The Interloper Read online

  They had walked past the side of the house and were on the front yard, maybe twenty feet from where the police cruiser was parked, and another cop interrupted them by walking out of the front door of the house and yelling over to the cop with McCoy that the residents inside were scared but okay. That cop was older. In his fifties, thick body and barrel-chested. His face a square block that looked even ruddier and beefier with how red his ears and neck were and how short his hair had been cut. He fixed hard angry eyes on McCoy and added, “This perv broke in to rape the woman living here, but didn’t have time because she called the police. This guy’s a real perv, Stan, with some sicko baby food fetish.”

  McCoy could feel the change in the cop who had cuffed him and was taking him to the car, and it chilled him. He had no chance anymore of changing the guy’s mind. He was going to be arrested, and they’d find Heather stabbed to death in his bed, and assume he was a rapist who killed one woman and tried to rape and kill another. The fact that it made no sense for him to be in this town, wherever the fuck he was, wouldn’t matter. Nor would it matter that his thumbnail had been ripped off. By the time he was able to convince anyone to search the house he’d been taken to, it would be cleaned up, either by Luce, if he was still alive, or that fucked up agency he worked for. It was over for him.

  A car pulled up to the house and a wire-thin man in his late forties got out of it. The older cop yelled at him to move on, but the man flashed a badge and waved him over. McCoy stood blinking, not quite believing what he was seeing. It was that sonofabitch psycho, Luce, and whatever he was saying, the cop seemed to be eating it up. He could hear snatches of their conversation. That McCoy was a serial rapist and killer that the FBI had been after and that he had killed a young woman earlier in Scituate, with the cop saying that he had almost struck again in their town. He wasn’t quite sure, but it looked like Luce was showing the cop photos, probably of Heather’s body. More stuff was said, and then Luce and the cop shook hands, with the cop saying something about him needing to make a call, but it shouldn’t be an issue. McCoy realized then what was going on. That Luce was pretending to be FBI and that the cops were going to be handing him over to Luce.

  “That’s the psycho who kidnapped and tortured me!” McCoy forced out, pleading.

  “Just shut the fuck up,” the cop behind him ordered.

  McCoy stared dumbfounded at Luce while The Factory hit man smiled sadly back at him the way you would any other sex-crazed pervert. Panic seized McCoy so tightly that he could barely breathe. But that didn’t last long. Soon the panic was taken over by an intense rage. It might be over for him, but he was going to kill that sonofabitch before he breathed his last. He might have his hands cuffed behind his back, but he still had enough skill from his wrestling days where he should be able to knock Luce to the ground and stomp hard enough on the bastard’s throat to do the job. And with the older cop sitting in his police cruiser busy making a call, that was as good a time as any.

  In a swift, fluid motion, McCoy swept his right leg behind him in a counterclockwise motion so that his thigh was pressed behind the younger cop’s leg. In a split second, he lowered and twisted his body and pushed upward into the cop, striking him hard in the chest with his shoulder. The blow sent the cop tumbling backward over McCoy’s leg. It took him another second to right himself, and then he charged Luce with the intent of ramming The Factory hit man in the jaw with the top of his forehead. That other second where he righted himself cost him his chance, because the cop who had been in the car making a call must’ve been able to get a shot off. A bullet struck McCoy in the back and tore through his heart. A half a second more and he would’ve had Luce, but as it was he was dead before he hit the ground.

  Chapter 18

  Willis first tracked Luce to an address in Plymouth that turned out to be for a gas station. As Willis drove past the location, it was doubtful Luce had stopped there to hide the money—most likely he needed to fill up, and possibly also wanted to grab some food. The nine minutes that Luce had spent there allowed Willis to catch up and watch as The Factory hit man drove out of a one-car garage at the second address Willis tracked him to—a single-family house that looked abandoned, probably one that Luce had been given to use as surveillance for one of his hits. It would be risky to use that house to stash five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but then again, if there was a good hiding place inside, Luce would’ve had plenty of time to find it.

