Read Online Precipice: The Beginning by Kevin J. Howard - Free Book Online

for the four security officers standing in the doorway to come forward. “I guess we’re going to have to punish both of you tight lipped bastards. Take them both to solitary.” Andrews stepped aside as his officers followed orders. “A few days of peace and quiet are exactly what you need.” Andrews gave a wicked smile. “The rest of you, pick this shit up.”
    The officers stepped behind Travis and Sean and followed them out of the room.

9
    H arold Dasher, or Dasher to his friends of which he had none, sat behind the wheel of an idling black sedan. The engine coughed and struggled but kept running. He would have opted for a quieter getaway car, but if he’d had the money to fulfill such requests he wouldn’t be in this situation. As it was, he didn’t have a choice. He’d borrowed twenty thousand dollars from Edward Dupree and the time for collection had come and gone. And Edward Dupree was not the kind of man to give extensions. But Dasher didn’t have a choice. He needed to borrow the twenty thousand to pay back the ten thousand he’d borrowed from Hector Gomez. With interest, his debt to Hector had increased from ten to eighteen. Dasher looked out the driver side window and watched the bank, wondering how such mindless thugs like Edward and Hector could be so good with math and figures. Dasher himself was quite intelligent, but not very good at following directions. His mother had called him too “jittery” for school. That was just a nice way of telling him he wasn’t cut out for a structured learning environment, so he’d left school in the sixth grade. After having it out with his mother for such a “stupid ass decision,” her exact words, she’d taken the cigarette from her cracked lips and pressed it to the back of his hand, leaving a scar he carried to this day. So he’d wiped away the tears and left home. Since then he’d had what many would consider a rough life. Hopefully all that was going to change in the next few minutes. One large score and he could not only settle his debts, but maybe have a little something extra to live on, to pull himself out from under the large rock God seemed to have set on him.
    “Let’s milk this bitch!” Nick bounced anxiously in the passenger seat.
    Dasher knew Nick as well as he knew any of the in and out people he’d met over the years, introduced as a friend of a friend, someone to snort some coke with on a Thursday night or shoot pool with at Finnegan’s. But he was a twitcher, bouncing and shaking as if his mind were a cell phone set to vibrate. Nick made Dasher nervous. He himself was a bit of a hothead, easily set off and always ready for a fight, but Nick was unpredictable—a very dangerous combination when he gets pissed off or drunk. Dasher remembers an incident three months ago behind Dugan’s Theatre in the downtown district. He’d gone with Nick and some really fat guy they called Butch to the alley for a score, supposedly an average pickup of some meth. Dasher found out that most normal things are always twisted to and fro when handled by Nick. So they’d met their contact in the alley and offered up the money in exchange for the goods, but the dealer had tried to pull one over on them. Weighing down the bag instead of the real deal. Without needing to confirm this, Nick grabbed a discarded beer bottle and beat the dealer to death, then proceeded to urinate on the corpse while humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” To say the very least, Nick made Dasher very nervous. Especially at this moment as Nick sat with the shotgun lying across his lap, petting it sensually.
    The two men in the back seat were both friends of Nick, people Dasher had never met but were willing to do the job. Dasher shuttered to think what type of characters these two thugs were, but he let it go. He’d come up with a good plan, laid it out to Nick and was thankful for the help. At their level in society, any help was better than none.
    “Are we ready?”