by Matt Rogers
Hunters
The King & Slater Series Book Eight
Matt Rogers
Copyright © 2020 by Matt Rogers
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Onur Aksoy.
www.onegraphica.com
Contents
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Books by Matt Rogers
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Afterword
Afterword
Books by Matt Rogers
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Sign up for a free copy of ‘BLOOD MONEY’.
Meet Ruby Nazarian, a government operative for a clandestine initiative known only as Lynx. She’s in Monaco to infiltrate the entourage of Aaron Wayne, a real estate tycoon on the precipice of dipping his hands into blood money. She charms her way aboard the magnate’s superyacht, but everyone seems suspicious of her, and as the party ebbs onward she prepares for war…
Maybe she’s paranoid.
Maybe not.
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Books by Matt Rogers
THE JASON KING SERIES
Isolated (Book 1)
Imprisoned (Book 2)
Reloaded (Book 3)
Betrayed (Book 4)
Corrupted (Book 5)
Hunted (Book 6)
THE JASON KING FILES
Cartel (Book 1)
Warrior (Book 2)
Savages (Book 3)
THE WILL SLATER SERIES
Wolf (Book 1)
Lion (Book 2)
Bear (Book 3)
Lynx (Book 4)
Bull (Book 5)
Hawk (Book 6)
THE KING & SLATER SERIES
Weapons (Book 1)
Contracts (Book 2)
Ciphers (Book 3)
Outlaws (Book 4)
Ghosts (Book 5)
Sharks (Book 6)
Messiahs (Book 7)
Hunters (Book 8)
LYNX SHORTS
Blood Money (Book 1)
BLACK FORCE SHORTS
The Victor (Book 1)
The Chimera (Book 2)
The Tribe (Book 3)
The Hidden (Book 4)
The Coast (Book 5)
The Storm (Book 6)
The Wicked (Book 7)
The King (Book 8)
The Joker (Book 9)
The Ruins (Book 10)
“It is lamentable that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”
Voltaire
1
Devin Nelson stood in the Oval Office before the President of the United States and said, ‘Do you trust me?’
The President hesitated. ‘Would you be here if I didn’t?’
The thick oval rug muffled their words. Nelson liked that. If they reached unwanted ears, they would cost him his career, his wellbeing, and almost certainly his life. His involvement in the world of covert black-ops afforded him the ability to rid the meeting of lingering officials. The Secret Service were outside in the adjoining office, waiting diligently for the briefing to conclude.
It didn’t help Nelson’s nerves that he’d spent all day thinking about this moment. In typical presidential fashion, the planned early-morning debrief on active wet work missions had been rescheduled twice to accommodate the President’s chaotic and never-ending list of obligations.
Finally Nelson had wormed his way into a 5:30p.m. debrief, and the time slot had miraculously stuck.
Now the President stood above the Seal, the coat of arms adorning the middle of the rug. It formed the centrepiece of the room. The man was in his early sixties with steel grey hair, cut short. His suit was tailored to his thin frame and his eyes were pale blue, sharp and uncompromising. It was like he never blinked. Nelson had known that gaze for decades, well before the man took office. Its unwavering power had carried him to the highest throne in the land.
Elevated him to places neither of them anticipated.
‘It’s my job to be here,’ Nelson said. ‘I’d understand if you didn’t have the same confidence in me as you did in the old days.’
‘Why would anything have changed?’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘But why are you asking, Devin?’
He was the President, after all. If he didn’t know how to cut to the chase, he’d have been bullied out of power at the beginning of his term.
Nelson said, ‘I have something for you.’
He slipped a tiny glass vial out of his inside jacket pocket. He held the contents up for scrutiny. The liquid within gleamed under the lights. It was semi-dark outside now, the White House grounds coated in a stormy grey, which only emphasised the allure of the amber substance, like a warm hug on a cold night.
The President stared at the vial for a beat. ‘I don’t know what that is, but how the fuck did you get it in here?’
‘You think they bring me in through the front?’ Nelson said. ‘You think I’m subjected to the routine for regular schmucks? All those screening procedures?’
The President shrugged. He rounded the Resolute desk, that giant old-fashioned slab, and sat down in his chair. Then he gestured for Nelson to sit opposite.
Which definitely wasn’t, ‘No, put that away and get out.’
Nelson hadn’t entered the White House the “regular schmuck” way in nearly a decade. He reminisced on the painstaking security measures — passing the Uniformed Division officers with their rifles, the Belgian Malinois’ sniffing for explosives, the infrared and audio detectors, the marksmen on the roof, the sweeps, the frisk searches, the alarms just waiting to blare if so much as a hint of treachery was detected.
Nelson had abandoned all that when he’d ceased to exist. Running black operations does wonders for expediency. All those boring hoops public officials have to jump through become an outdated relic of the past.
With great power comes … well, whatever you want, really.
So now Nelson came and went as he pleased, away from the lens of public scrutiny, delivering intelligence briefings to perhaps the most famous individual on the planet.
Information that would never make the news or the talk shows.
Now he pulled up an ornate wooden chair and sat on the other side of the Resolute desk. He placed the vial on the wooden surface and rolled it gently between his two index fingers. Like a nervous tic, only there was nothing automatic or habitual about it. He knew exactly what he was doing.
