Lion

by Matt Rogers

  Slater lined up his free hand and pumped it like a piston into the guy’s forehead, bone against bone, rattling the human brain around inside its skull and sending the guy straight back where he lay, this time stripped of his senses.

  Emptiness.

  Stillness.

  Quiet.

  Slater knelt amidst his surroundings and focused on breathing deep, controlling himself, preventing any kind of murderous tendencies to follow him through to whatever came next. The life of a man who killed others yet tried to clutch onto some kind of moral compass was a hard life indeed. It took a certain type of compartmentalisation rarely seen in situations such as these. Slater had killed a man and knocked three others unconscious in the space of five seconds, and the all-out brawl had fired his brain into overdrive.

  Attempting to bring his cortisol levels back down to normal took horrendous self-control.

  The corridor lapsed into silence as he breathed, surrounded by a dead man and three men who might soon follow him if their injuries proved fatal — which they very well could. Nothing in Slater’s conscious thoughts dwelled on the punishment he’d exacted — these men had tried to kill him, and wherever they’d been set on taking him would never have bode well for Slater.

  He got to his feet, testing his injured leg as he levered himself upright.

  Then one of the chefs from the kitchen at the end of the corridor materialised in the open doorway. He stared, mouth agape, at the carnage.

  Reluctantly, Slater raised the Beretta to point square between the man’s eyes.

  34

  Slater stood uncomfortably still, tapping into a decade of maintaining calm in the most frenzied situations, to the extent where it took the chef a few moments to spot him amidst the sea of crippled bodies. Some were dead, some were injured, but everyone who had come into direct physical contact with Slater wouldn’t be moving for quite some time.

  Depending on how the chef reacted, he might face a similar predicament.

  The man spotted Slater and froze in his tracks, staring down the barrel of the loaded Beretta M9.

  Looking directly at his own demise.

  Slater tightened his grip on the weapon and made no movement whatsoever — except, after a few seconds of stalemate, to raise one eyebrow. As if questioning what the chef was going to do next.

  The man — a European guy in his late twenties — started to speak without moving his lips, effectively transforming into a ventriloquist out of fear. He must have figured that a single jerky, unwarranted move to either side would cause Slater to panic and put a bullet in his brain.

  Smart kid, Slater thought.

  ‘Can I walk away?’ the guy said, four words that summed up the mortal terror no doubt coursing through his veins.

  ‘Have you done anything wrong?’ Slater said, barely raising his voice above a conversational volume.

  ‘Uh…’

  ‘Simple question. Don’t overthink it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not involved?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re close with your employers?’

  ‘Not really. I cook.’

  ‘If anyone asks you what happened here… you got any particular allegiance?’

  ‘I just cook.’

  ‘Get out of here.’

  The kid didn’t move — Slater didn’t blame him. His limbs would have locked up upon sight of the Beretta. If he truly did just cook — which Slater had no way of knowing for sure and no intention to hang around questioning him — then the sight of massive violence would freeze him like a deer in headlights.

  Either that, or he was a phenomenal actor.

  Slater doubted it.

  In all likelihood the guy just cooked.

  ‘You heard me?’ Slater said.

  ‘I heard you. I’m worried you might shoot me when I move.’

  ‘You don’t move in three seconds and I might shoot you.’

  A weak threat, and something Slater had no intention of following through with.

  But it gave the guy a choice, which he capitalised on by pivoting on his heel and disappearing from sight. He’d been attempting to act casual when he fled, but Slater could see the adrenalin spurring his movements, adding an extra burst of athleticism to his steps. Slater had seen it a thousand times before.

  He breathed in deep through his nose, then out through his mouth, composing himself in the sudden silence. He tuned his ears to any suspicious noise from the VIP room outside, but it seemed like business as usual. Even though all-out physical warfare and unsuppressed gunshots caused a racket, Slater imagined the staff-only corridor had been soundproofed in some capacity, in case employees needed to make noise without disturbing the patrons gambling their life savings away.

  As he stood motionless, surrounded by dead and unconscious men, he realised he was exactly right.

  Act casual.

  He tucked the Beretta M9 into the rear of his waistband, re-engaging the safety to ensure he didn’t shoot himself and ruin everything he’d worked so hard for. Then he strode straight back out into the VIP room, adopting as relaxed a demeanour as he could manage given the fact he’d been fighting for his life seconds earlier.

  Thankfully, Slater had been fighting for his life for countless years.

  It had become as monotonous as breathing.

  A couple of high-roller gamblers looked his way as he stepped into view, throwing him inquisitive glances as if to say, What was all that about?

  They must have heard muffled punches — the gunshot reports tearing through the soundproofing.

  They’d likely been dragged away by security many times before, given the track record required to make it into a room as exclusive as this. Monstrous losses brought out the worst in people — Slater had lost count of the number of times he’d seen drunken fits of rage in casinos. Those who security deemed it necessary to remove seldom returned. So it came as a surprise to the whales that had seen him leave to watch him stride straight back into the room like nothing had happened, untouched and unperturbed.

  Slater shrugged and gave a sheepish smile, as if to say, Can’t believe I got off so easily.