  Willis had parked at a corner where the street intersected with the one running perpendicular to it, and he used a newspaper to shield himself from view. Luce, though, had barely pulled out of the driveway when he brought the car abruptly to the curb and got out of it. He took several steps in the direction of the house’s backyard as if he had heard something, then jumped back into his car and drove past Willis. He took a left at the intersection and drove down the street behind the one he was just on and came to a stop halfway down this other street. Willis got out of his car, and using the house on the corner to hide behind, watched the scene unfold. After McCoy was shot in the back, the older cop who had fired his weapon knelt by the body and felt for a pulse. Several seconds later, he stood up and shook his head. Willis got back to his car and drove off then, pulling into a strip mall parking lot three miles away. Hendrick had heard the gun shot over the cell phone connection that Willis had kept open, and insisted on knowing what happened. Willis told him that McCoy had been shot.

  “Did that fucker Luce do it?” Hendrick demanded, his voice cracking.

  “No, a cop shot him. Your buddy was making a run for Luce.”

  “Is… is there a chance Bud’s still alive?”

  “No chance.”

  Hendrick got quiet after that.

  Willis didn’t say it, but he was relieved that cop shot McCoy. There was little doubt McCoy charged Luce to kill him, and from the stunned look on Luce’s face and the way he froze, McCoy just might’ve succeeded. If he had, Luce’s car would’ve been impounded and the money would’ve been found, because it still had to be in his car. Luce hadn’t gone to that house to stash the money. He went there because he thought he had McCoy on ice. Somehow McCoy escaped, but that fat slob had to get himself picked up and killed by the police.

  Willis wondered about the badge Luce flashed the police officer. Maybe it was his Homeland Protection badge, or maybe The Factory had changed their protocol and was now issuing fake FBI badges to their hit men. Whichever it was, Luce’s Factory bosses weren’t going to be happy hearing about it. The first rule they drummed into Willis’s head when he was in training was to keep a low profile and never talk to any law enforcement unless you had absolutely no other choice. But then again, if Luce was planning to flee with the money sometime over the next several weeks, then it wouldn’t hurt him to take the chance he did.

  Five minutes after McCoy was shot dead, the GPS tracker showed that Luce was on the move again. Most likely the cops were only too happy to lose their sole witness to how they bungled their arrest and had to shoot an unarmed and handcuffed prisoner. While Luce couldn’t have gotten a good look at Willis with the way he had hidden behind the newspaper, he made sure to give The Factory hit man enough of a head start so that Luce wouldn’t spot his car for a second time. For the next hour and a half, Willis followed Luce through southern Massachusetts and into Rhode Island and then to the small town of East Greenwich. The trail led Willis onto a single-lane dirt road bordered on both sides by tall sea grass. He knew that things were coming to an end. That this was where Luce was planning to stash the money.

  Luce had come to a stop a mile up the dirt road from where Willis was, and had been there for the last ten minutes. Willis’s plan was to drive within a half mile of Luce’s location, and then proceed on foot to finish things. This changed when Bowser sat upright in his seat, growling in a severely agitated way. If Willis hadn’t reacted by pulling the car off the road into the sea grass to his right while slamming on the brakes and spinning the car around, he would�
��ve been killed. A split second before the attack came, he threw himself across the passenger seat and forced the bull terrier down also. The hand grenade that exploded where he would’ve been driving without Bowser’s warning still threw the back end of his car several inches up into the air. The barrage of bullets from the AK-47 that followed blew out the back window and back tires.

  Willis held onto Bowser’s collar while he flung the passenger door open. The dog strained against his collar wanting badly to go after their attacker, but Willis pointed straight into the sea grass and ordered the dog to go there. Bowser didn’t like it and let loose several angry pig grunts, but Willis held onto the collar while pointing straight ahead and ordering the bull terrier to ‘go’, and when he let go of the collar, Bowser reluctantly followed his command and scampered away into the tall grass to safety. Willis had crawled out of the car when he heard another grenade hit the driver’s door. He flung himself away from the car, landing behind a rock just as the grenade went off. He was pinned where he was. Little more than dead meat.

