Outlaws by Matt Rogers (phonics books TXT) 📕

had a hood, and he pulled it up. The last thing he wanted was to get recognised as a person of interest, for the red-and-blue flashes of police lights and the wailing of sirens to ruin his last miserable moments of freedom.

He wanted desperately to have an outburst, but didn’t allow himself to. Nor did he let himself curse his fate, or curse what was probably the abhorrent ending to his career and life. He walked past a park bench and planted himself down at it, staring at the pavement, wracking his brain for any potential solution to his woes.

As he suspected, there was nothing.

There were a million solutions if he was on his own, which was the reason he’d spent most of his life in solitude. No collateral, no responsibilities, no bait to dangle over his head. When he wanted to disappear, he disappeared. He’d thrown that all aside by introducing Alexis, and he should have known better. There was no fairytale ending. His skillset was useless if he was facing off against the entire shadow world, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to protect her entire extended family.

There was no way around it.

He had lost.

He could run now. He could let them butcher everyone Alexis knew and loved in their desperation to get to him. Then they’d probably kill her, too, for her awareness of state secrets. Other than her, he had nothing, so vanishing would be effortless. He had as much freedom as he wanted, as long as he was comfortable taking the nightmares and shoving them deep in a vault inside his head.

So that was that.

Live as a monster.

Or die with his soul intact.

He already knew there was no reality where he’d ever choose the former. You could strip him of all his training, all his experience with pain, all the limits he’d forged simply by enduring longer than anyone else thought possible … you could get rid of everything, and he’d be the same man underneath. He’d have the same principles. He figured he was born with them.

And he’d die with them.

He stood up, probing his mental map for the closest busy street in Brooklyn. Wherever he could most easily hail a cab. Strangely, he felt nothing now. Maybe he’d experienced everything. Maybe by abandoning Alexis, by making the love of his life hate him, he’d ticked that final box on the checklist of the human emotional spectrum. Maybe, with that all wrapped up, all he was left with was emptiness.

He spotted a cab, across the street in the distance, maybe a couple of hundred feet away.

It was idle.

If he got in, it would take him to the gravel hard shoulder off the bank of the Hudson River. He’d get out. He’d watch it drive away. As soon as there were no witnesses, a sniper would put a round through his skull.

There weren’t any other options.

That was his fate.

So he made for the cab, but it was a two-minute walk, so before he threw his burner phone away forever he figured he’d make one final call. Perhaps she’d listen to him now. Now that she knew he was a dead man walking. Perhaps he could make her understand what she’d done to him.

He pulled out the phone and dialled a number he knew off by heart.

He didn’t expect her to answer.

She did.

She didn’t say anything.

‘Violetta,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

Silence.

He said, ‘This is the endgame. You win. Will you listen to me now? Before I go.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ a male voice said. ‘Just tell me where you are.’

A voice he knew.

Slater froze.

Literally stopped dead in his tracks, in the lee of a rundown tenement building. Somehow, the sky turned greyer. Uncertainty swelled. And his heart sank.

He said, ‘You never went to California, did you?’

Silence.

Slater said, ‘That was all bullshit, wasn’t it? You’ve been working with her this whole time.’

King said, ‘I went to California, alright. Now I’m back.’

‘I’m sure you did.’

‘She set me up, too.’

Now it was Slater’s turn to fall silent.

King said, ‘Yeah.’

‘How do you have her phone?’ He paused. ‘Did you kill her?’

‘No. She’s with me.’

‘How can you trust her?’

‘I can’t,’ King said. ‘Which is why she’s not here with me voluntarily.’

‘Christ,’ Slater said, turning in a half-circle. ‘This is a mess.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘You’re burning bridges.’

‘Only the ones you’ve already burnt.’

Slater went quiet.

King said, ‘You think I’d just give up on you?’

‘What happened in California?’

‘It was a dummy lead. It led to nothing. They fed a bunch of small-time crooks some false information that’d keep me busy until tomorrow night.’

‘I’d be dead by then.’

‘Sounds like you would have been dead within the hour.’

‘Yeah. Probably.’

‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ King reiterated. ‘I’m here. We’re going to fight this.’

‘How can we?’

‘We’ll figure it out.’

‘What’s she told you?’

‘Nothing yet. She’s here beside me. I’ve instructed her not to speak. I want us to talk to her together.’

‘I’m going to kill her.’

King went quiet.

Slater said, ‘Is that going to be a problem?’

‘We’ll see. Depends what we hear.’

‘Does she know I just threatened her life?’

‘No. I’m not on speaker.’

Slater fed King the name of the street he was looking at, upon which rested the cab that would have sealed his fate.

‘Brooklyn?’ King said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Sit tight.’

King hung up.

Slater kept the silent phone pressed against his ear.

65

After the throaty cough of the suppressed gunshot had well and truly faded, King took Violetta by the arm and led her out of her apartment.

They went downstairs and covered the length of the lobby. He held her hand like they were an ordinary couple, and kept the Glock under his jacket, angled at her stomach. No one gave them so much as a second look. They stepped outside under an overcast sky and crossed the street, silent, looking straight ahead. King walked her a couple of hundred feet away from her building, and on the sidewalk he took her wrist in a firm grip to make sure she didn’t make a break for it.

A shiny Land Rover was the first civilian