Unleashed
Jordan Everett
Copyright © 2021 by Jordan Everett
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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
About the Author
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One
Kaden ushered good into the world by killing off the bad, but this bad was two hours late. She hadn’t been this bored in years, and laying in an uncomfortable, twenty-year-old truck didn’t help pass the time.
The truck hid among the other ratty vehicles dotting the street. The neighborhood, an unsightly blend of residences and factories, was considered abandoned by those who lived within the confines of the law.
Every time she heard a noise that wasn't a crow cawing, her head peeked out the dirty window of the covered truck bed, and moments later, lowered back onto the thick mat. Thank goodness she'd thought to request the mat. She rolled onto her back and sighed at the blackness of the campershell, only a few feet away from her nose. Voice muffled by a surgical mask, she said, "Benny."
"What's up?" he replied into her earpiece.
"I've been pondering Sub Rosa."
"Uh huh."
Sub Rosa was an online marketplace that allowed anyone to sell illegal products, and more inventory appeared daily. Guns, bombs, and every drug imaginable was available, although none of those bothered Kaden much. Only the sale of people—actual humans sold into slavery—kept her working as an assassin. Kaden had been trying to see the world in grayscale instead of in black and white, but no matter the perspective, human trafficking reeked of pure evil, hidden in ebony’s darkness. No amount of reasoning could change that.
Kaden said, "Why not find the vermin selling humans, hack the site to find their identities, and then I do this wonderful marathon hit where I crush all their skulls?"
Benny breathed hard into the mic, probably a chuckle. "Your dedication is likeable, very unique. However, Sub Rosa is on the dark web. We've got someone whose full-time job is monitoring the forums and taking notes. She makes friends and waits for people to drop revealing information. I can’t just hack it."
Kaden narrowed her eyes. "Can't the baddies drop fake information if they suspect a rat?"
"Unlikely. Josie doesn't act on things people reveal to her privately."
A slow crunching of tires on the uneven street made Kaden ignore the rest of his response. She rolled onto her belly and peered out as a purple minivan clanged, bottoming out through a pothole. It slipped into the driveway of an abandoned home fifty feet past her. The van contained a shipment of captives, and the abandoned home sometimes served as a station on the trafficker's journey to the buyer.
Kaden’s task included neutralizing suspected traffickers with non-lethal darts. Once the captives confirmed she’d chosen the traffickers, Kaden would wrap up the job with the revolver holstered to her back. Nowadays, Kaden disliked hits, but if she were forced to pick favorites, ones like this would top the list. Tear the oppressed free of their oppressors—the likeability was in the simplicity.
"Game time," she mumbled to herself.
She grabbed a rifle loaded with sleeper darts and poked the barrel from a hole in the window of the bed, cut for the occasion.
A man wearing a pine-green T-shirt walked around the rear of the van and slid open its door. Scum number one. From a distance, Kaden only made out his medium skin tone and stocky build. The driver, in a gray hoodie and stepping out, was the obvious Scum Two. She counted eight women and three men emerging from the back, already with postures caved in and chins pointing at the ground.
The group arranged themselves in a line on the path. As soon as they turned toward the front door, Kaden shot the driver, positioned at the back of the line, and before he hit the sidewalk, she shot the leading man, Scum One. She slipped from the truck bed and rotated her black baseball hat to shade her face while sprinting for the group, her footfalls pattering and careful on the pocked street.
One woman knelt, weeping. Others looked at Kaden with a mixture of shock and fear. They'd been through so much, and a woman in all black, including a black surgical mask, approached them with a rifle.
Kaden asked, "Anyone speak English?"
More frightened eyes. A small voice said, "A little."
A tiny fresh cut marred the woman's face, right above her eyebrow, and her frown lines were prominent.
"Who is holding you prisoner?"
The woman gestured to the men lying unconscious on the walkway.
"Anyone else?"
She hesitated before saying, "No." But with a shaking finger, she pointed to another woman at her four o'clock, who was looking everywhere but at Kaden. Scum Three?
Kaden stepped forward and grabbed the shifty woman by the arm. The others exploded into fright, shrieking and clutching their chests. Kaden shook her and said, "Mala?" Bad? She wouldn’t kill based on one stranger's word.
"No, no!"
"Cecelia!"
Kaden snatched the English-speaking woman and lifted an arm of both people.
"Mala?" Panic rose into Kaden's throat—mistaking the victims and perpetrators was unforgivable. How to say who again? "Quien?"
Half the crowd pointed at the English speaker, who began to struggle in her grip. Kaden popped a dart into her and let go. The woman crumpled while the other ran into the embrace of an older man.
Kaden said, "Bien?"
A few nods among the shocked and horrified faces. Good enough.
Kaden reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of twenties that added up to three hundred dollars. "Take the minivan and buy something to eat. Then call this organization, and they'll get you sorted and back home. Sound good?"
Kaden handed over the bilingual business card of Invisible Millions, a non-profit dedicated to stopping human trafficking. They’d help much better than an assassin could. The organization also happened to be an arm of Vigilant Citizens, the vigilante organization that Kaden now worked for.
