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

a few shops had backup generators, and the outer halo of illumination gave them something, at least.

But in the alleyway they veered into, it was pitch black.

Slater pushed King a couple of feet into the mouth of the laneway, and then let go of his arm. Slater handed over his duffel bag containing the MP7, freeing both his own. King froze on the spot, two bags in his left hand, and waited.

In the quiet King reflexively lifted his shirt, seizing hold of the Glock with his right hand. The handgun was large for its positioning against his appendix, but he was a large man, so it worked. He felt the cold metal and strained his gaze.

Then two silhouettes hustled past the mouth of the alleyway.

He couldn’t see much, but he didn’t need to.

Slater stepped forward and seized the smaller of the pair from behind in a vicious single-arm chokehold. With expert dexterity he looped his bulky forearm around the silhouette’s throat and yanked the guy backwards hard, almost taking him off his feet.

The second silhouette took off like a rocket.

One moment he was there, the next he was gone.

King burst off the mark to try and catch him, but it was futile. He’d already vanished. King snatched at thin air anyway, then stumbled to a halt in front of Slater and the man he had in a chokehold.

No, not a man.

A kid.

Probably nineteen or twenty — a pup in comparison to Slater — but even in the lowlight King could see the menace in the kid’s eyes. He had long flowing black hair and an evil intensity about him. Veins protruded from his forehead — mostly because Slater was squeezing him half-unconscious — and his teeth were bared in a snarl.

Slater pressed his Glock to the kid’s head and dragged him further into the alley, out of harm’s way in case the second silhouette decided to take potshots at them from a secluded location.

King followed.

He heard Slater say, ‘You just can’t leave me the fuck alone, can you, Rico?’

38

Samuel ran for his life, panting, hyperventilating.

He’d never seen something unfold that fast before.

It had sent his adrenaline levels into the stratosphere.

He couldn’t believe how quickly it had unfolded. One moment, he and Rico had been sneaking south through Manhattan, hot on the heels of the two men they were pursuing. Then the men were gone, and a few seconds later someone had reared up from the shadows like a pouncing lion and wrenched Rico nearly all the way off his feet. Samuel had his gun in hand, but he’d been spooked. His heart had skipped a beat in his chest, and his first instinct had been to run.

So now he was on the opposite sidewalk, maybe a hundred feet from the place Rico had been snatched. He got his wits about him and slowed to a jog, then finally a fast walk. Then he pivoted and worked on bringing his heart rate back down, breathing hard through his mouth.

Gotta go back.

You liked him. He was a friend.

Gotta help him.

But his legs stayed fixed to the ground, like his feet were cast in concrete. He couldn’t figure out what had come over him. Nothing had frightened him like that before. It took a few ragged breaths, but eventually he gained some confidence back. He set off before it could dissipate, striding hard, his palm against the Glock slick with sweat. He made it back to the mouth of the alleyway, but Rico was gone, and so was his assailant. There were a few civilian stragglers, wandering aimlessly through the streets, and no one else.

Samuel put his hands on his hips.

He felt so alone.

So abandoned.

So empty.

He thought Rico had been a godsend. Something to keep his mind off the fallout with his family. Now, with the kid gone, Samuel couldn’t hope to keep his sanity. He knew it. He shouldn’t have done the coke offered to him, but peer pressure had got to him. He had enough of his marbles to know he wasn’t all there mentally, which was a paradox, but it made sense to him. Drugs would just make him worse. More unstable. More prone to madness.

A voice whispered in his head.

Just end it.

He looked down at the Glock.

Considered it.

He had nothing left.

Then he heard movement. Quiet, and guarded, so he only caught it at the edge of his hearing, but it was movement all the same. It sounded like five or six people moving in a tight unit. Obviously with some sort of combat training, or Samuel would have heard them coming from a mile away. But now there were tears in his eyes, and his bottom lip had started quivering, and he truly didn’t care who they were, or what they were here to do. In that moment he figured if they were going to kill him, then they could go right ahead and do it. He stared up Fifth Avenue and saw them materialise out of the gloom.

There were five of them. Big intimidating men in suits, coated in sweat from moving so fast, but they were still quiet as mice. They reached Samuel and converged around him, staring at him like he was an exhibit in a museum.

They noticed the Glock in his hand, and kept a cautious distance.

But they were armed too.

It didn’t take Samuel long to realise there were five handguns pointed his way.

He’d be dead if he lifted a hand.

He briefly considered it. The equivalent of suicide by cop.

Same result either way.

Then he figured he might as well find out who they were, if this really was the end. He kept his voice low and said, ‘What’s going on?’

One of them said, ‘We’ve been following you all the way from Midtown. Where the hell is he?’

‘Who?’

‘The guy you were with.’

‘Rico?’

A couple of the suits breathed sighs of relief. Like the weight of the world had been lifted off their shoulders. The same guy said, ‘Yes. Rico.’

‘He was just here…’

‘Where’d he go?’

Samuel pointed a