  *

  Back in Plymouth, Luce had spotted the white bull terrier lying in the passenger seat of the car parked on the corner. If it wasn’t that he had heard a cop yelling at McCoy, he would’ve stopped and fired several rounds at the man behind the wheel acting as if he was reading the newspaper. He knew who the man was and he realized then how the man had tracked him there. When Willis had grabbed Patterson, that weak-kneed traitorous sonofabitch boss of his must’ve shown Willis how to track Luce by his badge. First things first. He had to stop McCoy from being taken into police custody, and the cop bought the story he gave him. If he hadn’t, Luce would’ve executed both of the police offers at the scene before putting a bullet in McCoy’s head. But the cop accepted what he told him and was willing to call Wally for further confirmation, and Luce knew The Factory higher up would support him. He hadn’t quite figured out what story he’d give Wally afterward, but it would be something along the line of McCoy being behind Patterson’s abduction, and that would buy him enough time to arrange for his disappearing act.

  He had to admit, McCoy surprised him twice that day. First, escaping from that house, second, the way he broke free from that cop and charged him with murderous intent. Luce’s reaction time sucked. He stood frozen like a deer in the headlights as McCoy charged him, and McCoy might’ve been successful if that other police officer hadn’t shot him in the heart. It was a hell of a lucky shot, but it did the trick, and the whole incident showed that it was time for Luce to get out of the game.

  With McCoy dead, he could focus on Willis, which would require little more than luring him to an isolated spot and ambushing him. And so he drove to this desolate coastal area in the middle of nowhere in Rhode Island. After turning down a dirt road, he bounced along the road for another seven miles before hiding his car in the four-foot high sea grass, and then running down the road a mile so he could wait for Willis.

  The first grenade should’ve finished Willis off, but for whatever reason the guy drove off the road and spun the car around. Luce had hidden himself well enough in the grass that that shouldn’t have happened, but it did. It didn’t matter. After two grenades and plenty of automatic rifle fire, he now had Willis pinned behind a rock, and the next grenade should be it. Hell, Luce could use all his remaining grenades and it wouldn’t matter. Once he took off to Southeast Asia with his newly acquired retirement money, he wouldn’t be needing any of them.

  Luce took another grenade from his bag and pulled the pin. Before he could throw it at Willis, his right knee exploded. The pain was excruciating and he dropped to ground, and only after letting out a loud scream did he realize that someone else had shot him and that he had dropped a live grenade into the bag with his others. He reached in for it just as the grenade went off, and he saw his hand fly away from him like a missile. The first explosion triggered a much larger one that lifted him off the ground. When he landed, he noticed with some curiosity that his legs were missing completely, blown off from his waist. This curiosity didn’t last long as he first went into shock, and then bled out seconds later.

  *

  “Shit!”

  After the gunshot and explosions, it didn’t surprise Willis to hear Hendrick’s voice. He yelled out, asking whether Luce was dead.

  “Yeah, the fucker’s dead. Goddamn it! I wanted him alive!”

  Willis got up and saw Hendrick standing twenty feet away, staring at the ground with a look of disappointment and anger. Hendrick looked over at him. “I shot the asshole in the knee. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! He must’ve dropped a live grenade into a bag of other grenades,” Hendrick said, disgusted.

  Willis joined him and saw that Hendrick was staring at the little that was left of Luce. “We need to find his legs,” Willis said. “It will be easier if we have his car keys.”

  They found his legs about thirty feet from where the rest of his body landed, but there were no car keys in his pockets. Willis went back to his car and got the GPS tracking device, which was still intact and operational. Ten minutes later they found where Luce had hidden his car. His Factory badge was left on the dashboard and his keys were in the ignition. They found three hundred thousand dollars inside the trunk.

  “He must’ve split up the money as a precaution in case he couldn’t go back to his car,” Willis said. “The rest could be hidden anywhere between here and where he ambushed me.” He paused for a moment thinking about it, then halfheartedly added, “We could look for it, but I don’t think we’ll find it. I also don’t think we should stick around after all the gunshots and explosions.”

