Ghosts, Matt Rogers [reading the story of the .txt] 📗

he shared with Alexis and took a white custom shirt and grey Armani suit pants off their respective hangers. He tucked the shirt into the pants, both tight against his frame — a byproduct of focusing hard on adding a few pounds of rock-hard muscle over the last month — then slipped a matching grey Armani jacket over the whole thing. Gucci loafers went on his feet over thin ankle socks, and he decided to leave the shirt open at the collar with an extra button undone.

He eyed himself once in the mirror and went downstairs, satisfied with the visual package.

When he stepped into the kitchen, Violetta said, ‘You nailed it.’

She stood behind the kitchen island, hunched over a laptop she’d placed on the countertop.

Alexis was elsewhere.

King was still getting ready.

Slater mock-twirled on the spot. ‘Think I look sharp?’

‘You look like a crime boss,’ she said. ‘A wolf. Like I said — nailed it.’

‘Then I’ll fit right in at this shithole.’

She looked at him. ‘You doing okay?’

He didn’t immediately answer, and he hoped she understood. He’d always needed to switch gears to open up. It didn’t come easily to him. Before Alexis, before King, before the madness of the last couple of years, he’d been a loner. An unbelievably efficient operative, barrelling from one life-threatening situation to the next. Satiating the voices in his head with an unending stream of booze and drugs and women. He’d pursued each of his three vices with the same recklessness he’d pursued his work, which meant the stillness he’d found in recent history was well and truly out of the ordinary.

But his silence didn’t mean his answer would be grave.

There were far less demons in the basement of his mind than there’d ever been.

So he said, ‘Yeah. Doing great. You?’

Only four words, but this was not a superficial conversation. Each one had a purpose. Violetta recognised it, too.

She said, ‘I’m getting there.’

‘Understandable.’

‘This is new to me. The upheaval. Being a vigilante.’

‘You get used to it.’

She looked at him. ‘I can tell.’

He fell quiet.

She said, ‘Do you ever get un-used to it?’

‘I’ve never slowed down for long enough to find out.’

She nodded, pondering it. Then something caught her eye on the screen in front of her, and her gaze locked on with laser focus. She said, ‘Got him.’

‘Who?’

King stepped into the kitchen. He wore a size larger than Slater in everything, and that was no small feat. His suit was also tight, but he pulled it off. The jacket and pants were dark maroon, the colour of hellfire. Underneath he rocked the same custom white shirt as Slater, also open at the collar. They hadn’t even planned to coordinate. Call it a sixth sense.

Violetta said, ‘You two should dress up more often.’

King said, ‘For all the banquets we attend?’

Slater turned back to her. ‘Who’d you find?’

‘Armando Gates,’ she said. ‘The guy behind the curtain at Wan’s, according to King’s new friend Josefine. He’s a notorious pimp, but he’s never been convicted. Seems like everyone has a file on him but he’s still out there walking around. A street thug, through and through, but little more than that. There’s no greater conspiracy involving him. He’s just a bad boy.’

‘Could they send him away?’ King said. ‘If they really wanted to?’

Violetta narrowed her eyes, focusing hard on the screen. She used the trackpad to scroll. ‘I’d say so.’

‘Then you know what that means.’

‘Josefine’s going down for a kilo of coke,’ Slater said. ‘I think we’ve already established the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has a few bad eggs.’

‘Maybe more than a few,’ Violetta said, still scrolling.

‘That’s why we’re not going to tear Wan’s apart,’ King said. ‘No matter what we find.’

Slater said, ‘Why do I feel like that was directed at me?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Violetta said. ‘Maybe because of your track record.’

Slater allowed himself a half-smirk. ‘I promise to behave.’

King said, ‘She’s serious.’

Slater turned. ‘I know that.’

‘You might see things,’ King said. ‘Things that will make you angry.’

‘I know what you’re getting at,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll be fine. I can control myself.’

‘I hope so. We need to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.’

‘Don’t lecture me like I’m a child.’

‘You’re not a child,’ Violetta said. ‘You’re a man. A man who’s seen red before.’

‘And King hasn’t?’

‘This whole experience may be … tailored toward what you despise.’

‘I know,’ Slater said.

There were girls being sold, whether complicit in it or not. Slater’s mother had been sold, what felt like a lifetime ago. Taken by human traffickers, disappearing into the seedy underbelly of an unseen global industry, never to be heard from again. His father hadn’t been able to handle the guilt, the fact that he wallowed in fear and did nothing to try and find her. He’d checked out using his own gun a couple of years after it happened. Leaving Slater an orphan, chewed up and run through the system, until a certain black division of the government plucked him out of the military for a greater purpose.

The rest was history.

He said, ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Then let’s not waste time,’ King said.

Violetta didn’t approach them, didn’t try to initiate physical contact. It was easier that way. A certain detachment had to be there when an operation was imminent. There was no guarantee either of them would walk out of the unlicensed club alive. Frankly, Slater didn’t think a band of street thugs would pose much of a challenge, but that was the worst part about what they did.

It was unpredictable.

Violetta said, ‘Good luck. Don’t start a war.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ King said.

He made for the door.

Slater followed, eyes on his back.

Locked onto the dark red suit material.

He stuffed that colour down into the recesses of his mind.

Willed himself not to let it out tonight.

10

Right on time, a Bentley Flying Spur pulled into the estate.

It was a behemoth of a four-door, big and dark green, but it whispered up to the front porch making practically no noise at all. Alexis swung the driver’s door open and climbed out.