I notice that the bellboys smiling near the ritzy front entrance are a little too aware for my liking. The pair of them do more than just look out for the guests and take care of baggage. Each one of them has eyes out, scanning the sea, as if waiting for something to appear on the horizon. Which is smart, because pirates. Pirates are big here. It’s still a bit more than what I’d usually expect from your average helping hand, so I’m sure to keep an eye on the pair as I make my approach.
The nearest one of them looks over at me. His gaze doesn’t linger on my army jacket, strappy tank top or Defender-Flex jeans. Instead, his eyes go to my scuffed hiking boots and the duffel bag on my shoulder. I look back at him as I approach, see that his arms carry that slightly too muscled yet slightly too thin look that I’ve learned to recognize. It’s the look of a man who’d lost a few dozen pounds during reconnaissance training, and never quite mastered the need to eat more calories than he’d burned. A Philippines Scout qualified soldier would be my guess, or maybe even an alumni of the Ranger School in the U.S.
Worry grows inside of my belly as I come closer. This bellboy is protection, and high quality protection at that. Putting someone like him on simple bellboy duty means that this hotel has enough gun hands on call to be the next best thing to a fortress. Walking through that door will be a pain if anything goes bad, and there are few things worse for a smuggler than being inspected while holding a bag full of guns.
For a moment, I consider messaging the buyer and pulling out. No cop can keep me behind bars for too long, but each detention I rack up is a bread crumb that someone can use to complicate my whole life. I’ve got roots laid down now, and still have Mary, my little sis, to take care of back home. I definitely do not want to risk getting caught.
Another thought comes to me and I sigh a step later. I also have bills. Lots of bills, ranging from the internet connection at my house to the fixer who keeps my address off the grid. The guns weighing down my shoulder won’t quite buy me a new house, but it’ll cover my sister’s tuition for another semester at least.
That alone makes the decision for me. I straighten my back a little, lift up my chin and start walking towards the front doors of the hotel with purpose. I make eye contact with the half bellboy, half commando, as I approach, almost daring him to stop and offer me shit. My hope is that he’ll mistake me for just another arrogant guest on a gap year trip through the more “dangerous,” i.e. brown, corners of the world.
I give the guard a “what’s your problem?” look as I approach. He stares back at me for a moment, before smiling, stepping back and opening the door for me. I don’t blame him for moving, because at a hotel this nice, my expression is usually followed by the “where’s your manager?” voice and unemployment check.
Nose up, I pass by him and into the hotel. A metal detector hidden in the fame of the entry hall door goes off when I enter, but I put on another look of impatience, and the half bellboy, half commando, waves me on through.
For not the first time, I’m glad to be blonde, around six feet, and more than slightly curvy where it counts. My looks are sometimes a problem when it comes to negotiations in some parts of the world, but they more than make up for it in how often security forces underestimate me.
I wander a bit and find my buyer a minute later on one of the hotel’s patio bars. Plain faced and brown haired, he sits in a chair near the incoming sea breeze and sip on one of the resort’s signature and disappointingly umbrella-less cocktails. A garish, red jeweled class ring perches on one of his fingers and clinks the glass of his cocktail whenever he picks it up for a drink. I come closer, and my movement draws his eyes away from a wall mounted flat screen tv and over to me. His gaze takes in my face, the duffel bag on my shoulder, and finally my chest in more or less that order. He makes little attempt to hide where his eyes roam, and I feel a flicker of irritation cross my face as he stares.
I doubt that he takes notice, because in moments he’s already turning back to the TV, his attention captured by a news story about a storm and the resulting influx of Florida refugees. That story was old, even back in my teens, so I know that he’s not actually interested in it.
“Hello.” I say, pulling out a chair. “I’m Robin.”
The man turns back to me with a smile and holds out his hand for a shake. It’s bare save for a red jeweled college class ring.
“I’m the Money.” he says, smiling as if he’d made a joke. I stare at him blankly for a moment until I realize that he’s quoting Casino Royale.