  Hendrick looked extremely pissed off with how tightly his jaw muscles were clenched, but he didn’t argue, nor did he say a word when Willis split the money fifty fifty between them.

  “My car’s ruined,” Willis said. “I’m going to take this one. Get in. I’ll give you a ride back to where you left yours.”

  “This has to be worth at least ten grand,” Hendrick forced out, his voice strained to where it was barely a whisper.

  The car couldn’t have been worth more than seven thousand, but Willis didn’t argue. He counted out five grand to Hendrick then turned to head to the driver’s door. He had only taken two steps when he heard a loud thud behind him. When he turned, he saw Hendrick and Bowser struggling on the ground, with the bull terrier’s jaws locked on Hendrick’s right arm. A 9mm Glock was gripped within Hendrick’s right hand, and he was fighting to get that pointed at Bowser. Willis stomped down on Hendrick’s hand until he let go of the Glock. Willis then picked up the gun.

  “It’s your fault my buddies are all dead! It’s all your fault!”

  A craziness shined in Hendrick’s eyes as he stared defiantly at Willis. The accusation was ridiculous. Luce would’ve done what he did whether or not Willis was part of the robbery. Maybe Hendrick believed what he said, or maybe he was just using it as an excuse to explain trying to double-cross Willis so that he could grab all the money. Whichever it was, Willis didn’t care. He ordered Bowser to let go of Hendrick’s arm, and after the dog relented and did as he was ordered, Willis shot Hendrick twice in the middle of the forehead. He collected Hendrick’s share of the money, wiped the Glock of any prints, then got in Luce’s car while letting Bowser jump onto the passenger seat.

  He drove back to his wrecked car, and after transferring to Luce’s car his duffel bag and other belongings, including a stack of stolen license plates, he wiped his wrecked car clean of prints, changed Luce’s license plate with one of his stolen ones, and left Luce’s Factory badge lying on what remained of the hit man’s corpse.

  If anyone had heard the gunfire or explosions, they either didn’t call the police or they sent them to the wrong location, because Willis was able to drive down the dirt road and out of Rhode Island without incident.

  Chapter 19

  When Willis returned to the house in Winthrop where he was keeping the two Factory supervisors, he first went up to where they had left Elliot Finder, a
nd without saying a word, shot the man dead using his thirty-eight with an attached silencer. He then went down to the basement. Patterson lifted his head from the floor and gave him a hopeful smile.

  “Were you able to get back your money?” he asked.

  “Not all of it.”

  Willis used the same thirty-eight to end Patterson’s life.

  Earlier, when he was driving to Winthrop, he had called Hanley to fill him in on how much money he was able to recover and what had happened to the rest of the crew.

  “How many of them did you kill?” Hanley asked.

  The question annoyed Willis. “Only Hendrick, and that was because he tried killing me first.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  Willis ignored the question. “Your cut of ten percent is going to be thirty grand. That’s all you need to worry about. And I’ll be paying you your other charges. What we talked about before about me buying a new face, I have the money now, so I need to get this done sooner than later. Arrange it with your guy, okay? Sometime next week?”

  Hanley told him he’d take care of it and hung up.

  It wasn’t until Willis was leaving Winthrop that he thought of that cute waitress he had slept with and how he wanted to spend some more days with her. The Factory would be on high alert after what had just happened, but that didn’t matter as far Willis was concerned. He had already gone over Luce’s car with a bug detector and there was nothing planted on it. Still, he’d use some of the three hundred grand to buy himself a used car and ditch Luce’s, and as long as he was careful they’d have no way of tracking him down, so he wouldn’t be putting himself at any additional risk if he stayed in the area for another three or four days. A slight grin twisted up his lips as he thought about Kate’s slightly upturned nose and her infectious smile and how comfortable he felt with her. A call from Hanley knocked him out of his daydreaming. Willis felt a deadness settling in his stomach when Hanley demanded to know whether he had butchered that very same waitress.