by Matt Rogers
Opal tucked the phone away and went back out into the corridor. Topaz leant against the wall with his veneers sealed behind pursed lips, standing guard outside the door that led to their prisoner. He raised a questioning eyebrow.
Opal said, ‘We got them.’
Topaz said, ‘Goddamn.’
The ensuing silence spoke volumes. Topaz read the mood in the air, nodded an understanding, and pushed the door of the interrogation room open.
Opal stepped through.
Topaz stayed outside.
Connor was alone in the grimy den, sitting on his heels to alleviate some of the stiffness from his right shoulder. His wrist was still chained to the guardrail fixed into the wall. He’d only been a captive for a few hours, but in his mind it might as well have been months. His face was gaunt, like his skin was stretched too tight over his skull. It never failed to surprise Opal what stress could do to a man.
Connor lifted his gaze expectantly, eyes wide with hope.
Opal said, ‘You were telling the truth.’
Connor breathed out.
Opal said, ‘We found them.’
Connor’s eyes lit up. ‘Already?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So we have a deal?’
‘Sorry, kid.’
Opal unholstered his Beretta and shot Connor in the face.
He made it quick. He drew, aimed, and fired so fast that Connor didn’t even have the chance to wear an expression of shock. His face was still relaxed, his eyes still hopeful, as the bullet blew his brains out the back of his head. The eyes went vacant and glassy as his body collapsed, jerking at the shoulder socket as the handcuff kept him half-suspended like a floppy marionette.
He never would have known it was the end.
Opal considered it merciful.
He scolded himself for even giving a shit about what was and wasn’t merciful, then walked out, leaving the body where it was. The clean-up crew would take care of it. He had more important matters of concern.
Topaz said, ‘You look distraught.’
Opal narrowed his eyes. He might have hesitated to kill the kid, but it was an anomaly, an outlier. ‘Really?’
‘No. But you’re not your usual self.’
‘If we let him go, he wouldn’t have talked. Those types never do. He would have been grateful to be alive.’
Topaz looked at him with disgust, like he’d wasted the last ten seconds of his life listening to that. ‘So?’
Topaz turned and walked away.
12
Summerlin
Las Vegas
Life was good.
Jason King lay stretched out on the sofa with his head in Violetta’s lap, his ear pressed to her stomach. There was still no sign of a baby bump, made more impressive by the fact she barely had an iota of fat around her waist. Even a tiny bulge would have seemed pronounced. Then again, she was only at the very beginning of the second trimester. There’d be a bump in a couple of weeks, they were sure.
The first physical sign of their child.
Violetta ran a hand absent-mindedly through his hair. Rays of late-afternoon sunlight streamed in through the big windows facing the front lawn of the estate and the walled perimeter beyond.
Violetta said, ‘This is unlike you.’
‘What?’
‘Lying here. Doing nothing.’
‘Not sure I could do much else if I tried.’
It had been a busy day. A four-mile run to the shooting range on the other side of the mountains, three hundred rounds of practice with a SIG Sauer P226 MK25, then the same four miles back. A quick shower, then an MMA sparring session with Slater. The two of them going at it every day on the mats was a relatively new development, but it was proving more effective than any sparring they could find at the local combat sports facilities, which usually involved holding back on eighty percent of their abilities so they didn’t decimate the competition and draw unwanted attention to themselves. After sparring, he’d napped for two hours, rested for another three, then hit the closest powerlifting gym for an old-school chalk-assisted strength session of squats, deadlifts, and cleans.
Now he was utterly spent. He’d sleep nine hours tonight without any trouble.
Violetta traced a finger across his chest, working her way down to his stomach, then lower…
She said, ‘Shame about that.’
King smirked with his eyes closed. ‘Your appetite’s voracious.’
‘When’s the last time we had the house to ourselves?’
‘Touché.’
Slater and Alexis were out on the town for dinner, which was a strange occasion given their lifestyle. Of course, hitting the town used to be Slater’s everyday routine, coupled with the consumption of every substance under the sun to drown his traumatic memories. But that was precisely why he didn’t do it anymore. It’s a whole lot easier to stay dedicated and disciplined when you don’t allow yourself any temptation whatsoever. Going to the Strip, surrounded by all that hedonic materialism … it was a recipe for disaster. Every square inch of the Vegas establishments were designed to suck in vulnerable souls, coaxing them into feeding the city their sobriety and then the contents of their bank accounts. Slater was strong, but it only took one slip-up to go back to the way things were, so he never gave the bright lights the opportunity to seduce him.
But that was then.
Back when they’d first moved here, Slater still had adjustments to make — a new relationship, a new home, a new existence. There were fresh habits to form, different surroundings to adjust to. It was tumultuous, and that wasn’t even taking into account the way he and King had severed their relationship with their old employers.
Now, there was routine, which gave him the stability to enjoy a night out for dinner with Alexis without getting swayed by the bright lights.
