by Mike McCrary
Another violent day at a beach house.
Murphy stands up, moving along the perimeter of the land with his Glock held low with both hands. Brubaker wouldn’t have time to set up any real security. Possible that they arrived here only minutes before he did. He needs to go in strong. Needs his brain-mate Noah to float toward the back on this one. Noah is fine with that.
Murphy attaches the suppressor to his Glock.
No need to go loud, not tonight, not until he has to.
Murphy picks up speed, running with all he has toward the back of the house. He plants his back on a few feet of wall between a stained-glass window and the door he knows leads to the kitchen. Controls his breathing. Finds his warrior tunnel vision. Peeking in through the door’s small window, he sees the kitchen is empty. He goes to work on the lock.
It clicks.
He pulls the door open slow.
Staying low, Glock gripped loose but ready, Murphy moves in, crouching behind the massive kitchen island. There are gleaming silver trays of food everywhere. Fine crystal. Signs of a catered event. The kitchen smells of wine and baking pastries. A whiff of sizzling steak fills his nostrils. Memories enter, then fade.
Something moves in the corner.
Murphy spins, gun raised, tracking.
A woman dressed in a black and white, old-time maid outfit lies tied and gagged in the kitchen's corner. Her frightened eyes beg Murphy for help. He raises his hand, trying to calm her. Offers a soothing expression. Anything to keep her from making more noise. Pointing toward the next room, he asks silently if they are in there.
She nods, eyes bulging.
He mouths a thank you.
He can hear them now. The adrenaline and the mix of his minds must have shut down his hearing briefly. He needs to be better. He can’t hear Brubaker yet, but he hears other voices in the dining room. Some speak calm and direct. Others are elevated and panicked. Ones that sound like they are used to being in charge but find themselves in unfamiliar territory.
Part of Murphy wants Brubaker to get away with this.
He can’t help it.
If he were being honest, he’d love to watch her plan unfold. Flush it all away. Destroy the system that failed almost everyone. See what flower grows up from a crack in the concrete. They did this to them. They created Brubaker. They built Murphy. Both born from the deaths of Noah and Kate. They should reap the shit out of what they sowed.
A man walks into the kitchen.
A man from the plane and Central Park.
He locks eyes with Murphy. A tiny curl of a smile.
Murphy fires two whispered shots into his sternum, then one between his eyes. He springs up, catching the body before it falls to the tile. Murphy stares into his wide eyes as life drifts away from the man. Murphy’s stomach turns. Odd, the sadness he’s experiencing. As if he’s killed a friend. A friend he’s known forever but has never really met.
The woman in the corner cries.
Murphy has no time to console her, or himself. Time’s up. They’ll notice this man not returning to the party soon. Murphy lowers the body to the tile. He places a finger to his lips asking for quiet from the maid.
Deep breath.
He moves through the door.
In a blur, Murphy storms into the room. His sight goes white before snapping into focus. The second man from the plane stands two feet in front of him. He goes for his gun. Murphy puts a single bullet in his head. Red mist floats. The man falls back, landing in the middle of the table. Plates launch, then crash. Glasses shatter to the floor. The back of the man’s head bleeds out onto the white tablecloth, spreading out like spilled wine into the food and fragments of fine china that litter the table.
Murphy looks over the long dining table, scanning the faces of the Mega Three. All of them stripped of ego and power. Their mouths open, eyes watery and wide. Reduced to their core. No assistants to blame.
No lawyers to call.
Only fear.
At the opposite end of the table a distinguished silver fox of a gentleman rises to his feet. Middle-aged fit. A lawyer at one time perhaps, or some corporate suit before all this happened. Now, he’s a crazed mix of what he once was and Murphy.
“Hi.” Cheery, gun-raised greeting with a toothy smile.
“Hi.” Murphy raises his gun with a cluck of his tongue. “Where is she?”
