Ghosts

by Matt Rogers

  He passed out from the pain.

  King waited for the judge to resurface back to consciousness. It took a couple of minutes. He started to worry that he’d killed the guy, but Icke’s breathing was stable.

  Finally the judge started twitching, and then one blood-rimmed eye opened. The rest of his face stayed squashed against the ground.

  King heard footsteps far away, echoing from the ground floor corridor, and low concerned voices bickering back and forth.

  He timed the footsteps.

  Icke mumbled, ‘Please don’t hurt me anymore.’

  A simple yet effective surrender.

  King said, ‘You’ll get it done?’

  Icke said, ‘I’ll get it done.’

  ‘Whatever it takes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you thinking of running? Disappearing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can I trust you?’

  ‘Look at me,’ Icke mumbled, half his face still squashed. The judge didn’t have the energy to lift his head and regard his own sorry state.

  King said, ‘You still have resources. You could still try it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘My friend and I are staying right here in town until we see this through,’ King said. ‘We’ll be watching you. If you even think about making a run for it…’

  ‘I won’t.’

  The footsteps grew louder.

  They were close now. They’d swept the ground floor, found all the bodies. Hadn’t swept upstairs, hadn’t found Elsa. Now they were en route to the loading bay. Clearing the complex, room by room.

  A door slammed, far off.

  King didn’t turn.

  He kept his eyes fixed on Icke.

  He waited for Icke to look at him.

  When the judge did, King said, ‘This is what happens to anyone you turn to for help.’

  He turned around as the door to the loading bay flew open.

  88

  Jack Bowman wasn’t particularly fazed.

  There were dead men everywhere, and the stench of blood and sweat hung thick in the air, but he’d been a Green Beret. He’d seen serious shit. Two stints in Afghanistan, followed by crippling disillusionment, followed by an honourable discharge, followed by accepting a gig at a private security firm, followed swiftly by the buyout of that security firm by one Chief Judge Alastair Icke.

  Jack had to give it to the old bastard — he was brave. He’d told them what he wanted to do with them almost straight away. Some refused to participate and left, but none of them ratted him out. Who’d they rat him to? He owned everyone.

  Jack had appreciated the honesty and signed on the dotted line.

  There hadn’t been a whole lot of excitement so far. He was coming up on his one year anniversary with Icke. Day to day he watched drugged-up teenagers come and go. Some stayed for a while. The three here now had been prisoners for some serious time. Some sort of negotiation with foreign buyers. Jack didn’t mind. He was paid handsomely by the hour. There were high profit margins in sex trafficking — product was cheap to acquire, and the supply never ran dry. Icke could afford to splurge on security. Better for his peace of mind, considering the thousand other things he had to worry about.

  Now Jack cleared empty room after empty room, feeling more at home than he’d ever felt in this boring job. When he’d signed on that line he’d accepted he was selling his soul to the devil, and he hadn’t cared one iota. He’d anticipated having to take part in some seriously dark shit. Instead he stood around and looked intimidating.

  He hoped to God the perpetrators of this massacre were still in the building.

  Nothing better than the opportunity to flex his long-dormant trigger finger.

  The offices were empty, that much was certain. Jack swept the last windowless space, came up short, and ducked back out into the corridor. Three of his team were there, their eyeballs bugging, their weapons hot. They were on Dexedrine. He’d always avoided using artificial means to pump himself up.

  Adrenaline did more than enough.

  Ricardo said, ‘Clear?’

  Jack nodded, and jerked his thumb at the door to the loading bay. ‘Clear that, then we go upstairs, then we’re done.’

  ‘What if—?’ Usman started, but Jack cut him off with a closed fist.

  He’d heard something.

  In the loading bay.

  He almost smiled. He hoped for something more than rival gangbangers who’d got lucky. He hoped for world-class operatives, which was a hell of a long shot in this pathetic city, but sometimes miracles happened. He wanted challenge.

  He connected to the gun in his hands — a HK MP-5KA4 with a fifteen-round mag, highly effective for urban warfare — and felt it become part of him. It didn’t matter how many men he was up against. He’d racked up over a dozen confirmed kills in Afghanistan, and he’d never once been in trouble.

  Vegas, in comparison, was child’s play.

  He made sure Ricardo, Usman and Jesse were right up on his six, but he didn’t figure he’d need them. He took a deep breath, tapped into the beautiful rush of stress chemicals, and flung the door open.

  He processed the scene in milliseconds.

  Icke on the ground a couple of dozen feet away, half-dead.

  A big man, like a bodybuilder with functional strength, standing over Icke, facing them, watching them arrive.

  And a blurry silhouette only a couple of feet to his left, moving at him like a freight train. The guy was slightly smaller than the big man but still fearsome to behold, a bald African-American guy in his thirties with—

  That was as far as Jack got.

  The black guy collided with him, knocking the submachine gun back into his own chest. The barrel struck him so hard in the solar plexus he thought he heard the bone crack. Before he could even breathe the attacker wrestled the gun off him like it was nothing, shoved him aside and killed Ricardo, Usman and Jesse with a perfectly placed spray of gunfire.

