Why the Devil Stalks Death

by L. J. Hayward

  Lewis eyed him suspiciously. “Is that a jab at the suit?”

  “Of course not.” Jack kept a completely straight face.

  “This is payback for the costume in Melbourne, isn’t it?”

  With a wounded gasp and hand pressed to his chest, Jack said, “As if I would.”

  “Right.” Lewis shifted again, tugging at the tight crotch of his suit pants. After a moment, he began singing that song again—until Jack jabbed him in the ribs. “Hey, watch the suit!”

  “Then don’t sing that song.”

  “You know, you’d be much nicer to work with if you just stopped screwing your face up all the time.”

  “I’m not screwing my face up.” Jack scowled, then forced his expression to smooth out.

  “Hah. You’ve been frowning almost constantly for the past couple of months.”

  “Have not.”

  “Seriously,” Lewis harped on. “Is something wrong? You’ve been snapping like a dingo with rabies lately. I mean, you nearly reduced Claudia to tears last month.”

  Jack grimaced. He and Claudia Sterne had sat back-to-back at work for five years and still could barely manage a civil conversation. But then, Claudia didn’t like anyone. She was abrasive and condescending and a snob. No one had managed to dint her hoity armour in all the time Jack had known her. Who would have guessed reminding her to lube up her broom before she rode it home would have done the trick? The entirely provoked comment had earned Jack another round of lectures from the human resources counsellor.

  “Did your boyfriend leave you?”

  Jack didn’t get a chance to wallop Lewis because they’d arrived.

  Silom was one of the more popular nightlife areas of Bangkok, and there were several strips of brightly lit, extravagant go-go bars bustling with locals and tourists wishing to partake in one of Bangkok’s more infamous treats. However, the street they’d stopped on was quieter, darker, less blatant about what it was offering.

  The taxi driver told Jack the fare in well-practiced English, and Jack pulled the notes from his clip, handing them over with a much less graceful thanks in Thai. Lewis climbed out of the car and tried to shift his goods into a more comfortable position. His efforts, however, broke off when he got a look at the sign hanging over the door of the building in front of him.

  “This is where you’re taking me?” he demanded as Jack joined him.

  A doorman stood in an alcove, deep enough he was only a vague, darker shape in the shadows. Similarly, the building’s façade was nondescript brick and tinted windows. The only mark of the business inside was a wrought-iron circle hanging over the door. A single, short arrow came off the circle, pointing slightly east of the circle’s north. The symbol of Mars—the god, not the planet—or more commonly, male.

  Jack couldn’t help the nasty grin he shot over his shoulder. “This is what you get for singing that damn song all the time.”

  “No, this is what I get for letting you talk me into shit like this.”

  Noting their interest, the doorman sidled forwards. He asked something in Thai, eyeing them both up and down.

  “Don’t speak much Thai, but I do have these.” Jack produced two poker chips, both showing the same symbol as the club.

  With a knowing smile, they were ushered to the door, which opened promptly at the doorman’s knock, and Jack and Lewis went in.

  The entrance was outfitted like an old gentlemen’s club, with thick rugs and several sets of leather chairs next to small tables displaying newspapers from around the world. The walls were polished panels of oak on the lower half, lushly stylised brown wallpaper above, dotted with oils of landscapes, and portraits of old men Jack had no hope of recognising. There was a fireplace, merrily burning within its black marble mantelpiece, brass urns, silver snuff pots and small figurines of stalking tigers arrayed across it. Soft lighting heightened the sense of exclusivity.

  Lewis leaned in close. “Posh den of iniquity.”

  Jack shushed him with a hard stare.

  From behind a screen, the host appeared. He was an older man, thin and distinguished in his expensive tuxedo, streaks of grey running through his black hair. With a keen eye he took in their dinner suits, stance, and expressions. Coming to the correct conclusion, he faced Jack.

  “Sir, it is a pleasure to have you with us tonight,” he said in accented but perfect English. “How may we serve you?”

  Jack revealed the two poker chips again. “I was told this is a place a man can relax and find some entertainment.”

  Smoothly, the host took the chips and they vanished into his tux. “Indeed it is. What would you and your associate be interested in?”

