by Matt Rogers
Tyrell said, ‘How long we here for?’
Alexis glanced at him as she placed her bags on the dining room table. ‘I don’t know. Hopefully not long.’
He sighed and made for the other side of the divider screen.
She called after him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I gotta come up with some excuse. Danielle wants to meet up tomorrow. Just my luck, huh?’
‘Danielle?’
‘Oh, yeah. That was Will I spoke to about that. She’s this girl in my year level. So hot. I can’t even explain…’
‘Don’t worry, I believe you.’
‘She gave me her number today. Today? Shit, man. Feels like a week ago. Anyway, we’ve been textin’…’
Alexis couldn’t hide her smirk. ‘I’ll tell Will. If he knows there’s a date with Danielle on the line, he’ll work twice as hard.’
Tyrell disappeared behind the divider screen with a scoff.
Violetta dumped her bag beside Alexis’ belongings. It was packed to the brim with baby supplies. She fished around for a toy rocket that Junior was fond of and sat at the dining room table, waving it around his face and making soft airplane noises. He smiled and laughed.
Alexis watched, expressionless.
Finally Violetta looked up. ‘What’s up?’
‘Been thinking about what King said. About what we ignored, bringing kids into this.’
Violetta sighed, held her son close. ‘Yeah. But we’re human. There’s always things we ignore. No matter how tough or smart we think we are.’
‘You think we should have sworn to live as ascetics?’ Alexis said. ‘Sometimes I think maybe that was the only way.’
Junior croaked a happy cry and writhed in Violetta’s arms, swinging his little hands around.
Violetta looked past him, up at Alexis, and said, ‘Too late.’
22
Through bloodied teeth, Dominic mumbled, ‘What’s the bet they send Troy?’
Crouched with his back to the brick wall, bracing against the evening chill, Zach shook his head. ‘I, uh, I dunno. I think Ronan might wanna speak to us himself. Give us a good talkin’ to.’
‘We don’t have to put up with this shit, you know?’
‘Yeah we do. You want King and Slater as bad as they do. As bad as I do.’
‘Do I?’ Dominic said, staring into space. ‘Do we?’
Zach thought, Don’t.
Don’t start down that path.
Dominic said, ‘Were we ever part of that? Were we involved?’
‘No, but…’
‘That’s what brought them closer together. That wasn’t us. We were outsiders. Always have been. Always will be.’
Zach said, ‘It’s a principle thing.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
‘You telling me if those two fucks were right here in front of us you wouldn’t make them hurt? You wouldn’t make them pay?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. Because you know damn well that’s what I’d do.’
‘Then shut up about it until the job is done. We can figure out whether we want to hang around afterwards.’
‘I thought you said before we ain’t got a choice.’
‘We don’t.’
A horn honked out on the street, tendrils of noise whispering down the laneway to the rear of the building.
It made both of them jolt in place.
Zach said, ‘You think that’s Troy?’
Dominic checked his phone, then glanced at Zach’s own screen, which was tilted toward him. ‘Why wouldn’t he just call?’
Then a text from Troy, to Zach’s phone: Here.
Dominic saw it and sighed. ‘Dumb fuck.’
It was a freezing night in Winthrop and the mouth of the laneway lay deserted. Zach assumed it would be no different along the street. Maybe the owners of the pizza joint or the Chinese takeout next door would glimpse them hauling themselves into Troy’s ride and speeding away, but that wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Everyone was tucked up in blankets in their houses in front of their fires. Witnesses were scarce.
All this went through Zach’s head as he followed his brother out to the street, but before they stepped out onto the sidewalk, Dominic froze and placed a hand square on Zach’s chest.
Zach’s stomach twisted. Big brother’s premonitions were otherworldly. If he suspected something…
Zach reached intuitively for his Glock before he remembered what happened to it.
Dominic pulled his own gun, kept it lowered in the shadows. He motioned across the street with his other hand. ‘Does that look right to you?’
The van hovered across the street, exactly halfway between the closest streetlights. The view through the windshield was nonexistent. All of it was dark. There was no movement from the cabin.
Dominic lowered his voice. ‘You see Troy? My eyes aren’t that good anymore.’
‘Nah,’ Zach muttered. ‘I don’t see him.’
They took a step back.
Zach said, ‘Fuck this. Let’s just scale the wall, go over the roof.’
He glanced up at the jagged cracks in the bricks, the chunks missing. They’d make competent footholds. He and his brother had worked with far worse terrain overseas, when they were at war.
At war.
Fourteen years ago.
A soft voice in the back of his head said, You used to be someone to be feared.
Now he couldn’t even kidnap a lady pushing a stroller.
Habits fade, skills regress.
He just never thought it’d happen to him.
Or his brother, who looked up at the wall and mumbled, ‘I don’t know…’
Indecision.
Pathetic.
Zach made a decision. He grabbed Dominic by the shoulder of his jacket, like he’d done in the park, and said, ‘Go.’
He turned all the way around to face the wall.
And came face to face with Jason King.
The man looked different in the flesh.
Larger.
