Outlaws by Matt Rogers (phonics books TXT) 📕

behind her throughout the conversation. King had barely noticed him. The guy was focused on his carbine, checking it had come out the other side of the onslaught in one piece.

Now, only a couple of feet from Violetta, he closed the gap in the blink of an eye and had his Beretta drawn and pressed to the side of her head before King even realised what had happened.

She opened her mouth to gasp, and he clamped a gloved palm over it and wrenched her close.

King drew his Glock and locked it onto Banks’ forehead, but that had clearly been expected.

Banks said, ‘Can’t solve this problem, buddy.’

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘You might be able to outsmart a cartel foot soldier in a standoff,’ he said. ‘Not me.’

‘I—’

‘You shoot me, she dies. Simple as that.’

‘You die too.’

‘I know,’ Banks said. ‘Isn’t this fun?’

‘Again,’ King said, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’

‘I respect you. Soldier to soldier. They wanted you both, but you did a good thing here. I’m not some tyrant. I know evil when I see it. You wiped out evil here.’

‘You helped.’

‘It was your idea,’ Banks said. ‘You get the credit.’

‘So you despise what you see here, but you don’t care about her?’

‘Trust me, I’d prefer it didn’t have to go this way. But I got orders. I’m not about to disobey orders.’

‘You were going to.’

‘All a ruse. I’m a patriot. I asked them to pick — her or you. They picked her. She has a thousand secrets in this little head of hers that you don’t have. So I’m going to leave with her. Please don’t do anything stupid.’

‘You’re not ready to die.’

Banks half-smiled. ‘Bad luck, my friend. I’m perfectly willing to die. And your shot leads to my shot. You know it does. Look at my finger on the trigger. That’ll spasm, the moment I die. You shoot me, you’re killing your girlfriend.’

Violetta didn’t move a muscle. Her eyes, wracked with tension, said everything.

Not now.

Not this close to the finish line.

King said, ‘You could have said we escaped before you could get your hands on her.’

Banks shrugged. ‘Then I’d be lying. I’m a man of my word.’

‘I thought you were decent.’

‘I am,’ Banks said. ‘You might like to paint me as the bad guy, but this isn’t sunshine and rainbows. Hard choices have to be made. Be objective, King. Ask yourself — if you were upper management, would you willingly let her go with everything she knows about them? The greater good, blah blah blah.’

‘She knows nothing about them,’ King said. ‘She’s told me that herself.’

‘She knows enough.’

King lowered his Glock, recognising it was futile.

The wind howled.

Something under the hood of the truck hissed, the engine mechanics still powering down from the long drive.

King said, ‘Then it’s a good thing I heard the call.’

Banks hesitated. ‘What?’

‘When I lay down next to you outside Duke’s mansion. I grabbed your wrist.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I slipped something under your glove.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘Then how did I hear what you said when we got out of the truck?’

Banks stared.

The tension built.

The air froze, despite the desert heat.

King said, ‘I slipped something else under there, too.’

Banks didn’t react.

But his eyes flickered toward the woollen hem of the glove on his right hand.

The hand clutching the gun.

It wasn’t enough to act. King’s gut churned, and the rest of his insides seized, and a cold fell over him he wasn’t familiar with. The cold of defeat.

He met Violetta’s gaze and tried to convey how sorry he was with his eyes alone.

Then Banks’ gaze floated past his glove, past King even. Over King’s shoulder. He was staring at the house. King’s speech had thrown him off ever so slightly, and now something had distracted him on top of that.

King didn’t have time to turn around, but he knew it was Damien that had emerged from the ranch. The skinny kid with the mop of hair must have seemed like an apparition in the desert night to Banks. Especially considering the fact he thought King had cleared the compound.

Still meeting Violetta’s gaze, King gave an imperceptible nod.

She wasn’t an elite combatant. She didn’t have superhuman reflexes. She knew all Banks was experiencing was a brief flash of cognitive dissonance, a momentary spark of confusion.

But she went for it anyway, which made her braver than anyone King had ever met.

She jerked out of his grip, hard.

He fired.

The first shot missed, passing an inch past her head.

She fell away from him.

He got the gun halfway up and shot her.

King blew his head apart.

86

He moved so fast he caught her before she hit the ground.

Skidded through the dirt and wrapped his arms around her and lowered her gently to the earth.

His heart hammered.

His whole world stopped.

She landed in his arms, her eyes closed…

…and her face contorted in pain.

Pain.

Pain was good.

You can’t feel pain when you’re dead.

It was the slowest second of his life. He saw each millisecond pass, the whole time unimaginably tense, every muscle locked, every fibre and sinew vibrating with uncertainty. He checked her body and neck and face, searching for the point of impact, searching for the wound that might spell—

A red patch on her arm, rapidly expanding.

The bullet had gone through the bicep and come out the other side.

Clean entry and exit.

He fell off her and collapsed onto his back, panting hard, an infinite weight off his chest.

He thought he’d known relief before that moment.

He realised he’d never come close to the true sensation.

She panted, too. They’d both dumped their adrenaline hard. King gave thanks he’d wiped out the compound before the standoff with Banks. He figured he didn’t have the energy to stand, let alone fight.

Eventually he sat up. She lay there, staring up at the night sky, keeping pressure on her arm. She knew exactly what to do. She’d practically stemmed the bleeding already. Her first-aid training was unparalleled.

Her voice low and shaky, she said, ‘You didn’t have a bug.’

‘No shit,’ King said. ‘But when else would he have talked to his handler? Either you or