Spectre

by Shiloh Walker

  A cold fist of terror gripped the young man’s insides, squeezing, squeezing...turning his bowels to liquid and his knees to putty. “What do you want?”

  “Right now?” Sarge shrugged. “I want a plate of that bacon I finished frying up, some eggs, and coffee. I bet you wouldn’t mind the same. Then we can talk.”

  Without saying another word, Sarge turned his back on Meric and walked out.

  THE WALLS WERE CURVED and looked like stone under a coat of somewhat fresh whitewashing. Peering up at the tall, round barrel of the building, Meric tried once more to make sense of what was going on, but as with each previous attempt, he failed.

  Edging forward to the wrought iron railing, he peered over and looked down, spying a door that led outside. It had to. The light falling through was too bright to be anything but the sun.

  Licking his lips, he gauged the distance, and his strength.

  Could he make it before Sarge figured out what he was doing?

  No, weakling. You can’t. The voice of his father, although not welcome, wasn’t incorrect.

  He’d seen Sarge move. The man was big, powerful and fast.

  Meric was still recovering from an injury and while he was fast, his strength was only a fraction of that of the man who’d brought him here.

  Caged animals learned certain lessons—when to eat, when to rest, when to bide their time.

  Meric had lived most of his life as a caged animal. He wasn’t as strong as he needed to be to flee or fight. Unless he had no other choice, the best thing for him to do was to wait—wait, bide his time, grow strong. Then he’d strike.

  “Decided to join me, I see.” Sarge swung him a pragmatic look, one that made Meric think the other man saw see clear through him.

  “I want some coffee.” Meric gave the big man a belligerent look, pleased his voice sounded flat and emotionless, like his father’s would have. No sooner had he thought of the mean fucker who’d fathered him than he found himself thinking about what Sarge had said—German citizen. Sniper. Handy with bombs. Wanted by the authorities in Germany and in other countries. Meric had never questioned his father about the numerous false identities, or the countless escape routes he’d been made to memorize every time the old bastard dragged him into a job. That had simply been his life. But he wasn’t surprised to learn this information about his father, either.

  “Just coffee, huh?”

  The speculation in Sarge’s voice pissed him off. “Just coffee.”

  “Okay, okay.” The big man held up his hands, then poured a cup of the steaming brew and set it in front of Meric. “Sugar or cream? I make it strong.”

  “No.” He took a sip and instantly regretted it. Strong didn’t quite define the potency of what he had just taken in. But he wouldn’t relent and ask for something to smooth the way either.

  Sarge whistled easily as he plated up a serving of breakfast and put it down in front of the chair opposite where Meric sat. Then he slid the rest of the bacon onto a plate with the two remaining eggs. Meric almost said something, but a memory of his father throwing away food in front of him loomed in his mind and he bit his tongue. Maybe if he didn’t say anything, he could creep back in here later and grab a bite. The son of a bitch would probably make him clean up anyway. If that was the case, he could eat every fucking thing he found, couldn’t he?

  Sarge put the second plate down, tantalizingly close to where Meric sat and gave him a shrug. “Sorry, kid. Table’s not that big. It’s only me here.” His pale amber eyes gleamed. “Well, usually. Don’t mind the company, though.”

  Meric didn’t respond as he drank his coffee and did what he could to study his surroundings.

  From what he could tell, they were on the second level of the building—one that was constructed to be round. He didn’t have much reference but he had the impression the structure was big, too. He was dying of curiosity but kept the questions behind his teeth. It was either that or lose his teeth—a lesson he’d learned early in life.

  “It’s an old lighthouse.”

  Meric shot Sarge a look.

  “That’s what you were wondering about, right?” Sarge grabbed a piece of bacon and crunched into it, chewing slowly and with obvious pleasure. He took the time to enjoy a second bite before continuing. “You can ask me anything you want to know. I don’t mind. If it’s something I don’t want to talk about, I’ll just tell you I won’t answer. But there’s no harm in asking.”

