by Logan Ryles
“Who are you, Salvador?”
Was he the head of the snake, or just another piece in a massive machine? Nothing about the events of the last four weeks felt like the manipulations of a single man. If Reed knew anything about the criminal underworld, it was that nothing was ever as it seemed, and there was almost always another layer of puppet masters behind every fiendish action. Salvador was most likely just a boss, calling the shots on behalf of a bigger boss, and so on. The only way to know was to find him.
Reed stuck the list of names to the wall in front of the bed. One at a time, he taped each picture, note, and news article to the wall. Headlines documenting the events in Atlanta hung beside campaign photos of Mitch Holiday and charts outlining the structure of Oliver Enfield’s criminal empire.
Reed stepped back and rubbed his chin, staring at the mess of data. He drew in a long sigh and turned to Baxter. “We’re gonna be here a while, boy.”
The dingy room was quiet, and though Baxter lay on the end of the bed with his eyes closed, Reed knew he wasn’t sleeping. The old dog never slept without snoring, and now his breaths came in gentle wheezes between his teeth.
He’s in so much pain.
Reed’s eyes stung, and his head felt numb. He tipped the beer bottle and drained it, then tossed it on the floor next to half a dozen others. The carpet, a worn pattern of green with red flowers, blurred out of focus, and Reed didn’t try to blink his way back into clarity. The flowers were dyed into the carpet’s fibers, now flattened by years of dirty feet. He imagined he could see the bacteria and grime clinging to each twisted strand, crawling toward the beer bottles like an army of disease.
He embraced his headache and nausea. It was probably hunger, but he didn’t have an appetite or any desire to leave the hotel room. A part of him wanted to stay there forever, lie back on the bed, let his mind drift into oblivion, and let them find him a week later.
Kelly. He saw her seductive smile as bright and dangerous as the first day he met her. He remembered that moment so clearly it almost felt real, as though it were happening right in this moment, here in his mind. Reed exhaled, savoring the memory. He could still feel the hot Mediterranean sun on his face, flushing his skin red as his heart pounded and sweat streamed from his face. The place was Monaco; the date was sometime in June of 2016. It was a memorable date because it was his first international contract. A casino drug lord crossed the wrong hombre back in Mexico City, and that hombre hired Oliver’s company to settle his score. Oliver dispatched Reed. It was Reed’s sixth hit, and in a lot of ways, it was the trickiest. Reed decided to conduct the kill by strangulation, inside the drug lord’s penthouse, high atop a downtown tower.
Everything went perfectly, right up until nothing did. There was a prostitute in the penthouse, and even though she was high as a kite on some narcotic, Reed knew she would remember everything. He had hesitated over the bed, staring down at the slain mob boss, then turned toward the prostitute with the choke wire still dangling between his fingers.
That moment of hesitation almost killed him. His original egress plan had been to take the service elevator to the bottom floor, hijack a car, and make his way to the coastal town of Cannes. Oliver would extract him via a charter boat two miles off the coast—a difficult but manageable swim. In the years that passed since that pivotal moment, Reed often wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t spent those crucial twenty seconds standing over the prostitute, struggling to decide whether he should kill her. Maybe he could have dodged the security officers who came barreling through the penthouse door with their guns drawn. Maybe he wouldn’t have been shot in the arm or forced to hurl himself out of the balcony window. It was two hundred feet to the hard concrete below, and the only thing that saved his life that day was a series of street-level canvas awnings that broke his fall. Even so, his arm and two ribs broke on impact, rendering every breath total agony as he fought his way to the parking garage, his vision bloodshot and his head swimming.
And that’s when it happened. He slammed into Kelly at the same moment she burst out of a service door and skidded toward a cherry-red Ferrari Spider 458. She wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over her dark hair, and a face mask covering her mouth and nose. When their eyes locked, a recognition of criminal kinship instantly registered in their eyes, and Kelly didn’t hesitate.
After a quick manipulation of the ignition wires on the Ferrari, she jerked her head toward the passenger seat and slammed the car into gear. “Let’s roll, kid. We’re in this together now.”
Reed piled into the car without question, ignoring the flashing red flags that erupted throughout his mind. Kelly stomped on the gas and piloted the vehicle out of the garage and onto the street. French police cars were already barreling toward them from all directions, but they didn’t stand a chance. The shiny red supercar slid in and out of alleys, screeching around apartment buildings, and leaving the squad cars in a shower of golden Mediterranean sand.
Reed had never seen a woman drive like Kelly. With every twist of the wheel, her eyes shone as though she were a kid on a pony, working the paddle shifter with the grace and agility of a practiced master—a true racer.
A tear escaped him as he recalled the wind whipping through the windows, tearing at their hair.
Ten minutes later he passed out from blood loss, remaining unconscious until he awoke in a hut buried deep within the French countryside. His wounds were stitched, his ribs braced, and Kelly sat beside him, watching the sun set over the gleaming outline of the supercar.
Her hood and mask were gone, exposing the sharp curves of defined features—a small mouth, a sharp nose, and high cheekbones. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional way, but in that moment, Reed had never seen a woman so gorgeous.
