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

Icke’s all mine. Wait here.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Slater sighed.

King ran off and disappeared into a stairwell.

In the newfound silence, Slater’s condition caught up to him. He was only now able to register the rapid heart rate, the sweat dripping off his face, the horrible pain shooting up his leg. In the grand scheme of things he was fine. No long-term damage, no gunshot wounds, not even a single knock to the head. His brain was running smooth as clockwork, which made it infinitely more frustrating. He’d understand if an accumulation of beatdowns kept him out of the fight. If he was staggering left and right, head swimming from the disorientation, there’d be no chance of taking part.

But here he was, head clear, mind sharp, held back by an ankle.

He swore to himself as he felt the joint inflaming in real time.

Should have stayed put, he thought. Should have let King take care of it.

But the day would come when King couldn’t take care of it, and Slater would be damned if he held back and let his closest friend and ally die while he watched.

Not a chance in hell.

He held his weapon tight and crab-crawled underneath the Tank, worming his way through the rubble to the other side. He set up position against the wall, inching his way to a seated position, so he could see out the newly created hole in the front of the building. The lot was dark and unpopulated. He eyed bodies scattered across the dirt, mirroring the eternal path of destruction he and King seemed to carve wherever they went.

It was a good thing, then, that they spent most of their time on the job around bad people.

A door opened nearby.

75

It was the door King had rebounded off a minute earlier, previously sealed shut.

Slater angled his SIG up and sideways, planning to intercept whoever stepped out.

Lucky he gave the new arrival a chance.

It was a kid.

A Hispanic teenager, tall for his age, incredibly skinny. The tattered singlet and khaki shorts he wore looked like they’d fall apart under the pressure of a gust of wind. He was barefoot. He had a handsome face, with high cheekbones and thick black hair that hung in locks over narrow eyes with long lashes. In another life he might have adorned magazine covers as a model.

He looked like a prisoner of war.

He was.

Slater said, ‘What’s up?’

The kid stared at him, perplexed but not scared. It was like he’d seen everything a boy could possibly see. There was nothing left to fear. He was hollow to it all.

Slater said, ‘English?’

The kid shook his head.

‘Spanish?’

A nod.

Slater switched to Spanish. He had a rudimentary grasp of the language. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Fabian.’

‘Fabian, I’m Will.’

‘Hi.’

‘You got a friend in there, Fabian?’

A nod. ‘Omar.’

‘How long have you two been here?’

A shrug. ‘Months, I think. Could be years. Time has been … weird.’

‘Do you know Alastair Icke?’

‘Who’s that?’

Slater nodded. ‘Thought as much.’

He wasn’t sure why he wanted it to mean something. Like Icke had a personal grudge against these two kids, or a grudge against their families. Maybe that’d make it make sense. It’d be poetic that way. In reality the old judge was just vermin who preyed on anyone he thought he could take advantage of. If the kids had been sold to overseas buyers, they’d have wasted away in a fate worse than death. Vanished, like they’d never existed at all.

Just like Slater’s mother had.

The pain had taken the wind out of his sails. He didn’t even try getting to his feet. He saw Fabian shifting from foot to foot, uncomfortable with being out of his room. Stockholm syndrome in full effect.

The kid eyed the hole in the wall, and the night beyond.

Slater said, ‘You got family out there? In Vegas?’

Fabian nodded.

Slater said, ‘You want to talk to the cops?’

Fabian shook his head.

Slater understood why.

He said, ‘Go. Take Omar and go. Don’t come back. Pretend it never happened.’

‘How?’

A poignant question that Slater didn’t have an answer to. He couldn’t even take his own advice. If he was able to, he never would have had a drinking problem. He’d have thought, Yeah, okay, that stuff happened. Forget about it. Move on. But you can’t forget about the shit he’d seen, the shit that had happened to Fabian and Omar. Even if they hadn’t been touched, physically or sexually, they’d still spent months as captives in a room. That was enough to break the toughest souls.

Slater said, ‘You’ll figure it out. I know you will. Go.’

Fabian turned in the doorway and hissed rapid-fire Spanish back into the room. He was met with hesitant protests. Fabian urged Omar out, and the boy followed meekly. Slater nodded to him, too. Omar was shorter, and even skinnier.

Omar said, ‘Who are you?’

‘A friend,’ Slater said.

Omar couldn’t comprehend it.

Fabian snapped the kid out of the trance-like state by pulling him hard toward the destroyed wall. Before he left, he turned back to face Slater.

Slater said, ‘Go.’

Fabian said, ‘What if it happens again?’

‘My friend is upstairs making everyone who did this to you choke on bullets,’ Slater said. ‘There won’t be anyone around to do it again.’

Fabian stared at Slater like he was something from an alternate reality.

Maybe he was.

Then the kid took all his emotional baggage and trauma out into the night. Omar followed.

Slater never saw them again.

76

If not for the tension, the second floor of the complex might have been ambient.

It was less bare, actually decorated with a keen eye for taste, unlike the empty corridors on the under-utilised ground floor. There were pot plants in the hallway and paintings on the walls and even a couple of rugs on the carpet. As if Icke was pretending this place wasn’t a storage facility for sex slaves.

King knew he wouldn’t meet resistance.

Not from Icke’s underlings.

Only from the old judge himself.

A doorway at the end of the hall had light emanating from within.

Practically a homing beacon.

King let the shadows wrap him up, quiet as a mouse, his footsteps inaudible.

Somehow