Kage by John Donohue

Author:John Donohue [Donohue, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-01-12T10:37:06+00:00

ever said they were geniuses.”

His partner smirked. “Lucky for you. The old guy across the

street saw them force the door and called it in to 911. Probably

the only reason the EMT’s got to you before you pumped out.”

I said nothing while that thought sunk in. “What else?”

Berger finally prompted.

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John Donohue

“Huh?” I was still thinking about how close I came this

time to not waking up.

“You said there were two things that weren’t right about

this,” he reminded me.

I closed my eyes for a minute. “Yeah. The second thing was

that these guys were armed to the teeth. And it wasn’t street

junk. The knife was a pro’s weapon… “

“How do you know that?” Berger asked suspiciously.

I shrugged and the action tugged a bit on the leads to my

hand. I saw the lines on the monitor near the bed jump a little.

“You can feel it in the balance, the heft of a weapon,” I

explained. “Particularly something like a knife.” The cops

looked significantly at each other.

“You know a lot about things like this,” Berger said. It

sounded like an indictment.

I got a quick flash of a knife jutting from an eye socket. The

ring of gunshots. Blood. “Hey,” I told them, “they broke into

my house. They weren’t there looking for my social security

check or to steal the stereo.”

“What do you think they were there for then?” Berger

pressed.

I paused. I fidgeted a bit and the monitor spiked again.

“They were there to get… me.” I concluded.

“They came close,” Berger’s partner observed. He was

watching me half the time and eyeing the heart rate monitor

the other half.

But Berger was focused on me. He sat down in the chair

next to the bed, as if he had finally heard something worth his

time.

“And why were they after you, Mr. Burke?” he said quietly.

Berger’s blue eyes glittered. His partner didn’t move a muscle.

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I shifted in the bed. “I don’t know,” I replied, shaking my

head wearily. And it was partially true.

“You never saw these men before?” Berger pressed. He

sounded incredulous. I signaled no. He sighed and slipped a

folded piece of paper out of his jacket. It was a printout of mug

shots. He flattened the paper out and laid it gently in my lap. I

looked at the two pictures there. The photographs captured the

stolid features well enough, but didn’t convey the air of menace

these men had in person. I recognized them anyway.

“These two gentlemen are Geronimo Martín and Xavier

Soledad. They’ve got a rep on the street that’s pretty fierce,”

Berger told me. “They’re shooters. They don’t come cheap. And

they always work together.”

“They call them Los Gemenos,” his partner chimed in. “The

Twins.”

“These guys are not street punks,” Berger told me. “Various

law enforcement entities like them for a lot of different crimes,

but they always skate. You got a special job to do in the His-

panic underworld, you call them.” Berger looked at me with

those cold eyes. “And you’re telling me you don’t know why

these two came calling at your place?”

“No clue,” I said. In retrospect, it wasn’t the brightest move

I’ve ever made, but I was still trying to put pieces together and

wasn’t ready to share my suspicions.

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