by Rhys Ford
“Well, it’s a good sign for me to pick up on, because it says you need to work it off. And I’m always up for a good run.” Kuro added the chunks of meat into the skillet. “Let me just throw this all together and go get a gun, then we can head out.”
“Really? We’re going to go running with a gun?” Trey scoffed. “Didn’t they take yours? How many do you have?”
“A lot less since your sister keeps taking them away from me,” Kuro shot back. “First, I’m not taking you out without being armed because someone is trying to kill you. And I’m going to have as many guns as I need because there is a whole lot of other stuff I still want to feed you, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure you’re here to make rice for me.”
“WE ARE running in circles,” Trey complained, panting a bit from the hard pace Kuro set. “Not exactly the kind of jogging experience I was looking for.”
Before his sneakers hit the track, Trey thought he was in pretty good shape. Then Kuro began to run alongside of him and that perception was blown out of the water. He thought he would have to set a slower pace, knowing Kuro’s hip was damaged and his body was scarred, but within a few minutes, Trey had to lengthen his stride to keep up.
To make matters worse, the bastard was wearing long cotton pants and wasn’t even breathing hard.
The fitness center was one of the million sleek buildings in Los Angeles featuring rows of weight machines and other torture devices scattered about two floors of toned, hard bodies working off the croutons of their lunchtime salads. They’d been hustled in through a back door off of the parking structure, taken past a room full of women doing hot yoga, the windows steamed up like a sauna. The man who met them at the garage was heavily muscled, his body barely contained by a pair of Lycra pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with the gym’s logo, and he paced around the freight elevator, glancing up at the numbers periodically while assuring them the running track on the second floor would be theirs for however long they needed it because it would be left closed off to the gym members until they were done.
It was a utilitarian space at its best, but obviously set up for hard-core training. The track itself was probably about a quarter-mile around, because the long run took up most of the second floor. In the center of the oval was an odd collection of square boxes and wide A-framed triangles with a few hurdles scattered in between. Trey thought it looked like a giant toddler dumped their building blocks into the middle of the room, some of the build-outs nearly tall enough to block out the opposite side of the track. Everything was painted a doldrum gray, but the track was a speckled black ribbon, hard enough to run on, but gave slightly beneath their feet.
“The walls aren’t very inspiring. They could have at least put up a mural to make it interesting. And why is the stuff we’re running on black? Is it supposed to be a road?” The track surface was a bit spongy despite resembling asphalt, and Trey had lost count of how many times they’d gone past the fire extinguisher by the service entrance, the one bright spot in the whole room. “I feel like we’re running in the world’s ugliest hamster wheel.”
“Did you forget the part where someone’s trying to kill you? And be nice to me or I’ll run you through the course. See how inspired you feel after climbing those frames.” Kuro veered a little, nudging Trey’s shoulder. It was enough of a hit to throw Trey off his stride, but he quickly recovered. “There’s nothing wrong with running in a gym. And since the guy who owns this place owes me a favor, it was easy enough to get him to shut this down for a couple of hours so we could run.”
“So you’re willing to inconvenience everyone else who wants to use this track during peak after-work hours so I can get a run in?”
“I would shoot anyone who wanted to use the track in the knee just so you can get a run in,” Kuro responded. “And you always run this slow? It must take you forever to get someplace.”
“Fuck off.” Trey laughed through a stitch in his side. “I’m pretty sure now they took you up to some sort of secret laboratory and replaced all of your bones with some kind of super metal. That’s why—”
He’d gotten too relaxed, felt too safe being around Kuro, because when the service door blew in, Trey froze, shocked by the sudden explosive boom of the solid metal door hitting the cinder block wall. It took him a second to realize someone was rushing through the opening, and it wasn’t until Kuro shoved him off the track and behind one of the obstacle boxes that he heard a burst of gunfire.
“Stay down and don’t get killed,” Kuro ordered, coming up with the gun he’d strapped to his ankle before their run. “We are going to end this right here and now.”
