Why the Devil Stalks Death

by L. J. Hayward

  Ethan had been separated from his mother before the surgery. Before he was six years old. His memories of her weren’t as numerous or clear as Jack’s were of his own mother, but the loss had left a scar as deep, as painful—as disabling. And perhaps Ethan hadn’t had a loving father to help with the grief. Jack could only hope that at such a tender age, Ethan hadn’t also had the crippling guilt, as well.

  Jack had to say something. The longer he didn’t, the more Ethan’s expression smoothed away, heading towards his cold-hearted killer persona. If it got all the way to dead-eyes and steely mouth, Jack feared that would be it. Their little experiment in cohabitation would be over, and Ethan would leave for good. If Jack said the wrong thing, then the outcome would be the same.

  “What was the lullaby?” Jack asked casually.

  For a moment, he thought he’d blundered; then Ethan’s lips curled up slightly at the corners.

  “I don’t remember all of it, but it was about a chicken. A grey one, or a brown one.” Ethan frowned in thought. “Or perhaps there were many chickens. Either way, it or they laid eggs in very unusual places and a little boy would eat the eggs while they were still warm.”

  “Warm from the chicken’s bum or from being cooked?”

  Ethan blinked at him. “Do you know, I have no idea.” Then he laughed.

  Relief more than anything else made Jack laugh as well.

  Breakfast done, Jack tidied the kitchen. When he was done, Ethan emerged from the bedroom dressed in a dark charcoal suit.

  “Those look like going-out clothes.” Jack tugged on the back of Ethan’s collar as he passed him on the way to the bathroom.

  Ethan followed, fastidiously straightening his jacket. “I have a meeting today.”

  “With your banker?” Jack smirked.

  “Not exactly.”

  Any more answers were stalled by teeth brushing.

  “Then who?” Jack persisted on the way back to the living room.

  Pocketing Victoria’s key and slipping on his sunglasses, Ethan returned Jack’s smirk. “Perhaps it’s a surprise.”

  Jack frowned at his back as Ethan led the way out of the apartment. “For whom? I hope not for the not-exactly-a-banker person. Didn’t you say you retired?”

  Ethan’s chuckle was pure evil, and once more, answers were forestalled by Jack’s neighbour opening his door. As soon as it was wide enough, Mr. Cesare’s dachshund, Short Round, bolted out and aimed himself at Ethan’s feet.

  “Shorty!” Rocco Cesare scolded, stepping into the hallway.

  Ethan was already crouching, hands full of excited, yapping dog, so Jack reassured his elderly neighbour it was all good.

  “You’re off late this morning, Nishant,” Mr. Cesare commented while Ethan and Shorty reunited.

  Back at the start of his semiregular visits, Ethan had installed a security system in Jack’s apartment that met his requirements for feeling safe. In the process, he’d come into contact with Mr. Cesare and Shorty. Ethan and any animal were destined to be firm friends, and Jack suspected Ethan had allowed himself to be seen by the old man just so he could get his hands on Shorty. He couldn’t help but wonder how Ethan would react to Mr. Cesare knowing about his presence now, though.

  “Worked late last night.” Jack kept one eye on the pair on the floor. Shorty was on his back, stubby legs waving ecstatically as Ethan scratched his belly. “You guys going for a walk?”

  “Before it gets too warm. Hello,” Mr. Cesare added as Ethan stood, a happily wiggling sausage dog in his arms. “I remember you. You installed Nishant’s alarms.”

  Ethan smiled. “Yes, sir. Ethan Saint.” He held out a hand.

  Mr. Cesare shook his hand. “Rocco Cesare. Call me Rocco, and perhaps you can convince Nishant to do the same. Is that your Aston Martin parked next to Nishant’s noise machine downstairs?”

  Christ. A dog and appreciation of his car. Mr. Cesare was certainly hitting hard on Ethan’s weaknesses. Jack suffered through the gushing for a minute, then pointedly put his hand on the base of Ethan’s spine and pressed gently. “Don’t you have your mysterious appointment to get to? And I can’t be much later than I already am.”

