Blush(93)
A dozen snipers could easily remain concealed here for hours. He didn’t have fucking hours. Perhaps not even minutes. All it would take was one killer to double back to the house—
Cruz focused. Take out the four he knew about, trust Mia had done as instructed. Get back to her alive.
Who was he dealing with? Strengths? Weaknesses? Skill level?
Richard Lemon. Cruz ID’d him when he got a brief glimpse of the guy’s frizzy orange hair as he darted behind a large headstone before getting off two shots in quick succession, covering his shit-for-brains partner so he could get closer. Dick’s clown hair made him easy to spot among the moldy, mottled-gray tombs. Dumb fuck should have worn his customary knit cap.
The moonlight spotlighted Lemon’s partner as he disappeared off to the left behind a tall tomb with chipped plaster and a watchful guardian angel perched on top. Medium height. Bent shoulders. Thin, dark hair, dramatically receding hairline, bald spot. Beak of a nose. Kevin Muncie. Yeah. That fit.
The ex-military sharpshooters usually tag-teamed. They were crack shots. If a client wanted a clean hit, they were the two to do it. They weren’t the brightest bulbs in the pack, but they knew the business end of their Lapua Magnum sniper rifles.
They’d never met, but Cruz had studied them, seen their pictures and rap sheets, just as he did with anyone in his line of work. Knowledge was power.
Their MO: gunshot to the back of the head. Always accurate. They were good, damn good. When they were sober they were considered the best snipers for hire. But word on the street was Muncie had a drinking problem, and Lemon liked his nose candy. As indicated by their miss tonight, one or both of them were impaired.
Or the shooter had been one of the unknown others.
Fuck. Who were the other two, and where the hell were they? The hair on the back of his neck prickled, imagining them sneaking into the house to confront Mia. . . . Cruz’s heartbeat kicked up, pounding in his throat, and he consciously lowered it.
Four men working together? Or a fucking coincidence that they’d all converged tonight? One of the quartet thought he’d be the last man standing for the huge payout after they hit Mia. Or planned to make sure he was. It occurred to Cruz that there might be more than just the four of them.
Which begged the fucking question: How had the four killers found Mia in this backwater? She trusted the cousin, Todd, and Blush’s security guy. Neither, she claimed, knew her present location.
Michael Ordway at Davis and Kent had received the mailing address in New Orleans yesterday, but had not put anything in the mail because of the new development. One of the three men had betrayed Mia. One of them wanted her dead. One of them had hired at least five hit men to do the job: himself and whoever else was out here. Clouds drifted over the bright light of the moon, creating moving shadows in the black-and-white cityscape to deceive the eye.
Time to draw everyone out into the open where he could deal with them. Fast. “Give it up, Dickhead,” Cruz yelled from behind an enormous ivy-covered mausoleum with a kneeling angel at prayer atop the arch over the ornate, rusty scrolled wrought-iron door. It was the biggest and most elaborate crypt in the forgotten Louisiana country cemetery. “This hit is mine. Fuck off. Go back to your hole in Laredo.”
Lemon’s hiss of surprise sawed through the thick night air. “How the fuck do you know where I li—”
“Shut it, asshole!” Muncie hissed. Much closer now. Up ahead fifty feet.
Cruz listened to the asinine exchange as he tuned in to other footfalls. A slight breeze came up to ruffle his hair with damp fingers, sending a swirl of leaves rustling down the walkway in front of the concrete bone house. Between the lightly dancing leaf shadows across the way, he glimpsed, rather than heard, a man hiding two hundred feet north of his location. He was crouched near a dark gray crumbling tomb with Debeneaux engraved along the top face of it. A family crest was centered below the name.
Two solid granite panels sealing the tomb had etchings of the people’s names and birth and death dates engraved on the front. It looked decades newer than the shadowy pockmarked tomb behind him. Cruz crouched in a wedge of denser blackness, as still and dark as the shadow itself.
The man sneaking up behind him smelled faintly of Brut cologne—moron. His tread disturbed the small twigs in the damp weeds. Under two hundred pounds, slight limp. Thus far he hadn’t gotten off any shots. Maybe the guy was smarter than Lemon and Muncie. Maybe. Maybe he was smart enough to bring a handgun to the party instead of a long-distance rifle. Maybe.
He’d be dead before the night was over.
Definitely.
“Looked pretty fucking cozy to me, back there in the kitchen,” Lemon taunted, revealing his exact position. Cruz stepped back lightly, moving slowly, his feet making very little sound on the hard stone surround of the crypt. “What happened? Suddenly decided you’d rather fuck the mark than off her? Maybe we’ll take a turn before we finish the job. No hard feelings.”