Shot Through The
Heart
Maggie’s World
Maggie had been
running for what seemed like an hour.
She knew in reality, it had probably been less than ten minutes. The docks were now far behind her, as was the
fate of Marco Breaux. After her
interrupted attempt to eliminate Marco, she’d headed into the city and away
from the cops who now had custody of the Family member. Though she could have kept running, she
slowed herself to a brisk walk.
I hope for his sake and ours, that Marco is
dead, she thought. She’d stabbed him with the knife, but she
wasn’t sure if she’d hit his heart. The
poison needed entry directly in the bloodstream from the source to spread
quickly enough to do the damage needed to counteract Marco’s rapid healing
abilities. If she’d missed, the wound
could have been like nothing more than a pin-prick. If she’d hit the heart partially, the wound
could be fatal, but Marco could have lived for a period of time. Plenty long enough to tell Reed Monroe more
than he needed to know.
Maggie gauged her
surroundings. She was in a residential
neighborhood. The dark night around her
was broken only by street lamps at the corners of each block, and the
occasional front porch light. The homes
in the area were modest, yet clean, and she could imagine that each held a nice
little old couple in their seventies, sound asleep in their beds. It didn’t look like the kind of place right
for the likes of her and the trouble that she always brought with her.
She walked a couple
more blocks until she found a bus stop covering and a bench. She sat down and pulled the cell phone out of
her pocket. Opening it, she was
surprised to see it light up. She’d
imagined that it would have expired during her little swim. She supposed that the plastic case she kept
it in to protect it from her frequent episodes of dropping it had kept water
from its pertinent parts. Whatever the
reason, it worked and that was all that mattered. She pulled up the phone book and entered her
father’s name.
Drake answered the
phone tersely, and Maggie closed her eyes.
“Father, it’s me,” she said.
“I know it’s
you. Is he dead?” Drake asked.
“I’m not sure. I got him, but it wasn’t clean and the police
were on our heals, so I couldn’t stick around to find
out.” Her father remained silent. “If he’s not dead, or even if he is, the
police have him.”
A bang came over
the line, likely the sound of Drake breaking something. “Unacceptable. This murder investigation and the pressure
from Jeremiah’s Company are two too many problems. The risks to the Family are becoming too great. We need to eliminate the source of one or the
other.”
Maggie knew from
the moment she met him that Reed Hackman’s days were
numbered. Out of all the players
involved in this little drama, though, he deserved to die the least. “Let’s take out Jeremiah,” Maggie said,
surprising herself a little.
She could hear
Drake breath through the phone line for several moments. “Yes, that might help things. There was an attack on a Family member last
night in the French Quarter. Jeremiah is
becoming bolder all the time.”
“I’ll start looking
for him tonight and see if we can’t neutralize his organization.”
“Fine. Then
come back to the Manor and we’ll decide what to do about Marco,” Drake said.
Maggie ended the
call with her father and took in her surroundings again. She’d need to head to the store and get a
change of clothes and her car to begin a search for Jeremiah. She hated the thought that she’d just signed
someone’s death warrant, but it wasn’t like she didn’t do it all the time. The only comforting reality of that aspect of
her life was that she only took a life in the act of self-preservation. She wasn’t sure that made it right, but
Maggie knew she had to find a positive side somewhere, or she’d end up a cold
and ruthless killer like her father.
As Maggie walked
toward her shop, she thought about Reed Hackman. Seeing him tonight, she realized that the
instant attraction she’d felt for him was blossoming into something more. She didn’t know if she’d categorize it as
love—she’d never been in love—but she definitely felt something more than
indifference for him. He seemed to have
some quality that all those around her lacked.
It could have been the confidence that he carried around like a
billboard. Or the handsome smile he’d
shined on her so briefly. Then again, it
could have been his Brad Pitt looks or his shapely rear end. Maybe all of the above.
Maggie shook her
head and laughed a little at herself.
She barely knew Reed and he’d put her in jail in a heartbeat if he knew
what she was. The thing about the cop
was that he really seemed to care about making the city a safer place to
live. While Maggie wasn’t a blight on society for the most part, many of those in the
Drake Family were as bad as they came.
If Reed knew about her, he’d be appalled. Whether it was the cop thing, or the moral
thing, Maggie knew in her heart that she had no chance to have a relationship
with the man.
And yet she now
found herself checking him out in the middle of a high speed chase, taking that
barest moment to fantasize about dining with him at some fancy restaurant, or
dancing the waltz on a darkened dance floor.
The fantasy of Reed was taking up residence in the rest of her dreams
about being able to live a normal life.
Thinking about her
dreams and her dream man, Maggie made her way to the Carved Wood store. There was an extra change of clothes in the
office, so she shimmied into the new outfit and then emerged back on the
street. She got into the
Commander’s Palace
held a fair amount of people. Tonight,
of course, the restaurant was packed to the gills with all of New Orlean’s finest.
They were likely wolfing down steaks, and shrimp, and all the freshest
seafood from out in the gulf, prepared by one of the best chefs in the
country. Maggie wished that she could
enjoy a meal.
