The Jason King Series: Books 1-3

by Matt Rogers

  Now, it was back to solidarity. Back to bottling up how he felt. He wasn’t annoyed by the notion.

  In fact, he’d been doing it for years.

  It had simply been a pleasant reprieve being able to relate to someone about the work he had to carry out in the past.

  He turned away from the views over the midnight-black bay and made for the other end of the deck. He ascended a short flight of stairs and stepped out onto the same area he’d seen previously, before Slater’s furious rampage.

  The women stood clustered together, all free from their bindings. Clearly, Klara and the Asian woman had done well to cut their friends loose. They visibly relaxed as they saw his face, probably worried that one of the remaining mercenaries would head for the roof and eliminate their chances of ever tasting freedom again. King looked out at shaking hands and terrified expressions. A few kept their composure, remaining stoic even in the face of such grave danger.

  ‘Listen up,’ he called. ‘You all speak English?’

  They nodded in unison.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He took a deep breath, struggling to formulate sentences that would adequately explain the situation they faced. Finally, he simply decided to tell the truth. ‘This is precarious. The man who was responsible for your capture is dead, but he had some serious connections. Myself and my partner already ran into a couple of cops who had … other intentions.’

  ‘Was that your partner who took the helicopter?’ one of the women said.

  King nodded.

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘Even I can’t tell you that,’ King said. ‘I wish I could.’

  ‘Who are you two? Police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Army?’

  ‘No.’

  He met Klara’s gaze, and something flared behind her eyes. She knew he was something else. Something rarer. A hidden understanding lay there.

  Did you kill people? she had asked back in the villa.

  Now she knew.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I could spend all night explaining what I am. Or what I used to be. But we don’t have time. I don’t know how long it’ll be until more police show up, but I’d place bets on it happening soon. And there’s really no way to tell if they’ll be honest upstanding citizens or more of Moreau’s friends. You and I would be dead before we could work that out. So you all need to run.’

  A brunette European woman still dressed in an evening gown let her mouth fall open. ‘Are you saying the police will kill us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ King said. ‘I honestly have no idea. I can’t say they won’t. Laying low is your best bet.’

  ‘We don’t have our purses, or our phones,’ another woman said. ‘They stripped us of everything when we were snatched.’

  ‘How did they do it?’ King said.

  The Asian woman stepped forward. ‘Everyone at the party was in on it. You could sense something was up in the air. It was supposed to be this upper-class function full of high-profile names, but there weren’t many guests apart from us. We clued onto it when a few girls got drowsy before the rest. They spiked our drinks. A few of us started to panic and they pulled out guns. Herded us into a van and brought us here. It all happened so … fast.’

  ‘How close were we to—?’ the European woman said, her eyes welling.

  King shook his head and let out an anxious sigh. ‘Very close. If this boat left the dock, no-one would have ever seen you again.’

  Several whimpers sounded from the group. King would have reacted similarly if he had been in such a position. The sheer helplessness they had faced sent dread through his chest.

  And anger…

  Suddenly, he knew what needed to be done. It had been a long time coming, but the mental image of these women being carted off to a ghastly fate flipped him over the edge. He made a resolve — inwardly — and committed to it. Then he tossed it to the back of his mind. His troubles weren’t over yet.

  ‘When did they take your things off you?’ he said.

  ‘In the van,’ Klara said. ‘They threw them altogether in a plastic bag.’

  ‘Did that come on board?’

  ‘I can’t be sure.’

  King clenched his teeth together and mulled over what to do. ‘Wait here.’

  CHAPTER 41

  He descended once again into the bowels of the superyacht.

  It felt like entering a graveyard. The boat’s interior had the aura of death about it. It hung in the air like something physical, something he could touch. There was a different kind of quiet in the aftermath of a battle. The sort of absolute silence which signified that everyone in the immediate vicinity had died a grisly death.

  He passed rooms littered with the dead, casting his eyes away from the bodies. It wasn’t that he was squeamish. He had seen the effects of point-blank shotgun blasts many times during his career and hadn’t been phased. But lingering on so much carnage and violence would only bring him back to that past that he was trying so hard to forget.

  Or was he?

  He had a lot to process. Everything from the appearance of Afshar to the revelation that Black Force wanted him gone to the discovery of Moreau’s depravity had sent him on a wild ride that he was only just starting to come down from. It had made him reconsider many things.

  He wasn’t sure if the decisions he made after this would be beneficial to his health.

  But he had to make them nonetheless.

  He burst into the kitchen where Slater had effortlessly murdered four soldiers-of-fortune and gagged as he inhaled. The unmistakeable smell of faeces lingered in the air. A natural response to being shot non-fatally. Yet every man in this room had been subsequently killed by Slater’s follow-up shots.

  Was Slater a good person?

  Should he have allowed him to fly off to a new life, unpunished?

  King didn’t know. This field of employment had so many grey areas that he’d given up on trying to form a black-and-white opinion of someone’s moral compass long ago. He knew his own was muddled beyond belief. Sure, he wanted to help people — but he killed many in the process.

