Where Death Meets the Devil

by L. J. Hayward

  “May I ask you a question, Jack?”

  Jack looked into the other room but couldn’t make out much past the pale oval of Blade’s face. The tone, however suggested a quiet seriousness. After the night’s revelations, Jack was more than willing to entertain the idea.

  “Sure. I reserve the right not to answer, though.”

  “As you wish. Do you like your job?”

  Nowhere near what he’d thought it might be. Nonplussed, Jack took a moment to consider his answer. “Today? Not particularly. But generally, yeah, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he repeated to give himself a bit of time. “I guess, because it’s good work. We’re protecting people. Safeguarding freedom.”

  “And you see what I do as wrong?”

  “You don’t?” It was out before Jack considered how it sounded.

  “I asked you first.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “All right. Justify one of your kills for me.”

  “Easy. Valadian. You’re after him yourself.”

  “Not to kill. To neutralise. And he isn’t dead yet. Pick again.”

  Blade didn’t answer straight away, and all sounds from his side of the room—soft rustling, low breathing—stopped. When he did speak, it was quiet and low.

  “They were part of a smuggling group, taking women out of Colombia for transport to Argentina, where they were sold as sex slaves.”

  “Who?” Jack had guessed but he wanted it confirmed.

  “The US Marines.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “I can. The investigative team looking into it couldn’t. Their progress was stymied by political red tape and military cover-ups. The longer the powers that be tried to deny it was going on, the more it happened.”

  “So you took the matter into your own hands. Vigilante justice, Blade?”

  A hint of dry humour in his words this time. “Not vigilante. I was paid by the person who decided to bypass the bureaucratic nonsense.”

  Jack shook his head. “Are you saying all of your kills are equally worthy?”

  “No. But if I have a choice, then yes.”

  What had Blade said when they argued about the difference between soldiering and assassination? “At least I get to pick my targets.”

  “So, to answer your question,” Blade said. “Yes, what I do is wrong. But for me, I’m doing it for the right reasons.”

  Crap. When was Blade going to stop tipping Jack’s preconceived notions on their heads?

  “All right,” Jack conceded. “Tell me this, then. Do you like your job?”

  Blade smiled. “Today? Yes.” He rolled over and snuggled the sleeping bag around himself, and within moments, his breathing lulled into a relaxed, easy rhythm.

  Jack picked up Blade’s mug, sniffed a strong tea blend, and put it down with a disappointed grunt. Before he picked up the book, he tried to think of what Blade might find so fascinating and came up with nothing. Resigned, he turned it over and read the title.

  Ice Station by Matthew Reilly.

  Not immediately familiar. Curious, Jack read the first page.

  Half an hour later he was no clearer on his impression of Blade. The book read like an action film—fast paced, wildly imaginative, highly improbable, and chock full of clichés. Jack couldn’t quite mesh this with what he knew of Blade.

  An hour after that, he still had no clue but he was thoroughly hooked by the book and had no intention of putting it down.

  By the time dawn crept around the edge of the building, he was only a couple of pages off the end.

  “Please, whatever you do, do not spoil the ending for me.”

  Not even looking up at the sound of Blade’s voice, Jack muttered, “If you don’t see the end coming a mile off, then you’re not as smart as you want the world to think you are. I didn’t think leopard seals were that vicious.”

  Blade put his hands over his ears and stalked away.

  Smiling tightly, Jack finished the book in peace.

  Thanks to the meeting with Harraway, Jack had lost his last doubts by the time he reached his desk. Barely pausing, he picked up the fudge and descended to the sublevels and Ethan’s cell, Shadow One and Two dutifully following him.

  “Again?” Shadow Two asked wearily.

  “Dropping off another bribe.” Jack brandished the confectionary. “I won’t be long.”

  They went through the whole rigmarole again and it dragged out, time expanding around Jack so every movement of the guards seemed absurdly slow. He watched for a sign they suspected him or Ethan, hyperaware of anything that might escalate into a threat. It saddened him that this place he’d once believed to be safe suddenly seemed hostile, like he’d been dropped behind enemy lines in a foreign land.

