You Can't Find Peace

By Sean Cummings

8-Track Tapes. Customized vans. Drugs. Disco. Double Cross.

Neil Collins has a dangerous past that just caught up to him. An ex-specialist, Collins did a lot of bad things for a lot of years for a lot of money. Disavowing that life, he hides in plain sight in a small mining town in the middle of the Canadian Shield. It is spring 1976. America is in its bicentennial year. Custom vans with airbrushed murals prowl the streets to the sounds of cool music on 8-track tape.

Someone is frantically banging at Collins' front door first thing in the morning and that simply doesn't happen when your former life consists of having done very bad things for people who want plausible deniability, like governments running tricks on each other. Only the person standing in front of Neil is the brother he hasn't seen in years, and he's got his family in tow. Sporting a fresh shiner, he's pale and panicking because killers are coming, and they need to leave now.

Money laundering. Illegal narcotics. Outlaw bikers and Russian assassins. Throw in an order of double cross and it's just average day for a former trigger man hiding from his past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Cummings
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780995844131

Sean Cummings

Sean Cummings' published works rage from traditional urban fantasy (Shade Fright, Funeral Pallor) to a blend of dark fantasy and superheroes. (Marshall Conrad: A Superhero Tale) He is a veteran, and he lives in Saskatchewan Canada with his wife, two big dogs and one cranky old cat.

Book preview

1970 - Upper Peninsula of Michigan

I used to be a soldier. Still was if I needed to be. Soldiering just didn’t stop the moment you got out of the army. A man had all these skills, and there was money to be made.

But I was never big on guns. Kind of a ridiculous personal stance since firearms were the primary tool that specialists used to carry out their contracted deeds. I was a good guy on occasion. More often, a bad guy. It was always easy to kill but hard to live with. You must partition your conscience into tiny boxes, each one containing a self-generated excuse for inserting an eight-inch blade into someone’s brain stem with a sharp twist.

My name is Neil Collins. I once hunted whoever’s name was on the contract during a period of my life I would like to erase.

You believe your own bullshit. Amazing. It paid well, didn’t it? It was deadly and delightful, and you lived it up. Cocktail lounges in national capitals. Fast cars. The races too—like Jackie Stewart’s ‘72 Grand Prix win, right before your disappearing act. And of course, there were women, and some of those women were pros like you. What was her name, the Russian lovely? Katarina? You remember her, surely . . .

Asshole, I growled. Get out of my head.

Fat chance.

Only a cold-hearted bastard could evade the stab of loss when someone close to them paid the ultimate price for their greed, lust, envy, pride, or political connections. Too often it was the lust that did it. People deep into the shit don’t realize that dark-haired beauty or olive-skinned Adonis they’re screwing at the local motor inn is screwing them for information. What you know is all that matters. Your sexy new affair carries a blade for silent kills. He or she is on East Berlin’s payroll, or Washington’s. Or Moscow’s.

Specialists work for despots, druggies, and dictators, government intelligence agencies and the military. One might even be in your town, right now, and if you’re a target, they’ll find you and end you.

Basically, specialists didn’t kill you so much as tear apart your life and any proof that you ever existed at all.

Back in the day, I knew a few things about the hunt. I knew a few more things about an effective disappearing act, or least I thought I did. That’s why I’d rented a little brick house in the hardest-ass part of Sudbury: the Donavon. A working-class neighborhood. A place where someone with my past could, for a while at least, lead a quiet life.

So you can imagine my surprise when my estranged brother James showed up at my front door wearing a shiner first thing the morning on the Sunday after Victoria Day. I hadn’t seen him in years. Not since I joined up.

So how did he find you and what kind of trouble was he in to bother looking for you? Now you have an excessively big problem, don’t you?

Frood Road is a hell of a stretch from the Beaches, James, I rattled, my voice filled with phlegm from smoking too many Players while watching the ball game on TV. I ran a hand through my hair in apprehension.

James scanned me up and down. Did I wake you?

I stood in the doorway wearing nothing but boxers, a Montreal Expos t-shirt, and the look of a man who hadn’t slept in three nights because his nearly forty-year-old mind still thought he was twenty-one. My back was sore, and my stomach was sour from the beer and pizza.

And I really wanted to go back to bed.