23
King was ready to pounce, but he watched the two men fumble around in the mouth of the laneway, facing the other way.
He was furious beyond measure, but that didn’t mean he’d allow himself to be undisciplined. Rage could be contained, channeled into focus. So he bided his time, waited for them to turn around, and then launched himself at them.
He could’ve held them at gunpoint, but that wasn’t the way King wanted to do things.
Not after this afternoon.
The armed man swung his gun around like it was on a marionette string when he noticed King’s presence. King snatched at the Glock 17 — same as the one Violetta had stolen off his buddy — and seized it in an iron grip while it was still pointed at the brick wall. The guy tried to fire a round, but King’s grip prevented him from being able to get his finger inside the trigger guard. It became a test of sheer strength, and King was never going to lose that battle.
But he was surprised by the ferocity with which the man wrenched the gun.
He was desperate not to lose it.
King pried the guy’s fingers off the hilt and ripped it free, out of his grasp. He made to reverse his grip, spin the Glock in his palm so he could aim it right back at the man, but a sharp left hook caught him in the temple as he was rotating the weapon against his palm. Despite King’s reaction speed, the punch had come so fast he’d barely seen it. He snatched for the Glock, trying to complete the revolution, but the trigger guard wasn’t where he thought he was.
He didn’t immediately recognise he was wobbled.
The gun wasn’t there anymore. He realised it had fallen from his grasp at the same time he took a step back, and the ground swayed underfoot, like he was standing on a ship’s deck in high seas. The concrete of the alley felt like a giant waterbed.
Oh.
He wasn’t about to be some hero and get himself killed. He’d clearly underestimated the level of ability he was going up against, so he “turtle
d up” by bringing his elbows up to his chin, forming a guard so a follow-up punch couldn’t get through. Sure enough, the guy he’d disarmed was already swinging a right hook to follow the left, and it crashed off King’s forearm. Knuckles dug into flesh and muscle and King’s whole lower arm went dead.
The guy hit hard.
King fired back a one-two combination, the jab and straight right cracking like whips, but he came up inches short. It wasn’t a conscious error. His vision swam, spinning left and right, and the ground swayed. Nothing was where he thought it was. He’d punched right through the assailant’s skull, at least according to what his vision told him, but all he’d hit was air.
Going south.
Plummeting south.
King backed up, nearly falling over as he reversed a few short stutter-steps to regain his composure. His heel brushed the barrel of the Glock 17 and he kicked it away, under a dumpster.
The brothers glanced at each other as King retreated. Their hands were bare, both unarmed.
Stripped by Violetta, then King.
King could see the fire in their eyes, the frustration.
He’d maybe miscalculated a few things.
They took off after him, like lions closing in on a wounded gazelle. Little did they know King could fight all day in a semi-conscious state, and wouldn’t stop swinging until his brain shut off at the light switch…
He didn’t get the chance to find out just how tough he was.
Slater darted around him, gun in hand. It was his trademark firearm, a Glock 43X with a staggering SilencerCo 45 Osprey suppressor. The silencer was larger than the gun itself. As he skirted around King, Slater shoved him back with one hand, keeping him safe as he recovered his wits.
Slater raised the Glock and pointed it square between the closest man’s eyes.
His aim didn’t so much as waver.
The brothers stopped in their tracks.
‘Good,’ Slater said. ‘That’s good. Now lie down.’
‘Fuck you,’ the guy on the left spat, the one King had disarmed. The older brother. His voice was garbled, his jaw deformed and swollen from Bill’s punch.
King could tell he meant it. The standoff took on a surreal quality as his brain readjusted to reality. The semi-consciousness began to dissipate, returning to regularly scheduled programming.
Slater strode right up to the older brother and stuck the fat Osprey suppressor under his jaw. Touched it to the swelling. The guy hissed a pained grunt through gritted teeth.
Slater stared into his eyes. ‘Try to snatch it off me.’
The guy stared back.
Slater said, ‘Go on.’
Silence.
No movement.
Slater said, ‘That’s right. You won’t. Because you know who I am. We’re going to figure out why that is, and why you hate us. But keep in mind I hate you just as much. If not more.’ He leaned closer, inches away from the guy. They were a similar height. ‘You lot tried to snatch my son.’
The other guy said, ‘Fuck you,’ mirroring his brother.
King listened to the way the words came out. There was unbridled animosity. Slater’s right. They hate us.
Slater didn’t even look at the younger brother. Kept staring the older one in the eyes.
‘Lie down,’ he said softly. ‘Or you die here. And you’re not ready for that.’
A beat of consideration.
Then the older brother took a step back and lay down on his stomach on the cold concrete.
‘Shit,’ the younger guy whispered under his breath.
He lay down too.
King surged forward, producing a jumbo roll of thick electrical tape. He blindfolded and gagged them, leaving only room to breathe out their noses. They looked mummified. Then he tied their wrists and ankles so tight it almost cut off circulation.
Slater mouthed, ‘You good?’
King took a step backwards, then forwards. No pitching or wobbling. The ground felt sturdy.
He nodded.
