by Matt Rogers
Nothing to see here.
Slater sized up angles and distances. Then glanced to his left.
He thanked his lucky stars for Jason King.
King was already halfway across the street, sauntering toward the cruiser like he hadn’t a care in the world. At six-three and two hundred and twenty pounds he was a veritable wall of muscle, and he used it to bend down and obstruct the view as he tapped on the passenger side window. It came down a few inches, and Slater watched King receiving stern words, feigning disbelief at why they were irritated. His broad back completely blocked their line of sight.
The thugs hadn’t noticed.
Slater lunged past Mary and leapt into a jumping elbow, putting everything into it. Like a freight train exploding into motion. In his haste he shouldered her aside, and she let out a little cry as she fell against the railing, but it was drowned out by the crack of the thug’s jaw shattering. The pure violence knocked him off his feet, made him spill back through the open motel door he’d just emerged from.
When Slater landed, he grabbed the two remaining men by each of their collars and hurled them into the room after the first guy.
He followed them in at a sprint and kicked the door shut behind him, sealing Mary outside, alone.
35
It was like target practice at a shooting range, only the consequences were fatal.
Slater had taught Alexis everything about ignoring the consequences. She remembered his words as she spun. There should be no difference between shooting for practice and shooting for your life. It’s the nerves that make you miss. It’s the pent-up tension. You should flow like water. You should try your very best, using whatever mental tricks you need, to convince yourself that there aren’t any consequences, that it doesn’t matter whether you live or die. Then you have the greatest chance of staying alive.
The less you desire, the better you do.
She saw four heads, four targets, all of which had been facing the lake, searching for signs of a woman emerging from the sinking car. They’d heard the gunshots behind them and all four were starting to spin, guns coming up.
She didn’t breathe in, or out, or panic at the fact they would soon mow her down in a hail of gunfire.
She just gently depressed the trigger, four times in a row, working her aim steadily from right to left.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
No one got a shot off.
Their bodies fell and the undergrowth swallowed them whole.
She remembered the distant scream from before, but didn’t bother searching for the source. The body of the lake was broad and sweeping, visible from almost anywhere along its perimeter trail. There was no question as to whether the whole ordeal had been witnessed. That much noise in such a public place…it absolutely had, no matter whether she’d seen civilians on the way in or not.
As soon as she registered that she’d killed everyone she ran back to the closest enemy SUV. All its doors hung open. There’d been four men in the first car and two in the second. She got behind the wheel, threw the car into gear, and accelerated away fast enough to swing the other three doors closed.
When Boronda Lake receded in the rear view, the shock set in.
You just killed six men.
Six lives, individually snuffed out.
It made her realise she wasn’t like Slater, wasn’t like King. Not yet. It’d take time. It was obvious why they’d been pursuing her, what they’d planned to do if they got their hands on her, but somehow it didn’t make it any easier to handle.
Death was death.
She drove fast away from the scene, aware that she’d now reached the tipping point. She’d killed before, killed to defend herself, but wiping out that many people at once was staggering in implication.
You’re a human weapon now.
Whether she liked it or not.
36
Slater had the jump on them but they still had guns.
Relentlessness, therefore, was the only answer.
He’d taken all three of them off their feet in the initial madness but the two he’d hurled by the collar were fast to rise, uninjured and embarrassed. The other guy had slammed the back of his skull against the floor and his jaw was a broken mess, so he wouldn’t be getting up until he got his bearings. That’d be five or ten seconds from now, but that was all the time in the world.
Slater lurched toward the closest of the pair who’d gotten up and threw a Muay Thai-style front kick into the wrist he was using to try to pull his piece. Bones shattered under Slater’s boot heel and the guy jerked his hand away with a gasp. He wouldn’t have felt much pain in the moment, what with the adrenaline of a survival situation, but his right hand was now useless. He couldn’t use his left to pull his weapon from the holster so Slater took the opportunity to pivot to the other guy and punch him square in the nose with a tightly closed fist.
Blood jettisoned from both nostrils.
The guy was an idiot and had elected to lunge toward Slater instead of pulling his gun. Or maybe he wasn’t even armed. Whatever the case, Slater finished him off by grabbing his skull in a two-handed grip and smashing it into the concrete wall beside the closed door.
He dropped like a bag of meat and bones, which is what he was.
Slater whipped back to the guy with the broken wrist and used the momentum of the pivot to lash out in a sweeping leg kick. His shin blasted the outside of the guy’s knee, knocked it into the other leg, and took his whole base out from under him. He went down in a heap and Slater stomped on his head twice.
He turned to the last man, the one with the broken jaw.
He froze.
The guy was still lying on his back, brandishing a HK pistol with a fearsome suppressor attached. He’d only just managed to work it free, but Slater could see he was close to death. His bloodshot eyes watered and the broken jaw was already starting to puff his cheeks up, swelling under his eyes and screwing with his vision even further. On top of that, slamming the back of his head against the ground had likely severely concussed him.
Slater registered the sight of the gun and jerked to the right.
The guy fired.