KURO HAD little hope of Trey listening to him. It’d been stupid for him to trust Dan’s staff, but it’d been a risk Kuro had been willing to take. Actually, he had no choice to take, because Trey was beginning to fall off the edge of his control and he needed to get out of the loft, peeling away the frustration and anxiety bubbling beneath his skin. The big guy who’d led them into the track had been nervous, glancing around even while they were in the elevator. Kuro assumed it was because Dan had given explicit directions to his manager about the track’s use, but now he realized it was because the muscle-bound idiot sold them out.
He didn’t question Dan’s loyalty. Kuro pulled that guy’s ass out of the fire more times than he could count, and everyone in the community knew Holly would have Kuro’s back. While he cultivated a levelheaded reputation, she was known to exact revenge for even the smallest of slights. Something like a familiar bald man breaching a secured room wielding a gun was definitely the kind of incident Holly would bleed someone over.
“I just want the kid!” the guy shouted as he aimed around one of the obstacle frames, blowing a corner off of the cube with a single shot. “I’ll leave the door—”
“I’m not a fucking kid!” Trey yelled back from somewhere among the structures. “I’m twenty-eight!”
Kuro cursed under his breath, knowing the man would be able to find Trey’s position after he yelled. Ducking, he scrambled through the course, using the more solid shapes to give himself some cover, but when he got to the spot where he thought Trey was, he found himself instead staring at a man he’d shot at before.
His hair was a little longer, grown out to a dark stubble, but his face with its memorable canted nose had been embedded in Kuro’s mind. Of the two men that night, he’d been the one who Kuro tagged as a professional. That opinion didn’t change in the split second they stood across one another, staring each other down. At first glance, the man’s dark clothing could have passed for workout gear, if one didn’t notice the ammo belt slung across his hips. Wearing a black tank top, he’d probably hoped to blend in with the gym’s clients, his bare arms nearly as thick as those of the weightlifter who’d brought them upstairs, but the similarity ended there. His body came from years of rough work, his large-knuckled hands blown out from punching flesh. There was an ugliness to the twisting of his mouth, an arrogant smirk plastered over his broad face, growing malevolent as he widened his stance and raised his gun to shoot a hole through Kuro’s chest.
That was the moment Trey came out from behind one of the A-frames and plowed his foot up between the man’s legs.
Kuro was on the move before the man’s knees hit the ground.
The Glock was a forceful weight in his hand when he brought it around, punching the man across the chin. The angle was wrong to hit the nerves along his jaw to knock him out, but Kuro’s next hit did the trick. Trey dropped away, dodging back down into the obstacle course, disappearing between two cubes. The guy was stubborn, refusing to let go of his gun even as his eyes rolled back. When his shoulder hit the thick mat in the center of the track, he tried to bring his weapon up one more time, wildly aiming its muzzle toward Kuro’s direction.
Kicking the gun out of the man’s hand, Kuro followed through with another punch, rocking his opponent’s head back into the padded floor. He hit hard enough the man’s skull bounced, and a firm thu
mp of bone connecting with the hard surface beneath reverberated through the air. There was blood on the man’s face, a trickle coming down from his nose, but the smirk was gone, probably wiped away by the first ball-bashing hit he’d taken.
Digging his knee into the man’s stomach, Kuro twisted a hand into his tank top, pulling the fabric together tight enough across the man’s throat to make him struggle to breathe. Pushing his left thumb against the criminal’s eyeball, Kuro gouged down, putting enough pressure to threaten but not enough to pop the soft orb beneath his pad.
“Who hired you?” Kuro growled. “Give me a name.”
He couldn’t believe his ears when the subdued man whispered who’d sent him, but the muttered name made everything suddenly fall into place. Another tap across the man’s chin took him down into the black, and Kuro caught up, shaking his hand as he went to retrieve the now-unconscious man’s weapon.
