Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

Maximise confusion, Violetta thought.

She slipped back to her natural American accent, succinct and fluid. ‘Listen, bitch — you kill me and you activate my contingencies.’

Kerr shifted an inch back in her seat, thrown off by the abrupt change in personality.

Violetta heaped it on. ‘You think wires in this day and age are actually wires? They’re microscopic. There’s one in my collar, and it’s been streaming a live feed of this conversation to a certain political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. I think you’ll know his name if I told you. If I don’t walk out of here in one piece he’ll publish everything before you and your “considerable influence” can shut it down. He’s listening right now.’

Kerr soaked all this in.

She put her elbows on the desk and leant forward on them, inching closer to Violetta’s face, staring her in the eyes.

Her gaze could melt steel.

Violetta didn’t flinch.

Didn’t matter.

Kerr smiled again, the same sickly leer. ‘No he isn’t. You’re lying through your teeth.’

Violetta said, ‘Try me.’

‘I will,’ Kerr said. ‘Because there’s something you and your self-righteousness didn’t take into consideration.’

‘And what’s that?’

Kerr said, ‘I can smell your fear.’

Violetta said nothing.

Kerr said, ‘Have you forgotten what world I live in? Have you forgotten what I do? How many people do you think I’ve seen beg for their lives in front of me? How many do you think threw out a Hail Mary to try and save their skin when they knew all hope was lost?’

Violetta said nothing.

Kerr lowered her voice. ‘You’re one of those people.’

She hit an intercom button built into the surface of the desk, inches away from her hand. ‘Gentlemen. Come in here, please. I have a job for you.’

A pause.

Kerr added, ‘Bring a suppressor.’

Violetta launched out of her chair.

She only made it a few inches off the leather. There was a Beretta M9 in Kerr’s spindly hand, drawn from underneath the desk at warp speed. Violetta hadn’t even seen it materialise. But she made sure to throw herself back into the seat as urgently as she’d come out of it. She recognised the barrel aimed at her temple and sunk into total compliance.

It was the only way to temporarily stay alive.

Kerr said, ‘I could have done that whenever I wanted. I could shoot you right here.’

Violetta slumped her shoulders.

Kerr said, ‘But then what’s the point of paying people for? Delegation is important.’

The door opened quietly, off to the side of the room.

Violetta didn’t dare look.

She had no choice — she had to try something. She hunched forward and let out a massive breath of air, like the pressure in her core had reached boiling point and burst forth from her lips. Kerr seemed to buy it. It helped Violetta slump her shoulders and enshroud her mid-section in shadow as she gently slipped a hand into the low pocket of her suit jacket. If Kerr thought she was going for a gun, she was dead.

But Kerr missed it.

Somehow, some way, fate had aligned to mask it from view.

It was a game of inches.

Millimetres, even.

But Violetta was able to touch a finger to the fake key fob and depress the button.

33

Alexis’ phone screamed in her pocket.

Her heart leapt.

She thought, Did I somehow press my own panic button?

Ward looked over. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘My phone,’ Alexis said.

‘Is that your ringtone?’ he said. ‘Are you deaf?’

They were cruising down Blue Diamond Road to the southwest of Vegas, having already left the congested epicentre of the city in the rear view mirror. The road was like an artery cutting through barren swathes of empty sand lots, with the occasional collection of houses or lone industrial buildings punctuating the view. She knew they would only get further away from civilisation, and with it her chances of being saved by a Good Samaritan.

Yeah, right, she thought. Fat chance of that. I’m handcuffed in a fucking cop car.

Ward drove with one hand, reached over and shoved his other hand into her pocket to get to her phone. That alone was violating. She flashed back to a dark night in New York City, in the midst of a power blackout, when two stockbrokers who lived down the hall forced their way into her apartment and threw themselves on her. It made her sick to her stomach.

And this is just the beginning.

She hadn’t even met Ray yet.

Ward retrieved the phone and glanced down at the screen before returning his eyes to the road. ‘Who’s Violetta?’

Oh, God, Alexis thought.

She stonewalled.

He said, ‘Not going to answer that?’

Nothing.

Over the shrieking, Ward said, ‘How the hell do I stop this?’

‘How dumb are you?’

Ward stared at her.

She sighed. ‘Just turn the phone off.’

He did.

It cut the wailing off abruptly and blackened the screen. The car returned to resigned silence. He dropped the dead phone in the drink holder.

He said, ‘Probably should have searched you before, huh?’

He looked her up and down, probably wondering whether she had a hidden firearm.

Then he seemed to note her arms wrenched hard behind her back, and settled back into the drive.

Thinking, It can wait.

‘You didn’t think about it,’ Alexis said. ‘Because it wasn’t a routine arrest. You’ve never abducted someone before, let alone handed them over to a rapist.’

Ward sat still as stone.

Ward said, ‘How am I supposed to know if he’s a rapist or not?’

She stared at him with fury. ‘You didn’t just say that.’

‘What do you want me to do?!’ he yelled, so loud it made Alexis shrink in her seat. He smashed an open palm against the top of the wheel. ‘You think I enjoy this? You think this gets my rocks off? I’d rather be anywhere else.’

‘You could be anywhere else.’

‘And then they’d murder the woman who raised me.’

Alexis paused. ‘Your grandmother raised you?’

Ward opened his mouth, then cut himself off before he could speak. He shook his head emphatically, side to side. ‘No. No. Don’t do that. I’m not talking to you about my goddamn family. I’m not talking to you about anything.’

‘Sounds a lot like you are.’

‘Shut up,’ he