No home for killers, p.1
No Home for Killers, page 1
PRAISE FOR E.A AYMAR
“Aymar is at the top of his game in this bold, high-stakes thriller where no character is safe. It’s excellently written, thought-provoking, intense and gripping with enough shocking twists and turns to keep you fully immersed until its stunning end. Don’t miss this one!”
—Lisa Regan,USA Today Bestselling Author
“This is a bold, relentless, breathtaking thriller from start to finish. E.A. Aymar writes about complex, damaged characters with incredible grace, anchoring the heart of this book in family conflict and trauma. Taut and twisty, with intense pacing and perfect plotting, No Home for Killers is a remarkable read. I absolutely loved it.”
—Hilary Davidson, bestselling author of Her Last Breath
“Tough, haunting, full of surprises and vivid characters, No Home for Killers is hardboiled and thoughtful, riven with pain and spiked with humor, and never less than a pedal-to-the-floor thriller. A gripping read.”
—Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award winning author of the UNSUB series
“I had so much fun reading No Home for Killers. It’s an action-packed thriller filled with characters you root for and bad guys you love seeing go down. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. One of the best books I’ve read this year!”
—Matthew Farrell, bestselling author of We Have Your Daughter
“E.A. Aymar’s No Home for Killers is a breathtakingly paced thriller; a character-driven journey of rage and justice that will leave you pondering the subtleties between good and evil, and right and wrong. Violent yet sensitive, Aymar’s command of the noir thriller is on full display here, in what is absolutely his best book yet.”
—Jennifer Hillier, USA Today bestselling author of Things We Do in the Dark and Little Secrets
“Aymar skillfully blurs the line between justice and vengeance in a gripping tale of crime and its consequences. His masterfully drawn characters are at times both relatable and brutal as the tension builds through each shocking turn until the final twist that will haunt you long after the book is closed.”
—Isabella Maldonado, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Cipher
“This book is a delight from start to finish - by turns funny, poignant, and action-packed. Twists and turns to keep us guessing the whole way. E.A. Aymar is a master storyteller, delivering fascinating characters in a realistic setting. Make a home on your shelves for this one!”
—Eliza Nellums, author of The Bone Cay and All That’s Bright and Gone
“With No Home for Killers, E.A. Aymar firmly establishes a home on the bookshelf next to fellow DC thriller authors George Pelecanos, David Swinson, and James Grady. The Pena sisters will stay with you long after you have closed the book, unless, like me, you reopen it to start right back at the beginning. Aymar is the goods.”
—Eryk Pruitt, author of Something Bad Wrong and What We Reckon
OTHER BOOKS BY E.A. AYMAR
The Unrepentant
They’re Gone (written as E.A. Barres)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Ed Aymar
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662504563 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662504556 (digital)
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller
Cover image: © The Good Brigade / Getty Images; © Tim Robinson / ArcAngel; © caesart / Shutterstock; © Cafe Racer / Shutterstock
For Nancy and Noah, always.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PART FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART ONE
When the Smoke Clears
Where will you be?
Where will you stand?
When the smoke clears?
What will people see,
Held in your hand,
When the smoke clears?
Will you be on your knees
Or in a police van
When the smoke clears?
Will we be free
In this land
When the smoke clears?
Excerpted lyrics from “When the Smoke Clears”
Written and recorded by Markus Peña
Blues for You Records
PROLOGUE
“Your brother’s dead.”
Everything in Melinda Peña’s world disappeared for a moment. The light, chilly rain. The courier delivering dinner to the townhouse across the street in their McLean, Virginia, neighborhood. The tightness from her arms crossed over her chest. All she realized were those three stark words from the woman at her door and the painful, fist-like memories of her brother.
“You mean Markus?” Melinda’s voice was strange to her ears, as if it belonged to someone else. Someone whispering.
“Yeah.”
The stranger’s disregard reminded Melinda of her own estrangement from Markus. The world slowly returned.
Melinda recrossed her arms, straightened her posture. Fought back the sudden press of tears and forced out a casual “Okay.”
The woman looked a few years younger than Melinda, probably somewhere in her late twenties, wearing torn jeans and a gray hoodie, with a vape pen in her right hand, her left shoved in the hoodie pouch. Strands of wet blonde hair were stuck to her forehead like sloppily drawn Ss.