This one you haven’t seen in years and years. Suddenly he shows up at the door after you took extreme measures to stay hidden. You’d better figure out precisely how that happened—and quickly.

Five-hour drive in the middle of the night to my doorstep. I growled. A secret place. How did you find me?

People are coming, and I need your help. James’ voice shook. A ghastly shade of grey covered his face. Sweat rolled down his brow and dripped onto his collar.

And that whopper of a shiner over his left eye. Again, perfect. When someone punches you in the face, it means the guy in charge is not the kind of person who negotiates settlements of disputes with lawyers charging a hundred dollars an hour. It means the person who has it in for you can afford people on the payroll to dole out shiners and fat lips or cracked ribs. Or something entirely worse.

People were coming. My kind of people. Clearly, I wasn’t going back to bed anytime soon. How did you find me and what did you do, James? I asked with a sharp edge to my voice.

Please, Neil, there isn’t time. We need to go, and I’ll explain once we hit the road.

I craned my neck, gazing over my errant brother’s shoulders to feast my eyes upon his gorgeous cherry red 1976 Mercury Cougar idling in front of my house. Even with the bug spatter across the hood and windshield, it was a beautiful automobile. Plush leather seats that hugged your body like a soft woman in a warm bed on a cold winter night. A high-end Philco factory sound system with AM/FM and 8-Track. Air conditioning and a sunroof. Very simply, James’ Cougar was a thing of beauty.

And inside, another surprise. I rubbed my eyes. My ex-girlfriend from a lifetime ago. From before I joined the army.

Brenda.

Christ, she hadn’t aged a day.

Brenda was with James? I narrowed my eyes.

Yes, I’m married to Brenda, James said. Look, we have to get moving.

Brenda was my sister-in-law?

This will be a fascinating reunion, don’t you think?

Brenda bobbed around the passenger seat, her head darting back and forth like a bird on a tree branch surrounded by hungry house cats.

In the back seat, a boy of about ten peered through the rear window keeping his head low. My nephew, I presumed. Every few seconds, he did a shoulder check followed by a quick glance of the street to the front of the car. Narrow shoulders hidden behind a striped t-shirt, round spectacles of the thick plastic variety.

Perfect. A kid. Whatever James had done to get the bad guys on his tail had to be huge since he fled with his family.

James threw me a tortured look. We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes. Get in the car!

I clenched my jaw tightly and hissed, "What in the living hell did you do, James?"

He ran both hands through his combover.

It’s a long story, he moaned, throwing his arms in the air. I’ll tell you all about it, but we need to get the hell out of here, Neil.

It was everything I could do to stop myself from driving a fist into his good eye for a matching set of shiners.

I disappeared for a reason, I said sharply. And you showing up is bad for me and it’s really bad for you. How did you find me and what did you do? You’ve got three seconds.

My brother heaved a weary sigh and said, Look . . . Mom and Dad are gone. My family is in the car, and you’re my only sibling. Neil . . . we need to leave now. People are coming!

People are always coming, I shot back. I don’t know how you found me but—

"I’ve been searching for you for years! James barked. Mom and Dad hired a detective to find you after you got out of the army because you vanished into thin air. You and the old man never got on, but he cared about you, you know. He and Mom spent thousands of dollars trying to track you down and both went to their graves never knowing why one of their two sons abandoned them. Well, the detective eventually found you and—"

Don’t tell me. He’s dead, too.

I don’t know, James said coldly. They’re on our tail. Neil, you’ve got to help us. Please.

Gee, do you think so? I snapped.

James glanced nervously at his watch. Christ, there isn’t time for this, Neil! He looked exhausted, the result of working too many years into the silent hours reconciling the books for corporate clients. Dried spittle collected in both corners of his mouth. A thin red film covered the white of his remaining good eye.

My brother was involved in something that sounded bad. This was real. Someone was coming to whack my closest known relative and his family. I didn’t particularly care for my brother, but there was an innocent kid in the back seat along with his mother. The girl I had left to become what I became. Both were going to wind up dead, and I simply wasn’t prepared to allow that to happen. I was completely aware, however, that James might have been lying to me too. I’d seen it a thousand times in the past: people on the run will say anything to save their own skin.

So much for my quiet life in the roughest part of town.

Bad guys carried guns. I needed to get James and his family the hell out of the city and into a secluded area because the only way to deal with someone who was on your tail was to take him down before he took you down.