“That’s not your car, is it?” He asked.
Kelly faced him with a broad, childish grin. “It is now.”
Reed allowed the tears to drain over his cheeks as the memory faded back into the foggy mist of the past. The months that followed with Kelly were a whirlwind of encounters around the world, carefully orchestrated to mesh with her car boosting and his assassination schedules. He never asked her about her curious career, and she never asked about his. From the start, they both knew it wasn’t meant to last, but for an instant, he hoped it would.
He remembered Kelly’s gentle words after the literal train wreck in Atlanta. “I would have married you if you weren’t such a scoundrel.”
She had left her successful career as a supercar thief after she found faith—some form of Christianity. He didn’t understand it, and at the time, losing her to this strange, legal lifestyle ripped deeper into his heart than a simple breakup would have, but looking back, he admired Kelly for making the jump that he only dreamed of—getting out, moving on, living a normal life.
And she almost made it. She was pregnant, had a fiancé, and enjoyed a quiet career as a nurse. She had it all, right up to the moment she was burned alive in her own home.
Reed put his feet on the floor and fumbled with the phone. The tears that stung his eyes made it difficult to dial. He put the phone on speaker and cleared his throat.
“Lasquo Financial. How may I direct your call?” Lasquo Financial was a bank of sorts based out of New Orleans, specializing in managing the financial needs of the criminal underworld. As a contract killer, that included Reed. He read off his memorized series of coded passphrases, then requested to speak to Thomas Lancaster, his personal banker.
“One moment.”
The hold music was gentle and soothing, but it couldn’t fill the void that shredded through his soul. It only made it feel deeper and wider, every musical note echoing off the canyon walls in his heart and reminding him just how dark and empty he felt.
“Reed, my boy. Good to hear from you.”
Reed swallowed and cleared his throat. “Thomas, thank you for taking my call. I wanted to check my investment balance.”
“Let’s have a look. As of close of busine
ss yesterday, you’ve got three-point-two million invested with me. And change.”
“That’s perfect. Can you cash out a million for me?”
“Um, sure. May I ask why?”
“I lost somebody dear to me. I want to send some money to their parents.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that, Reed. I can arrange it for you.”
“Could you make it anonymous?”
Reed could hear Thomas’s busy fingers already clicking at his keyboard. “You know I can, Reed. What I usually recommend to my clients in this situation is to let me mail the money to the beneficiary as a life insurance check. I can set it all up through a shell company, and they’ll be none the wiser.”
“That sounds great, Thomas. Thank you.”
“Of course. Just email me the names and addresses.” Thomas hesitated, and Reed heard tension in his breaths. “Reed . . . there is another matter. Something happened a couple days ago.”
“Yes?”
“A, um, gentleman came in inquiring about you. Small, South American fellow. Wanted to know about your recent spending, current location, etcetera.”
The words rang in Reed’s ears as facts with no emotional implication. What Thomas said should’ve concerned him, but he was too tired to be worried. “What did you tell him?”
Thomas snorted. “I told him what any self-respecting banker would tell a stranger inquiring about one of my clients. I invited him to go fuck himself.”
Reed tried to smile. “Thanks, Thomas.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get his name.”
“His name is Salvador, and I’m dealing with it. Thank you for letting me know.”
Thomas coughed, his tone returning to its traditional, all-business formality. “Of course, Reed. Let us know if there’s any way we can help. I’ll take care of that life insurance disbursement right away.”
Reed dropped the phone on the bed, then drew in a long, deep breath. He envisioned the flashing smile of the dark-skinned South American standing beside Oliver at Pratt-Pullman Yard, the first and last place Reed saw the man who called himself Salvador.
Regardless of whoever was behind this tangled mess of crime, deceit, and bloodshed, Salvador was to blame for what happened to Kelly. Her death, the death of her fiancé, and the death of her unborn baby were all on his hands. And Reed was going to roast him alive for it.
Six
4:28 p.m.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
State Capitol Building
“Madam Governor! A moment of your time!”
“Madam Governor, can you comment on your administration’s intentions concerning offshore drilling initiatives?”
“Madam Governor, has your cabinet reached any decisions with regard to a new attorney general?”
Maggie Trousdale stopped at the foot of the Capitol steps and turned to the crowd of reporters bustling in around her. The crush of bodies, the flash of cameras, and the clamor of voices overwhelmed her senses, igniting her trepidation about the office she had just been inaugurated to. When she first announced her candidacy for governor only fourteen months prior, she never imagined she would actually win. What business did a small-town girl from the Louisiana swamps have in running an entire state? She ran because she wanted to make a point—that corruption and bureaucracy had saturated her state for far too long, and that the new leader of Louisiana should be prepared to take on the challenges of Baton Rouge and the swamp of political mire it contained. She had no idea how strongly that message would resonate with the people of Louisiana, or how ferociously the citizens of Louisiana’s rural towns would rally around the prospect of electing one of their own.
But it did, and they had, and now here she stood—a thirty-one-year-old governor of one of the most culturally and legally unique places in the country—overwhelmed beyond her mind.
The state troopers who stood at her elbows closed in and held out their hands, barking at the reporters. “Stand back! Stand back now!”
