Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2), Jack Lively [ebook voice reader txt] 📗

be Keeler. Did you actually imagine that we haven’t planned for this possibility? What do you think is going to happen to us in the hands of law enforcement? Do I look to you like a woman who is destined for prison?”

Chapman said, “You think your lawyers and lobbyists can help you?”

A guy spoke up from the back of the table. I recognized the voice. The woman had called him Frank on the phone. He said, “We own the state, bitch. So just shut your trap and let the cops come. The FBI has no jurisdiction here.” He addressed the woman in front. “Jill, Cory’s on the line. Cory, are you there?”

A voice crackled from the telephonic device built into the middle of the table. “I’m here.”

I raised the Breacher and put a load of buckshot into the speaker. Which shattered into a thousand pieces and ceased to exist as a discreet object. Most of it went into the face of a small man across the table. His face had been surrounded by a white beard, with a magnificent head of white hair. All of that disappeared fast when the blast ejected him violently from the comfortable chair and sent him across the floor. I didn’t bother to check if he was alive or dead, or if he still had a face.

Instead, I turned to look at Chapman. “Think they’ll get off like they say?” Chapman said, “They’ve got the lawyer, the mayor, the governor. Sounds like they’ve got it all covered. In my country, for sure, they would be covered one hundred percent. In my country we wouldn’t even think about legal proceedings, we’d go right to torture, interrogation, and then secret execution. All in a quick succession, maybe on the same night. Then we’d bury the bodies in a forest. Here, I don’t know. But I generally take a realistic approach to things Keeler. Why would it be any different here?”

Frank started to speak. The word coming out of his mouth was ‘democracy’, but he didn’t get it all the way out. The woman cut him off. Her face had drained of color. “Shut up, Frank.”

She was looking at something behind me. I turned to see what it was.

The first toothless sick guy was coming in the door slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet, weak and rheumy. They were rotating hungrily in their sockets, absorbing the visual data. I could see that the desire for revenge was burning in him. He looked famished for it. The others started to crowd through behind him, like a shambolic mob of the living dead. They were intense, chewing and sucking on lips with toothless gums. I looked at Chapman. She looked at me. I spoke to the first guy who’d come through.

“You think you can handle them?”

He nodded at me with more vigor than I would have given him credit for. The guy’s lips smacked and I was able to see his tongue when he spoke. “No problem. Just give me one of those good-looking shotguns will you? I won’t use it because that would be too quick for them, and they deserve it slow and bad. The gun would be just in case they start to get uppity.”

I turned back to the board members. They had lowered their hands. I made eye contact with them, one after the other. They were looking back at me, alert and expectant. I wondered what they expected. Then I realized it was the same thing they always got for their guilt, some kind of impunity. Some kind of a loophole they could exploit. I was looking at mild concern with an expectation of deliverance.

I handed the Breacher I’d just fired to the guy with no teeth. I was pretty sure he’d like the load. He spoke to me with his eyes on the board members, roving between them. “Thank you, and goodbye mister.”

I turned away as the woman executive made a nervous cough and started to say something, but her voice was quickly muffled. By then I was following Chapman’s athletic figure out the door. I closed it firmly behind me and joined her on the balcony, looking over the property. The glass was gone and the breeze was crisp. To my right I could see down to a pier. A zodiac boat was bobbing serenely in the calm waters. The sun was not yet up, but it was a new day. There was some commotion behind the closed door. A boisterous board meeting, no doubt the last.

Fifty-Six

Chapman led me back to the orchard. In the early blue light I could see that the fruit trees were mature. Maybe they had been planted a hundred years ago, maybe more. I tried to cast my mind back to recall when Alaska had been purchased from the Russians. It was sometime in the 1860s or 1870s. We came up to the edge of the orchard, just on the crest with a view on the ocean below.

Chapman pointed and I followed with my eyes, landing upon an area of recently turned soil.

I said, “George Abrams?”

“And others.”

“He was a brave man.”

“George was one of the good guys.”

I looked at her. She was beautiful in the morning light. She smiled, knowing that I was watching her. Strands of blonde hair were blowing gently. The ocean was calm, it was going to be a perfect day.

A siren moaned in the distance. Far off for the time being, but not for very long. I figured we’d get out of there before any commotion. We’d had enough commotion for a good long while. What we needed now was no fuss and no ruckus. I had the phone in my pocket, but I didn’t use it. Ellie was a competent operator, and she would do a great job of sorting out the situation up here. It was her jurisdiction, and I hoped that in the end she would get the property for her people. If I was a betting man, I’d