Hair of the Dog, Gordon Carroll [top 100 novels of all time TXT] 📗

This was not the time to consider such thoughts. This was a time for protecting the Pack. This was a time for killing.

40

Twenty minutes to eight. Jerome went to the elevator, holding it on the tenth until I called him and told him to go. Max and I made our way quietly down the stairwell. I watched him closely, seeing the change in his body behavior as we spiraled our way down to the ninth. His tail went up, his ears and head too, scenting with little head jerks, like a shark testing the waters. He would have broke then and there, but I held him back with a hand signal. Crouching, I peered around the lapses in concrete until I spotted the head of the black kid outside the door to the eighth floor. The door was closed, which was good. I sent Jerome a text that he could head down now and sent Max down.

Jerome felt his cell vibrate and he saw Gil’s message to ‘go’. He hit the button for the eighth floor. The doors closed and the elevator started down with a loud chunk sound and a sudden lurch.

The thought passed through him that he had never in his life put so much trust in another man. The detective could have let him die several times already and had outright saved him twice. Right now, Jerome was again putting his life in the man’s hands. If he came out of the elevator and Gil and the dog were not there to set up a diversion, as well as taking out some of the Bloods, he would certainly be shot to pieces before he could escape. Strangely though, he had no doubt that Gil Mason would be there, despite the danger. And this from a man that Jerome had tried to kill and still might have to kill, because nothing mattered to him except saving Clair. Not these men, not the dog, no, not even the detective.

The little digital light over the door, showing the floors, had long since burnt out and hadn’t been replaced, but the loud mechanical chunk told him when he was there, even before that instant of weightlessness that signaled the stopping of the elevator’s controlled fall through open space.

Jerome held the stubby rifle at the ready. He wasn’t so accustomed to rifles, but his instinctual talent at killing and violence made up for his lack in technical skills. Besides, Gil Mason had told him all he needed to know. You pointed the muzzle at what you wanted to destroy, then clicked the trigger.

Jerome’s lips actually twitched at the corners and then the door opened.

Max padded down the stairs silently, his eyes locked forward, the scent drawing him in a near straight line toward his prey.

The guard, Tyrell Jefferson Monroe, leaned against the door lounging, unaware of the danger that approached. He was seventeen years old and had never killed anyone, although he’d done an even dozen robberies and broken into about a thousand cars. He’d never actually stolen one, hot-wiring just wasn’t his strong point. His main claim to fame was that he’d raped an old woman after breaking into her apartment and tying her up. She hadn’t had a lot, just a few dollars and an old TV that wouldn’t bring much. She had some food stamps, and some loose change, but not much of that either. He fell asleep in her apartment after awhile, and when he woke up, she was still tied with the silver tape he’d found under her sink. The strip he’d slapped across her mouth still held. He smoked a bowl while she watched him, a little line of dried blood coming from her nostril and dripping down her cheek, holding there like an ancient stalactite. Probably from when he’d punched her to get her to shut up. She was old, really old, but she was a she and he was high and he hadn’t had a woman yet, so he did what he did and her cries made him feel strong. He’d thought about killing her then because he did feel kind of bad after, but he heard a siren from somewhere outside and thought they might be coming for him. So he ran and the siren turned out to be a fire truck, but by then he was coming down from the high and just let it be.

The memory brought mixed emotions of guilt and excitement. He sucked in on the cigarette he was smoking, a smile coming to his lips, when he suddenly saw something staring at him in the dark corner by the back of the stairs.

For just a second he thought it was the old woman. The way she’d looked at him. That look of pure hatred. But then he caught himself and realized it must be some kind of animal because it held that strange reflective look that they do. His hand started to move toward his waistband and the gun he had stashed down the front of his pants. But it never made it there, because he was right. It wasn’t a poor, abused old woman tied and helpless. No it wasn’t an old woman at all.

Max watched… his eyes unblinking… utterly still… his breathing slowed to almost nothing.

I let Max go with a simple hand gesture. He moved like invisible lightning, disappearing in an instant. No sound of nails clicking against the concrete reached my ears. Max moved like a big cat, soundless, even though he did not possess retractable claws. No, not retractable. Instead, Max walked on the pads of his feet like a panther.

I moved a few steps down, listening and peering through the near lightless stairwell. It wasn’t quite dark enough for night vision, not yet, but close. I waited for about five seconds. Still no sound of attack. I’d lost my vantage point to see