The Fall Moon Read online

I pulled my weapon and cocked it. He slowly groped his way to his feet and walked unsteadily to the kitchen door. I opened it and he stepped out into the back yard. There he bent double and vomited profusely onto the lawn. He stayed leaning like that for a moment, panting. The cool breeze moved his thin hair. The moon, now waning, was casting a dim glow across the grass.

  Dehan was behind me in the doorway. Her voice came disembodied. “OK, now you’ve been sick, let’s go.” She came up beside him. “The patrol cars are on their way.”

  She didn’t see the blade because it was in his right hand and she was on his left. He didn’t turn at speed. He didn’t do anything to alert her. He turned deliberately, and in the same movement thrust the blade low, toward her belly. The whole thing took no more than a couple of seconds.

  But I had seen it. I shouted and lurched forward, thrusting my body between hers and the knife, grabbing at his wrist with my left hand and clubbing at his head with the Colt. I felt the blade bite and tear at my side and then we were falling through the dark, through the cool air, and I could see the sky and the stars moving, turning above me.

  The impact of the ground was jarring and agonizing. Shards of pain like glass pierced my belly and my lungs. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. Then air rasped noisily into my lungs. I clawed at the grass and dragged myself to a sitting position. The Sicario was on his hands and knees. I looked up at Dehan. She was looking down at her belly. Her hands were red with blood.

  I made a horrific, rasping noise and rushed the Sicario. He still had the knife in his hand, but I didn’t care. He slashed at me. I grabbed his wrist and he sawed at my arm with the blade. The pain didn’t feel like pain. It felt like a release from the agony in my chest and my belly. I pounded his face with my fist and he staggered back. I rushed him again. He was disoriented. I grabbed his knife hand in my left and his throat in my right and we fell to the ground again. I felt him writhing and struggling underneath me. His left hand clawed at my arm. His feet thrashed and kicked. I looked up at the fall moon, saw Dehan in my mind, standing, staring at her own blood, and cried out, as the moon touched my hands, the blade drove home and beneath me, the Sicario stopped moving.

  EPILOGUE

  I sat on the sofa, watching the TV. It wasn’t my parents’ sofa. It was a new one I had bought, big, cream and overstuffed. The news item described how federal agents had busted the Camacho gang’s network of heroin and cocaine smuggling, based in New York and Arizona, and arrested over a dozen gang members, including the two brothers themselves. The agent in charge of the investigation, Detective Mike Turner, based in Washington, had made a statement.

  I didn’t want to hear his statement, so I switched off the TV.

  There was the sound of a boot kicking the door. I got up with difficulty. I had a lot of bandaging and a lot of stitching on my belly and on my left arm. I went and opened the door. Dehan stood there squinting at me slightly in the late September sunlight. She had her shades perched on top of her head and looked disturbingly attractive. Her arms were full of grocery bags. “You look like you died of your wounds and you went to purgatory.”

  “You brought wine and tequila. How nice.”

  “I thought we could celebrate. You going to move your great lunking self out of the door so I can come in?”

  “Of course.” I stepped aside. She pushed past me and went to the kitchen. “What are we celebrating?”

  “The Sicario is out of intensive care and will live.”

  “That is something to celebrate?”

  She was unpacking steak wrapped in greased paper, potatoes, avocados… “Sure. This way he will testify, and you won’t have to stand trial for killing him.”

  “I thought he had killed you. You were standing there with blood all over your belly and your hands.”

  She stopped unpacking and smiled at me. “I thought he’d killed my wife is not a defense to a charge of homicide. Besides, it was your blood all over me, not mine. You have to stop getting stabbed in the belly.”

  She set about unpacking and putting away again. I said, “He didn’t stab me, it was more like sawing from the outside in.”

  “Nice.” She put the bloody steaks on a plate in the fridge.

  “I thought I had lost you,” I said, after a moment. “Not just to the Sicario, to Washington, the Bureau… Turner.”

  She stared at me for a long five seconds, holding the fridge door. She was smiling. It was a nice smile. “You big dumb ass,” she said. “I’m going to put it down to the loss of blood and the painkillers. How the hell could you think something like that, Stone?”