  Ethan stiffened and stepped away from Jack’s touch. “Of course, Nishant.” His tone was pleasant, but he didn’t look at Jack as he handed Shorty back to Mr. Cesare. “Goodbye, Rocco, Short Round. Enjoy your walk.”

  Jack added his goodbyes to Ethan’s, then followed him along the hallway, down the stairs, and into the garage. By the time they reached Jack’s bike and Victoria, the tension had eased from Ethan’s shoulders, and he threw Jack a soft smile as he unlocked the car. As such, he caught Jack’s expression. “Jack?” He could imbue a wealth of information in the single syllable, and Jack had become quite the proficient interpreter over the past year.

  The garage was empty but for them. It was late enough most of the building’s inhabitants had long since left for work, and the small gym walled off at the back of the space was unoccupied.

  Satisfied no one else was within hearing, or striking, range, Jack said, “You seem to be settling in okay.”

  “I’m not completely socially inept, Jack.”

  “I never said you were.”

  Ethan pursed his lips. “Then what has you worried?”

  “You. I know you’re not used to this sort of exposure.”

  Looking away, Ethan lifted one hand to Victoria’s roof, as if he found comfort in the touch of her silky-smooth body. “You don’t know what I’m used to, Jack.”

  Guts shifting uneasily, Jack nodded. “True. So, this is normal for you? Living with another man. Being seen in public with him as a gay couple. That’s just everyday for you, is it?”

  Not for the first time, Jack wanted to take the sunglasses off Ethan. He wanted to see his eyes, look for something in them that would answer the question without Jack having to wait anxiously while Ethan worked out his escape route. Unable to deal with the silence, Jack barrelled on.

  “Mr. Cesare’s cool. He tried to set me up with one of his grandsons once. But not everyone is like him. Most people don’t care, but those that do tend to really not like seeing two men together.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Being aware of it is one thing. Being the subject of it is something else. I know you’ve never done this before. Have a relationship with someone. Live with them like this. Unless you were lying about that, too.”

  Ethan’s head shake was emphatic, the hand on the car curling into a fist.

  “That’s what I’m worried about. How you’ll feel knowing people don’t like you being with me.”

  It wasn’t just the gay factor, though. How would Mr. Cesare like it if he knew what Ethan used to do? Jack already knew what his workmates would think, but that was only one facet of his life. Until he’d let himself accept Ethan into his life, work had been his entire world. Now, he knew there was something beyond the Office. Something that could be just his. If he no longer had the Office, he wouldn’t be alone. But if Ethan decided he couldn’t deal with being in an “out” gay relationship, then Jack wouldn’t have anyone or anything left.

  And the longer Ethan wouldn’t look at him or say anything, the more Jack thought perhaps he would be alone, after all. A thought that hurt as if he’d been shot through the heart.

  Jack was thrown off his feet, and he crashed against the stairs he’d just come down. The sharp edge of the risers snapped into his armour, jolting his whole body. Despite the radiating agony across his chest and the roaring of blood through his ears, Jack heard the next shot, a muffled crack at the same time the cement by his head blew into shards. Instinct rolled him over and off the stairs, falling into the narrow space between them and the wall of the building. Another shot followed him, sparking off the wall as he dropped.

  Adrenaline flooded his body, and he scrambled into deeper cover. His USP was in his hand without a thought. Sitting up, Jack peered over the stairs. The shooter had to be somewhere in the alley
with him. Not on a roof because the angle of the shots had been too shallow. There wasn’t a lot of cover in the narrow, dead-end street. A couple of industrial bins and a car were parked at the far end. A fourth shot ricocheted off the brick a few millimetres to the side of Jack’s head and he dove back down, grunting as the motion set off another series of painful waves through his chest.

  Breathing through the discomfort, Jack called up the few seconds of footage his implant got of the alley and replayed it. In the split moment before he ducked down, he saw a small movement on the edge of the image. Focusing in on it revealed a blackened shape suggestive of the business end of a silenced rifle. The entrance to the alley was covered by an overhead carpark, its underside a cat’s cradle of girders and supports. The shooter was up there, nestled into the deep shadows with a rifle.

