by Matt Rogers
When he turned back, Alexis’ eyes were wide.
She said, ‘That would kill someone.’
‘Practice makes perfect.’
‘Show me.’
He slipped the pads back on and guided her through fifty consecutive elbows, making subtle corrections and slight adjustments until she started to realise how much power came from the rest of her body — the whole chain of muscles, connected together — not just the arm. When he signalled the session had come to a close, she put her hands back on her knees.
Between gasps of breath, she said, ‘You know what? I don’t feel like I’m on the verge of death anymore.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m slowly increasing the workload. Your body is getting used to the exertion.’
‘I still don’t feel like I’m there yet.’
‘You’re not,’ he said. ‘We’ve been at this for a month. It’ll take years.’
She looked up, somewhat dejected.
She said, ‘I know I’ll never be able to do what you do.’
He shrugged. ‘Why should that matter?’
She didn’t answer.
It wasn’t what she’d expected to hear.
He said, ‘You’re better than you were yesterday, aren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘That’s what matters. That’s all I’ve ever focused on.’
A faint noise floated up from the ground floor.
The front door, opening and closing.
Alexis said, ‘That’ll be Jason.’
Slater checked his fitness watch. ‘He’s late.’
‘Maybe he stopped for a burger.’
They shared a smirk.
She might as well have suggested King had done hard drugs.
Slater said, ‘Can’t hurt to check.’
‘I’ll shower.’
She stepped in and touched a hand to his face. ‘Thank you. For being patient with me.’
He put his hands on her waist. ‘You’re the one to thank. You’ve kept up every step of the way. You’re more patient than I’ll ever be. And I owe you.’
‘For what?’
‘For making me realise there’s more to life than just this shit.’
She kissed him.
He savoured it, just as he’d savoured each of them. She’d taught him a whole lot more than that, but he didn’t voice the rest.
She was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
He went downstairs and found King strangely motionless — not fetching electrolytes from the fridge, not stretching, not moving at all. The man had his elbows on the kitchen island and a faraway look in his eyes. He was staring into space.
Thinking.
Slater said, ‘What?’
King looked up.
He said, ‘I need your help.’
8
Violetta saw King arrive home.
She straightened up in the metal desk chair, surrounded by what encompassed her makeshift ops centre. It was nothing in comparison to the DARPA-grade resources she’d had access to a month previously, but there was no need to match her old tech. In her role as black-operations handler, she’d been responsible for running a large swathe of clandestine ops for an entire country. Now, she was focused first and foremost on the anonymity of four people — herself included. All that took was an assortment of monitors, servers and cables, not endless banks of servers carrying out large-scale data processing.
From this study she ran security for the estate.
All was clear and the perimeter was locked down, just as it had been for the last thirty days straight.
Alonzo had proved his competence.
The government wasn’t looking for them.
They were invisible.
They were ghosts.
But she maintained a rigid routine anyway, because there was no harm in being overly cautious. Satisfied with the lack of excitement on the triple-monitor setup, she was about to peel out of the chair when King came into frame, finishing his run in the lee of the front awning. He tapped his watch to stop the workout, put his hands on his hips, but didn’t go inside immediately. He stood out the front, pondering something, which she only noted because it wasn’t like him to waste time.
She watched him standing there as the thwack of elbows hitting pads echoed from a distant corner of the second floor.
She loved him.
And she knew he loved her.
That’s all there was to it. It was shockingly normal in their crazy, mile-a-minute world, and that was what made it so pure. But deep down she knew the last thirty days had been far too grounded, far too uneventful. Sure, there’d been training and evolving and the implementation of a strict routine, but she knew he and Slater needed order and chaos in equal measure, or they’d consider themselves nothing more than wasted potential.
Violetta knew it would come to this.
King was out there, contemplating, because he’d found something that needed fixing.
That’s what ghosts do best.
They haunt the living.
When he came out of his stupor and made for the front door Violetta killed the exterior feeds, powering the screens down as the servers hummed steadily in the background. There was nothing more to see.
Above her head, faint footfalls headed for the stairs.
Slater, coming to check.
Slater knew something was up, too. Maybe it was the timing. Maybe it was purely a sixth sense. But she heard Slater go downstairs into the kitchen, and she waited in the privacy of the ops centre for the conversation to play out. She wasn’t the type to intrude. King would come to her in his own time.
And he did.
They spoke for fifteen minutes in the kitchen. Then footfalls came toward her. The door opened, and King stepped into the room, still perspiring from his ever-consistent morning exertion. She rose and went to him, and put her hands on his chest, and stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his lips.
He pulled her in close.
He said, ‘I found something.’
She said, ‘I know.’
‘You do?’
She reached out and tapped one of the black screens. ‘You were out front for a while.’
‘Only a minute or so.’
‘For you, that’s a while.’
He nodded. ‘I was thinking.’