  Finally the door opened and Jack entered. It was getting easier to leave his doubts at the door the more times he did this. Each time reinforced the idea Ethan really was here, was truly back in Jack’s life, making it as perplexing and dangerous as he had in the desert.

  “Another visit so soon,” Ethan murmured. “I’m flattered.”

  “Not a long one.” Jack put the fudge on the table. “As requested, two logs of mint-choc swirl. Do try to make these last longer. I can’t keep bringing you stuff like this.”

  Leaning against the wall, Ethan nodded, those predator eyes glinting. Like with the tiger in Cambodia, there was an intimate understanding in his expression. Ethan knew exactly what Jack was doing, knew why he was doing it.

  “I’ll do my best. Thank you, Jack.” No hint of teasing.

  Jack could only nod in acknowledgement, his throat suddenly tight. He reached behind himself and knocked on the door. The minute passed in silence. Ethan held his gaze the entire time. Conversely, time seemed to speed up, the sixty seconds flying by in a single beat of his heart.

  Time is relative, Dad used to say. A minute surrounded by the enemy felt like an hour. An hour with your loved ones felt like a minute.

  The door opened, and Jack forced himself not to race out.

  He wanted to go back to the roof. Needed to see the open sky, breathe the free air. But he couldn’t, not after Maxwell’s earlier tirade. He ended up running the stairs, up and down. Told the Shadows he needed the exercise or he would go crazy.

  At one point, he managed to lose his watchdogs. They’d taken to handing him off at the halfway mark, but as he was sprinting upwards towards the roof, Shadow Two dropped back, swearing breathlessly. In the confines of the stairwell, Jack managed to evade his watcher for nearly three minutes. When he was caught again, he got an earbashing from Maxwell and was further confined to the eighth floor. Apparently trusting the Shadows had performed better than Tall and Silent, Maxwell left them with Jack, but tasked them to keep him under better control.

  By the time he reached his desk, they were down to two hours. He’d been sitting there for several minutes before he realised what he was looking at.

  The photo of Sherlock sat crooked on the desk. Jack knew it had been square when he left his desk earlier. He always took a moment to make sure the frames lined up when leaving his desk. It was one of those little rituals everyone had, unconscious habits that became conscious only once they didn’t happen, or someone else messed with them.

  Jack checked on the Shadows. One leaned on the wall of Jack’s cubicle, reading something on his phone, while Two surreptitiously checked out the female tech at the desk behind Jack’s. She was pretty, but exuded a you-could-be-on-fire-and-I-wouldn’t-care intensity that deflected friendly overtures and left come-ons broken in the dust. He wished Two good luck and turned back to his own dilemma.

  While Sherlock’s goofy canine grin laughed at his extreme caution, Jack carefully picked up the medals and Matilda’s card and secured them in his top drawer. He contemplated the lone frame for a long moment, wondering if he was being stupid. Perhaps someone had bumped his desk in passing, knocked the picture over, and put it back carelessly. It could be nothing. Or it could be something.


  He had to check it out.

  Casually, he picked up Sherlock’s picture, suddenly missing the big doofus. He’d come home from that last deployment, on medical leave, certain he was going to be court-marshalled, and all he’d wanted was to see his dad and play with Sherlock. Only to find his dad in hospital, confused and convinced his only son was KIA, and his dog dead.

  Shaking off the memories, Jack ran his fingers over the back of the frame, looking for anything out of place. All he discovered was a piece of paper, folded and tucked into the corner. He pulled it free and slipped the photo into the drawer with his medals. While his hand was in the drawer, he unfolded the paper and glanced at it.

  Rooftop. 1730. Ditch your dates.

  Maria. It had to be. Only she had called his watchdogs “dates.” And in an hour, one hour before the deadline, she wanted to talk to him privately. This didn’t bode well for her staying away from the whole mess.

  And just how the bloody hell did she expect him to ditch the Shadows?