  He would never solve the puzzle of delivering vigilante justice … so he chose to ignore it.

  He did what he felt was right.

  Nothing more, nothing less.

  He scanned the marble countertop in the centre of the room and found exactly what he was looking for. The plastic bag of personal items, lying out in the open. After all, what was the use in hiding it? It would take a small army to penetrate the mercenary force defending the yacht. Moreau and his mysterious Middle-Eastern buyer would have felt secure inside the floating fortress.

  In the end, it had only taken two specialists.

  Next time, pay for better help, King thought.

  But there wouldn’t be a next time. A 9mm hole in Moreau’s forehead ensured that.

  He snatched up the bag and returned to the top deck, where the women distributed the possessions amongst themselves until they all had what they needed.

  King made sure he had the attention of the group before he spoke. ‘Listen up. You get as far away from Calvi as you possibly can. Call whoever you need, do whatever you need to do to get yourself home. But don’t trust the authorities. Dye your hair, use fake tan … whatever. But stay safe. Okay?’

  They nodded. He led them down through the superyacht, selecting a course that would ensure they saw as few corpses as possible. They clambered out of the hole in the side of the boat in single file, amassing on the pier as a group. King followed behind.

  Additional police had yet to arrive. Maybe they had been instructed to hang back by Roux and Mercier, who probably anticipated that they would need to eliminate certain witnesses.

  Corrupt pieces of shit, he thought.

  The empty police sedan was still parked at the end of the pier, its doors hanging open, its lights flashing over the deserted bay. An ominous sight. King hurried the women down the pier, away from the slaughterhouse. He took a final look ba
ck at the yacht, its hull butchered by Slater’s wild intrusion with the BMW, its helipad conspicuously empty.

  He feared the investigation awaiting whoever stumbled across its contents. A whole lot of good men would lose a hell of a lot of sleep over what went down.

  At the end of the jetty, the European turned and looked King in the eye. ‘Thank you. So much. Whoever you are.’

  ‘Best to forget I ever existed,’ King said, but he nodded his understanding. Several of the other women nodded their thanks, yet most were too traumatised by what an ordinary evening had turned into to respond. They hurried away into the night, some staying in groups, others branching off alone.

  One stayed back.

  Klara.

  As soon as the others had dispersed into Calvi, she threw her arms around King. He held her tight and breathed her scent, devastated that she had become involved in the madness that was his life. He felt her heart pounding in her chest, and her arms shaking as they looped around his neck. He kissed her, pressing his own chest against hers.

  When they parted, she seemed a little calmer.

  ‘I still don’t know who you are,’ she said. ‘But this was insanity.’

  ‘I was looking forward to seeing you today,’ King said. ‘It was the first time I felt truly happy in a long time. Then everything went to shit.’

  ‘We can still see each other. I’d like that.’

  ‘I can’t do that to you, Klara.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘This wasn’t an isolated incident.’

  ‘All of that?’ she said, gesturing in the direction of the boat they’d come from.

  King nodded. ‘That’s my life. I don’t try to make it that way, but sooner or later it just leads back to chaos.’

  ‘Because of your past?’

  He shrugged. ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t get myself into situations like this.’

  ‘You’re a complicated man,’ she said, forcing a smile.

  He smiled back. ‘I am. Adds intrigue, I guess.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can handle much more intrigue.’

  He wiped the smile off his face as reality hit. ‘You should go, Klara.’

  She met his eyes and he could see tears forming behind them. ‘I thought, you know … that we had something. Even if it was brief.’

  ‘So did I,’ he said. ‘Truly, I did. But that was while I lived here. I can’t stay on this island. I don’t know where I’m going after this.’

  ‘Come to Sweden.’

  He smiled. ‘I’d like nothing more.’

  ‘So just do it.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why, Jason?’ she said, her tone strained. ‘You going to go looking for more trouble? I thought you were retired.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  He lapsed into silence. Truth was, his idea of paradise was returning to Klara’s home country. He could just imagine the things they could do.

  How happy he could be…

  But his life had become a pattern. Everywhere he turned, violence and death followed. He saw it as a part of himself now, something unavoidable. And now there were fresh thoughts bubbling in his mind. Thoughts he couldn’t ignore.

  ‘You’ve got a hotel here, right?’ he said.

  Klara nodded, her blue eyes piercing into him. He saw hope in them. There would be hope in his own if he hadn’t made up his mind back on the yacht. ‘Go there and lay low. There’s something I need to take care of — that I can’t avoid any longer. Wait there, and I’ll call you.’

  She scoffed. ‘You’re going to leave, aren’t you?’

  He bent down and pressed his lips into hers again, feeling their fullness. Her taste made him want to abandon every dangerous thought he had, but his conscience was ingrained deep. He knew what he needed to do. It wasn’t the pleasant thing, but it was the necessary thing. ‘I’m a man of my word. I’ll come back. But there’s something on the island I need to address.’

  ‘What?’ she said.

