Page 156 of Beware of Dog

Shep picked his way across limp hands, and upturned, sightless faces, until he was close enough to press his gun to Ruiz’s temple and pull the trigger.

Toly let him fall, his sleeve splattered with blood and brains.

Then the room was silent…saved the muffled sounds of distress coming from Sig and his father. That was when emotion came into play; when Shep’s fury boiled up like an infection that needed lancing.

Mercy handed his hammer off to Toly, who lurched beneath its weight a moment before he got it under control.

Mercy stepped over Ruiz’s body and moved around behind the two dining chairs where the Blackmons waited, eyes shut and cowering.

Blackmon senior’s eyes snapped open when Mercy crouched down with a grunt—he had an old, bad knee injury Shep recalled—and sliced the duct tape off his ankles. “If I’m being honest,” he said, while Blackmon goggled down at him, face ashen in the lantern light, “I’m more than a little insulted, mon cher. You chose to mess with the Lean Dogs, and you sent a street gang after us. You messed with the Dogs, and you thought you were gonnaget away with it.” He tsked and shook his head as he lumbered back to his feet and moved behind the chair to slice the tape at Blackmon’s wrists. “Either you’re the cockiest fucker alive, or you haven’t heard of us, and that…that just kinda kills my self-esteem, you know.”

“Hey, Shakespeare,” Fox said, but there was a laugh in his voice. “You gonna get on with it or keep monologuing?”

“I’m getting there. You know I like to be sociable.”

“Oh, I know.” Mercy ripped the duct tape off Blackmon’s mouth—he gasped, and sobbed on the inhale—and Fox gestured with his gun. “Get up. Walk toward the front door.”

Blackmon buried his face in his shaking hands and let out a low, wounded sound.

Mercy smacked him in the back of the head. “He said get up and walk toward the front door. Do you want me to help you?”

Clearly not: Blackmon nearly fell twice in his attempt to stand. Trembling all over like a newborn foal, upper lip shiny with snot, he began shuffling toward the door, tripping on bodies.

Still taped up in his chair, Sig struggled against his bonds, shouts muffled behind the tape, but clear all the same: he was calling for his dad.

Fox let him get as far as the foyer before he turned and gave Shep the nod.

The bullet went into his back, just to the left of his spine. He fell forward like a cut-down tree, already too far gone to break his fall. His nose impacted the tile with a crack and a wet squelch.

“Alright, Siggy,” Mercy said, and moved toward him with the knife. “Your turn. You’re the big finale.”

There were men, Shep reflected, his own father among them, whose lips would curl in disgust if they witnessed what he was about to do. Sigmund Blackmon was only twenty, and he was unarmed, was surrounded, outgunned by much older and more experienced men. He was an asshole, and a little rat bastard, a spoiled brat, but did he really deserve this?

In Shep’s estimation, he did.

Should Shep have picked on someone his own size? Given the kid a fighting chance?

Those were not questions he asked himself, in the moment.

When he was unbound, Mercy hauled him up by his hoodie and maneuvered him into place. Sig’s feet didn’t seem to be working, but that didn’t matter; Mercy moved him around like a doll, until he stood in the middle of the room.

Shep stepped forward, and Sig looked up at him, eyes swollen and face wet. “P-p-please,” he stuttered. “Please, I’msorry…I never meant…I didn’t know…”

Shep sought some biting, devastating final proclamation inside himself…but he had no words. Only this: he took Shep’s hand, and fitted it around the grip of the Colt. Lifted both together so the barrel was pressed to Sig’s temple, his limp finger inside the trigger guard, spreading prints and DNA.

Sig closed his eyes, and his teeth chattered. “Please,” he whispered, one last time.

Shep fit his finger over his, and pulled the trigger.

Mercy released him, after, so he would fall, so it would look natural. He landed on top of a Diablo, so his back bent at a funny angle. His hand had spasmed at the end, so he still held the gun.

“Okay,” Fox said. “Clean up, and then we go. Fast. We’ve got less than a minute.”

Everyone started moving in a hurry, then, but Shep stayed rooted.

He’d never experienced such acute relief. All the energy bled out of his limbs; the final trigger pull had yanked the plug on his adrenaline, and he swore it emptied out through the tingling soles of his feet; he imagined it as a glugging dark liquid, leaving him empty and sparkling in its wake.

His vision sparkled, too, bright flares crowding in at the edges. Reese hurried past him, and he seemed to be walking up a wall, somehow.

---