To allow my plan to fall into place without having it picked apart by investigators, I needed to make sure there was no sign of a fight or any visible wounds on Pike’s body.

Other than the ones I had planned for him.

Threatening him in an effort to get him to admit who gave the order and who was knowledgeable of the mission would produce nothing but laughter—or a challenge for me to kill him.

Val’s revelations about Pike’s sadistic and psychotic state of mind—combined with what I already knew—led me to believe there was little I could do to intimidate him into talking—or to force him to comply with my demands.

I was left with no alternative but to use him as a piece of the puzzle I intended to assemble, and nothing more.

“Do you really think this is going to fix it?” I asked.

“It should,” he replied. “The spot on the garage floor is right under the water pump. I don’t know what else it would be.”

“I thought the valve cover was leaking on mine, and I found out it was the crank seal. Now I’m driving a fucking rental car while they fix it.” I leaned over the fender of his truck and peered under the hood. “Why don’t you pay someone to fix it? Who wants to spend a Saturday evening working on their truck?”

“I’m not like you. I’d rather do it myself than pay somebody to do it. It feels good knowing I fixed this fucker myself. I’m damned near done with it.”

Thirty minutes later he was finished with the water pump. He started the truck. Within seconds it was obvious that it was leaking again. The plastic coolant bypass hose that I’d purposely cracked earlier in the morning was the cause of the leak, but Pike didn’t realize it.

The coolant was leaking along the valley of the intake manifold, down the front of the engine, onto the water pump, and dripping on the garage floor.

Upon seeing the coolant dripping on the floor, Pike kicked the truck’s fender so violently he left a sizable dent.

“You piece of fucking shit!” he seethed.

He reacted exactly the way I wanted him to.

“Let’s go in and have a beer. We can look at it later,” I said. “It’s almost time to get something to eat, anyway.”

“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s have a beer.”

Once inside, he tossed his hat on the kitchen counter and yanked the fridge door open. He handed me a beer and opened one for himself. Frustrated about the truck, he finished the beer in one gulp. He opened another.

“Have you got any whiskey?” I asked.

“Got a bottle of Jack above the fridge. Why?”

“I need a shot,” I said. “Hell, let’s have one in Shep’s honor.”

“That’s the least we could do.” He retrieved the bottle, poured two shots, and handed me a glass. “To Shep.”

I raised my glass, knowing in a matter of minutes Pike would get what he had coming to him. “To Shep.”

He raised his glass. “Shep.”

After drinking the shot, I poured our glasses full once again. “Here,” I said, handing him his glass. “We need to drink two more. This one is for the sniper he got in Iraq. Crazy fucker saved my ass.”

I raised my glass.

He clanked his glass against mine. “To Shep.”

I drank the shot, winced, and poured another. “This one is for dragging the entire rifle team to safety in Afghanistan. Saved our asses again.”

I gestured to his glass. “Let me pour you another. Last one.”

He set the shot glass down on the countertop and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I poured his glass full and nodded toward it.

“To Sergeant Austin Shephard,” I said.

He drew a breath, downed the shot and slammed the glass down on the countertop.

I set my empty glass beside his and raised my hands in mock surrender. “I’m done.”

“Gonna stop at three huh?” he asked.

I needed him to have whiskey in his system for my plan to work. Having more than three shots and half a beer in mine would prevent me from being mentally sharp.

The three shots of whiskey he’d consumed would be enough for the coroner to find in the autopsy. That was all that mattered.

It was time to quit.

After a few more steps were taken care of, I would kill him without remorse.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got to hit the head. My gut’s churning.”

“You know where it is,” he said.

I left the kitchen and went to the hall bathroom. Purposely, I left the door ajar. I lifted my shirt tail, removed the HK23 .45 caliber pistol from its holster, and screwed the silencer to the threaded barrel.

I placed the weapon on the far side of the toilet, out of sight. I pulled down my pants, sat on the toilet, and tilted my head back.

“Hey Pike!” I shouted.

“What?” he responded, his voice muffled by the half-closed door.

“Do me a favor.”

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Taking a shit?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That Jack Daniels is killing me.”

“Pussy.” He chuckled. “What do you need?”

“Can you write me a note?”

“What?”

“God damn it, come here!” I yelled. “I can’t hear you.”

I heard his footsteps approach the door.

“What?” he asked through the door crack.

“I just thought of something, and ever since that Texas job, I can’t remember shit. My short-term memory’s fucked. Will you write it down before I forget it?”

He laughed. “You want me to write you a fucking note?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just scribble it down on a piece of paper. I’m not admitting it to Doc Rhoades, but lately, if I don’t write shit down, I forget it. It’s terrible since killing that bitch in Texas.”

Memory loss was common with military forces that had been exposed to bomb blasts, and we’d been exposed to our fair share.

“Do you have any short-term memory loss?” He asked in a mock female voice. “I’d like to butt fuck that sexy bitch.”

I clenched my teeth at the thought of him touching her. “Me, too.”

“What do you want me to write down, dip-shit?” he asked.

“Just write Wallace 1730 and suppressor.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll explain what it means when I’m done.”