  Meric snorted and looked away, not fooled by the obvious bullshit.

  “Anyway, it’s not used anymore. There’s a bigger, more advanced one close by. We’re a few miles north of Gloucester, Massachusetts. My dad, his dad, his people have been running this place...” He paused and blew out a breath, skimming a hand back over his short, bristly head of hair. “Well, one of my great, great grandfathers—missing a great, great, probably, he was an escaped slave. Old John made it all the way up here to Gloucester around about 1824, long before the Civil War. The lighthouse keeper was Timothy Austin. He was a Quaker—their kind didn’t hold with slavery, you know. Anyway, my several-times great-grandfather ended up being taken in by Austin. That old man was getting on in years, didn’t have a family or anything. When he passed, he left the place to my ancestor. Been in the family ever since. We’ve been running it for years, right up until it was decided that a more efficient system was needed. My grandfather was lucky enough to know people with the right connections. Gramps bought this place before it even went on the market. It’s been home to my family for generations.”

  Meric swung his head around and looked at Sarge. “Fascinating.”

  “Kid, you’ve got a game face that trumps men twice your age.” Sarge started to laugh and smacked his thigh.

  When Meric didn’t share his amusement, Sarge’s laughter faded and his smile was replaced by a frown. “Of course, maybe I shouldn’t be so amused by it. I got a feeling it was a shitty life that made somebody as young as you so hard.” He took another piece of bacon and demolished it. “Man, there is nothing like fried, fatty pig. You get me?”

  Meric stared so hard at the crispy, golden brown piece of pork in Sarge’s hand, his eyes unfocused. Jerking his head away, he blinked and forced his gaze to his coffee. “Whatever.”

  When he lowered it, the plate of food looked like it had been nudged closer.

  Sarge was shoveling a bite of egg into his mouth. He caught Meric glaring at him and paused. “What? Do I have food on my face?”

  Meric started to answer, then stopped. “It’s nothing.” Determinedly, he looked away, staring out the window in the curve of the wall past Sarge’s shoulder. He thought he could make out a couple of inches of water.

  And the sound...closing his eyes, he heard a rhythmic, rushing noise that was oddly...soothing.

  No, he told himself. It wasn’t soothing. Nothing about this shit was soothing. He needed to take in his surroundings and get out—and not find anything about the place remotely soothing.

  The sounds of eating continued, not obnoxiously loud, but it was hard to miss the quiet rasp of a metal fork over a plate, the crunch of bacon. Paired with the rhythmic sounds of water, it was almost...peaceful.

  Meric banished the thought, again and sipped his coffee, determined to make it last. If he drank it slowly enough, he could fool his belly into thinking he’d eaten something.

  “You sure you don’t want any of that?”

  He glanced at Sarge and saw him pointing at the plate that sat a few inches from him. His belly gave a demanding gurgle. Face going red, he looked from the plate to Sarge, then dropped his eyes to study the empty plate now sitting in front of Sarge.

  “I mean, if you’re happy with coffee, that’s fine. I don’t want to be greedy or anything, but if you’re not going to eat it...” Sarge went to reach for it.

  Meric didn’t realize what he was doing until the tines of the fork narrowly missed Sarge’s hand.

  “Well. Okay.”

  Sarge gave him a measuring
look as he leaned back in his seat, watching Meric as he started to eat.

  A few minutes later, Meric’s plate was empty.

  Then another plate, laden with more eggs and two pieces of toast was placed in front of him.

  He didn’t question it, just started to eat.

  His belly hurt by the time he was done. A cup was put at his elbow. He sniffed, caught a spicy scent.

  “Ginger tea. Might help to drink it, unless you want a bellyache from all that food you put away.”

  He was thirsty, so he didn’t argue.

  When he was done with the cup, he finally looked at Sarge. “What do you want?”

  “Who said I wanted anything?”

  Meric snorted. “You didn’t keep me alive, then feed me out of the goodness of your heart.” He spat on the floor and muttered under his breath.

