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

hands shaking, so they didn’t even manage to aim before Slater shot each of them once in the head.

The last guy did okay.

He had the automatic rifle, and instead of aiming and firing he recognised that this was an arena where milliseconds counted, so he put on the metaphorical gladiator helmet and simply squeezed the trigger and sprayed the whole laneway. But the dumpsters absorbed any shots that might have shredded King and Slater otherwise, and King finished him off with a sharp three-round cluster to his face and chest. He wasn’t wearing protective gear. He died gruesomely.

But his finger held on the trigger, gripping it in his death spasm, and he went down still spraying.

Right next to Alan Ward.

Bang-bang-bang-bang.

The gunfire fizzled out, and the rifle fell from his grip.

Slater held his breath.

King closed his eyes in resignation.

Ward lay still.

Then the shock brought him back round, and he woke up screaming.

It was like someone had jump-started Slater with a defibrillator. Hope came rushing back, and he ran out from behind cover with his heart in his throat. It didn’t take long to figure out Ward had taken a bullet to the thigh. The shock of the wound, coupled with the beating he’d sustained seconds earlier, had overloaded his senses and made him pass out. Now he was awake, grunting and groaning, clutching his leg.

The bullet had missed the arteries.

Slater put pressure on the wound. Beside him, King breathed, ‘Back in business.’

‘Remind me why we do this.’

‘For the kicks.’

They helped Ward to his feet. He didn’t offer any resistance. He was almost catatonic, from shock and pain and the lingering fear of getting carted back to Ray. Slater tied a crude tourniquet over the thigh wound, then used plastic cable ties to secure his hands behind his back. They helped him to the Bentley, shoved him so he splayed across the rear seats, then got back in their own seats.

Slater separated the car from the dumpster he’d used as an added braking mechanism and reversed out of the alleyway. There were two thumps as they rolled over two bodies. Then they were out on the street, which was understandably deserted. People only hang around to gawk and film shootouts in movies. In reality, when you hear unsuppressed gunfire in suburbia, you take cover and put your head down and pray for your life.

He gunned it away from the scene before any potential witnesses got brave.

Ward thrashed in the back.

Slater said, ‘Relax. We’re not going to kill you.’

Ward said, ‘Who … who are you two? I’ve never seen you before.’

‘We’re not with Ray.’

‘No shit.’

‘We’re here to help.’

‘You beat the shit out of me.’

‘You got into bed with an ex-sheriff running a sex trafficking ring,’ Slater said. ‘I’d say it’s deserved.’

‘Don’t you know—?’

King held up a palm. ‘We know you ran. Tell us why.’

‘Tell me who you are first.’

King turned in his seat and aimed the SIG at Ward’s forehead. ‘We make the demands here. Not you.’

‘Are you helping me or kidnapping me?’

‘A bit of both.’

Ward sighed. He was pale, his hair was matted to his forehead, and his lips were red with his own blood. The massive adrenaline dump was beginning to subside. The pain was becoming increasingly noticeable. He started shaking.

He looked from King to Slater and back again.

Something seemed to click.

He said, ‘She said there were others. Is that you two?’

Slater braked so hard it threw Ward against the back of King’s seat. The cop bounced off it, crumpled across the rear seats, and curled into the foetal position. By that point Slater had pulled to the shoulder, burying the Bentley in the long shadows cast by the late afternoon sun.

He twisted in his seat, his eyes aflame. ‘She?!’

Ward moaned. ‘I’m sorry if I—’

Slater picked up his own SIG and reached into the back to press it against Ward’s collarbone. The man winced and came out of his shell.

Slater said, ‘Tell us everything. Now.’

He did.

It all came streaming out, from his first encounter with Alexis to her subsequent abduction, all the way up until he shot Keith Ray in the chest and hightailed it out of the warehouse, running for his life.

Slater kept everything he wanted to say locked deep inside. He could sense King right next to him, terrified that Slater would pull the trigger out of impulsive rage.

He didn’t.

He quashed his anger until the time was right to let it out.

Slater said, ‘Ray’s not dead.’

‘I shot him on the left side,’ Ward said. ‘In the heart.’

‘You were semi-conscious when those guys were standing over you, weren’t you?’ Slater said.

‘What guys?’

Slater could see Ward’s head spinning. So much had happened so fast.

‘One of those goons flat out told you you didn’t kill him,’ Slater said. ‘Ray was wearing a vest.’

‘Those guys back there?’ Ward said. ‘They ran straight after me. They don’t know. They were making it up.’

‘There are these things called phones,’ King said. ‘Someone invented them a while back.’

Ward went quiet.

Slater said, ‘You have no idea how bad I want to pull this trigger.’

Ward suppressed a gulp. ‘I’m sorry, man. Is she your girlfriend? Wife?’

‘Don’t say a goddamn word about her unless I tell you to.’

Ward got the message and shut his mouth.

Then he seemed to remember something and got brave again. An inkling of the adrenaline, still lingering. Steeling his nerves.

He said, ‘I was telling the truth about my grandmother. I love that woman. I was going to protect Alexis as best I could, I swear. Then Ray found out I left that key fob on her, and … I know Ray’s rep. I know more than I told Alexis. He suppressed so many cases. He let so many people stay on the street that shouldn’t have been there. Witnesses disappeared. Some of them were found, tortured and killed. I knew it was him. Just from what other cops told me.’

King said, ‘He’s not lying. There’s no way he would have done something so drastic otherwise. If we weren’t here, those guys would have killed him.’

‘I