Page 60 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

The back of his neck tingled again, and he smoothed the hair down there and turned back to face the interior of the shed, where Hames’s scream had tailed off into a sad, pathetic whimper.

Ghost was tired, suddenly. Exhausted. His wife and his daughter were in New Orleans against orders; one of his sons was in London, and the other thought he was dead, and would hate him when he found out he wasn’t.

It was time to end this. And maybe, he reflected, it had never been worth embarking upon in the first place.

“Tell us who put the hit out on my club,” Ghost said. “Give us a name, and the pain stops.”

Hames glanced toward the window, and back. “I can’t.”

“I know it’s Abacus,” Ghost said. “I know all about those fuckers. Tell mewho, specifically, or he’s gonna take your other ear!”

Again, he looked toward the window.

Fox stepped forward – and Ghost held out a hand. Wait.

He walked in close to Hames, leaned into his face again. “Why do they want to arrest us?” he asked, changing tack. “If they want us gone, why not just kill us?”

He didn’t think Hames would answer. But, finally, the man wet his lips and whispered, “They want to embarrass you. They don’t want to kill you: they want toruinyou.”

“Who?”

Warm wetness flooded Ghost’s face. A sudden burst, like hot coffee thrown full force. It filled his eyes, and he stepped back, swiping at them, gasping at the salty, hot layer of slime that bloomed in his mouth, that splashed up his nostrils, landed in hot stripes across his cheeks and forehead.

Blood. It tasted like blood.

A hand fisted in the back of his shirt and dragged him to the floor. “Get down, get down,” Fox barked, and his knees slammed to the floorboards, teeth clicking from the impact, and Fox’s hands pressed his head down, down, covering the back of his skull. It was only then that Ghost realized the ringing in his ears was the fading echo of a rifle shot; that the musical tinkling was window glass raining down to the floor.

“Ho-oly shit,” Mike swore, and there was a scuffle of shoe soles. “Sniper. They fucking sniped him.”

“Who the fuck isthey?” Ghost snapped, and brought his sleeve up to mop the blood and gore from his face, an awkwardmovement thanks to the way Fox was crouching over him and pinning him down.

When his eyes were clear, he blinked the last bits of sticky blood from his lashes and peered up at the chair. He was eye level with Hames’s feet, and could see a yellow stain spreading across the top of one white sock where the man had pissed himself in death. From this angle, all Ghost could see of his head was his angled-back neck and chin and jaw, but blood was running down it, and there was a jellied mess on the floor beyond the chair where the exit wound had sprayed bone, and blood, and gray matter.

“Let me up,” Ghost said, but Fox pressed down more firmly on his head.

“No one followed us.” He sounded incensed. “No one, I checked!”

“They musta already been in position,” Mike said. “There’s trees all around here. Maybe even a deer stand.”

“Shit,” Fox swore, with feeling. He sounded alive and hot-blooded in a way he normally didn’t, and that sent a cold lick of fear down Ghost’s back. When Fox panicked, it was time to fucking panic.

“Let me up,” he said again, more urgently, and this time Fox’s hands lifted.

Ghost sat up on his knees and mopped his face some more with his sleeve. Spat another man’s blood down onto the floor.

“DNA,” Fox muttered, as his head swiveled side to side, scanning the windows.

“Fuck the DNA. They know we’re here, and they know who we are.”

The shot, he saw, had entered through the window to their right, shattering it before it shattered Hames’s skull like a melon. One of the two-by-four wall studs was shattered beyond, where the round had punched

through and out into the night, its original trajectory altered by the bone and meat through which it had passed first.

Mike stood flattened against a portion of windowless wall, hands pressed back against it, too-thin chest hitching and shuddering as he fought to catch his breath. Fox had pulled his gun, and held it up by his head in his right hand, his other palm braced on the floor, ready to push to his feet.

Ghost’s pulse throbbed quick and dizzying at the base of his throat.

They were all waiting for another shot, he realized. None of them were in a sightline in front of a window, but the sniper had been watching them; it was a small shed, and they could probably guess where each of the three of them was standing.

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