Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

and concluded that they weren’t in grave danger yet. They ordered huge meals and gorged on copious amounts of carbs in mutual silence. The old military adage: Eat when you can. You never know what the future might hold.

They finished, left a hefty tip, and figured it was best not to test their luck.

Slater said, ‘I say we head back for the rest of the day. Keep in touch with the girls, find out what they’re doing.’

King thought about it and nodded. ‘We’ve done our job. The rest is in Maeve’s hands.’

They’d been cooped up in their hotel room for the last twelve hours, so Slater suggested a detour through Camplex Park for a breath of fresh air amongst nature. They took Saddlehorn Road around the park, drinking in the sun, tasting the cool air in their throats. It was bliss in comparison to a stuffy room, no matter how luxurious the hotel was.

Trees were dotted intermittently through the swathe of grass constituting the bulk of the park. Slater took the lead, heading off the road, taking a direct diagonal route back to the Arbuckle Lodge.

King followed, but the emptiness rubbed him the wrong way.

There wasn’t a soul about. The wind blew through the trees, whipping at their clothes.

A man with hunched shoulders and wide meth-crazed eyes stepped out from behind one of the trees with a gun.

It happened so fast that King couldn’t shoot first.

He had his Glock out of his jacket in maybe a second flat, but the man already had his own barrel aimed at King’s head, and he fired.

King wasn’t there anymore though.

The instant he’d registered the hostile gun, he’d dropped to his stomach on the grass, hard enough to give himself a mild concussion if he wasn’t careful. But a concussion was infinitely better than a bullet to the dome, so he took the risk. The guy’s first shot blasted the silence away, and the displaced air of the bullet’s flight path whipped over his head. It missed by a solid three feet, but the shooter was competent enough. He’d aimed for King’s centre mass and instinctively squeezed the trigger before realising King’s centre mass was now on the ground.

King fired back.

One shot to the head.

Almost unfair, given his skillset.

The junkie’s neck snapped back and he slumped against the tree trunk and slid down to the base. His dead eyes were glazed as his chin dropped to his chest.

The noise of the twin reports echoed all the way through the vast grounds of Camplex Park, and faded away.

Slater stood deathly still.

King clambered back to his feet, already having suppressed his adrenaline response considering the threat was gone.

Slater looked all around. ‘Shit. Let’s go. Now.’

King said, ‘Search him first.’

28

Slater figured a junkie hired by bikers to execute them in broad daylight wouldn’t have much to offer in terms of important loot.

He reluctantly searched the corpse anyway.

Then realised he should never assume anything.

He went into the inside pocket of the body’s oversized leather jacket, and felt the clink of glass between his fingers. He seized the contents of the pocket and came out with two full vials of Bodhi.

He held them up for King to see.

King’s eyes widened. ‘Where was he going with those?’

Slater went through the man’s jeans pockets and found a phone and a tattered wallet, but no keys. He suspected the man was homeless. The smartphone was an ancient model with no passcode — typical junkie foresight — and the wallet held no credit or debit cards, just fifteen dollars in cash and an old ID that identified the man as James Fitch.

Thirty seconds had elapsed since the incident, and no Good Samaritans had emerged to investigate. Slater hoped they’d been far enough away from any ears to explicitly identify the noise as gunshots, but he doubted it. His ears were still ringing from the reports. Someone would come check it out eventually, so time was against them.

He finished patting down the body and said, ‘That’s it.’

King was already on the move.

They were back in their room within ten minutes, and only passed three people on the way back to the hotel, none within the immediate vicinity of the shooting. One of the three had nodded politely to them — the greatest threat in subsequent police interviews — and the other two hadn’t glanced up from their phones.

Overall, a good result.

Slater sat on the edge of his bed, going through the would-be assassin’s phone. There were multiple texts to a nameless contact — just a number in the phone — about drug deals for personal consumption. He disregarded them, kept scrolling, and hit the jackpot.

‘Here,’ he said.

King looked up.

Slater said, ‘Most of the texts are the guy asking other people for times and meeting locations. For his own deals. But this one — contact name “Wyatt” — is the opposite. Wyatt asked for an ETA at ten a.m. this morning, and Fitch told him two in the afternoon. Guess he was optimistic about how quickly he could take us out.’

King stewed on the information. ‘How’d he know we’d walk through the park?’

‘Sometimes even junkies get lucky.’

‘He’s dead,’ King said. ‘Wasn’t overly lucky.’

‘But if he’d stepped out when our backs were turned…’

King nodded. He knew as well as Slater did how unpredictable life-or-death situations could be. All it took was one moment of complacency, one instant of dropping your guard, and a junkie with zero combat or firearms training could have a loaded weapon pointed at the back of your head. Then it’s simple physics. One trigger pull, and you’re gone.

Slater scrolled back through old messages between Fitch and Wyatt, and said, ‘No specific address — Fitch must have already known it. But here, ten weeks ago, he says, “I’ll be at the motel in five.”’

‘Doesn’t help,’ King said. ‘I doubt he’s staying there anymore.’

‘Unless he works there.’

‘Long shot. Besides, how many motels are there in Gillette?’

‘Plenty,’ Slater said. ‘But…’

He opened the maps application on Fitch’s phone. The three most recent addresses entered into