He would’ve missed even if Slater had stayed still.
He could probably see four Will Slaters in his vision.
No idea who to focus on, no idea who was real.
The bullet spat in the confined space and the guy jolted, shocked, probably at the sight of all the Slaters moving at once. Slater used the opportunity to leap forward and kick the gun out of his hand, breaking most of his fingers in the process. Another three or four stomps to his head and he was dead.
No more movement.
From anyone.
Slater checked himself over. His breathing was erratic, out of control, so he focused on stabilising his oxygen intake as he used the motel sheets to wipe the blood off his fist. Other than that, there was no evidence of the carnage on his person.
It’s a fine art to ignore your body’s responses to a life-or-death fight. He felt juiced to the gills, and there was an overwhelming urge to burst out of the room and sprint until he collapsed just to get rid of the excess energy. Instead he fought it down and methodically searched the corpses. He came away with three Heckler & Koch pistols — two VP9s and a HK45 Tactical, with 9mm and .45 ACP rounds respectively. Each dead man carried two spare mags for each weapon. The guns themselves were already loaded with full mags. It was akin to striking gold. The money clips he found in each man’s jacket pocket didn’t even compare, but the three bundles of notes still added up to over fifteen thousand dollars cash.
He tucked all the money away, shoved the sidearms in the back of his waistband and cinched his belt tighter to prevent them from wriggling around.
Then he walked out.
He was back on the landing thirty seconds after he ran into the room.
Nothing had changed. Mary stood gripping the railing, perplexed and shocked and moti
onless. She’d been alternating her gaze between the police cruiser across the street and the sealed door, but now she affixed a terrified stare on Slater. King remained hunched over the car window, his broad shoulders stretching from one edge of the frame to the other. He was gesticulating with one hand like an elderly Italian man irate about a card game, locked in a good-natured yet passionate debate.
Slater turned back to Mary. ‘I’m with Alexis.’
The relief nearly made her knees buckle. ‘What just happened—?’
Slater jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘They’re in there. They’re not coming out. It’s okay.’
‘I heard thumps. I heard…bones breaking.’
Slater used a hand on her shoulder to gently guide her toward the stairs. ‘Yeah. Listen, we might have to pretend we’re together. Only for a minute or so.’
‘What?’
‘Just copy what I do and try not to look too scared of me.’
37
A phone started chiming in the centre console.
It jolted Alexis out of the darkness of her mind.
All that training had gotten her ready for the day when she’d need to properly utilise her skills, and now she had. There were six bodies in her wake. That understanding, that realisation, carried weight beyond what she could comprehend.
But what she could do was pick up the phone and look at the caller information.
She answered without a word, now back on the civilised roads of the Palo Alto Hills.
Heidi said, ‘Give me good news.’
Alexis said, ‘Not much of that going around.’
No gasp, no surprise, just silence. Cold computation. The woman’s composure was otherworldly. ‘This isn’t going to stop.’
‘I’m counting on it. Keep sending them. Eventually you’ll run out of people to call and you’ll be wide open.’
‘You must be new to this. I’ll never run out of people to call. That’s the point of having money.’
‘Money’s good. But reputation is everything. If the underworld starts to realise that the men you’re sending out into the fray aren’t coming back, they’ll stop answering the phone. No one wants to be cannon fodder.’
Heidi couldn’t deny that, because it was the absolute truth. She said, ‘But you’re not superhuman either.’
Alexis didn’t answer.
Heidi said, ‘It doesn’t matter if my contacts stop answering the phone. I have my own private security. I can wait you out. You’re not getting to me. I have all the time in the world.’
‘No you don’t.’
Also true.
Alexis said, ‘I’m sure you live in a palace. I’m sure it’s fortified. Some gated community with cops crawling all over it. So you’re right. I don’t want to handle our business at your home.’
‘Then that’s where I’ll stay.’
‘And let your company die?’
Silence.
‘I’ve been checking the news, Heidi,’ Alexis said. ‘The big launch is close. Those two guys from the board in your office when I came in…they sure didn’t seem happy. You’re supposed to perform. You can’t work from home. Not at a time like this.’
‘You won’t hit me at work, either.’
‘Better hope you’ve got enough protection on your commute.’
‘Of course I do.’
‘We’ll see. Now go call the head Russian and tell him that you got all his men killed.’
She hung up.
She’d memorised Mary’s number the night before so she dialled it into the henchman’s phone, listened to it ring and ring. Then she tried Slater.
Nothing.
38
Sure enough, the cops had reached the limit of their patience, and Slater watched King step back as the passenger door was forced open against him in the officer’s haste to get out.
By then, Slater and Mary were halfway down the stairs, and they came out into the central stretch of concrete as the two cops skirted round King and strode across the street. They must’ve been concerned by their brief look at Mary.
They made a beeline past the pool area. Slater made himself look concerned, and flooded his eyes with relief like he was happy to see them. He looped an arm around Mary’s lower back and rested his palm on her hip. She didn’t flinch or lean away. She was a fast learner. Maybe she was like Alexis in more than just looks.
