Damien stared blankly.

  King said, ‘Or you can run back to Daddy, and he’ll give you a new gig like this, and the same thing will happen eventually. It might be someone like me, or it might be a rival cartel. The outcome’s the same.’

  Damien managed an imperceptible jerk of the chin — it might have been a nod.

  King said, ‘I didn’t need to ask you a thing. I can read people. You never wanted this life but you felt trapped in it. Your girlfriend made the decisions for you, and you were slowly getting desensitised to it all. You were coaxed toward a cliff edge. You nearly went over it. This is your out. Take it or leave it.’

  Damien said, ‘How can you be sure I’ll make the right decision?’

  The first time he’d uttered a word since King had arrived.

  He barely had an accent. His English was impeccable.

  ‘Because if you weren’t going to,’ King said, ‘you never would have asked that question.’

  Then King looked around, morose. He added, ‘And I’ve killed enough people tonight.’

  He walked out.

  85

  A vicious gust of desert wind blew in through the open doors and shattered windows as he made for the entrance.

  The house’s foundations creaked, protesting the elements.

  At least it wouldn’t bear the burden of caring for new residents for quite some time.

  King stepped outside and surveyed the scene of destruction. There were bodies everywhere — scattered across the dirt, resting against bullet-riddled vehicles. Violetta was by the truck, her gun still raised, ever vigilant. Her face was flustered but her eyes were focused. She saw him emerge, and palpable relief washed over her. He nodded to her — it’s done — and she lowered the weapon.

  Banks was on the other side of the truck, still in the zone, rolling corpses onto their backs with the toe of his combat boot and checking for signs of life. As King stepped down off the porch, he looked up and nodded with satisfaction.

  Compound cleared.

  King approached. ‘Well, now I feel stupid.’

  Violetta said, ‘Why?’

  ‘I kept the container in the trailer because I thought we’d have to present it long before we shot up the place. Then our cover got blown way early, and we still pulled it off. So it was an unnecessary risk all along.’

  Violetta looked at Coombs’ body. ‘Speaking of cover being blown … who the hell is that?’

  ‘The guy who sent me to Moscow,’ King said. ‘Slater’s old instructor.’

  Violetta stared at the dead man, and then at King. ‘That’s why I pressured you not to take civilian gigs.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t listen.’

  She stopped, taken aback. She must have been expecting an argument.

  Clarity cleared his head as he looked at her. ‘What? You want me to put up a fight? I made a bad judgment call. End of story.’

  She nodded, somewhat reserved. ‘So we’re done? This is finished?’

  King regarded the trailer. ‘We’ll take the container to a police station. Somewhere commercial. Somewhere well-known. Laguna Beach, maybe. There’s no way the cartel owns cops in good neighbourhoods. Out here, that’s where they have control. In the places most people don’t have the nerve to stick their noses.’

  ‘People live out here,’ Violetta said.

  ‘This place is as obvious as it gets,’ he said. ‘Anyone who’s seen it hasn’t had the backbone to do a thing about it.’

  He surveyed the dead, and added, ‘Just one of many problems I’m looking at.’

  ‘Problems you solved,’ Violetta said.

  Banks had been lackadaisically sauntering up 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 I were with him from the moment we approached him. Except for when we got out.’

  ‘That didn’t work, though. He wasn’t distracted enough.’

  King pivoted, still sitting in the dirt. He looked back over his shoulder. Damien was still there, shoulders slumped, hair flipping side to side in the wind. He was cold and unnerved and terrified of the solitude that awaited, the new life he would have to build for himself, the new identity he’d have to forge. And now he was doubly shocked by the brief gunfight he’d witnessed.

  The kid had no idea how his appearance had saved everything.

  King nodded a silent thanks to the kid, which he knew would go uninterpreted.

  He didn’t care.

  He knew his mercy had saved Violetta’s life.

  She looked at the kid, too. They were far enough away to be out of earshot, especially with the wind. She said, ‘You missed one.’

  King said, ‘No I didn’t.’

  She looked at him. ‘He’s young, and he’s here. You know what that means.’

  ‘He’s the boss?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘He’s no boss.’

  ‘His father is someone important, obviously.’

  ‘So he should be held accountable for his father’s business?’

  ‘He’s here,’ Violetta said. ‘How many containers do you think he saw come in? How many times do you think he watched his men force themselves on the slaves? Not to mention the ordinary business of the cartels — drugs, guns, extortion, murder. He was witness to all of it. He did nothing about it.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘It is. Not to mention he’s a witness.’

  ‘It’s not,’ King said, lowering his voice. ‘You haven’t seen the side of humanity I’ve seen. You think people just start evil? They’re corrupted over time, each and every one of them. He was being corrupted — by all the people around him, by the fact he couldn’t do anything to stop it, by the knowledge of what his family does, by the life he sees no way out of.’