  He needed coffee. Well, he wanted bourbon, but coffee was all he had access to, so coffee it was. Lewis and Lydia were in the tearoom. Jack could think of no excuse to not sit with them, so he did and pretended to pay attention to their ponderings over their investigation. They were still turning over rocks and finding squirmy double-dealings thanks to Ethan’s information. They had a list of questions for Jack’s next interview with Omega Subject. He did his best to contribute as he would if he weren’t planning anything untoward.

  Then it was time for his mysterious meeting on the rooftop. Time to get some answers. If he could somehow ditch his dates.

  When he stood, Shadow One came on point. “Where are you going?”

  “Toilet. Coffee wants out.”

  Falling in front and back, the Shadows escorted him to the toilet, One informing Maxwell of their movements. They both came in with him this time.

  Before Jack could get any further through his plan for ditching the Shadows than curling his hands into fists, the door to the toilets snapped open and Maxwell barrelled in.

  “Sir!” Two exclaimed as the HoS sailed right past him.

  Jack barely got out a grunt as he was rammed face-first against the wall by the urinal. Maxwell landed a knee in the small of Jack’s back, reaching for his wrists with thick-fingered hands.

  He reacted on instinct. Every nerve had been on edge since his second talk with Ethan that morning, his body primed for combat. Twisting his left arm, he broke Maxwell’s hold, and then he jabbed his elbow backwards. He hit nothing but armour, pain slamming back up his arm. It distracted Maxwell, however, making him jerk to the side. Jack stepped back, getting his foot between Maxwell’s legs, and buck-twisted at the same time. Maxwell went down with a heavy thud and an angry growl. He was fast, though, catching Jack’s leg with his calves and bringing him down beside him.

  Then there were fists and knees everywhere as the Shadows joined in.

  “Fucking hell, Reardon!” Maxwell reached through the mad scramble and caught Jack by the collar of his jacket. “Give it up. I’ve got a whole team here. You can’t win.”

  Not because Maxwell was right, but because Jack suddenly found himself in an interesting position, he stilled. Jack’s head was in very close proximity to Gerard Maxwell’s groin. And he hadn’t had to orchestrate some other awkward scenario of getting close to the sec-tab on the HoS’s belt. His plan to distract building security just might work.

  How long things would go in Jack’s favour remained to be seen, though, because frankly, this couldn’t be good.

  “All right, all right,” he gasped, freeing his hands and holding them up in surrender.

  While the Shadows secured his hands, Maxwell held him in place with that tight, unforgiving hold on his collar. With a slight tilt of his head, Jack’s teeth would be in a position to cause some terrible pain for the HoS. Right now, however, escape wasn’t in the cards.

  Jack slipped sideways. His implant flared to life and he worked fast. He didn’t need to access the sec-tab on Maxwell’s belt, had no need to bypass the biometric, vocal, and key-code locks. All he needed to do was skim the device’s radio frequency identification.

  The implant pinged a successful read just as Jack was wrenched away from Maxwell. Coming back to himself, he pretended to be dazed from the punches as they hauled him to his feet. Shaking his head, he managed to focus on Maxwell. There was a red patch on his chin where Jack had got a lucky hit.

  “Sorry,” Jack said, nodding towards the baby bruise. “I didn’t mean it.”

  Maxwell rubbed at it gingerly, scowling. “Right, because innocent men always punch first.”

  “They do when they’re shoved face-first into a wall in a men’s toilet. I was scared about your intentions.”

  Shadow Two snickered, then cut it off the instant Maxwell glared at him.

  “You should be, Reardon,” Maxwell snapped. “This way.”

  Cuffed and subdued, Jack was frogmarched out of the toilets and back into view of all his fellow ITA assets. The entire floor went quiet as the security team fell in around Jack, escorting him to the elevators. Lewis charged out of his operations room, looking like he was prepared to tackle six armed people singlehanded. Thankfully, Lydia caught him before he got more than a couple of paces. Jack wanted to reassure Lewis and Lydia, but he didn’t risk it. Anything he did, even a small shake of his head towards a friend, would be used against him and Lewis, and Jack didn’t want anyone else dragged into this mess. Maria was already mixed up beyond being salvageable. He just hoped a security team hadn’t been sent to the roof to get her, as well.

