by Matt Rogers
They both took stock of what had happened and neither pulled the trigger.
Again, it’d get them both killed.
Alexis’ nerves were shot, frayed by so many close calls, and Petr was gone.
Again.
She nearly swore in frustration.
He could be out there in the shadows, though, aiming at her head, so she gently circled Heidi in front of her, putting her own back to the lip of the slope.
Another standoff.
64
King closed the gap on Frankie after they crossed the San Mateo Bridge.
Hayward’s suburbia swallowed them and the streets narrowed as their surroundings became residential. King leant on the accelerator, getting closer to Frankie’s taillights. Frankie was driving fast, well over the speed limit, but he wasn’t being insanely reckless. He wasn’t running red lights or missing other cars by inches. He wouldn’t know he was being tailed. He was a thuggish gangster, not a competent soldier, and any nuance or subtlety would be lost on him, especially in this state. It seemed Heidi had summoned him to the San Lorenzo Creek with urgency.
So she’d suspected foul play.
There were too many moving pieces. King hadn’t a clue who was allied with who, whether Slater was even alive, what kind of state Danny was in. He looked across at the young man and saw the whole side of his head stained red, but looking past that he didn’t seem too badly hurt. He must’ve smeared the blood all over his cheek and forehead trying to stop his ear bleeding.
Danny noticed King’s concerned look and said, ‘I just…don’t understand.’
‘Understand what?’ King said, eyes on the road again, ripping a right turn to follow Frankie into San Lorenzo.
‘What are you even doing this for? Like, who’d Frankie make an enemy of? Who’s paying you?’
‘No one’s paying us.’
‘Then…?’
‘One day you’ll get it. Maybe.’
Danny lapsed into a quiet that seemed horrified. After a beat he said, ‘Do you think I would’ve done it? Do you think I would’ve killed someone?’
‘Only you can answer that.’
Danny nodded. Turned his face toward the window, probably so King didn’t see him crying.
King stared ahead and felt his core tighten. ‘You can deal with emotions later. We’re here.’
Danny faced forward in time to see Frankie hit the brakes at the end of a desolate dead-end street in an industrial zone. The red brake lights flared, lit up the gloom. King hovered at the mouth of the street, held his foot gently on his own brake. Ready to accelerate at the slightest hint of hostility. He’d killed his headlights, but Frankie had to know he’d been followed by now…
The driver’s door flew open, and King braced himself to duck if he saw anything resembling gunmetal.
A body flew out the door, its silhouette moving like oil across the street. From King’s viewpoint it was only a flash of movement, but it bled into the shadows and disappeared.
Frankie, running for his life.
Yeah, King thought. He knows.
He stamped on the accelerator, and the car shot down the dead-end street. King kept his eyes peeled for any sign of movement in the dark, but he saw nothing. Danny sat tense as steel beside him, wordless. He kept tight pressure on his missing earlobe. Blacktop flashed by under the hood.
Frankie had only been out of his car for maybe ten seconds, and its engine was still running.
Then, as King closed in on the tail lights, Frankie came sprinting back out of the gloom.
Caught by surprise, King touched the brakes, skidded his own car to a halt maybe thirty feet from the rear bumper. He wanted an optimal position for a shootout. But the silhouette kept running, straight back to the open driver’s door. King couldn’t figure out what the hell Frankie was trying to do…
…until he realised it wasn’t Frankie.
The shape was broader, stockier, its movement more laboured. Like a huffing, puffing cube instead of the oil that King had likened Frankie’s frame to.
It dove behind the wheel of Frankie’s car and slammed the door, shutting the interior lights off, but they stayed illuminated just long enough for King to make out features through the rear windshield, meeting the man’s eyes in the rear view mirror.
Slavic features.
Had to be Petr.
What are the odds?
He didn’t have time to consider the odds because Petr’s eyes widened as he saw King in the mirror. They didn’t know each other, hadn’t seen each other before, but the eyes betray all intentions. The man understood, and when the door slammed and the interior went dark he wasted no time. Hijacking Frankie’s ride was as simple as shifting the car into gear and stomping the accelerator. The keys were still in the ignition, after all.
The Russian had spotted an opportunity and seized it.
King said, ‘Out.’
Danny didn’t answer. Probably wasn’t sure if King was talking to him.
As Petr fishtailed a wild U-turn at the end of the street, King shouted, ‘Out!’
‘Why?’
Only one syllable, but the tone revealed what Danny meant.
He was scared.
Petr finished the U-turn, smoke pluming off rubber, and picked up speed as he mounted the sidewalk to get around King’s car, parked in the middle of the street.
King said, ‘This’ll be too dangerous. Find somewhere to hide and don’t come out until I’m back.’
‘What if you don’t?’
‘Danny, get out.’
Danny threw his door open and spilled out of the passenger seat as Petr shot past them, nearly clipping the driver’s side mirror. As soon as he was clear of the car King spun the wheel and accelerated, and the G-forces slammed Danny’s door closed. He roared away from the scene in pursuit of the last surviving member of the Russian gang, hoping and praying that Danny heeded his advice.
