Dark Hunter

by AJ Adams

  “Why should it?” He was genuinely puzzled. “You’re not some freak who kills kids or carves up women.”

  “I see.” I didn’t, but I’d consider it later. “Well, you can rely on me.”

  “I know.” A friendly slap on the back. “I thought you’d ask the value of the gems.”

  “About half a million?”

  “Double that.” Arturo enjoyed my awe. “Don’t tell. They’re a surprise gift for Solitaire.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  Arturo was bouncing on his toes, full of energy. “Come on, we’re throwing you a welcome party.”

  It sounded hell, but I knew I couldn’t refuse. “Thanks, Arturo. I’m feeling at home already.”

  “Terrific!”

  There were about twenty men sitting under a covered porch in Arturo’s garden, and I quickly gathered they were the senior staff, up for a monthly meeting.

  “We lose track of details otherwise,” Arturo shrugged. “The regular lunch means we all stay tight.”

  I was introduced to everyone, “Rip saved my life, so I asked him to come and stay a while.”

  I was fussed over and finally put at a table with the men I already knew, the local senior staff. Kyle, Chumillo, Quique, Pedro Rojo, and Rafa nodded and told the others they would be giving me a guided tour of Mexico, but as soon as everyone sat down, they made it clear they knew what I’d be doing.

  “We all saw the video,” Chumillo handed me a beer. “I never would’ve guessed Campello was such a pussy!”

  “When he lost it, he lost everything,” Quique said. “I mean, the sapphires were worth a fortune, but if you had a choice between a couple of million on the run and this life,” he gestured to the pool and the massive barbecue pit beside it, “I know what I’d choose.”

  “Loyalty,” Pedro Rojo nodded. “That’s what makes a man.”

  “And courage,” Kyle added.

  The machismo of it all reminded me of a film I’d seen years ago. “How very manly,” I heard myself drawl, “but I think I can top that. ’To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!’”

  My wretched tongue, right? There was a second’s silence as they worked out what I’d meant, and just as I thought they’d be furious, they burst out laughing.

  “Que cabron!” Chumillo was wiping his eyes. “Conan the Barbarian, right?”

  After that, I was fed on more fillet steak, excellent red wine, and a salad straight from heaven. The lunch was exclusively male, with Arturo cooking and everyone running around to help. It was only towards the end of the meal that the women turned up. I spotted the raven-haired beauty immediately.

  Arturo gave her a crushing hug and toted her straight over. “Rip, have you met Solitaire?”

  “I saw you in London.”

  She smiled at me, “Of course, the hero of the hour.” I got a hug, and then she was introducing me to her friends. “Maria, Roberto’s wife, Regina, Tiko’s wife, Cora, Pepe’s wife, and Gloria, Juan’s wife.”

  It was hugs and kisses all round, and then I watched with interest as the husbands and the rest of the men fussed over the girls. They’d been to a handicraft fair, a project of Solitaire’s, I gathered, so they were laden with pottery, embroidery, and trinkets.

  It was fascinating. In Tricky’s gang, women were for sex and doing housework. From what I’d observed, it had been the same pretty much everywhere else. However, it seemed respect was the theme among the Zetas.

  The men listened, exclaimed, and admired. Then the women left to have coffee indoors, and we were alone again.

  “You’ve spent some time in the Balkans, right?” Chumillo asked. “What are the women like there?”

  Frankly, I was stumped. I’d had a few hookers but never a girlfriend. Women don’t interest me much. Still, I knew better than to say so. “They’re beautiful, strong and independent.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Arturo had joined our table. “Solitaire is all that, and she has a gift for organisation too. If she wanted to, she’d take over the country.”

  “Might be good for the economy,” Rafa grinned.

  “But not for us,” Arturo quipped. “She’d have us paying tax, for starters!”

  There was lots of whooping and laughing. Yes, these men clearly valued their women.

  “How are you getting along with that doctor?” Arturo asked Chumillo.

  “She dumped me.” He didn’t sound upset about it. “She’s hot for a neurologist.”