Maggie sighed from exhaustion. It wasn’t yet noon, but she had already put in an eight-hour workday. She couldn’t remember her last shower, or whether she had eaten breakfast or not, but she wasn’t going to ignore the reporters. They were the mouthpieces of the people, and the people were the reason she took this damnable job in the first place.
“First of all”—Maggie raised her hand, quieting the crowd—“I want to restate my extreme sorrow and sincerest condolences to the family of Attorney General Matthews. He was a good man, a loyal servant of Louisiana, and an outstanding prosecutor. My cabinet is shocked by his sudden passing and will be providing state police and the Louisiana Bureau of Investigations every available assistance as they pursue an inquiry into his death. We—”
A reporter shouted over his colleagues’ heads. “Does that mean you believe he was murdered, Governor?”
“I didn’t say that.” Maggie faced him directly. “At this time, I have been advised by Lieutenant Colonel Jackson of the LBI that there are no indicators of—”
“Yes, you said that yesterday. Shouldn’t we know more by now?”
“As I stated already, we are not—”
A new reporter broke in. “Who will be your replacement?”
Maggie felt her cheeks flush, and she bit back the urge to curse. Enduring the constant interruptions and disregard for anything she was saying were an element of political pandering she was neither accustomed to nor predisposed to tolerate.
Instead of objecting, she decided to answer the question with a challenge of her own. “Ms. Simmons, isn’t it?”
The reporter nodded, tapping a pen on her lip.
“Ms. Simmons, are you at all familiar with the Louisiana Constitution?”
The crowd was quiet now, and several of the reporters shot Simmons crooked smirks. She didn’t answer, and Maggie cleared her throat.
“I thought not. If you were, you wouldn’t have asked that question. Per our constitution, anytime the attorney general’s office is suddenly vacated, the assistant attorney general assumes the office, unless the remainder of the attorney general’s term exceeds one year, in which case the governor calls a special election. Since Attorney General Matthews’s term extends another twenty-two months, I will be announcing the scheduling of a special election for a replacement within the week. You can direct all further inquiries as to the identity of the new attorney general to the people of Louisiana.”
Another outburst of questions blasted from the crowd. Maggie waved her hand and offered a tense smile. “That’s all for today, everyone. Thank you so much.”
She mounted the steps, turning back toward the Capitol. At four hundred fifty feet tall, Louisiana’s Capitol building was the tallest in the nation, rising above the streets of downtown Baton Rouge in polished white marble. In Maggie’s early days as a pre-law student at Louisiana State University, she often sat in the sprawling thirty acres of state gardens that surrounded the building and studied under its magnificent shadow. At the time, the building inspired her. It felt majestic, powerful, and secure. Now it only stressed her out—a pit full of political vipers, half of whom wanted to take her out as quickly and violently as possible.
Her shoes echoed on the marble floor as she crossed the main atrium and approached the elevator. Maggie never wore heels—she hated them with a passion. Most days she wore simple brown hiking boots, only adorning flat dress shoes when tradition absolutely commanded it. It was an odd choice for somebody who also had to wear dress clothes every day, but her supporters loved it. They called her Muddy Maggie, The Swamp Girl. One of their own.
As soon as the door smacked shut on her executive office, the voices began. Daniel Sharp, her lieutenant governor, rambled on about press releases and issues with the media. Yolanda Flint, her chief of staff, waved a handful of papers and entered meltdown mode over logistical problems for her visit to New Orleans the next day. Half a dozen aides talked at once, crowding around the board table and freaking out over ten different subjects Maggie di
dn’t care about.
“Everyone!” Maggie clapped her hands, and the room fell suddenly silent. She rubbed her temples and pushed out the mental clutter of the press conference. This wasn’t the time to join the mayhem. “I think it’s time you all had a break. Take a twenty and get some fresh air.”
Everyone exchanged tense looks, hesitating where they stood.
Maggie snapped her fingers. “That wasn’t a suggestion, people. Let’s roll.”
The aides began shuffling toward the door, and Maggie redirected her attention to Dan and Yolanda. “Not you two. We’ve got a call to make.”
The doors clapped shut behind the crowd of aides, and Maggie sat down at the head of the board table, pouring herself a tall glass of water, and sucking down half of it while Yolanda launched into her spiel about logistics.
“Yolanda.” Maggie tried not to snap. “I really don’t care. Just make it happen.”
“But what are you going to wear? I need to coordinate your appearance given the current nature of—”
“Yolanda. Did Governor Fields have to coordinate his appearance every time he set foot outside the Capitol?”
“Um . . .” Yolanda twitched and clicked a pen in her hand.
“No, he didn’t. And don’t tell me it’s because he was a man. We’re not coordinating a dinner party, we’re running a state. It doesn’t matter what I wear. Now sit down, and chill out with the details.”
Yolanda reluctantly settled into her seat, and Maggie finished the water. Dan sat down to her left, interlacing his fingers and waiting for Maggie to speak. That’s what she appreciated most about her lieutenant—he knew when to shut the hell up.
Maggie punched the speaker button on the desk phone and waited for her secretary to pick up.