Scar Tissue

  Scar Tissue

  Samantha Simard

  Copyright © 2020 Samantha Simard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except within the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or by any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents described within are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7326392-5-6

  Also by Samantha Simard:

  Wolfe & Vaughn Mysteries

  Stitches

  For Mom and Dad, again. I couldn’t do this without you.

  And for everyone who picked up a copy of Stitches. Thank you for welcoming my gang of misfits into your hearts.

  “From the day of a child’s birth he is taught by every circumstance, by every law and rule and right, to protect his own life. He starts with that great instinct, and everything confirms it. And then he is a solider and he must learn to violate all of this—he must learn coldly to put himself in the way of losing his own life without going mad.”

  - John Steinbeck, East of Eden

  “Mind is a battlefield

  All hope is gone

  Trouble to the right and left

  Whose side you’re on?

  Thoughts like a minefield

  I’m a ticking bomb

  Maybe you should watch your step

  Don’t get lost”

  - Foo Fighters, “The Sky Is a Neighborhood”

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  If Laine Parker slept, she always had the same dream.

  If, not when, because sleep was not guaranteed. Sometimes she blacked out when her head hit the pillow, but more often the thump-thump of rotor blades and the screams of dying men rung in her ears. If she gritted her teeth against the noise and stayed in bed, that was when the dreams arrived.

  The dreams started innocently, with the burn of the sun and grains of sand chafing her skin, but quickly morphed into one particular, nightmarish memory. She recalled all too clearly what it felt like to crawl on her belly up a rocky incline in the dead of the night, M4 strapped to her back and her uniform—including the field medic patch on her sleeve—coated in a layer of dust and sweat.

  Laine’s unit—12th Infantry, First Batt—was one of two backstopping a team of Rangers during an operation in a village about ten klicks outside Baghdad. One road in, one road out, curving up and around the left-hand side of a moderately elevated hill. The Rangers were looking for somebody the pointy-heads back home figured could give them intel, which meant the poor bastard needed to be taken alive; it also meant they had to make their way up the damn hill without any villagers raising the alarm.

  The Rangers were ahead of Laine by fifty meters and on the plateau of the hill, crouched low to stay in the shadows of the fencing surrounding the village, the barely-visible green glow of their laser sights sweeping for threats. The road was to Laine’s left, and she knew without turning her head that the other infantry unit was making the same slow on the other side of the road, ready to block the exit in the event something went FUBAR—fucked up beyond all recognition. If you were in the Army long enough, you got used to plans falling through.

  In front of Laine, the lead Ranger signaled for everyone to stop by raising his closed fist. The Rangers had reached the curve in the road that turned into the village, and in the middle of the road was a motionless lump. The clouds in front of the moon moved along, providing some ambient light, but it was still tough to see without night vision goggles. Laine was top of her class during marksmanship training, and even she couldn’t tell what the thing was, until a gentle breeze came along and ruffled its fur.

  A dog. A goddamn dead dog in the road.

  Something tickled at the back of Laine’s brain, a remnant of a conversation she’d heard back on base—about dead dogs and what the hostiles had started using them for—but that tickle was drowned out by a flash of light up and slightly to Laine’s right. The flash came from an open window in the top floor of a crooked little walkup, and it was something with which Laine was all too familiar.

  The glint of a sniper’s scope, trained directly on the Rangers who were in the middle of deciding how to get around the dead dog. In that moment Laine knew there was no informant, no intel, and there probably never had been. It was a trap, and they’d walked right into it.

  “Get down!” she heard herself scream, right before the sniper fired and the improvised explosive device inside the dead dog’s belly detonated.

  The world went white, and Laine woke up.

  ~***~

  A howl caught in Laine’s throat, the noise smothered by the oppressive humidity that only late August in Boston could bring. Her red hair had worked free of its topknot, brushing against her sweat-soaked sleep tank when she rolled off her mattress (always too soft, no matter how many books she stacked underneath it). It took her a moment to orient herself, to realize she wasn’t in some rattrap in the Middle East or one of the stark, prison-like rooms at Blakely Manor.

  Laine rented a shitty one-bedroom apartment in Mattapan with her little brother, Aiden. Her window faced Blue Hill Avenue, across the street from a dilapidated strip of drycleaners, cell phone stores, and vacancies with garage doors pulled down over the storefronts. There was a small kitchenette and an even smaller bathroom, and Aiden slept on the futon in the living room, insisting that Laine take the bed. Her brother worked for a catering company and was in and out at all hours anyway, so it was no big deal.

  She crossed the bedroom in three long-legged strides and stopped in front of the window, open to sparse two-in-the-morning traffic and the burn of a nearby trashcan fire. The scent of ashes drifted inside, a choking blight that reminded her of dead men, their charred bones crunching like glass under her boots.

