I’m not accusing your brother of anything, Damon replied. I can only tell you what I just overheard and what I think is happening on the other side of this door.
Jesus. Wade paused. I can’t tell. Things are just so dull that I can’t even tell you that much.
That’s fine, Damon said. I need you to pull in all your energy as low and as deep as you can. Yes, bullets and all kinds of shit may soon be flying, but, if you can make a move so you’re somewhat protected, lurching like a drunk or not, I’d appreciate it. Because, when I come in, unfortunately it’ll be guns blazing.
But no response came from Wade.
Wade, are you there, man? Come on. Talk to me. Talk to me. But Damon got nothing.
In the background he thought he heard a hard spit. His heart froze, as he kicked in the door and, with his gun at the ready, entered in a fury. And a man stood there, with a gun against a prone figure on the bed. Damon didn’t have time to see if it was Wade.
When the gunman looked up, startled to see Damon suddenly appear, the gunman smiled. “I’ll just shoot him right now,” he taunted. “And I thought for sure you were a goner.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t check,” Damon replied.
“And that was my mistake. I get it,” the gunman noted calmly. “But you can sure as hell bet I won’t make another one.”
“You already did. You had to go back and finish up your other asshole’s job and kill off poor Mera,” he murmured. “Your local hire couldn’t even be trusted to kill off three people in one night, could he?”
The guy’s face twisted in fury, and then he calmed somewhat, as if realizing Damon was trying to rattle him. “Good help is hard to find.” He shrugged. “But if you don’t put down that gun, I’ll blow your friend to bits.”
“You blow my friend to bits, and I’ll take you out,” Damon stated, “no question. You’re done. So which will it be?”
The guy stared at him. “You won’t get any answers out of me.”
“Well, at least I’ll know that we took out one of the guys involved in this raid,” Damon muttered. He studied the gunman for a long moment, stepping closer. “Jesus, he’s your brother for crying out loud.”
“What are you talking about?” the man asked in surprise, stepping back.
“Hands up,” Damon ordered.
“I can still shoot him. Drop the gun and put your hands up.”
“Do you think I don’t know that you’re Wade’s brother? You think we haven’t felt that same familiar energy?”
“Energy?” he asked, trying to deflect.
“Don’t joke with me,” Damon snapped. “Whoever put up that energy guard around this building knows a thing or two.”
The guy beamed. “Yeah, I sure do.” He shook his head. “And, yeah, it’s my brother. Too bad my brother chose to work on the wrong side of the wrong team. I tried to get him to come my way a long time ago, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. He had plenty to say about my choices in life though,” he noted. with a shrug. “I never did understand that holier-than-thou personality.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I know so.”
And just then a moan came from the bed. The gunman looked down at his brother, startled, his trigger finger clenching, as Damon’s gun fired, hitting the gunman’s wrist. The gunman’s own shot went wild as he jerked backward, dropping the gun and holding his injured hand. He stared at Damon in shock. “Jesus Christ. The least you could have done is killed me.”
“Not happening,” Damon replied, “unless you have somebody who’ll do the job for you. But they won’t do that until they know for sure that you’re not dead yet.”
He stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“They’re taking out everybody they can. Nobody is left alive. You’re no different.”
“No, that’s not true,” he argued.
“Yeah, it is. The first guy who hit our people was Peter Boswell,” Damon stated. “He’s dead now. Did you kill him?”
“I had to. He was a loose screw, and, besides, he didn’t do the job.”
“So you cleaned up, and of course our little government man has been taken out.”
He frowned. “Bob?”
“That’s a name I’m hearing first from your lips.”
“Yeah, I used to work with him a long time ago. He’s a dirtbag. But then some of those suits are. They get comfortable in their job and become mostly pencil pushers and don’t even realize when you take over their log-ins and do all kinds of shit behind their backs.”
“Somebody decided that Bob was a loose end.”
He stared at him in shock. “He’s dead? I thought you meant he was moved or fired.”
“Yeah, he’s dead,” Damon stated, holding the gun on Wade’s brother. “What else do you know?”
“I don’t know jack shit”—he smiled—“except that you guys’ days are numbered, and a pretty decent contract is on your heads. But it’s already been accepted by another group.”
“What group?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve got the contract, so I don’t give a shit.”
“So who were you just talking to on the phone then … about shooting your own brother?”
“I wasn’t talking to anybody.” He gave Damon a flat stare.
“Liar. Absolute lies,” Damon snapped.
“Well, if it’s a case of lying, you might want to keep me alive, just for leverage.”
“Why is that?”
“Because your home base that you thought was safe isn’t safe,” he explained, “and my brother was a backup trap just in case. But we’ve got her now, so if Wade lives or dies now, it doesn’t matter.”
“Her? Who are you talking about?” But in his heart Damon knew. “What have you done?”
“I was helping governments and helping myself at the same time. Nobody looks after us when we get old and gray.”
“You don’t need to be looked after when you’re old and gray,” Damon said bluntly. “None of you guys survive that long.”
He stared at Damon, his face turning ugly. “Well, that female we missed the first time around, we don’t have to worry about her anymore,” he snapped. “Because she’s the one we nabbed. And believe me that’ll be a done deal before you ever get out of here.”
Feeling his heart pound and hoping it was all lies and bravado, he sent a mental message to Terk. Jesus Christ, you better have Tasha with you. This asshole says they’ve picked her up already.
They have, Terk’s voice hard and grim. They already have.
Damon immediately turned back to the gunman, who was already laughing at him. “Where are they taking her?”
“You’ll have to find out,” Wade’s brother taunted. “I don’t give a shit.”
And, with that, Damon dove into the guy’s mind, looking for whatever messages he was sending and receiving.
Immediately the man screamed in pain. “What are you doing? What the hell! Stop!”