by Matt Rogers
Omar said, ‘Who are you?’
‘A friend,’ Slater said.
Omar couldn’t comprehend it.
Fabian snapped the kid out of the trance-like state by pulling him hard toward the destroyed wall. Before he left, he turned back to face Slater.
Slater said, ‘Go.’
Fabian said, ‘What if it happens again?’
‘My friend is upstairs making everyone who did this to you choke on bullets,’ Slater said. ‘There won’t be anyone around to do it again.’
Fabian stared at Slater like he was something from an alternate reality.
Maybe he was.
Then the kid took all his emotional baggage and trauma out into the night. Omar followed.
Slater never saw them again.
76
If not for the tension, the second floor of the complex might have been ambient.
It was less bare, actually decorated with a keen eye for taste, unlike the empty corridors on the under-utilised ground floor. There were pot plants in the hallway and paintings on the walls and even a couple of rugs on the carpet. As if Icke was pretending this place wasn’t a storage facility for sex slaves.
King knew he wouldn’t meet resistance.
Not from Icke’s underlings.
Only from the old judge himself.
A doorway at the end of the hall had light emanating from within.
Practically a homing beacon.
King let the shadows wrap him up, quiet as a mouse, his footsteps inaudible.
Somehow Icke heard him.
‘No!’ his voice bellowed. ‘No, no, no, no. You are mistaken, my friend. That’s not how this is going to go. Come in. Hurry.’
King froze halfway down the corridor, gun up.
‘I’m not in the mood!’ Icke roared, still unseen. ‘I’m not going to have a Mexican standoff with a thug like you. Get in here now, and we’ll talk this out like men.’
King thought, You’re not a man. You’re a boy.
But he followed the judge’s orders.
Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Yes, Your Honour.
He materialised in the doorway like an apparition.
His worst fears came true.
The room had a desk, a chair, an overabundance of pot plants, a radiator in the corner. A set of handcuffs dangled off the end of the radiator, the loose cuff still swinging. It had been freshly used. A sight to make anyone sick. It showed entrapment, resistance, fear — someone held against their will.
Icke stood behind the desk with Elsa in front of him as a human shield.
A revolver pressed to her head.
It was the first time King had laid eyes on either of them.
Icke was exactly how he’d expected — big, maybe six two. Hair that had receded decades ago, a mixture of whites and reds and greys, and a complexion somehow even worse than Keith Ray’s. Ruddy, pockmarked, like a miniature battlefield across his cheeks. Eyes that blazed bright, but not with natural energy. The man was a stimulant fiend — King knew by taking one look at him. Slater was right. This wasn’t an old judge who knew how to compartmentalise. This was a man who accumulated such insidious power by never taking a moment off, never stopping and considering whether he was on the right path or not. Energy fell as the years ticked over, and he replaced the inevitable decline with a chemical cocktail to speed himself up.
His gun hand shook.
Not from fear.
Just like Ray’s.
Elsa was blonde haired and blue eyed like her mother, small and underfed and expressionless. King had seen the same look on her face in prisoners of war. There was a certain hopelessness, an abandonment of optimism. She thought she’d never get out. The gun to her temple was just a formality, and maybe an escape. If Icke pulled the trigger she wouldn’t have to cry anymore, wouldn’t have to worry, wouldn’t have to think.
There was promise in that.
The only promise she still felt.
Icke said, ‘You’re not a rival, are you?’
King said, ‘No.’
He had his SIG aimed square within the frame of Icke’s fat face, but he didn’t dare pull the trigger. Icke’s finger was tight on his own gun. One shot from King, and there’d be two casualties in the office.
Icke said, ‘No shit. I don’t have rivals. This is my town. So you’re something else.’
King remained still.
Didn’t move a muscle.
Didn’t speak.
A sharp contrast to the overstimulated, sweating, shaking judge.
‘If you were a rival, I’d be aiming at you,’ Icke said. ‘But you’re not. You’re here for her.’
‘I’m here for it all.’
‘So this is a takeover?’
‘No.’
Icke mulled it over. He couldn’t stop shaking. ‘Gloria sent you.’
‘No.’
‘I don’t see her. You’re here instead of her.’
‘We used her,’ King said. ‘To get to you.’
‘That’s not very brave of her,’ Icke said. ‘She’ll need a talking to, after I’m out of here.’
‘You’re staying right where you are.’
Icke jerked Elsa up by the hair. ‘Am I?’
She grimaced.
King looked at her, very briefly. He tried to give her a silent command. Be steady.
She seemed to understand. She stopped struggling.
Icke said, ‘Put your gun down.’
‘No.’
‘Then she’s dead.’
‘Then you’re dead.’
‘I don’t care.’
King smiled. ‘Yes you do.’
Silence.
King said, ‘If that’s the way you think it’s going to go, then pull the trigger.’
Elsa’s eyes blazed.