She even leant into him, rested her cheek against his shoulder, like he was her place of refuge in this mad world.
He could tell the cops bought it immediately because they didn’t approach with hostility. They stopped a couple of feet from them, looked Slater and Mary up and down. One of them said, ‘Where’d your friends go?’
Slater gave a vigorous head shake, his lips pursed. ‘Not our friends, brother. They surrounded her when she came out of the room. Lucky I wasn’t far behind.’
The other cop off-handedly said, ‘Which room y’all in?’
‘Twelve,’ Slater said without any hesitation, remembering the number on the door. It’d only be a big deal if he made it seem like a big deal.
The first cop said, ‘Where’d they go?’
‘Ran off when they saw you guys pull up. Down the stairs and down that passageway that leads to the back. Might’ve even scaled a fence, I don’t know…’
They side-eyed each other.
Slater said, ‘One of ’em had a piece.’
The first cop stiffened. ‘Did he pull it?’
‘I didn’t get a good look. If I had to guess, it was a HK45. That’s a serious piece for these parts.’
The second cop said, ‘You know a lot about that?’
‘I’m ex-military.’
Instantly their guards came down. The first guy said, ‘Got it. We’ll check it out. Glad you two are okay.’
He looked pointedly at Mary, who hadn’t yet commented.
She nestled in closer to Slater. ‘Me too. That wasn’t fun.’
They nodded, satisfied, and hustled back to their car. King stood on the sidewalk, putting on a dejected act like he hadn’t succeeded in making new friends, and they ignored him as they climbed back in and pulled out to scope the next street for signs of the unsavoury trio.
Slater stepped away from her, took his hand off her hip. ‘You did great. They bought it.’
She gave him a deliberate look up and down, her head clearer now. ‘Wasn’t hard.’
He ignored that, pointed out King. ‘Go to him. I’ll be there in a minute. There’s something I need to do.’
She didn’t ask questions, probably just grateful to be alive. He waited until she was halfway across the street, weaving through traffic, then he went straight to the front office. The door jangled as he stepped inside. Reception was gloomy and smelled faintly of rot and wet paint. A jowly and rotund man in his fifties sat behind the desk, rotating slowly left and right in a swivel chair. From there he had no line of sight to the first floor landing.
The guy hadn’t seen anything, but he didn’t like the look of the newcomer. Slater could only guess why. He pulled out the three clips of cash and placed them, one by one, on the desk.
The man blinked, bags sagging under his eyes. ‘What the hell?’
‘That’s over fifteen grand.’
Another blink. It might be a tic. ‘Okay.’
Slater said, ‘Room twelve needs a clean-up.’
‘Who are you?’
Slater ignored that. ‘Talking to anyone about what you see in there would be bad for business. I wouldn’t be happy about it. You don’t really know enough about me for the cops to find me before I hear that you’re a snitch. And if I hear that, I’ll come back for a refund. You got all that?’
Several blinks in a row. ‘Just a refund?’
‘I told you I won’t be happy.’
The guy took the cash. ‘Okay. I got it.’
‘You know people? There might be some heavy lifting involved.’
‘Yeah,’ the guy grumbled. ‘I know people.’
&n
bsp; Slater nodded. If he loitered to clarify anything, he might seem too desperate, so he turned around and walked out before the owner could get a better look at him.
He got back in the rental car beside the black van, reversed out, and picked King and Mary up from the other side of the street. So it didn’t feel like she was a prisoner, King ushered Mary into the passenger seat, and he got in the back. Slater drove away fast, but not fast enough to arouse suspicion. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled over for breaking the speed limit.
Mary twisted in her seat to study King, then turned to look at Slater. ‘You’re both friends of Alexis?’
She had to be sure.
He understood.
Slater nodded. ‘I’m her partner. Jason’s a family friend.’
Mary twitched. Looked back at King. ‘You just told me your name was Phil.’
King shrugged.
Slater said to King, ‘I think we’re past that.’
‘I guess we are.’
Mary’s breathing started to quicken as the gravity of what had happened set in. It wasn’t a dream anymore. It was crystallising into traumatic memory. She’d be wondering, What if? for weeks, months, maybe years. That sort of thing isn’t easily suppressed.
When they were out of the Mission she said, ‘Did you kill those people?’
Slater didn’t answer.
39
They all converged in St. Francis, a neighbourhood in Daly City just south of San Francisco.
It was far closer to the Mission than the Palo Alto Hills, but King and Slater wanted to get off the road as fast as possible. There was no telling how many men Heidi had ordered to take Mary, and they couldn’t be completely sure who’d witnessed what happened at Azure Waters. There’d been passing traffic the whole time — inevitable in San Francisco — and someone could’ve looked out their window and seen Slater smash an elbow into the thug’s face on the landing, then violently hurl the other two into the room. They might’ve called the cops. In relation to other cities, SF wasn’t exactly a crime hotspot. There were bad neighbourhoods, sure, but the tide usually lifted all ships. Wealth raised the bar of safety.