They’d returned from Wyoming two weeks ago, concluding a chain of events that began with a sad woman on a park bench. King offered to help her, which led to the discovery of an underage sex trafficking ring run by an insidious handful of Vegas’s public officials. With that situation handled, they’d followed the money that funded the trafficking operation. It took them to the Bahamas. They’d toppled an illicit financial empire on Grand Bahama, and that in turn led them to another funded operation — Mother Libertas. The extremist cult was in its foundational stages when they stumbled across it, and it was horrifying to think what it might have become had they never chanced upon it. By cutting the head off the snake they disillusioned its followers, and its existence was exposed to the mainstream media days later, nullifying any chance of the cult rising in the shadows.
Then they came back home.
A hard reset on their globetrotting endeavours.
A couple of weeks had passed without incident, which was strange. Chaos had become the new normal.
Now Violetta said, ‘How do you think Will’s handling dinner?’
King said, ‘He’ll be fine. He might even enjoy himself.’
‘That would surprise me.’
‘Would it?’
‘Las Vegas is an evil temptress. I’d say he’s stymying the urge not to drink. It might be a hard fight.’
‘Then he’s right at home.’
Her fingers paused at the crown of his hair, hovering there. ‘Do you miss the carnage?’
‘It hasn’t even been a month.’
‘Still…’
‘I don’t miss it. But I’m not entirely comfortable without it.’
‘Remember what we spoke about before that mess in Wyoming?’
‘An intermission until our baby arrives.’
‘What do you think about it?’
He looked up at her. ‘Do you see me patrolling the city looking for trouble?’
‘Because you haven’t got the itch yet.’
‘I won’t get it,’ he said. ‘And if I do, I’ll ignore it. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Have you thought about being done forever?’
He closed his e
yes. For a long time he didn’t answer. Outside the sun went down, and the “smart home” system kicked in. A timer synced to the daily sunset time ticked over, switching a pre-selected variety of interior lights on. They were mostly floor lamps to tastefully elongate the shadows, giving the estate the atmosphere of a homely ski lodge warmed on a winter night. It was Alexis’ touch, much like the rest of the interior.
She had just as much of an eye for artistic decoration as King and Slater had for violence.
But this place was more than that. It was also a home, deliberately imperfect, intentionally messy, with belongings scattered across surfaces. King and Slater’s previous residences — a pair of adjacent eight-figure penthouses on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — had lacked that touch. Those apartments had been sparse, minimal, ordered to the point of artificiality. They weren’t homes. They were training dens, containing nothing that didn’t serve a purpose.
This was a new phase of their lives.
A human phase, where they could live instead of rigorously optimising every aspect of their existence. They still used the principles of efficiency for their work — their training, their fitness, their combat abilities — but outside of that, they could be themselves for the first time in their lives.
But, King realised, the work still had to be there.
Work and play. Discipline and relaxation. Yin and yang.
Finally King said, ‘I can’t. Not forever. It’s not who I am.’
‘And if our kid ends up growing up without a father?’
‘Then, hopefully, some day he or she will understand. That if I go, it’ll be protecting others. Probably people I don’t even know. Hopefully that shows our kid how to live a good life.’
‘By not living your life at all?’ she said. ‘By being six feet under? That’ll inspire your child?’
He looked up into her eyes. ‘You’re right. Maybe being the sacrificial lamb wouldn’t be the best outcome.’
He paused.
Thought about it.
Then said, ‘It helps that I’m awfully hard to kill.’
13
Slater saw every drink on every surrounding table.
It complimented the Nobu experience. The prestigious restaurant, tucked inside the hedonistic wonderland of Caesars Palace, offered saké and craft cocktails that individually cost more than a couple of days’ groceries. The mood lighting was engineered to perfection. He and Alexis had a circular booth to themselves, and they gorged on king crab tacos, salmon sashimi, wagyu gyoza, rock tofu tempura, and yellowtail with jalapeño.
It was culinary heaven.
Slater wondered if the food would taste this good if the last few months of his life hadn’t been hell. The contrast seemed to be necessary. If every day of his life was filled with uninterrupted pleasure, then it wouldn’t be pleasure. It would all be the same monotony.
Alexis said, ‘Enjoying yourself?’
He smiled at her. ‘This is great.’
She was stunning. It made it easy to focus on her beauty instead of that ever-present temptress that was the drinks menu. She wore a simple Balmain minidress, one of the few designer pieces she owned, and it fit her physique like it had been tailored to every inch of her frame. She was something to behold in a low-cut dress. The gruelling daily routine she’d mastered over the last few months had moulded her into a fatigue-resistant machine, stripping every ounce of fat off her frame and accentuating the functional muscle. She was slim, strong, and lethal. She’d been in shape before she met Slater, but the slow transformation into a vigilante operative had built off that solid foundation.
She sipped her saké and said, ‘Jason’s become a domestic husband. And he’s doing a damn fine job of it. Rewriting decades of conditioning, I’m sure.’
‘I know,’ Slater said. He sipped water. ‘You know, I don’t mind it.’
‘No more coaxing him into operations, then?’
‘I did that in Nassau, thinking we’d be roughing up a small-time gangster. If I’d known what it’d lead to, I might never have tried. We put Violetta in danger. That baby growing in her womb is more important than any of us.’
‘Have you thought much about what happened in Wyoming?’
