Monsters by Matt Rogers (bill gates books to read TXT) 📕

in the shadow of the upside-down glove compartment. He hadn’t spotted it before. Hadn’t spotted it when it truly mattered.

He clambered off Kit’s twitching, half-conscious form and reached through the window frame, over Bobby. His voice was a mutter as he took the gun, identified it as Bobby’s compact HK pistol. ‘Thank you, sir.’

Kit hadn’t deemed words necessary before the fight, so Slater wasn’t about to do anything different.

No point trying to make someone see the light if there’s no hope of redemption.

Slater rolled back to Kit and shot him in the head before the guy knew what was coming.

A small mercy, at least.

He almost fell onto his back and succumbed to the pain after the job was done, but this was California. Cops would be here in minutes, especially with an unsuppressed gunshot in the mix. The crash had been chaotically loud.

So Slater fished around in Kit’s pockets until he found the man’s phone, relieved him of it, and hobbled away.

He could worry about the pain later.

As he receded into the night up the back of the lot, he tried King’s number.

66

It was so quiet by the flood control channel that Alexis heard everything.

The noise of two cars approaching somewhere on the other side of the foliage, then a brief pause, then both vehicles speeding away.

King, she thought. What are you doing?

She didn’t let it show that she was holding out any sort of hope. Heidi couldn’t handle a gun to save her life, but she could spot weakness from a mile away. And in this situation she didn’t need to be competent with a firearm. She was pointing it at Alexis’ face from six feet away. Alexis was doing the same.

Their fingers resting millimetres from their respective triggers.

Alexis dwarfed Heidi, which surprised her. It’d been hard to tell in her office at Vitality+’s headquarters, what with her propped up behind a giant desk. Alexis figured she was the type to position her chair higher than whoever she was facing, just for the sake of the power dynamic. Up close she was five-four at best, and thin of build. Without her power she was nothing, and Petr had done a respectable job of pulling her away from her legions of security, her army of hired guns.

What army?

The army was gone, and soon the money would be gone, and Heidi was then vulnerable to derision, arrest, humiliation.

Despite it all, she was inquisitive. She scrutinised Alexis over the ridge of the Grach pistol, staring her in the face. ‘First time I’ve got a proper look at you.’

‘You saw me in your office.’

‘Yes, but…’ She sighed. ‘I was reeling. I didn’t really…take it all in.’

‘Is that what you’re doing now?’

‘I’m not sure if there’s a way out of this. So, yes, that’s what I’m doing.’

‘You can put that gun down. Then there’s a way.’

‘I’m inexperienced but I’m not stupid. If I budge an inch you’re shooting me. If you wanted to hand me over to the cops you would’ve called my bluff and done it already.’

‘Your bluff?’ Alexis said. ‘You mean, the bluff about lashing out at your employees if you knew you were going down? That wasn’t a bluff. That’s exactly what you did. Ernie’s wife…’

She trailed off.

Heidi’s eyelid twitched. ‘Ernie’s wife…you mean Rachel McFarlane?’

‘Probably.’ Alexis felt sick. ‘They shot her. I came across her body, came across them beating Ernie to a pulp.’

‘So he died too?’

‘No. No one besides his wife. None of the seven.’

Heidi twitched again.

Alexis watched her closely for a reaction as she said, ‘I had friends planted with Frankie Booth and his crew.’

Heidi’s eyes clouded with confusion.

Alexis said, ‘That’s his real name. Not Costa. He came over from Boston, before you started working with him. Bit of a coincidence that we even found him, because I was only hunting you.’

‘Who paid you?’

‘No one. Someone I know asked me for a favour.’

‘Your friend?’

‘Not really. Wouldn’t go that far.’

Heidi’s face scrunched up, the confusion amplifying. ‘What the fuck are you even talking about?’

‘Your employee. Mary.’

Heidi rolled her eyes. ‘Of course. That scared little girl.’

‘Her aunt put me up to this.’

‘Who you aren’t friends with?’

‘Doesn’t matter how I feel about her.’

‘Right. So she’s loaded, and she dipped into her coffers.’

‘I’m not getting paid.’

‘Of course you’re not.’

‘You won’t believe me. That’s okay.’

Heidi shifted her weight to the other foot. Her arm was getting heavy. Alexis was intent on keeping her talking, steadily distracting her from the seriousness of the interaction. The instant she let her guard down…

Alexis said, ‘Actually, let me reword that. Her aunt didn’t put me up to anything, really. She just brought it to my attention.’

‘And you are…? We never covered that.’

‘No,’ Alexis said. ‘We didn’t.’

Silence.

But Alexis didn’t like silence. Not with a gun in her face. There was really nothing to do but talk until one of them slipped up. So she relented. ‘I’m just some nobody. But I met a couple of guys who used to do what you hire people to do, only at the highest level. They’ve been my family for a while. I guess that led me to this.’

Heidi sneered. ‘Your family?’

‘Something like that.’

’They’re using you. You’re some sick side project of theirs.’

‘I get why you’d think that. In your world, everything’s transactional, right? I bet you haven’t gone a day in your adult life without carefully calculating your every move — what you’d gain from it, what you’d lose.’ Alexis took her silence as both an admission and encouragement to continue. ‘So of course you won’t believe that I’m not getting paid. Because why would anyone do anything without receiving something in return? Right?’

Heidi said, ‘They wouldn’t. Suggesting otherwise is bullshit. No one does things for anyone other than themselves. Not deep down. That’s the way it’s been since the dawn of time.’

‘You’re projecting your own twisted head onto the world. There’s so much of it that doesn’t work that way.’

‘You’re full of shit and you know it. Righteous bitch.’

Alexis said, ‘But your aim will lower first. Because you’re scared. Because,