  “Pity. I liked her. Her cousin was a nice girl too. The quiet law student, I mean, not the one with the irritating giggle.”

  Tricky would have burned the doc’s assets with a wire for having the cheek to leave him, but from the way the Zetas talked, I gathered that revenge was strictly a business-related event. Also, they seemed to think that it was a good thing to be in a stable relationship.

  There was no way I was taking on a woman, but it would be good to show an interest.

  “I’m going to have to take Spanish lessons,” I said to the table, adding, “Mexico looks to be full of beautiful women, and I don’t think ‘vino’ and ‘hola’ is going to get me very far.”

  It went down well. “Well, in Boy’s Zone that would be enough,” Pedro Rojo quipped. “Just hold out some money to be sure!”

  I reckoned I had said enough, I didn’t want to risk making a mistake, so I drank some more wine and nodded and smiled a lot. It was a strain, though, and after an hour, I’d had enough. There were too many people, and missing a night’s sleep was catching up with me. Suddenly I felt drained.

  “Come on,” Chumillo was getting to his feet. “You’ve had a long day,” he commiserated. “I’ll drive you.”

  “I have a rental car.”

  “We returned it yesterday. You’ve got a couple of rides in your own garage. I’ll give you a lift home.”

  Half an hour later, Chumillo dropped me off at Campello’s, no, my home. It looked just as it had the day before, except now it was mine. I felt warm and mellow just looking at it.

  Chumillo spotted my reaction and was happy for me. He really was a child of nature. “Rip, enjoy, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I’d been shattered at the party, but now I was buzzing again. I opened all the doors and windows and set to explore.

  My first stop was the garden. I hadn’t had access to one since I was a child, and this one was glorious. It was all overgrown, a jungle almost, but I spotted limes, roses, wild garlic, and cilantro as well as hemlock, foxglove, and hawthorn. It was a treasure trove. There was a pool, too, and a Jacuzzi, both functioning but in need of cleaning.

  The house was just as miraculous. The living room, the kitchen and office downstairs and the three bedrooms upstairs needed a good mucking out, but the paint, woodwork, and furniture was made from top-class material: oak closets, leather sofas, and Egyptian cotton sheets soft as silk.

  Everywhere I looked, there were lots of toys: cameras, laptops, fancy phones, and several televisions. Campello had lived the high life. He’d been a damn fool to throw it all away on a whim. I was determined to dig in and stay.

  It took me a night and a day to clean the house, but finally I settled down on the massive leather sofa and began to plan my hunt. Arturo had given me twelve files. Flipping through them, I was pleased to see they were perfect. I might have picked them myself.

  It was a huge relief. Working for Tricky had been okay, but some of the kills had involved fledgling targets—drug dealers and wife beaters. They’d qualified, but trapping them had been too simple to be interesting. Arturo’s list read like an Interpol Most Wanted bulletin.

  Finding Navarro, my first target, was a piece of cake. From his file, I learned his first kill had been a rival crack dealer called Big Al. Navarro shot him in the head and left him on his balcony for all to see. As it was Halloween, the neighbours didn’t twig for over a week; they thought the corpse was holiday decoration.

  I didn’
t even have to get into character as it was crystal clear Navarro liked to hide in plain sight. Accordingly, I had a good look at the map. Drawing a line between his place and his girl’s place, I found a motel just outside the city limit with a rep for renting out rooms by the hour. Navarro would think that amusing. I knew I’d find him there.

  I went across the river, watched the place and got a good look at the register. Only one name appeared every week like clockwork: my target wasn’t even using different identities.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, I prepared for the hunt. The town proved full of treasures: a well-stocked market and supermarket, some good fashion boutiques filled with wigs, costumes, and makeup as well as a fantastic range of sex shops that offered all the cuffs, gags, and other tools of my trade.

  On the night I wore a black tracksuit and camouflaged my features with some tape around my eyes, a stick-on moustache, dark skin cream, brown contact lenses, and a big brown hairy wig. All my toys were packed in a black reusable shopping bag.

