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

took them longer than it should have to notice her digging her fingers into her jeans, searching, probing…

She touched the side of the key fob.

Ray saw what she was doing and lunged for her.

Ward didn’t. He was still too shocked.

Ray tackled her just as she got two fingers on the surface of the key fob…

Wrong side.

Her fingertips jabbed at plastic.

The button was on the other side.

Ray’s momentum sent her careening backwards, but she didn’t lose her footing. She stumbled, and he stumbled with her. He ripped her hand from her pocket, and the fob came flying out with it. It hit the warehouse floor on its plastic back and slid, collecting a ball of dust. It skittered to a halt with its button facing the roof.

At no point in the wild scuffle had it been pressed.

Alexis regained her balance and hunched over, shoulders rounded.

Defeated, hopeless, sick to her stomach.

She expected Ray to hit her in the face, or the gut, or anywhere that hurt enough to crumple her, and then he’d start heaving kicks into her head and throat and ribs.

But that didn’t happen.

When she finally righted herself, Ray was staring, his face red with rage.

But not at her.

At Ward.

He said, ‘I told you to search her, Alan.’

‘I did,’ Ward spluttered.

Panic.

The uncontrollable rise of anxiety, from his stomach to his chest to his throat, choking him from the inside.

Alexis saw it all. She knew something was coming. Something irreversible. Somehow it had all unfolded to her advantage. The initial accusation, putting him on the back foot, rattling him … and now this.

The key fob was right there between Ray and Ward, like a museum artefact on display.

It had come from her jeans pocket.

A simple frisk would have found it.

Ray knew.

Ward knew.

Ray said, ‘Why did you let her keep it?’

‘I didn’t—’

Ray said, ‘You did.’

She sensed the small army in the warehouse, bristling, looking for a reason to release their collective testosterone. Ward sensed it too, perhaps more so than Alexis.

Ray said, ‘Maybe we need that walk after all.’

‘Keith…’

‘She seduced you, didn’t she?’ Ray hissed. ‘You couldn’t resist giving a pretty girl a lifeline.’

‘No.’

‘So you didn’t search her, or you let her keep it?’

Silence.

Ray said, ‘It’s either a gross display of incompetence or a betrayal. Which is it?’

’N-neither. I frisked her. I must have missed it.’

The last sentence hung there, exposing just how pathetic it sounded. Ray let it hang. The silence said, You can’t have missed it.

Ward was like a middle-schooler defending himself before the inevitable detention, but middle-schoolers don’t have their life hanging in the balance.

Under her breath Alexis said, ‘No.’

Ward didn’t listen.

He snapped.

He ripped his service weapon from its holster.

He shot Ray in the chest and ran for his life.

39

King slipped back into the role.

He was desperate for information, but he couldn’t show it. It’d make Gates withdraw in a heartbeat.

‘What do you want?’ he spat.

Silence.

King said, ‘Did you call to apologise?’

‘No one speaks to me like that,’ Gates said.

‘I do,’ King said. ‘I speak like that to anyone who lays hands on me.’

‘I’m sorry, ’mano,’ Gates said. ‘Really, I am.’

King thought, He is desperate.

King said, ‘So — what do you want?’

‘You and your friend were holding back, weren’t you?’ Gates said. ‘When me and my boys roughed you up. I could tell.’

King didn’t say a word.

He didn’t know where the hell this was going.

How much Gates knew, how much he didn’t.

He wished he’d been able to interrogate Kerr on exactly what she’d fed to Gates, but she was tied up and Gates was talking now.

Gates said, ‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Answer my question.’

‘Why are you asking it?’

‘I know you were holding back,’ Gates said. ‘Who are you two, really? I’ve killed people with the damage I dealt to you and your friend.’

King thought, I seriously doubt that.

He said, ‘Yeah, we held back.’

‘How much of it were you faking?’

A pause.

Gates said, ‘Come on, man. I know people. I know you.’

King said, ‘We weren’t scared, if that’s what you’re asking. We had to put that on.’

Does he know?

Gates said, ‘I thought as much. I respect what you did and why you did it. You’re smarter than the average impulsive criminal.’

The average impulsive criminal, King thought. So — you?

‘Listen,’ Gates said. ‘This is coming out of left field, brother … I’m well aware. Now, I know you’re in the heroin business, but are you in it? Have you got experience with the enforcer side of it?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I’m all out of options,’ Gates said. He was talking fast. King guessed cocaine was helping him get the words out. He was jacked. ‘All out of motherfuckin’ options, and I need you.’

‘Us?’

‘You didn’t fight back at my club ’cause you knew we’d shoot you,’ Gates said. ‘But you could have. You two are tougher than you were letting on.’

‘You could say that.’

He doesn’t know who we are, King thought. He’s guessing. But he’s got some parts right.

Gates said, ‘I’ve got a problem.’

‘If you’re coming to us for help…’

‘I know, I know. We didn’t get off on the right foot. But I didn’t trust you yesterday. I thought you were bullshitting about the Ray thing. And then…’

‘Ray?’

‘The guy the cops mentioned. I hadn’t thought it through. But now … well, shit’s hit the fan, my friend. I’m in a goddamn war with an ex-sheriff. Not an undersheriff, not an assistant sheriff. The fuckin’ sheriff. My boys have shot it out with his boys at a couple of locations. He’s gone to ground. Holed up in some industrial zone somewhere, I’m sure. But I’ve lost men. I’ve lost a lot of men. And the ones I’ve got left, they’re all tied up. Ray got a couple of them. I know he’s torturing them somewhere. Lads, look … I have no one else on call.’

‘Wait,’ King said, and forced a laugh. ‘You need our help?!’

‘Depends whether you’re actual gangsters or just pretenders.’

King ignored the question. ‘What on earth would you need us for? After all you did to us.’

‘You’re all I got,’