  I shrugged. “I guess it was cumulative, from the moment you shot those two men. I felt…” I shook my head. “I didn’t know who you were. Suddenly you seemed to be running the case alone, and then it was you and the feds, and Turner winking at you, taking you out to dinner on federal business…”

  She sighed and looked sad. “Yeah, my bad. I should have told him to get lost sooner. He offered me a job, tried to come on. I told him to go to hell and was really looking forward to seeing you when I got back. But you’d gone all hormonal on me and left.”

  She came over and kissed me. Then she grabbed a big old terra cotta bowl and started making a salad.

  “I thought you liked him.”

  “You’re crazy. You need to read about Bowlby’s styles of attachment. You may have a problem.”

  “Really?”

  “You want a beer?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She pulled open the fridge and took out two beers. She cracked them and handed me one. “So what about San Francisco?”

  “I found Amy and Charlie there. They’re alive and well.”

  “You son of a bitch!” She picked up the lettuce and threw it in the bowl. “I knew that’s why you’d gone! And you say I was running the case on my own!” She shook her head. “You never did buy they were dead, did you?”

  “Not fully. He killed Karl and she killed Christen. She was being abused. She and Christen. It’s a long story. I won’t testify. I’ll lie in court if I have to. I won’t let them be prosecuted.”

  She took a swig and studied my face a while. “Look at you. What happened to the rule of law?”

  “I guess you perverted and corrupted me.”

  She chuckled and took another pull. “Badass rule-breaker. I like that. Hey…” she reached out and poked me on the chest. She was laughing now. “What did you think? Be honest. What did you think when Sicario sent you that message, I’m upstairs?” She laughed out loud and staggered a couple of steps back toward the fridge.

  I was laughing too, but less. I shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I didn’t know what to think.”

  “You thought, didn’t you. You though I was going to be up there, in bed, in black lace, with strawberries… Admit it, Stone. Go on!”

  I shrugged again. “I don’t know. I knew a week away from me would have you clawing your way up the walls, but I was worried about my stitches. Every Mexican woman I was ever with ended up tearing out my stitches!”

  “In your dreams, pendejo.”

  She went back to making the salad, still chuckling.

  I said, “Carmen, is this the end of it now?”

  She went very still, staring down into the salad. “End of what?”

  “The campaign of vengeance against the Chupacabras and Mick Harragan. And keeping secrets from me. Is it over?”

  She came to me and put her arms around my waist, squeezing gently with her head on my chest.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It’s over.”

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  What'd you think?

  First of all, thank you so much for giving my work a chance. If you enjoyed this adventure, then I would be extremely grateful if you would consider writing a short review for the book online. A good review means so much to every writer, but means even more for self-published writer like myself. As it allows new readers to find my books, and ultimately allows me to spend more time creating stories that I
love! :)

  You can do so directly down below:

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  * * *

  Ready for the next mystery?

  If you are ready for the next mystery in the Dead Cold series, then you can purchase your copy of the next installment now! The links are down below:

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  UK Link – coming soon

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  That's it for now :)

  Take care,

  Blake Banner

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  ALSO BY BLAKE BANNER

  Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com

  DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES

  An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)

  Two Bare Arms (Book 2)

  Garden of the Damned (Book 3)

  Let Us Prey (Book 4)

  The Sins of the Father (Book 5)

  Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)

  The Heart to Kill (Book 7)

  Unnatural Murder (Book 8)

  Fire from Heaven (Book 9)

  To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)

  Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)

  The Butcher of Whitechapel (Book 12)

  Little Dead Riding Hood (Book 13)

  Trick or Treat (Book 14)

  Blood Into Wine (Book 15)

  Jack in the Box (Book 16)

  THE OMEGA SERIES

  Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)

  Double Edged Blade (Book 2)

  The Storm (Book 3)

  The Hand of War (Book 4)

  A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)

  To Rule in Hell (Book 6)

  Kill: One (Book 7)

  Powder Burn (Book 8)

  Kill: Two (Book 9)

  Unleashed (Book 10)

  The Omicron Kill (Book 11)

  9mm Justice (Book 12)

  Kill: Four (Book 13)

  * * *

  [1] See An Ace and a Pair

  [2] See And Ace and a Pair

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY - ONE

  TWENTY - TWO

  TWENTY - THREE

  TWENTY - FOUR

  TWENTY - FIVE

  TWENTY - SIX

  EPILOGUE