The men would be getting ready to bum-rush the kitchen and front door, and with Fellows down and Billy useless and unarmed, I knew Joey and I alone couldn’t take them.

  And Hannah…

  I just realized that Hannah was still hiding behind the bar. The man hadn’t seen her, as he hadn’t shot her. I’d left her laying on the floor, tucked back into the corner, but still out in the open. He would have taken her out immediately upon entering, so the fact that he hadn’t meant…

  I heard a shuffling sound, then a high-pitched grunt, followed by a massive shattering of glass. I swiveled around the column and watched as the man, eyes directly on me, wobbled for a split-second and then fell, some sort of liquid and glass mixture sparkling down around his shoulders. A darker substance spread around his head and began pouring out onto the floor.

  And then, from around the corner of the bar, Hannah emerged.

  “Hurry,” she said, “he’s down, but I heard a few more in the kitchen. They’re going to be here in —”

  She didn’t get to finish the thought.

  25

  Two men burst through the open kitchen door, firing at everything and nothing all at once. I was already in motion, running and jumping over the invisible line that would, for at least a second or two, put me in view of the men guarding the front door. But I had to get across. I had to get back to Hannah’s side.

  They were firing at Joey or something on that side of the room, or they hadn't seen him yet and were just firing because undertrained mercenaries typically did exactly that when they found they had a loaded weapon in their hands and permission to use it. I was able to drop the first one quickly before his reptilian brain even recognized the threat, but the second man saw me and started to react. He kept firing, now engaging solely out of a sense of fury, adrenaline, and excitement, but his shots became more rhythmic and focused.

  I made it out of the no man’s land space in the center of the room and behind an overturned table, ducking to stay low enough to not be an easy target for Rafe outside. The shots continued, and I wondered if he’d even seen Hannah yet, who must’ve been still crouched or lying prone next to the dead guy whose blood was staining my wood floors.

  I waited, hearing the rounds landing around me. Three, two, one. And then, click.

  I almost laughed out loud. Idiot. I could practically hear the conversation Rafe had had with this goon. “You got fifteen shots, you fool, so don’t use them all at once.”

  And now he was experiencing the most terror-inducing feeling any man in battle can feel: needing to reload, just when it’s the other team’s side to start shooting.

  I rose and danced right, hoping to stay out of the way of a straight shot from the outside guys, and ran toward the second man who'd come in. I fired, but my shot was outpaced by Joey's two. All three hit, and the man sort of imploded in on himself as he went careening back toward the open kitchen door.

  Hannah was kneeling now by the bar, reaching for my hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll guard the kitchen. You need to get in there and start making more.”

  I knew what she was talking about — we needed more Molotovs. Our first Molotov had been a disastrous joke of a failure, but I knew what we’d done wrong. By tearing the rags into tattered pieces, they’d become too small to fit snugly enough in the top of the bottle, and upon impact it had fallen out. The bottle itself had been impressively sturdy, the result of many years of research and development by the manufacturer, hoping to prevent spillage and breakage during delivery. It probably wasn’t part of their plan to build a thin-walled Molotov cocktail bottle.

  I needed to get into the kitchen, so I could access the foolproof version of our fuel source — the super-high proof liquors from the moonshine.

  Joey was standing behind me, having come over from the front door. “I can’t hold it alone,” he said.

  I nodded. “Fellows?”

  “Dead. Took a quick one to the neck.”

  I nodded again. “Front door’s theirs, then. They’ll regroup, try to figure out if we’re all still alive in here, then they’ll be coming back in about a minute from now. Maybe sooner.”

  “So we focus on the kitchen? Maybe barricade ourselves in?”

  Hannah shook her head. “They’ll just toss in another grenade or two.”

  “But we can’t hold the front door.”

  “No,” she said. “We can’t. But this can.”

  She held up the plastic bottle of butane and another of Wray and Nephew overproof rum. She shoved another hand towel into the end of the butane, then lit it. She swirled it around a few times then hurled it at the front door. It went up in a brilliant blast of flame just inside the threshold, but almost immediately died down to a dull burn. It wouldn't last more than a minute, and even at its current burn rate, it would be easy enough to step over.

  “That was underwhelming,” I muttered.

  “I’m not done, Mason,” she said.

  She held the Wray and Nephews by the neck of the bottle, took a swig, winced, then handed it to me. “Throw that,” she said. “Hard.”

  I did as I was told and launched the bottle at the wall just behind the fiery mess of the butane, near the doorframe. It hit the frame, another perfect throw, and burst. The glass shattered and spread out, the razor-sharp fragments an excellent addition to our makeshift defenses. Then the overproof rum caught fire, and the butane was joined by a stronger, slower fuel. The flames licked upward, now about a foot off the floor.

  Not great, but certainly not nothing.

  “How much more of that do we have?” I asked.

  “None,” she said. “I honestly thought it would be bigger.”

  “It’ll have to do for now,” Joey said. “Hannah, guard the front door. Mason and I need to get those buckets.”

