by Nick Thacker
“What are you doing?” Roderick screamed. “Turn around. Slow down — or stop, I will drive from —”
“I got this, Rod,” Gareth said. “You just make sure our new friend doesn’t try anything stupid.”
Their ‘new friend’ had recovered from the reckless spin, but her eyes were widened in fear. Or anger.
Or both.
He risked a quick glance at her and saw something he didn’t expect. Behind her eyes was a question, pleading. Help.
He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Again, a cluster. All of it. The girl, barely thirty, if that. Roderick, the man who was there for support, not telling him anything useful about the real situation. And the man back at the mansion, sitting in his awe-inspiring armchair, waiting out the end of his life.
No one here wanted to give him information, so he would go get it himself.
This woman was there to kill the mansion’s owner. That much he knew. And that meant that this woman, Latia, would probably be quite surprised to see him up close, in person, rather than through the lens of a rifle scope. Likewise the other way around. Gareth wondered what the man’s face would betray, what he might then be willing to discuss.
So that’s where he was headed.
“You are going back?” Roderick asked.
“I am.”
“Why? The mission is to push forward, to move on.”
“The mission is to figure out what the hell is going on. And right now, I don’t know what the hell is going on. I have a feeling that this lady and that old man back there know each other from somewhere, and I intend to watch them discuss it.”
“It will be pointless,” Latia said, once again staring out the passenger’s side window.
“Yeah?” Gareth asked. He had reached the dirt road and decided not to slow down. This was his third time on it, he knew where he was headed, and he knew the vehicle could handle it.
He knew he could handle it as well, and he didn’t really care much for the comfort of his passengers. He was beyond playing the game, playing for someone else’s side. He’d find out what was happening, with or without Roderick’s help. And Latia — well, she was a card he could now play. Perhaps the man back at the mansion would be willing to deal.
“I agree with the woman,” Roderick said. His voice was calm, even, although the car was bouncing wildly on the dirt road and his head was lolling around like the rest of theirs.
“Good for you,” Gareth said. “Maybe you both can join a secret-keeping club when this is all over.”
“Red,” Roderick said, “heading back to the mansion is a waste of time. We have two targets left to find, and this excursion will set us back.”
“We’ve been ‘back’ the entire time, Rod,” Gareth said.
“My name is not ‘Rod,’ Mr. Red.”
“Well dammit, man!” Gareth screamed. “What the hell is your name? And what is this all about? We’ve got a convicted killer here in the car with us, and you don’t really seem all that interested in figuring out what her problem is.”
“My mission is to — “
“I don’t care what your mission is!” Gareth yelled. “We’re going back. I’m getting answers.” He punctuated his words with a hard thrust on the gas pedal, pushing everyone’s head backward into their headrest.
We’re going back.
26
RED WANTED TO MAKE RODERICK stay in the car, to make him wait outside. He couldn’t trust him, and he knew that now. Roderick had a different mission — perhaps the same end result, but he cared little for Latia’s life or the why behind her own mission.
Gareth wanted to find out what was going on, and the man in the mansion, on his armchair, looking out at them, knew. He could give them information that Gareth sorely needed. Whether he would or not was a completely different story, but he thought he had a bargaining chip.
Or a threatening chip.
He still had a problem. A lot of problems, actually. And Roderick was one of them — the man wasn’t operating with the same parameters as Gareth, and that meant he couldn’t be trusted. Another problem was that they were running out of time. Another client had just been killed.
And Latia hadn’t been the one to do it.
Red pulled up between the two buildings, the larger warehouse on his right, the smaller congruent structure on his left. The mansion, the fountain in front of it, directly ahead.
“What is the plan here, Red?” Roderick asked from the backseat. Gareth could hear the frustration in his voice.
“We talk to that old man again. With her standing in front of him.”
“What good will that —”
“He will not talk to me,” Latia said suddenly.”
Gareth and Roderick stared at her, but Gareth opened his door and turned to face her. “You sure about that?”
“He remembers me. So he will not talk.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Gareth said.
He walked around to the passenger side while Roderick got out, then he offered a hand to Latia. “Try anything stupid and we put a bullet through your head. Got it? My friend here is very willing to end it that way, so I wouldn’t tempt him.”
Latia nodded, the dark glare returning to her face.
Red pushed her forward but held onto her arm. He waited until Roderick passed, still not trusting the man, then pushed Latia again. They walked like this, a stuttered step or two followed by a push, all the way up the steps of the mansion.
Roderick was there, gun drawn. This time it was a pistol. The assault rifle he’d left in the car, but Gareth was positive the man was every bit as capable with the smaller tool as Gareth himself was.
“Your show, Red,” Roderick said. “What would you have me do?”
“Well if you’re asking, I’d love to not get shot. I’d also love for her to not get shot, or the guy inside. Think you can make sure that happens?”
Roderick leaned in to Red, whispering. “I understand this is not a traditional mission for you. I respect that things are not going as smoothly as we may have planned. But if she is correct — the man does not talk — we leave her here. Dead.”