“Who sent him?” Trey asked, sliding out from between a pair of inflatable balance balls. “You know who it is?”
“I know who it is,” Kuro responded, a chill settling down in his blood. “And now I know who to go after.”
Nineteen
“DO YOU know how long it’s been since I’ve been on a strike?” Tatiana tied off her braid, wrapping a tight elastic around its end. It wasn’t difficult to hear the excitement in her voice, even as she spoke around a mouthful of the knitted beanie she’d clenched between her front teeth. “I mean, I’m not ungrateful for the old man. He keeps me busy enough, and a lot of people hate his guts, so I have to stay on my toes, but I haven’t seen real action since I left the agency.”
“That is not a ringing endorsement for me to drag you along on the run,” Kuro replied, checking the ammo in his clip. He’d done a full rundown of his equipment in the apartment, but it never hurt to double-check, even in the close confines of the Challenger’s front seat. “Don’t make me second-guess this.”
Predictably, she rolled her eyes, muttering out the side of her mouth, “Please. Who else would you ask to go on this? Aoki? He is one teddy bear away from being the comic relief in a Korean War sitcom. And Bishop Three can barely wipe his nose without help.”
“I’ll give you Aoki,” Kuro conceded, cocking his head. “But you’re selling Trey short. He took down that guy in the gym. Or at least incapacitated him enough for me to punch his lights out.”
“He shouldn’t have come out at all,” Tatiana tsked. “You’re getting soft, Blackie. There was a time when you would’ve punched him in the face to knock him out so he would be out of the way.”
“You forget we didn’t work for the same agency. Not my style, Boom Boom.” He caught her sidelong glance, returning it with a sheepish grin. “Okay, maybe I did that once.”
“Markov’s nose was never the same again.” She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “And he’d been so pretty before. One might think you were jealous of the competition.”
“Markov and I were never in competition with each other. He’s straight.”
“Wrong competition.” Her grin was wide enough to make a Cheshire cat envious. “It was always a toss-up who was prettier until your fist took care of his face.”
Kuro thought he was too old and jaded to blush, but it was a definite burn across his cheeks. Exhaling between his clenched teeth, he slid his Glock back into its holster. “You about ready to go?”
“How do you want to play this?” Tatiana tucked her braid under her beanie, craning her head down to peer out of the car’s front windshield. “You said you can’t guarantee the layout. How blind are we going in?”
“Pretty blind, but we’ve got one thing going for us. Our target is as paranoid as hell.” Kuro offered up a pair of sleek black gloves to Tatiana. “Here. I brought some for you. They fit like skin, and you won’t even feel them.”
“You always had the very best toys,” Tatiana murmured, taking the gloves from Kuro. “Can I keep them when we’re done?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see if we can get what we came for. Then we can negotiate,” he suggested. “But I’m leaning towards yes. Just don’t get killed. I don’t want to bury you in them.”
What he was planning had been tried before, but Kuro had something others didn’t—a banked rage and a fairly good knowledge of the grounds.
The curved streets and the infrequent streetlamps provided enough cover to hide them from curious eyes, the soft pools of light pouring down onto the road much dimmer than the rest of the city to avoid bleeding up and ruining the night sky for the nearby observatory. It was quiet up in the hills, a different world from where Kuro grew up. He’d cut his teeth—and feet—on the glittering streets to the east, barking his knuckles on hard heads and ruthless assholes. What he was going to do in a few minutes would violate every scrap of respect he’d earned along the way, damaging relationships he’d made over the years.
Was Trey worth it? That was a question he’d only pondered once… right before he opened up his gun safe and grabbed a pair of Glocks to take with him, shooing the cat out of the way before he shut the door on her tail.
“You ready?” Tatiana grunted, checking the fit of her beanie in the car’s rearview mirror. “Because I left my girlfriend back at your house and I’d like to get home before midnight.”