Jesus. I can’t stand people who think that quoting James Bond, and not even the best Bond at that, is a good way to start an arms trade. I want to make fun of him, or at least call him an idiot to his face, but I settle for ignoring his hand, sitting down, and placing the duffel bag at my feet.
“We’ll see if you’re worth every penny.” I say, ignoring my own advice to play nice with the man who, annoying or not, really is the money. “I’m not calling you that, by the way. You’re Todd until the end of this meeting.”
Todd the buyer lifts his eyebrows in surprise after I tell him his new name. While he’s busy doing that, I lean back and raise my hand and call over a waiter.
Todd seems to get over the slight, because his smile, apparently genuine, returns within moments. I don’t like it, though. Something about him, the way he carries himself maybe, sets my teeth on edge. A shiver runs over my arms, rising goosebumps and dredging up old, unclear memories. I shake my head to clear out the thoughts and disguise the motion with another wave for service.
A waitress appears at my elbow a moment later. She’s a small, painfully good looking woman with skin tones so warm she practically glows. Her smile is sweet, too, and I find myself thinking that I could eat it right up, along with a few other things.
Images that have nothing to do with business and everything to do with just how long it’s been since I’ve kissed a woman like that invade my thoughts. I flush and feel that anxious sensation of being tongue tied, despite having nothing to say beyond what I’d like to drink. It figures. I’ve never picked up the skill of smooth talking outside of my deals. I hear that being a single mother leaves few chances for romance. I’m not a mom, but raising a sibling on my own hasn’t been too different.
The woman leaves with my order before I can embarrass myself, and I turn my attention back to the buyer, who sits there, fiddling with his class ring. He may be a fool, but that doesn’t mean I can let my guard down around him for long. Constant vigilance isn’t just for Hogwarts, especially when you’re still sitting with a very illegal bag of guns at your feet.
“I don’t know if you’re new to this, and I don’t really care.” I said reaching into my pocket. I do it slow, because you always, always, move slow at a meet. Even the most polite buyers tend to be a little twitchy, so I make sure to be careful when I pull my phone out of my pocket a moment later.
“Either way, this works the same.” I continue, opening my phone’s banking app. “You have five minutes, not six or seven, but five, before this meet is concluded and I leave this table. I strongly advise a transfer of funds before then, because I hate taking baggage along with me on a return trip.”
As I finish, I tap the bag of rifles with the tip of my boot, shifting the mass of steel barrels inside with an audible clunk. Some may call that unnecessary, but I’m a big fan of clarity when traveling abroad.
My speech doesn’t seem to phase Todd the buyer, because he reaches into his own jacket pocket, still smiling and moving slow as well, for a phone without saying a word. The case surrounding his phone is thinner and more sleek looking than the one I carry, but I still recognize a similar signal setup to my own. He presses a few things on the screen, then returns the phone back to his jacket. My own phone buzzes a moment later, and I look down to check out the new balance on my account.
I blink. Recheck the numbers, Blink again.
Four hundred
thousand dollars. This man has just sent me four hundred thousand dollars, more than eight times the price my secretary had agreed on him paying when the order was first made. With this kind of money I could pay off the farmland and house that Mary and I shared. We could go on vacation in an actual plane. Jesus, she could even go to grad school without debt. With this kind of money, we’d be actually be ... free.
Free. That’s the word that makes me start looking for the catch. No one, not in this business or anywhere else in life, gives up anything for free. I’d learned that after making a deal with a devil by the name of Beeze. Nothing comes free. My drops were no different.
I set my phone face down on the table.
“What do you want?” I ask the buyer.
“Come on Robin, what else? My company wants you.”
CHAPTER THREE
“You’re very in demand, you know.” He says.
I don’t know, actually. My secretary, a bald, hard-souled man with an office in Angola, arranges all my meetings. Separating the chaff from wheat is no small part of what I pay him to do.
“Being in demand is overrated.” I reply.
