by Morgan Black
The case from Storage Solutions has two thousand rounds of ammunition--a quarter of it for my pistols, the rest for the uzi packed in alongside it. There are other less exciting bits and pieces tucked away in the case as well, but they’re less important to me right now.
Careless of the fact that I’m in a moving vehicle with an uninvolved person just a foot away, I get to work:
I strip the handguns down, check them for dust, and piece them back together. A lot of guys in my line of work get weird affectations about their guns, like sailors with their boats or some shit. That’s not me. They’re tools. Nothing more, nothing less.
I shrug my jacket off and gather up the holster from my carry-on, shrugging into it. The weight of it is calming in a way, the way I imagine someone must feel when he puts his wedding ring on. Not that I’d know that from experience. The life I live, having a girlfriend would be an irresponsible risk. A wife? An impossibility.
Collecting the magazines from the case, I load the handguns and holster one.
There was someone in my life once. Someone I was as close to as I imagine a man might be to his wife. Someone I could depend on no matter what, through thick and thin, through the worst life had to offer.
My kid brother, Alain.
Growing up in the rougher parts of North Las Vegas, Alain and I were more than siblings. We were each other’s protectors. The little niche we carved out for ourselves, our comfortable life, our business, none of that would have been possible with someone who didn’t have that implicit trust, that family bond.
I’m on the way to kill the men who took him from me right now.
For the moment, I leave the uzi in its case. Hopefully my first stop is the type of job that won’t need anything more than a handgun and a blade. I slip the knife from my suitcase and tuck it into my ankle sheath, the slim steel nestled away in my boot.
Thinking about Alain makes something inside me ache, a throb like an old bruise that never quite goes away.
Most people might have taken a step back, let themselves grieve when their kid brother died. But not me. Not knowing what I know. I watch the shops on Sepulveda Boulevard fly past, the Maybach cruising along in silence.
Anger curdling in my stomach, I don’t even notice I’ve zoned out until the chauffeur--Alicia, I remind myself--speaks to me over the intercom again.
“Is there anywhere you’d like to stop before item one on your agenda?”
That’s right, “Amber” sent the Touring Club my itinerary. Alicia is a good driver, she knows sometimes a guy needs to deviate from his plan for whatever reason.
“Like what?” I ask, aiming for playful. Flirting with a distractingly gorgeous woman is the best distraction in the world. When I’m on the hunt, be it a slow game ending in an explosive tryst or just searching for a quick fuck in a nightclub, it’s easy to leave my baggage at the door.
“I don’t know.” She pauses, considering. “Food? Coffee? Anything you forgot?”
For a moment, I consider asking her to breakfast. If this were a normal job, I’d do it. I’d take her to a nice cafe, a quiet one, and buy her a strong coffee. I’d buy her pastries and fruit--or bacon and eggs if she’s a greasy spoon kind of gal--and set my hooks in her, ask her questions, learn more about her.
But this isn’t an ordinary job. I’m not getting paid for this. And even if I were, I probably wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy the reward.
“I think I’m all right,” I say. “But maybe after these first couple meetings, we’ll stop somewhere and have a drink.”
“We?”
I can hear the guarded tone of her voice, the skepticism. She’s had clients hit on her before, no doubt. How could she not, looking like that?
“Yes. We. You and I. Together.”
“I’m afraid I can’t drink before driving you anywhere. Conditions of my CDL license and all.”
So she’s playing the professional card. Well, two can play that game.
“Agreed,” I say. “I’d hate to jeopardize your job. Which is why we could have a drink at the hotel. When you’re all done driving for the night.”
When she speaks up again, her voice has gone playful.
“What if I tell you I don’t drink?”
“I’d ask if you only say that to avoid drinking with specific people.”
“What if it’s against my religion?”
“If it was against your religion you wouldn’t have mentioned your CDL as your first excuse.”
“Fair enough. What if I told you it’s against Club policy?”
“I’d say you probably get clients asking you to do all kinds of things that are against club policy.”
This time, her quiet lasts for longer.
I know her type: her reluctance is an act. She doesn’t want me to think she’s easy. She wants me to respect her as a professional, and I can’t do that if I also think she’s into booze and casual sex. So I tell her that.
“I get it,” I say. “You don’t want me to think you’re into drinking and casual sex because you’re a professional.”
She’s silent.
“Well let me put it this way: I’m the embodiment of a consummate professional. And I have so much casual sex that I’m not sure I remember what the other kind is even called.”
“Formal sex,” she says without skipping a beat. “Or business casual sex.”
Oh, I like her.
I touch the heavy weight of the holster under my jacket, reminding myself of why I’m here. I can chase tail later.
Yet still, something nags at me. Like a little voice in the back of my head, asking me if you can chase tail later, why do you care so much that it has to be her tail?
I hit the button for the intercom.
“Isobel Towers straight away,” I say. “I do have a job to do.”
If she’s surprised or concerned by my sudden shift in demeanor, she doesn’t comment.