They each hefted a squirming body over one shoulder and receded down the alley, letting the evening swallow them.
24
Troy counted to one hundred in his head.
He told himself that’s all he’d allow.
When it ticked over, he growled a low note of concern and dialled Ronan, who answered with an exasperated, ‘What?’
‘I’m just sitting here. At the place you told me. I told them I was here. They came out. I saw them look right at me. Then they went back in the alley and they haven’t come out again.’
The quiet of the cabin ticked by, one second after the next. Troy liked splitting things into intervals. It gave him something to focus on, kept him away from his thoughts. He didn’t like living in his head. Too much rot in there. He knew his brain was broken. Some imbalance of serotonin or however they described it. He hated Ronan and Otis with a burning passion, but he literally couldn’t leave. Something invisible wouldn’t let him. Unconscious conditioning, like Stockholm syndrome.
Ronan snapped him out of his spiralling thought loop. ‘Did you hear me?!’
‘No, sorry,’ Troy said. ‘I drifted.’
‘You see them yet?’
‘No. I think…’ He didn’t want to say it.
‘You think what?’
‘I think they ain’t with us anymore.’
‘You think they got killed?’
‘No. I mean they might have run—’
‘Right. I get it.’ A deep sigh. ‘Okay, get back here.’
‘Wait,’ Troy said, furrowing his brow as he picked at a fingernail. ‘You’re just gonna—?’
‘Yeah. If they’ve hightailed it, I’m not wasting another second worrying about them. If they haven’t, then they’re just idiots, and the same goes. You got a problem with that, Troy?’
Troy wanted to say, I liked Dom. I liked Zach.
He didn’t think that’s what Ronan wanted to hear right now.
He said, ‘No. No problem. I’m on my way.’
Ronan ended the call without another word.
Troy sighed to himself as he put the van in gear and drove away. As he pulled out of the street, he wondered what that might feel like. To run. To turn and go and not look back. He hoped Dominic and Zach were happy. They deserved that much. They’d been through some serious shit over the years. They all had. Not quite like what Troy had suffered, but still…
His cheekbones didn’t line up. One side of his face had been broken a few times, and hadn’t set right. Neither had his nose. It was like a squash, bent all out of shape. He wished he could say the injuries had come from good old-fashioned American mischief — Fourth of July parties, wakeboarding at the lake, snowmobiling. There were no fun stories behind his misshapen bones.
Just disobedience.
Once they’d come back from Korangal, Otis used to beat him every time he started drifting away from the squad. Troy couldn’t help himself. He didn’t like the Korangal crew. Didn’t want to associate with them. He understood that it was hard to reintegrate after living such strange and macabre lives overseas in service of their country, but he at least wanted to give it a shot.
Not anymore.
Now he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
So he wished Dominic and Zach well.
Godspeed.
He told himself he would live vicariously through them as he followed his conditioning and crawled right back to his masters.
25
Slater pulled the chairs across the concrete floor.
They grated under the weight of the men sitting in them, but to Slater their bulk was nothing. He shifted them side by side, then ripped the electrical tape off their eyes and mouths.
They blinked under the spotlight. Their eyes watered as they adjusted to their surroundings, looked all around the spartan room. Concrete walls surrounded a concrete floor and a concrete ceiling. They probably figured it was a basement, not a bunker. That was all they’d be able to make out.
Slater stood closer. Gun in hand.
The Osprey suppressor loomed.
They were tied to the chairs, their wrist restraints having been cut away and then re-fashioned over each armrest. The same went for their ankles, each of their calves taped to a chair leg.
They weren’t going anywhere.
Didn’t matter how strong they were or how hard they could throw a punch.
Slater slapped the older guy in his swollen jaw. ‘Name.’
The guy moaned in pain.
‘That’s not an answer,’ Slater said. Slapped him again before he could even form a sentence. ‘Name.’
The guy stared up at Slater with furious eyes that were starting to water involuntarily.
Slater wasn’t about to play these games. Sensory overload was key. He slapped him a third time, harder than the first pair.
The guy shrieked, ‘Dominic!’
Slater said, ‘Thank you.’
He turned to the younger brother. ‘Name.’
‘Fuck you,’ the younger guy spat.
Slater studied him. The man’s neck was like corded steel, his throat tense in anticipation of a punch or a slap to the face. Instead Slater twisted on the spot and slapped Dominic again.
Dominic moaned uncontrollably. His jaw would be burning hot, the pain overwhelming. The claustrophobia of the bindings would only make things worse…
Slater said, ‘Name.’
‘Zach.’
‘Thank you.’
He turned back to Dominic, then jerked his head back at King. ‘You landed a good punch on my friend back there.’
Dominic blinked hard, maintaining eye contact with Slater. ‘Why isn’t he handling this?’
‘Because we agreed to do it this way. I’m doing negotiations with you two, and King will handle your friends when we get to them. That way we can each stay calm. It’s important. Otherwise he’d be negotiating with the men who tried to kidnap his loved ones, and vice versa. His partner, and his son. You picked the wrong people to try that with.’