It was settled then. I blinked a few times and then slapped James hard across the right cheek.

He winced and massaged his face. What the hell was that for?

For waking me up and dumping your shit on my doorstep. I glanced back at Brenda, twitching in the front seat of that Cougar. Our eyes met and in three milliseconds, she wore the same look that I’d seen in the eyes of those who were on the wrong end of a contract: ice cold fear.

I dug my finger into James’ chest. "Get in the car and I’ll be right out. You do exactly as I tell you, and that means keeping Brenda calm. She’s dead terrified. Terrified people can get you killed."

James raised his eyebrows and blinked nervously a few times. What are you going to do?

I exhaled heavily. Save your bacon, it looks like. Now get in the car. I’ll be driving.

1

1976 – Sudbury, Canada

I used to be a soldier. Still was if I needed to be. Soldiering just didn’t stop the moment you got out of the army. A man had all these skills, and there was money to be made.

But I was never big on guns. Kind of a ridiculous personal stance since firearms were the primary tool that specialists used to carry out their contracted deeds. I was a good guy on occasion. More often, a bad guy. It was always easy to kill but hard to live with. You must partition your conscience into tiny boxes, each one containing a self-generated excuse for inserting an eight-inch blade into someone’s brain stem with a sharp twist.

My name is Neil Collins. I once hunted whoever’s name was on the contract during a period of my life I would like to erase.

You believe your own bullshit. Amazing. It paid well, didn’t it? It was deadly and delightful, and you lived it up. Cocktail lounges in national capitals. Fast cars. The races too—like Jackie Stewart’s ‘72 Grand Prix win, right before your disappearing act. And of course, there were women, and some of those women were pros like you. What was her name, the Russian lovely? Katarina? You remember her, surely . . .

Asshole, I growled. Get out of my head.

Fat chance.

Only a cold-hearted bastard could evade the stab of loss when someone close to them paid the ultimate price for their greed, lust, envy, pride, or political connections. Too often it was the lust that did it. People deep into the shit don’t realize that dark-haired beauty or olive-skinned Adonis they’re screwing at the local motor inn is screwing them for information. What you know is all that matters. Your sexy new affair carries a blade for silent kills. He or she is on East Berlin’s payroll, or Washington’s. Or Moscow’s.

Specialists work for despots, druggies, and dictators, government intelligence agencies and the military. One might even be in your town, right now, and if you’re a target, they’ll find you and end you.

Basically, specialists didn’t kill you so much as tear apart your life and any proof that you ever existed at all.

Back in the day, I knew a few things about the hunt. I knew a few more things about an effective disappearing act, or least I thought I did. That’s why I’d rented a little brick house in the hardest-ass part of Sudbury: the Donavon. A working-class neighborhood. A place where someone with my past could, for a while at least, lead a quiet life.

So you can imagine my surprise when my estranged brother James showed up at my front door wearing a shiner first thing the morning on the Sunday after Victoria Day. I hadn’t seen him in years. Not since I joined up.

So how did he find you and what kind of trouble was he in to bother looking for you? Now you have an excessively big problem, don’t you?

Frood Road is a hell of a stretch from the Beaches, James, I rattled, my voice filled with phlegm from smoking too many Players while watching the ball game on TV. I ran a hand through my hair in apprehension.

James scanned me up and down. Did I wake you?

I stood in the doorway wearing nothing but boxers, a Montreal Expos t-shirt, and the look of a man who hadn’t slept in three nights because his nearly forty-year-old mind still thought he was twenty-one. My back was sore, and my stomach was sour from the beer and pizza.

And I really wanted to go back to bed.

This one you haven’t seen in years and years. Suddenly he shows up at the door after you took extreme measures to stay hidden. You’d better figure out precisely how that happened—and quickly.

Five-hour drive in the middle of the night to my doorstep. I growled. A secret place. How did you find me?

People are coming, and I need your help. James’ voice shook. A ghastly shade of grey covered his face. Sweat rolled down his brow and dripped onto his collar.

And that whopper of a shiner over his left eye. Again, perfect. When someone punches you in the face, it means the guy in charge is not the kind of person who negotiates settlements of disputes with lawyers charging a hundred dollars an hour. It means the person who has it in for you can afford people on the payroll to dole out shiners and fat lips or cracked ribs. Or something entirely worse.

