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

time Slater had spent firing the shot to spin him around like he weighed nothing. Then he pinned his arms to his sides in a crushing bear hug and lifted him off his feet. Slater felt the man’s slick blood all across his back. He was bleeding heavily. But that didn’t stop him taking an athletic step to the right and swinging Slater into the wall.

Slater hit it chest-first, caving the panel in, and his face bounced off the broken plaster. Nausea immediately swelled in him, his delicate nose flaring with agony.

Zircon dropped him in a thunderous heap at his feet.

Slater coughed blood and fished around for his SIG, his hands slapping the floor all around him.

Zircon stamped a boot down on Slater’s forearm.

Slater looked up at him. The big man was pouring blood. There were two entry wounds in his torso — one through the right side of his chest, and one through his ribs. He was a dead man walking.

Just not yet.

And that’s really all that mattered.

Zircon saw the SIG, inches out of Slater’s reach, and grinned. His lips were bloody, yet Slater hadn’t struck him in the face. Internal bleeding. Another sign of imminent death.

Still didn’t matter.

As Zircon bent down with a wince and picked up the SIG he muttered through red teeth, ‘Where’s your other half?’

King stepped into range and cracked him square in the forehead with a cocked elbow.

It turned him off at the power switch.

Zircon pitched backwards and hit the opposite wall across his upper back, tearing straight through it. He came to rest in a grotesque heap, half inside the wall, half out. Crimson everywhere. All over the walls, all over Zircon. He’d bleed out before he returned from consciousness.

Game over.

Slater blinked twice so he could focus on King standing over him.

King had his SIG drawn, gripping it with his good hand. It was the same arm he’d used to throw the elbow.

Slater’s eyes asked a silent question through his haze of pain.

King turned and regarded Zircon with a disgusted grimace. The big man had already expired. Even on the floor, Slater could tell the lack of movement was permanent.

‘Would have been a waste of a bullet,’ King answered.

He tucked the SIG away, pulled Slater to his feet, and helped him hobble away.

They limped past Jada’s huge corpse on the kitchen floor.

Slater said, ‘You can read people, huh?’

40

‘What the hell was that?’ Alexis said as they sped away from Jada’s abode.

King said, ‘What did it look like?’

‘So they’re pop-ups at some freak carnival now?’ Alexis asked. ‘They spring up from the ground when we least expect it?’

King didn’t answer. He was wired, everything focused on suburbia flashing past out the windshield. Any hint of a pursuit, any inkling of backup, and he’d go at them like he was juiced to the gills. Realistically the hunters could blockade the exit to Vermillion Avenue, trapping them in the street. Its teardrop shape would help them bunker down for a firefight, but they knew nothing of the neighbourhood.

They’d probably lose.

Her foot all the way down on the gas, Violetta said, ‘Where’s the rest?’

Slater moaned from the rear seats.

Violetta glanced at King. ‘He’s bad.’

Alexis shouted, ‘What do we do?!’

King said, ‘Airport.’

The four passports were scattered across his footwell. He’d collected them on the way out and thrown them into the Ford before he leapt in himself. Violetta hadn’t addressed it, too focused on getting a fast start, but now she said, ‘You’re joking.’

‘They have us,’ King snarled. ‘The estate, and now St. George. They’re closing in. We can’t go back to the safe house. At the very least they know what we’re driving.’

‘So we take the car they know we’re in straight to the nearest airport?’

‘No,’ King said. ‘Double back to Vegas. We’ll use McCarran International.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘They’re still spread out. Otherwise they would have surrounded the house. We wiped out a decent chunk of the SAC team at the estate, so right now it’s individual hunters winging it. Jada mustn’t have given them much time. When she called, Zircon was all they could get to Utah in time.’

‘None of that addresses the fact we’d be walking back into their hands.’

‘Get Alonzo to dump false information into the feed. Get him to tell them we’ve been sighted on five separate roads around St. George. What little they have left in Vegas will be packed up and shot up I-15 to Utah.’

‘And the car?’

‘Pull over here.’

‘Jason—’

‘Do it.’

She stamped on the brakes. Before the car had even slowed to a crawl he was out, shouldering his door open with his good arm, ignoring the jolt that transferred through to his left side. His soles caught traction on the asphalt and he used the running start to barrel up the driveway Violetta had stopped alongside.

He intercepted the woman in her thirties as she was hauling grocery bags out of her trunk.

The woman sensed the barrage of movement and spun just as he came up with his SIG, pressing it to her temple. She almost fainted at the touch of the cold steel on her skin.

He said, ‘Don’t talk. Listen. I represent a faction of the Sinaloa cartel here in Utah. I own the local sheriff. I’m taking your ride. If I catch wind that you call the police anytime before midnight, I’ll come back and kill you and that small child I saw run inside just before. Do you think I’m lying?’

Bone-chilling silence.

He lowered his voice and said, ‘Answer.’

‘N-no,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t think you’re lying.’

Her voice wavered up and down in octaves. Fear was making her heart thud triple-time. The small vein in the side of her neck pulsed.

King said, ‘Midnight. Tonight. You report the theft, you get the insurance money, and I’m in the wind.’

Her face twisted in anguish, and it made him hesitate.

He asked, ‘Are you insured?’

She nodded, and he realised it was just terror giving her strange facial expressions. He hadn’t held a civilian at gunpoint in quite some time. The messier details had