by Jack Parker
You’re Only Dead
Book 2
by
Jack Parker
Copyright © 2019 by Jack Parker
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Jack Parker
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 1
Here was a familiar blunder. In lieu of a proper staff, use the bouncer to guard the door. Sure, he was big enough. A little shy of two meters and dense as an anvil, mean-faced enough to make a man apologize just for eye contact. But really, what was the use? These chaps made their living looking tough for your typical drunken Friday night crowd, not staving off real trouble. This'd probably be more of a challenge if they'd posted a single dwarf with a gun. Just had to get the bloke away from the door. Prevent him from being able to issue a warning. Emery Fletcher considered this as he chewed the mint in his mouth and pushed a cigarette between his lips. Easy enough. He traipsed down the alleyway with his head down, hands patting his pockets as he approached the back door to the basement club he sought access to. He passed by the rugged bouncer outside but stopped a few feet after, shoulders sinking with a sigh. "Oy there," he said, turning around to face the great giant and mimicking a drunken sway.
"Piss off," the man ordered.
"Come on then," Emery said with a frown, slurring his speech. "You got a light on you? Mm?"
"Jog on, you little cunt," the man snapped, shooing him with a great hand.
"Aw, that's customer service for you," Emery huffed. "Wh-what, I ain't prestigious enough for your pissing club so I ain't fit to share your air? Why don' you jog on?"
"I'm warning you," the bouncer seethed. "Go on or I'll crack open your bloody skull."
"Well I been cleared off'a better places than this shit hole, lemme tell you. By bigger blokes, too."
"Yeah, take it on home."
Emery grumbled, moving his cigarette to the other side of his mouth and trudging over to the nearby wall before unzipping his pants.
"What the fuck do you think you're doin'?" the voice boomed from his left.
Emery grunted, reaching down to pretend to pull himself out. "Takin' a slash, mate, what's it look like?"
"Not here you ain't."
"Well not with you lookin' at me," he forced a hiccup and spun his index finger in the air. "T-turn around, why don't you. Bloody pervert…"
"Look, I'm gonna come over there and knock ya flat if you don't get moving," the bouncer threatened angrily, jabbing a finger out at him and turning red.
Emery held his arms wide and pretended to stumble. "Have at it, ya great slag."
There, that was it. The man came towards Emery full force, snatching him by the coat and about to haul him to the ground when he felt the barrel of a gun jam into his waist and looked down to see Emery glaring coolly up at him.
"Alright then, now that I've got your attention," Emery said quietly. "Would you be so kind as to get down on your knees?"
The bouncer was clearly stunned, but managed to curl a lip in defiance. "The fuck is this…?"
"It's your boys about to be a fucking alley cat's dinner," Emery growled, pressing the gun hard between the man's legs. "On your knees, please."
The man visibly swallowed and did as he was told. "I ain't a part of this," he said as he did so.
"Hands on your head."
He lifted his hands up to the back of his head and tried to glance back at Emery behind him. "Whatever it is they're doin', I'm just paid to watch the door. I swear it."
"You're trying to buy your life with uselessness?" Emery asked flatly. "Let's do better, shall we?"
The man licked his lips. "I…I dunno what you—"
"How many are down there?"
"Uh…"
"Come on, sweetheart," Emery pressed the gun hard into the back of the man's head. "It's your job to watch the door. You just told me so. How many men?"
"Four."
"You sure about that?"
"Yeah. Yeah."
"All armed?"
"Fuck, I dunno. Probably."
"Alright then…" Emery bent forward, leaning in close to the man's ear. "Now suck my cock."
The man went totally rigid, breath leaving him. "Wh…wha…"
Emery snorted loudly and pulled back, holding up his gun and patting the bouncer roughly on the back. "There, see? Now when you come to you're gonna be awfully glad this was all you got."
Before the man had time to be confused, Emery struck him hard in the back of the head with the butt of his gun and sent him sprawling onto the asphalt in a heap. He stepped over the unconscious body and strode casually towards the basement door, descending the stairs with calculated movements and slipping inside. Lights were flashing and music was blaring around him, but there wasn't a soul in sight. Emery carefully surveyed his surroundings, making his way over to a metal door on the immediate right and gently trying the handle. Locked from the inside. Bollocks. He pursed his lips, flattening himself against the adjacent wall as he tried to think of a way around this. He couldn't fail here. It was his best lead. He closed his eyes a minute before the door suddenly opened up.
