Point Blank Read online

  Point Blank

  Mike Ryan

  Copyright © 2017 by Mike Ryan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  Also by Mike Ryan

  1

  Recker was sitting on an oversized chair in a dark corner of the living room, waiting for his target to come home. The lack of light disguised his presence. Now that he knew the man’s wife and two young kids would not be home, Recker no longer had to wait for the right opportunity to come along. After a brief stay in the hospital, the wife texted her husband she was taking the kids to her parents’ house for a couple of days. It would take a little longer, though, for the bruises to go away.

  Teresa Golden had been abused by her husband for at least a year from what Jones could figure out. It wasn’t until this last time she had to go to the hospital for treatment. Though she told everyone she fell down the stairs, it was quite obvious it wasn’t the case. Jones first got wind of her problem several weeks earlier when his software program picked up a text from Golden to her sister, saying her husband had hit her. With children at the ages of nine and six, Recker wanted to take Richard Golden out permanently, fearful the abuse he unleashed on his wife would eventually spill over to their children. Jones, though, successfully debated that the loss of their father at such a young age would be devastating to them and made Recker reluctantly agree to his partner’s plans. Jones argued he could continue to monitor the situation to make sure the kids were never harmed. Recker wasn’t so sure Jones would be able to tell and the kids’ case wouldn’t get lost eventually under the sea of assignments they were likely to get in the coming months. Plus, Jones had convinced his partner he had to change his ways of handling things or else they’d always have to wind up moving after a few years. They had to start working towards handling killing as a final option and not the first choice.

  Recker wasn’t very fond of their newfound way of doing things, but he was willing to try it for a while. At least until he proved to Jones it wasn’t working, which he suspected would be relatively soon. In the case of Teresa Golden, Jones hoped just working her husband over would be enough to scare him by letting him know he was being watched. Recker didn’t believe it would work though. He feared giving Richard Golden some bruises of his own, would only make the man angrier and worse, thinking his wife had something to do with it and told someone about him.

  Recker didn’t particularly care for this less violent and friendlier, at least in his mind, version of himself. It’d been a long time since he pulled the trigger with a target standing in front of him, and while he still didn’t enjoy it, he still believed it was as necessary as ever with some people. No matter what Jones said, or how he explained it, or how it benefited them by keeping their profile lower, Recker would never be convinced some people could be rehabilitated or scared into better behavior. Some people just had to be dealt with by violence. It’s just the way it was.

  Regardless of his own personal views, Recker was playing Jones’ game for the moment. He’d been waiting in the Golden home for about an hour in anticipation of Richard Golden getting home from the bar, his usual stop every Friday after work. Recker was staring against the far wall at a big bow window, looking into the dark night air through an open slit of the brown curtains. He’d just taken his phone out to look at the time when he noticed a bright flash before a pair of steady car lights shone through the windows. He slowly put the phone back in his pocket as he calmly waited for his victim to walk through the door.

  Recker heard the metal juggling of keys as they clanged against each other as Golden tried to steady his hand to unlock the front door. He could already tell Golden wouldn’t be much of a problem. Judging by how long it took the man to open the door, Recker felt confident his target already had too much to drink. He was soon proven right as he watched Golden stumble his way into the house. Golden staggered his way into the living room and flicked on the lights via the switch on the wall. He did a double take and took a step backward, not sure if he was seeing correctly or if he was more under the influence of alcohol than he thought. He shook his head to shake off the effects of the booze as if it would suddenly make the man sitting in his living room go away. Once Golden realized his vision wasn’t going away, he wiped the sweat from his hands off on his shirt, then his pants. He moved slightly to his right as he steadied himself on the back of a nearby chair, looking uncomfortable in the presence of a stranger in his home.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m uhh, just a concerned citizen,” Recker said.

  “Get out of my house before I call the police.”

  “I think that would be a mistake on your part. Or if you’d like, we can wait until they get here and we can exchange stories. You can tell them how I broke into your house, I can tell them how much you’ve beaten up on your wife over the past few months, including her hospital trip yesterday.”

  Golden looked stunned that his visitor knew about his misdeeds.

  “So, who are you and what do you want?”

  “I told you, I’m just a concerned third party,” Recker said.

  “Did my wife put you up to this?”

  “No, I come from an organization that oversees matters like this. We watch from a distance,” Recker said, standing up.