The maitre d did
not look kindly on her jeans and t-shirt attire the moment she stepped through
the front door. If he didn’t like her
now, he would have really liked the bloodstained outfit she had on before this
one. He raised an eyebrow at her as she
walked up to the podium. “May I help
you?” he asked, only a small bit of
“I need to meet
with Mr. Jeremiah,” she said.
“Mr. Jeremiah isn’t
receiving any visitors this evening,” the man responded.
Maggie
congratulated herself inside for making a good guess at where her prey might be
tonight, though she knew luck probably had more to do with it. “He’ll want to see me. He had a message for me that I’d like to
answer.”
The maitre d sighed
and picked up a cell phone from an inner shelf on the podium. “What is your name?”
“I’m Maggie Drake,”
she said.
He walked away into
the dining room and through a door to where Maggie could no longer see
him. She stepped closer to the dining
room entryway to look inside. Looking
over the crowd of patrons, she wasn’t sure she’d remember what Jeremiah looked
like. When she’d seen him last, she’d
been under the influence of something, and her perceptions hadn’t been exactly
clear. She remembered him as a weasely little man, but that might have been due to his
actions rather than his physical appearance.
When the maitre d
returned, he shuffled his phone from hand to hand, returning to his spot behind
the podium. “Mr. Jeremiah will see
you. Follow me,” he said, motioning
inside the restaurant.
She followed him
through the well appointed guests eating fifty dollar steaks, to an inconspicuous
stairway in the far back corner. She
climbed it quickly, leaving the greeter at the bottom. The door at the top opened and she stepped
in, knowing that she should be more cautious of Jeremiah and his henchmen. At this point, though, she was more interested
in the end result, rather than the beginning.
Jeremiah sat on a
couch across the room from the door, a glass of wine in his hand. She did recognize him, and realized that he
looked every bit like a weasel as she’d recalled. He wore a thousand dollar suit and jewelry
worth at least twice that. Unfortunately
for him, something about his slicked back hair and tiny eyes overrode any
upgrades money could buy.
Three of Jeremiah’s
associates sat at the dining table in the middle of the small room eating
dinner. They wore suits, but like
Jeremiah, their true nature shone through in their eyes like spotlights. No matter the other benefits of their job,
death took a toll on the soul. They had
most likely bashed more heads than a professional fighter, and taken much joy
in doing so.
“Ah,
Miss Drake. Did you deliver my message to your father?”
Jeremiah asked, swirling the wine in his long stemmed glass.
Maggie took a step further
into the room, stopping so that she could still see all of her adversaries to
her front. “Yes, I did. And the reaction was exactly as I thought it
would be.”
“Your father does
not want to cooperate?” Jeremiah asked in a playful tone.
“Not
exactly. He wants you dead.”
The slick man’s
eyebrows went up. “And you’re here to do
that?”
Maggie nodded. “I am.”
Jeremiah’s mouth
screwed up like he’d just bitten into a lime and he motioned a hand toward one
of his henchmen. “That’s too bad for
you. You seem like a smart girl.”
One of the thugs
moved stood up from the dining table and moved toward her. She took a step to close the distance and
lashed out with a right hook that connected with the man’s jaw. The bone cracked beneath her fist and the man
went down in a lifeless heap. His eyes
were half open and would have shown a great deal of pain if he were
conscious.
A look of surprise
on his face, one of the other unremarkable Jeremiah followers stepped up to the
young woman. He wore a dark suit similar
to the other two and purchased with drug money.
He likely didn’t believe that what he’d just witnessed would happen to
him. He probably thought that Maggie
must have just gotten lucky with her last punch. Maggie didn’t like having to get physical for
her father, but she couldn’t deny that she liked being an underdog in this
man’s world. The shocked looks on the
faces of those she put in their places always gave her a measure of
satisfaction.
When the second man
came at her, Maggie sidestepped his lunging punch and grabbed his arm. She pulled him in,
head butted his chin, then lifted him under both arms and threw him against the
nearest wall. His body rattled a two way
mirror there, in which Jeremiah’s reflection looked at her from the couch with
wide eyes.
“You’re next,” she
said, turning to him.
The gunshot rang
out in the small room like a canon.
Maggie turned her head to the last remaining thug to see smoke coming
from the barrel of a snub nosed 45 pointing directly at her. The bullet hit dead center in her chest,
sending her off balance, but not off her feet.
She took a step backward to lien against the mirror. A dark red stain grew from pea sized to a
softball on her T-shirt as she stared at it.
Jeremiah finally
got up from the couch. He scrambled
across the room toward the back exit, keeping his beady little eyes on
her. The thug stared at her as well, but
couldn’t seem to move.
“This won’t stop
me,” she said, straightening her body.
Jeremiah didn’t
wait around to see what her next move would be or if she could follow through
on that promise. He fled through the
door, followed shortly thereafter by his employee.
Maggie walked
toward the exit in a deliberate pace.
She wanted to run after him.
Unfortunately, the gunman had hit her in abspot
that would take a while to heal. Even if
she couldn’t catch him today, she planned to repay Jeremiah the favor.