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

are moulded by their environment. They need to be shown what is right. Sounds like she’s been tumbling down a hill for a long time, but you were the one who first gave her the push.’

‘Get off your high horse.’

Violetta shook her head. ‘You got that part wrong. I’m not on one.’

‘You’re not?’

‘I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I’m not trying to show you the light. You’re irreparable. I’m just voicing my own thoughts. Talking out loud to myself. Trying to get to the bottom of what makes a piece of shit like you.’

‘Are you a mother?’ Kerr said.

Violetta didn’t answer.

Kerr said, ‘You’re not.’

Silence.

Kerr said, ‘I thought as much. You know nothing about being a mother. You know nothing at all. Stay out of my family’s business.’

Violetta didn’t enlighten her with a response.

So much was wrong with Gloria Kerr that she didn’t have a clue where to start.

She opted not to start at all.

She made for the door.

Kerr said, ‘Don’t you want information out of me?’

Violetta stopped with a hand on the knob. She turned back. ‘That’s not my field of expertise. I know the methods, but I’ll leave the execution to my friend.’

‘Which friend?’

‘The one who wanted to hurt you.’

‘The black guy?’

Violetta didn’t answer.

‘What’s his problem?’ Kerr said. ‘Every professional I’ve met manages to stay … detached. He got a history with me I don’t know about?’

Silence.

Kerr said, ‘Is this personal?’

‘He’s got a history with the business you run,’ Violetta said. ‘His mother was sold into it when he was a boy. She was taken overseas, and no one ever heard from her again. It drove his father to suicide. Will took all his anger and bottled it up and became what you were introduced to in your office.’

‘Will,’ Kerr said, rolling the name over her tongue. ‘Has Will got any family left? Any friends?’

Violetta didn’t answer.

Kerr said, ‘Whoever they are, I’ll make sure they get hurt. I’ll make sure they suffer endlessly.’

‘And how are you going to manage that?’

‘The three of you are effective, I’ll give you that. But you’re flawed. I saw it first-hand. I’m a terrible person who does terrible things on the regular, right? You should have shot me in my office, but you didn’t. You should be pulling my fingernails out right now to get the information you want, but you’re not. You should have killed the five men your friends roughed up to minimise witnesses, but you didn’t. You’re trying to be good people. You’re trying to do things the right way. So that’s what you’re going to continue doing until your precious morality gets in the way and makes you slip up, and then I’ll be out of here. Whether that’s in one piece, or whether I’m missing pieces, I don’t care. I only need to be breathing to keep going. Then I’ll start in on everyone you know, everyone you care about, everyone that makes your heart flutter.’

Violetta said, ‘That’s a whole lot of words to mask the fact that you’re losing.’

Kerr went quiet.

Violetta said, ‘Good luck with all of that.’

She walked out.

42

King was, indeed, on the phone with Gates.

Who was practically frothing at the mouth.

Gates was shouting, ‘There’s more commotion in Arden. Cars in pursuit. Looks like Ward mutinied. We need that piece of shit before Ray gets to him. He might even come to our side.’

Our side? King thought.

King heard, ‘Wait a second,’ then muffled tapping and shaking, before Gates sniffed hard through one nostril, perhaps a foot from his phone.

Another line.

An excellent method of calming down, King figured. What Armando Gates really needed right now was to jack himself up with more adrenaline.

Now Gates came back to the phone and said, ‘Okay — oh damn, that was good — okay. Where are you?’

Slater had his foot on the accelerator of the Bentley. They weren’t using the BMW for obvious reasons. The big rental car generated considerable power, though. Slater veered onto Blue Diamond Road and shot past trawling traffic, twenty or thirty miles over the speed limit.

King said, ‘Blue Diamond Road.’

‘Woooo!’ Gates screamed. King could imagine him pacing the room, sweating, reading the updates from his tech guy. ‘He should be coming at you any moment. My guy just spotted him on a CCTV on South Jones Boulevard, facing that road. So depending on where you are…’

An LVMPD cruiser screamed past in the other direction, matching the pace of their Bentley. King caught it as nothing more than a flash of white and black, but it was speeding and it wasn’t using its lights or sirens.

Bingo.

Slater braked hard, pulled to the shoulder, and wrenched the wheel. The Bentley jerked and jolted over the rough median strip hard enough to throw King against his seatbelt. He took all the pressure on his collar bone, which might have resulted in injury if his body wasn’t fully accustomed to getting smacked in every direction. Slater kept both hands on the wheel as he nearly threw the rear out, but he recovered the turn in a half-competent drift and mounted the opposing lane. A couple of cars swerved to avoid the new arrival. Drivers leant on horns. Slater didn’t notice. He hit the gas again and, with the difficulty of the divided roadway behind them, charged after Ward’s cruiser with renewed vigour.

Gates said, ‘His registration is—’

‘We’ve got him,’ King said.

‘You’ve subdued him?!’

‘No,’ King said. ‘But we’re after him.’

‘Good,’ Gates said. ‘That’s real good, my friend. You get that bastard and you bring him—’

‘Where are you?’

A tiny pause.

King followed up with, ‘We need to know where you want him.’

Gates said, ‘I’m back at Wan’s. Only temporarily. Hiding in plain sight, as it were. I know this place like the back of my hand so I can fortify it to the—’

King killed the line.

There was nothing more they needed from Armando Gates.

The pimp had dug his own grave.

They were only a few hundred feet from Ward’s rear bumper, and gaining fast. The Bentley was fearsomely impressive under the hood, and the