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

We let you and Gloria go on with your miserable lives, and we take our little crusade someplace else.’

Kerr twitched, her face shifting against the gun barrel.

She knew he was lying.

Ray noticed.

He clammed up, went silent. Then a look passed over his face.

The dawn of realisation.

The cooperativeness vanished.

King’s stomach opened into a pit and his insides fell through it. He thought, No.

Not this close to the finish line.

Not now.

Ray said, ‘Your “crusade”?’

King shrugged.

Ray put it together. ‘You killed those guys.’

King said, ‘What?’

‘That’s what kickstarted this whole war,’ Ray said. ‘Gates thought I whacked four of his men. Calle 18 thugs. You won’t see me shedding a tear over them, but I didn’t do it. He never believed me. And then … well, I got so angry that he was attacking me, so I attacked back. I never stopped and thought, Who actually did that? It was you.’

King said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Yes you do.’

Alexis tensed up. King saw her coil like a spring, anticipating something. She’d spent more time around Ray and his goons. She knew him better than King did. And if she was worried…

King said, ‘Let’s discuss this rationally. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I need more details.’

‘Turn us on each other,’ Ray said, thinking out loud. ‘Create chaos. Let us rack up the body count while you sit back and put your feet up…’

King said, ‘Keith?’

Ray looked up. ‘You don’t need more details. You know what I’m talking about.’

Beside King, Ward took a step forward.

Now King tensed up.

What are you doing, Alan?

Ward said, ‘Keith, your shooters are dead. There’s another guy. This is a setup.’

Silence.

Ward said, ‘Kill the girl.’

In hindsight it made perfect sense.

Ward always had two options.

Option one: side with King, Slater and Violetta. The cop didn’t know the three of them, but he’d trusted them for a brief spell. Everything he’d seen of the vigilantes had demonstrated they were unwaveringly moral, refusing to do the wrong thing even if it got them or their loved ones killed. It was noble, just like he’d said. But it’s not human instinct. Human instinct is to survive. Ward hadn’t been able to picture himself surviving in the aftermath of the good guys winning. He’d done a bad thing by kidnapping Alexis, and he couldn’t see a scenario where they didn’t kill him just to tie everything up with a neat bow.

Option two: side with Ray. A degenerate psychopathic drug addict who made rash decisions on the regular, a man who was backed up to a wall with no way out, who’d been run out to an abandoned warehouse in Arden to take the heat off his war with violent pimp Armando Gates. Not a wise decision to choose him on the surface, but this world doesn’t exist on the surface. Ray always saw what was right in front of him. Now he saw a young man willing to help him, and because he was an impulsive moron he’d inevitably forget about the past.

Ward saw forgiveness for his mistakes in the form of Keith Ray.

If he’d chosen King, there’d always be that guilt hanging over his head, the knowledge that he’d wronged someone who never forgot, never forgave.

King and Slater’s rigidity had pushed Ward away.

King figured this all out in the blink of an eye.

Then pandemonium erupted.

King moved like a whip. He knew he’d be the first target of the shooters in the windows, so as soon as Ward said, ‘Kill the girl,’ King grabbed him by the uniform and dragged the cop in front of him.

Sorry, Alan.

This was your choice.

The first bullet hit Ward in the left side of the chest, shattering his heart, killing him instantly.

It would have hit King in the throat if he hadn’t moved.

King held him by the collar to prop up his dead body, using it as a meat shield.

King used his first shot with the SIG to nail Keith Ray between the eyes.

No bulletproof vest this time.

No miraculous salvation.

Just a dead ex-sheriff with a hole in his head.

54

Ray’s momentary confusion over Ward’s sudden allegiance switch meant that he’d been half a second off putting the gun back to Alexis’ head. It meant when he fell away with a black hole between his eyebrows and reflexively pumped the trigger, the bullet went wide and missed her. She responded fast and smart, throwing herself to the ground, covering her head with her hands.

King fired four shots up at the window he’d seen the muzzle flare come from.

Another bullet thwacked Ward’s slouching corpse.

Blood sprayed King’s face.

It wasn’t his.

More shots hit the open window — Violetta, unloading her weapon, providing suppressive fire. Zoned in with indescribable adrenaline, King saw a silhouette amplified in a second window. He fired twice and the silhouette jerked backwards and disappeared from sight.

The shooter from the first window wasn’t down.

He fired again from the darkness.

Ward’s corpse took a third direct hit.

The bullet went through and grazed King’s thigh, splitting skin, drawing blood.

King growled, ‘Fuck it.’

He couldn’t stay in no-man’s-land a second longer.

He hurled Ward’s bullet-riddled body aside and threw himself over the hood of the Range they’d arrived in. He came down on the other side in an ungainly heap, throwing dust everywhere, so it took him a moment to make out the pair of figures sliding round the trunk, finding cover too.

Violetta, dragging Kerr by the hair.

A bullet whipped past the air between them, ruffling both sets of long hair.

Violetta flinched and fell away, unsure if she’d been hit or not.

Kerr ran for it. Flat-out sprinted across the road, despite the shooter in the window not being able to identify who was a friendly and who wasn’t. Putting her life in the hands of the gods.

King raised the SIG and zoned in on her upper back as she ran away from the car.

He had a clear unobstructed shot.

He could make it with his eyes closed.

Violetta yelled, ‘No!’ over the din of the SUV absorbing rounds.

King hesitated. He looked over.

She was shaking her head