Hope had returned, which she probably considered cruel, considering she was about to die. Her benevolent rescuer, right in front of her. Freedom so close she could taste it.
Then Icke did something King didn’t expect.
He got brave.
He walked her out from behind the desk, barrelled her toward the doorway. King saw every inch of the movement. He processed every millisecond. The barrel of the revolver didn’t waver once. He had no shot.
Icke kept coming, slow and lumbering.
But coming all the same.
Decision time.
Step back, step out, let him pass.
He couldn’t go far.
Or keep filling the doorway, risk a collision, hope to capitalise in the chaos.
Chaos wouldn’t work this time.
She’d probably die.
King stepped back.
Stepped out.
Let them through.
77
Elsa managed a tiny, ‘No,’ before Icke manhandled her out of the office, his giant weight creaking the floorboards under the thin carpet. To King, nothing else in the world existed. The whole universe, condensed to this one moment, shrunk to Elsa and the barrel of the revolver.
There was no window.
King held.
Icke turned her around as soon as he was out of the office, facing King again. ‘So much for not going anywhere.’
King stood still.
Icke was beginning to feel it. He stopped shaking. The congestion and chaos inside his body fell away, replaced by focus. He got sharper. He held the gun tighter.
King didn’t move.
But he saw the rest of the corridor.
A silhouette, looming behind Icke.
Icke smiled. ‘Tell your friend behind me if he lays so much as a finger on me this trigger gets pulled. If he goes for the gun, the trigger gets pulled. If he goes for the girl, the trigger gets pulled.’
King didn’t react.
His insides twisted.
He said, ‘Stand down, Slater. Come here.’
The silhouette hovered.
King said, ‘Now.’
Slater limped around Icke
, past Elsa, and stood next to King.
78
Icke looked at Slater. ‘Your buddy’s smarter than you are.’
Slater said, ‘Is he?’
‘And I’m smarter than the both of you.’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course. Like I wouldn’t be monitoring Keith Ray like the goddamn NSA. A man that unhinged, that depraved?’
King thought, The pot and the kettle.
But he didn’t say a word.
Nor did Slater.
They bristled.
Icke said, ‘I know where you live.’
Silence.
Icke said, ‘Took me a while but I traced it. I’ve already deployed the rest of my men. Say goodbye to those other two. Your girlfriends, I take it?’
King’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
Without taking his eyes or aim off Icke, he used one hand to reach down and withdraw it.
He glanced at the screen for a half-second.
A text.
Violetta.
Help.
79
They hit the estate so hard Violetta didn’t have a moment to think.
A souped-up truck with a ram bumper tore the front gates off their hinges at fifty miles an hour. Security cameras caught it, and the early warning system screamed, but by the time she pulled the feed up on her laptop — seconds after it happened — the SUV was already stationary by the front door, and men were spilling out.
Violetta’s fingers flew over the keyboard.
She brought up her messages, fired a one-word iMessage to King — the best she could manage in the circumstances — and then spilled off the stool.
Alarms blared across the mansion.
Alexis looked everywhere, eyes flying left and right, on the verge of panic.
Melanie’s face was an encapsulation of terror.
Violetta shoved Melanie in Alexis’ direction. ‘Take her upstairs. I’ll hold them off.’
‘Wait—’
‘Go!’
Alexis complied. She grabbed Melanie by the arm and sprinted for the grand staircase in the entranceway. She took them two at a time, dragging the teenage girl behind her, and Violetta watched them spill onto the landing of the second floor just as the front door burst open, glass shattering. Beyond, a powerful engine rumbled.
Violetta let out a scream from the kitchen.
To draw them away from the staircase.
Then she ran.
80
Bodies spilled into the kitchen — she caught a glance over her shoulder. Big, powerful men. She bolted into a connecting passageway as a stray bullet shredded the door frame.
Her heart thudded in her throat, choking her.
She made it to the de facto armoury, got the door open and squeezed inside just as silhouettes burst into the same hallway. Her heart thudded harder, but she didn’t hear it or feel it anymore. It was all too close.
She had to hope they were meatheads.
They were.
They followed her into what they figured was an empty room she’d dead-ended in, and by that point she’d ripped a MK17 SCAR-H off the rack. It was a heavy weapon and she didn’t have an overly powerful frame, but with the help of panic it weighed nothing at all. She got it aimed at the doorway and pulled the trigger before anyone had even come into view, but as she suspected they wanted this over quick, so they literally stepped into the stream of bullets without a moment to reconsider. They had their guns up but 7.62mm calibre rounds shredded their faces and throats. Their bulletproof vests absorbed the rest, but the damage was done.
Three bodies cascaded on top of each other in the doorway.
Violetta breathed out for the first time since the alarms had sounded.
She rushed out into the corridor, and caught the last man retreating. He’d witnessed three comrades torn to shreds and elected to regroup in the kitchen. He didn’t make it. His back was turned, his movement frantic, the sub-machine gun in his right hand forgotten as he pumped his arms like pistons.