“Got it,” he said. “Wallace. 1730. Suppressor.”

“Appreciate it,” I said. “Now. Close the door. This could take a minute.”

He pulled the door closed.

I waited for five minutes, hoping he’d finish the beer he was drinking. The more alcohol he had in his system, the better my plan would work. I slipped the silenced pistol in the waistband of my jeans, against the small of my back. After covering it with my shirt tail, I washed my hands.

I wiped the area free of any fingerprints with the hand towel. Protecting the door handle from finger prints with my shirt tail, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

Out of his line of sight, I whistled jokingly. “Holy shit. You don’t want to go in there.”

“Thanks for the warning,” he said with a laugh.

I walked into the kitchen. “Did you write that stuff down for me?”

Standing on the kitchen’s tile floor facing the television in the living room, he tilted his head to the side. “Sitting by the bottle of Jack.”

“It’s embarrassing that I can’t remember shit lately.”

“Don’t tell that bitch, Rhoades,” he said. “I just answer ‘no’ to all her questions. I don’t even listen to them.”

I feigned being drunk and stumbled to his right side. I draped my left arm over his upper back and pulled him close, bringing his right shoulder against my left. “Appreciate it, Brother.”

He chuckled. “You’re fucking drunk, aren’t you?”

Not too drunk to do this…

I stumbled forward, taking him with me in the process. At the same time, I slipped my right hand into my waistband and retrieved the pistol. While he was trying to regain his balance, I pressed the tip of the silencer against his right temple and pulled the trigger.

The .45 caliber slug exited the barrel with a thwack! The left side of his head exploded as the bullet exited his skull. He fell into a pile of lifeless flesh at my feet. At the same time his body hit the floor, pieces of his fragmented skull landed on the countertop beside him.

I gazed down at his crumpled body. Blood began to pool on the floor around him. I needed to act quickly, or the coroner’s reports wouldn’t support my plan. I slipped on the latex gloves I’d been carrying in my right pocket. Using my gloved hands, I grabbed the note, folded it, and placed it in the front pocket of Pike’s jeans.

I removed his phone from the other pocket and texted a message to Wallace’s phone.

Pick me up. Truck’s broke down.

I put his phone in my pocket and turned toward the kitchen counter, being careful not to step in the pooling blood.

Despite what’s shown in the movies, square whiskey bottles are nearly impossible to break over someone’s head. Using the bottom of the bottle would allow me to thoroughly clean his DNA from it without damaging the paper label. Clinging to the hope that my belief held true, I used my folded tee shirt as a buffer and hit him with the bottom of the whiskey bottle hard enough on the crown of his forehead to create what appeared to be a terrible rug burn, right at the scalp.

I unscrewed the lid from the bottle of whiskey and tossed it on the floor at his side. I watched as blood pooled around it. I wiped the bottle clean, then pressed Pike’s fingers against it as if he were gripping it. I carefully carried the bottle to my rental car, grabbed my bag, and went inside.

Leaving Pike’s hair, blood, and the whiskey bottle at the next murder scene would link him to the crime. I plucked a handful of hair from his scalp and placed it in a Ziploc bag, then removed a small down pillow from my bag. Using Pike’s right hand, I fired the pistol into the folded pillow and retrieved the slug. Upon finding the two spent brass shell casings, I placed one in my bag with the lead slug I’d removed from the pillow case.

A good investigator would check the pistol’s shell casings for fingerprints. The bullets in the magazine were currently free of any fingerprints, but that was about to change. I pressed Pike’s thumb and forefinger against the spare brass shell casing and tossed it onto the floor beside him. I removed all the cartridges from the pistol’s magazine and one from my bag. After pressing Pike’s fingerprints into each of them, I loaded the magazine and slid it into the pistol’s magazine well.

I positioned the loaded pistol—less one spent cartridge—loosely in Pike’s right hand.

The crime scene investigator would find cordite on his hand and right arm, confirming he’d shot the pistol. The one spent cartridge casing was left on the kitchen floor with his fingerprints on it. His fingerprints would also be on each of the cartridges in the magazine, which would provide proof that he, in fact, loaded the gun.

Instead of the investigator’s finding the two spent cartridges that were actually fired, they would only find one, indicating one shot was fired in the “suicide”, and that the shot was fatal. Me pressing the barrel to his temple would cause powder burns, which would support him not being shot from across the room by someone else.

The Wallace 1730 note in his pocket would suggest that he had a meeting with Wallace at 1730. The suppressor note would have been a reminder for him to get the suppressor from the armory for the pistol he used to commit suicide, which is exactly where I got it from.

After cleaning my shot glass and placing it in the cabinet, I washed out my beer bottle and dropped it into my bag. I then removed his boots and put them in the bag along with the pillow. Lastly, I suctioned some of his blood into a small syringe and placed it into a Ziploc bag before wiping the kitchen free of any fingerprints.

On my way through the garage, I grabbed his hat from the countertop, the garage door remote from the visor of his truck, and his jacket from on top of the workbench in the garage.

I glanced at my watch. 1715.

I had twenty-two minutes to kill the next member of New Dawn’s soon to be defunct program.