‘What happened?’
He told her every detail. Every spoken word. Every action. The shaky conclusion to the whole thing.
Violetta processed it all. She kept her cool — her specialty. Maintaining a level head in high-stress situations was her forte. She wouldn’t have survived a day in her old job without it.
She said, ‘You know what this might unravel.’
‘I know it’ll go deep.’
‘Do you think it’s wise for us to put that heat on ourselves so soon after what happened?’
‘It shouldn’t matter. If we start coming up with excuses not to act, it’ll open the floodgates. You know that.’
‘There’s being brave, and there’s being reckless.’
King smiled. ‘They go hand in hand.’
She sighed.
He said, ‘You knew what this was going to be when we ran. We weren’t going to play defence forever.’
‘I’m fully aware of that,’ she said. ‘If I’m in, then I’m all in. I’m just trying to convince myself it’s a good idea.’
‘It’s never a good idea.’
‘It won’t stop at Wan’s.’
‘Which is why we’re not going to approach it like it will.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘You’re not going to storm in there and smash heads together?’
‘Unlikely.’
A smirk crossed her face. ‘That’s uncharacteristic.’
‘I’ll pretend I’m offended by that.’
She thought for a moment, then said, ‘She looked like me, huh?’
King pretended to think about it in turn. Then he mock-sighed. ‘You were bound to find ou
t sooner or later…’
‘What?’
‘This is a new era. I’m only in the business of helping supermodels.’
She slapped him playfully on the chest.
He winked and sauntered out.
She stayed behind, but there was no tension. It didn’t even cross her mind. Jealousy couldn’t exist in their world — they operated at the fringes of the human emotional spectrum. When going to work meant putting their lives on the line, petty relationship squabbles fell to the wayside. It was something they’d never even addressed — it just was.
Nothing they did would work if they didn’t trust each other with their lives, and that encompassed all of your usual partnership issues.
She wasn’t used to her new life. Not yet.
She was an outcast, a rogue, exiled from the government she’d spent half her life serving.
But there was no one she’d rather do it alongside than Jason King, Will Slater, and Alexis Diaz.
She followed him out of the ops centre.
9
As the sun went down, Slater dressed for the night ahead.
Not his usual getup, but it wasn’t a usual night.
He stepped into the walk-in wardrobe of the bedroom he shared with Alexis and took a white custom shirt and grey Armani suit pants off their respective hangers. He tucked the shirt into the pants, both tight against his frame — a byproduct of focusing hard on adding a few pounds of rock-hard muscle over the last month — then slipped a matching grey Armani jacket over the whole thing. Gucci loafers went on his feet over thin ankle socks, and he decided to leave the shirt open at the collar with an extra button undone.
He eyed himself once in the mirror and went downstairs, satisfied with the visual package.
When he stepped into the kitchen, Violetta said, ‘You nailed it.’
She stood behind the kitchen island, hunched over a laptop she’d placed on the countertop.
Alexis was elsewhere.
King was still getting ready.
Slater mock-twirled on the spot. ‘Think I look sharp?’
‘You look like a crime boss,’ she said. ‘A wolf. Like I said — nailed it.’
‘Then I’ll fit right in at this shithole.’
She looked at him. ‘You doing okay?’
He didn’t immediately answer, and he hoped she understood. He’d always needed to switch gears to open up. It didn’t come easily to him. Before Alexis, before King, before the madness of the last couple of years, he’d been a loner. An unbelievably efficient operative, barrelling from one life-threatening situation to the next. Satiating the voices in his head with an unending stream of booze and drugs and women. He’d pursued each of his three vices with the same recklessness he’d pursued his work, which meant the stillness he’d found in recent history was well and truly out of the ordinary.
But his silence didn’t mean his answer would be grave.
There were far less demons in the basement of his mind than there’d ever been.
So he said, ‘Yeah. Doing great. You?’
Only four words, but this was not a superficial conversation. Each one had a purpose. Violetta recognised it, too.
She said, ‘I’m getting there.’
‘Understandable.’
‘This is new to me. The upheaval. Being a vigilante.’
‘You get used to it.’
She looked at him. ‘I can tell.’
He fell quiet.
She said, ‘Do you ever get un-used to it?’
‘I’ve never slowed down for long enough to find out.’
She nodded, pondering it. Then something caught her eye on the screen in front of her, and her gaze locked on with laser focus. She said, ‘Got him.’
‘Who?’
King stepped into the kitchen. He wore a size larger than Slater in everything, and that was no small feat. His suit was also tight, but he pulled it off. The jacket and pants were dark maroon, the colour of hellfire. Underneath he rocked the same custom white shirt as Slater, also open at the collar. They hadn’t even planned to coordinate. Call it a sixth sense.
Violetta said, ‘You two should dress up more often.’
King said, ‘For all the banquets we attend?’
Slater turned back to her. ‘Who’d you find?’