The group huddled together, and they stood staring and probably reeling from the abrupt change in the course of their lives. But everyone was vulnerable until they were at Invisible Millions. That included Kaden, who had trash to dispose of, and quickly. She snapped, "Leave!"
The woman nodded and said, "Vámonos, mis amigos. Quien puede conducir?"
Something about leaving and friends.
A lanky woman replied and headed into the driver seat. While Kaden waited for everyone to shuffle back into the minivan, she noted the surroundings in the cloudless, bright day. A squirrel scampered across the street, but nothing else showed life as the van backed from the driveway. As soon as they turned a corner, Kaden pulled out her revolver and shot one man in the temple and the other in the forehead, the only way to make sure they never held anyone else captive.
As for the woman, Kaden couldn't decipher her role. Kaden was paid to kill, not judge, so she couldn't act with hazy details. She sighed, then stuck a second dart into the thigh of the woman. The gunshots would bring authorities, people who puzzled over innocence for a living. Let them puzzle over the remaining woman's innocence.
&
nbsp; Hopefully news of the traffickers' fate caused ripples within Sub Rosa, because she wanted their vendors to know that suppliers had been killed. The screen that vendors worked behind wasn’t an impenetrable shield.
Leaving the woman unsettled her, though. What if the woman was innocent and became a scapegoat? Somehow became worse off? Kaden huffed and moved on. Whatever uncertainty lay in the woman's story, Kaden had to scuttle away from the gunshots.
She grabbed the darts from the cooling bodies and raced from the scene. Not her smoothest, but she’d take it.
Kaden walked through a sterile hall, decorated with framed prints of fruit. The white laminate floor and light gray walls probably made the place more secure somehow, but it reminded her of a hospital, except with slightly musty carpets that needed replacing.
Vigilant Citizens funneled funding into personnel, mostly via equipment and systems to keep them alive. It was a respectable way to budget, and Kaden felt a smidge guilty that her attack on the complex had been so expensive for them. The monstrous investment in defense had worked flawlessly. While Kaden fought in an office near the entrance, a level hallway had lowered into a ramp to trap her underground, into a basement designed to kill. Kaden would've died of thirst at Cori’s whim, but instead, Cori hired her. Kaden went along only to fulfill a need to undo her dirty past. Once she helped dismantle Mr. Ng's parent company, she'd happily leave everything behind. In fact, Kaden browsed for condos in Fiji in her spare time.
"You sure hyped this up," Kaden announced as she walked into Benny's office. A faux window that simulated daylight cycles lit his office, the biggest in VC. That window helped to keep him cognizant to the time of day.
Benny looked away from the curved, triple-monitor setup and grinned at her from over his shoulder. "Good morning! Sorry to drag you here before noon, but I've got a surprise for you. It's on my workbench." He pointed behind him.
Kaden glanced apprehensively at his eight foot wooden workbench, covered with a nonsensical array of tiny electronic parts, circuits, wires, and open boxes. That row of tiny metal round things looked somewhat like Goose shells, but Benny refused to let anyone but Kaden use Goose, so that made no sense. Shows what Kaden knew about how he developed gadgets. Kaden's rule was three feet of space between herself and the table, because she was sure she'd touch something, then suddenly Benny mixes up equipment causing Goose to implode instead of shooting a deadly laser, leading to her death and the world's demise.
Benny was well aware of this completely rational fear, so she said, "You get it."
Benny rolled his eyes and himself across the floor, uneven tiles causing the chair to bump in rhythm. "Have a seat, stay a while."
She sat in the only other chair in the room as he rolled back to drop a flat and wide cardboard box in her lap. The package was something he'd ordered from Sub Rosa. She rattled it hard and regretted it immediately. After all, she'd been asking for electrocuting rounds for her small-caliber pistol. She slit the packing tape with a knife from her boot and tore it open with a snap. She smiled. In the box sat another box, colorful yet primarily orange and white. The little box read, in rainbow letters, “Kinder Eggs.”
She looked to Benny for any sign of recognition, and he laughed.
She said, "The hell is this? Eggs? I expected evil incarnate, and these eggs are claiming to be kinder. Are other eggs cruel?"
"Kinder Eggs are chocolate eggs with a toy inside. They're illegal in the United States because of the plastic within a food. The FDA is worried that little kids will gobble them up like they're part of the treat."
"The FDA agonized over awesome toy treat things? I think Spaghetti-Os are more dangerous than this."
"That's right. I want to eat one!" said Benny. He pulled the package onto his lap.
As Benny tore open the colorful box, he continued, "Sub Rosa sells anything illegal, not just crack and roofies and illegal swords. I saw this and couldn't resist. The European recipe is better, too. My aunt used to bring them over." The foil crinkled as he unwrapped it. He revealed a milk chocolate egg and said, "This is hilarious, though." He bit into the egg and showed her. "See? White chocolate inside. Have one!"
Kaden peered at the egg suspiciously. The supposed yolk was plastic, no doubt holding a toy. She crinkled her nose and said, "No thanks. I don't like white chocolate. White chocolate is not chocolate."