  Shifting around to get a line of sight on where he’d glimpsed the rifle, he wondered if it was Ethan up there, and what Jack would do if he scored a hit. Actually hitting the target would be a bloody miracle, and either way, Jack was pretty sure it wasn’t Ethan. The man he knew wouldn’t have wasted his first, surprise bullet on a body shot. Or missed on the follow-ups.

  Jack, unconcerned about the noise he made, fired off three rapid shots into the girders. They boomed in the confined space, echoing off the walls. One bullet sparked off a metal strut, and within the shadows, a darker shape jerked and rolled over a precarious perch across several horizontal bars. Jack didn’t think he’d scored a direct hit because a second later, the subject returned fire, three more shots, and then three more, the timbre deeper. He or she had emptied the rifle and moved on to a larger-calibre handgun.

  Waiting out the volley, Jack dug a smoke grenade from his jacket pocket and, when he got a chance, raised up and fired with one hand while pulling the pin with his teeth and tossing the grenade with the other. It hit the bitumen under the overpass, and smoke bloomed. Jack kept up a steady rate of fire while the white cloud grew to encompass the space under the overpass, billowing up into the girders.

  “Drop your weapons,” Jack called as he made an explorative move out of cover. If the assassin had thought to bring a gas mask and thermal goggles, then Jack was out of luck. “Come down slowly and surrender. Backup is already on its way.”

  Nothing. Not that Jack had expected anything, let alone compliance. But since “nothing” included no more gunfire, Jack made his slow, cautious way along the wall of the building, covering the smoke-shrouded girders. His chest and back ached, but the armour had done its job, thankfully, even if the weight on his abused torso was now more annoying than ever.

  “Identify yourself,” he tried, still not disappointed when he got no answer.

  By the time he reached the covered passage, the smoke had dissipated enough he could see up into the girders. They were empty. Following through to the entrance of the alley, Jack saw a dangling rope hung over the side of the carpark. It twitched once as the escaping subject disappeared over the edge.

  In the distance, sirens were wailing and getting closer, undoubtedly called by someone, or many someones, in the surrounding buildings. Not wanting to get caught up in official business, Jack hurried back to the bike and made his own hasty getaway. As he sped down the road, he contacted Lewis.

  “Several cars are heading your way,” his friend said by way of a greeting. “There were eight reports of gunfire. Someone found you, I presume.”

  “Yeah,” Jack thought back to him. “Contact was made in the lane behind the Oaks Goldsbrough. First shot from the other party.” Coolly, Jack made his report so Lewis could pass it on to the appropriate authorities and answer their most immediate questions. Anything more than that would be subjected to a “need to know, and you don’t” line.

  “Did you get a look at them?” Lewis asked when he was done.

  “Just the wrong end of their gun and the underside of their shoe as they disappeared over a wall above me. It wasn’t Blade, though.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m still alive. He wouldn’t have missed under those circumstances.”

  “Good to know. We got your package, and it’s with the lab right now. Should have a prelim on the blood in another hour or so. I have a location on the coordinates you found as well. You’re going to love it,” Lewis predicted in a wry tone.

  Jack’s sore stomach sank. “Where?”

  “The Cenotaph at Martin Place.”

  One of the oldest WWI memorials in Sydney. Whoever had left the coordinates on Jack’s mirror wanted him there, no fucking doubt.

  “We checked all CCTV footage around ten thirty last night and the night before. Nothing suspicious, so whatever’s happening there hasn’t happened yet. I’m about to mobilise a strike team to set up a watch—”

  “No.” Jack had to concentrate on getting through a slow patch of traffic and couldn’t immediately continue.

  In his head, Lewis waited a moment, then asked, “Why not? If you’re going to spring the trap, at least do it with a team there to give assistance.”

  Jack grumbled as he wove the bike between a couple of cars and found a clear stretch. “You even think too hard about setting up in Martin Place and they’ll know it, Lew. They won’t touch the place with a remotely controlled drone. Trust me. They’re operating at a level we can’t touch, as sad as it is.”

  There was a grinding silence on the other end of the line. Then Lewis muttered, “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I. I’ve got seven hours until then. I’ll think of something.”