‘Armando Gates,’ she said. ‘The guy behind the curtain at Wan’s, according to King’s new friend Josefine. He’s a notorious pimp, but he’s never been convicted. Seems like everyone has a file on him but he’s still out there walking around. A street thug, through and through, but little more than that. There’s no greater conspiracy involving him. He’s just a bad boy.’
‘Could they send him away?’ King said. ‘If they really wanted to?’
Violetta narrowed her eyes, focusing hard on the screen. She used the trackpad to scroll. ‘I’d say so.’
‘Then you know what that means.’
‘Josefine’s going down for a kilo of coke,’ Slater said. ‘I think we’ve already established the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has a few bad eggs.’
‘Maybe more than a few,’ Violetta said, still scrolling.
‘That’s why we’re not going to tear Wan’s apart,’ King said. ‘No matter what we find.’
Slater said, ‘Why do I feel like that was directed at me?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Violetta said. ‘Maybe because of your track record.’
Slater allowed himself a half-smirk. ‘I promise to behave.’
King said, ‘She’s serious.’
Slater turned. ‘I know that.’
‘You might see things,’ King said. ‘Things that will make you angry.’
‘I know what you’re getting at,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll be fine. I can control myself.’
‘I hope so. We need to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.’
‘Don’t lecture me like I’m a child.’
‘You’re not a child,’ Violetta said. ‘You’re a man. A man who’s seen red before.’
‘And King hasn’t?’
‘This whole experience may be … tailored toward what you despise.’
‘I know,’ Slater said.
There were girls being sold, whether complicit in it or not. Slater’s mother had been sold, what felt like a lifetime ago. Taken by human traffickers, disappearing into the seedy underbelly of an unseen global industry, never to be heard from again. His father hadn’t been able to handle the guilt, the fact that he wallowed in fear and did nothing to try and find her. He’d checked out using his own gun a couple of years after it happened. Leaving Slater an orphan, chewed up and run through the system, until a certain black division of the government plucked him out of the military for a greater purpose.
The rest was history.
He said, ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Then let’s not waste time,’ King said.
Violetta didn’t approach them, didn’t try to initiate physical contact. It was easier that way. A certain detachment had to be there when an operation was imminent. There was no guarantee either of them would walk out of the unlicensed club alive. Frankly, Slater didn’t think a band of street thugs would pose much of a challenge, but that was the worst part about what they did.
It was unpredictable.
Violetta said, ‘Good luck. Don’t start a war.’
‘We’ll do our best,’ King said.
He made for the door.
Slater followed, eyes on his back.
Locked onto the dark red suit material.
He stuffed that colour down into the recesses of his mind.
Willed himself not to let it out tonight.
10
Right on time, a Bentley Flying Spur pulled into the estate.
It was a behemoth of a four-door, big and dark green, but it whispered up to the front porch making practically no noise at all. Alexis swung the driver’s door open and climbed out. She tossed Slater the keys.
‘Any issues?’ King said.
‘None
,’ she said. ‘I made it back, didn’t I?’
‘Here’s hoping you didn’t get flagged in the system.’
‘I don’t think they would have leased me the car if that was the case,’ she said. ‘Besides, it’s been a month. If there was something that could lift the blanket off our old identities, it would have happened by now.’
Slater smiled as she passed him by. ‘You don’t get fazed, do you?’
She said, ‘Thought that was a fundamental part of the job. You look good.’
‘Don’t I always?’ he whispered.
She took his hand — briefly — on the way past. ‘Don’t get yourself killed.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
Then she was gone, leaving the two of them alone in the balmy desert night.
King said, ‘This feels different, doesn’t it?’
‘How?’ Slater said, but he knew.
‘Doesn’t feel like work.’
‘I think we can manage,’ Slater said. ‘It’s just street thugs running some janky racket.’
‘For now it is. When does anything ever resolve itself neatly?’
‘It doesn’t,’ Slater said, and made for the driver’s seat. ‘That’s the fun part.’
King rode shotgun, and Slater familiarised himself with the Bentley’s cockpit and drove out of the estate. The gates rumbled closed behind them — Violetta’s invisible hand, sealing them out.
There should have been nerves inside the car.
The stress of undercover work — having to pretend they were undesirables, aware that the slightest slip-up would ruin everything, trapping them in an unfamiliar web.
But there was nothing.
They might as well have been heading out for groceries.
They drove east for fifteen minutes, staying on West Desert Inn Road the whole time, passing darkened suburbia and a handful of empty sand lots. Then the Spring Mountain gravel pit loomed on their right, like the ground had opened up and swallowed an area the size of several football fields whole. Minutes later they were in Chinatown. Wan’s had a public address King found on Google, so he navigated as Slater guided the luxury ride through relatively quiet streets. It was a weeknight, and the allure of Vegas was elsewhere.