Hoping Frankie’s grooming didn’t still have its hooks in the poor kid’s soul.
65
Slater didn’t have a gun in reach.
Wouldn’t even know where to start searching for one.
In any other setting, facing off with a man sporting far worse injuries, he’d be buoyed by confidence. In his long career of both official and unofficial operations he’d rarely encountered another individual who could withstand pain the way he could, shut it out like he was capable of. He couldn’t feel his ankle, or even much of his leg, and the rest of his body was scratched and bruised and inflamed, but he really wouldn’t consider that an issue.
Except maybe now it was, against a professional fighter in unarmed combat.
After all, a fighter’s career is built around the ability to deal with pain. If they didn’t have that, they would cave the first time they stepped foot in the cage. If Kit had anything close to an experienced MMA record, it meant he’d been taking professional bouts every three or four months consistently for years. He would know all about harnessing adrenaline, using it to blunt injury and agony until the job was done. That was his career, and when that’s your career, it’s your life.
So Slater found himself unusually hesitant.
Kit came round the trunk with unbridled anger in his eyes. There was no quip about Slater not getting the job done, no pause to mix words before the big moment. He was furious, and he didn’t have time for any of that shit. He charged at Slater and feigned a right uppercut that made Slater jerk back, bring his hands up into a competent boxing guard, at which point Kit changed levels and shot in for a double-leg takedown.
It was sloppy and slow, his athleticism and training hampered by grievous injury, but the exact same could be said for Slater.
Slater tried to sprawl his legs backwards to prevent the takedown but his ankle didn’t respond to his brain’s commands. He ended up lurching back in a half-committed stumble, which ended up making the takedown even easier.
Most people, if they ever had a street fight, would be merely irritated if someon
e grabbed their legs and forced them down to the ground. That’s only because they don’t know the consequences. Instead of irritation, Slater felt true panic as he fell back. If Kit got on top of him, his brain would be punched into mush. No question.
Slater did everything right on the way down. Bucked at the hips and tried to roll with the momentum of the takedown, tried to reverse it so he ended up on top. He’d drilled that move so many times it was now flawless muscle memory, and more importantly it didn’t rely on the use of his ankle, so he managed a decent effort.
But it was still hampered by the state of his body.
He ended up bucking Kit halfway off him, so they sprawled side by side into the dirt.
Slater could’ve thrown a fist off his back, twisting sideways into a hook, trying to bounce Kit’s face off the ground, but it’d have to be picture-perfect to achieve anything. There was much more reward in establishing top position so he scrambled to his knees and then threw himself on top of Kit, trying to seize full mount and pin the guy to the ground.
Kit brought his knee up at the right moment and it crushed Slater’s groin.
There’s nothing quite like that sort of pain. It overrides any mental barriers you’ve erected, cuts through to your core and shuts your body down.
Slater refused to let his body shut down.
He tapped into some primal willpower, some part of the brain that modern society never activates. Even he never activated that part. It was a state of mind he didn’t want to dwell in, a type of savagery he never wanted to use. But if it was a matter of collapsing in this ditch, getting his face beat in, or becoming something truly dangerous, well…
We’re human.
We want to survive.
Kit’s knee smashed between his legs, the bone driving into his groin, but he snarled and seized top position despite every part of his brain and body wanting out. Kit couldn’t believe it. The man’s eyes went wide underneath Slater. He’d landed a perfect knee, a knee that might even be life-altering, but it hadn’t done anything. He was probably wondering if Slater was superhuman, or a cyborg.
Let him wonder.
Slater elbowed Kit three consecutive times in the face, rendering him motionless. The guy was only semi-conscious but it gave Slater the breathing room to look around, get his bearings, assess the situation properly.
They were right next to Bobby’s corpse.
Slater squinted.
Made out the shape of a semiautomatic pistol resting in the shadow of the upside-down glove compartment. He hadn’t spotted it before. Hadn’t spotted it when it truly mattered.
He clambered off Kit’s twitching, half-conscious form and reached through the window frame, over Bobby. His voice was a mutter as he took the gun, identified it as Bobby’s compact HK pistol. ‘Thank you, sir.’
Kit hadn’t deemed words necessary before the fight, so Slater wasn’t about to do anything different.
No point trying to make someone see the light if there’s no hope of redemption.
Slater rolled back to Kit and shot him in the head before the guy knew what was coming.
A small mercy, at least.
He almost fell onto his back and succumbed to the pain after the job was done, but this was California. Cops would be here in minutes, especially with an unsuppressed gunshot in the mix. The crash had been chaotically loud.
So Slater fished around in Kit’s pockets until he found the man’s phone, relieved him of it, and hobbled away.
He could worry about the pain later.
As he receded into the night up the back of the lot, he tried King’s number.
66
It was so quiet by the flood control channel that Alexis heard everything.
The noise of two cars approaching somewhere on the other side of the foliage, then a brief pause, then both vehicles speeding away.
King, she thought. What are you doing?
