Hands in the air! No sudden movements, or we’ll shoot!”
Bear hadn’t even realized he was still gripping the pistol. He looked down at it, contemplated his options. But he didn’t have any. He let the pistol slip from his fingers and thud to the ground. Then he slowly raised his hands and clasped them behind his head. Strong hands brought one arm down roughly behind him, and then the other. The cold metal of a pair of handcuffs encircled his wrists and brought Bear immediately out of his stupor.
The head officer in front of him, a broad man with dark skin and sharp eyes, lowered his weapon and disappeared back out the door. A few seconds later, he emerged again, this time with an older woman at his side. She was wiry and hunched over, like gravity had years ago started to eat away at her. She was shaking, her eyes never quite looking in the direction of Bear or the dead bodies.
“Is this the man you saw enter with a gun?” the officer asked.
“Yes, yes,” the woman replied. Her voice was watery and quiet.
“I need you to say that again, very clearly,” the officer asked.
She still didn’t look at Bear. “Yes, this is the man with the gun. I saw him.”
The officer looked over at one of his deputies and nodded. The other man led the old woman away. Bear was forced to his feet. He was a head and a half taller than the lead officer, but that didn’t seem to intimidate him.
“I knew them. They were good people.” He stepped closer to Bear, his fists balled tight. “They were good people.”
Bear swallowed hard. He knew. He had seen it firsthand every day since he’d arrived in St. Lucia. But despite the injustice of it all, and despite the fact that the real killer was still out there, Bear couldn’t say anything. Even though he hadn’t pulled the trigger, part of him thought he deserved the handcuffs anyway.
Chapter Three
Bear’s knees had been forced up to his chest as he was put into the back of the police cruiser. Most cars couldn’t accommodate his large frame. It never made road trips any easier. And this was the worst kind of road trip. The officer in charge of transporting him back to the small St. Lucian jail kept glaring at him from the rearview mirror. Bear didn’t look away from his gaze. Regardless of his self-imposed guilt, Bear didn’t pull the trigger and he wasn’t about to act like he did.
The trip was short, but it still felt good to stretch his legs when he finally unfolded himself from the car. He was met by two additional officers and led by the elbows toward the tiny precinct. Bear made sure not to give them a reason to handle him more roughly than they already were. He kept his eyes straight ahead and didn’t put up a fight when they shoved him roughly inside a cell with four other men.
The local jail on St. Lucia was small. It had three cells, each filled with an odd mixture of locals and tourists. The stench of alcohol hit Bear as soon as he walked inside. He figured most of his cellmates were there because of the bottle, but a few looked a little sharper, a little more hardened.
Bear turned in his cell after the door closed behind him and stuck his arms through the bars, waiting for one of the officers to remove the cuffs from around his wrists. They were starting to pinch.
A tall, thin officer looked him up and down, the disgust evident on his face. “Murderers don’t get the same comforts as everyone else.”
Bear bit his tongue. His trademark sarcasm wasn’t gonna do him any favors here.
Instead, he turned around and eyed his roommates. There was only one bed, which was occupied by a man Bear’s size. His eyes were clear, so Bear figured he was in there for something more than disorderly conduct. He had a scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down to his jaw and over to the tip of his chin, as if someone tried to carve his face like a Thanksgiving turkey.
“You got a problem?” the man asked. He sat up and leaned forward, holding a fist up in front of his face. “I could take care of it for you.”
“Take it easy, man. Not looking for trouble.”
Bear walked to the other side of the room and leaned up against the wall. He was fairly certain he could take the other man, but Bear had been in the cell for a solid thirty seconds. He wasn’t about to rock the boat just yet. Not until he could get a better bead on the rest of his roommates.
There was a man sitting in the corner, sleeping. His mouth hung open, exposing several yellow teeth. Drool ran down the side of his mouth. The strongest stench of liquor was coming from that area, so Bear figured the man wouldn’t pose a threat. He’d sleep for the next twelve hours.
A third man stood at the bars, clinging to them like they were his lifeline. He stayed as far away as possible from the man on the cot and kept throwing furtive glances over his shoulder. He was the only other white man in the cell besides Bear. Tourist, maybe.