  Laine turned away from the window, leaning down to pull the long black plastic case out from under her bed. She flicked open the latches, pushing up the top to reveal the matte black pieces of her Steyr HS-50 M1. Not the same kind of rifle that had earned her sharpshooter patch, but it would get the job done.

  A breeze pushed valiantly through the sludgy air, cooling Laine’s overheated skin and making her scar tingle. It was bright pink and ran diagonally across her face, from the top left side of her forehead, through her pert nose, and into the right side of her jaw. The scar resembled a ropy trench, the furled tissue making her left eye lift with permanent intrigue and pulling the right half of her mouth into a permanent rictus grin.

  There was only one thing that would make Laine grin for real. Considering the nature of the task, that grin would probably come right before she died.

  ~***~

  Aiden Parker woke
abruptly from a sound sleep. Not unusual—either a spring from the apartment’s ratty couch was poking him in the ass, or Laine had yelled her way out of another nightmare. It was quiet for a handful of moments, and Aiden heard the latches on his sister’s rifle case snap open, the sound echoing in the thin walls. That was his answer.

  Maneuvering off the couch—Aiden was six-and-a-half feet tall and built like a brick shithouse—he headed for the bedroom. He didn’t mind getting woken up in the middle of the night too much, since his job had him working events that took place on weekends. “Can’t sleep?” It was a redundant question. Nearly every night since Laine left Blakely Manor was like this one, except now they had a plan to change things.

  Laine made an affirmative noise. Her pale hands moved in the shadows, assembling the pieces of the rifle with practiced ease. “Is it bad that I’m excited?”

  Aiden listened closely to understand what Laine said. They were whispering in an effort to not wake the neighbors, and the lisp caused by Laine’s scar made her words drag at the ends.

  “No, Lainey—I don’t think it’s bad at all,” he said, coming further into the room and sitting on the edge of the mattress. It groaned under the combined weight of Aiden and the rifle case. “You got the hang of that thing?”

  “More or less. Guy I bought it from took good care of it.” Laine lifted the assembled rifle, biceps tightening as they hefted twenty-eight pounds of metal and plastic. The Steyr was intimidating enough in the daylight, but in the near-darkness of the bedroom it looked monstrous. “Glad I was able to find the five-shot model. Bolt-action blows if you miss.”

  “You don’t miss often.” Aiden reached out, put a hand over Laine’s where it was curled around the Steyr’s pistol grip. “Lainey… we’ve only got to wait a couple more days. Just a couple more days, and we’ll be able to send our message. Loud and clear.”

  Laine looked at Aiden with the same serious ice-blue eyes he’d known all his life, the shiny tautness of the scar across her face a stark reminder of what she’d endured. “You really think this is the right way to go? Knocking off a gubernatorial candidate seems like a drop in the bucket.”

  “It’s big enough to draw attention, but it won’t get us killed. We’ve been over this.” Aiden was annoyed that Laine still had doubts; his sister might be a damn good shot, but she wasn’t a brain trust. “Look, there’s no reason this shouldn’t work. As long as we stick to the plan, we’ll be fine.”

  Laine blew out a breath and set about disassembling the Steyr. “Right. Stick to the plan.” Her gaze lingered on the inside of the rifle case’s lid, to which Aiden knew a picture of their intended victim was taped. “Stick to the plan, and we’ll be fine.”

  She placed the pieces of the gun back in the case and slammed the lid shut, trapping the photograph of Christopher Sullivan against the weapon.

  ~***~

  Chapter Two

  Constantin Ionesco had watched his boss dish out a lot of bullshit over the years, but this party took the cake.

  Tonight’s dinner was a fundraiser for Christopher Sullivan’s gubernatorial campaign, in its home stretch with Massachusetts’s primary elections just two weeks away. The venue was Stela, a Romanian-American restaurant that occupied a glass-front building on Stuart Street in Boston’s Theatre District. It was owned by Anton Codreanu, a wealthy restaurateur who was also a local magnate, a respected leader in the city’s criminal underground, and Constantin’s boss.

  Every table in Stela was perfect down to the smallest detail, no placeholder askew and every napkin a bright blood red against draped white linen and gold-rimmed plates. The chandeliers toward the outer part of the floor were dimmed so the focus centered on Anton’s table with Christopher and his family. The restaurant was maxed out at two-hundred and fifty attendees, each of whom had paid dearly to dine with the likely Republican nominee for governor.

  Constantin stood in the shadows near the doors to the kitchen, his pinstriped Armani suit buttoned to conceal the Ruger SR45 in his shoulder holster. His stocky frame and closely-cropped black hair screamed bodyguard, but scarred knuckles and the way his eyes scanned the room said he was actually good at his job.

  Beside Constantin, Sebastian Codreanu—Anton’s son and the body Constantin guarded—made an amused noise. “You look like someone’s attack dog, cavalerul meu curajos.” Despite living in Boston’s prestigious Back Bay neighborhood since the age of six, Sebastian’s Romanian was flawless. “Swiveling your head like that must be painful.”

