“Royal!” Lyric screams, appearing in doorway behind me. I figured she was useless with her gun, bought it just to feel safe, but when I see it held steady in both hands, I know right away that's not the truth. “Get down!”
I drop low as she gets a shot off, grazing the man's shoulder and giving me enough time to move up the stairs and elbow him in the throat. He's a big bloke, and he doesn't go down easy, lifting his injured arm up and aiming directly at my fucking cock. A quick flick of my wrist, and his elbow bends the wrong way, the gun falling from his fingers.
I use my gun to hit him in the face, once, twice, three, four fucking times before he sags to the carpet with a harsh breath. A quick kick to the gut and another to the face, and he isn't getting up anytime soon.
There's blood everywhere and bullet holes, but I've already got my phone back in my hand, speed dialing up my boys.
“We're on Underwood Drive, near Hector. Get here.” I end the call when I'm halfway down the stairs, pausing next to Lyric as I pull her inside and shut the door. The Mile Wide boys had silencers on their guns, but Lyric doesn't. It's possible the cops'll show up.
I flick the locks and then put her behind me.
“Stay close, Pint-Size, and keep quiet, alright?”
She nods her head, her expression drawn and determined, like she didn't just a shoot a man, like she's done all this before. Carefully, I pull open the door across from us, finding a small powder room with nobody in it.
“Kitchen's down the hall on the left, living room straight past that. There's a pair of French doors that go outside, and to the right of those, an office.”
I feel a small smile pull at my lips as Lyric trails behind me down the hall, taking a supporting role as I survey the downstairs for any signs of life. There's nobody, and the back doors are locked several times over. Satisfied with that portion of the sweep, we double back and do the same thing for the upstairs, Lyric giving me the layout as I check both rooms and another bathroom.
“Kailey isn't here,” she says after I declare an all clear, checking both men to make sure they're still unconscious. “Kailey … isn't here,” Lyric repeats, breathing a sigh of relief. “They must've been waiting for her to come home.”
“Better tell that on-again, off-again bloke that he saved her life,” I say as I grab the arms of the first man and drag him down the hall, around the corner, and lay him on the floor in front of the kitchen island. A quick assessment of the blood in the hallway, and I know there's no way to clean this up before the cops get here. I suppose with some dim lighting and a little scrubbing, it might be alright. “Grab a bucket, something to wipe the splatter off the walls with. If you can hang something over that hole, all the better.”
Lyric looks back at me for a second and then nods, no hesitation or fear in the way she moves. It was like she was born to live a different life, something more exciting than being a monkey in a suit. Or hell, maybe she is right for politics? She does what needs to be done, no bones about it. I love it.
It takes an effort to pull myself away from Lyric, but I do, heading up the stairs and moving the second body out of sight. I flick the upstairs lights off, satisfied that if the police show up at the door, they won't be able to see anything.
Back down the stairs, my boots quiet against the carpet, I find Lyric with a nail and a hammer, putting a new hole right above the spot where the bullet entered the drywall. Within seconds, she has a family photo hung there like it's been gracing that spot forever.
“God, I bloody fucking like you, Lyric,” I say as I pass, pulling her in close for a quick kiss. She smiles as I race past and open the front door, running a hand over the splintered wood of the porch column. It's not obvious enough that somebody who wasn't familiar with the house would notice it, so I move on, into the powder room to clean up my hands, check for spots of blood on my clothes.
When my boys arrive at the door a minute later, the place is about as spic and span as it's gonna get, Lyric dragging a rug over the saturated red stains in the carpet.
“I've got two of them that need to go with Glacier,” I say, letting Dober and Smoky in the door, Mug right behind them. “But I need you to wait and see if the cops are going to show. Pick up anything on the police scanner?”
“Nothing about this,” Dober says, giving Lyric a long, lingering look before passing his gaze over to me. “They're swamped trying to deal with an illegal bonfire on the beach, bunch of drunk ass kids from Humboldt State with too much weed and too much alcohol. Somebody spray painted a dick on the lighthouse, and some tweaked out punk smashed in the windows at Murphy's and stole some beer. It's a busy Tuesday night in Trinidad, CA.”