  Hearing Lewis shift uncomfortably, Jack decided against making him suffer too much. The unit leader was here against his wishes, giving in to Jack’s insistence he couldn’t do this part alone. Besides, he didn’t want to risk the hard work of the past three weeks just because watching straight-as-a-plumbline Lewis Thomas try to seduce a male prostitute would make a hilarious story back at the Office.

  “Nothing too specific,” Jack said. “Just a bit of a taste of what’s on offer.”

  The host glanced at Lewis, then nodded. Lewis huffed but didn’t object.

  “Thirty thousand, each,” the host said politely.

  Jack took the baht notes from the clip and held them up. “And if we like what we see?”

  Another knowing nod. The host flashed a couple of black cards, the club logo embossed on their surface. “Fifty thousand. Each.”

  Feeling Lewis’s disapproving glare on the back of his neck, Jack counted out more notes. He exchanged the lot for the two cards.

  “A moment, please, gentlemen.” The host disappeared behind the screen again.

  “Really?” Lewis muttered as Jack held out one of the cards. “He already pegged me as not interested.”

  “No. He pegged you as curious. Come on, you don’t have to use it.”

  Lewis snatched up the card and shoved it in a pocket. “This is the last time I let you organise anything.”

  A moment turned into several, then five minutes, and Lewis started pacing.

  “Stop it,” Jack murmured.

  Lewis stopped but started fidgeting. “I just want this finished. We’ve been here too long as it is.”

  He wasn’t talking about the awkwardness of waiting to be sent into a high-end gay brothel. Their original job had been to find out if the intelligence coming out of Bangkok about one of their highest-priority subjects was valid. As part of the secret Meta-State Agreement, Thailand operations were under the purview of Internal Threat Assessment. Normally, it would have been handled by the Singapore branch, but since their teams hadn’t been making much headway, they’d asked Sydney for help. Jack’s South Asian heritage had seemed to do the trick. He wasn’t Southeast Asian or Caucasian, so the locals weren’t quite so wary of him. As a result, what had started as a weeklong op turned into a full-on hunt for Theta Subject. Three weeks hunting their subject through underground gambling dens, some of the less savoury brothels and high-stakes poker games where the buy-in was ludicrous but getting out with all your blood was the real prize.

  It wasn’t all thanks to Jack’s skills, though.

  In the eleven months since Director Harraway had been exposed as a traitor, arrested, and packaged off for a lifetime sentence in an ultrasecure prison, the Office of Counterterrorism and Intelligence had felt the change. With the flow of intelligence no longer strangled by Harraway, both Internal and External Threat Assessment investigations had exploded with forward momentum. The Office had a vitality it hadn’t experienced for years.

  All thanks to the assassin Ethan Blade. Or more precisely, the mysterious person who’d contracted Ethan Blade to take out the organised-crime-boss and terrorist-wannabe Samuel Valadian—thereby exposing Jack’s long-term undercover operation and thrusting him into an uneasy alliance with the assassin—and ultimately, revealing Harraway as a traitor. It hadn’t helped that Ethan had b
een exactly Jack’s type—lithe, lean, beautifully sculpted out of muscle and taut flesh, possessed of an occasionally wicked humour, and incisive intelligence.

  “So?” Lewis drew Jack back to the present. “Did he?”

  Jack played dumb. “Did who what?”

  “Did your boyfriend leave you?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend to be left by.” He could feel the scowl approaching and tried to stop it, but his brows prickled in angry frustration.

  The rote “I don’t have a boyfriend” answer was more of a lie and less of a cover, now. He and Ethan had finally talked about it and agreed they were committed. Ethan had said he would move in with Jack, albeit four months ago—and he hadn’t communicated since. So did Jack have a boyfriend or not? Ethan had definitely said “see you soon” when they parted, but apparently they had very different definitions of “soon.”

  “Well, something definitely changed,” Lewis continued, showing a remarkable lack of self-preservation. “For a while there, after the Harraway thing, you were, and I hesitate to use this word in conjunction with you, happy. But now? Sheesh. Claudia was the worst, but not the only casualty. I figured you were getting it regular, then it stopped. Was I right?”

  Yes. “No. I don’t have a boyfriend, then or now. Nothing’s changed.”