  For the first time, she truly looked at him. Saw past the stereotype. And King thought he saw her register that something was different. This kid had no ambition. Nor was there relief on his face — he seemingly didn’t care that he’d been spared.

  Violetta said, ‘You think he’ll find a normal life? This is all he’s known.’

  ‘He can try,’ King said. ‘We owe him that much. If he hadn’t walked out when he did, Banks’ first shot would have gone through your skull.’

  She stared at him. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He got up and helped her to her feet in turn. They dusted themselves off and took a moment to survey the bodies. Joshua Banks, Jack Coombs, and a compound of sicarios.

  Seventeen dead, in total.

  She said, ‘Is this the way you thought it would go?’

  ‘Not even close. But at least it resolved everything.’

  She said, ‘Almost everything.’

  The trailer loomed over them.

  King nodded. ‘Let’s get to it.’

  He vaulted up through the open driver’s door, into the seat he’d been forced out of minutes earlier.

  All those minutes ago.

  Back when everyone was alive.

  It was a strange world he lived in, and he’d never fully adjust.

  Violetta rounded the hood and got in beside him. The cabin felt enormous with just two people in it. King worked the ignition and listened to the behemoth rumble slowly to life. Through the windshield, he watched Damien sit down on the porch, taking stock of what had happened here.

  King executed a sweeping three-point turn in the courtyard and drove the truck out through the open gate.

  Objective cleared.

  87

  The truck plunged into anonymity as soon as it mounted the highway back to the coastline.

  Just another set of headlights in the night.

  Nothing to do with the scene of slaughter in the rear view mirror.

  Violetta got on the phone immediately. They were both balls of tension, their sanity threatening to unwind if they received bad news. Violetta no doubt more concerned about Beckham, King more concerned about Slater. But not by much. There was equal worry for the party in general.

  And they both knew, if one was dead, the other likely was too.

  Because Slater would go down fighting to avenge Beckham — that’s the way he was wired. And if Slater wound up dead before he reached the Hooper Quadriplegic Centre, then Beckham’s fate was sealed also.

  King sensed the phone pressed to her ear, but she wasn’t speaking. He focused on the unchanging highway flying past underneath the truck and nothing else.

  The knot that had found its home in his gut returned with full intensity.

  Then he heard a tinny voice from the speaker, muffled by Violetta’s ear.

  She said, ‘Do you have him?’

  An answer came.

  She said, ‘Is he hurt?’

  Another answer.

  She said, ‘Alexis. She’s okay too?’

  A single syllable that could only have been, Yes.

  Violetta breathed out, and so did King.

  She said, ‘Okay. Still good to follow the plan we discussed?’

  Another, Yes.

  She said, ‘Speak soon.’

  She clicked off.

  King bowed his head to the top of the wheel. When he finally sat up, he shook his head. He could see her in his peripheral vision, staring vacantly out the windshield, wondering what might have been.

  Which made him think.

  He said, ‘I was stupid.’

  She said, ‘Why?’

  ‘I hadn’t seen combat since New York. I don’t think I fully believed in myself. So I gave up on the idea of storming in there and letting loose with bullets straight away. I thought I’d have to present the human cargo first, prove my presence in the compound was justified. Then flip the switch and start executing them silently. Berserker mode would have been the right choice, because it meant I could have left the container out of it.’

  Violetta said nothing.

  King turned to her. ‘If we all died back there, no one would know. The women would be sitting in that container, helpless. I’m a moron for bringing them back into danger when I’d already got them out of it.’

  She said, ‘All “what-ifs.” You didn’t fail. They’re alive.’

  ‘But I didn’t trust myself,’ he said. ‘That can’t happen again.’

  She stared. ‘You think it’s because of the hiatus you took?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Then what are you saying is the solution?’

  ‘Work harder. Do more.’

  ‘Isn’t that why you abandoned the government? So you could do less?’

  He shook his head. ‘Never. I can’t stop. I’m going to do things my own way. But I didn’t know if you’d be along for the ride. I need to know if you’re okay with that.’

  She sat, pensive and still.

  He said, ‘I think Slater’s in the same boat. I don’t think we want our talents to go to waste.’

  She said, ‘There’s nothing to stop me from continuing to handle the pair of you.’

  Music to his ears.

  ‘So that’s the way forward?’ she said. ‘A vigilante crew?’

  ‘Like old times. Only a little more organised.’

  She didn’t respond.

  He said, ‘Unless you have other ideas.’

  ‘I’ll be honest — I did. Until this. I know what’s in that container back there. I can’t sit back and allow things like that to keep happening.’

  ‘Welcome to my mind.’

  It felt good, he had to admit.