Hounacier (Valducan Book 2) by Skorkowsky Seth

Author:Skorkowsky, Seth [Skorkowsky, Seth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Ragnarok Publications
Published: 2015-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

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Malcolm sat in the front seat of the SUV, his skin sticky with perspiration. They'd parked in the T-alley behind the apartments, facing the northern street. Using the AC was pointless for such a long wait, so they'd opened the windows, but the heavy, humid air didn't move enough to make any difference. He'd made Quentin smoke outside, but the stink still drifted in.

He checked his watch.

11:44. Sixteen more minutes.

He hated the waiting before a job. Time slowed to a painful crawl as the tension only raced higher and higher. Over all the years, it had gotten better, some, but it never went away.

Malcolm slid his hand into the oxygen bag and touched Hounacier's handle. She could always calm him. Tracing his fingers across the smooth grip, he petted the carved animal head curving from the end. He never had figured out exactly what type of animal the crude carving was supposed to depict. Panther, he suspected. It felt like a panther, sleek and menacing. It would help if anyone knew where exactly Hounacier originated, but no one did. Ulises had said stories of her first appeared in Les Cayes in the late Nineteenth Century. Then in the 1920s, a New Orleans bokor named Papa Peyroux carried her back to Haiti. If he had known what the animal was, he took it to his grave.

Malcolm remembered the way Ulises had touched her handle the day they'd first met. Protective. She was his love, and along came some half-Cuban American from some big university with big ideas and no faith. He couldn't imagine how that must have felt. But Ulises took him, trained him, and eventually gave his greatest love over to that same arrogant boy he now called his son. A son that never called, rarely visited so that Ulises could see him, see Hounacier, be in the room with her again.

Would that be his fate too? Would the day come when some pompous shit would appear, inherit Hounacier, and leave Malcolm to loneliness and booze as his only company? He'd deserve that.

Pushing the thought away, Malcolm checked his watch again.

11:51. Close enough.

He took the radio from console and thumbed the rubberized button. "Check in. Issach, you got anything?"

"Nothin'."

"Sammy?"

"Just sweatin' my balls off," Sammy replied.

"Well, get ready. We're going in in five minutes. Remember the plan. Issach, we'll meet you up on three."

"Got it," Issach said.

Malcolm picked up the black wire earpiece and plugged it into the Motorola. Taking Hounacier's bag, he stepped out of the vehicle and clipped the radio to his belt. "Quentin, you ready?"

Quentin sucked a final drag off his menthol and dropped it. He nodded, blowing a long stream of smoke.

"Errol, go ahead and start the car." Malcolm slipped the silver-chain-wrapped dowel in his back pocket. "Call Atabei. Let her know."

The little man nodded and stuck the key in the ignition.

Before closing the Lexus door, Malcolm slipped the sawed-off into the holster along the back of his belt, beneath his untucked shirt. He kissed the crescent bone pendant then slung Hounacier's bag across his back.

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