  Lewis eyed him with a shrewd expression but dropped the topic. Jack couldn’t help but feel there might be a “for now” clause on the look, but he was willing to let it go, too. Right now, they had a job to finish.

  The host reappeared and Jack and Lewis were shown into the inner sanctum.

  “Well?” Connors asked after a short silence.

  Jack sat back in his chair, restraints clinking. “Pleasure, obviously.”

  “Obviously. I hear it’s a nice establishment.”

  “Decent. Had a bit of fun. Left. Nothing that memorable.”

  “A bit of fun,” Connors mused. “Wasn’t there a disturbance while you were there?”

  Jack cocked an eyebrow. “Something with another patron. My friend didn’t like the commotion, so we left pretty quick.” This was getting ridiculous. Time to move things along. “What’s this got to do with anything? Why do you have pictures of me on holiday in Bangkok?”

  Flicking away the photos of Jack and Lewis, Connors matched his expression. “Oh, don’t worry, we haven’t been spying on you. That’s not what the New South Wales police does.”

  Intentional jab? There had been rumours for years that the ISO was a cover for a covert organisation of spies. The fact it was true didn’t mean Jack had to let Connors know he was on the right track. “Then how did you get those photos?”

  “A mere curiosity. They popped up while I was looking into your involvement with the strike force. I wouldn’t have bothered you with them except for the fact I’ve worked with Lewis Thomas in the past, when he was with ASIO. He left, um, about eight years ago now. Works as an investigator with some financial group, I think. The thing is, back then, Thomas would never have gone to a gay brothel.”

  “Nothing wrong with being a bit curious.” Lewis wouldn’t enjoy Jack using him like that, but that was a fight they could have when Jack wasn’t under arrest, everyone was safe, and the Judge taken care of.

  Connors agreed with a nod. “Is that how you met him? Picked him up in a bar?”

  Another exploratory question, or just coincidence?

  “We met on a job. One of his clients did some work for the ISO in PNG. It was a contested area, so we put a security team on them. Look, we both know this has nothing to do with Lewis or Bangkok. It’s something about the Judge, or Infinity. Just tell me so we can get this sorted and I can get out of here and back to work.”

  His speech had zero visible impact on Connors. The man was good, or he didn’t really care. He just looked at his screen again, flicked, then looked up. “Somewhere to be, Mr. Reardon?”

  Jack barely suppressed the eye roll. “It’s the Judge, isn’t it? He’s struck again.”

  Connors’s gaze flinched.

  If Jack hadn’t been staring him down, he would have missed the flash of that grief and anger from the start of their meeting. Oh fuck.

  The strike force. Infinity. Their tiny little team. None of them here now. It made a cold, horrible sense all of a sudden.

  “Who was it?” Jack asked, ice coating his guts. Ethan would pay for this. Fucking pay.

  The detective pulled on a new mask, one of pure wrath. “You tell me.” Connors’s eyes were crosshairs, and Jack was caught.

  Before either of them could react, the door buzzed open and another cop came in. A woman, older than Connors, petite, dark-haired and brown-eyed, in a grey pantsuit. Her expression was fixed.

  “Connors, we need to talk.”

  Connors held Jack’s gaze for a burning second longer, then picked up his phone, stood, and walked out. The woman gave Jack a quick, hard look, then left as well, closing the door behind her.

  “Fuck.” Jack tugged furiously on his restraints.

  No fucking way was he going to let them make that accusation. The cops thought he was the Judge. The Goddamn fucking psycho Judge.

  Oh Christ. Jack leaned over his knees as far as he could, trying to take some deep breaths, to calm down.

  Someone from Infinity was dead. Who? There were only two candidates. Stephanie or Adam.

  No matter who it was, there was one thought flitting at the edges of Jack’s mind. A thought he knew he’d have to think sooner rather than later, but one he really didn’t want to. With a sigh, he gave up the fight and let it come.

  Ethan.

  There was a vague outside chance it hadn’t been the Judge. That it had been Ethan.

  That last look he’d given Jack—hurt, swiftly and completely morphing into dead-eyed nothing. A blank canvas, capable and willing to become anything required to get the job done. Whether that job was exposing a Meta-State traitor, killing a presidential candidate in South America, seducing Jack across a hostile desert, or hiding knowledge of a psychotic killer, the job always came first.