  He’d never been dismantled like that before. He couldn’t blink, let alone retaliate.

  Shock didn’t even have the chance to set in.

  There were levels to this game.

  Jack thought he’d been at the top.

  He wasn’t even close.

  That was the last thought that went through Jack Bowman’s brain before the big man across the room shot him in the head.

  The hurricane of violence consumed him and broke him and he thought no more.

  89

  King watched Slater tear through the pack, his broken ankle forgotten, his movement unimpeded.

  One man against four trained operatives.

  A hot knife through butter.

  The guy leading the charge looked competent enough, but wilted in the face of Slater’s rage. The guy lost his weapon, watched Slater kill his three comrades with it, then hesitated for a split second, still staggered, still reeling.

  King raised his SIG and put a bullet in his face from across the loading bay.

  Four bodies collapsed in and around the doorway.

  He turned back to Icke. ‘See?’

  Icke saw.

  He moaned.

  King said, ‘I’ll give you three days.’

  ‘I need more time than that.’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  Quiet.

  Icke had lifted his face a few inches off the concrete to watch his final reinforcements slaughtered, and now he lowered it back to the bloody puddle, dejected.

  King said, ‘Tick tock.’

  He walked over to Slater, and they went upstairs.

  90

  The reunion at the estate was shaky.

  It had been a night to remember.

  Violetta undertook a panicked clean-up, but there’s no easy fix for bullet holes in the ceilings and walls and bloodstains soaked deep into the carpet. She quarantined the five bodies in an empty room — the same room they’d stored Gloria in — which proved difficult enough on its own. Moving two
-hundred-plus pound deadweights left her sweaty and exhausted, and she dreaded the inevitable police response to deafening automatic gunfire in a gated community.

  But then she remembered she had a powerful ally, if only temporarily.

  She placed a call to Gloria, who in turn placed several calls to sergeants and vice detectives that she either had dirt on or trusted completely. The furious phone complaints from neighbours fell on deaf ears. Some of them rang back several times to stress the noise of the racket to the LVMPD, but were told after a brief investigation the chaos had been chalked up to hoodlums letting off illegal fireworks back-to-back. The suspects had been apprehended. There was nothing to fear. Go back to bed. Sleep peacefully.

  So Violetta sat by the entranceway in a trance-like state as the house quietened around her.

  No lights.

  No sirens.

  No handcuffs.

  Upstairs, Alexis had put Melanie to bed, soothing her, insinuating the home invasion had been nothing more than a bad dream. Melanie would know better, but sometimes the brain believes things it knows not to be true, just for the warm embrace of false comfort.

  King and Slater arrived thirty minutes later with Elsa Bell.

  They stepped through the damaged front doors first, leading the way so she felt more comfortable. All three of them saw Violetta sitting by the staircase, knees up to her chest.

  King said, ‘Hey.’

  Violetta said, ‘Hey.’

  ‘Violetta, this is Elsa.’

  The girl was skinny. Her features were gorgeous. She’d make a heartbreaker of a woman in a few years’ time.

  Elsa said, ‘You look like my mom.’

  Violetta smiled. ‘Funnily enough, that’s how this all started.’

  Elsa cocked her head.

  She looked up at King.

  He said, ‘I’ll explain later. It’s late.’

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  For the first time Violetta noticed Slater’s makeshift crutches. He was standing on one leg, letting the other dangle, leaning his weight on a pair of hiking poles from the trunk of the Rezvani Tank. His foot had ballooned — the injury was grotesque. If his ankle hadn’t been broken before, now it was mangled. The bone would need to be set, the foot encased in a moon boot. He’d need to keep off it for weeks, maybe months.

  He might never walk the same.

  Violetta gestured to his ankle. ‘Is that the only major injury?’

  King’s face was riddled with small cuts and bruises, the clear aftermath of a physical brawl, but he didn’t seem in any way debilitated. She knew concussions were invisible, and each one added up worse than the last, but her partner’s eyes were clear. So were Slater’s.

  To her relief, Slater nodded.

  He said, ‘Where’s Alexis?’

  Violetta sighed. ‘Upstairs.’

  Slater hesitated. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Physically? She’s fine.’

  ‘Why’d you say that?’

  ‘She killed a guy.’

  Slater froze.

  King didn’t react.

  Neither did Elsa. She’d been a prisoner for months. She didn’t need coddling. She knew what this world involved, how it worked below the illusion of civility.

  Slater said, ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah, shit,’ Violetta said. ‘There’s an animal inside of her, Will. She let it out tonight.’

  Slater said, ‘What happened?’

  Violetta told him.

  The elbows, the beatdown, the taking of the rifle, the shot through the top of the head.

  Slater said, ‘Can I see the body?’

  ‘I don’t see the point.’

  ‘I want to see what she saw.’

  ‘She didn’t just see it,’ Violetta said. ‘She did it.’

  King said, ‘Just the way you taught her.’

  There were a plethora of emotions fighting for control behind Slater’s eyes. Relief that it wasn’t Alexis on the receiving end, guilt for introducing her to this life, unrest over what the memories might do to her.

