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

carpet right near the bloodstains and looked under the bed.

She expected the worst.

She found Melanie staring back at her, wide eyes unblinking in the shadows.

Unhurt.

Alexis breathed out. She didn’t have the energy to get back up. She pressed her face to the floor and sighed.

‘We’re okay,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It’s all okay.’

Violetta said, ‘King needs to know about this.’

Alexis heard her pull out her phone and fire off another text.

84

Slater couldn’t walk anymore.

Standing in one place for too long was his kryptonite, and the ankle ballooned beyond comprehension. He felt it swelling, the bones grinding, the pain held at bay by tension. He’d feel all of it soon, when the stress cocktail wore off. It was a ticking time bomb threatening to incapacitate him at any moment. Sooner or later he’d have to sit down.

Icke said, ‘Now let’s talk.’

King got another text.

He looked down at his phone.

He started to shake.

His aim drifted down. He didn’t care about the standoff anymore.

Slater thought, If Violetta’s still texting, and it’s bad news, then that means…

Oh, fuck.

He wanted to react, wanted to scream, wanted to make any sort of sound to convey the horror in his chest, but he didn’t.

Icke smiled.

Soaked in the defeat, the loss of their loved ones, the crushing weight pressing down on them. This was a man who wouldn’t know what that felt like. Who was close to no one but money. Whose life was as empty as the grave he’d eventually wind up in.

The judge sensed a window of opportunity.

Aimed the gun at King.

But King wasn’t destroyed anymore. In those milliseconds the pain vanished, replaced by unnerving coldness, and he whipped the gun back up and shot Icke before the judge could depress his own trigger. Icke fell away, and blood sprayed, and Elsa fell forward. King caught her and spun her around and shielded her with his body, the Kevlar vest beneath his tactical gear like a great medieval shield.

In all that madness Slater had caught the briefest of glimpses of King’s phone screen.

A message from Violetta.

We handled it.

Emotion makes you weak, but emotion makes you human, too. Slater needed a half-second to process what had happened. He’d experienced the death of Alexis and the revelation that she was fine in the same instant. It reset his brain for that crucial window of time — unnoticeable to any observer — that he needed.

When he turned to search for Icke, the man was gone.

The judge had caught some ungodly second wind and all Slater caught of him was a flash of his big frame disappearing through a door right beside him. Blood pumped from the man’s collar bone. King hadn’t hit him in the head.

Darkness swallowed the old man, and Slater saw the space beyond wasn’t another office but a stairwell, spiralling down.

King still had his back turned, shielding Elsa from harm, unaware that Icke was no longer there.

Before he could get up, Slater growled, ‘He’s all mine.’

His leg didn’t hurt anymore.

He didn’t feel a thing.

Only rage.

He ran for the stairwell on a broken ankle and pursued Icke into the abyss.

85

King cradled Elsa until Slater vanished, then released her.

The corridor was empty.

The complex was a ghost town.

Literally.

He said, ‘Are you okay?’

She hyperventilated, but her head was clear. She said, ‘I think so.’

‘Go back in the office. Lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone other than us.’

‘Please don’t make me go back in there.’

He turned her around so she could look him in the eyes. ‘Icke’s all that’s left. There’s no one else.’

‘He got away. He’s still here.’

King made sure she was watching his eyes.

He said, ‘He’s nothing.’

She believed him.

She ran back into the office and he heard the snap of a lock bolting.

He bolted, too.

For the stairs.

Followed them down into darkness, taking them three at a time, on and on, down and down…

He burst out into a glaringly bright loading bay, and realised he’d caught them already.

Icke was fat and old and slow, and Slater was impeded by broken bones. King found his partner rooted in place, both legs skewered into the ground in the mouth of the stairwell door, taking aim at the bloodied judge wobbling for his life across the cavernous space.

King pulled up alongside Slater.

Slater said, ‘Good to see you again.’

King said, ‘You, too.’

Icke kept stumbling. The revolver in his hand forgotten, his fear mortal, his focus directed entirely toward the semi-trailers on the other side of the loading bay. Cover he’d never reach.

Slater asked, ‘Head?’

King said, ‘Legs.’

‘My pleasure.’

Slater shot Alastair Icke in the back of the knee. All three hundred pounds pitched forward grotesquely, putting him face-first on the ground. The revolver spilled from his hand and skittered out of reach. He lay flat on his considerable stomach, one cheek pressed to the concrete, immobile.

His body started heaving.

King thought he might be convulsing.

Then he realised.

The judge was sobbing.

The gunshot report echoed in the loading bay. Its noise was final.

Slater limped over, kicked the revolver even further away, then retreated. King passed him by en route to Icke.

Slater said, ‘He’s all yours.’

King said, ‘You don’t want this?’

‘I don’t want to look at him,’ Slater said. ‘I’m going to pretend he never existed.’

Slater’s eyes were tired.

His soul was tired.

King understood.

Slater held out a hand, palm open, fingers out. King slapped it, held it, and pulled his brother in.

‘An entire system,’ Slater said. ‘We did it.’

‘We did.’

Slater eyed the judge one last time. ‘Now finish it.’

King mirrored Slater’s words. ‘My pleasure.’

He walked over to Icke.

The judge had levered himself into a half-seated position. He’d rolled over, tried to sit up, deduced that was impossible, and propped himself on his elbows. His collar streamed blood, as did the back of his leg, but neither were fatal. King tore Icke’s sweat-soaked shirt apart at the buttons and ripped off two strips. He bound both wounds tight.

Preserving his prey.

King said, ‘Where were the three kids headed?’

‘Huh?’

Icke tilted his face to the white light overhead. It made him paler then he already was from the shock. His pockmarks