"Oh, don't be a party pooper. Be a criminal with me!"
"Very funny," she said. Being criminals together defined their friendship at this point, and neither particularly appreciated it. She stuck a hand out and said, "Fine." Kaden pulled back the foil while the melting chocolate smacked around in Benny's mouth.
"Chocolate eggs for breakfast," she said and bit into it. The candy was too sweet, but she nibbled more anyway.
"You're telling me," said Kaden, chocolate muffling her words a bit, "That Sub Rosa will sell anything. Literally, anything."
"Anything. Legend in the forums is that the owner started out by selling owls as pets."
They sat in silence while she finished her egg and Benny wiped out a second one. As soon as the last bit of chocolate coated her mouth, she opened the yolk and out fell a plastic figurine, a warrior.
Kaden said, "I'm glad that our massive compensations and the resources of this top-secret base are being put to good use. We're saving the world, one toddler's unobstructed windpipe at a time."
"According to boss lady, the whole marketplace is corrupt because it'll sell anything."
She balled up the foil and asked, "Seriously, this reinforces my position to only work on trafficking cases. Now that I'm not on a mission, tell me why you won't hack the site and blow it apart into pieces so small, they won't bother rebuilding?"
"It’s not that easy. Hackers rely on human elements to open doors. Emailing someone, claiming to be their bank and asking for their login information, works way too often for stealing passwords. People on the dark web have to be privy to scammers just to get there. I can probably weasel into the hosting services and wipe that, since no backups exist on the dark web. But, with the market's revenue, they'd rebuild in days. I'd attack again, and I'd waltz with them until they learned my style and locked me out entirely."
"Hacking sounds so dull."
"Compared to your job, everything's dull. Oh, I finished my homework."
“Yeah? Do tell.” When they’d agreed to join Vigilant Citizens, they'd taken Cori's word on operations. Even though the two worked in the same building and attended the same meetings as everyone else, they acknowledged that trust was in short supply, so Benny needed to use his newfound access to comb through all of VC. If they weren't sure they worked for the good guys, they would quit.
According to Cori, they gathered intel from all media sources and through Invisible Millions. If alerted to a case, they probed for more information until Cori understood it from all angles. She would decide to either let it go, hold it on the backburner, or intervene directly.
Most culprits deserving intervention held too many connections in high places, rendering them untouchable. VC held onto those cases, hoping circumstances would change. In fact, they rarely intervened—only if the depth of the criminal’s violations couldn’t be doubted. VC preferred to monitor issues as they solved themselves, or sometimes VC anonymously nudged police departments in the right direction. In that regard, they were private investigators with no client, working from their own whims.
That seemed like an ideal blend of measured justice, so Kaden prayed that Benny had pleasant news. She leaned forward, and Benny nodded curtly and said, "Cori didn't lie to us. The four they've killed were mighty unsavory. I recommend reading a few case files yourself."
"So this work is in the gray area?" That was the low bar for her last foray as a killer-for-hire. She would help VC, then she'd take a long vacation in Fiji, and finally she'd open a restaurant and become a normal member of society. Some days, the dream even felt obtainable, and she could imagine the warm Fijian sand between her to
es.
He said, "Let’s say dark gray." The baggies under Benny's eyes were huge.
Benny ruffled papers instead of looking at her. He seemed indifferent. They would give up their lives for each other, run to Mars and back for each other, but whenever the conversation became serious, lately their friendship seemed strained, and she couldn't pinpoint why. She sighed again.
All she said was, "You look tired."
He sat back in his chair and said, "I am tired, Kaden. I'm full time and then some. Since we deal in literal life or death, I have to be flawless, but I can’t when I’m run into the ground. I’m only human. Cori's letting me get an assistant, ’cause even she sees these bags under my eyes are at maximum capacity.” He ran his hand through his tight curls.
"Sorry to hear that, my friend. Let me know if I can help. I don't do much around here."
"You freed nine people from traffickers yesterday, but yeah, you don't do much."
They laughed together at the dark logic. Such was their life.
Kaden said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you. A few weeks ago, I hired your private investigator friend to find Aaron. She set up a meeting for next week."
Benny's face lit up. "I am so, so glad. She'll find him for sure."
Kaden looked away. "I refuse to let myself hope. It's a constant battle." But hope had seeded, making her vulnerable, her most despised state. She had not forgotten to tell Benny—mentioning the search solidified that she had hope, so she'd avoided it.
"At least you'll know. Oh no, I don't mean to be an awful friend, but I’m late for the meeting. Cori's adamant that everyone be there."
"Except me."
Benny locked his computer and popped his laptop from the dock. The room dimmed. He stood and said, "Like I won't tell you everything. Have as many eggs as you want." Holding his mug and laptop, he left her to study the faux window. Today, Benny had picked a scene showing a lush garden. She laughed at birds zipping by, then leaned over and plucked another silly egg from the box. Maybe Cori hadn't invited her as a favor. She'd rather be back in that boring truck bed than in a boring meeting.
Unleashed (End of an Assassin Book 3) Page 1