Outlaws, Matt Rogers [best ereader under 100 TXT] 📗

‘You know how this goes. Pretend you’re a saint all you want, but if you really want to spare me, then run. I’ll give you ten seconds from when you let go of my wrist. Otherwise, put a bullet in me like you were supposed to. There’s not a chance in hell I’m even going to hear you out.’

‘You’ll hear me out,’ King said. ‘You don’t have a choice.’

The man was right. Banks saw the Glock glinting in King’s other hand, aimed up at his throat.

Banks said, ‘You really want to go that route? Battle of reflexes with someone like me?’

‘Every word you just said could have come out of my own mouth.’

Banks went quiet.

Mulling over it.

Then said, ‘Okay. Talk. If you think it’ll do you any good.’

‘Why’d you join the military?’

‘To serve my country.’

‘You don’t get to the level you’re at through patriotism alone. There’s got to be something else there.’

‘To contribute. To help.’

‘Did you see a truck drive in earlier tonight?’

‘To where?’

‘Cut the bullshit,’ King said. ‘I know what house you’re watching. I was there yesterday.’

‘Yeah,’ Banks said. ‘I saw it.’

‘The crew who own the house are smugglers who work the port. Half of them are dead. That was my doing. The trailer you saw attached to the truck has a container in it. Girls from Eastern Europe. Hand-picked, kidnapped, trafficked. The three men I left alive are going to deliver that container to the Baja cartel for an enormous handling fee. They take the risk of bribing port officials, they reap the benefits. I want to deal with them, and then follow the container to its final destination, and then deal with whoever’s there. But I knew someone like you would be watching. And despite the light I’ve been painted in, I’m not the enemy. So I’m not willing to kill you on sight.’

Banks said, ‘What exactly do you want from me?’

‘Let me do what I came here to do,’ King said. ‘You don’t have to involve yourself. You don’t even have to watch. Blissful ignorance, or whatever. But deep down I think you joined the military for the right reasons, and those same reasons won’t let you kill me when I’m trying to eradicate a little bit of evil in the world.’

Banks said, ‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Because there’s no point lying about any of this when I had the jump on you from the start,’ King said. ‘Why the fuck would I make this up if I had ulterior motives? You wouldn’t be around to hear me out.’

Banks thought about it.

And, as much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t find a hole in the story.

He said, ‘After this, you disappear?’

King said, ‘Of course.’

They hadn’t agreed on anything, but King let go of Banks’s wrist. He settled back in the dirt, still flat on his stomach, now a few feet away. No longer uncomfortably close.

If Banks wanted to, he could kill the man right then and there.

It was an overwhelming display of trust.

Banks moved his knife hand, and watched King bristle. But instead of clasping at the hilt, he tilted the top of his wrist toward his own face and checked his digital watch.

‘Clock’s ticking,’ he said. ‘Get to work.’

72

Under a dark sky, Slater conducted surveillance of his own.

He didn’t face a mansion in Emerald Bay. He faced the Hooper Quadriplegic Centre, which resided in the leafy suburb of Stratford Hills to the west of the city, just over the James River. It was ordinary suburbia — brick houses with wide lots on either side, broad sidewalks, an aura of stillness. The nine-to-fivers had come home from their jobs to lounge in front of the television, and the elderly were in bed. The children were too, only involuntarily. No one was out at nine in the evening. The city centre would be busier.

Here, you could hear a pin drop.

He watched the big government building from a distance, statuesque behind the wheel of the Hyundai, parked across the street. A handful of visitors came and went over the course of the evening, but little else happened. There was no real way to conduct illicit proceedings — the building sat in the middle of an enormous lot with a neatly manicured lawn. There was no secret way in. No tunnels underground. If the shadow world had come for Beckham, they wouldn’t need to send an army. They’d send a lone man or woman with a syringe or a knife. No need for a gun — that’d be loud and messy.

The more Slater thought about it, the more he figured a needle would be the way to go. Quiet, discreet, no blood — and if the stuff inside the barrel of the syringe was advanced enough, it’d look like natural causes.

He knew, without a doubt, the government had access to those sorts of concoctions.

The question was: Did they know about Violetta?

Slater wasn’t about to wait around to find out.

He turned to Alexis in the passenger seat. ‘I’m going to do this quickly. In and out.’

‘What if there’s eyes on us right now?’

‘I have no feasible way of knowing that,’ he said. ‘But why would there be forces here in advance? To make sure he doesn’t escape? He’s a quadriplegic.’

‘If they know Violetta’s gone rogue, they’ll send men straight here.’

‘But they wouldn’t have pieced that together until a couple of hours ago at the very earliest. You think they have shadow forces right here in the city they can trust? You think they have a whole army on standby willing to execute a helpless quadriplegic in his disability home?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alexis said. ‘I don’t know anything about this world.’

Slater looked pensively out the window. ‘Nor do I.’

She didn’t respond.

He said, ‘But what’s waiting around going to accomplish?’

She shrugged.

He handed her the spare Glock and said, ‘Remember what I told you.’

She said, ‘I won’t hesitate.’

He knew.

He’d found two potential rapists in her bathroom the night he’d met her. She’d tased and subdued them both in the midst