  We all snapped into action. Hannah had the shotgun now, waiting behind the bar and aiming toward the flames at the front door. Anyone entering would be deterred a bit by the fire, but they’d be able to get through our little gauntlet without much fuss. Hopefully then finding themselves staring down the business end of Hannah’s weapon help keep them at bay.

  But Joey and I were going to make that gauntlet pure hell. We just needed to get into the kitchen.

  26

  We poked our heads in and found it a mess — the shotgun blast to the door had splintered pieces of wood and drywall everywhere, and the drywall dust hung in the air, tiny particles of wall snow that made it seem as though we’d stumbled upon some sort of drug bust. We’d entered a snow globe of drywall.

  Two men lay dead on the floor, blood leaking down toward the drain in the center of the small room. I moved toward the buckets stacked in the corner while Joey started dragging one of the men's bodies to clear a space. I grabbed the first bucket I could find and pulled it down. It was heavy, but not unmanageable. I carried it back out into the main space, and Joey followed behind with another. Hannah was still there, waiting for an attacker that never came. It was possible they were waiting for the small fire we'd set to die down, or that they were regrouping and planning on coming in through the kitchen for their second attack.

  Either way, we needed to get the front of the bar closed to business as soon as possible. The plan was to make more of the little bombs, the Molotov cocktails, to have on hand when the mad rush of thugs came through my front door. Now that there was a good bit of flame on the floor near the threshold our defense would be stronger, every Molotov adding to the wall of fire.

  In the back of my mind, however, I knew there was a significant risk — we were literally playing with fire. The smoke alone could be dangerous enough to kill us all, and if Rafe decided he'd figured out what we were working at, he could simply close the doors and let us asphyxiate ourselves. The windows in the side of the building that had been blown out would help vent the smoke, but then we ran into the issue of the fresh oxygen coming in and making our flame and smoke problem bigger.

  All of that meant we had to act fast, but not too fast. If we simply made the front entrance a wall of fire, the men would decide to focus their attack on the kitchen or just wait us out. So we had to be ready, but not stupid.

  “Joey,” I said. “Any way to find out where these guys are? I’m putting something together.”

  “No, unfortunately. The camera line was cut. The one that went to —”

  He stopped. “What?” I asked.

  “They cut the camera line. The one that feeds the monitors and recording system here in the building.”

  “Right, which means there’s no way we can see what they’re up to.”

  “No, it means there’s no way we can see on the monitors what they're up to. When they installed the system, they told me there's a website, too. A place to check the feeds remotely."

  "But the power's out," Hannah said. "That means Internet and WiFi are down, too."

  “Right,” Joey said. “But I’ve still got service.” He held up his phone and showed me the little symbol that apparently meant he was right.

  “Good,” I said. “Give it to Hannah. I need your help with these.”

  He nodded, handing his phone to Hannah after typing in the web address. He told her the username and password and then grabbed his bucket of moonshine.

  I waited for him to join me right in front of the bar, knowing we were exposing ourselves to the possibility of a frontal attack if the men came in now, but also trusting that Hannah was holding the phone with one hand and manning the shotgun with the other.

  “I thought we were making more of the Molotov cocktails with these,” Joey said.

  “We are,” I muttered. “Just not with bottles.”

  He frowned but didn't say more.

  “Move yours over there, by Billy. Tell him to get into the bathroom. We need to check on Shalice anyway.”

  He ran through the center of the room, and I winced, waiting for a shot from the parking lot. None came. They’re on to us, I thought. They know we’ve got a way to defend ourselves.

  They could wait us out, but I knew Rafe wasn’t going to let Billy die. Not before midnight. I checked my watch. 11:46. Fourteen minutes until the money’s gone.

  That meant Rafe was getting antsy. We’d taken out some — half? — of his men, and so far they had nothing to show for it. It would probably take a few minutes for Rafe to get into Billy’s phone and get to what he needed, so I figured we had, at best, ten more minutes before Rafe himself drove a car through the wall and went nuts trying to kill us all.

  So they wouldn’t be waiting us out after all. We were in the endgame, and Rafe knew we’d won so far. We’d held our ground, and we weren’t all dead. He was running out of time — and patience.

  I watched Billy crouch-running back toward the bathroom, his hands on the back of his head like a hostage that had just been released. I saw Joey move toward the front wall of the building.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, Billy’s head poked out from around the corner of the hall. “Mason,” he said.

  I looked over at him.

  “She’s awake.”

  Shalice suddenly appeared as well. She was standing on her own, but Billy held her arm and supported it a bit. She was grimacing, holding her side.

  Joey raced over to her. “Are you — are you okay?” His voice was shaking.

  She nodded. “This bandage is tight as hell, but I can walk.”

  I nodded to myself. The plan is taking shape.

  I glanced over at Hannah to see if she'd made progress. She was squinting down at the phone but seemed to sense that I was staring at her.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s just hard to see. But from what I can tell, they’re congregating in the parking lot in front of the bar. Rafe’s there, too.”

  “You recognize him?”

  “No, but I saw a man walk over from where the cars are parked on the side of the building. There’s no one left on that side.”

  “And the back?”