4
~ Alicia ~
Two of the excuses I gave Jake Hawthorne were the truth. It’s true: drinking before a commercial driving job is grounds for losing your license. And it’s also true that Touring Club drivers are prohibited from both consuming alcohol on the job and the other shit Jake hinted at wanting to do with me.
But Jake’s response to my excuses was also right.
It’s not the first time a client has liked what he sees. I’ve had offers that have run the gamut: have a drink with me, go to dinner with me, come back to my hotel room with me. My third job ever, the guy offered me a thousand dollars to climb into the back of the car and blow him.
But as hot as Jake is--and he is, smoking hot--there are lines I just won’t cross. I need this job too badly to endanger it for the promise of a free drink or a bigger tip. I flirt with my clients, sure. Sometimes shamelessly. But there’s a line I can’t cross.
Which is a shame, because in a different life I’d cross a lot of lines for a guy like Jake. I can’t see him right now with the privacy partition up, but I can imagine it: his rich brown eyes roving down the lines of my body, the way his tongue snakes out when he wets his lips.
He looks like he knows what he’s doing with that tongue.
Uncomfortably warm, I crank up the AC a bit and focus on the road. Isobel Towers isn’t far away and traffic isn’t awful right now.
I try not to pay attention to the sinking feeling of exhaustion pulling at me, dragging me down like a weight. It’s been a while since I slept. I’m good for a while yet, I tell myself. Because there’s no other option.
After asking me to take him to Isobel Towers and going weirdly quiet, Jake hasn’t said a thing. It was like he flipped a switch in himself, from flirty and relaxed one second to cold as ice.
I guess that’s how it might be for a lot of those tech billionaires, though. They didn’t get to where they are without having some personality quirks. Few geniuses do.
Unlike a lot of the rich listers we drive around, I’ve never heard of Jake Hawthorne. But that isn’t sayi
ng much. A lot of our clients are very private people. And who can blame them? I had to sign a stack of forms to even get the job in the first place. And it’s a miracle they took me. Because otherwise I’d be up shit creek.
Before my glamorous life as a chauffeur, I ran a photography studio. I was never world famous, but it made a living. And more importantly, I made a living doing something I absolutely loved. Photography is my passion. I’m always staring off into the distance admiring light, wondering how the world would look if I was photographing it through a lens. It’s in my blood. I can’t turn it off.
But I guess that’s why they call it a dream job. The dream part. And at the end of a dream, you always wake up.
My former business partner--and ex-boyfriend--fucked me over hard. The studio crashed and burned. I had to take out a loan to buy out the lease. I sold my camera gear to make the payments, but it wasn’t enough. The debt piled up. I worked odd jobs here and there, but never anything steady or anything that paid that well.
We’re sorry, people would say, you just don’t have any practical skills. You aren’t qualified.
By the time I managed to land the Touring Club job, my credit cards were maxed out. I had to beg my parents for the money for my CDL course.
So no, after everything I’ve been through, I won’t compromise the club rules for a drink and a laugh with Jake Hawthorne. No matter how much I’m tempted.
“We’re here,” I say over the intercom as I guide the Maybach into the parking garage opposite Isobel Towers. I take the ticket and pull up outside the closest elevator. The big concrete structure is cavernously dark, dotted with expensive-looking cars.
“Thank you,” says Jake. His voice is oddly emotionless, like he’s shut himself down inside for the meeting he’s about to attend. He certainly doesn’t sound like a guy who’s about to give a sales pitch for software or whatever the hell he does.
I leave the car in park, engine running, and slip outside to open up the door.
When Jake slips out and stands, I catch a glimpse of his face. He looks... different, somehow. His eyes have gone opaque, that rich brown gleam all gone from them. He looks like he’s all business.
Smoothing out his jacket, he bends over and retrieves a small, shiny leather briefcase from one of his hard suitcases.
“I may be a while,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve got a work phone?”
I slip it from the pocket of my jacket and peer up, meeting his eyes. It’s like looking into the eyes of a complete stranger. An old soldier who’s gone to war and come back changed.
He gives me his number and I text it so it’s in my contacts.
“I’ll message you if I’ll be longer than two hours,” he says. “Go and get yourself lunch or something. Bring me the receipt.”
For a moment, I wonder what kind of meeting he’s going to. Don’t guys like this have every hour of their day meticulously planned by personal assistants with three-hundred-dollar haircuts and smart glasses and tight-fitting pencil skirts? How does he not know how long he’s going to be?
But I know better than to ask.
“Good luck in there,” I say with a quick smile.
He lifts the briefcase and gives it a pat, then turns to me. For a moment, there’s a hint of the old Jake, the Jake I was first introduced to.
“Oh, I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.”
After that cryptic statement, he’s breezing past me, taking long strides toward the elevator, his face all hard lines of concentration.
I climb back into the Maybach and guide it into a parking spot.
Lunch? Receipts? Whatever. I’m going to take a nap.
5
~ Jake ~
It’s strange, actually being at Isobel Towers. I heard the name so many times in my work for the Császár family that I built it up into something in my head like Mordor or whatever. But it’s just a couple building.
