Outlaws by Matt Rogers (phonics books TXT) 📕

vigilante. Think of it as an unceremonious separation — myself and my colleague broke up with the secret world. Violetta decided to come with us.’

‘So the government wants me dead?’

‘Just the shadowy parts of it.’

‘Great.’

‘I’m the best of two bad options,’ Slater said. ‘You’re your own man. You make up your mind.’

Beckham looked around the room. There was a bed, and a small television, and a pair of armchairs for visitors facing that television, and a tiny kitchenette that clearly hadn’t been used in years, and an amalgamation of assistance equipment for his crippling disability.

Then Beckham turned back to Slater, as if he was surprised Slater hadn’t moved.

‘What?’ Beckham said. ‘You think I have any sort of attachment to this place?’

Slater nodded his understanding.

Beckham said, ‘Whatever keeps me alive — do that. I don’t care what it takes.’

Slater nodded again.

That’s all there was to it.

He crossed the room, took Beckham’s wheelchair by the handles, and guided it towards the door.

Tapping into automatic reflexes, he stopped the chair in its tracks as soon as they reached the door and skirted around, sliding the Glock out of its holster. He pushed down on the handle and swung it outward, slowly, keeping the gun raised, sweeping the corridor outside with the barrel.

Empty.

He leant out through the doorway and looked down, then up the corridor.

There was a pair of tall serious men six feet away from the doorway.

Heart-wrenchingly close.

One had a Beretta M9 in his hand.

The other had a syringe.

75

They made an odd trio, crammed into a tight row in the cabin of the tractor-trailer truck.

Jason King behind the wheel.

Violetta LaFleur in the middle seat.

Joshua Banks on the far side.

King made the introductions. ‘Violetta, Josh. Josh, Violetta.’

‘Pleasure,’ Banks said.

‘Likewise.’

Banks said, ‘You two are probably the most wanted individuals in the country, right?’

‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘We’d argue it’s unwarranted.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you?’

‘Can we trust you?’

‘If there’s one thing I hate more than enemies of the state, it’s human traffickers. Let’s deal with this, and then we’ll talk.’

King said, ‘You’ll be talking to thin air. After this we’re gone. That was the agreement.’

Banks nodded. ‘And what exactly do I tell my superiors?’

‘There was a commotion at the mansion,’ King said. ‘Gunshots. A cacophony of them. You moved straight in, but the truck got away. That’s the last you saw of it. If all this goes to plan, then a massacre in the desert will make headlines in a few days time. This truck will be found on the scene. You don’t know anything. You didn’t see where it went.’

‘That makes me look incompetent.’

‘It’s a whole lot better than admitting you aided enemies of the state.’

‘They might not believe me.’

‘Then you’d better be convincing.’

King entered the address Quinn had given him into his phone’s GPS, and threw the truck into gear. It rumbled out of the courtyard, leaving the walled property behind. They were out of Emerald Bay within minutes, on the Pacific Coast Highway in the dead of night, with the wind howling in through the sliver of a gap in the driver’s window. King had rolled it down a crack to air the cabin of Quinn’s stench. When King had picked him up off the driveway, he’d inhaled the aroma of stale sweat coating the man’s skin.

Salty perspiration generated by fear.

It had never, and would never, make sense to King.

If you were going to make yourself supremely uncomfortable, why do it in the pursuit of selfishness? Quinn would have no doubt worked through his fear and delivered the truck to its owners and run off with hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what good would that have done him? He’d still be miserable, still be uptight, wound into a ball of chronic stress. Constantly looking over his shoulder, constantly searching for the next criminal opportunity to keep himself afloat.

King was constantly uncomfortable, too. But when his head hit the pillow at night, he always found stillness. Satisfaction in the knowledge that he was contributing to the common good. Satisfaction from the fact that he’d be okay if he died in the process. Quinn had died terrified and full of unrest, because everything had been banking on reaching the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. King was happy risking it all without the prospect of reward, because he was content with his own actions.

That was the difference between him and the people he hunted.

It always would be.

There was little conversation as they finished their southward journey on the PCH and turned east on the Ortega Highway, aiming for Mission Viejo and beyond. The hills rose, and the suburbs turned to bare dry chaparral. The plains undulated under the night sky. The vastness became apparent, and the lights of the coastline faded away, replaced by the odd new housing development buried in the spectacle of the mountains. The GPS guided them in the direction of Perris, out into the emptiness of the desert beyond the hills.

King and Banks knew little about each other, but they didn’t talk. Now was not the time for superficial conversation, and almost all conversation they could think of would be superficial.

It didn’t matter what they’d done in the past, or who they were as people, or how long they’d served their countries, or what they enjoyed doing in their spare time. It would only serve to humanise each other, and there was no need for that.

They were bracing for war.

Violetta, although not a field operative, understood the dynamic better than anybody. She’d handled operatives like them for most of her professional career. It took ruthless objectivity, clear-headedness, and a refusal to ever be reactionary, which meant she stayed just as quiet as they did.

When there was twenty minutes left in their journey — at least according to the navigation software — Banks broke the silence. ‘Tell me everything Quinn told you about what we’re going into.’

‘It’s a ranch-style compound,’ King said. ‘Unspecified number of sicarios, but he mentioned perimeter guards manning the walls, more guards on the ground