  He thought of a low one-storey house in the hills of Aregno. ‘Something personal.’

  CHAPTER 42

  King slunk back to the superyacht, taking care to make as little noise as possible. He approached the tail end of the BMW, hanging half inside the boat’s hull and half dangling in thin air. He released the trunk’s latch and it floated open, making barely a whisper of noise.

  He climbed in.

  He’d forgotten to retrieve his most important possession.

  He opened the glove compartment with a single pull. It drifted up, and he gazed at the contents within. His phone, which he’d thrown in after the surprise call with Moreau back on the highway. And — more importantly — the old watch.

  He fished out both items and tucked them into his own pockets. Then he snuck away from the marina — and possibly the entire town of Calvi — forever.

  He walked the streets in the dead of night, finally free from the intense burden of pressure. The previous twenty-four hours had been a whirlwind of action. It felt like the old days. He knew how to handle that sensation — to ride with the sharp twists and turns that often came when revelations were unfolding at breakneck speed. But now he could finally let go. He could wander aimlessly. He had nowhere to be, no responsibilities to take care of.

  But despite that, he couldn’t get the thought of Slater’s disappearance off his mind.

  It would have ramifications. They wouldn’t be apparent all at once, but from what he’d gathered, Black Force had been stretched thin enough as it was. Losing their best operative would prove disastrous.

  He wondered if Slater’s absence would have far-reaching consequences.

  He hailed a cab on the outskirts of Corsica and bent down to the passenger window as it pulled to the sidewalk. He saw a burly dark-skinned man with both hands on the steering wheel, eager to pick up another customer this deep into the night’s darkest hours. King briefly considered throwing him out of the driver’s seat and tearing away in the cab. After all, it had worked so well for him previously.

  But he’d blatantly disrespected the law enough for one day, at least.

  He peeled a few water-damaged euro bills from one of his pockets and handed them over to the driver, still damp. ‘They’re not in the best condition, but they’re all I’ve got. You okay with that?’

  He’d handed across well over a hundred euros. The driver didn’t speak English, but he nodded approvingly. King gave him the address — which he knew off by heart — for the small house in Aregno and let his eyes drift closed as the cab peeled back onto the road.

  Within seconds, he was asleep.

  He was jerked awake by a soft hand on his shoulder. He started, rattled by the physical contact, expecting a bullet to follow shortly afterwards. Instead, he stared through blurry eyes at the cab driver — looking suitably shocked — who politely let him know that they had arrived at his destination. He nodded his thanks and clambered out of the car, shaking off the fear that had coursed through his body at the thought of being murdered in his sleep.

  The cab roared away into the darkness.

  It had dropped him at the very end of the familiar gravel street. Even though he had been here many times before, he’d never formed the courage to complete the task ahead. He thought back to the previous night — to the figure opening the door. He had reversed away then. Backed out like he always did.

  Now, he would follow through.

  He would do what he had been meaning to do ever since he stepped foot in Corsica.

  This was the sole reason he had chosen the Mediterranean island as his home.

  Because he knew — sooner or later — he would have to confront the past.

  With Slater’s words echoing in his ears, he set off along the gravel. His pace slowed as he approached the house. Killing he could do. He thought nothing of throwing his life on the line to save others. The knowledge that at any moment a bullet or stab wound could shut his lights out paled in comparison to what
lay ahead.

  This was a particular confrontation that he’d hoped he could avoid forever.

  He walked up to the door. Down the narrow path leading to the front porch and past a few orderly rows of pot plants.

  Neat, he thought. Just the way he used to keep things.

  Some things never changed.

  He rapped once on the door before he could stop himself. Now it was too late. He was committed to stay the course. He figured it was close to three in the morning, but he knew that if he put the encounter off for a second longer — he would psyche himself out forever.

  This was his one shot.

  He heard footsteps. His heart thrummed in his chest. He felt the rapid beat of it roaring in his ears. His stomach dropped. His limbs grew numb. He hadn’t felt a reaction so visceral before in his entire life. Something about this moment shattered all his senses.

  The door opened.

  A man stood before him. It had been a decade and a half since they’d seen each other. Old age had receded his hairline and added more grooves and wrinkles to his forehead, but apart from that King thought he hadn’t changed one bit. He had grown a sturdy moustache. His physique was a little saggier, a little depleted by time, yet it still had the same musculature that King had always remembered. The broad chest. The wide back. The kind eyes.

  The strength that he’d grown up with.

  ‘Hey, Dad,’ King said, unable to help the tears from spilling down his face.

  CHAPTER 43

  Ray King.

  Truth was, King had followed Slater’s advice closer than he thought. He’d managed to track down his old man months before — back when he was employed — utilising Black Force programs to scour the Social Security databases. He’d discovered that his father had moved to Corsica after he’d left for the military, alone and retired. There he had coasted along, living a peaceful existence, never venturing into trouble. Keeping to himself for the most part.

  King had fully intended to fly directly to Corsica as soon as he left Black Force for the last time. To make amends. To repair what had been broken by his departure.