The truest law that exists is an ancient law: Actions have consequences. We try to escape them, try to convince ourselves that the rules don’t apply to me, but no matter what we do, there’s always a price to be paid whether you like it or not. And unfortunately for Omar and Jasper, The Charmer’s actions are starting to have one hell of a consequence.

The sun beats down on the dusty pavement as US Marshal Hank McCarthy climbs out of his cruiser and walks his size 13 boots over to a can of Coke and stomps it into the ground. He sighs and spits when he sees the gas station before him, rotting away like a roadside cancer.

The Marshal badge hanging on his chest catches the sun, and he takes his cigarette out of his mouth and flicks it, sending sparks flying, then he pulls his cowboy hat off his head and starts fanning the wind while squinting and spitting at the monstrosity before him. In front of him are the remains of a roadside horror movie. One car torn to shreds, one gas station messier than the inside of a college microwave, and he’s holding in a piss so bad water is practically coming out of his ears.

But after 20 years on the job, his accomplishments seemed to have been forgotten as he’s sent off to tackle this piss-ant project chasing down some hillbilly heist like he’s fresh out of the academy. Might as well be the second coming of the Alamo, and unfortunately, he’s Davy Crockett on the front line.

He pushes the door open, ignores the anemic ding, and glances at the counter. Bob’s hunched over like a broken-down scarecrow, his greasy hair sticking up every which way, looking like he’s 5 minutes late for his five minute break. Bob is still worked up, leaning over a wall of cigarettes, pulling what’s left of his hair out. Hank strides over.

“Alright, alright, looks like the tornado left the trailer park and found this place,” says Hank as he motions around the room as if he were a pastor and the mess was his church. He wears a smile so fake you could confuse it for plastic surgery.

“Where were you?! I called 20 minutes ago,” Bob screams.

“What do you expect… you’re 15 minutes away from being 15 minutes away,” says Hank, still wearing that smug-ass smile. “I was working on another case that brought me into the area, and all them local boys were busy, so you’re stuck with me.” He steps to the side and picks up a can of soup, skimming the label. “But if you ask me, that’s good for you because I’m better than the rest of them.”

Bob rolls his eyes. “Gee… lucky me.”

Hank scowls, then sets the soup back down.

“You bet,” he adds.

Despite Hank’s flippant tone, his gaze flicks around the room, taking in the chaos of a gas station that looks like it’s been on the receiving end of a leaf blower. The whole damn place reeks like motor oil mixed with stale cigarettes and something that might’ve been food before it got stomped into the linoleum. He’s seen these kinds of places before, and usually, they’re run by a junkie and robbed by a junkie. But if you ask him, they deserve to be robbed, it might do the world some good. After all, the last thing this world needs is another gas station clogging up nature’s wonder. And for this case here, being his last assignment ever was just another way the world was telling him it was time to retire.

“Public service, my ass!” Bob gruffs.

“Alright, alright,” Hank soothes. “What happened? One of your regulars swing by for their fix and decided to redecorate?”

Bob folds his arms, his weathered face creasing with anger. “Can’t you tell?! I’ve been robbed!”

Hank raises an eyebrow, feigning surprise. “Really? I wouldn’t have guessed from the pristine condition of the place. Who was the lucky bandit? Long-hair Dave again?” He reaches for a candy bar and starts to unwrap it, the crinkle of it all making Bob wince.

“You gonna pay for that?”

Hank stuffs his hand into his pocket and flips Bob a dollar. It falls well below the counter.

Bob shuts his eyes, causing the crow’s feet around them to deepen like canyons. When he opens them again, a flicker of fear dances in their depths.

“Ain’t no long-hair, it was a gang.”

Hank pauses and pulls the candy bar from his mouth, and looks at Bob like he grew a second head.

“What was that?”

A piece of chocolate falls from his mouth and splatters over the floor. Bob turns a deep shade of red and explodes.

“A gang! A damn, fuckin’, handkerchief-wearing gang,” says Bob.

Hank scratches the side of his cheek, as Bob’s words finally make an impact.

“A gang huh?”

“Yes!”

Hank looks away, his eyes catching his cruiser then falling back to his badge. He doesn’t know if he should believe him. But a gang? A gang changes everything.

Hank lets the candy bar slip from his hand, and all around him, the world falls into complete silence. Every sound in the dump, the dying buzz of fluorescent lights, Bob’s wheezing, even the crackle of his radio just disappears like someone turned the volume knob to zero. It’s as if Bob’s words were the only light source illuminating a deep, dark hole, and Hank can almost feel his cheeks tighten into a smile. Maybe those pencil-pushing pricks at headquarters just handed him a golden goose without even knowing it. In his mind, he just hit the fucking lottery. This. This case would be a worthy one to retire to, not some bullshit the brass hats had in mind.

