by Matt Rogers
King said, ‘Doesn’t sound good.’
‘Not one bit.’
A sharp bang came from the hallway, and they both twisted in an instant to meet the potential threat. But it was the wind blowing the door closed. Slater breathed out and looked at King.
‘We need to go,’ he said. ‘We can discuss this later.’
King looked all around. ‘I’m going to miss this place.’
‘Are you, though?’
King shrugged. ‘Not really. Trying to be sentimental, I guess. Figured it was worth changing things up for once.’
Despite everything, Slater managed a wry smile. ‘You’re never going to be the sentimental type. I don’t know much, but I know that.’
King said, ‘I could say the same for you.’
‘Then who cares if we have to leave?’
‘What’s thirty million dollars worth of real estate anyway?’ King grumbled.
Slater placed a hand on his shoulder and gently shoved him toward the door. King got the message. Slater figured he was still grappling with his injuries — they’d both taken several consecutive knocks to the head, and that could throw anyone off their baseline. They both strode for the door, and on the way out King snatched a few meagre possessions off the countertop — his phone, a passport, and an expensive leather wallet.
Slater said, ‘I need those things, too. I’ll meet you at the elevator.’
‘The parking lot,’ King said.
‘Okay,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll be five minutes.’
‘It’s going to take you that long?’
‘There’s someone I need to pay a visit to. I don’t appreciate thin-skinned snakes.’
King nodded. ‘Throw in a little something special from me, too.’
‘I’d be happy to oblige,’ Slater said, and made for his own penthouse.
34
The elevator was empty, and quiet.
Slater stood with his hands clasped behind his back, trying to detach himself from the barbaric skirmish. He was returning to civilisation, and he couldn’t remain a savage. King was elsewhere in the building, heading for the lower levels, but after collecting the necessities Slater had made straight for the general elevator.
There was someone he needed to see in the lobby.
He wiped a few specks of dried blood off the top of his head, and scrutinised his appearance in the gilt edged mirrors. He looked okay, all things considered. He felt like shit, but that was manageable, too. He figured the hordes of mercenaries that had been sent to dispatch him felt worse.
Or, rather, felt nothing at all.
The silver doors whispered open and Slater came out of the elevator like a freight train. He didn’t run — he strode with purpose, containing the black fury in his chest. He rounded the corner and there was Victor, his fat ass still planted in the same shitty swivel chair. Slater walked straight behind the reception desk and was looming over the concierge before Victor had even raised his head.
Victor looked up, his complexion pale and sweaty, and almost fainted.
Slater grabbed him by the back of the neck and smashed his face into the desk.
It left a red imprint on the wood where his nose impacted.
Victor recoiled back in his seat, bleeding freely from both nostrils.
Slater stood there, silently watching.
Victor screamed.
Slater reached out and clamped a hand down over his mouth.
‘How much did they pay you?’ he said.
He took his hand away.
Victor said, ‘Nothing, man. Nothing. They threatened my kids.’
Slater nodded solemnly, then turned on his heel, as if to walk away.
He heard Victor audibly sigh.
He spun around violently and punched the concierge in the mouth.
Blood sprayed.
Slater said, ‘It’s almost like you forgot we were friends.’
Victor moaned and held his head in his hands.
Slater said, ‘You don’t have children, do you, Victor?’
The man went even paler still.
Slater said, ‘Next time you sell me out to the highest bidder, make sure you’ve got a decent cover story in case it doesn’t work.’
‘Please, man… I thought they would win. I didn’t want to get hurt.’
‘Pathetic,’ Slater snarled.
Then he said nothing further.
He stood there and waited for Victor to open his mouth.
Victor raised both hands and pleaded, ‘Look, I don’t have kids, Will, and I’m sorry for lying, but you have to understand that—’
Slater crouched down so he was inches from Victor’s face and said, ‘Think about what you did. You gambled on the risk that a team of highly trained killers would get the better of little old King and I. You came up short. You know what we paid for when we bought in this building? We paid for the guarantee that the staff wouldn’t be slimy little weasels. You following what I’m saying?’
Victor started to sob.
‘I’m going to leave you alive,’ Slater said. ‘Against my better judgment. But I want you to think long and hard about what you did. Then I want you to do better.’
‘I promise,’ Victor gasped, his brain probably flooding with indescribable relief. ‘I promise, sir. I’m sorry that I underestimated you.’
‘Here’s a reminder,’ Slater said.
He reached out, snatched Victor’s hand in a vice-like grip, and bent three of his fingers back, one by one.
Victor moaned.
‘You think this is harsh?’ Slater said.
‘Yes,’ Victor moaned.
He realised his idiocy all at once.
‘You know what’s harsher?’ Slater said.
‘I know — I know. I am so sorry.’
‘Harsher is a bullet in my head, and in the head of my friend.’
‘I know.’
Slater said, ‘It’s not a mercy that I’m leaving you alive.’
Victor paused, furrowing his brow.
Slater said, ‘How many men did you send up there?’
