Twenty-six years earlier
The rain acted like a metronome against the car roof, the dark alley their mask.
The subtle glow beyond the thin curtains of the apartment ahead told them someone was home. He’d detected two adult outlines. From their stature, composure, stance and movement, Nate ascertained them both to be female. And one of them, for just a short while, had carried a small child in their arms.
‘This is it,’ Nate said.
‘Definitely?’ Frank asked. ‘I can’t have any mistakes. This might be our only shot.’
‘Then try and remember that.’
Nate looked back up at the windows. He’d never had anyone accompany him on a job. It made it trickier, more risky. Successful team work required years of working together, getting to know each other, unless there was that rare spark of connection that made it seamless. And he had neither with Frank. He didn’t even like the guy. But the Hordas clan paid well – lucratively well. And they were willing to pay a ridiculous amount for this job. It was technically easy: a woman and her kid. It was the kid he’d been told they were there for. Frank’s kid. She’d stolen him and Frank wanted him back. And Frank had wanted to be there to make sure it was his kid.
Nate wasn’t social services. He wasn’t judge and jury. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t want to know. In fact, on this case, he felt the less he knew, the better. He’d spent years developing that tact and it was the reason his reputation was infallible enough for the Hordas clan to hire him whenever they wanted the best on a job. Whenever they had an important enough job to pay for the best. And his lack of concerns as to the whys when it came to their business made him their top preference. Off the back of that, he’d become top preference for many more cases and many more clients. His business had thrived as a result.
‘You’d better be light on your feet,’ Nate said, looking back at him.
Frank was a big guy – in height and girth, the latter of which was the result of being overindulged by the Hordas clan. He wasn’t part of the family, Nate knew that much. But he may as well have been. The Hordas clan let few in, but Frank had been one of them.
‘What are you fucking trying to say, Nate?’
‘You know what I’m trying to say. And remember the rules: I’m not touching the kid. I’ll kick the door in, I’ll scan for company, I’ll prevent any trouble, I’ll have your back. The rest of it is down to you. And neither of us touch the women, understood? Or any other kids that might be in there. We keep it quick. We keep it efficient. We stay on task.’
‘Trust me, I don’t want to be in there a second longer than I need to be,’ Frank said. He reached for the car door. ‘Let’s do this.’
Nate took the lead. He ascended the metal outer steps, rain dripping from the handrail. It only took one direct blow to the lock from the sole of his foot to send the door ricocheting open.
He stepped inside, Frank close behind him.
The child jolted in his chair, the woman feeding him knocking back hers as she leapt to her feet.
The pang from the fear in her eyes was instant, but he swallowed it and kept his focus.
He was not there to wield his moral compass. He was there to get the job done.
He kicked open the bedroom door directly ahead, revealing it to be empty.
Catching a glimpse in the corner of his left eye, he looked down the corridor to where the tail of a long skirt fled back into the room.
The door slammed.
He glanced across his shoulder to the raucous in the kitchen-diner between Frank and the woman, the child already crying and screaming in his arms, the woman pleading with him to give him back.
‘Fuck,’ he hissed under his breath before heading down the corridor.
He kicked open the door to his left first to reveal a vacant bathroom before he kicked open the door to his right. It took two blows, it having been bolted. But it broke in the end.
The woman stood in the middle of the room, the knife in her out-held hand trembling in her grasp, her eyes wide with panic.
It wasn’t a sight he liked to see. It wasn’t a sight that gave him any pleasure. It was a sight that sickened him to his core that he had created it.
But it was a job.
Just a job.
No questions. No guilt. No hesitation.
Knife in hand, she should have been out there trying to help her friend, help the child. It made no sense that she was stood there. No sense unless she was protecting something.
Something he picked up the subtle scent of. A scent coming from the slatted wardrobe behind her.
He stepped forward.
‘You stay the hell back!’ she demanded, her voice shaking as much as her hand.