  “Look...” Sarge sighed, giving the spittle on the floor a disgusted look. “First, I get you not trusting me. In your place, I wouldn’t trust me either, but can you not spit on my floor?”

  Meric’s ears went red, then redder still as Sarge got up and grabbed a paper towel from the roll over the sink, wetting it, then coming over and kneeling on the floor a few feet from where Meric sat. Stupid, he thought. He could so easily attack. Kick him, strike the man. Right in the head, stun him, then attack.

  Then Sarge looked up, gave him a flat look. “Don’t try it.”

  Meric tensed, then forced his muscles to relax. “Don’t try what?”

  Sarge shook his head and finished his task before rising and tossing the paper towel into a trash can on the far side of the room. He washed his hands, turning his back to Meric—again, stupid. When he turned, he gave Meric a look that let him know he’d been quite aware of what Meric was thinking. He returned to his seat and sat down, annoyance still on his face. “Now...second...I don’t want jack shit. I saw a hurting kid and decided to help. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Bullshit—”

  Sarge held up a hand as Meric went to spit again. “You spit on my floor again, son, you and me are going to have a problem.”

  Meric smirked.

  Staring Sarge straight in the eye, he leaned over and spit on the spit on the floor.

  Sarge sighed and lifted his gaze heavenward. He got up and gave the spittle on the floor a long look, then studied Meric. “I’ve got lasagna on the menu for dinner. Normally, I don’t make guests clean up, but for that...” He pointed at the small, shiny little pool of fluid. “If you want to eat anything but peanut butter for dinner, you’ll clean the entire fucking kitchen and that mess.”

  He walked out.

  Meric smirked. Sure, the man was planning on making lasagna. And, yeah, sure, Meric was planning on staying.

  Chapter 1

  Spectre

  Money wasn’t the deciding factor when I took a job, but with some of them, if the payout wasn’t adequate, I wouldn’t touch them with a grenade launcher. It wasn’t worth the hassle.

  Right now, my current job was proving to be a shit show and, with every passing second, I was starting to think I needed to ignore my client’s next call when it came, burn the phone and forget the whole mess.

  The only thing keeping me from doing that was curiosity. Curiosity and boredom. Neither of those were good motivators, but I’d spent the past few months lazing on the beach in Cancun, with the odd, occasional, self-chosen target to alleviate the boredom.

  I was ready to get back to the job.

  So far, though, I had yet to see anything in eastern Tennessee that could possibly warrant my presence, although looks could be deceiving.

  I was a prime example of that. To the casual observer—or even a trained one—I looked like a man in his late twenties or early thirties enjoying a day in a popular tourist destination, a backpack with moderately expensive and well-used photography equipment stowed inside. If somebody were to take a look—say law enforcement—they’d find that the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV’s SD card already held several hundred pictures, mostly of scenery, but there were other shots for variety. All three of the lenses showed signs of use, and I could detail which one was ideal for each shot. I’d initially started carrying a camera because it was a useful explanation if I was ever caught walking into odd places, but over the past decade, I’d develop a passing interest. One could even say it was a hobby, although I simply considered it a useful deception.

  Paired with the casual clothing, stylishly overlong hair visible under the baseball cap and a pair of battered boots, I sipped my coffee and looked over a map as though searching for a prime hiking trail in the nearby national park.

  My contact should have called ten minutes ago. If I didn’t hear from him soon, I’d leave. So far, all this had cost me was time and the plane ticket, but the fat piles of money I had stowed in various banks, both in America and outside of it, made the cost of the ticket negligible. The client had offered to take care of travel, but that was a hard no.

  Taking another sip of coffee, I glanced down the walkway, first left, then right, before using the sparkling pane of glass in front of me to survey the street. I’d finished my check and was looking at the time when somebody approached.

  I took in everything about him out of habit and wrote him off as a nonentity. Not a threat, not a contact, not a problem.