She squinted up at the sky. “Can I come in?”
Melinda didn’t move. “How’d you know Markus?”
The woman took a drag from her pen, turned the tip blue. “Same way women always knew Markus.”
“I haven’t talked to him in years.” Regret flickered when Melinda heard her own words, a small moment when she wished she’d been more involved in his life.
Then she thought about what Markus had done to her.
The regret passed.
The stranger allowed herself a small smile. She took another hit from the pen. “You don’t know shit about him, do you?”
“I know enough.”
“Really?” Her smile turned contemptuous.
“What’s that mean?”
“Hell, lady,” the stranger said. “I just told you your brother’s dead, and you don’t give a damn.”
Melinda ignored her, didn’t feel the need to go into her family history with some stranger. Or return to her past at all. The past was like a dark stairway leading down to a secret room she’d locked long ago.
“What’s your name?” Melinda asked to change the subject.
“Dani. With an i.”
“Is that your real name?”
Another drag. Dani eyed her. “A lot of people give you fake names?”
The doorknob to that imaginary secret room was rattling. “They used to.”
“Dani’s real enough.”
The silence between the women stretched like a rickety wooden bridge.
“How’d Markus die?” Melinda asked.
“Someone killed him.”
That surprise again for Melinda, but this time more abrupt. As if she had been running and tripped.
“What?”
Dani watched her closely. “Someone killed him.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Fear touched Dani’s face, widened her eyes. “No one does. But I have an idea.”
Melin
And it changed Melinda. Her guilt grew.
“Can I come in?” Dani was asking again.
She’d moved closer, only a couple of steps away.
Melinda smelled the alcohol on the other woman, noticed the uneven brightness in her eyes, heard her slur. Maybe the twilit rain and the surprise of the conversation had hidden it, but these were signs that, years ago, Melinda would have immediately noticed. When she’d worked with women like this.
Before she’d locked that secret door.
“No,” Melinda said, her thoughts still helplessly everywhere, scattering like escaping convicts. “I think you need to leave.”
“I just want to tell you something else.” Dani glanced behind herself. “It’s important. Let me in.”
“Absolutely not.”
Dani took another small step toward her. “They might be after me.”
“Who?”
“I just need help.”
And then Dani’s body was pressed against her, pushing her, her hands reaching around Melinda, that dense smell of beer everywhere. “What’s wrong with you?” Dani was saying. “Help me!”
For a moment, Melinda was too surprised to respond. She felt herself pushed back, her foot pressed down on the hardwood inside. She heard the television from the family room, where her boyfriend, Rick, was watching Jeopardy!
But the step back was a tightening spring, a physical memory of the times she’d stopped men who were angrily searching for the women Melinda was helping. Melinda pushed forward and shoved Dani out. The other woman tripped, fell, landed on her palms and butt. From the ground, in the rain, her eyes burned.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dani asked. “Why won’t you help me?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Melinda asked back, shaken, quick breaths making it hard for her to talk clearly. “You can’t force your way into my home.”
Dani gathered herself, picked up her vape pen. Glared hard at Melinda. “You want to know what happened? You’ll find out soon enough.”
“What’s that mean?”
No answer. Dani walked away, down the sidewalk, heading out of the little townhouse community. Melinda couldn’t help glancing up at neighboring windows, wondering if anyone had seen what happened.
She closed the front door. Locked it.
Melinda’s legs were unsteady as she walked to the bathroom to wash Dani’s touch off her. As she thought about Markus, about what the woman had said.
You’ll find out soon enough.
Melinda desperately needed to get in touch with Emily, their younger sister.
It had been two years since the three siblings had last spoken, two years since the awful incident that had led their separation to grow, solidify like sunbaked mud. But, despite this, Melinda had always felt a connection with Emily she hadn’t felt with Markus, their older brother.
Melinda needed to warn her. She didn’t know what Dani had meant, but Markus had a way of pulling the entire world toward him.
And if the troubles in his life had finally caught up with him, then Melinda knew darkness would soon follow. Even dead, her brother would still cover all of them in his long, relentless shadow.
CHAPTER ONE
“Oh Jesus, shut up shut up shut up!” Emily Peña screamed at the kidnapped man kicking inside the trunk of her car.
Mercifully, Jon Winters, the kidnapped man, quieted down.