  As Golden watched his visitor get up from his chair, a lump went down his throat in anticipation of what the man might do to him. Recker never had a pleasant look on his face when he was on an assignment and he looked even more intimidating to someone whose mind was in a haze. Recker took a few steps toward his impending victim, causing Golden to panic. He ran back into the hallway, racing up the steps to get to his son’s room, though in his condition it was more like stumbling up the stairs. Recker followed his target, though in no apparent hurry to inflict the damage he was about to unleash. He slowly and methodically walked up the stairs, knowing Golden wasn’t in a state where he could easily slip away from him. And Recker wouldn’t have even feared him if Golden’s mind was clear, let alone in the alcohol infested haze he was in. But even though Recker didn’t fear the man, it didn’t mean he wasn’t alert. Anybody could get in a lucky shot if he wasn’t being careful or took his opponent for granted.

  As Recker reached the top step, he was bracing himself for a surprise attack. As soon as both feet were on the second floor, he looked in both directions, not sure which way Golden went. As he looked to his right, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It was almost like a blur coming toward him, though Recker ducked just in time as he saw the baseball bat swinging at him. The bat shattered pieces of the corner of the drywall, plaster falling onto the floor. Once Recker rose up after the bat whiffed past him, he countered Golden’s assault with a thunderous left hand across the cheek of the drunken man’s face. Hurt from the blow, Golden staggered into the wall, unable to counter with an offensive of his own. With his target seemingly stuck to the wall, Recker moved in and alternated between his right and left hand across both sides of Golden’s face in a furious fashion. Once Golden put his hands up to guard the onslaught across his face, Recker turned his attention a little lower. He gave Golden a few sh
ots to his midsection, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to hunch over. As his victim crossed his arms and clutched at his stomach, Recker looked down and saw the baseball bat lying there. He picked up the wooden weapon with his left hand then cocked his right hand in order to deliver a vicious uppercut to Golden’s jaw. The back of Golden’s head smacked into the wall, putting a slight indentation into the drywall, and giving him an even bigger headache. As he put his hands against his chin, Recker grabbed the handle of the bat with both hands and swung at Golden’s stomach. The man instantly fell to his knees as he struggled to breathe, feeling his ribs crushed by the blow. As Golden was on the ground on all fours, he began spitting out blood as he gasped for air.

  In the heat of the moment, Recker’s first inclination was to keep the punishment raining down onto Golden’s body. He took a firm handle of the bat once more and waved it over his head, ready to deliver at least one more blow to the back of Golden’s head, possibly a fatal one. But before he swung down, Recker thought of Jones’ words to him, about trying to turn over a new leaf. As he looked down at his victim, unsure what to do, some of the rage inside Recker’s body slowly evaporated. He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. He slowly brought the bat down and held it with one hand at his side before he let it slip away from his fingers as it knocked around on the laminate flooring.

  Figuring his time there was done, Recker delivered a final message by kicking Golden once more in the midsection. The blow caused him to crumple to the ground in agony. As he lay there on the floor, writhing in pain, moaning amongst the coughing and blood-spitting, Recker squatted to give him some lasting words to remember him by.

  “This was just a little warm-up,” Recker said. “In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be keeping an eye on things. You’ll never see me or know when I’m near. But if I hear you have laid another hand on your wife or kids, I’ll be back. And I guarantee I won’t be nearly as friendly as I’ve been tonight.”

  Recker stood back up and adjusted his clothes before taking a final look at his victim on the ground. He calmly walked back down the steps as if nothing had ever happened, without a care in the world. He continued right out the front door and into his car, driving away with the satisfaction from successfully completing another assignment, even if it wasn’t quite to the level he would have liked.

  Six months had gone by since Recker and Jones had relocated to Michigan. Instead of living inside the city limits of Detroit, they set up shop in the suburbs, just as they had done in Philadelphia. Dearborn was the city Jones had chosen. Located in Wayne County and part of the Detroit metropolitan area, Dearborn was one of the larger cities in the state and also the home of Ford headquarters. Their operation worked so well in Philly that Jones sought to replicate everything almost entirely in their new home, right down to the office setup. The only difference for the professor was, instead of getting his own apartment, he lived right there in the office. This one was a little larger than their previous one, with an extra room off of the main quarters. It was supposed to be for another small office but Jones turned it into a bedroom with a foldout couch which turned into a bed. Considering he spent most of his time in the office anyway, it didn’t seem worthwhile to him to get his own place. With the couch, a TV, and a small table, it was all he needed. The bathroom had a small shower and they kept a large refrigerator in the main office, so it contained all the comforts of home for him.

  Recker, on the other hand, made a few minor changes from how he approached things in Philadelphia. Though he did get another small apartment as he did before, that was it. He didn’t attempt to get to know any other players in town like he did with Vincent and Jeremiah, didn’t try to establish any contacts the way he did with Tyrell, and he didn’t make friends with anyone like Mia. He felt the risks outweighed the benefits in trying to do the same in Detroit. Plus, he just wasn’t interested in complicating relationships the way they once were. Recker had just finished an assignment and walked into the office, finding Jones on the computer as he usually was. He plopped down on the couch and intentionally let out a sigh, loud enough for Jones to hear.

