CHAPTER ELEVEN
Silas
“Aren’t you getting a little too old for all of this?” I said as I walked up behind the man hidden in the shadows, his eyes scanning the area before he decided his next move.
“Fuck off,” he replied back as if he knew I was there even before I spoke.
Okay, so he probably did. He probably used his bat ears to hear me walk up or his strange super nose to smell me in the light breeze or some weird shit. Did it surprise me? Nah, because I knew this guy, though he liked to pretend I didn’t.
“I’m not ready to retire any more than you are,” he said as his head slightly turned to the side and he glanced at me for half of a beat before going back to the mission. “Croatians. I can tell by the mark on the door.”
Oddly enough, the huge metal door and its frame were still standing even though the rest of the building around it was burnt to a crisp. The light mark looked like it had been there for years, though I suspected that wasn’t the case.
“This part of the country…I’d say Keften Jugovac, perhaps?” I tucked my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels.
“Yeah,” the hunter grunted in agreement, his eyes still scanning the scene. “I need to make a call.”
Which he did, talking in something akin to Polish but with some strange, thick dialect. One I didn’t recognize and had trouble following along. He hung up almost as quickly as he’d gotten on.
He wasn’t one for lingering. Time wasn’t a luxury in his line of work.
While mine, time was usually on my side. Scoping out a target. Learning their habits, seeing into their soul. These were things that took time and patience. Skills that I had honed over the years. I’d learned to wait and breathe. I’d learned to sit in the dark and quiet all the thoughts that I had floating around in my head. I’d learned to view life from a scope or a pair of binoculars. I was the guy that was silently watching from afar, tucked so tightly into the darkness that you didn’t even sense that I was there. Then, when you least expected it, I took the opening. I fired. I killed. Then it was over and the world became busy again.
But, the hunter, he moved. In and out of the darkness like a curious alley cat on the prowl for his next meal. He tracked and searched, only pausing long enough to scan for the next clue.
Two men with very different jobs, two very different approaches to situations. Yet, the shadows were our only friend.
“Let’s move,” he said retreating back into the darkness like a panther, his back to me the whole time as he walked away. He didn’t wait for me to fall into step because he knew that I would.
Nadya called me in for one reason, and one reason only. Sure, she might have cared about this guy that we were hunting. The lost brother, or whatever. But that wasn’t the reason behind her call. I was here to pull the trigger, to end the lives of the men that had left the bodies behind. The innocent girls. The ones that were to be sold off to a fate worse than what they’d received. Maybe? Yeah, I truly believed that because these people were monsters. They had a deal with the devil that went much further than mine, hers, or even this asshole’s here in front of me.
“Get in,” he said as he dropped down into his car. Nondescript, four-door coupe, just in case you were wondering. Something that didn’t stand out and even the dark blue wasn’t something that would be noticed sitting on the side of the road. One you’d expect to find stickers on the window and a damn car seat or two in the back.
“I’ll take mine,” I said with a shrug. “Give me the address.”
“Get your gear and get in the fucking car.”
So, I wasn’t going to waste time arguing with his super focused ass. I ran to my car. This one fast, black. Sure it was more noticeable but it also got me here in record time.
I scanned the area as I popped the trunk to my car. Upon opening it, it looked completely devoid of anything, even those little plastic tags that sometimes come off of grocery bags. You know the ones I was talking about. Those little fuckers always seem to come off at the wrong time and somehow manage to stick to you in an irritating way. Like a pimple in your ass crack. Just can’t seem to get rid of those fuckers.
With the quick press of a hidden button, the bottom lifted up and I dragged my case out from the hidden space. Then I closed the trunk and didn’t even care to check if the car was locked. There was nothing in it that would give me away or that I would miss if it was taken. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have enough money to replace it if I wanted to. Besides, it was three years old, which meant it was time for an upgrade.
I tossed my case in the back seat before I slid into the front one. Then he took off…like an old lady. I mean, there were still cops around the corner so I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to catch any unwanted attention. Only once we were a few blocks away, did he really punch it. Well, as much as a car like that would allow. His eyes constantly scanned the horizon.
“Remember Dallas?” I asked because I knew it would not only irritate him but make him smile on the inside as well.
“Yeah,” he said in a flat tone, but I could see the quick twitch of his lips.
“You think we’re too old for that shit?” I asked as a joke. I mean, I was getting up there in age but I wasn’t slowing down. I wasn’t a party guy, but I didn’t mind having a crazy time every now and then. And I certainly didn’t mind sharing.
“No,” he said but for some reason, it sounded like he was holding back a sigh. “But it just doesn’t have the appeal that it once did.”
“You looking to settle down, Huntsmen?” I said turning my head to face him as a shocked expression overtook my face.