“Says the woman now sitting on most of an untaxed half million.” He says, reaching into his pocket again. “That’s the starting bonus. The actual paychecks will have to be taxed, but don’t worry. A cover ID goes along with the onboarding process.”
Ah. Starting bonuses and onboarding processes. In a business this small, it’s easy to keep track of the lingo that different kinds of buyers throw around. Onboarding means human resources, which in turn means corporations. Add that to untraceable guns, and you have ...
“Mercenaries.” I say out loud.
Todd the buyer snorts, his amusement seeming genuine.
“Come on now.” he says, “This isn’t the 1500s. What I help run is a respectable private military company. Taxes in line and paperwork signed. We have our fair share of ex-spooks and cops and special operators, but we’re desperately short on people with… your sort of talents.”
“Smugglers?” now it’s my turn to snort. “I find it hard to believe that you can’t hire a few of them to help out on the job.”
“Ah, that.” Says Todd the buyer. “We do have our fair share of smugglers, mostly the soldiers making ends meet on the side. No, what I need, what we need, is quite frankly, a bastard. Born, made, it doesn’t matter to us so long as you’re a bastard through and through. We’ve done some digging on our end and have tracked down a few of your old jobs. Something tells me that you’re our kind of girl.”
His eyes shift down to my jacket sleeve, and when I follow his gaze, I notice a small smear of blood on my cuff. The guard from before must have left it while struggling with me. I rub at the smear, but only grind the stain deeper into the fabrics and thread.
Frustrated, I frown and look back up at Todd the buyer. I like being called a bastard less than most, mainly because Beeze, the person, well, thing, that gave me my start in this business was the kind of guy that more than deserved the word. Still, I’ve done a job or two that ended messy. Not his fault for calling things as he saw them, as they happened to be.
“I’m a bastard when I need to be, but I know my lane and what’s in it. I know a little of yours too, and that’s not for me.”
I stand up from the table, leaving the duffel bag at my feet.
“Thanks for the bonus.” I say, “But I’ll pass on your offer. Contact my secretary if you need to see me again. Do not ask for a refund. He won’t give you one.”
I walk away from the table, passing by the waitress returning with my drink on a platter as I do. Feeling awkward, I shrug my shoulders in apology for making her work for no reason, and drop a few dollars on her plate to make up for it. She thanks me with a smile worth a cool million more, and I brush past her and into the rest of the hotel.
Exiting the hotel is easier than entering. All I need is a blind corner without cameras and my lighter in hand. I keep the trip short and I land a few blocks away from my bank in Switzerland before the heat downstairs can make me start to sweat.
I don’t like going to banks. They remind me of the people I’d grown up around, or rather the anxiety that they’d had when it came to paying bills. The memory of the stern looking faces on visiting collection agents, and the farms that neighbors had sold off bit by bit, makes me think about the job that I’d just turned down. Half a million dollars was a whole lot of money, but something about the offer, or maybe just the man doing the offering, tickled alarm bells in my head. No use worrying about it now, though. I’d managed to take care of Mary and myself well enough with my current business so far. I’ll keep taking care of us no matter what else comes up.
After rounding a corner and coming within eyesight of my destination, even I have to admit that my current bank’s pretty nice looking, assuming you’re into ornate European buildings. Inside, I make my way to my usual banker, exchange pleasantries, and withdraw half of the buyer’s payment in cash, as is my habit. Like I said, no one can keep me in jail, but a hit to my bank account is still possible. My banker tries to convince me to maybe leave my assets alone for a while longer, but as always I ignore him, thank him, take my money in yet another duffel bag (so convenient), and go.
The last stop I aim for is the best, in my opinion. It’s a two-story house with four smallish bedrooms, near a freeway that’s just close enough to keep the acres of farmland surrounding it from feeling like an endless sea of corn. A bed of bright yellow sunflowers hugs the front half of the building. Mary always said that adding the flower bed is what made our house a home. I never got the appeal, but I love her, so the flowers, and the gardener who tends them on Fridays, get to stay.