“Just missed her, friend.” Clucks his tongue as Murphy does. “Hungry? There’s plenty here.”
Bakshi screams something inaudible. The silver fox slaps the taste out of his mouth.
Eve Ono holds her hands together. Fighting to be strong.
“You know you want a piece of them.” Silver Fox points out the Mega Three. “I know part of me does.”
Murphy wishes he didn’t enjoy seeing the Mega Three squirm.
Noah hopes this situation isn’t hopeless.
“Again. Where is Brubaker?”
The silver fox shrugs, shifting to his right. Murphy notices something. Something behind the silver fox. Didn’t see them at first, but he does now. Bodies lie one on top of the other against the wall. Three men in dark suits, what’s left of them. Cut wide open, their insides slipping out onto the floor.
Murphy has his answer on the Mega Three’s security.
Pruitt is slumped over at the table to the right of Murphy. His face is pale. His eyes flicker, then close. Murphy presses his fingers to Pruitt’s neck. There’s a pulse, faint, barely anything, but he is alive. For the time being.
There’s more.
Looking around the table, he now sees the blood on the faces of Bakshi, Ono, and Pruitt. He missed this too. Maybe it was the surge that comes from entering a hostile room. His warrior tunnel vision. Perhaps his mind didn’t want him to process these things, but he can’t deny what is in front of him. They are all bleeding from their foreheads. Blood slides down into their faces in crimson streaks.
“What?” he lets slip out.
There’s a bloody knife resting on the table near the silver fox’s hand. He runs his fingers over the bone handle as his warm eyes go cold.
Murphy looks closer at Bakshi. He’s shaking uncontrollably. The skin where his hair and forehead meet has been pulled back ever so slightly. On the table in front of Murphy, a bloody knife rests in the hand of the man he shot in the head.
A horrifying idea rockets through Murphy.
“She asked for this?” Murphy resets. “She told you to do this?”
“Group decision, but yes, ‘twas her idea.” Drops of glee in the silver fox’s voice.
The thought chills Murphy to the bone.
It runs Noah over.
She wanted maximum pain and suffering.
“No,” he whispers.
Footfalls thump above them. Murphy estimates three more are coming from upstairs.
“This is uncomfortable yet undeniably exhilarating. I know you probably don’t feel it, very different for you I’m sure, but this experience is pure electricity for me.” The silver fox bounces on the balls of his feet. “Just meeting you is an honor. Man, I wish we could talk for hours—”
Murphy fires three whispered shots into the silver fox.
Grouped tight together in his chest the size of a baby’s fist.
“Grab his gun,” Murphy tells Ono. She seems the most together at the moment. “Anybody who isn’t me walks through that door, kill them.”
Murphy pushes through the door returning to the kitchen.
Staying low, he closes his eyes focusing on the sounds above.
Think.
He reviews the layout of the house in his head. There are two ways to get to him. The stairs are in the next room, or if they’re feeling spry, they can go out the windows and climb down. He has to assume both are in play. The math on this is simple.
If he’s right about there being three of them, two will go one way and one will go the other.
Think.
They are part of him. Part Murphy.
What wo
uld I do?
Two will take the stairs. One will—
The kitchen door flings open. Murphy spins. His first shot fires wide, blasting the glass door. Shattered bits bounce and dance at the feet of the maid. His second shot thumps into the wall. A man rushes in. An insane glow to his eyes—could have been an accountant in normal life—his shotgun raised and ready.
The accountant wastes no time going to work.
Shotgun blasts boom like thunder. The island explodes. Plates burst. Silver trays clang to the ceramic tile. Murphy pivots, squeezing off a shot that tears into the accountant’s thigh. The accountant drops to one knee but blows out a hole in the wall above Murphy’s head. Searing, stray tungsten buckshot cuts into the side of Murphy’s face.
Murphy launches out the door into the living room.