“You and I both know that there is no such thing as ‘settling down’ in our line of work. There is go until you can’t anymore, or death. That’s all. You and I don’t get the bullshit fairy tale. We don’t get the girl to come home to at the end of the day. This is it. This is all our lives will ever be.”
I settled back into my seat knowing his words were true. We were fucked up people. And fucked up people didn’t get the happily ever after shit.
“You don’t have to be so depressing about it,” I mumbled as my eyes stared blankly out the front windshield.
“I’m not going to lie to myself. You shouldn’t either.”
Fine. He had a point. It wasn’t that I was out there hoping for that mushy shit. But the thought of having someone to crawl into bed with at the end of a long job, someone that maybe knew what I did and didn’t judge me, was slightly appealing.
And completely unrealistic. I realized that as I thought about it.
With a shrug, I ended the pointless conversation and let the silence take over as we weaved our way to the city limits.
We end up in a neighborhood I imagined flourished long ago. The houses old and crumbling. The yards overgrown and the pavement cracked and ransacked with potholes. He pulled up along the curb between two houses. All of them seemed to be abandoned and I wouldn’t doubt that some of them had been taken up with squatters. There were a few worn paths I’d noticed leading to the back of a few of the houses. But I couldn’t see any form of life. No lights, not even from candlelight. Just nothing.
“There,” he said pointing through the space between the houses. The next street over was barely visible through the trees and overgrowth. But I could see it, the light flickering through the front window helped give it away. Clearly, that house had power somehow. “Gear up. I’m not waiting long.”
He pulled out his handgun from his side holster, checked the clip, then tucked it back away. Then he patted his leg on the opposite side as if someone were checking for their wallet in their back pocket. The knife was there, I already knew that much. But Hunt, he wasn’t one to go in half prepared.
Without another word, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the midnight air.
I twisted in my seat, snatched up my case, then exited the vehicle myself.
Then we were moving, our heads on a swivel as we danced in and out of the darkness of the trees. We crossed one backyard into the next, and at the back corner of the house, we paused so I could set up. I was already loaded down with multiple weapons. I had a feeling my guns were going to keep themselves tucked at my side for this mission. Quiet and calm was needed right now, I sensed it and I had no problem with it. I could kill a man with my bare hands as quickly as I could pull the trigger of a gun.
I pulled out my detached scope and tilted my head around the corner of the house. The one we were looking to breach was across the street. The oddly quiet street. There were several vehicles parked in the driveway and all I could think was these people weren’t even trying to be inconspicuous. Careless, perhaps. But I knew it was more than that. They had power and held no fear. It didn’t matter if people knew they were there because no one would mess with them. Well, they may have had that mostly right, but I was fucking here now.
“If they have him, he’s in there. I’d bet the basement,” Hunt said, crouching down behind a bush so that he could see the place for himself.
“Nothing on the outside. No guards that I can tell walking the perimeter. Camera right outside the door. Twenty, maybe twenty-five feet radius. Full night vision. Another one in the hall,” I said moving the scope around so I could see everything that I was able to. “Two men in the living room. That’s all I got. They aren’t moving. One’s standing just shy of the window, I can see his shoulder. One’s sitting on a chair in front of him.”
“I need to see more. Moving in.” He didn’t wait for me to give the okay before his feet were moving.
I rolled my eyes and tucked my scope in my pocket. Then I shoved my case between the side of the house and overgrown bushes. If I couldn’t get it on the way back that was fine. I sure as hell would be able to replace it, no problem. I wasn’t oddly attached to my things like some people were.
There was no buddy system, hand on the shoulder while we crouched low and moved together. Nope, not for Hunt. He almost always worked alone and it showed. I mean, so did I, but I also knew how to be a safe team player. But that wasn’t even it. I knew him, he knew how to do things right, he just chose to go his own path. He was like a grumpy old man, way too set in his ways.
Around the back, we found an opened window. Not the kind of open like someone had pushed it up to let the breeze in. This was broken, the dust and dirt-crusted along the jagged pieces, but it was clear that the room on the other side had been untouched by the elements for a prolonged period of time.
“Empty,” Hunt whispered as he slyly peered inside. “Well, sort of. There’s a body. Female. She’s dressed really nice but missing a shoe.”
That told me that she wasn’t a captured girl. She wasn’t one that was to be sold to the highest bidder. I looked in to see for myself. By her hair, makeup, and clearly expensive clothes, she definitely wasn’t one. She didn’t have that week-old dirty hair or the dark circles under her eyes. Or the starved look to her frame. She didn’t look like they purposely tried to cover up the bite marks or bruises from where the sick fucks had gotten rough with her. No, she was…there for a different reason.
Before I could say anything, he dropped down into the room. His head cocked to the side as he took in the dead woman’s face like he was trying to place her. I followed suit, standing behind him looking over his shoulder.