Isobel Towers off Sepulveda: an innocuous business park consisting of two nine-story towers fronted with blue-green panes of glass. Home to a couple video game developers, a campus for an English learning college, and Martinsen Enterprises, the trucking company that moves all of the Császárs’ product.
I’m here for Luka Martinsen.
I bid Alicia goodbye in the parking garage with a hint of a smile, but it doesn’t show on my face. I’ve already shut down. Normally I can keep it up: that glib persona, the cheery playboy who can talk his way into anywhere. I can play any part necessary to get the job done.
But this is the first time I’m walking into a murder I’m not being paid to commit.
It feels different.
I take the elevator to the top floor of the parking structure, where a skybridge connects it to the Towers themselves. I have a plan. Or at least most of a plan.
Opening up the burner phone, I look over the details Vin sent me. For a biker, he’s weirdly good with computers. But then again, I suppose he’s the dispatch and freight moving equivalent of a biker.
Any Császár property has ridiculous security. I would know, I’ve worked with them. But the advantage of storming into this particular building is that none of them know my face.
Even if what happened in La Jolla has reached these guys, they may not know it was me. And even if they do, to them I’m just a name.
Walking briskly, purposefully over the skybridge, I make my way to reception. Vin’s sent me the locations of Luka Martinsen’s personal offices. I’m not sure where our meeting will take place.
The lobby is so stereotypical corporate rich guy: lots of chrome and black leather and glass and natural light. All the receptionists look like they could be models in their spare time. Even the people sitting in the waiting rooms look wealthy.
I stroll up to the closest desk and put on a winning smile for the girl sitting behind it. She can’t be older than twenty. I’d hate to have to kill her, because innocents as collateral damage isn’t really my thing, but if I have to fight my way out of this place, nothing will stand between me and the door.
“Hi.” I pitch my voice low and confident, full-chested. “Jake Hawthorne. Mr. Martinsen is expecting me.”
The woman flits me a quick smile and types up something on her computer, fingers flying across the keys. She nods a little to herself, as if relieved my story checks out, and gestures to an elevator.
“Take the elevator to the ninth floor waiting area,” she says. “Mr. Martinsen won’t be too far away.”
It’s the most tense elevator ride of my life.
The small waiting room atop the ninth floor is empty. There are comfortable suede chairs lining the wall, a big brown sofa, a coffee machine, some magazines. It’s so bizarrely casual. Like I’m not walking into a den of pure evil.
Luka Martinsen has all manner of innocuous business, but I know the truth. I know about the coke. I know about the guns. And I know about the girls. Brought in via port usually, far from home, promised jobs as housekeepers and hotel workers, unaware of the horror that awaits them. I know exactly how much blood is on Luka Martinsen’s hands.
As I stand in the waiting room, shifting my weight on the soles of my fine leather shoes, I regret getting involved with these people at all. If only I’d known how bad it actually was, maybe Alain would still be alive.
But what’s done is done. I can’t bring my brother back. But I can destroy the men who killed him.
And more importantly, I can find his daughter.
Martinsen thinks I’m here to pitch him new logistics software. Vin promises it looks legit. But the longer I wait, the more I wonder. Is the other side of that door so silent because they’re planning an ambush? Did they figure me out?
I sit down and pour myself a coffee. Probably won’t help my nerves, but it feels warm and tastes good on the way down.
When the door opens, it’s a man I don’t recognize. My fingers twitch, like they’re already on a trigger. But all they hit is styrofoam coffee cup.
The man, Hunter Voss, is
a name I know. He leads me into Martinsen’s office, and thank God it’s just the two of them.
I introduce myself with a flash of teeth. It looks like a smile, but it’s something more primitive than that. More predatory.
“Mr. Hawthorne, thanks for coming,” says Martinsen.
As he and Voss take their seats, I wander up to the head of the long, dark wood table. It smells like it’s been freshly oiled. Martinsen settles into a seat at the front and twitches a polite smile up at me, his little mouth slightly pursed.
He looks so normal. I actually find myself wishing he looked more evil. But I suppose one of the truest things you ever learn, brushing elbows with real evil every day, is that most of the people in this world who do terrible things look just like you and me.
Martinsen is portly, with a shaggy goatee and a broad-shouldered build. His hair is cropped short at the sides and swept back over his head with some sort of pomade. His suit is expensive, but not flashy. He has a wedding ring on. It’s simple, also not flashy.
For a fleeting second, I wonder if his wife will even miss him. Or if she even knows about this part of his life at all.
“I appreciate you lending me an ear for a couple hours today,” I say, setting my briefcase on the desktop. I open it so that Martinsen and Voss can’t see inside, can’t see that it doesn’t contain a laptop at all.
But as I twitch open the latches, something in the room’s atmosphere changes. There’s a subtle shift, like the way atmospheric pressure drops before a storm.
In a split second, I notice several things: Martinsen scoots his chair back, further away from me. And I’ve let my eye off Voss, which is a mistake. Voss is just a shipping and logistics guy in the organization, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous in close quarters. Voss is sitting up, reaching into his coat for something.