  No-one spared him a second glance. They returned their attention immediately back to the hundred-thousand dollar chips at play on the tables.

  In the end, money trumped any kind of suspicion.

  It simply wasn’t worth the mental distraction.

  Slater shoved his hands into his pockets to buy himself time on the stroll across the room, searching every corner for any sign of additional security looking his way. There were a couple of guards dotted around the outer perimeter of the room, but none had noticed his presence yet. He wasn’t even sure if they knew of their co-workers’ business — in all likelihood he was no more suspicious than any of the other patrons.

  But, as he ducked his head to avoid detection and wandered in the rough direction of the entrance, he realised there was nothing he could feasibly achieve on this floor.

  The head of security would have realised Slater’s true intentions by now. He might already be storming toward the VIP room, surrounded by his men. There were countless variables — had Forrest been watching surveillance footage upstairs? Had the triad spotted him en route to Mountain Lion after identifying him as Shien’s protector? How long could he leave Shien alone, bunkered down in the hotel room, before her father and his powerful friends tore Macau apart searching for her?

  He was out of his depth, and he knew it. Trying to manoeuvre himself into the dark heart of Mountain Lion in a tactical way would almost definitely result in failure.

  This far along the journey, he would have to brute-force his way through the final leg.

  A thought flickered through his head.

  You’re barely getting started. You’ve achieved nothing.

  That was reality. He realised he’d barely scratched the surface of what was happening in the underbelly of Mountain Lion — he had no proof of any kind of wrongdoing whatsoever
, besides a small army of security intent on silencing him earlier. They wanted Shien back for a reason — if he discovered that reason had anything to do with his gut feeling, there would be hell to pay.

  You won’t be able to do anything if you don’t make it off this floor.

  He stormed straight out of the VIP room, speeding past an oblivious security guard in the process of picking his fingernails. The man either had no idea who Slater was or was so inept at his job that he couldn’t see what lay right in front of him. Slater made it three feet past the guy before he raised his head — in Slater’s peripheral vision, he watched the man recognise what stood in front of him.

  ‘Hey… you’re—’

  The guy had been in the process of getting to his feet. For some reason, no matter how experienced the adversary, they were always surprised if Slater struck them in the middle of a sentence. Something about interrupting the theatrics felt unnatural — how could Slater ruin a moment by not allowing the guy to finish his words?

  But that was exactly how it unfolded, and as usual it paid off. The guy’s jaw was slack halfway through the line delivery, clearly intent on causing a scene and pulling him up in front of the rest of the VIP room. Slater’s fist scythed through the air with a practiced whip-like motion and caught the man directly on the chin, whipping his head to the side in unnatural fashion.

  The lights went out, and he crumpled.

  It had taken a half-second to complete the action — Slater found that all the suspicion of a violent confrontation came from the immediate aftermath, when adrenalin was pumping and cortisol was shooting through the roof. So he kept his pulse low and caught the man by the shoulders even as his knees were giving out.

  He gently lowered the guy to the ground, loudly proclaiming, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, you okay, buddy? What’s wrong? Oh, no…’

  Genuine concern laced his tone, and that was what drew the most attention. The facade wouldn’t hold up for long — some of the patrons would have seen the punch out of the corner of their eye, but it had happened so fast they wouldn’t have been sure quite what they’d witnessed. Slater’s subsequent demeanour would confuse the hell out of them for just long enough to suppress a full-scale panic.

  Slater finished lowering the guy to the ground and slipped straight out of the VIP room.

  ‘Hey…’ a voice cried.

  He ignored it.

  He beelined straight for the same door he’d seen the head of security slip through moments earlier and barged straight into a restricted area, reaching for the Beretta M9 simultaneously.

  35

  The two triad henchmen stepped into the marble lobby of one of Mountain Lion’s rival casinos with purpose in their stride. They were headed for the front desk, adamant that their anonymous tip would pay off and that soon the situation would be back under control.

  Right now, they weren’t sure exactly who wanted them dead.

  Seemingly everyone.

  As they strode across the spotless floor, Tak spoke first. ‘How the hell did Forrest find out?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Antoine said.

  ‘We fucked up. There’s no going back until we sort this out. Jerome told us as much.’

  Antoine pressed two fingers to his eyeballs, riding out a wave of stress. ‘What did he say exactly?’

  ‘He asked us if the accusations were true. I told him they were — we don’t know how much evidence he has. He could have been testing us — if we lied, he could have killed us. So I told him we did it, and he said he appreciated the honesty but he needed to distance himself from us until Forrest calmed down. Forrest is one of his highest paying customers, after all.’

  ‘You think that’s a lie?’

  ‘No way to know. But you want to disobey him?’

  ‘No. Are you sure this is the right move, though? You have more experience in this game.’

  ‘Forrest knows we stole money from him,’ Tak hissed. ‘An obscene amount of money. Just think about that for a second. Think about what kind of a person Peter Forrest is. You think he’ll ever let us off the hook?’

  Antoine shook his head. ‘That’s a powerful enemy to have. He could pay the triad to kill us themselves.’

  ‘He sure could. He could do a million things.’