  Violetta said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘She can never go back now.’

  ‘You thought she could before?’ Violetta said. ‘She made her decision when she chose to run with us. Tonight was a formality. It was going to happen, sooner or later.’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘She’d kill or she’d die.’

  Silence.

  She said, ‘You always knew that, Will. You just didn’t want to dwell on it too long.’

  He nodded.

  She said, ‘Go upstairs and be with her. She needs you.’

  ‘What about what’s left to do?’ he said. ‘The bodies. The fallout. The cops. You had a gunfight in the richest community in Vegas.’

  ‘Kerr shut it down,’ Violetta said. ‘I told you she flipped. She’ll do anything we say.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘To an extent, I’m sure.’

  ‘So I’m off the clock?’ Slater said.

  ‘You need to get that looked at,’ Violetta said, gesturing to his swollen ankle.

  ‘In the morning,’ he said.

  ‘You won’t be able to sleep with the pain.’

  ‘You don’t know how tired I am.’

  She knew.

  To the bone.

  She was the same.

  This game required everything you had to give, and then a whole lot more.

  He used the hiking poles to hop to the stairs, pausing beside her.

  She said, ‘You need help?’

  ‘I’m good.’

  Slater took the steps slow, taking care where he placed the poles. He winced the whole way up. At the second floor landing, he turned and looked back at King.

  ‘How’s that for a first operation?’ he said.

  ‘You bore the brunt of it,’ King said. ‘For me it was simple.’

  ‘If my ankle could flip you the bird, it would.’

  ‘You can do that yourself.’

  ‘But I won’t,’ Slater said. ‘Because you’re a damn good partner.’

  He hopped away, disappearing from sight.

  91

  Slater’s bedroom door hung ajar by a few inches.

  He saw through, caught a sliver of the room. Nothing seemed amiss.

  He pushed the door open with one of the hiking poles.

  The bed was empty, still made up. No sign of Alexis. The arc of Slater’s sweep meant he first noticed the two bullet holes in the sheets, followed by the considerable dark brown stain at his feet. It had been a thick puddle of red not long before. Somehow, the brown was uglier than the red. It carried old secrets, proof of violence, proof of a life nullified against its will.

  He noted every square inch within his line of sight, then retreated and closed the door behind him.

  There was nothing for him here.

  He knew where she’d be. The mansion had bedrooms to spare, and they kept a couple of rooms made up on the off chance they had guests. Slater had always known none of their visitors would be regular guests. That wasn’t part of their life. More than likely they’d be those like Melanie or Elsa, victims seeking refuge. Victims of the eternal war between good and bad. It was a murky line, though. Everyone was good and bad in their own ways. Nothing in this world was black and white.

  His face contorted as he hobbled down the hall. True to Violetta’s promise, the pain was hitting him in all its intensity. His vision wobbled, warping the walls, but he held it together. If there was anything he’d mastered in this life, it was the ability to endure.

  He made it to the spare rooms up the back of the second floor. There were two positioned opposite each other, and he took a wild guess. Melanie would be in one of them, and Alexis would be in the other. He went right and tapped on the wood with the end of a hiking pole.

  Three long seconds of quiet, then the door softly opened.

  She stood there, green eyes boring into him, hair freshly washed an
d brushed over her forehead in a straight front fringe.

  She looked different.

  She said, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘My leg’s been better,’ Slater said. ‘But I’m fine. Are you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He didn’t take his gaze off her eyes. She’d be unbelievably sore tomorrow morning — a byproduct of using muscles you’ve never used before, fighting for your life like you never have before — but that was nothing. Physical pain will pass if you recuperate properly and implement adequate rest and recovery.

  Emotional pain hits different.

  Emotional pain can last for the rest of your life.

  But he’d been in her position before. He remembered his first kill like it was yesterday. He had a faint concept of what she was going through, but everyone was different.

  He showed restraint. ‘Do you want to talk about it later?’

  Sometimes silence was the best medicine.

  ‘I want to talk about it now,’ she said.

  He said, ‘Alright, then.’

  He hopped inside. The room was furnished with a bed, nightstands and a flatscreen television on the wall. There was a distinct lack of anything that could be remotely considered decorative. No paintings, no plants, no rugs.

  They’d never given much weight to the theory that they might have visitors.

  Alexis walked him to the bed and helped him stretch out, abandoning the hiking poles as he got his ankle elevated on a couple of pillows and slumped against the headboard.

  It was the first time he’d truly stopped since King had come back to the house with the news that he’d met a stranger in need of help.

  Slater would never grow tired of this sort of satisfaction.

  True achievement. He could have died a dozen times over the last forty-eight hours, and still he’d gone back for more. He hadn’t stopped until the job was done. He could have rested earlier, packed it in and put his feet up, but all that would’ve led to was a profound sense of unrest. Do the job, do it right, do whatever it takes, and then, when it’s over, drop your guard and be still.

  Finally, he relaxed.

  The peace wouldn’t have meant anything if he hadn’t earned it through suffering.