CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Eric parked across the street from the small, dirty bungalow set in the hillside overlooking the western portion of Atlanta. At one point, this bungalow had been the office of a firing range. The range was still used occasionally by amateur shooters and hunters, but the office had long since closed.

At the moment, the bungalow was the hideout for one Francisco Jimenez, known to his fellow low-lifes as Gaucho. He had been here since the raid on the warehouse a few days ago and was probably trying to figure out how he was going to stay away from some no doubt very angry employers who were running out of available targets for their frustration.

In a way, it would be poetic justice if Gaucho were killed by the very employers who paid him to kill, but Eric didn't want that for him. He wanted to be the one to watch Gaucho die. He was the last of the dog-murderers who needed to be brought to justice.

Well, that wasn't exactly true. The entire Georgia Syndicate needed to fall, but Eric knew his limits. He was one man, and while he had a skill set that allowed him to make the small difference he had made so far, he was under no illusions that he could somehow destroy an entire crime family.

So, he would take this one last killer out, and then he would work in the shadows, investigating the Syndicate and passing information along to the FBI, the DEA and the ATF to aid them in their fight to bring the organization down. He hadn't worked out all of those details yet, but he would save that until after he took care of his own mission.

This was it. This was the end of this chapter of his life. After today, the Wolfman was gone. He would go back to being Eric Ciccolo, private citizen, until he figured out what identity he wanted to assume when he turned unofficial investigator.

Maybe he wouldn't bother with an identity. The Wolfman had a purpose to it. The last thing the dog killers saw was the image of their own victims. That made sense. Since he would be working clandestinely and in a support factor rather than as someone pulling the trigger himself, it would just be frivolous ego that made him don an identity. If they asked him who he was, he would just say nobody.

Nobody. That name worked as well as any.

"Nobody," he whispered softly.

How he wished that were true. If he were nobody, maybe Lucy would still be alive.

He smiled softly as he recalled the day he first saw Lucy. She was so small and adorable, just a little ball of cream and tan with the most beautiful blue eyes he'd ever seen. He'd joked with his wife at the time that those were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, even more beautiful than her own.

Of course, that set of beautiful blue eyes had eventually fallen on one of the other partners at her firm, and now the two of them lived somewhere in Colorado helping sufferers of ski accidents sue the winter resorts in Aspen. He didn't miss his ex-wife.

But God, he missed Lucy.

He read somewhere that there were religious texts that commanded men to give the last of their food to their dogs before their wife, to let their families starve to death before they let their hounds starve to death. He had no idea if that was really written anywhere or if the website had just made something up to be shocking and sensational, but he agreed with the sentiment. After all, a dog would never cheat you. A dog would never betray you. A dog would live its entire life devoted to pleasing you.

A dog would die rather than go against its owner's wishes.

A pang of guilt hit Eric at that. The first man he had killed, Harris, told him that Lucy hadn't even fought. She had sat there and allowed herself to get killed rather than fight back. Eric trained all of his dogs to refrain from violence unless commanded to use it, and Lucy had been the best of all of his dogs. He could fully believe that she had sat there, knowing she would die but preferring that to disappointing him.

He hated himself for that. He wished with all of his heart that he had taught her instead to defend herself at all costs. Maybe if he had, she could have survived long enough for him to rescue her.

Well, he couldn't fix the past, but he could change the future. He could, and had, avenged her and all of the other dogs that had been killed by that horrible dog fighting ring.

Except for one man, and that one man would get his comeuppance today. He glanced at the passenger seat where his tools waited. He had brought a handgun today. He was fairly sure that Gaucho was armed, and while he preferred to kill Gaucho the way he killed all of his victims, he wasn't so set on it that he would risk his own death. If Gaucho got the drop on him, he would do what he had to do.

The collar today was a new one. The last one had been rendered unusable after Eric had nearly melted Robert Evans' neck with it. He realized that it was dangerous for him to allow his emotions to take over like that, but there was a sense of triumph watching the body of that killer jerk around, abused just like the body of his victim. The only regret he had was that Jeanie Peterson would never know that Fluffy Face's kidnapper had been punished for his crime. Maybe when she was older, Eric would look her up and leave her a note.

Or not. Children moved on so easily, and Jeanie was young. It was possible that she would be able to push away her guilt and think only of the good times she had with Fluffy Face. Eric would hate to remind her of her dog's brutal end unnecessarily.

No, those memories were for him to carry. That was the burden he chose when he adopted the Wolfman.

Eric looked in the rearview mirror. The snarling face of a wolf, the ancestor of all dogs, looked back at him.

"One more hunt," he said softly, "one more kill."

He looked out the window at the darkening twilight. A perfect ending to a perfect career. He grabbed the handgun and the collar and stepped out of the car.