  My brave knight. Constantin almost cracked a smile at the term of endearment. It was from a game they’d played when Sebastian was a boy, wherein Sebastian was a prince in peril and Constantin was the courageous hero who saved the day. Constantin was often hard-pressed to reconcile the innocent child from his memories with the man Sebastian was forced to become, but he’d see that child in moments like this and feel a swell of platonic affection.

  Not that he’d ever show it. “Your cufflink is crooked.”

  Sebastian swore under his breath, flicking a strand of jaw-length dark hair out of his eyes as he fiddled with the errant accessory. “This thing’s been giving me shit all afternoon.” His tone took on a bitter tinge. “But God knows what would happen if I did not show up to the party looking like Daddy’s pretty little showpiece.”

  Pretty wasn’t the word Constantin would’ve used, but even a straight man could acknowledge that Sebastian was attractive. The blue twill of his suit matched his eyes, points of color standing out in an otherwise gloomy corner. He’d shaved before the party, erasing his usual stubble and leaving the unfamiliar scent of Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille behind. Sebastian had previously worn Clive Christian No. 1, until his one-night stand with Jake Wolfe and its aftermath; Constantin was the one who convinced the maid to throw the bottle away after she found the cologne in Sebastian’s trash.

  And just because Sebastian’s comment about his father was accurate didn’t mean Constantin had to like it. He glanced at his charge, a frown pulling his craggy face downward. “Prințul meu—”

  His response to their game was cut off by the ring of a fork tapping the side of a champagne flute. Nearly in unison, the tables of attendees tore their attention away from alcohol and appetizers and focused on their host.

  Anton Codreanu rose from his seat at the Sullivans’ table, setting the flute down and smoothing down the front of bespoke suit. Not yet fifty-five, Anton had a plain face surrounded by a graying beard. His eyes were the same bottle-blue as his son’s but colder in demeanor. His thin lips widened in a smile, genuine on the surface but hiding a rolling tide of contempt.

  “Thank you all for being here, and for your incredibly generous donations to Mr. Sullivan’s campaign,” he said, raising his voice to be heard throughout the massive dining room. “He is going to speak momentarily, but I wanted to tell you that since endorsing Christopher’s campaign, I have come to see him more clearly as both a politician and a man.” The thin smile widened, and Constantin didn’t like it a bit; that smile meant good things for Anton’s personal ambitions and nothing good for the city of Boston. “And I like what I see. Now, please join me in giving our next governor a warm welcome—Christopher Sullivan, everyone!”

  The man of the hour stood up amid a clamor of applause, a grin on his face as he ran a hand through his head of curly brown hair. The hair appeared to be a familial trait, from what Constantin had seen of Christopher’s siblings, as was his freckled nose and short stature. He was good-looking in the way that a father’s ideal prom date for his daughter might be—cute, but not cute enough to lure her into the backseat of his car after the dance.

  “Thank you, Anton, for that flattering introduction. Am I blushing? I hope I’m not blushing.” As polite laughter filtered through the room, Constantin realized he was witnessing the so-called “awkward charm” the Boston Herald wrote about in their page-long endorsement of Christopher’s campaign. “And thank you all for coming! I can’t believe…”

 
; He trailed off, and what followed happened in a matter of seconds—to Constantin, it felt like hours. Like most public speakers, Christopher had been coached to not focus on the crowd directly, but to look slightly above their heads. This practice reduced nerves for both speaker and audience, and put Christopher’s gaze on the wall of windows at the front of Stela and the passing headlights on Stuart Street.

  Christopher’s sudden pause caused a confused murmur to spread through the attendees, but Constantin couldn’t have cared less. He followed Christopher’s stare and immediately figured out what caught his attention. A set of headlights attached to a van had slowed to a crawl, and the back door slid open.

  Constantin saw the gleam of titanium and the six barrels of a minigun and felt the floor drop out from underneath his feet. “Get down!”

  Stela’s glass front collapsed in a cacophony of sound, NATO rounds twice the size of AA-batteries passing through the panes. The bass-deep thud-thud-thud of the minigun’s rotational fire resonated through the building as the guests scattered in all directions, screaming and panicked if they weren’t already injured and sprawled on the floor. Splinters of wood and shards of glass flew through the air, rocketing upward like fireworks with each bullet that hit.

  Constantin’s first priority was Sebastian. He tackled the younger man to the floor, sliding an arm under his head to save him a concussion. As soon as Sebastian was out of harm’s way, Constantin hid behind an upturned table and aimed his Ruger toward the street, joined in the effort by several of his men. The shooters timed their attack perfectly, driving away in the scant seconds it took for Constantin and the other bodyguards to take cover and gather their wits. All that was left when Constantin lined up his sights was a faint smoke trail, a byproduct of the rubber the assailants burned on their way down the street.