Page 163 of Like Grim Death: Part One

Maverick slams the gun down again, his back muscles tense as he lands the blow, his face blank save for the way his baby blue eyes light up when he strikes the guy again, and again. There’s blood flicking up from Leon’s face, and it splatters along Maverick’s neck, over his tattoos.

Maverick’s chest heaves beneath his jacket, but he keeps hitting the guy, and hitting him, and he doesn’t stop, even as a strangled sound escapes his own lips. Something a lot like grief in the noise.

Sid steps forward, but Ella holds out her arm, not touching my wife, but stopping her all the same.

I glance at Lilith, her eyes on me.

I nod once, indicating she should let Ella make the decision.

The sound of the gun against flesh seems impossibly loud in the night, and every hit is like a punch to my gut, seeing Maverick lose himself in this man who threatened his girl.

My abs tense, the familiar guilt snaking up my spine, coming around to my core.

Maverick hits him again, and again, until his own face looks injured with the amount of blood on it.

Then all at once, Maverick stumbles to his feet, his arm and shoulder no doubt aching. I can see it in the way he lets his arm dangle oddly from his body a moment before he shakes his hand, trying to brush the pain aside.

Impossibly, Leon makes a whimpering sound as he rolls over, and I see eyelashes fluttering among the whites and reds around his eyes. His lips are covered in blood, his nose looksgone,concave, but Mav isn’t done.

He leans down, jerking the guy up by his neck.

Leon’s legs stumble beneath him, black shoes scuffing against gray pavement. Maverick turns, dragging the guy behind him.

I don’t know how he’s walking, his knees bent as he reaches for Mav, and I think it’s only to hold on.

Maverick keeps his grip on the back of Leon’s neck, but I notice he leaves the gun as he jerks the guy toward the car and the other two bodies—Nikita’s and Raz’s.

When he gets to the Town Car, Leon crying now,sobbing,Maverick shoves him into the front seat. Leon drops down, bowing his head in his hands, blood all over his fingers from his wounds, whimpering sounds leaving his bloody lips.

Maverick doesn’t look at any of us.

He goes for Nikita, hauling him underneath his arms as Mav walks backward until Nikita is level with the passenger seat.

Maverick heaves him into the seat, letting his body slump like a crumpled sleeping bag. Then my brother reaches the last guy, hefts him over his shoulder like a sack, and opens the back door with one hand, then drops Raz’s corpse into the seat.

Without looking at me, he heads around the BMW, pops my trunk, and I know what he’s got before I even see it.

The red can.

Gasoline.

You never know when you might need to burn fucking evidence from a job, and I guess, maybe in a way, that’s what Maverick is doing.

Ella, Sid, and I watch as Maverick walks around the Town Car, pouring gas over the hood, then the bodies and along the interior, taking special care to dump it all over Leon’s head, his sobs jagged and broken in the darkness.He’s still alive.

Then Maverick throws the gas can in the car, and carefully shuts each door, a loud thwack in the night.

He reaches his hand into his pocket, pulling out a lighter.

Only then does he turn toward me, but it’s not me he’s looking at.

It’s Ella, by our side.

“Back up,” he says quietly. It’s a command, but there’s a soft respect in the words.

Ella doesn’t move, but Sid gently grabs her wrist, and all three of us move back, until we’re on my driveway, a safe enough distance from the car.

Mav flicks the lighter, the flame orange in the night.