His shoulder slams into another man like a runway train. Their bones crunch and crack as they hit the hardwood floor in a pile. The man is enormous. Bald. Looks like he could be a high school coach. Murphy’s gun slips from his fingers, bouncing along the floor.
Coach lands a punch to Murphy’s jaw.
Murphy returns with a headbutt, then another.
The coach jams his gun to Murphy's face.
Murphy slaps it away at the last second, sending the bullet ripping into the ceiling. Murphy grabs him by the ears, beating his head against the hardwood. Coach levels his weapon.
Murphy snaps coach’s neck.
Rapid, pulsing fire comes raining down from the stairs. The relentless fire carves up the couch as Murphy throws his body behind it. Stuffing flutters into the air like snow.
The kitchen door is thrown open.
Murphy twists on his back, pulling his double-barrel pistol shotgun. The blast removes most of the accountant’s head.
The automatic fire pounds away from the stairs.
Murphy scrambles on his back using his elbows and heels, pushing himself clear of the couch.
He’s created an inch of an angle.
His attacker is at the bottom of the stairs. Murphy can see him now. An ordinary-looking guy, but his face seems half-dead. As if some form of paralysis had set in. He drags one foot behind him. A leg that won’t move. Spit flies from his mouth as he screams some form on nonsense, blasting away without focus or aim. Murphy loads fresh shells.
They’re not all the same. He’s the weakest of the litter.
Brubaker is their alpha.
Murphy aims. Sorry, Noah thinks.
He fires.
The thump of the weak one’s body on the hardwood floor leaves a dull echo.
Murphy exhales.
Noah processes.
Silence fills the house of Montauk's iconic Seven Sisters.
Chapter 40
Murphy took the helicopter back to Manhattan.
The large man and Agent Heart Eater were still out cold in the grass.
He asked the pilot to call someone once they were in the air.
The riot has died down, but one hell of a mess remains. Police and emergency workers scramble in all directions. Chants of triumph. Screams of terror. People run down the streets, racing away from the park. Some run toward it. Others hold phones steady, capturing the insanity of it all.
Murphy cuts through everyone.
Face blank.
Moving toward one place and one place only.
The hotel bar where it all started for him. The windows are shattered. The doors gone. Tables and chairs are overturned, tossed around the place like loose change.
It’s dark inside, but the lights from the city’s chaos shine through the now open-air bar. Murphy slips behind the bar, grabs a bottle of the good stuff, then heads to the booth he and Dr. Peyton once sat in a lifetime ago.
The booth is shrouded in shadow, but it gives Murphy an agreeable place to sit and think.
Alone.
Unnoticed.
Sirens wail outside the blown-out picture window. Fires burn in the distance. He takes a pull straight from the bottle. Not too much, just a taste. He wants to take his time with this. Unwinding his thoughts—especially thoughts inside his switchblade mind—will be a bit of a chore.
On the helicopter ride back from Montauk, Murphy called in to Peyton about what happened. He did all the talking. Brief sentences. Information cut to the bone, no filler words sprinkled in for comfort. Peyton didn’t have a chance to say anything before Murphy ended the call.
Brubaker got away.
The Mega Assholes are alive.
There’re some bodies to deal with.
That was it. That was all Murphy felt needed to be said.
Brubaker got away is the part that has dug its way into Murphy’s head. A clenching grip on his brain that will not release. There’s another thought that grips him while he sits in the dark having a drink in the white leather booth where he was told two people share his skull.
They said he volunteered for this.
Thompson and Peyton both told him that, in some form or fashion. Murphy’s mind is clearer now. Access is better, far from perfect, but it is better than it was before. He remembers some things more than others. It’s all faint. Beyond fuzzy, but there is a memory of Thompson and Peyton visiting him in prison. Murphy’s legs were chained to the floor. His hands locked close together in front of him.
He remembers.
He wanted to kill them both, at first.
They told him about a program they were working on. He told them to eat shit.
They told him it was a second chance. Another chance at a life.