He looked at her curiously. ‘Which part?’
‘Are you sticking to your guns?’ she said. ‘Still avoiding the news?’
‘You’re with me all the time. Does it look like I’m watching the news?’
‘I’m not with you every waking moment. There’s opportunities to slip off to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, Google “Mother Libertas.”’
She winked at him, indicating she was half-joking.
He said, ‘Yes, I’m still sticking to my guns. That’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down. Have you looked?’
‘One time.’
‘Anything of note?’
‘Just reports of a massacre in Thunder Basin. Six dead, apparently. That’d have to be the Riordans, Elias, that Grayson fellow in the church, the guy who ambushed—’
‘Alexis,’ Slater interrupted. ‘Let’s leave the past in the past.’
She said, ‘But what about Dane’s source?’
Slater cocked his head.
She hunched forward, lowering her voice so there wasn’t a chance it could float to other tables. ‘They knew who we were. Our full names. What you and King used to do. What position Violetta used to hold. How did they get that information?’
‘Dane told us,’ Slater said. ‘He had an asset embedded in the intelligence community.’
‘And you just want to let that go?’
‘Absolutely,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not dipping a finger back in that world. It’s a cesspool.’
‘But if they know who we are—’
‘Knew,’ Slater said. ‘They’re dead.’
‘Their contact isn’t.’
‘Their contact has our files,’ Slater said. ‘That’s it. The whole espionage community has our files. It’s nothing important.’
‘There’s someone in government black ops who’s devoted to Mother Libertas. I was never in the intelligence community, obviously, but isn’t that a red flag?’
‘Mother Libertas doesn’t exist anymore,’ Slater said. ‘It was a grassroots movement, and we crushed its leadership. It got the attention of the mainstream media, who highlighted how ridiculous its beliefs were, and now it’s fizzled out into a joke on the Internet.’
‘So you have Googled it.’
Slater shook his head. ‘I just know how the world works. Momentum works in both directions.’
Alexis said, ‘But this asset … if he was motivated…’
‘What’s there to motivate him? Maeve’s persuasions were his addiction, and she’s dead. The money’s gone, so the river of Bodhi has dried up. This “asset,” if he really was a believer instead of a simple drug addict, would have gone through painful withdrawals and realised he was an idiot for believing in the cult in the first place.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But what if he’s still got a supply, and still believes?’
‘Then, even still, he’s got nothing,’ Slater said. ‘Besides our files, which don’t have anything on our current location.’
‘But if he knew we destroyed the cult, and he was motivated by revenge…’
‘You think the government as a whole isn’t motivated to find us?’
‘It’s different if he thinks we killed his gods. And he knows we were in Thunder Basin.’
‘There’s nothing there, Alexis.’
She shrugged. ‘Just making sure.’
‘We take enough precautions. The estate’s a fortress because of Violetta’s … well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “paranoia.”’
She smiled. ‘I know.’
‘I love you.’
She paused. Took a moment to relish the sound of the words. He didn’t say them often. He usually just showed he loved her through his actions, not empty platitudes.
She said, ‘I love you too.’
The table rattled as someone stumbled into it, knocking the edge with their hip.
Alexis jolted, and Slater looked up into the eyes of a tanned Hispanic man with a mane of curly black hair flowing down to his shoulders. His expensive suit hung open at the collar, one button too many undone, and his eyes were black and beady. He was in impressive shape underneath the suit but his eyes were cloudy with drink. He was in his early thirties, probably an investment banker or a venture capitalist with money to burn if he was so comfortably inebriated in an establishment like this. He had no concern for the venue’s etiquette.
He mumbled, ‘Sorry, papi,’ then laughed loudly and jaggedly.
Ha-ha-ha-ha.
Slater said, ‘No problem.’
The man turned to Alexis and stared without a hint of social awareness. He looked between her and Slater, then focused his eyes again on her. ‘Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it.’
She didn’t laugh coyly like so many people do when a stranger makes an offensive joke. Instead she stared back at him without a hint of a reaction.
The man turned back to Slater, raised an eyebrow. ‘She’s got some attitude, huh? You bagged a good one.’
Slater said, ‘Get the fuck out of here before I throw you out.’
He said it calmly, without any aggression, so as not to disrupt the subdued fine-dining atmosphere. It didn’t gel with the words that came out of his mouth, but he let his eyes do the talking.
The long-haired guy’s eyes widened. ‘Pipe down, buddy. I was just—’
‘You were just nothing,’ Slater said. ‘Get out. Sober up.’
The guy saw something volatile in Slater’s eyes, like a bomb with a one-second fuse. He didn’t drop the attitude, but he shuffled off aggressively, swaying left and right as he headed for the front of the venue. Slater could hear him muttering obscenities the whole way.
Alexis said, ‘I should have hit him.’
‘Not anymore,’ Slater said. ‘The way you’re training now, you hit someone, they’re in the hospital. Doesn’t matter that you’re a woman. You clock them in the face with perfect technique, the size and strength difference doesn’t matter. They’re going down with broken bones. And the brain is delicate. They go down and crack their head on the side of a table? They’re dead.’