Gareth stared at the man, every bit his equal and still wholly unknown to him, and nodded. “Thanks. Let me try. I have to understand what’s happening here, Roderick. If it doesn’t work, we have one more client.”
Roderick stared, unmoving, but his face drained of color.
He’s scared, Gareth thought. Scared of failing, or scared of what might happen to him if he does fail.
Gareth knocked on the door. The man was still inside, or on the property somewhere. There was nowhere else for him to go, and no other roads that led out to the highway. They had driven to the highway and back without seeing another vehicle, so the man had to be inside.
He knocked again. Before his fist hit the heavy door a third time he heard the latch clicking and then the door swung open.
Gareth blocked the other two behind him and looked inside. He saw the man’s face, troubled, yet recognizing.
“You have returned,” the man said.
“That’s right,” Gareth replied. “I wanted to ask you some questions. May we come in?”
He could tell the man knew there was someone behind him, as his eyes darted up and around Gareth’s tall frame, but he probably thought it was his teammate, Roderick. The man cleared his throat. “What sort of questions?”
Gareth pushed the door open more, forcefully, and the man fell backwards a step. “I want to ask about Likur Holdings. And the bank. And this account you’ve all been depositing money into. What the hell they all have to do with one another.”
The man frowned, either from Gareth’s rough entry or from his rough statement. Gareth, however, didn’t back down. He stepped over the threshold, all while still remaining directly in front of Roderick.
“And there’s someone here to see you. She tried to say hello earlier, but… we got in the way.”
He stepped sideways and grabbed Latia’s hand
at the same time, pulling her forward and into the large home. Roderick followed as well, shoulder to shoulder with Gareth.
“Her name is Latia, and she tells me you won’t talk to us. But I’ve got a big, angry partner and a gun that says different.”
He watched the man’s face. It went from white to red, then back to white. Fear, anger, then fear once again. With a bit of stress and anxiety thrown in. Up close the man seemed far older than he had before. Liver spots dotted his face and bald head, and the atrophied muscle Gareth had noticed before seemed now to be fat, plain and simple. The man may have been powerful, physically, long ago, but he was far from his peak today.
“Sh — she… how…”
“You recognize her?” Gareth asked. Roderick slammed the door shut behind him. “She told us you would.”
“L — Latia? It is you?”
He dipped into Russian, probably repeating the question, but Gareth stopped him. “This was my idea, so I’d appreciate if we kept the dealings in English. I know for a fact we’re all capable of speaking English.”
He raised his eyebrows toward Latia.
She bristled, writhing a bit in Gareth’s grasp, but she didn’t try to make a break for it. Instead, she recovered, standing up straighter, eye to eye with the man. Her glare intensified. “I have waited fifteen years to see your face.”
The man didn’t speak.
“But your face was not supposed to have life.”
The man nodded. “I was prepared, Latia.”
Her nostrils flared. “You did as my sister requested.”
Gareth shot a glance toward Roderick. Sister?
“She is finishing the job. The one we started together. You have done as she has requested, all but one final task.”
The man’s head fell. “I — I tried. I was prepared. They —”
“We stopped it,” Gareth said. “You were supposed to die.”
The man nodded.
“And we got in her way. She couldn’t take the shot.”
“She can now.”
Gareth shook his head. “No. I want to know what the hell is going on. Maybe we go sit down in there? You seem to like that armchair.”
The man looked around at the three people in his home, two strangers and someone he had not seen in quite some time. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “There is no reason. I will tell you what you need to know.”
Latia didn’t take her eyes off the man. “I told them you would not say anything to me,” she said. “You have grown soft in your old age, Gaspar.”
Gaspar.
“Gaspar?” Gareth asked, questioning the man.
He nodded. “Gaspar Likur.”
“Likur Holdings,” Gareth said. “It’s your company?”
“It was,” he said. “The bank owns it now, though it is a completely different entity today. Just a shell of a corporation.”
“And what did it do, back when you ran it?”
The man’s head fell. Gareth saw a tear, a lone drop of clear liquid, hit the hardwood floor. “No,” he said. “I cannot…. I cannot bring myself to say it.”
Gareth started to plan. He wanted to press him, to make him speak. Maybe the girl can wait in the car. If he won't talk in front of her. He wanted to know. He felt so close, so near the final answer he’d been searching for.
But if the man would not speak, there was nothing he could do. Gareth wasn’t going to torture him. He wasn’t that sort of soldier, and he certainly wasn’t that sort of man. He wanted justice, but not at the expense of another man.
He cleared his throat, hoping to gather the man’s focus and force him to look directly at him. It might make a difference, make the man feel at ease a bit, as if it were just him and Gareth in the room.
He opened his mouth to speak, to beg the man to continue, when Roderick’s phone rang again.
27
GARETH TURNED TO LOOK AT Roderick. He was not trying to hide his frustration any longer. This was a life-or-death situation, and Gareth wanted Roderick to understand where he stood on that fact or get out of the way. He waited for the man to pull the phone out of his pocket.
Latia looked like she had never seen a cellphone before, and the man — Gaspar Likur — just had a shocked, beaten expression on his face.