  The man settled on the bench next to me, heaving out a tired sigh before glancing at me. “Waiting on the wife?”

  I gave him an affable smile even as I gave my surroundings another look then went back to looking over the map.

  My companion spoke again, drawing my attention once more.

  “Come here every year,” the older man said, waving a hand toward the shopping center off to our right. He looked to be in his forties, overweight in the way a desk worker might be, with a friendly smile and thinning black hair. He had smile lines fanning out from his face and they deepened as he grinned at me. “You’d think I’d be used to the fact that she wants to drag me into every damn store. I could have stayed at the cabin and watched TV but here I am.”

  “Married life,” I said, playing the part. I did that easily. I’d even put a gold wedding band on my hand prior to boarding my flight. It helped curtail flirtations and was another way to throw people off. Just another part of the role I played in life.

  “You got it.” He aimed a finger at me, gunman style and laughed, a deep-belly sound of rich amusement that seemed a little too much for such a simple comment, in my opinion, but I’d come to learn that there were simple people out there who were able to laugh at the smallest things. It puzzled me, but many things in life did. I’d stopped questioning those things, because the answers always eluded me. “You and the missus thinking about going on a hike?”

  “I am.” It caused a ripple of dark amusement to think about a nonexistent wife so the smile I gave was genuine. “She doesn’t care for the outdoors unless she’s enjoying them from the comfort of the passenger’s seat. I’ll just have her drop me off at the park.”

  The phone in my hand finally buzzed. I gave my companion a nod and rose, pacing a few steps down and putting my back to a wall as I opened the secure calling app, as well as another, one I’d specifically designed myself. It altered my voice so that no known software could use it for a voice match, assuming any of my possible employers were stupid enough to try. “You’re late.”

  “Spectre!” The jovial voice came over the line, irritating me in a way the overweight tourist never could. “I had some business matters to attend to...you understand these things.”

  “I understand that you told me you’d call at 10:15. It’s almost half past. The sort of work I provide requires accuracy at all levels. If you can’t manage to contact me at the proper time, can I trust you to be accurate on other levels?”

  A couple of young women went by and one of them shot me a flirtatious look. I ignored it as I listened to the change in the breathing pattern on the other end of the line.

  “I’m a busy man, Spectre.”

&
nbsp; “I know you are...Tommy.” Dead silence. I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll give you credit. Whoever handles your tech and security is decent. I’m better.”

  “I’m not amused,” Tommy O’Halloran said, his voice tight.

  “I didn’t expect you would be.” The leader of the Irish Mafia in Boston wasn’t a man known for his sense of humor.

  He’d taken over from his father at a young age, just six years ago, when his father suffered an abrupt, fatal heart attack. He’d only been twenty-four at the time. From what I could tell, some men in the organization didn’t think he was ready for it. Tommy had taken the reins of control with brutal hands and swiftly silenced all dissenters. Humor wouldn’t serve him. Shifting my stance, I braced a foot on the wall behind me as I gave the perimeter another slow look. “But I don’t take jobs without knowing who I’m working for. That was made clear in the initial contact.”

  “You haven’t agreed to take the job yet. This invasion of my privacy doesn’t engender trust, Spectre.”

  “Then we can end this discussion now. You found me. I’m sure you can unearth other possibilities.” I lowered the phone.

  “Wait.” Tommy’s voice came out in a rough growl.

  “All right.”

  “The payout for this job is substantial.”

  “You already mentioned that. What is substantial, in your mind?” A cute brunette went bustling past me, laden with bags and I watched as she dropped down onto the bench I’d vacated, grinning at the man there. She leaned over and kissed his cheek before brandishing the bags. He looked at them with a wince. Calculating how much she’d spent, I decided. But then he leaned in and kissed her.

  Human interaction could be fascinating.

  “I’ll transfer five hundred thousand in Bitcoin to you just for assessing the job. If you accept it, I’ll send another five hundred thousand. Complete it in the manner I request and I’ll send another million.”