  “Something wrong?” Jones said.

  “No, not really.”

  “Then what was the sigh for?”

  “Oh, nothing I guess,” Recker said.

  “I think I know you better than that. What are you not happy with? Did you not like the conclusion of your spousal abuse case?”

  “No, it turned out fine. I did like you asked and just roughed him up some.”

  “You preferred taking him out permanently?”

  “Well after his ribs heal there’s a good chance we’ll wind up dealing with him again. You know I don’t like to handle the same people more than once.”

  “Well, it’s all in the interest of trying to keep a lower profile,” Jones said. “We’re trying to prevent what happened at the end of our last stop, remember?”

  “Yeah, I understand your reasons for it, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. It also doesn’t mean it’s going to change anything. Might not kill anybody for the next year and we could still wind up in the same boat.”

  “Yes, I’m aware. But can we just try it my way for a little longer before you break out your artillery?”

  “I guess,” Recker said, letting out another sigh to indicate his displeasure.

  “What else is bothering you? Is it just the fact you haven’t killed anybody in six months and you’re getting an itchy trigger finger?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “Is killing really so much ingrained into your soul you can’t find another way to settle things?” Jones said.

  “We seem to go over this every couple of months since we’ve known each other. It’s not the killing per se, it’s that sometimes it’s the only way to handle things. Why postpone the inevitable?”

  “Because I don’t believe it is inevitable.”

  “That’s the fundamental difference between us,” Recker said. “You believe people can change and I don’t.”

  “You just don’t want to believe people can change.”

  “David, out of all the people I’ve killed since we started this, which one of those do you honestly believe would have never committed another crime if I had let them live?”

  “Well…,” Jones said, struggling to come up with a name.

  “Exactly.”

  “Part of it is self-preservation. I’m trying to prevent another ending like the one in Philadelphia.”

  “All the planning in the world won’t change that.”

  “Well I disagree.”

  “You know my philosophy. You’re just as likely to run into trouble as you are to walk. You’re just getting there faster. Historically, Detroit’s been one of the most violent cities in the country with some of the highest murder rates. Sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire. If I bump a few criminals off, is it really going to put me on the radar?”

  “So, if I give you the thumbs up to kill the next ten people you come across, will it make you happier?”

  “Eh,” Recker said with a shrug of the shoulder.

  Jones threw his hands up in frustration. “What is it you’re looking for then?”

  “I dunno.”

  Jones could see in Recker’s mannerisms and body language, he was troubled by something. It couldn’t have just been his unhappiness about the way they were now working. There must have been something else on his mind. After a few minutes of silence, Jones thought he might have come up with a solution. Recker hadn’t spoken of Mia in about three months. Jones figured his friend might have been missing her.

  “Is it Mia?”

  “What?” Recker said.

  “When was the last time you spoke with her?”

  “A few months I guess.”

  “Is that why you’re unhappy?”

  “I didn’t say I was unhappy.”

  “You didn’t have to. It’s written on your face,” Jones said.

  “Oh.�
�

  “So?”

  In prior years, Recker might not have been so forthcoming and honest in his answers. But with the relationship and rapport he and Jones had built up, they no longer seemed to keep things to themselves anymore. They were even becoming comfortable in talking about their unpleasant thoughts they used to keep private. Recker briefly thought about not talking about it any further but eventually relented and came clean.

  “I dunno. It’s a bunch of things I guess.”

  “Such as?” Jones said.

  “Our work here, our life here, Mia, Philly...all of it.”

  “It’s not just the killing thing bothering you, is it? You’re just unhappy about being here in general.”

  Recker took a deep breath before answering. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought with time I’d be better with this.”

  “Well six months isn’t exactly a lot of time.”

  “I know. But it’s just...I dunno, I guess I just felt like Philly was my home. I never really had one before. I felt at ease there, comfortable. Moved all over ever since I was eighteen. Sticking in one spot always felt like a dream to me. Something unattainable. I guess since I finally got a taste of what amounted to one, it’s been hard to let go.”

  “I can understand. But maybe it’s because you haven’t really tried to fit in here,” Jones said. “I’ve noticed you haven’t done the same things you did there.”

  “Trying to do what you suggested and keep a lower profile. Fewer contacts and people who know me.”

  “You know we can’t go back, right?”

  Recker didn’t reply and just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Mike, if we ever go back there, the CIA will latch onto you again in a heartbeat. You somehow dodged a bullet the last time. But you’re not Houdini. The next time you most likely won’t be so lucky.”