Emily sighed and yawned and reached over to the glove compartment. She popped it open, fumbled past a plastic case filled with syringes, pulled out an energy drink. Unscrewed the top, downed it, tossed the empty canister into the back seat with the others as she drove down the interstate.
Caffeine filled her, tingled in her nerves, evaporated the exhaustion behind her eyes. Emily had barely slept this week, and that pissed her off because she loved sleeping. She was always tired. Probably, she reflected, because of all the fighting. She almost always needed naps. Although her enthusiasm for naps made her feel a lot older than twenty-eight.
But it hadn’t been fighting that had kept her up this week.
It was Markus’s death.
They hadn’t been close. There was always distance between them—Markus was single-mindedly attached to his music, and Emily would rather gargle marbles than listen to jazz. But there were moments, as the oldest and youngest siblings, when Emily and Markus had enjoyed camaraderie, a playful rebellion against dutiful Melinda or their strict parents. Laughing at their parents’ demands while Melinda urged them to listen, getting drunk while Melinda resolutely stayed sober.
And then everything had split apart at their mother’s funeral two years ago, the family sent flying in different directions. No one had returned.
Emily heard Jon Winters kicking again from inside the trunk and turned on her music, let “Rage” by Rico Nasty fill the car.
He kicked harder. Either the drug had completely worn off or Jon hated rap.
“I like this song!” she shrieked.
He stopped kicking.
Emily glanced in the rearview mirror. There was no good place to pull over on Interstate 66, the long road leading straight through Northern Virginia into DC. No place where privacy was promised.
Which meant she had to work quickly.
Time to put Jon Winters back to sleep.
Emily slowed the car, pulled over to the side. Left her emergency blinkers off, just in case someone saw them and decided to help. She grabbed her brown canvas mask with three vertical black stripes painted down the front, pulled it over her head, tucked her dyed-blonde hair inside.
Emily reopened the glove compartment and retrieved a syringe filled with midazolam.
She’d read online about the drug, a member of the benzodiazepine family used to sedate patients for surgery, to calm seizures and agitation, even occasionally administered in executions. Emily had gone to a small pharmacy, wearing large sunglasses and a big floppy hat, waited until the pharmacist was called to help someone searching for flu medicine. She slipped behind the counter, found what she was looking for, slipped out.
It had happened so fast that it didn’t even feel like breaking the law.
Besides, as Emily often told herself, she was plunging the syringe only into men who deserved it.
Markus had once made a batch of weed-filled brownies during her senior year of high school and eaten them with her. The ensuing high, confusion, and loss of control had left Emily sobbing and begging her laughing older brother to take her to the hospital. Since then, she’d never done a drug stronger than alcohol. But even though she hated needles, she’d known the midazolam needed to be tested. The last thing Emily wanted to do was send criminals into comas, or worse.
She wasn’t a killer.
She’d tried the drug on herself in her apartment, tense as she injected a mild dose into her shoulder, sitting cross-legged on the bed and watching an anxious couple search for a new home on House Hunters. She was asleep a commercial break later. Woke groggy and confused after an hour, annoyed that she’d missed which house the couple had chosen.
But the midazolam had worked.
Emily glanced in the rearview mirror again, saw a break in oncoming cars, crawled into the back seat. She kept her head down as she popped a latch, pulled the seat down to reveal the inside of the trunk. Heard a whimper. Smelled piss.
She positioned her thumb over the syringe’s plunger.
No light from inside. Emily had taken out the trunk’s bulb, disabled the emergency latch, removed everything else. Nothing was in her trunk except Jon Winters, his mouth gagged and wrists bound.
His eyes widened in fear when passing headlights illuminated her mask. He cried against the gag, tried to jerk his body free from the restraints.
Emily ignored him, squinted at the syringe. Tapped the tip to make sure no air bubbles were present. Pressed the needle against his bicep.
The back of her head smacked into the driver’s seat.
His kick had come out of nowhere. Left Emily’s world lopsided. Nausea briefly threatened to rise.
Oh, Emily thought. His feet.
Didn’t tie his feet.
Another kick to her chest sent her sprawling into the front seats.
Emily shook her head and sat up, trying to see clearly. Jon Winters was still in the car, his bound hands scrabbling at the back door, looking for the handle.