He snatched the knife from her a split-second later, as easy as snapping a branch from a rotten tree. He had her arms pinned to her chest a second after that, her back against him as he restrained her so he could open the wardrobe door.
From her nestled position amongst the shoes and jumpers, a small girl looked up at him, her large dark eyes crested by her heavy mousy-brown fringe.
Her startled gaze shot to the woman. Her grip tightened on the soft toy she was holding. She stared back at him.
Eyes that bore right into him.
No tears. No protest. Nothing but silence.
‘Don’t touch her!’ the woman demanded. ‘You leave my daughter alone!’
As she squirmed in his arms, he reached for the child regardless so he could take a closer look.
The little girl’s teeth clamped down on his hand, a bite that made him flinch, before she withdrew deeper into the wardrobe, her eyes blazing with defiance.
He let the woman go. As he sucked the blood from the bite mark on his hand, he stared back at the woman, giving her the once-over: the same dark eyes, the same colour hair as the child.
The raucous out in the kitchen-diner had distanced, telling him Frank was already making his way back outside.
They’d already been there long enough. They’d got what they came for.
And no one had said anything about a girl. A girl was not on his list.
‘Please,’ the woman said, tears of frustration, of anger, of helplessness pouring down her cheeks.
The boy: that’s all he’d been instructed to collect. Just the boy.
With one more glance at the little girl, he turned on his heels, the pit of his stomach telling him he was making a bad mistake.
He entered the kitchen-diner to see the full-on scuffle on top of the steps.
He reached the door.
He saw the woman trying to block Frank’s descent. He saw her lose her footing, the wet handrail giving her no grip as she fell. His heart leapt as he saw her stumble backwards.
There was no way of getting to her past Frank. No way of breaking her fall.
He heard the other woman cry out behind him.
He watched Frank head on down the steps.
The other woman pushed past him.
Nate descended behind her, one step at a time.
‘Rhona!’ The other woman’s voice trembled with panic as she fell down beside her. ‘Rhona, can you hear me?’
But Rhona didn’t respond, the angle of her neck making it clear it had broken in the fall.
‘Fuck,’ Frank hissed, reaching for his gun and raising it to the back of the other woman’s head, but Nate grabbed his arm.
‘You’ve done enough damage,’ he said. ‘You came for what you wanted.’
‘And the bitch has seen too much.’
‘Like she can do anything about it.’
Frank reluctantly pulled away, splashing through puddles on the way back to the car, the child screaming in his arms, his out-held to where his mother lay dead on the ground.
Nate knew what he should do. As he gazed down at the dead woman, the blue stone around her neck catching the light as Frank switched the car engine on and flashed his lights, he knew he should have put the other one out of her misery too. He should have returned upstairs for the girl. The girl who then looked down from the window, at the body directly below her.
Instead he walked away.
As he got into the car, the child had reduced to sniffles in Frank’s arms, the small sound of, ‘Mummy’ escaping his lips.
Nate slammed the heel of his hand hard onto the steering wheel before reversing out of the alley. ‘Fuck,’ he hissed under his breath.
‘It was an accident. She shouldn’t have got in the way.’
‘She’s fucking dead, Frank,’ Nate said, glowering across at him, Frank’s nonchalance adding to the sickening feeling in his gut. ‘No one was supposed to die.’
He glanced at the child, his red-rimmed brown eyes now wide and startled again, reminding him to watch his temper.
Eyes that reminded him of the girl he’d left behind.
He looked back at Frank. There was no way he was telling him. There was no way he was telling anyone.
And he was done with the Hordas clan. That was his last job for them. This was the last time he was involved in collecting people. Right then, he felt like it being the last job for anyone.
‘Don’t you worry, son,’ Frank said, addressing the boy as Nate pulled out onto the main street. ‘I’m going to take real good care of you. You’re going to have the best of the best. You’re one special kid. One very special kid.’ He leaned closer to his ear. ‘Because you’re going to make my friends very powerful indeed.’