Peyton was kind.
Thompson was a prick.
Murphy was silent.
Peyton talked about a chance to right the wrongs of his life. To do better. To be better. She got to Murphy. Even without the benefit of Mr. Nice Guy Noah, her words cut into Murphy’s mind. The very idea that he could be better. The thought that he could carve some right among the piles and piles of wrong. It resonated with him. Prison had allowed him the ability to reset a bit. To let the pills, the booze, let all the rage press pause if only for a moment. Still, Murphy stayed quiet as she spoke. He kept his lips tightly sealed until they brought up his mother.
They said she was locked up, imprisoned because he was careless. Sloppy. Unhinged, he called Murphy. Thompson called her an old woman.
Said she would die in prison because of him.
Murphy pulled hard on the irons cuffed to his wrists until they cut deep into his skin. He remembers the look on Peyton’s face as she saw the blood drip.
“Sounds fun.” That’s what Murphy told them that day.
The first day of the rest of his life.
A cool wind brings him back to the bar’s white leather booth.
Eyes closed. Shoulders raised, becoming like earrings.
Murphy takes a drink.
“Hi.”
Murphy turns so quick whiskey slips out from his lips.
Dr. Peyton stands to the side of the booth with her trusty tablet in hand. She takes one of the few intact glasses from the bar then slides into the booth next to him.
“You can still track me.” Murphy pours her a drink.
“I can.” Takes a sip. “Did you think I was stupid?”
“She’s out there—”
“Yes. And since you didn’t feel like talking or answering your phone, that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Better.” She turns to him. “I know where she’s going.”
Murphy’s heart skips a beat. His grip around the bottle tightens.
“She was using Pruitt’s unlimited resources to hack into Thompson’s data. Took a while, they were working on it ever since Baghdad, but she got what she wanted about thirty seconds before you kicked in the door at Montauk.”
“Where?”
“Your girls are in a secure site. Place just over the Queensborough Bridge.”
“She’s going after them.” Shoulders inching up again.
“We were able to track
her after the hack. She was rushed, made mistakes. Had everything sent to a phone.” Peyton checks her tablet. “She stole a car. We’ve got eyes on it now. She’s headed that way.”
“You are a sneaky shit, aren’t you?”
“It’s impressive the lengths she’s gone, but we can’t—”
“Choose your words carefully, Dr. Peyton.”
“Sorry.” She takes a drink. “There are no easy answers here.”
“You’re going to kill her.”
“Not sure we have much of a choice. She’s close to the secure site but…” She avoids eye contact. “You can still get there, Murphy.”
Peyton points her whiskey glass toward the street.
A black SUV with red and blue lights flashing pulls up to the curb.
“It has a driver with simple orders—ignore laws, get there fast.”
“I’m going alone.”
“No. I need eyes on you too.”
“Where’s the trust?”
“Really?”
“How much time do I have?”
“You’ve got a three-minute head start before I call in a tactical team.”
Murphy pushes out from the booth.
Peyton’s hands tremble as she drains her drink.
Chapter 41
The Queensborough Bridge looms behind Murphy.
As if peeking over his shoulder.
The street is eerily quiet. Cars line the curb, but with no one in sight.
There’s an empty city park to his left. A swing creaks, swaying with the breeze.
The events of the evening have sucked the life out of every part of New York and the surrounding areas. Most are staying behind locked doors. Those who wanted or needed to be in tonight’s chaos are bloodied, bruised, on the run, in custody, or sadly, dead.
Murphy stays within the shadows.
Keeping himself as tight as he can to the iron fencing that runs along the street. The occasional streetlight slices cones of light every six to eight feet. Plenty of room for Murphy to roam.
The safe house that holds his children is up ahead.
Noah fights every instinct to run full throttle toward the site. Wants to kick in the door. Wants to look into the eyes of his girls. Wants to hold them. Wants everything to be okay. Wants normal to return.