“She turn into a pumpkin or a mouse?” Kuro shot back, chuckling at Tatiana’s lifted middle finger. “They’re over at Trey’s place, remember? He wanted to get some clothes.”
“Is he tired of wearing your old rock-and-roll shit, Blackie?” She stuck her tongue out at him when he returned her gesture. “Are you sure it’s healthy, him staying with you? You’ve known each other for what? Three days?”
“Months,” he corrected. “And I like having him with me. Better than him being with the two of you. Kimber would shoot him before breakfast.”
“Twice,” Tatiana confessed. “She has… issues.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he agreed. “Okay, let’s go. Just remember, no killing unless you have to. There’s only so much cleanup we’re going to get on this.”
“And here you said I could have fun,” she snarked. “Fine, but you’re buying me a milkshake on the way home. Chocolate.”
They went in hard and quick, slipping in through a break in the wall near the garage. Kuro exploited every weakness he knew, holding Tatiana back in the shadows while he crept up on the large dark shape of a bodyguard hovering near the house’s back entrance. There were flaws in the security detail’s coverage, notably the abundance of thick man-wide columns spanning the rear of the ostentatious structure, but those design mistakes were exactly the sort of thing Kuro loved to exploit on a job.
Or at least he had loved. On this one, it was too personal, too close to his own skin, and as much as he was willing to dive back into his old life, he was only doing it because his new one was in danger of collapsing around him. It was too easy to slip back into old habits, like wishing he had something stronger than a horse tranquilizer to stab into the man whose neck he wrapped his arm around and wrestled to the ground.
“Come on, don’t fight me,” Kuro murmured, slowly holding the man down until the drug took hold. “Be glad I’m not using chloroform. That shit takes five minutes to work.”
Gurgling, the man battled against the effects of the sedative, thrashing about in Kuro’s arms. His shoulder began to throb, a not-so-subtle reminder it’d been spackled together with staples and bits of metal. Then a flailing elbow caught him right in the ribs, nearly unseating his tight grip.
“Could you hurry this up?” Tatiana hissed from her position against the outer wall. “What’s taking you so long? Do you need me to do it?”
The man took one final heaving breath, then collapsed, nearly throwing Kuro off balance. Bracing against the dead weight pushing on his chest, Kuro slowly lowered the man down to the ground, then rolled him over to tuck him into a niche against an enormous planter bristling with ferns. Brushing his hands clean, Kuro stepped over the guard
’s legs, listening for movement in the house.
“Get the door. I’ll cover you,” Kuro whispered at Tatiana after she slunk up next to him.
He’d have preferred to run a silent mission, but they didn’t have time to work out hand signals, and since they’d worked for opposing agencies, he had little faith they shared a common gesture reference. Drawing his Glock out, Kuro kept close to Tatiana’s heels, sweeping his attention back and forth to watch for any other guards walking around the area.
Tall hedges separated the properties, but Kuro spotted lights through the thick copses. The U-shaped mansion cradled fountains and gardens in its gentle curve, with a colonnade following the line of the building, providing some cover from Los Angeles’s nonexistent rain. Tall picture windows and french doors made up most of the lower floor’s exterior wall, giving the illusion of easy access, but Kuro knew better. The panes were bulletproof and wired up to an alarm system that would bring archangels and hellfire down on them should it go off.
He couldn’t see any movement through any of the windows around them, but most of the lights were dim or the drapery was too thick to let any illumination escape. They’d avoided a bank of floodlights coming in, and the security guard was on a half-hour route, only intersecting another guard on the opposite side of the house, far away from their entrance point.
The short recon they’d done was sloppy, a good enough job for a quick hit, but Kuro’s stomach knotted tighter with each step he took. Standing behind Tatiana with his gun up, he listened to her work the lock, then swear a streak of icy Russian under her breath.
“What’s wrong?” There was movement in the bushes as the wind picked up, sweeping through the canyons around them. Parroting her words right back at her, he asked, “What’s taking you so long? Do you need me to do it?”