“The Butcher. Well, one of them anyway. That name seems to be taken by so many people these days,” I said with a huffed laugh as I tried to hold back my eye roll. “Sadistic fucking bitch.”
“Looks like whoever was her guest for the night used her shoe to free themselves from the wall,” he said, keeping his body crouched and making his way over to the wall under the window. His fingers reached out and touched the loose dust from the drywall. “There’s blood on that drill.” Hunt grimaced for a fraction of a second. “I would have killed her too.”
“So…guess this means he’s gone,” I said stating the obvious. I mean, it was clear that whoever had been tied up or chained up or whatever in this room was no longer here. I looked over and saw the dried trail of blood leading out the door. It was a wide trail, the size of a body. There had been a lot of blood spilled in that one spot. “That blood has already dried. So I doubt that’s from your guy.”
He cut his eyes up at me as if to say no shit. Clearly, he’d already dismissed it and wasn’t going to waste his breath to say so like I had.
We were too late, but at least our guy wasn’t dead. Right? I hoped he’d made a clean escape, anyway. Seeing as the door was still shut, the body was still in the middle of the room, and there wasn’t a crazy kind of commotion outside the door, I would have assumed they didn’t even know what had gone down in here just yet. It was only a matter of time and the longer we stayed here the better the chance that we’d be found out.
Then, like the universe had read my thoughts, the clink sound of a lock turning had us both frozen in place.
“I’ll be in the car,” Hunt said moving to the window. It wasn’t that he was afraid to fight, it was just that he’d rather not.
Whatever. I could handle this shit myself.
But because I was me, I couldn’t resist saying something to poke at him.
“Really?” I whispered harshly. “After you stood there and smelled the burnt up flesh of all those innocent girls they did that to?”
And that right there got him. Got him thinking beyond his little tracking mission. Got him to open his eyes to the rest of the picture around him. Also, got him unsnapping his knife holster and moving to take his place hind the door.
Me? Well, I stood in plain sight. Trust me, it was all part of the unsaid plan.
“What the fu—” The big guy didn’t even get a chance to finish his sentence before the wide-eyed look of horror overtook his face and the gurgling of blood filling his esophagus took over. He didn’t even have a chance to reach for his gun.
Hunt, being a lot smaller than the guy, struggled to bring him to the ground slowly so as not to make any more noise than necessary. Then he wiped the blade of his knife off on the guy’s grease smeared shirt. By the looks of him, I pegged him as a simple lackey. We needed to take down Keften, since we were doing this. Sure it wouldn’t stop trafficking, but it would make one less man in the trade.
With a chin jerk, we were moving out the door. The basement had been set up as an extra floor of sorts. There was a long hall with three bedrooms off of it. By the time we made it to the stairs, we’d taken down three men without a sound. We ascended the stairs, and came face to face with another guard. This one had time to fire off a shot, narrowly missing my head. That was enough to alert everyone that was left in the house.
Then it was all mayhem and bloodshed. But in all honesty, they didn’t stand a chance. Five shots from my handgun and they were all down, clean shot directly between their evil eyes.
“See, you didn’t really need me,” Hunt said after we cleared the rest of the house.
“Keften’s not here. He must have run when he heard the shots,” I said, double checking the faces of each body. Clothing alone told me these men were throwaways. A man with his job, his empire, wouldn’t wear everyday shit. And it wouldn’t be dirty and rumpled on top of that.
“Moving on then,” he said sounding super focused.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care, in fact, I could tell you that he was pissed about Keften getting free. He’d derailed his job for this, and we didn’t even get the target. He thought he’d failed.
And maybe I felt that way too, but I was satisfied with what we had done. It may not have been much, but I could only hope that it was some sort of dent in Keften’s empire, in his plan. If anything, I’d put a few thorns in his side. Yeah, that was enough to make me smile just a bit.
“What’s next?” I asked as I closed the passenger’s side door.
“I drop you. Bocca got away, so wherever he is, has to be safer than here. You’ve done your job.”
I couldn’t very much argue with that. With a shrug, I left it at that, and when he dropped me back off at my car, I merely gave a nod as a goodbye. Then he took off without so much as a glance back in the rearview mirror.
My job was done. Time for a drink.
What?
You think I needed to go after Keften?
Well, that would have been the noble thing, right? One should never mistake me for being noble. I wasn’t a damn knight in shining armor. Sure, I kept my killing to guys that deserved it, but they were always jobs. Until a contract came across my proverbial desk for Kefton’s head, then I wasn’t going to go after him. Think what you will, I had a fine line I had to walk. If I started making my own jobs, if I started randomly taking out the kingpins, then it would draw too much attention to myself. Not only that, then I’d no longer be the executioner, I’d be the fucking judge too. Sorry, but I wasn’t one to carry that extra weight on my shoulders.
I had to believe that his time would come. And maybe if I was lucky, I would be the one holding the clock.