“There’s been some kind of mistake,” the man mumbled to himself. He sounded like he was on the edge of tears. “Please. Please let me have my phone call. I need to call my wife. Please.”
The officers on the other side of the cell just ignored him, along with the desperate voices that carried over from the two additional cells. Even though this man was dressed in a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks, it looked like he had been in them for at least three or four days.
The last man in the cell was small, at best half Bear’s height. He looked frail and weak, but his eyes were sharp. He wore khaki pants and a crumpled polo, and a bowler hat sat atop his head. It looked like he’d blow away in a strong wind, but there was something about him that made Bear look twice. The man looked back. It was a quick, timid glance, but Bear felt like those three seconds were enough for this other guy to read him like a book. But what did he see? And what would he do with that information?
One thing all three of the men had in common, though, was the fact that they weren’t in handcuffs. Bear wondered how long the officer would stay posturing like this. He wasn’t about to hold his breath.
Bear had been in tight spots before. Most of the time he had Jack at his side. That’s because it was usually Jack’s fault they were in a tight spot to begin with, but Bear would’ve given anything to have him there now. Jack would make matters worse—he wasn’t exactly good at following the rules—but things always got better after they got worse.
Maybe Bear just needed a catalyst.
Bear pushed off the wall and leaned against the bars next to the tourist. There were four desks in the room outside the cell. There were officers walking back and forth, carrying paperwork or drinking coffee or laughing like there weren’t a dozen drunken inmates six feet away from them.
There was one officer still sitting at his desk. It was the tall, thin one that had refused to remove the cuffs. Bear cracked his neck on one side, then the other. There was no telling what would happen here, or how rough the officers got with their prisoners. The precinct was fairly clean and orderly, but it didn’t look like the shepherds cared much about their flock.
“Hey,” Bear called out. He saw the officer stiffen, but the man didn’t turn around. “Hey, Buddy. C’mon. I need to piss.”
“There’s a drain in the floor,” the officer called out over his shoulder.
Bear turned around and, sure enough, there was a small drain on the floor. So maybe that acrid scent wasn’t just from the guy in the corner.
“What about lunch? My meal kind of got interrupted.”
That hit a nerve. The man stood up so fast, his desk screeched across the floor. In two steps he was in front of Bear. “You want to say that again?”
Bear didn’t back down. “I said my meal got interrupted when my friends were killed right in front of me.”
The officer put his hand on his gun. Bear didn’t miss the movement, but he didn’t give the man the satisfaction of looking away from his damning stare.
“You mean when you killed Sophia and Derek. For all I care, you can starve.”
The man looked Bear up and down one more time and walked away. Bear sighed. Jack was better at getting on people’s nerves than he was.
“Do I at least get a phone call?” Bear called out.
The tourist spoke next to him. “Good luck.” He laughed, but it was hysterical, like the man was on the edge of a breakdown. “I’ve been trying for two days. They won’t let me call my wife. Or my lawyer.” He called out at their captors. “This is unconstitutional! I have rights!”
Bear waved away the comment. “They can say they’re understaffed and overrun with delinquents. Lets them get away with anything.”
Between one breath and the next, the entire mood of the room shifted. Bear felt more than heard that the large man had gotten up and crossed the room to stand behind him. Moving slowly and deliberately, Bear turned to face him. The other man’s face was a mask of anger.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Bear said. He held up his handcuffed hands, hoping it would make him less threatening.
“Derek gave me a job when no one else would,” the man said. “Sophia made sure I had food when my girl kicked me out of the apartment. They were good people.”
Bear froze. He had a feeling there wasn’t going to be an easy way out of this one. “I know they were good people. They helped me out too.”
The man took a step forward. “You killed them.”
Bear stood his ground. “I didn’t.”
“That’s not what Jenkins said over there. You calling him a liar?”
“I am,” Bear said. “He wasn’t there. He didn’t see what happened.”
The big man looked down at Bear’s hands. Bear made the mistake of looking down at them, too. They were still covered in Sophia’s blood. When he looked up again, all he saw was a fist coming at his face without any time to do anything but take the hit.