  Jack was herded into the elevator and, in tense silence, taken to a meeting room on the tenth floor, where McIntosh was waiting for them. Maxwell came in with him, but left the rest of the team outside.

  Donna McIntosh was in full Arctic mode, standing by the window, arms crossed, expression tightly controlled.

  “Ma’am,” Maxwell said respectfully. “The suspect.”

  Suspect? What had given him away?

  She glanced at Maxwell, then Jack. A shiver rolled down his spine at the pure anger that flashed through her cold blue eyes.

  “I had doubts, Jack,” she said. “I didn’t like it, but I had to address them. I can honestly say I didn’t expect to find anything.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was an honest statement. There was so much she could have discovered. What had she found?

  “For a period of three minutes, you evaded your security detail in the stairwell,” McIntosh said coolly. “Where were you?”

  Oh fuck. “On the stairwell. Running off excess energy from being cooped up in this building. Is it my fault his”—Jack snapped a nod in Maxwell’s direction—“staff can’t keep up?”

  Maxwell growled but McIntosh held him back with a cold expression. Then she turned to a screen on the table.

  “I want you to listen to something, Jack.” She tapped at the touchpad and Jack heard his own voice.

  “Can’t this wait until you’re done in here?”

  His watchdogs had been recording his conversations. He wasn’t entirely shocked, having expected something like this. But still, he couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed as his conversation with Maria in the ladies’ toilet was played through. When it ended—“I mean it, Maria. Stay out of it. I’m warning you.”—Jack had a chilling suspicion about why he was really here.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, dreading his suspicions being confirmed.

  “What’s happened is you disappeared for three minutes at 1622 today somewhere between the tenth floor and the roof. You had more than enough time to get to the roof and back down.”

  Jack blinked. “The roof?”

  “Yes, the roof.” She called up a file and turned the desk screen to face Jack. “She was found five minutes before you were secured.”

  On the screen was a picture of the roof. Maria Dioli sprawled awkwardly next to an ant
enna. Her sightless dark eyes were clouded in death as she stared at him.

  “Her neck was broken. No sign of a struggle, so it was someone she knew. Someone she trusted to get that close.” McIntosh didn’t give him a chance to deny it. “Jack Reardon, I’m arresting you for the suspected murder of Unit Leader Maria Dioli.”

  “We’re leaving now?” Jack looked out at the burgeoning day.

  The sun had just cleared the horizon, but already the heat was building. Inside the brick stable, the cold of night was trapped, but it wouldn’t last long against the brutal assault of the day.

  “We won’t be going far to start with,” Blade explained. “And Sheila will be doing most of the work.”

  The beast in question honked happily and shoved her head at Blade’s back. He stumbled forwards a few steps, almost dropping the hefty saddlebag he held.

  “In a moment,” Blade muttered, pushing her away.

  “Christ, you’re like an old married couple.” Jack snickered and retreated to the back of the outer room, reluctant to go out in the unfiltered sunlight. His memories of his last effort were hazy, but those of the result weren’t. He didn’t want to suffer another bout of heatstroke, clean of bacterial infection or not.

  Blade gave him a withering look, then pointed to a pack. “If you could secure that to the other side of the saddle, I’d truly appreciate it.”

  Grumbling out of a sense of obligation rather than any real frustration, Jack did as asked. In truth, he was keen for this to get underway. It was time to get back to work, to find Valadian and put this whole mess to rest. That, and he had a burning curiosity to see what Blade had planned.

  Sheila knelt neatly in the middle of the outer room, her long, knobbly legs tucked up under her belly. While Blade had decked her out in her gear, she’d sat quietly and serenely. Now that Jack approached with the pack, she twisted her long, sinuous neck around and spat at him.

  Jack glared at the thick camel-phlegm on his shirt, then gave the ugly creature a discreet kick in her shank.

  The camel grunted and bared her teeth.

  “Jack,” Blade said wearily.