Luna's Lethal Lure

The beginning of the end was when I got my new job.

I'd been a delivery boy for a few months, but I was getting too good at my job. So they moved me down to night shift, doing special orders and such.

It wasn't bad work, no one ever gave me any trouble about it. In fact, I got a lot of special treatment because I was on night shift. I had my own office to do my paperwork and stuff in, and there were some nights where some really well-dressed guys would come by and wait for me to finish up with my deliveries so we could go out to dinner or something. They were nice enough guys, but they always spoke in code, sometimes even with each other. Not that it mattered; all I had to do was bring them their packages, then bring back whatever they wanted from the store on the way back.

One night I came back with a package for Mr. Sunniviez, the owner's son or something like that. It had been a while since he'd given me that name. As usual, he didn't say anything more than "Uh huh," as I handed him the envelope. He opened it right away and took out what looked like a bunch of contracts or something, then handed it back to me with another ten dollar bill in an envelope marked "for your troubles." That made it a pretty good night all around; if I did get some more special favors later, it would be worth it just for that money alone.

The next day at work was pretty quiet; everyone seemed kind of tense around me and Mr. Sunniviez wouldn't even look at me when I brought him his coffee. When the delivery van rolled up to the loading dock at about three in the afternoon, however, it suddenly clicked into place. All of my suspicions about weird things going on during my shift were being confirmed by the presence of two other guys from my old job: Frank and Mikey Jaxx--the muscle for Dave "the boss" Jaxx himself!

The little squeeze of fear in my chest turned into an icy ball in my stomach as we went off to make our first order drop on the least busy side of town. Dave hadn't said anything about putting Mikey and Frank on my shift; he must have thought that he could keep this whole thing under wraps if he kept his muscle out of sight until after the deed was done! My hands were shaking so much that I almost dropped Dave's coffee when he handed it off to me at the last minute before we went to make our first stop at the warehouse corner store down by the riverfront docks.

We were supposed to load up on bottled water and snacks while we waited for our customer to show up; it wasn't unusual for us to meet people this way if they couldn't afford their own storefronts or whatever, but this guy was supposed to have his own place down near the docks anyway! As soon as we got parked outside the store, however, Frank jumped right out of the car and started pounding on a door across the street! He must have seen someone coming out through one of those big garage doors next door!

We stayed in the car while Mikey parked over behind us down an alleyway where he could cover us if something went wrong with our dropoff! The guy who showed up was wearing some kind of uniform underneath his heavy jacket--it might have been army fatigues or something else from back when there was still a military! He looked kind of nervous at first when Frank grabbed him by his jacket collar and dragged him over towards our car! He relaxed a little bit when Mikey jumped out from behind us and stood between us and Frank's prisoner, but not much!

That's when Dave finally told me why all this was happening! He leaned forward from the inside seat beside me with his face twisted in rage as he shouted at his captive over Mikey's shoulder: "You absolute vile individual!" he screamed; you should have seen how frightened that guy looked!--"you know who you're messing around with now? You think you can pull off some kind of coup against us?! You think you can start a turf war?!" He threw his arms wide open in disgust at what he saw standing before him: "Aspiring soldier boy!" As soon as he began speaking again his voice dropped low into a growl: "You're going to tell me what you've done with your men and where they are now!" His voice rose back up until it cracked like thunder: "And don't try deceiving me any further!"

"What are you talking about?" The man asked weakly as Frank let go of him long enough for him to straighten out his clothes--he wore some kind of medal on his lapel! If Dave wasn't so mad before, he sure as hell was now: "They've all gone AWOL from duty!" He yanked him close