Bear stumbled back and knocked into the tourist, who started calling out for help. Bear scrambled across the room and stood by the smaller man while getting his bearings again. Just when the room came back into focus, there was another fist coming at him. He took another hit, but at least this time he was prepared for it. Didn’t stop his nose from gushing blood, though.
The other guy was nearly as big as Bear, but not as fast. The man thought he could get another shot in, but Bear’s recovery was damn near instantaneous. He threw up his hands, cursing the cuffs that wouldn’t allow him to throw a real punch, and blocked the next two attacks. The man was relentless, but Bear had honed his survival instinct into a weapon to be reckoned with.
Bear clasped his hands together and brought his combined fists down like a hammer. The man’s knees buckled but he didn’t go down. Instead, he charged. Bear had just enough time to get a leg up and place it in the man’s gut, shoving him away and knocking him back into the other two in the cell.
Just as Bear was about to launch himself forward and land a hit that would put the other man down, two pairs of hands grabbed his arms from the other side of the bar and held him back.
“Fuck him up, Javier,” one of the men behind him said. It didn’t sound like Jenkins, the tall officer.
Javier grinned and wiped the blood from his brow, then stalked toward him. Bear leveraged himself against the bars and the people holding him back and swung his leg up and around. The kick would’ve landed harder if Bear had been wearing boots instead of sandals, but the result was the same. Bear’s foot caught the other man on the side of the head and drove him face first into the wall. The crunch of bone ricocheted around the room before he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
There was a collective intake of air, like there always was when someone had obviously been seriously injured. Bear didn’t pause. He wrenched one arm out of the grip of one of the men behind him, spun around, and pulled one of the second man’s hands through the bars. One hand wrapped around the officer’s wrist, while the other pushed against the elbow, the cuffs digging into Bear’s skin as they were stretched as far as they’d go. Between the jail cell’s bar and Bear’s hand, the man’s arm would give first.
Bear looked up at the officer, whose eyes were wide with terror. Bear leaned forward and whispered to him. “We’re both aware that I could snap your arm like a twig and shatter your elbow, right? Nod if you agree.” The man nodded frantically. “And we’re both aware that I’m choosing not to, right? Nod.” The man nodded again, tears in his eyes
Bear let the moment hang for another breath, and then let go. The officer pulled his arm through the opening and backed up against the far wall. He looked like a rookie, and Bear was sure this was the closest he had ever gotten to someone who was being accused of murder.
The second officer was Jenkins. He had pulled his gun and was aiming it at Bear, who raised his hands in front of him and backed up to the bed. He sat down, arms still raised, and waited for someone to do something.
It was the small man who moved first. Slowly, gingerly, he walked over to Javier and placed a pair of fingers against his neck. He looked up at Jenkins. “He’s still alive.”
Jenkins didn’t take his eyes off Bear. “Ramirez. Open the door. Pull Javier out.” When the rookie officer stuttered through an excuse, Jenkins cut him off. “Now, Ramirez!”
Bear watched as Ramirez opened the cell with shaking hands and dragged Javier out by his ankles. A smear of blood followed him on the way out. But Bear didn’t have any regrets. He wanted a catalyst and he got one.
He put a hand to his nose and wiped away more blood. He just wished it hadn’t come to blows. That wasn’t going to help his case. But it was worth a try anyway.
“Hey,” Bear called out. Jenkins turned around slowly. His gun was still out, but at least it was pointing at the floor now. “Can I get my phone call now?”
Jenkins stared at him for a solid thirty seconds before turning away and dealing with Javier.
“So that’s a no, then?” Bear yelled after him.
Chapter Four
After two days, the drunk man in the corner of the cell gained some semblance of consciousness and was allowed to leave. Bear figured he’d be back before long.
The cell felt downright spacious with only Bear and the tiny man sharing the room. When they were finally alone, the other man introduced himself as George. There was no exchanging of stories or sympathies, but there was an unspoken camaraderie there. Bear figured the man hadn’t been allowed to sleep on the bed while Javier was king of the cell, so Bear spent that night on the floor.