  ‘But going up against him isn’t going to solve anything,’ Antoine said.

  Tak froze in the middle of the lobby and grabbed his naive colleague’s shoulder. ‘Think about what you just said. Where’s it coming from?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What part of you is saying that?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re scared of going up against him. Deep down you know it’s the only way. We need to get rid of him and then melt into the background.’

  ‘We can’t do that alone.’

  ‘No, we can’t. That’s why we’re here. Are you following?’

  Antoine looked around, and finally gazed up at the ceiling far above them. Almost staring straight through the solid surface. Searching the floors above with his mind. Something clicked. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘This could go disastrously.’

  ‘So could almost anything we do right now. This is the world, Antoine. This is what things look like outside your bubble.’

  ‘I don’t see a solution to this.’

  Tak pointed to the ceiling. ‘There’s one up there. Now let’s go get her.’

  He approached the front desk, intent on using every shred of leverage he’d accumulated over his time as a career gangster to gain them the upper hand.

  Thirty minutes later, Tak and Antoine exited a lavish elevator, rejuvenated by fresh hope.

  ‘They sure were accomodating to your demands.’

  ‘I’ve done favours for their head office. Long ago.’

  ‘Did I really have to wait outside?’

  ‘I’m welcome in their inner circle. You’re not. They don’t trust you.’

  ‘They should.’

  ‘We got what we needed.’

  ‘You sure you saw the footage correctly? I don’t want to run into him up here.’

  ‘He entered the building with the girl. He left alone. I triple-checked.’

  ‘So this shouldn’t be a problem.’

  ‘It won’t be.’

  ‘Then why am I nervous?’

  ‘Because you’re used to things going your way. This is uncharted territory.’

  ‘It sure is.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it. We might be on the back foot forever, if this doesn’t pay off. And it probably won’t.’

  ‘Why are you saying that? For fuck’s sake…’

  ‘Better to accept reality for what it is than live in a pleasant illusion.’

  ‘I’m not in an illusion. But you saw what this guy did to Forrest’s men. And our own. You heard the reports coming out of the building on Beco da Perola? There’s at least a dozen men dead. Most of them Forrest’s. You think that’s someone we can manipulate?’

  ‘He has a weakness,’ Tak muttered.

  Without elaborating, he slid a keycard gifted to him by upper management into its slot underneath a polished door handle and pushed the broad wooden door at the end of the corridor wide open. It swung inward silently, revealing a luxurious presidential suite that a man who went by the name of Will Slater had booked hours previously.

  If all went according to plan, they would find the girl still here.

  ‘What if he told her to shoot anyone on sight?’ Antoine muttered, his voice barely audible.

  Tak grunted with hostility and slid a giant Desert Eagle handgun out of a custom-made holster at his side. ‘It’s a fucking kid, Antoine.’

  Nevertheless, the sheer silence of the suite hung thick over them in a tense shroud. Tak stepped forward, tentatively moving through the open doorway, scolding himself for being so nervous to apprehend a nine-year-old girl.

  He sensed movement to his left as he stepped into the main section of the suite, and wheeled o
n the spot, his senses firing, the barrel of the Desert Eagle coming up to lock onto its target.

  With a sly smile, he realised he shouldn’t have been so terrified.

  Shien sat at one end of the giant dining room table, unarmed, shaking with fear. She had known the sound of the front door opening could only spell disaster, but had effectively frozen in fright. She was, after all, just a child.

  ‘Hey, honey,’ Tak said, leering at their prize. ‘You remember us?’

  36

  Slater stormed into the security hub with devastation on his mind. The door was locked, but he simply hurled his weight at the centre mass, spurred on by adrenalin and immune to pain. The lock audibly snapped and he hustled straight into the room beyond.

  The broad space was almost the same size as the VIP room he’d just exited from — Slater took one look at the bank of flatscreen televisions covering the closest wall and realised this place acted as the central security node for the entire floor. Its surveillance cameras displayed footage of five or six different rooms, each handling millions of dollars a minute as obscene quantities of casino chips flew across the tables. The rows of desks in front of the screens were surprisingly unpopulated — Slater figured he’d already dealt with the bulk of security on this level.

  Left remaining was the head of security — the same short, rotund man who’d confronted him earlier — and a pair of heavyset guards complete with earpieces and sidearms fastened inside holsters at their waists.

  A grave mistake, Slater thought.

  Yet he understood the complexity of a structure like Mountain Lion Casino & Resorts, which meant these men might not be directly involved with the dark underbelly. In all likelihood they were, but Slater didn’t want that playing on his conscience.

  Thankfully, the pair had been in the process of responding to the commotion — the head of security must have seen Slater’s brawl on the live feeds. The guards almost ran directly into Slater as he stormed into the room, taking them entirely by surprise.

  Close range.

  Slater smashed the blunt surface of the Beretta’s magazine base into the bridge of the closest man’s nose. He went down howling, unable to help himself, and Slater followed through with a thunderous front kick into the chest of the second guy, knocking him back into one of the desks. The guy sprawled over its surface in awkward fashion, destroying a bank of computers in the process.