  “That’s what I can’t tell,” she said. “Seems like I saw something move back there. Could be one guy, could be two. Could just be a shadow of a tree branch.”

  I thought about this for a moment. Please just be a shadow from a tree branch. I knew Rafe was getting antsy, and we’d already killed a handful of his guys. There wasn’t an unlimited supply, and he couldn’t just wait us out any longer. Maybe he had pulled his team together for one last raid through the front door.

  “Okay, great. Thanks. Keep your eye on the front door. I think that’s where they’re coming from. They decided to focus their forces, make it an all-out attack.”

  The reunited lovebirds looked back at me. “So what now?” Joey asked again.

  I took a deep breath. “Now we leave.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Now you leave.”

  27

  “Mason, I —”

  “Get back behind the bar, get the shotgun, and get Hannah ready to leave. You’re going out the back door. Billy will help Shalice, but I need you and Hannah to fight your way to the woods.”

  “It won’t work, Mason,” Joey said. “He’s going to be watching the bar. All of it.”

  “You heard Hannah,” I said. “There’s only one or two guys in the back, behind the kitchen door. Mostly there to make sure we don’t try to sneak out. But they have no idea we can see them. If we come out guns blazing, especially with the shotgun, we can take them out quickly and get into the woods.”

  “We?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You.”

  Hannah made a noise. “You’re not going with us?”

  “Rafe’s not going to let me win. He’s coming for me now. Like Billy said an hour ago, it was never really about money, it was about power. Initially, he was interested in the payday, the idea of making millions without much work.

  “But when Billy screwed him, he got pissed. He wanted Billy dead because Billy made him feel like a fool.”

  Billy spoke. “You don’t think he still wants me dead?”

  "Oh, without a doubt, Billy Bob," I said. "But you're no longer the primary target. I’m the one who owns the bar. I’m the one who’s killed a bunch of his men. I’m the one who's made his life a living hell for the last two hours.

  “You all are on his list, for sure. But you’re on it for helping me. He wants me dead.”

  There was silence for a few seconds, and I rechecked my watch. 11:49.

  “So we get to the woods, then what?”

  “Fishbait.”

  Billy, Shalice, and Hannah all looked at each other, but Joey was staring directly at me. He knew exactly what that meant. “Fishbait” was a term I’d come up with long ago, after trying to figure out a way to safely — meaning without the possibility of being detected — dump bodies. Joey or I, after taking out a mark, would head into the woods behind the bar and bring the body to a small, rusting fishing boat I kept tied to a stump.

  From there we’d take the body into the bay, tie it up nice and tight to a couple cinder blocks, bleach it to remove any possibility that it could somehow be traced back to us, and dump it.

  By the time any of the ropes and tape wore down enough to release the body, it wouldn’t be a body anymore but just some heavy bones that would fall to the ocean floor. Anything that could be buoyant would be long gone.

  Hence, “fishbait.”

  Joey knew I wasn’t telling him to dump Shalice, Hannah, and Billy, but to “disappear” them all. They needed to get gone. Billy seemed to think that Rafe’s men were everywhere, snooping from behind every corner. Perhaps that was true, but if Rafe was no longer eyeing Billy for a huge cash prize — or if there was no more Rafe to speak of — no one who worked for him would care about tying up his loose ends.

  I knew enough about how the dark world worked. If we offed Rafe tonight, someone would fill his shoes and take over whatever empire he had left. But they would be stupid to take up arms against his old enemies — especially since those same enemies were ones who’d opened his throne to the next king.

  It would be a risky move, for sure — trusting that I knew enough about people like Rafe to know that he'd be coming for me instead of following the four of them into the woods. But it was worth the risk because it was the only thing I could think of.

  Besides, there was more to the plan. There was unfinished business I had to take care of. But that business was not with Rafe, not with his men, not even with my bar.

  I looked at my ragtag group of bandits, hoping I had made myself clear enough. “Get outside, and get to the boat. They won’t follow you.”

  “And then?”

  “And then Joey will get you both to wherever you need to go.”

  “And then?” Hannah asked.

  I looked directly at her. I paused, unsure of what to say. I took a breath, let it out. Sighed. “And then… We’ll figure it out.”

  She was clearly not satisfied by that answer, but it was the best I could come up with.

  11:50.

  “They’re coming,” I said. “Ten minutes ’til midnight. If Rafe still wants Billy, he’ll do it now.”

  They all stood there, pondering this.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  Joey snapped into action, nearly taking out Billy and Shalice, who were slower to start. They all raced toward the bar and around the side, joined by Hannah and her shotgun. They ran into the kitchen, and I heard Joey whispering some instructions.

  I turned back to the front door, checked the magazine in my pistol, and took another deep breath.

  This is it. Showtime.

  My phone rang.

  28

  A few things happened at once. The phone was still ringing in my pocket, so I grabbed it — not realizing that I dropped the pistol to my other hand, which was hanging by my side. I turned around at the same time and focused on the front door.

  But in paying attention to my group’s exit through the kitchen, and allowing Hannah to close the connection to the online security feed, I’d not been paying much attention to the front door.

 

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