She didn’t let it show that she was holding out any sort of hope. Heidi couldn’t handle a gun to save her life, but she could spot weakness from a mile away. And in this situation she didn’t need to be competent with a firearm. She was pointing it at Alexis’ face from six feet away. Alexis was doing the same.
Their fingers resting millimetres from their respective triggers.
Alexis dwarfed Heidi, which surprised her. It’d been hard to tell in her office at Vitality+’s headquarters, what with her propped up behind a giant desk. Alexis figured she was the type to position her chair higher than whoever she was facing, just for the sake of the power dynamic. Up close she was five-four at best, and thin of build. Without her power she was nothing, and Petr had done a respectable job of pulling her away from her legions of security, her army of hired guns.
What army?
The army was gone, and soon the money would be gone, and Heidi was then vulnerable to derision, arrest, humiliation.
Despite it all, she was inquisitive. She scrutinised Alexis over the ridge of the Grach pistol, staring her in the face. ‘First time I’ve got a proper look at you.’
‘You saw me in your office.’
‘Yes, but…’ She sighed. ‘I was reeling. I didn’t really…take it all in.’
‘Is that what you’re doing now?’
‘I’m not sure if there’s a way out of this. So, yes, that’s what I’m doing.’
‘You can put that gun down. Then there’s a way.’
‘I’m inexperienced but I’m not stupid. If I budge an inch you’re shooting me. If you wanted to hand me over to the cops you would’ve called my bluff and done it already.’
‘Your bluff?’ Alexis said. ‘You mean, the bluff about lashing out at your employees if you knew you were going down? That wasn’t a bluff. That’s exactly what you did. Ernie’s wife…’
She trailed off.
Heidi’s eyelid twitched. ‘Ernie’s wife…you mean Rachel McFarlane?’
‘Probably.’ Alexis felt sick. ‘They shot her. I came across her body, came across them beating Ernie to a pulp.’
‘So he died too?’
‘No. No one besides his wife. None of the seven.’
Heidi twitched again.
Alexis watched her closely for a reaction as she said, ‘I had friends planted with Frankie Booth and his crew.’
Heidi’s eyes clouded with confusion.
Alexis said, ‘That’s his real name. Not Costa. He came over from Boston, before you started working with him. Bit of a coincidence that we even found him, because I was only hunting you.’
‘Who paid you?’
‘No one. Someone I know asked me for a favour.’
‘Your friend?’
‘Not really. Wouldn’t go that far.’
Heidi’s face scrunched up, the confusion amplifying. ‘What the fuck are you even talking about?’
‘Your employee. Mary.’
Heidi rolled her eyes. ‘Of course. That scared little girl.’
‘Her aunt put me up to this.’
‘Who you aren’t friends with?’
‘Doesn’t matter how I feel about her.’
‘Right. So she’s loaded, and she dipped into her coffers.’
‘I’m not getting paid.’
‘Of course you’re not.’
‘You won’t believe me. That’s okay.’
Heidi shifted her weight to the other foot. Her arm was getting heavy. Alexis was intent on keeping her talking, steadily distracting her from the seriousness of the interaction. The instant she let her guard down…
Alexis said, ‘Actually, let me reword that. Her aunt didn’t put me up to anything, really. She just brought it to my attention.’
‘And you are…? We never covered that.’
‘No,’ Alexis said. ‘We didn’t.’
Silence.
But Alexis didn’t like silence. Not with a gun in her face. There was really nothing to do but talk until one of them slipped up. So she relented. ‘I’m just some nobody. But I met a couple of guys who used to do what you hi
re people to do, only at the highest level. They’ve been my family for a while. I guess that led me to this.’
Heidi sneered. ‘Your family?’
‘Something like that.’
’They’re using you. You’re some sick side project of theirs.’
‘I get why you’d think that. In your world, everything’s transactional, right? I bet you haven’t gone a day in your adult life without carefully calculating your every move — what you’d gain from it, what you’d lose.’ Alexis took her silence as both an admission and encouragement to continue. ‘So of course you won’t believe that I’m not getting paid. Because why would anyone do anything without receiving something in return? Right?’
Heidi said, ‘They wouldn’t. Suggesting otherwise is bullshit. No one does things for anyone other than themselves. Not deep down. That’s the way it’s been since the dawn of time.’
‘You’re projecting your own twisted head onto the world. There’s so much of it that doesn’t work that way.’
‘You’re full of shit and you know it. Righteous bitch.’
Alexis said, ‘But your aim will lower first. Because you’re scared. Because, for you, the stakes are higher.’
Quiet.
Alexis said, ‘You couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.’
Heidi pursed her lips.
Then smiled.
No reason to smile.
Until Alexis felt the gun barrel soft against the back of her own head and understood.
How had Petr snuck back up on her? That big stumbling buffoon couldn’t have closed the gap.
Then a voice that certainly wasn’t Petr’s said, ‘Alright. Party’s over. Now let’s lower that gun real slow.’
American, with a Boston accent. Party’s ovah.
She didn’t need to turn around to know it was Frankie Booth.