‘I think seven in total. There was the first three, then four new guys ran in, so I sent them straight up. I was scared, man.’
‘We left them up there. You’re not cleaning up seven bodies on your own, are you?’
Victor gulped. ‘I don’t know how I could.’
‘You’re going to have to explain to your bosses how they got up there in the first place.’
Victor bowed his head.
Slater said, ‘King and I are going to go ahead and disappear off the face of the planet, which is what we’re best at. You won’t be able to pin this on us. It’s up to you to justify what happened.’
When Victor lifted his gaze to meet Slater, there were tears in his eyes.
‘I thought you were a good guy, man.’
‘This isn’t a Hollywood movie,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not noble to a fault. If someone betrays me, it pisses me off.’
Victor said nothing.
Slater said, ‘Good luck.’
Then he turned and walked out of the lobby. He got in the private elevator and punched the button for the exclusive garage.
The doors whispered closed.
35
King gently lowered the mysterious black box to the rear seats of his Mercedes coupé.
He couldn’t leave it behind, after all.
Then he placed two HK417 rifles and almost a dozen spare magazines beside it, and slammed the door closed.
Altogether, there was enough illegal firepower and unknown tech in the car to implicate him as an international terrorist. But he didn’t think about that. He got in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine and swung the car around to line up with the doors to the private elevator.
Then he sat in silence in the deserted lot, stewing over what had happened. He considered hypotheticals. He thought about what he could have done differently. He grew restless over the injuries he’d sustained.
Even
tually the thoughts turned oppressive, so he employed the mindfulness meditation technique Slater had taught him en route to New Zealand all those months ago. As usual, it worked like a charm. He focused on the breath, and he cleared everything else from his mind, then… there was nothing. Just a deep trance-like state, and his surroundings blurred as he filtered the external world out.
He jolted out of his meditation when Slater threw the passenger door open and ducked into the coupé.
Slater said, ‘Victor got the message.’
‘Did you kill him?’
Slater shook his head, chewing his bottom lip. ‘He’s an ordinary guy. He was threatened. Survival instinct kicked in. Us or him.’
‘What’d you do?’
‘Roughed him up a bit. He deserved that, at least.’
‘You’re a better man than me.’
King threw the Mercedes into gear.
They drove in silence to the exit. King wound down the window and fished his keycard from his pocket, but he hesitated before placing it against the panel.
‘What are the odds Victor’s cut our cards off?’ he said.
Slater said, ‘Not a chance.’
‘You seem confident.’
‘I broke him.’
‘Did you?’ King said, raising an eyebrow. ‘I’m thinking it’d be fairly straightforward to call the cops as soon as you left.’
‘You’re angry that I didn’t do things your way,’ Slater said. ‘You’re angry I have a conscience.’
‘I’ve got a conscience,’ King grumbled.
‘Scan the card.’
King rested the keycard against the digital display, and it lit up a brilliant green.
The boom gate swung upward in front of them.
‘See?’ Slater said.
King tossed the keycard out the window with a flick of the wrist. ‘Won’t be needing that again.’
As they rose to street level, Slater twisted in his seat to give the building a final glance.
He said, ‘Damn shame.’
King slowed down as the Mercedes’ nose dipped into the laneway, facing the opposite wall.
‘Left or right?’ he said.
Slater said, ‘Doesn’t matter. Any direction that gets us out of the city limits as fast as possible. We need to lay low for a while. The middle of nowhere sounds appealing right about now.’
‘A while?’ King said. ‘I think you’re underestimating what sort of fallout this will have.’
‘Trust me, I’m not. It’s going to be bad.’
King went right.
He sliced the coupé onto a four-lane road leading out of the Upper East Side. There was still some traffic, but they’d been preoccupied for a couple of hours upstairs, and it was now close to two in the morning.
Neither of them expected to sit bumper-to-bumper for long.
The hunch proved correct. They went south-west and made for the Lincoln Tunnel, and there was no resistance to be found. They whispered into the tunnel and the overhead lights flashed by.
Under the soft artificial glow, Slater said, ‘Are you hurt?’
King didn’t respond for a beat.
He was thinking.
Then he said, ‘I think so.’
‘How bad?’
‘We’ll find out when we get a couple of beds for the night. Until then I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I can drive.’
‘No,’ King said with authority, and Slater understood.
Slater said, ‘Are you concussed?’
‘I might be. If I’m not driving, I might fall asleep. And that’s something I can’t afford to do right now.’
If you fall asleep in the throes of a concussion, it can lead to irreversible brain damage. This concept had been hammered into Slater for his entire career, and he wasn’t about to forget it.
Nor was King.
King said, ‘What about you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘In comparison, I’m okay.’
‘We’re both roughed up. There’s no point denying it.’
Slater said, ‘I think we need a couple of nights off.’
‘I’ve got the mother of all headaches.’
‘Me too.’
‘So we find a motel. We use false names. We rest up. We get to work figuring out what Williams was on about, and whether his conspiracies have any merit.’