My drop downstairs is a quick one without complication, and I land on my back porch near the kitchen door an instant later with another puff of brown smoke and fading smell of bad eggs. As I reach for the doorknob, I remember that I’d forgotten to stop and rent something to watch while we test out Mary’s new cookies later tonight. I could make another drop close and get it, taking maybe five minutes round trip, but I want to show Mary the unexpected haul from today’s job. She may worry and fret over the business and where cash like this comes from, but when it comes down to it, she’ll drop it. She’s only human. Just like me.
I start fishing for keys and have them half out of my pocket when I smell something burning. At first I think it’s the cookies, because there definitely is a hint of singed chocolate buried in the scent. But as my muscles tense up and heart starts beating with a mind of its own, I realize without doubt exactly what I’ve picked up on. It’s a smell that, in this business, you damn well better learn, because if you don’t you may wind up all sorts of dead.
Gunpowder. I can smell gunpowder, so much of it, that it’s seeping out of the kitchenette.
My heart continues hammering away in my chest by the time I realize this. It takes a whole lot of shooting to smell gunpowder this strongly. Sure, anyone can catch a whiff of it, hell even choke on it, if stuck inside an enclosed space when a few rounds pop off. But this isn’t an enclosed space like a hallway or smoky gun range. This is my fucking back porch on a summer day with a strong breeze racing from the north to the freeway by the south. If I can smell gunpowder through all this then dozens, maybe hundreds of rounds must have been fired.
Every single fiber and bone inside me wants to slam open the door and charge inside to see what the hell has happened to my home and Mary. I keep a lid on those feelings, that driving need, though, because there’s no way to help anyone if you end up quickly dead. Moving through a doorway without getting killed is one of the most valuable skills practiced by close quarters fighters, which isn’t surprising since I’d heard an Army Ranger once call doorways “motherfucking Fatal Funnels.”
It makes sense when I think about it now. If someone armed is expecting company on the other side of the door, the brightest thin
g for them to do is just aim at the big rectangle and wait. I don’t have the training, so going through a door covered by a gunman is suicide for me.
So I decide to say fuck it, drop my duffel bag filled with cash, and ignore the door all together. I flick my lighter, and trigger a drop.
CHAPTER FOUR
Most shortcuts through hell are over pretty quick. A spark or bit of flame is all that I need to start the process of leaving creation, and my time spent downstairs is usually over before I can blink. Landing where I want after is usually the easiest part of the process because once downstairs, all points on the globe are just within arms reach.
This time, however, my shortcut hits a snag at almost the exact moment I enter downstairs. In one instant, I’m falling through heat that sears the air all around me, ready to make my landing inside of my home. In the next, I suddenly pulled to a stop, my body hanging upside down from something latched hard and tight to my left calf. The pressure on my leg is excruciating, and I shout from the pain as I dangle in the middle of hell. I’m no stranger to the downstairs, though, so I clamp my jaw tight before I can panic and breath in a lung full of brimstone.
Still tumbling, I bend over at the waist so that I can get a clear view of whatever grabbed me. I really wish I hadn’t, though, because when I do, I find myself face to face with a devil.
Like the bush that my pop always talked about on Sunday mornings, the devil hovering in the air along with me burns too. Its grip on my leg is as hot and tight as a pipe wrench left to heat up in an oven. I can feel blisters and bruises growing along my calf. When I look into the devil’s face, I see blisters sprouting on its skin as well.
Jaw clenching back screams, I watch the devil as burn marks spread in patches of blackened, ruined flesh on its arms, neck and face. The scorched skin and meat spreads across the devil’s body in a wave, covering it from head to toe in charcoal dark scars. A moment later, the burned char starts to flake off, leaving pink, unruined flesh beneath. For a moment, the devil is perfect, looking like a young and well muscled woman, albeit one with wings on her back and a cruel smirk on her face. The moment doesn’t last, though, because the burn marks I’d watched cover her before stop shrinking and start to make a return.
The Brimstone Series Page 3
