Ciphers, Matt Rogers [a court of thorns and roses ebook free TXT] 📗

Not old enough to stop doing it — its allure was undeniable — but something he couldn’t put his finger on had been nagging at him for a long time, and now he understood what it was.

The chaos of life.

He’d never truly felt it. He’d caught snippets of it from time to time, but most of his raucous behaviour was carried out in a controlled environment. He was the golden child, after all, and his father understood that. There was a lot of leverage to be exploited if one of Guzmán’s rivals kidnapped his son. So the sicarios and the bodyguards and the henchmen went with him everywhere, and they watched him drink and smoke and fuck his life away. It was odd to outsiders, but he’d become used to them always being there, always watching like hawks, always sober, never partaking.

So, really, the partying wasn’t too crazy.

Because there was never the potential for anything really crazy to happen.

Like tonight.

Rico had received a taste of the chaos inside Palantir. Even though he’d been humiliated, stripped of his weapon and degraded in front of his own security, at least he’d felt alive in the process. Everyone thought he’d been skulking when he retreated to his booth after the bald guy had thrown him around like a puppet on strings. But really, he was savouring the adrenaline.

He was savouring the excitement.

So it clicked. He realised, The power’s out. We’re uncontactable. When am I going to get an opportunity like this again?

He eyed the sicarios.

They eyed him back.

He knew they knew.

But what were they going to do to stop him?

The eldest bodyguard said, ‘Don’t even think about it, kid.’

Rico was sick of it. All of it. Being told what to do, being told where to be, being told who to associate with. He might have listened to them if they’d been as loyal as puppy dogs. But they weren’t. They’d let the stranger humiliate him, and backed down from a fight. So he had no reason to hang around in their miserable company. They could fend for themselves and deal with the consequences when they got back to Mexico and had to explain to his father why he wasn’t with them.

He didn’t hesitate any longer.

He ran off down the alley and disappeared into the darkness, the remnants of coke and weed and booze still in his system, making him ambivalent to the consequences.

He heard his father’s men give chase, but he was genetically gifted with athleticism, and he used it.

He made it out into the busy street and vanished into the crowds of pedestrians.

Alone.

No supervision.

He audibly whooped with excitement. He couldn’t remember the last time there’d been nobody keeping tabs on him. He looked up and around, saw all the towering skyscrapers draped in shadow, like obelisks in the night. He’d never seen New York like this.

He’d never seen anything like this.

Savouring the anonymity of the crowds, he remembered the bag inside his jacket pocket, forgotten amidst the turbulence of the last thirty minutes. He hadn’t even thought about how he’d keep the party going, but now he gave thanks for it being there. Anything to delay the inevitable hangover. That’d ruin all the fun.

He took the small plastic ziplock bag out of his suit, opened it up, and dipped his pinky finger into the cocaine within. He was surrounded by people, but no one saw. Most of them had their phone flashlights firing, but the beams weren’t directed at Rico. They were aimed at the sidewalks beneath them, or up toward the sky. Almost everyone was awestruck by the dormant skyscrapers.

So when he scooped out a fingertip’s worth of the white powder and put it straight up his left nostril, no one batted an eyelid.

Even if they did see, no one would care.

Every socialite in New York City did coke. It wasn’t a special sight, not compared to what was going on all around them.

It hit immediately. He widened his eyes and rubbed another fingertip’s worth into his lower gums. He felt his heart beat harder in his chest, speeding up only slightly but thudding like it was turbocharged.

He smiled.

Life was good.

He was free.

He picked up speed, trying to find a quieter section of the city.

Looking for some trouble.

15

Slater stayed true to his word.

He bought two bottles of water from a street cart that had been hastily set up to accommodate the needs of the tens of thousands of people flowing out of buildings. The sidewalks were clogged with gesticulating civilians, and no one was getting anywhere in a hurry. Crowds had started to spill out into the roads themselves as everyone realised the gridlock traffic wasn’t easing up. It left drivers and passengers trapped in their cars, surrounded by hordes of pedestrians darting left and right across the roads. And this was just the start. Slater knew almost every vehicle in the city would be abandoned within hours. The reality was, no one was getting anywhere in these sorts of conditions. There were no functioning street lights. There were probably thousands of people trapped in elevators, so emergency services wouldn’t be focused on the roads.

No, for now, you could walk or you could sit in your vehicle with nowhere to go.

Already, people were locking up their cars and leaving them in the middle of the streets.

Slater sculled one bottle, sucking down twenty ounces of much-needed fluids, and then cracked open the second one. He dropped the first in a trash can and then broke into a jog, figuring his best bet was to sweat out some of the alcohol on the way back to the Upper East Side. It’d dehydrate him within minutes if he didn’t replenish his fluids, but he planned to keep buying water bottles along the way until his head stopped swimming and his equilibrium returned.

He had a feeling he’d need it.

It wasn’t comfortable, but nothing in his life was. He’d always favoured efficiency over comfort, and this was the shortest route to a clear head.

He kept