“H — hello?” Roderick asked.
Gareth stared. Roderick’s face fell. “We are at the previous client’s home.” A paused. “Yes, I told him that.”
Another pause, this one longer. “I cannot force his hand. He understands what is on the line.”
“Do I?” Gareth asked, looking around at the three people in the room who clearly knew more than he did.
Roderick ignored him. “Yes, I told him that as well. She is here, with us.”
Gareth couldn’t hear the words, but the woman on the other end raised her voice considerably. Roderick pulled the phone from his ear, waiting for the tirade to end. “I — yes, I know. I will. Immediately.”
He hung up the phone, and Gareth waited for an explanation. When he got none, he stepped closer to the man and clenched his jaw. “You want to tell me who that was?”
“That was our boss.”
“Your boss.”
“Correct. Effective immediately, you have been terminated, your services no longer needed.”
Gareth nodded along, almost expecting it. “Right. I didn’t do my job? Is that what she said?”
“That is what she said.”
“And what job was that, Rod?”
“We were supposed to kill her. We did not. And now there is another killer out there somewhere.”
“Her sister.”
Roderick’s eyes widened a bit, then he looked at Latia quickly and back to Gareth.
“Am I right?” Gareth asked.
Latia nodded. “My older sister. We are twins. Separated at birth.”
“But you’ve found each other now, huh? Decided to go on a killing spree?”
The woman froze again, her anger smoldering just below the surface but completely readable on her face.
“Okay, fine. I half expected this,” Gareth said. “Works for me. Roderick, just drop me off at the —”
Roderick's pistol came up.
Gareth reacted too slowly, his own pistol tucked away behind his back and too far to reach. By the time he had it out and the safety disengaged, Roderick had moved his own up to point at Gareth.
“Stop. We are done here,” Roderick said. He waited for Gareth to lift his left hand in the air, dropping his right — and the pistol — to his side.
Then Roderick shifted and brought the pistol up to Latia’s head.
“Please, Roderick,” Gareth said. “Don’t.”
“This is the job, Red. This is what you were hired to do.”
“I don’t kill people without a good reason.”
“She killed those other clients.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it was her sister. Doesn’t matter. I didn’t know them, and I don’t know her. This isn’t a trial, and no one’s been convicted.”
“No one needs a trial,” Roderick screamed. “She is the one killing our clients! She is the one who started all of this — she told you that herself.”
“What?” Gareth screamed back. “What did she start? What is all of this?”
He glanced around. Roderick, his hand up, one finger-weighted pull away from ended a young woman’s life. Latia, eyes wide, her glare still strong and burning powerfully. And Gaspar Likur, the man who had started whatever this was all about, long ago.
Gareth took stock of the situation. Two guns drawn, one aimed. One pistol at another human’s head. That meant there was one objective, one ‘right thing’ to do.
He rushed Roderick. Didn’t bother with the pistol — there was no way to get it raised, pointed, and aimed in time, even in close quarters such as this. He simply kept it in his hand, not wanting either of the other two people in the room to grab it. Rushing Roderick was a risk, of course. But in Gareth’s m
ind Roderick would have been expecting retaliation by Gareth’s raising his own weapon, in which case Roderick would simply turn and shoot him.
But he wouldn’t expect to be tackled, and that’s exactly what Gareth did. He flew into the large man with all his weight, pushing both of them right out the front door. He heard Roderick connect with the hard wooden door, but the door simply moved out of the way and they tumbled together, down the stairs.
Gareth had dropped the pistol, losing it somewhere as he’d flown through the air. They hit the ground at the bottom of the stairs and rolled a bit longer, Gareth ending up on top. He struck the man beneath him, a hook that caught him beneath the eye, but was unprepared for the man’s strength. Roderick tossed Gareth off and he bounced off the water fountain in the driveway, then threw a glancing blow to Gareth’s own face.
Gareth didn’t see Roderick’s pistol in his hand, either, but it was still an unfair fight now. Roderick was getting to his feet while Gareth was still trying to recover. He’d somehow lodged himself beneath the edge of the fountain and the gravel driveway, so it was all he could do to block a few of the blows that came in.
One of them, a kick, got him in the ribs, and he felt one crack. Another came toward his head, but this one he was able to block with a raised forearm.
He wasn’t going to be able to stop Roderick’s attack forever, and he was sure the man wasn’t interested in stopping. Roderick didn’t strike him as the type of guy who was a loose cannon, one to fly off the handle at the merest provocation, which meant this attack wasn’t out of retaliation. It wasn’t a mistake.
This attack meant that Roderick was the enemy.
He didn’t understand how, or why, but he was dead sure that Roderick had stopped being his teammate and had moved into enemy territory.
The next two blows came, weaker but still painful. One to the area he’d just been kicked, another blow to the ribs, and the second to his head. He blocked again with his raised forearm but he knew he’d be put out of commission soon enough.
Somewhere from above and in front of him a gun fired. He forced his eyes up to the porch and into the house and saw Latia, standing in the doorway, his pistol in her hands.
