Outlaws by Matt Rogers (phonics books TXT) 📕

‘It’s King. He could be in deep water.’

He said it because he had to vocalise it. Otherwise the thought would bounce around his head until it drove him mad. There was something bristling inside him, something he didn’t want to address.

A toxic concoction.

Guilt, shame, unease.

Bad timing for King.

And bad timing for him.

She sensed his turmoil. She was better at that than anyone he knew. She stepped in and said, ‘Your whole lives have been in deep water. If he stays in, he’s always going to be in it. That’s something you have to be okay with. If you leave, he’s on his own.’

Slater turned inward. Went quiet. The swarming passengers all around him seemed a world away. He was detached from civilian life, disassociated, depersonalised.

He’d always known that would be the case.

But had he really considered it?

He said, ‘I know. I understand.’

But he didn’t think he did.

21

King topped up with two brief hours of sleep to compensate for the sporadic rest he’d managed on the plane, then began the day like any other.

A clueless onlooker would never know he’d beat up six trained combatants and killed a well-known billionaire on another continent the day before.

He rolled out of bed, padded straight to the fridge, and drank half a gallon of water mixed with electrolytes and… something that wouldn’t pass Olympic drug testing. He and Slater had labelled the drink “Recovery Concoction” for a reason. There was no use breaking down their bodies in training if they didn’t take advantage of rapid advancements in performance-enhancers. Their schedules and mutual workload all but required it to keep them in one piece with the aid of “special” supplementation.

Hydrated and invigorated by the power nap, he sweated off the jetlag by burning a thousand calories with a routine run-of-the-mill workout. He figured he’d been pushing his body so consistently for so long that he knew how to work with discomfort better than anyone on the planet bar Slater. Maintaining an elevated heart rate came as naturally as breathing, and he alternated between high-intensity intervals on the assault bike in his workout room and five-minute rounds on the heavy bag, launching punches and kicks and elbows into the thick leather with relentlessness.

The whole time, a simple electronic band on his wrist tracked his performance. He’d been working with fitness trackers for the better part of two years now, and they’d accelerated his progress over the long term. It had taken him far too long to realise that maxing out your system each and every day didn’t get optimal results. Rest and recovery were just as important as the work itself, and by tracking his heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and sleep cycles, the band let him know when his body was ready to push, and when it was time to pump the brakes and recharge.

Of course, in a live operation, he had to go all out regardless of how ready he was, but during periods of downtime he could use the data to hone himself into as devastating a weapon as possible.

Truth was, whether it was civilians awed by their impressive physiques on the street, or mercenaries and terrorists awed by how effortlessly King and Slater could beat them to a pulp, everyone assumed it came naturally to them. Their genetic gifts were real — ungodly reaction speeds that had placed them at the forefront of government black operations — but everything else came from consistent, unwavering hard work.

And slowly, over the course of decades, King had learned that hard work and smart work were one and the same. In his twenties, he could have slaved away at a backbreaking construction job and made decent coin instead of joining the military. He damn well had the physique and the grit for it. The work no doubt would have been as equally hard physically as even the most gruelling training regime. But it took just as much tenacity to use his brain, to recognise fields in which he was particularly talented and then focus rigidly on improving himself in those fields. Discipline to stick to the right areas of expertise was hard work in and of itself. It was the invisible work, the work that gave a small percentage of the population obscene riches and resources, and kept the rest in poverty. King had been conscious of it for as long as he could remember. Fixating on the things in his life that reaped maximum rewards, honing them over and over again, and completely ignoring the rest.

It had gotten him here.

Dripping with sweat in a fifteen-million dollar Manhattan penthouse, in possession of one of the most devastating skillsets on the planet.

He’d modified his fitness band to suit his needs, so as soon as he hit a thousand calories, a small green light on the device came to life. He registered the illumination, then ended his workout with a final teep kick into the heavy bag.

A cold shower and a change of clothes freshened him up, and he began preparing breakfast to replenish when a knock came at the door.

A lighter, gentler knock than the one that had come earlier that morning, before dawn had broken over the city.

He went to the door, opened it, and pulled Violetta in close.

They breathed each other’s scent before they kissed, and when their lips touched all the treachery and tension and deceit that existed in their professional lives disappeared. He’d never lived in the present before he’d met her. Not truly. She crossed the threshold blind, eyes closed, face pressed to his. He swung the door shut behind her with a practiced push, sealing them in.

She pulled herself away, then placed a hand on his chest.

He raised an eyebrow.

‘I told you not to go,’ she muttered.

He half-smiled. ‘Because you thought I might be needed here. Not because you thought I’d get myself killed over there.’

‘You vouched for Donati.’

‘Because Coombs vouched for him. And Slater trusted Coombs. That was all I needed.’

‘Bad call.’

He nodded.

She said, ‘At