Hunters by Matt Rogers (books for 5 year olds to read themselves .TXT) 📕

It came out as a hoarse whisper, his face only inches from King’s. ‘You better be a good shot, pretty lady. A good shot. You miss by an inch, the bullet goes straight through me and into your man.’

Violetta didn’t answer.

King tried to hold it together, but Topaz’s grip was ironlike. He spluttered for breath, and saliva spilled out each side of his mouth. When he tried to inhale, Topaz pressed harder, steadily crushing his windpipe. Ounce by miserable ounce, the pressure piled on.

It got as bad as it could possibly get, and then it got worse.

Topaz was a rabid dog now, completely insane. He knew he would soon be dead, and he was going to take Jason King with him.

An eternal prize for the last hunter standing.

He’d carry the head of the most devastating operative in history with him into Valhalla.

It would give him a seat at the head of the table.

It had to.

In a strange southern accent King had never heard before, Violetta said, ‘You can have me, baby.’

‘What?’ Topaz snarled.

‘After you kill him, you can have me. As your reward. Because then you’ll be the apex predator. That’s what I like.’

Whatever Topaz had been expecting, it wasn’t that, so his eyes drifted up to see her for the first time. He noticed the curve of her wide hips under the dress, the way it sat off-the-shoulder, exposing her cleavage. It had been a long time since he’d been rewarded for anything.

Then he realised he was slacking, so he directed his attention back to King.

He hadn’t been distracted for more than a second.

But in that second King brought his useless left arm up and wedged it against Topaz’s neck, just under the brute’s chin. King couldn’t even feel his own forearm, but he pushed anyway.

Pushed with the rage of survival.

It didn’t do much, but it forced Topaz’s head back awkwardly, and his grip loosened slightly on King’s throat.

King sucked in a breath of air. Savouring the oxygen, he worked his right arm free and used it to pile on the pressure, both forearms combining to form a solid barrier that tilted Topaz’s chin up by force. Topaz pushed back against King’s forearm with his own neck, because if he moved back with it, he’d lose top position, and with it his life. It was an impossible situation. He was fighting King’s solid arm bone with his own windpipe.

It presented his head on a platter.

Like he’d rested his jaw on King’s forearm, propping his face up as a target.

Violetta put a round right into the middle of that target, directly through one of the veins that strained on Topaz’s forehead.

The man died with a grimace of frustration on his face.

No final peace. No satisfaction.

Just a grimy, gritty, endless struggle, and then death.

Exactly what the brute deserved.

With no resistance against his forearms now, King pushed harder, and Topaz’s corpse toppled backward into the garden bed.

There it laid to rest.

King coughed to test his throat, and the rawness was agonising. Maybe there’d be tissue damage, but what mattered was that he could breathe. In a haze of disbelief and screaming nerve endings, he crawled to his knees, then levered to his feet, trying not to wobble.

Violetta was already there to support his weight.

King cast his eyes around the estate. ‘We got them.’

Violetta strained to support him, her shoulder in his armpit. ‘We did.’

Then King’s stomach sank, the dread overriding the hurt. ‘Where’s Alexis?’

‘Back at Vásquez’s.’

King grimaced, and not from the pain. ‘Dead?’

‘No,’ Violetta said. ‘I think…’

She trailed off.

King said, ‘What?’

She didn’t answer. She led him around the side of the terrace, to the front of the property, where the lawn was scattered with the dead of Torres’ security team.

‘Did you do all this?’ she asked.

‘No. Opal and Topaz showed up when I was with Torres. He ordered his guards to take them out.’

‘Looks like it worked.’

‘I only ever intended it as a distraction. But they killed Opal. Pumped him full of lead before he finished the last of them off. He died right here.’

Violetta had finished assisting him to the terrace steps, where he gently toed the body of the talkative hunter.

Violetta gazed down at the corpse, then lifted her eyes to the devastation all around them.

She said, ‘Every last one they sent after us. All gone.’

‘Not all,’ King muttered.

Violetta said, ‘Oh?’

‘Sapphire. We should have got her in her safe house. We didn’t. We failed.’

Violetta said, ‘Alexis got her.’

A long pause. ‘Where?’

‘At Vásquez’s. Just then.’

‘How?’

‘That’s why I didn’t answer before,’ Violetta said. ‘I think … well, I think Alexis might have more of a death wish than Will.’

‘That’s a stretch.’

‘You didn’t see what I saw.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’

Violetta said, ‘I thought you might need a moment.’

King wobbled away from her, reached down and ripped a Beretta M9 from underneath Opal’s shirt, pulling it out of the man’s appendix holster.

‘Need a moment?’ he asked. ‘Am I dead?’

‘No.’

‘Then I’m good.’

He started down the driveway for the front gate, already laser-focused.

She shook her head in disbelief and followed.

103

King commandeered the open-topped security jeep beside the front gatehouse.

There was no one alive to resist.

Bloodstains spattered one side of the khaki vehicle, evidence of the war that had taken place around it. King gazed out at the initial stretch of driveway leading up to the front gate, imagining Opal and Topaz emerging from the gloom, kitted up with heavy-duty firepower and body armour, demanding their presence be made known to Fabio Torres. Maybe they had a prior relationship with him through Antônia. Maybe they thought that bought them safety through fear. But reputation and expectation meant nothing when the billionaire had a gun pressed to his head, which is what they’d never imagined King would do.

They’d come here expecting nothing but compliance, and they’d paid for it with their lives.

But not before killing nearly twenty men.

King shook his head at the depravity of it all, and gave thanks the hunters were dead.

Violetta climbed aboard, and they left Torres’ estate.

It