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

‘You shouldn’t be doing it before an operation. You never used to.’

‘It’s one glass,’ he said. ‘I’m steadying my nerves.’

‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘I’m usually not,’ Violetta said. ‘But today…’

‘It was intense.’

‘What would you have done if you found my body in Kerr’s office?’ she said.

He stared at her. ‘What’s the point of talking about this?’

‘Because,’ she said, ‘I never told you how close it was.’

He put the empty tumbler down.

He let her elaborate in her own time.

She said, ‘I played it off like it was nothing. But I had to take a risk. The sort of risk I’ve never taken before.’

He said, ‘You were in the field with us in New York. You had a gun to your head in the lobby of our building. Remember?’

She looked at him. ‘This was closer than that.’

He went quiet.

She said, ‘Her enforcers came in. Tony and Eric. Tony put a gun to the back of my head. Kerr had a gun aimed at my face, from the other side of the desk. I started weeping. It made him hesitate for a second. I threw myself to the side. So hard, so fast. I exaggerated it on purpose. To make Kerr jump.’

She paused.

She said, ‘Kerr shot Tony in the stomach. Just reflex, nothing else. Her finger pumped the trigger and her aim hadn’t caught up to her intentions so the bullet went straight through the space I used to occupy and into Tony’s gut. He doubled over and I stripped him of his gun and shot him and Eric in the head, then I wheeled to her and had my aim on her before she could aim at me. She was frozen like a statue. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She wasn’t even thinking about retaliating.’

King imagined it playing out.

It would have been close.

Way too close.

He said, ‘That’s the job.’

‘I’m just saying,’ she said. ‘We both need to be prepared for the day our desperation move doesn’t work.’

She got off her stool and came to him. He put his arms around her waist, cupping them against the small of her back. She took his face in her hands and kissed him, long and slow.

When they parted he said, ‘We were never supposed to live cautiously.’

‘I’m only wondering if there’s a life outside of this. If we’re still alive in ten, twenty years … do we reconsider?’

‘I tried it,’ King said. ‘Trust me, I tried it.’

‘And?’

‘It’s not for me.’

‘Because you lost someone,’ Violetta said. ‘You lost the closest person in your life. That has to tarnish your view of it.’

‘Klara was everything to me,’ he admitted. ‘Just like you’re everything to me.’

‘So if you lose me? If I lose you?’

‘We go on.’

‘I don’t know if I could.’

He kissed her on the forehead. ‘You’re stronger than me. You just haven’t recognised it yet.’

‘I’d question everything. If I had to do this without you.’

‘It’d be crazy if you didn’t,’ he said. ‘That’s the whole point. We’re supposed to feel these terrible things. You think I’m fearless out there? You think the constant reminder of death isn’t right there on my mind?’

‘It never looks like it is.’

‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘Everything I do is despite the fear. Not because of the absence of it.’

She nodded.

She said, ‘Tonight won’t go according to plan.’

‘It never does.’

‘I just need to know you’re ready.’

‘Always,’ he said. ‘I always expect the worst. That goes hand-in-hand with the fear.’

She said, ‘Where’s Slater?’

King said, ‘I think he’s talking to Alan.’

Violetta stood upright. ‘He shouldn’t be doing that.’

King said, ‘Wait.’

She stopped in her tracks.

He said, ‘Let them speak.’

‘What if Will gets angry?’ she said. ‘What if he snaps?’

‘Oh, he’ll get angry,’ King said. ‘But he won’t snap. He’s got more control than you give him credit for.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘When Ward revealed he kidnapped her, Slater already had a gun to his chest. He didn’t fire it.’

She nodded.

King said, ‘That was the most fear I felt today. Those few seconds. When I wasn’t sure what he was going to do.’

She hesitated. ‘Not even when you thought I was dead?’

King could be honest with her. She’d always told him to hold nothing back.

He said, ‘If you’d died, you would have died with honour. Fighting against evil like Gloria Kerr. If Slater had pulled that trigger, he would have killed a man simply because he was angry in that moment. A guy who was green to the police force, inexperienced, overwhelmed. A guy who wasn’t evil. Slater would have ruined everything he stood for with one trigger pull.’

She went quiet.

She understood.

She said, ‘Will would have died too. His old self. The moral side of him.’

King nodded. ‘That’s how ruthless we have to be on ourselves. It’s so easy to make allowances in our minds. We can’t ever let it happen.’

‘It’s the noblest pursuit of all, I guess,’ she said. ‘What happens when you’re asked to make a decision you’re not comfortable with to save your own skin?’

He stared into space, watching the shadows over her shoulder.

She said, ‘Jason? What then?’

He turned his attention back to her.

‘That’s when,’ he said, ‘we need to be prepared to lose each other.’

She nodded, went back to him and wrapped her arms around his mid-section.

Sometimes their world made no sense.

And sometimes it made perfect sense.

50

Slater wasn’t sure what his intentions were.

Before he could stop himself he went into the office occupied by Alan Ward.

The cop hadn’t moved — he couldn’t if he wanted to. His wrists and ankles were bound together with cable ties and, for added peace of mind, Slater had used his patented electrical tape cocoon to fix Ward to the armchair beside the desk. The junior officer sat there now, refusing to squirm, refusing to shout for help. He could understand that King and Slater didn’t consider him the enemy — they simply needed him restrained in case he got any rebellious ideas before nine p.m.

Slater sat down in the opposite armchair and waited for Ward to speak first.

It took some time. The man wasn’t chatty. Slater had