She laced a three-round burst into the back of his neck and skull.
He pitched forward and slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway.
He didn’t move.
Violetta tried to lower her heart rate, tried to stop her hands shaking from adrenaline, but she wasn’t privy to the exposure therapy King and Slater had undertaken. This wasn’t her life, her everyday existence. This was a terrifying anomaly.
Then she heard it.
Upstairs.
Two unsuppressed gunshots that ripped through the house. Tinnitus in her ears from her own skirmish muffled the noise, but that didn’t make it any less recognisable.
Her stomach dropped.
She ran for the stairs.
81
Alexis’s heart was in her throat.
Calm.
Her blood ran cold.
Breathe.
The breath seized her chest.
Don’t make it worse.
Melanie was all over the place, on the verge of a total breakdown, but things were moving too fast for the girl to actually panic. Alexis used her fitness base to drag Melanie’s hundred-pound frame up the two flights, even as the front doors smashed open behind them, even as gunfire blared through the house. Compared to the introspective quiet they’d been sitting in moments earlier, it was anarchy.
Her own bedroom — and Slater’s — was the closest available room.
There was a SIG Sauer in the nightstand drawer.
She shoved Melanie into the room and ducked low as a bullet tore through the ceiling above their heads, fired up from the lobby. Then she followed.
Instinct said, Hide.
The walk-in wardrobe, the en suite bathroom, even the space under the bed. All three options would bring at least a splash of clarity. They were patches of safety. They’d give her time to stop and think about…
No time to think.
Reason said, Prepare.
Hiding was the easy way out. She heard footsteps on the staircase, interspersed with automatic gunfire from downstairs. She didn’t have time to fear for Violetta. She didn’t have time for anything.
She pushed Melanie to the floor, and the girl went willingly. When she was prone Alexis dragged her toward the four-poster bed, and Melanie got the message. She crawled the last few feet on her own and burrowed under the bed frame, out of sight.
Alexis wanted to follow her.
She didn’t.
She went to the nightstand and tugged hard on the drawer.
It didn’t budge.
Locked, she remembered.
The footsteps hit the top of the staircase.
82
The footfalls were heavy.
He was a big man. She heard his heavy breathing. He was pumped with testosterone, and he wanted to slaughter everyone in the house.
The sheer magnitude of that knowledge was terrifying.
The bedroom door hung open, which didn’t mean anything. Even if she’d shut and locked it, he’d get it open with a single well-placed boot, or a quick pull of the trigger. He was closing in, only feet away, still out of sight, round the corner, invisible. Which made it more horrible. It left all sorts of room for the imagination.
No time for imagination.
Alexis didn’t run for the en suite, or the closet. She backtracked to the doorway and positioned herself alongside it, hip pressed to the plaster. The door itself was on the other side, swung almost fully inward, leaving a crack of space behind it. A reasonable person running for their life would sandwich themselves into that gap. It’d provide an iota of comfort in those final moments. They wouldn’t stand right out there in the open, accepting the fact they’d confront their attacker the moment he stepped into the room.
That wasn’t human nature.
Alexis fought against her nature with all the willpower she could muster.
The footsteps were there.
On the other side of the wall, only feet away from her.
He was one second away from stepping into the room.
She’d never experienced focus like this. She’d willingly put herself in a position where confrontation was guaranteed. She’d sealed either her fate, or the attacker’s. It was a crazy, mad sensation. She’d never get used to it, never be able to comprehend it.
Someone was going to die.
Slater’s words came to her.
The elbow is biomechanically stronger.
She took a deep breath.
The guy barrelled into the room — literally. His gaze was fixed in the slim gap between the wall and the door, searching for a body behind the wood. He’d spot Alexis in half a second. She had time.
For one attempt.
She detached from her body — she didn’t try, it just happened — and saw it all unfold from the perspective of the observer. Felt every muscle, taut and tense, coil like a spring. She set her feet and twisted at the waist and swung her elbow with her brain screaming, I want to live.
Please, let me live.
She hit him behind the ear, right where Slater had taught her to target, and felt the soft crunch of his skin and bone against the point of her elbow. She was, admittedly, a novice in the art of combat. King and Slater had the inhuman ability to destroy their foes like they weren’t living, breathing, resisting targets.
That wasn’t her.
But it stunned the guy hard.
He pulled the trigger of his rifle out of sheer shock and sent two rounds into the mattress.
Alexis went into a frenzy.
He was still hovering in space as he lost a modicum of balance and staggered half a step. It was nothing in real time, but she was focused as hell. So she repeated the same motion and hit him with the same elbow in the same spot. It rattled her whole body — she didn’t want to think about what it was doing to his head.
He started turning.
The gun barrel floated towards her.
Fast.
She elbowed him three more times as his head twisted, striking his ear, his cheek and his nose.
The cheek strike cracked his orbital.