“Whatever you’re doing with Wendy, it’s over now.”
“Is it?” I laugh a little. Everything’s so goddamn ironic today.
“If you want to make me pay, don’t take it out on her.”
“Trust me, Nick. I absolutely do want to make you pay. But I won’t need to hurt Wendy Gale because you’re gonna do exactly what I say.”
“And what would that be?”
“You’re gonna stay right where you are. And I’m gonna come to you. Hear me?”
“What about Wendy?”
“What about her?”
“Are you bringing her with you?”
“Nah, she’ll keep. Go back into the hotel office and tell Wendell you want a room. Then text me the room number.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll find out.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN - WENDY
FOUR DAYS AGO
Merc.
The word echoes in my mind as I let him wait on the other end of the phone.
“Nothing to say?”
I take a deep breath. “OK. I know who you are. What do you want?”
“Well, can I make a list?”
I can’t tell how serious he is. And I don’t know this guy. I’ve heard a lot about him, but I never bothered getting too close because whenever any of the other Company assassins would bring up Merc’s name, it always came with a warning.
When you’re one of two men on the planet who can run a PSYOP right inside the mind of a target, you’re in demand. And lots of new guys over the years have tossed around the idea of hiring Merc for his services when they had a particularly smart target who had pertinent information. Torture is so… old-school, right? Only a truly sick fuck wants to torture a person for intel before they kill him. Torture takes time. It requires a place where your target can scream loudly for hours on end. It’s not quick and easy and believe it or not, the Company assassins I know are all relatively well-adjusted men who just want to get the job done as efficiently as possible.
Whenever that happened—whenever some new guy thought bringing Merc in for a job was a good idea—the more worldly assassins would set him straight. It went a little something like this:
You want to know how to find Merc? We all know where he lives, but if you get within five miles of that place and you’re not passing by on the highway going eighty-five miles an hour, you will be followed by an armed drone until you leave the area.
If you try to ambush him into a conversation at the local coffee shop or grocery store—especially if he’s got his family with him—he will shoot you in your sleep that same night.
If, by some miracle, you actually get on his property his daughters will shoot you between the eyes and then feed you to their personal face-eating German shepherds.
When the oldkills, which is what we call the seasoned professionals, said all this, at first the newkill guy would laugh. Smile about it. Oh, this is so funny. What a good joke.
I mean, why wouldn’t he think that? He’s a fucking Company assassin. And there aren’t that many of them. Maybe fifty, total. So he’s one of the top fifty most dangerous men on the earth. Why should he be afraid of anyone, let alone some old, washed-up asshole who is so paranoid he has armed drones flying a pattern over his house twenty-four seven?
But about a minute later he would recognize the silence for what it was and realize no one was joking and that smile would drop. Thirty seconds after that he’d say something like, “Fuck that guy anyway. I don’t need to run no fucking PSYOP to get what I need.”
And everyone would let the newkill have his moment. No one would joke around or embarrass him for backing out of his great idea. Because every single one of them was afraid of Merc too.
It’s kinda weird how that happened. Because not a single one of them has ever seen Merc actually work. He’s been retired for more than a decade.
But that’s why they’re so scared of him.
Retired, you say? How does one go about retiring from the Company?
One doesn’t.
I mean, Adam’s not a bad leader, all things considered. But if you try to just pack up and leave your job… yeah. He’s gonna send in one of your oldkill friends to change your mind. And by change your mind, I mean he’s gonna make you dead.
So they all wonder, what kind of magic power does this Merc guy possess that he just gets to walk away?
Then you gotta tell them the whole stupid story. Merc isn’t actually Company.
What? It comes out incredulous. Bullshit.
It’s not bullshit.
Back in Merc’s working days the Company still had subcontractors. They found Merc at an MIT recruitment weekend. And the moment you say ‘MIT’ to these wide-eyed newkills, their mouths drop open. Ohhhhhhh. They start nodding, getting it. Now it kinda makes sense. He’s not an assassin. He’s a brain who just knows how to fuck with your head and kill you a hundred and twenty-five different ways.
“You still with me, Wendy?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Do you still want to know what I want?”
“Sure. Why not? I mean, since I’ve got you on the phone and all. It’s kind of a big deal, talking to you. If the newkills could see me now…”
“I don’t know what that means. Don’t even care what that means. I’m interested in what you know about Nick Tate.”
“Well, obviously, we’re close. I’m standing in his house talking on his phone.”
“Close… how?”
“All the ways, really. He’s family to me.”
And for some reason this provokes an uneasy silence from the infamous killer on the other end of the landline.
“Merc? Are you still with me?”
“So you’ve known him… how long?”
“Well.” I pause to count. “Pretty much my entire life. You remember the Santa Barbara massacre?”
“I was there.”
“Right. That’s right. I think I knew that. I was there too. But I was only five, so I wasn’t partaking in the killing that night. Obviously. I was on the superyacht. Nick ended up on the yacht too, and… we met. Few years later I was babysitting for him. He didn’t take to single fatherhood immediately and he needed a backup. So I was backup. And then, of course, we’ve done lots of jobs together, so I’ve been his real backup on about… mmmm… lemme think. Maybe… thirty jobs? Lots. I mean, maybe thirty jobs isn’t a lot to someone like you, but I think thirty is kind of a big deal.”
“Anything else?”
“If you want to know if we’re fucking, eh. Sometimes we do that. But I’m not his girlfriend, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s not my boyfriend. That’s not how we work. We are something much more than that.”
“How do you two work? How important are you to him?”
A chill runs through my body. It’s got to be ninety-five degrees outside and even though the AC is on, the front door is still open, so it’s hot in here.
The chill is a warning.
Something is wrong.
Something is very, very wrong.
CHAPTER TWLEVE - NICK