The President’s pale blue eyes were fixated on the amber liquid.
He said, ‘What is it?’
Nelson said, ‘Do you have matters to attend to this evening?’
‘Only the regular inconveniences. But I could give those orders in my sleep. Why?’
You know why, Nelson thought. Otherwise you never would have asked.
‘What is it?’ the President said again.
‘It’s called Bodhi.’
The President went to speak, then cut himself off. A wry smile played at his lips. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Put me on the back foot and make me ask the questions. Make me desperate. Make me eager to inquire.’
Nelson said, ‘I’m offering you a gift, that’s all.’
For the third time: ‘What is it?’
‘I took it last night. I can’t explain how good it is. There aren’t words to describe it.’
‘How’d you get it?’
‘One of my colleagues,’ Nelson explained. ‘He has a limitless supply. And he’s trustworthy.’
The President was a brilliant man. He digested everything Nelson had told him, cross-analysed it with what was currently making the rounds of the twenty-four hour news cycle, and said, ‘This doesn’t have anything to do with that shit that went down in Wyoming, does it?’
Inwardly, Nelson jolted, but he didn’t let an iota of it show. He said, ‘No. You think we’d buy into that amateur business?’
‘I don’t know,’ the President said. ‘From what I heard, whatever that husband and wife cooked up out there was brilliant. I’m sad I never got to try it.’
‘This is better. Trust me.’
‘What’s it going to do to me?’
‘Zone you in like nothing else. Like Adderall cranked up to eleven without any of the jitters. Not to mention the euphoria. Christ…’
The President’s eyes burned with desire.
He settled back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and surveyed the Oval Office. ‘This place, Devin. It gets to you. Out there, I play it up for the cameras. My public image is bulletproof. You seen my approval ratings? It’s because I embody that perfect personification of resilience and level-headedness … but in here, man. Sometimes I want to yank my hair out. Sometimes I want to resign. On the spot. No explanation. No half-hearted farewell speech like Nixon. Just drop everything and go into seclusion. Buy a cabin in the woods with Laurie, live out the rest of my days there.’
‘But you can’t,’ Nelson said, ‘so stop daydreaming about what’s never going to happen and get your releases where you can find them.’
He looked at the vial.
So did the President.
‘What if it’s too much?’ the man said. ‘What if I can’t hide that I’m high as shit?’
Nelson said, ‘It takes just over an hour to kick in. I’ll attend to other matters in the interim, and I suggest you do the same. Delegate what’s left for the evening, then tell the Secret Service you’re reconvening with me here at seven. Tell them it concerns clandestine wet work — black ops of the highest priority. Tell them, beyond a global catastrophe, you aren’t to be disturbed.’
‘And what if that happens?’
Nelson raised an eyebrow.
The President got a glint in his eye, like he was pumped with adrenaline at the very thought. ‘What if there’s a global catastrophe in the midst of … whatever this is going to be?’
Nelson calmly said, ‘Did you get to this office without taking any risk?’
The President tapped a finger against the surface of the Resolute desk.
Then he smirked, like he knew it was inevitable all along. ‘Seven, then. Why are you coming back, anyway?’
‘To ride it out with you,’ Nelson said.
He withdrew a second vial of Bodhi from the jacket pocket of his suit, worked the stopper off the top, and drank the liquid down.
The President looked at him like, So that’s how it is.
The man snatched the first vial off the Resolute desk, worked it open, and downed the contents in one quick gulp. Then he handed it back to Nelson. He took a deep breath and let it out with a subdued smile. ‘Sometimes I forget I’m not a robot.’
Nelson nodded.
The President said, ‘Here’s to living. And making the most of it.’
Nelson couldn’t mask a scoff.
The President said, ‘What?’
‘I thought I’d need to spend the whole evening persuading you. Your title makes me forget the degenerate you used to be.’
‘“Used to,”’ the President said, and winked. ‘Got to feel like you’re back in college every once in a while. Besides, you said this is like Adderall? I’ll just get more work done.’
Nelson got up. ‘See you soon.’
The President snatched the phone off the desk and started speed-dialling like there was electricity in his fingertips.
And the Bodhi hadn’t even hit him yet.
2
Connor’s hands hadn’t stopped shaking all morning.
Despite the incessant anxiety that came from his introversion, he’d never before lost physical control of his body, so it thrilled him to have a private office to ride out the discomfort. A while back, he’d read something when he was scouring the web for ways to come out of his shell, to be friendlier and more open to his colleagues so he could maybe, just maybe, make friends. He’d read: Fear and excitement are the same sensation. It’s all a matter of perspective.
So he told himself he was excited.
Mr. Nelson was across the city, deep in the White House, meeting with the President.
Would he do what Connor told him to do?
Yes.
Absolutely, yes.
No question.
Devin Nelson had decades more worldly experience than Connor, who was a lowly amateur in the intelligence world in comparison, but that’s
the beauty of certain chemicals. They strip away all inhibitions, all preconceptions and biases, and Connor had spent the previous night brainwashing Nelson at the peak of a Bodhi trip. That sort of neurological conditioning breaks through to the subconscious level. It influenced Nelson’s actions even when the man had come down from the drugs, even when he woke up sober and slightly hungover. He’d called Connor twice today, and both times he’d sounded like a subservient slave.