Hank decides to play dumb. He can’t be sure of this guy.  “A gang? Out here?”

“Damn right, it was a gang! I mean, come on, what do you call four or five people ransacking the place?” says Bob, as his eyes dart around the room like they were the eyes of a whack-a-mole game.

“You don’t say,” Hank scratches his chin. “That’s unusual for these parts – hell, there’s hardly enough people living out here to form a gang. What, they recruit some farm animals too?”

The vein on Bob’s head twitches.

“You heard me, so what the hell are you gonna do about it.”

Hank gives Bob the kind of look that shuts him the hell up then reaches into his jacket and produces a radio. It crackles as he switches it on, echoing the anticipation building within him.

“Gentlemen,” Hank growls into the receiver. “We got a 568… all hands on deck.”

He tucks the radio back inside his coat, as his chest sticks out a few inches.

Fate, it seemed, wasn’t quite done with Hank McCarthy just yet. He turns his attention back to Bob, whose nose is scrunched.

“It’s called pride, Bob, and it’s what you have when you do a good job. Now stay the hell out of my way, I’m gonna take a look.”

Hank stalks through the wreckage of the gas station, his eyes scanning the mess for clues, but on the inside, he couldn’t help but think how one man’s trash quickly became his treasure. How something so small, so forgettable can turn into a life raft when he needs it the most. He can feel his cheeks tighten as he restrains a smile. Moving around the aisles, a glint of metal catches his attention from the corner of his eye. One security camera, encrusted with grime and rust, stares down from a corner.

“This thing work?” Hank questions, his voice gruff as he points to the camera.

Bob shrugs, his voice accented with annoyance. “It better, I’m still paying it off.”

Ignoring Bob’s grumbling, Hank continues to survey the scene. Toppled shelves and ripped packaging, it all painted a chaotic picture. He squeezes his eyes shut, picturing the dance of destruction that had unfolded, each misplaced item revealing a clue. When he opens them again, his eyes are bottomless pools, swimming in thought.

“You got something to say?” says Bob as he takes a few steps back, clearly unnerved by Hank’s intense focus.

Hank offers a curt nod. “Tell me exactly what happened. And don’t leave out a single damn detail, no matter how small it seems.”

Bob frowns then launches into his story, his voice exploding with frustration, like a spouse ranting about their partner leaving the dishes undone for the thousandth time. Hank listens patiently, leaning forward, nodding, absorbing the details as if he were a sponge. When Bob finished, only one question hung heavy in the air.

“What about the car outside? Where are the damn bodies?” asks Hank.

“Car outside? What fuckin’ car outside?”

Bob squares his shoulders, paces towards the door, and bulges it open. And sees the smoke rising to the heavens. His hands immediately find his knees.

“Oh what the fuck.”

Hank smirks. “What, you didn’t see that?”

Bob cuts Hank with a look that could slice a lemon then pushes Hank aside as he makes his way back inside the shop. Hank picks up a new candy bar, opens it and starts chewing slow like he’s a kid waiting for the bus.

“Anyways… mind showing me that security footage?”

Bob sighs.

He leads him to a cramped backroom office, the kind that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since 1987, with stacks and stacks of paper and dog-eared Playboys lay intermingled across each other, building a wall around his computer.

“You keep a real tidy place,” Hank remarks as his eye finds the computer chair that had faded red like it had been left too long in the sun. He frowns.

“You gotta take better care of things, this is embarrassing.”

Bob slips an Advil into his mouth.

“Does this damn thing work?” says Hank as he squeezes past Bob and tucks in behind the desk. Bob pops the monitor with the side of his fist.

POP and the monitor flickers on.

Hank slowly turns to Bob, lip slightly curled, and returns to the screen.

“Give me some space, will ya? This is an official crime scene now, thank you.”

Bob shakes his head and glances at his watch, then takes a few steps back.

“And bring me back some napkins, will ya? This keyboard is greasy.”

Then Bob pops one more Advil and closes the door behind him.

Hank jostles the mouse, turning the computer to life, pulls up the security footage, then leans so close to the monitor you can see the reflection coming off his eye. There the grainy footage plays, showing a group of young men and women, their faces obscured by bandanas, ransacking the store with the chaotic nature of kids who were just promised a shopping spree. Their quick, jagged movements were so abrupt, at times it looked like they were stabbing themselves with candy.

“What the fuck is this? What, they took like 200 bucks?”

Hank’s hand finds the carton of cigarettes in his coat, while the other squeezes his forehead. He sparks one up, ashes on the ground, then continues with the video. The chaos resumes, but out of the corner of the room, one figure remains unmoved. An older guy stands there cool, contemplating watching everyone else going apeshit while he just… watches, observes and studies the patterns. Something about the way he moves , smooth, deliberate, like he’s done this shit a thousand times before causes Hank to take notice. His chair squeaks as he leans forward, and hits the pause button. His gut starts churning as he grips his cigarette, taps the table then presses play.