Emery instantly kicked the door inwards as it did so. It flew back and struck the man in the face with enough force to propel him back and onto the floor, blood spraying from his mouth as he toppled. Emery was through the door and on top of him before he even stopped rolling, belting him across the face a few more times for good measure before leaving him a sputtering, useless mess on pristine white tile. Three to go. He stepped lightly as he followed a corridor down where the blaring music above him began to fade and the faint sound of human voices could be made out. The room it led into was a wide open space. There was no décor to speak of, but Emery was fairly certain that he was looking at a makeshift torture chamber. Tables were set up in the center, covered in a gruesome array of well-used tools, chains, handcuffs, and bloodied rags. Two men stood near one table, sorting through its contents, while the third stood a few feet away over a hooded, bound man on the floor. Emery's gut tightened. There he was. They had him and he was right bloody here. He quickly slipped out and moved behind a pillar to prevent being seen, pressing his back against it and breathing heavily. This was going to be harder than he thought. But he was so close…His eyes opened and he stepped out, gun drawn.
"Hold it," he demanded loudly.
Shock pulsed in a chain over the three men. The two at the table both went for their guns and Emery fired once into the head of the closest, causing the other to immediately
hold up his hands in fear. The last didn't appear to be armed, but he was clearly the leader, holding a hand out to his associate and giving Emery a menacing glower.
"You in charge here?" Emery asked, tossing his head at the man.
He held up his hands in surrender but sneered. "Who the fuck are you…?"
"Never you mind about who I am. Let's just worry about what I want."
"Did Emerson send you? Is that what this is?" the man guessed. "The bastard's turned on me already, has he?"
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm not here for you." Emery glanced down at the man tied up on the floor. "I'm here for him."
The man's eyes narrowed and he looked down. When he looked back at Emery it was with incredulity. "Him?" When Emery didn't respond, he shook his head. "…Who in the fuck are you?"
Emery fired another round into the goon still standing by the table to his right without looking, still maintaining eye contact with the ringleader as the body hit the floor. "I don't like repeating myself."
The man gaped at his suddenly dead associate before taking a few steps back. "You don't want to do this…you don't know who I work for, do you?"
"I know exactly who you work for," Emery corrected. "I know exactly who you are. I know exactly what you do. I even know that you wear a toupee and have a penchant for beating up on the whores you fuck."
The man frowned deeply and took another step back. "Then you also know what kind of trouble you're in."
Emery shifted lightly as he heard a noise behind him. Shit. Five. That worthless bouncer. He could see the smug confidence well up in his enemy's eyes. He pretended not to notice. "Not if there's no one left to report back."
The man barely suppressed a smirk. "You're going to kill me, then?"
Emery gauged the man behind him. Not far away. Muffling his steps. Just to the left. "I'm going to kill you both."
Before the leader could reply, Emery whipped around and capped the lurking gunman behind him twice in the chest. When he turned back around, the other was drawing a gun from an ankle holster, but too late. Emery shot him in the stomach. He staggered back and hit the wall, arms around his gut, gun skirting off to the side somewhere. Emery slowly lowered his gun and took a step forward, glancing down to his right and placing his hand on the table to draw away a large, serrated blade. He stepped closer and looked down at his bleeding enemy with contempt. The man was trying to move away from him, looking up in fear, gasping in pain. Emery slowly crouched to his level.
The man's eyes widened in panic. "N-no, no, take him…take him!"
"I will," Emery nodded, running his fingers along the back of the knife before pointing it at the man's face and narrowing one eye. "But first I want you to answer me a question. And you'd better think bloody hard about it."
"Please don't. Please," he gasped.
"Who else knows you have him?"
"No one. No one knows. I hadn't made the call yet."
Emery twisted the knife and nicked just under the man's chin, not quite hard enough to draw blood. "Doesn't seem to me like you thought very hard about that."
"No, no, no," he groaned a pitiful sob, turning his head and squeezing his eyes shut. "I didn't have to think about it. It's the truth…it is, I swear it…"
Emery's gaze hardened. "It's a gut shot you've got there. I'd give you about ten minutes before you're good and done and I am not fucking around when I tell you that's ten minutes I can find a very unpleasant use for."
"The job was botched!" the man panted. He paused to cough, blood lining his teeth. "Killing him is just clean up! Collateral damage! Th-they won't look for him—not as long as they never see him again! Please don't—please…agh…"
Emery slowly pulled the knife back, studying the dying man with disgust. He wasn't lying about the injury. There wasn't much Emery could do to him that wasn't already done and people like this one didn't deserve it quick and easy anyway. He'd already promised himself when he started on this path that he would make every single bastard responsible suffer. "You'll all wish you hadn't started this," he said quietly.
Emery gave him one last glare before getting up, going back over to the man lying on his side on the floor. There was a hood over his head and his hands were tied with nylon rope behind his back. He hurriedly removed the hood and the man beneath him jerked, squinting in the light and reeling in shock. "Easy now, easy," Emery said, gripping his shoulder.
The disoriented man blearily attempted to focus on his savior, blinking out of sync. His face was bruised and his lip bleeding badly. At first he seemed confused. Then his eyes grew impossibly wide. "…Oh…Jesus fucking Christ…" he rasped. "Not you."
Emery smiled. "Lovely to see you too, Victor."