  I crossed the border and parked two miles from the hotel. I’m very fit so I walked quickly to my destination, slid into the motel car park, and waited for my quarry from behind a tree. The place was dark and nobody spotted me.

  The girl arrived first. I gave her five minutes, reckoning she’d use the time to close the curtains and text her lover. Then I put on surgical gloves, unpacked the roses I’d taken from the garden, and made my move.

  The girl peeped through the security spy hole, spotted the flowers I used to hide my face, and threw the door wide, giggling, “Ohmigod, for me?”

  The sight of the gun made her gasp, and the punch in the gut kept her quiet and frightened. Cuffs, a gag, and a blindfold had her immobile in less than a minute. I stashed her in the shower stall. She’d be out of the way there.

  She’d already turned down the lights and the bed covers, so I put the roses on the table and made my preparations. There was a solid chair, and I was happy to see the place was tricked out in cream and blue instead of boarding-house brown. Arturo wanted gory, and the pale paint would showcase blood beautifully. So I settled down to wait for my prey, feeling pretty good.

  Do you know the bugger was late? He trundled along near midnight, and he was half soused too. In a way it was good because he pushed open the door and didn’t even feel me coming up behind him. I touched him with a taser, and by the time he got it together, he was gagged and trussed to the chair.

  Watching my victim wriggle and mumble curses through the ball gag, I felt the champagne of superior strength bubbling up inside me.

  “Got you,” I told him. “And you know what happens when you’re caught, right?”

  From the furious growling, he didn’t like losing.

  “Arturo Vazquez sends his regards,” I informed him.

  He froze and I saw him gulp.

  “An example, he said. Brutal.”

  Another gulp.

  “From your file, I guess you know how this works.”

  His eyes said he did, and he wasn’t particularly pleased about it. His expression was nectar to me, though. This was absolutely perfect. He was caught in my trap, and now I was on top, perfectly in control. The monster inside me surged, filling me with delight.

  I produced my knife. “I thought we’d go for slicing.”

  The knife was carbon steel honed to surgical sharpness. When I trailed it down his cheek, he didn’t even wince as the blood welled. It was a thing of beauty.

  Arturo had asked that the woman be a witness. It seemed odd until I read the file and learned that this pair had disposed of the woman’s husband. Instead of divorce, they had staged a home invasion and clubbed the poor bastard to death. Arturo must have disapproved, his family values offended, hence the punishment.

  “You have been a busy little bee,” I teased Navarro. “What with the coveting, adultery, and murder, you were three for ten on the commandments, weren’t you?”

  His eyes told me he would like to kill me too.

  “Time to pay,” I whispered.

  As witnessing covers a lot of ground, I got the girl out of the bathroom and put her on the floor at Navarro’s feet. I cut off her top and skirt but didn’t strip her completely because I’d come up with a splendid idea. She wriggled a lot but I managed not to cut her, not that I think Arturo would have minded a couple of nicks, but I wanted to present him with a perfect job.

  When she was lying there in her undies, a saucy red bra with matching garters and black stockings, I started on her lover.

  I cut Navarro’s clothes off him too and began slicing. I took long light sweeps that didn’t hurt but that bled copiously. Before long he was a gory mess, and the girl was splattered liberally. After the first few dozen cuts, I moved him about a bit to make sure there were smears on all the walls and furnishings.

  Navarro had a rep as a hard man, but he was wailing through the gag the entire time. It was perfect; this was justice. The sound fuelled my need for vengeance, feeding my rage until it consumed me, gifting me with omnipotent strength.

  The girl was squalling too. It may have been concern for Navarro, but I rather think she was worried she was next. I wasn’t pitying her; I remembered her husband. The bitch was getting off easy.

  By four in the morning, Navarro was fading. The human body has roughly ten pints of blood, and I reckon I splashed a good third of it over that room. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you spread it thin the way I took care to do, you’d be amazed at the effect. It was a delightful splatterfest.