Slater raised an eyebrow and looked over wordlessly.
King said, ‘What?’
‘You think his conspiracies don’t have merit?’
‘Correlation isn’t causation.’
‘I know. But what are the odds?’
‘Slim.’
They let the silence unfold, and followed the Lincoln Tunnel all the way up to I-95. King turned his attention to making sure they weren’t being tailed, and out of the corner of his eye he noticed Slater’s head droop.
He woke him back up and said, ‘Are you concussed?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Slater dropped back into a slumber.
King followed I-95 north and merged onto I-80, spearing west, heading deeper into the mainland. Eventually Slater opened his eyes, took stock of his surroundings, and said, ‘Pennsylvania?’
King said, ‘I plan to find the most desolate motel in the state. Got a problem with that?’
‘Not in the slightest.’
Slater closed his eyes again.
King focused on the road for close to an hour.
Then shit hit the fan.
36
Slater stirred as soon as King said, ‘Will.’
He understood that tone.
He was aware of the danger it implied.
Because for something to concern Jason King, it had to be damn serious.
Slater twisted in his seat and rubbed a hand against his puffy face. He flashed a glance out the rear window.
There was a car on their tail.
But they were making it unbelievably obvious. There was no attempt to be covert — their pursuers must have figured King and Slater were wise enough to spot any tail eventually.
The pair of headlights was uncomfortably close, literally tailgating them, and they weren’t even on I-80 anymore. King had pulled off, taking a dark decrepit exit, and now he ran a red light at a giant empty intersection and went down a rural road, pushing the Mercedes up past eighty miles an hour.
The car stayed right behind them.
Slater reached back and hefted one of the HK417s off the rear seats.
He said, ‘Don’t bother running for much longer. They’re not going to leave us alone. Best we get this over and done with.’
King said, ‘Wait a minute.’
Then he found what he was looking for — the vast empty parking lot to a closed shopping mall, almost the size of a football field. He spun the wheel and raced in. There were streetlights dotted intermittently through the parking lot. The spheres of light radiating from the bulbs fell sharply away, leaving gaps of darkness between the lights. King pulled the Mercedes to a halt between two of the lights, whisper-quiet, and Slater was out of the car before it even stopped moving.
He ran flat out with the HK417’s stock pressed into his shoulder under cover of darkness.
The car tailing them made the same turn into the parking lot.
Their headlights illuminated Slater right in front of them, and they slammed on the brakes.
There wasn’t time to exchange gunfire.
Slater rounded to the driver’s door, wrenched it open, and hauled the driver out, simply pulling the guy over the top of his seatbelt. If not for the empty palms and the terrified expression on the man’s face, Slater would have shot him where he sat. Instead he dumped the guy down on the asphalt on his back and pressed a boot down on his throat.
Then he aimed the rifle through the interior at the passenger.
There were only the two of them in the car.
The passenger was a woman, sitting bolt up
right, with her slim shoulders tucked back and her chin held high. She was blonde and had a smooth pale face. Her blue eyes bore into Slater, scrutinising and analysing him even as he aimed a rifle at her head. Her expression was severe.
She said, ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’
He said, ‘Pleased to meet you, too.’
‘Put the gun down.’
‘Who’s this guy?’ he said, pressing his foot down harder on the throat of the man underneath him.
‘My driver,’ the woman said.
‘I can see that.’
‘He’s not armed.’
‘Of course he’s not. He’d be dead if he was armed.’
‘Are you trying to impress me?’
‘I’m trying to work out what you want from me.’
‘Not just you. Your friend, too.’
Slater said, ‘I’m going to search you, one by one. I’ll be quick, and I won’t be handsy. I’m not looking for a lawsuit at the end of this.’
Despite the tense circumstances, she managed a smile. ‘Don’t let the charm disarm you. Many men have underestimated me in the past.’
Slater said, ‘I was about to say the same about my own rugged good looks.’
Then he hauled the driver to his feet and conducted a quick frisk search. Satisfied, he shoved the guy away. Then he trained the gun back on the woman and said, ‘Out.’
She pulled the door handle and slid gracefully out of the passenger seat. Slater rounded the hood and looked her over once. She was wearing a tight skirt that left nothing to the imagination, and he could tell right away she wasn’t carrying a piece.
He said, ‘Okay. You’re good.’
He swept the rear seats, popped the trunk, and found nothing of alarm.
He lowered the gun.
Jason King materialised from the darkness.
‘Didn’t see you there,’ the woman noted with nonchalance.
Clearly he’d been expecting to startle her.
He stood in the shadows, barely illuminated, and scrutinised the pair.
Slater said, ‘They’re all good.’
King said, ‘They’re following us. They’re not all good.’
The woman said, ‘Drop the tough-guy bullshit, please. And you don’t need to run, by the way. Wherever you were planning on staying, it’s probably a whole lot more comfortable back in New York. No-one is coming for you. The government doesn’t care.’