Chapter 2
Victor hit the wall next to him hard, coughing and wheezing as he tried to keep from falling over. He could feel Emery's hands grasping at him but he shoved him off. "I'm fine, I'm alright, I'm alright," he panted, cradling his bruised ribs painfully and taking a moment to lean there and breathe. "Fuck almighty…"
"Come on. We've got to get out of here."
Jesus, this was too bizarre. "Yeah, no shit."
Emery crowded back into his space and yanked one of his arms over his shoulders to keep dragging him along. Victor stumbled alongside him with a groan. "I've got a hotel room just a little ways away from here. Two blocks. Can you make it?"
"I'm fuckin' working on it," he hissed.
It was late at night. There weren't many people out, at least not that Victor could see, but he was mostly preoccupied by the pain in his middle and the dizziness that one too many blows to the head had afforded him. Emery's voice had a little bit of an echo. "Sorry I wasn't there sooner. Didn't find out where they'd taken you until just an hour ago. Rather seemed like the nick of time, though."
"Yeah, fucking perfect," Victor grated. "How…what… Why are you—what did…just…what the fuck, man?"
"One thing at a time," Emery replied.
Victor's head was spinning far too much to grasp hold of a single question. He wasn't a hundred percent sure that this wasn't just a pre-mortum hallucination yet. He'd been pretty damn sure he was going to die, after all. …Alright, so he'd been pretty sure a lot of times, but this one had to be the king of near deaths. The job had seemed so fucking innocuous. Hack some guy's private computer, lift a couple of his legal docs. Fine, sure, he'd done it a thousand times before. That's how this shit always got started—when was he going to learn that there was no such thing as easy money? Somebody always double-fucking-crossed somebody and he was always caught in the crossfire.
Two blocks and one elevator ride later and Victor was being helped to a chair at a small table in a hotel room on the third floor. He sank down and sighed in pain, leaning back to try and get his bearings. A moment later Emery returned to hand him a towel packed with ice. "How's your head? Are you lucid?"
"Yeah. Sure," Victor muttered, suspiciously looking up at him.
"Good. Rest there a bit. I'll get you something to drink."
Victor watched, still dumbstruck, as Emery moved about the room. This was too much. He hadn't seen or even really thought about that face in two long years. He looked…different. Older, obviously, but in a good way. He was in excellent physical shape, no longer the somewhat delicate boy Victor remembered holding down to rip a tooth out of. He was a little more haggard than he'd been before and his eyes, still eerily blue, had a new well of knowledge behind them. Even if he was still only about five feet and seven inches from the ground, he seemed intimidating. And rightfully so. Apparently this year's model killed without hesitation. "…Shit, man. What the fuck are you doing in London?"
Emery glanced over as he pulled a bottle of scotch out of a lower cupboard of the kitchenette. "I only spent the first twenty-four years of my life here. Can't I have a visit?"
"A visit with who?"
Emery quirked an eyebrow at him. "I take it you're not thrilled to see me."
Victor shook his head in disbelief. "W
hy did…how did you even know where to find me?"
"Private investigator's been tailing you for three days now. I suppose it's lucky for both of us that you didn't notice. Also lucky that I decided to check in with him when I did."
It seemed like that was the kind of thing he'd notice. Usually Victor was awfully astute when it came to stranger danger. Fuck. He'd gotten too lax.
"What sort of job were you pulling, exactly?"
"Uh…I don't know. A really fucking stupid one." Victor sighed and scratched at his throat. "I was supposed to…siphon information from this dirty solicitor. Something about a big time client and some blackmail fodder. I didn't get very many details, but they gave me file names and a shitload of cash, so I figured being on a need-to-know basis was a-okay. I guess I was sort of desperate."
"How did they connect it back to you?"
"Someone flipped on us. Had to be—it sure as shit wasn't my program. And I hope they killed the two-faced bastard anyway."
"Mm," Emery acknowledged, eyes down on the glasses he was filling.
Victor eyed him. "Wh…well where the fuck is Kurt?"
Emery's hands froze for a moment in what he was doing. He didn't look up. "Gone."
Victor lowered the ice pack on his head to the table and was silent for a moment. He wasn't sure what to make of that. "Does gone mean dead?"
Emery poured two glasses and tucked the bottle away. "Gone means gone."
Victor took the glass that was handed to him, watching as Emery sat down in a chair across from him. "…Okay."
"As in bloody vanished," Emery huffed. "That's rather why I'm fucking here."
Victor stared blankly. "You mean he's missing?"
Emery nodded.
"Shit," Victor blew out a long breath. "For how long?"
"Just over a month."
Dead, Victor's mind supplied callously. But hell, it was probably true. Kurt was a hard motherfucker, but he also had a knack for getting himself into the worst shit ever. Like, you know, falling in love with his fucking kidnap victim and fleeing the country. Not exactly surprising that something would catch up with him. "Look, maybe I'm an asshole for asking, but how do you know he's alive? I mean the guy made a lot of enemies in his time, man."