  For my finale, I moved him back to the centre of the room, right in front of the table with the roses. I took in the exhausted eyes and air of defeat. We’d walked the journey together, his blood feeding the monster raging inside me. Now he’d take the final step alone.

  I showed him the knife. He knew he was seeing his end. There was just enough left in him to moan. It was a sound that thrilled me.

  “This is justice,” I whispered to him. “It’s a nasty business, isn’t it?”

  Then I cut a nick on his thigh. It’s a gusher, that vein, and the girl got a good soaking. She was choking and gagging, rolling in gore.

  I looked into his eyes, and he was still there. It was perfect.

  “Game over,” I whispered. “Bye-bye.”

  He was totally still, but I saw the life drain from him, his pupils dilating and finally fixing. As the light went out of him, I felt that glorious rush of power end. The hunt was complete.

  When I looked over the room, I saw the final spray had hit the flowers. I really have an eye for a picture. When I stepped back I got the whole effect. Him in the chair, a poster victim from a snuff film, the blindfolded woman at his feet, a vision that belonged to hardcore torture erotica, and the roses in the background, delicately patterned with his lifeblood.

  The coppers wouldn’t be able to resist leaking this to the press, and it was certain to make headlines. Everyone loves a horror film, and as the girl was decently covered, there would no need for unsightly pixelation. I snapped a couple of pictures and sent them off to Arturo.

  To avoid any problems, I pulled a stocking over my face, replaced the wig and walked out, keeping my head down. I didn’t know if they had security cameras, but it didn’t really matter. Even if they did, the stocking, the wig and the tracksuit made me unidentifiable.

  It was still dark, so I kept to the shadows and walked fast. I took off the stocking when I was well away from the lights and then trotted along, head up, arms bent, puffing industriously, looking like an early morning jogger if anyone happened to see me.

  The car was undisturbed. I stripped off my things and pulled a poncho out from under the seat. It was my car now, and I wanted to avoid smears.

  Fifteen minutes later the clothes were at the bottom of the river, and thirty minutes after that I was cruising through border control. American Immigration authorities were out in force, deporting a bunch of illegals, but my plates meant I was waved through with respect. It really was rat
her nice.

  I was treating myself to a breakfast omelette with two types of mushroom and some excellent local oranges when Arturo called. “Terrific job!” By the sound of his voice he really meant it. “The place is bouncing with police and TV cameras. It’s already breaking news on CNN. Lovely job, Rip. Really, really beautiful!”

  “I’m glad you like it. I enjoyed it.”

  Arturo chuckled. “I sent the pictures to Perez Hilton. We’re on every network.”

  “Excellent.”

  “The Gulf and the Sinaloa are already accusing each other.”

  It reminded me a line from the classic 80s TV show, The A-Team: “I love it when a plan comes together.”

  Arturo was chuckling as he hung up, and Chumillo was round by noon, bearing a wad of cash and loud with praise. “Terrific, job, Rip. The jefe is delighted.”

  But he refused a beer, and he was making a conscious effort to meet my eyes. I knew the signs; Chumillo was sensing my monster. We smiled and joked, but after he left and I went back into the house, I knew I needed a strategy to win him over again.

  I was settling down to cut the grass when I spotted the girl. At first I didn’t believe my eyes. But there she was, right in the middle of the wild garlic.

  She was cold and motionless. From the black and purple bruises the size of soup plates, she’d been beaten so severely that I thought she might have crossed over. But when I touched her neck, I felt a faint beat.

  Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and she was covered in mud. By the crushed reeds, she’d crawled out of the river; it argued a huge will to live and considerable force of mind.

  Sitting back on my heels, I thought it through. My instinct was to dump her in the river. She was so close to death, she’d be gone in a moment, and then I’d just get on with settling into my new home. On the other hand, she had to come from nearby, from the town perhaps. If she was important, I might get kudos if I saved her.

  I took my phone out of my pocket, turned her over, snapped a picture and sent it to Chumillo. He called instantly. “Who the hell is she?”

  “That’s what I was asking you.”

  “Alive?”