Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

right. Maybe being the sacrificial lamb wouldn’t be the best outcome.’

He paused.

Thought about it.

Then said, ‘It helps that I’m awfully hard to kill.’

13

Slater saw every drink on every surrounding table.

It complimented the Nobu experience. The prestigious restaurant, tucked inside the hedonistic wonderland of Caesars Palace, offered saké and craft cocktails that individually cost more than a couple of days’ groceries. The mood lighting was engineered to perfection. He and Alexis had a circular booth to themselves, and they gorged on king crab tacos, salmon sashimi, wagyu gyoza, rock tofu tempura, and yellowtail with jalapeño.

It was culinary heaven.

Slater wondered if the food would taste this good if the last few months of his life hadn’t been hell. The contrast seemed to be necessary. If every day of his life was filled with uninterrupted pleasure, then it wouldn’t be pleasure. It would all be the same monotony.

Alexis said, ‘Enjoying yourself?’

He smiled at her. ‘This is great.’

She was stunning. It made it easy to focus on her beauty instead of that ever-present temptress that was the drinks menu. She wore a simple Balmain minidress, one of the few designer pieces she owned, and it fit her physique like it had been tailored to every inch of her frame. She was something to behold in a low-cut dress. The gruelling daily routine she’d mastered over the last few months had moulded her into a fatigue-resistant machine, stripping every ounce of fat off her frame and accentuating the functional muscle. She was slim, strong, and lethal. She’d been in shape before she met Slater, but the slow transformation into a vigilante operative had built off that solid foundation.

She sipped her saké and said, ‘Jason’s become a domestic husband. And he’s doing a damn fine job of it. Rewriting decades of conditioning, I’m sure.’

‘I know,’ Slater said. He sipped water. ‘You know, I don’t mind it.’

‘No more coaxing him into operations, then?’

‘I did that in Nassau, thinking we’d be roughing up a small-time gangster. If I’d known what it’d lead to, I might never have tried. We put Violetta in danger. That baby growing in her womb is more important than any of us.’

‘Have you thought much about what happened in Wyoming?’

He looked at her curiously. ‘Which part?’

‘Are you sticking to your guns?’ she said. ‘Still avoiding the news?’

‘You’re with me all the time. Does it look like I’m watching the news?’

‘I’m not with you every waking moment. There’s opportunities to slip off to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, Google “Mother Libertas.”’

She winked at him, indicating she was half-joking.

He said, ‘Yes, I’m still sticking to my guns. That’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down. Have you looked?’

‘One time.’

‘Anything of note?’

‘Just reports of a massacre in Thunder Basin. Six dead, apparently. That’d have to be the Riordans, Elias, that Grayson fellow in the church, the guy who ambushed—’

‘Alexis,’ Slater interrupted. ‘Let’s leave the past in the past.’

She said, ‘But what about Dane’s source?’

Slater cocked his head.

She hunched forward, lowering her voice so there wasn’t a chance it could float to other tables. ‘They knew who we were. Our full names. What you and King used to do. What position Violetta used to hold. How did they get that information?’

‘Dane told us,’ Slater said. ‘He had an asset embedded in the intelligence community.’

‘And you just want to let that go?’

‘Absolutely,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not dipping a finger back in that world. It’s a cesspool.’

‘But if they know who we are—’

‘Knew,’ Slater said. ‘They’re dead.’

‘Their contact isn’t.’

‘Their contact has our files,’ Slater said. ‘That’s it. The whole espionage community has our files. It’s nothing important.’

‘There’s someone in government black ops who’s devoted to Mother Libertas. I was never in the intelligence community, obviously, but isn’t that a red flag?’

‘Mother Libertas doesn’t exist anymore,’ Slater said. ‘It was a grassroots movement, and we crushed its leadership. It got the attention of the mainstream media, who highlighted how ridiculous its beliefs were, and now it’s fizzled out into a joke on the Internet.’

‘So you have Googled it.’

Slater shook his head. ‘I just know how the world works. Momentum works in both directions.’

Alexis said, ‘But this asset … if he was motivated…’

‘What’s there to motivate him? Maeve’s persuasions were his addiction, and she’s dead. The money’s gone, so the river of Bodhi has dried up. This “asset,” if he really was a believer instead of a simple drug addict, would have gone through painful withdrawals and realised he was an idiot for believing in the cult in the first place.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But what if he’s still got a supply, and still believes?’

‘Then, even still, he’s got nothing,’ Slater said. ‘Besides our files, which don’t have anything on our current location.’

‘But if he knew we destroyed the cult, and he was motivated by revenge…’

‘You think the government as a whole isn’t motivated to find us?’

‘It’s different if he thinks we killed his gods. And he knows we were in Thunder Basin.’

‘There’s nothing there, Alexis.’

She shrugged. ‘Just making sure.’

‘We take enough precautions. The estate’s a fortress because of Violetta’s … well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “paranoia.”’

She smiled. ‘I know.’

‘I love you.’

She paused. Took a moment to relish the sound of the words. He didn’t say them often. He usually just showed he loved her through his actions, not empty platitudes.

She said, ‘I love you too.’

The table rattled as someone stumbled into it, knocking the edge with their hip.

Alexis jolted, and Slater looked up into the eyes of a tanned Hispanic man with a mane of curly black hair flowing down to his shoulders. His expensive suit hung open at the collar, one button too many undone, and his eyes were black and beady. He was in impressive shape underneath the suit but his eyes were cloudy with drink. He was in his early thirties, probably an investment banker or a venture capitalist with money to burn if he was so comfortably inebriated in an establishment like this. He had no concern for the venue’s