HARDCORE: Storm MC(103)

“Dice was always more my game anyway,” he said.



“Classy winner,” Missy laughed. “At least you didn't accuse me of cheating.”



“I'm still not entirely sure you didn't. How the hell did you get so good?”



Missy shrugged. “Cards are just numbers. I'm no math geek, but handling the product and the money at the Knife keeps my counting skills pretty sharp. As long as I can more or less keep track of which cards have already been played and which ones haven't...”



“I didn't realize I was sitting down to play cards with goddamn Rain Man,” Cain grumbled. “If that's how you play, the game was kind of over before it began, wasn't it?”



“Would you rather play something else instead?”



“Other than cards, we don't exactly have a lot of options around here, do we?” he said. “Unless you want to make paper boats or play Tic-Tac-Toe, or any of the other lame shit you probably had in your rainy-day activity book growing up.”



“I'll have you know it was an awesome rainy-day book,” she replied primly, “but no, I had something else in mind. Remember when I mentioned that I might pick up a board game at the store?”



Cain's eyes narrowed warily. “You didn't.”



“You bet your ass I did,” Missy said. “I wasn't sure if cards would be your thing, and I thought it might be a good idea to have a back-up plan so I wouldn't have to spend the night watching shitty TV and listening to you grumble. Besides, you're going to love this, I just know it!”



Missy went into the bedroom, rummaged around in a shopping bag, and returned with...



“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Cain groaned.



She held up the colorful box for a classic battery-operated game called “Doctor's Orders.” Cain remembered seeing the commercials for it when he was a kid. The players pretended to be surgeons, moving their plastic game pieces around the outer track and drawing cards to determine which bones or organs they had to carefully remove from the prone cartoon body drawn on the board. The body parts were labeled with their slang terms, and if removed incorrectly, each part would trigger a specific noise to indicate that the pieces had to be moved back—the “Peepers” peeped, the “Honker” honked, the “Ticker” ticked, the “Guns” went bang, and so on.



“See?” Missy smiled. “Now we can have fun and learn more about what's wrong with your body!”



Cain grimaced, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. You're fucking sick, though. I hope you know that.”



“Ahh, perhaps, but what's making me sick?” Missy asked playfully, setting up the game. “Is something burning in my 'Brain Pan?' Maybe someone popped my 'Six-Pack,' or put too much filling in my 'Pie-Hole!'”



“Yeah, I got something for your 'pie-hole,' all right...” Cain mumbled.



“I'll bet you do, pal,” Missy shot back. “You want to be the red piece or the blue one?”



“Whichever one gets this over with.”



“Red it is, then,” she agreed. “You can roll the dice first, since you said that was your thing.”



“Swell,” he said, picking the dice up and shaking them.





Chapter 23



Bones



Bones sat on the front porch of Cain's house, watching the setting sun paint the windows of the neighborhood houses in shades of pink and red.



His bike was parked in the driveway next to Missy's car, with his cut carefully folded up in the saddle bag. He leaned back in the rusty metal folding chair next to the front door, a lanky man in a sweat-stained white t-shirt, his bald head hidden by a ten-gallon hat, his cowboy boots up on the railing in front of him. Anyone passing by who looked his way might easily assume that he was just a local hick out enjoying the sunset.



However, Bones' casual posture was a careful act. He'd have preferred to stand guard on his feet like a sentry ready to leap into action at the first sign of trouble, his hands hovering near his guns instead of laced behind his head. But that would have attracted attention, and made neighbors nervous. Maybe nervous enough to call the cops—or other, more dangerous people they might be acquainted with.



So he had to play it loose, even though every muscle in his body was tense. From deep within the craters of his hollow eyes, he took in everything around him with the detached, meticulous focus of a security camera.



Bones had been born Louis Bonaparte, in Dayton. He'd joined the army the day after 9/11 and worked his way into the ranks of the legendary 82nd Airborne Division as a lieutenant commander. He'd led covert special ops in Iraq, and during that time, he learned to embrace the yin and yang of his personal philosophy: That life—and war—were equal parts stealth and shock-and-awe. Sometimes it was important to stay under the radar, and other times, it was just as important to leave a message in the form of scorched earth.