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

faded into distant memories. Her fear brought them back.

He said, ‘Say it back to me. Midnight. Tonight.’

‘Midnight,’ she said under her breath. ‘Tonight.’

‘Until then you sit in your house and watch some television and forget I exist.’

Another nod.

She was scared shitless.

He knew she’d follow orders.

He gestured to the idling Ford. Violetta spilled out first, all four passports sandwiched in her closed fist. Alexis followed. Together they rounded to the rear door and manhandled Slater out. With a shoulder under each arm they helped him limp groggily up the sloped driveway, brushing past the blonde woman to dump him across the rear seats of her car. The door was already open thanks to the grocery bags in her hands. The car itself was a mid-size Kia Optima, plain and suburban and anonymous, perfect for their requirements.

Violetta stood upright, arching her back, sucking in wind at carrying most of Slater’s weight. She turned and regarded the woman, then looked at King. ‘Should she be seeing our faces?’

King said, ‘Doesn’t matter,’ as he tucked the gun away. ‘By the time she talks we’ll be long gone.’

Even though he’d removed the main threat from sight, she didn’t budge an inch, seized by fear. She knew what he was capable of.

Or, at least, what she thought he was capable of.

The woman was smart. She swept damp locks of hair off her forehead, then stared King in the eyes. ‘Midnight. Tonight. You can trust me.’

‘Yes I can.’

He motioned to Violetta, who tossed him the keys to their Ford. He handed them to the woman, who gave him a reluctant, confused look.

King said, ‘Put our car in your garage, out of sight. Tell the authorities I made you do it at gunpoint. Or, if you prefer the Ford, never place the call to the cops in the first place. Consider it a fair trade.’

She glanced at the rundown second-hand Ford Explorer, then her shiny Kia in turn. Her voice infinitely feeble, she almost whispered, ‘I like my car.’

‘Then go get your insurance money,’ King said.

He swept past her and got behind the wheel of the Kia. Alexis, naturally magnetised to Slater, helped him into the back seat, and Violetta took the passenger seat. Alexis then got out and doubled back to collect the MP5s from the Ford. She lugged the submachine guns up the driveway and ducked into the Kia with them as the civilian woman watched in horror.

King threw the mid-sizer in reverse and gunned it out of the neighbourhood. The last image he caught in the rear view mirror was of the woman ducking behind the wheel of the Ford, fishing for the ignition.

It was reality. People like King and Slater could afford to be heroes. They had very few personal attachments, even fewer possessions, and a devastating skillset to boot. This mother had a child to protect, and there was no withstanding the might of the Sinaloa cartel.

In this situation, she was brave to obey.

Bide her time, learn from the experience, and live to fight another day.

Violetta said, ‘She’ll call right away. We’ve barely bought ourselves more time.’

‘She’ll call at midnight,’ King said, barreling back toward I-15.

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because our car’s not there anymore.’

Violetta twisted in her seat and caught a glimpse of the Ford’s rear end disappearing through the rolled-up garage door. She said, ‘I’ll be damned.’

King said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

They sped back toward Vegas.

41

They made it back to the city limits without incident.

There was a brief respite from conversation, a period of time they all used to recover from the whirlwind in St. George.

Finally, Violetta held up the passports. ‘These aren’t going to work.’

King said, ‘They’ll work in the sense that they’re valid passports. Jada was playing for the other team but she still did her job. You know what a legit document looks like, and you checked them before Slater unleashed hell. They’ll get us past customs, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Violetta admitted. The documents were perfectly legitimate. ‘But that’s the end of the road. They’ll trigger alerts the moment they’re scanned.’

‘We still have Alonzo.’

She hesitated. ‘We’re asking too much of him.’

‘Like he hasn’t risked his career for us already?’

‘He’s doing it from the good of his heart,’ Violetta said. ‘He’s lending a helping hand. What you’re asking for now…’

From the back, Slater said, ‘If you’ve got another plan, Violetta, we’re all ears.’

Silence.

King said, ‘Then that’s that.’

‘What if he says no?’

‘Then he says no. Why bother speculating until we know for sure?’

Violetta inhaled sharply, then nodded. ‘You’re right. Shit, this is bad.’

She used the sat phone from the safe house to dial his number.

He answered immediately. ‘What happened in Utah?’

‘We went to an old employee for fresh passports.’

‘Jada Butler,’ Alonzo said, as if he were reading off a screen.

Violetta paused. ‘So you do know what happened in Utah?’

‘I know now. There’s a report in my feed of an incident with an unnamed operative in Bloomington Heights. One of the gemstones, I take it? Those are the only wet work operatives that keep their movements hidden. I only find out about these things after the fact.’

‘Then why were you asking what happened?’

‘I had no idea you were headed there.’

‘No shit,’ Violetta said. ‘What do you think would have happened if you set up the meet? She would have called her old superiors regardless, to double-check you were legitimate, and they would have discovered you were aiding enemies of the state. If we told you what we were doing you’d be dead already.’

Alonzo let it sink in. ‘Shit. So she was a double agent?’

‘No,’ Violetta said. ‘It’s not as conspiratorial as that. She made a judgment call. What she thought was the right decision. She doesn’t know us, after all. She passed it up the chain of command.’

‘So you still need documents, I take it.’

‘We have them,’ Violetta said. ‘The ones she made for us.’

‘Why would she—?’

‘She’s good at what she does. She used them to stall us. We were supposed to be studying the passports so that Zircon prick