  “Okay. I’m going to have three strike teams on standby here, ready to roll if it goes sideways. They can get there in seven minutes.”

  Knowing he couldn’t veto it, Jack agreed with a grunt and turned off the road into a parking structure. Easing the bike around the boom gate, he took the ramp going down. Before he lost the signal, he told Lewis where he was heading and what he needed; then the call cut out and he was alone with his thoughts and aching chest.

  First contact with the enemy was over and done with. About all he’d learned for certain was it hadn’t been Ethan. According to her JSL listing, Eve Garrote was as good a marksman as Ethan, but his fleeting glimpses of the shooter hadn’t been enough to tell if they were female or male. All things considered, Jack settled on it having been the Judge. Not every soldier in the SAS was a perfect shot. Very few of them were. They were better than average, but not extraordinary. And if the psycho was really starting to lose his grip on reality, then that might affect his skills as well. At least Jack could hope. Anything to give him an advantage over the bastard.

  On the lowest level of the carpark, Jack rolled the bike towards the corner furthest from the exit. The area was permanently unlit, covering any comings and goings through the access to the underground tunnel network. Swinging his leg over the bike, Jack winced at the sharp increase in the ache in his chest. He unbuckled the panniers, unwilling to leave them behind this time, and found the secluded door to the tunnels and pressed his palm to the hidden scanner. The door opened silently.

  Jack didn’t have long to wait. About ten minutes later, he heard the soft pad of someone approaching. They were singing the song Lewis had told him to expect, which was, of course, “One Night in Bangkok.” Still, Jack kept his USP out and ready until they’d confirmed IDs and the medic had produced her kit.

  The medic, Karen, was good at her job, restraining herself to a single “You really should come in and get this looked at properly,” before shutting up and assessing the damage done to his chest from the bullet and his back from impact with the stairs.

  “Nothing cracked as far as I can tell,” Karen informed him after a couple minutes of somewhat painful poking. “You’ll bruise up nicely and hurt like hell for a while. Arms up.”

  “About that.” Jack lifted his arms obediently so she could wrap a wide bandage around his ribs. “Can you give me something for the pain?”

  Karen gave him the look every medical person Jack had ever encou
ntered had perfected—the “my trained opinion is clearly wasted on lunatics like you” look—but after finishing with the bandage and helping him back into the armour, she gave him a shot that worked within a minute. Very reluctantly, since Jack’s medical file noted he only had the one kidney, she also handed over a green whistle.

  “For emergencies only. And if you need it, then you absolutely, no excuses, need an ambulance, anyway.”

  Jack tucked the three-milligram tube of anaesthetic into an inner pocket on his jacket. “Fingers crossed I won’t need it. Thanks for this.” He gingerly patted his ribs. It didn’t hurt and he tried standing, which worked rather well, so he headed back out to the bike. It was precisely where he’d left it and showed no signs of tampering. As he emerged from the underground carpark, he called Lewis again.

  “Any sign of Blade’s Aston Martin?”

  Jack didn’t really think Ethan would be using Victoria now. She was too conspicuous and the Office knew she was his, but knowing where she was might just give Jack a direction to head in.

  “Not even a hint. We’ve got a KLO4 on any black Vanquish, though. There aren’t too many registered in Sydney.” Lewis rattled off a list of names in case Jack recognised one of them as an alias Ethan might use. None of them sounded familiar or stood out as something Jack associated with Ethan.

  “Extend the KLO4 to cover any sort of supercar,” Jack suggested. “Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren. Anything that goes from zero to holy fucking shit in under five seconds.”

  Lewis swore under his breath. “Yeah, okay. Any ideas on where to look for him?”

  Jack turned the Interceptor to the west. “That’s my next objective. I’ll let you know if I find him.”

  “Let’s just hope you find him before he finds you,” Lewis said, deadly serious.

  Revving the engine, Jack roared away.

  Lewis could hope all he wanted that Jack found Ethan first. True to form, Jack had fucked up. He’d ruined every other serious relationship he’d ever had, why should this one be any different? All he could hope for right then was that Ethan still thought Jack was worth the pain.