  Except when Ethan claimed Jack came first.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought right then.

  Jack glanced around the interview room again, looking for an escape route. That, or how to ensure a cold-blooded assassin hell-bent on personal vengeance didn’t get in.

  It didn’t matter, though. Here or somewhere else, if Ethan wanted Jack, he would get him. The perils of falling into the sights of one of the most successful assassins in the world.

  They left him alone with these terrible thoughts for a couple of hours. Jack went through the entire grief process in that time.

  Denial. It was all a lie. No one was dead. Connors was just fucking with him.

  Anger. Goddamn the fucking Judge. This was all his fault. Jack would kill him. Hunt him down and strangle the fucked-up life out of him. And fuck Ethan, too. He’d lied through his bloody teeth. Jack had trusted him.

  Bargaining. If it was the Judge, he’d gone too far this time. Made a big enough mistake he’d be caught. If they got him, then anything else would be okay. If they got that sick fuck off the streets, Jack didn’t care what else happened. Please, God, whatever happened to him, just let them catch the Judge.

  Depression. Nothing was going to happen while Jack was locked up. He was stuck here, and as long they thought he was the killer, then they weren’t hunting down the true guilty party. What if it was Ethan? What if they caught him? What if Jack was released just to watch Ethan be locked away? Christ, when did it all get so messed up? Why couldn’t they just go back to how it had been? Ethan’s surprise visits. Nights of wild sex and firm denials of feeling anything other than lust for this strange, enticing man. Back before the moment Jack knew it was something intense and no longer deniable.

  Acceptance. Jack was here. He wasn’t getting out until they were satisfied he wasn’t the killer, or until the Office came for him. No matter his personal crises, the Office wouldn’t leave one of their assets
high and dry. Whoever may have died wouldn’t go unavenged, not when the Office decided to move. And Ethan . . . well, Jack would fight, either against Ethan or for him, no matter what, and there was peace in accepting that as well.

  The door opened just as Jack was starting to calm down again. Connors stepped in, this time with the woman.

  “Mr. Reardon, sorry to keep you waiting,” Connors said, smoothly back in control. “This is Superintendent Dumay.”

  Dumay nodded to him. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Reardon.”

  Jack matched her nod. She’d been overseeing the strike force. While Jack had neither seen nor spoken to her, he’d witnessed enough aftermaths of Stephanie’s reports to Dumay to be wary of her.

  “Some new information has come to light, Mr. Reardon,” she said, taking the lead. “And it’s suitably distressing enough to make me willing to do anything to cut to the chase.”

  Connors leaned back against the wall, the very personification of couldn’t-give-a-shit, which only made Dumay’s statement that much more chilling.

  “What information?”

  Dumay’s dark eyes regarded him for a long, assessing moment. She reminded him of his director, Donna McIntosh. McIntosh was this woman’s physical opposite—tall, blonde, and blue-eyed—but underneath the superficial coating, both were tough and uncompromising. McIntosh’s eyes could go Arctic cold in an instant, and Jack didn’t doubt that Dumay’s could go burning hot just as quick.

  “Are you aware of the John Smith List?”

  Jack’s hard-won calm wavered. “Yes.”

  The John Smith List ranked every known assassin and was updated by all intelligence and security agencies in the world as new information came to light. Above thirteen were the small operators, two or three confirmed kills, nothing too flashy or risky. Below five were the heavy hitters, the sensation-makers, daring and dangerous. Between those two groups were the solid middle, the hardworking assassins quietly going about their jobs with ruthless efficiency and little to no fuss.

  If he wasn’t highly sensitive to it through his work with the Office, his cover as an SSA with the ISO required a working knowledge of the list. On a personal note, it helped to understand what it meant when the man he was fucking was number seven on that list. Though, after getting to know Ethan and how he operated, Jack suspected if anyone ever discovered just how many jobs he’d really pulled off, five, even four, would be a conservative estimate of his true rank. Seven, Jack had long since decided, was just another layer of protection. Not too high to risk the notice of one through four, but not so low he looked like easy pickings to those coming up behind.