“Why is he so calm?” Hank mutters, and leans closer to the screen. “Why the hell is this bastard so damn calm?”

He freezes the frame, the image locking onto Jasper’s face, and snaps a photo.

“Something ain’t right,” Hank murmurs, and looks out from the screen to the scene. He takes another look at Jasper, scratches his crotch, and then unpauses the tape, his eyes glued to the screen. And then it happens all at once. The old man says something to the gang leader, everyone runs out of the gas station, and the old man turned to grab another figure, a smaller guy bursting with nervous energy, shoving him roughly into the back of the gang’s van.

“That little fella didn’t want to go,” Hank grumbles, then jolts his head back to the scene, as if he were retracing the steps.

He pauses the frame again, the image capturing the raw terror on Omar’s face as he is shoved into the van. The kid’s eyes are wide as dinner plates, mouth open like he’s screaming, but you can’t hear shit on this piece-of-crap footage leaving Hank with the worst thing someone in law enforcement can have: an imagination. His eyes were wild, desperate to make sense of the senseless. “Wait a minute, those other idiots were a distraction. He just used them to distract people while he grabbed the guy. Yeah… yeah, this son of a bitch is a genius.”

Hank leans back in the chair so hard it nearly tips over then tilts his chin down and scratches it. Then instantly, he leans back, as excitement electrifies his body. His heart starts pounding like he just ran a damn marathon. This wasn’t just a simple roadside robbery. This was a kidnapping. Could even be human trafficking. A slow, morbid smile stretches across his face, with the kind of confidence of someone who is absolutely certain. This was a worthy case to go out on indeed.

Outside the store, the sound of sirens pierces the air as more cops arrive. A hint of panic blooms on Hank’s face as his eyes dart from the front of the store to the computer. If he didn’t act soon, there would be no way he could keep this case. And there’s no way in Hell he’s going to let some other suckers have all the fun, no matter what the rules say.

His fingers fly across the keyboard like a mad man. As he hears the ding of the doorbell cry out, he downloads the footage on a drive, deletes the footage from the computer, stuffs the drive so deep in his pocket it might as well be in another state, jumps to his feet and greets the newly arrived officers.

“Hold onto this,” he says, handing a fake file to the officer. “We got a kidnapping on our hands. I’m gonna go get the jump.”

The officer frowns and raises his hands as if to say, ‘What?’

Hank brushes past them straight towards the door.

“Hey pal… aren’t you going to brief us?” he stammers.

“No time…” says Hank without looking back. “They’re not too far ahead.”

The officer frowns and mutters, “What the fuck… want us to come.”

“No!” Hank reaches into his coat and flashes his badge.

As he approaches the door, a flash of white catches his eye. A small business card nestled amongst the debris lay close to the counter. The thing’s beat to hell, corners bent and stained with what looks like motor oil, but those two words in red lettering still jump out at him like a neon sign. “The Charmers,” with a number (440 330 0216). Hank’s brain starts clicking like a slot machine hitting jackpot. Hank grabs his chin, rewinding the footage in his head, watching one of those bandana-wearing shitheads remembering seeing the deviants pick up that card and slam it down in the video. He picks it up and jets back to Bob.

“You know anything about this?” asks Hank.

“The hell is that?” says Bob.

“A business card… what do you think it is?”

Bob sighs as his face grows red. Then he shakes his head as the memory fully forms and nods.

“Yeah, that’s the card of that little bastard who ransacked the joint.”

Hank smiles, then shakes his head. “Don’t you think you could have told me that when I walked in?”

Bob shrugs and struggles for words as his embarrassment kicks in. “Well, I… uhh…”

Hank shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it – common sense ain’t everyone’s thing.”

Bob looks blankly, emotionless, at Hank. There’s no winning an argument against an asshole. Meanwhile, Hank looks down at the card and smiles.

“You’ve done enough, thank you,” says Hank, briefly looking up at Bob as if he was going through the motions.

Bob wipes the corner of his eye, then Hank glances back down at the card and thinks this isn’t just going to be any chase. This was going to be a charming one.

He stuffs it into his pocket and makes his way outside, ignoring all the other officers arriving on the scene. As he approaches his cruiser, another glint catches his eye. In front of him, the sun reflected off a can of Coke crushed next to the wreckage with the tab ripped off.

“What a bunch of fuckin’ animals,” Hank mutters as he slides into the cruiser, feeling like a new man.

He starts his car, feeling the engine roar to life, and taps his coat pocket where the card lay, knowing he just found his golden ticket.

And all he had to do was follow it straight to the jackpot.

Please like, comment, share, and tell me what you think! This is Chapter 5 from my book. I’m doing a rewrite and would love to know what you think!