People were coming. My kind of people. Clearly, I wasn’t going back to bed anytime soon. How did you find me and what did you do, James? I asked with a sharp edge to my voice.

Please, Neil, there isn’t time. We need to go, and I’ll explain once we hit the road.

I craned my neck, gazing over my errant brother’s shoulders to feast my eyes upon his gorgeous cherry red 1976 Mercury Cougar idling in front of my house. Even with the bug spatter across the hood and windshield, it was a beautiful automobile. Plush leather seats that hugged your body like a soft woman in a warm bed on a cold winter night. A high-end Philco factory sound system with AM/FM and 8-Track. Air conditioning and a sunroof. Very simply, James’ Cougar was a thing of beauty.

And inside, another surprise. I rubbed my eyes. My ex-girlfriend from a lifetime ago. From before I joined the army.

Brenda.

Christ, she hadn’t aged a day.

Brenda was with James? I narrowed my eyes.

Yes, I’m married to Brenda, James said. Look, we have to get moving.

Brenda was my sister-in-law?

This will be a fascinating reunion, don’t you think?

Brenda bobbed around the passenger seat, her head darting back and forth like a bird on a tree branch surrounded by hungry house cats.

In the back seat, a boy of about ten peered through the rear window keeping his head low. My nephew, I presumed. Every few seconds, he did a shoulder check followed by a quick glance of the street to the front of the car. Narrow shoulders hidden behind a striped t-shirt, round spectacles of the thick plastic variety.

Perfect. A kid. Whatever James had done to get the bad guys on his tail had to be huge since he fled with his family.

James threw me a tortured look. We’ve got maybe fifteen minutes. Get in the car!

I clenched my jaw tightly and hissed, "What in the living hell did you do, James?"

He ran both hands through his combover.

It’s a long story, he moaned, throwing his arms in the air. I’ll tell you all about it, but we need to get the hell out of here, Neil.

It was everything I could do to stop myself from driving a fist into his good eye for a matching set of shiners.

I disappeared for a reason, I said sharply. And you showing up is bad for me and it’s really bad for you. How did you find me and what did you do? You’ve got three seconds.

My brother heaved a weary sigh and said, Look . . . Mom and Dad are gone. My family is in the car, and you’re my only sibling. Neil . . . we need to leave now. People are coming!

People are always coming, I shot back. I don’t know how you found me but—

"I’ve been searching for you for years! James barked. Mom and Dad hired a detective to find you after you got out of the army because you vanished into thin air. You and the old man never got on, but he cared about you, you know. He and Mom spent thousands of dollars trying to track you down and both went to their graves never knowing why one of their two sons abandoned them. Well, the detective eventually found you and—"

Don’t tell me. He’s dead, too.

I don’t know, James said coldly. They’re on our tail. Neil, you’ve got to help us. Please.

Gee, do you think so? I snapped.

James glanced nervously at his watch. Christ, there isn’t time for this, Neil! He looked exhausted, the result of working too many years into the silent hours reconciling the books for corporate clients. Dried spittle collected in both corners of his mouth. A thin red film covered the white of his remaining good eye.

My brother was involved in something that sounded bad. This was real. Someone was coming to whack my closest known relative and his family. I didn’t particularly care for my brother, but there was an innocent kid in the back seat along with his mother. The girl I had left to become what I became. Both were going to wind up dead, and I simply wasn’t prepared to allow that to happen. I was completely aware, however, that James might have been lying to me too. I’d seen it a thousand times in the past: people on the run will say anything to save their own skin.

So much for my quiet life in the roughest part of town.

Bad guys carried guns. I needed to get James and his family the hell out of the city and into a secluded area because the only way to deal with someone who was on your tail was to take him down before he took you down.

It was settled then. I blinked a few times and then slapped James hard across the right cheek.

He winced and massaged his face. What the hell was that for?

For waking me up and dumping your shit on my doorstep. I glanced back at Brenda, twitching in the front seat of that Cougar. Our eyes met and in three milliseconds, she wore the same look that I’d seen in the eyes of those who were on the wrong end of a contract: ice cold fear.

I dug my finger into James’ chest. "Get in the car and I’ll be right out. You do exactly as I tell you,