Slater was taken aback. He’d said, ‘That’s a good theory. But to put it into practice…’

  ‘Takes determination. Takes relentlessness. You’d know.’

  Slater knew.

  Now, he pulled into the parking lot of the Rentarío Paralysis Centre. It was a long low building, the whole exterior painted white.

  From the back, Beckham said, ‘Home?’

  ‘If you want it to be,’ Slater said.

  Beckham smiled wryly. ‘Oh, so if I don’t like it, you’ll become my full-time carer?’

  Slater shrugged. ‘We can find another place if you don’t—’

  ‘They’re all the same,’ Beckham said. ‘Trust me.’

  Both Slater and Alexis spun in their seats so they could speak to him face-to-face.

  Beckham said, ‘This is my life. There’s no point ignoring reality. I need a place like this. It doesn’t matter how fancy it looks or feels. It’s not like I can feel it anyway. Like I said, all I can focus on is what I can control. Like my happiness.’

  Slater didn’t know how to respond.

  Alexis said, ‘I want you to know you’ve changed my perspective on life.’

  Beckham looked over. ‘I’m glad. Now get me inside before I change my mind and go back on all this inspirational bullshit.’

  Slater laughed, and levered himself out of the driver’s seat, and stood tall and spread his arms wide and stretched his body, all his muscles wound tight from endless hours of driving.

  The evening was warm, and the atmosphere was pleasant.

  No one was hunting them.

  If they were, they’d never find them.

  Life, for the first time in a long time, was simple.

  Four parking spaces down, the front doors of a Ford Mustang with tinted windows opened.

  King and Violetta stepped out.

  Slater walked over and outstretched a hand. King slapped it and pulled him in, and they hugged tight for a single second. That was all they’d allow. They had oversized egos to nurse, after all. Then Slater moved to Violetta and hugged her, too. She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down and whispered, ‘Thank you,’ in his ear.

  He didn’t say, You’re welcome.

  He didn’t say anything.

  He’d never been one to rely on gratitude.

  He did things because they were the right things to do.

  He went back to the Hyundai and, together with Alexis, helped Beckham out of the back seat. They put him down in the modified wheelchair Alexis had reassembled, and adjusted his position until he seemed comfortable enough. Then Beckham craned his neck to look past them, to meet the gaze of his ex-girlfriend.

  Slater and Alexis took the cue, and wandered over to King. All three of them stepped aside and busied themselves with nothing.

  Violetta went to Beckham with tears in her eyes.

  91

  King didn’t try to get within earshot.

  He respected Violetta too much for that.

  He went with Slater and Alexis to the other side of the Mustang, where they milled about making unnecessary small talk to fill the silence. That way, even if Violetta and Beckham were speaking in raised voices, nothing would float over to them and ruin their privacy.

  But he kept shooting glances sideways.

  He couldn’t help it.

  She was squatting by the wheelchair, staring him right in the eyes, and he was staring right back. They were speaking animatedly. There was no hostility there. He seemed at peace, which contrasted what he’d heard about the grudge the man held. Violetta seemed like she understood.

  There were tears, but they weren’t tears of sadness.

  The conversation lasted twenty minutes. King didn’t postulate as to what it involved. The decade the pair had spent apart must have exacerbated the issues — at least, that’s what King thought. But he couldn’t get over the lack of animosity, especially from Beckham.

  Finally Slater noticed, and muttered between frivolous small talk, ‘I think Beckham forgave her on the way here.’

  King said, ‘After all this time?’

  ‘It was something I said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“Sometimes doing the right thing is messy.”’

  King paused.

  Thought about it.

  Realised he’d never heard a truer statement.

  He said, ‘That’s all it took?’

  Now it was Slater’s turn to glance at Beckham. ‘He’s one of the most unique individuals I’ve ever met.’

  Alexis nodded her agreement.

  King turned to her. ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘Better than expected,’ she said. ‘Given the circumstances.’

  ‘Your family is safe. Alonzo’s work is second to none. He’s thrown a virtual blanket over them. They won’t be found.’

  She nodded. ‘I know. It’s not about that.’

  King hesitated.

  Then he understood.

  Before the brief settlement in New York, his life had been a freight train of constant motion for as long as he could remember. As had Slater’s. To them, an upheaval of their surroundings was barely cause for raised eyebrows. Each of them had taken the events of the last few days in their stride — given their pasts, it was only slightly out of the ordinary.

  Alexis was a civilian. A few days ago she’d held a job, socialised with work friends, been deeply set in the routine that confines so many to a certain chain of actions, over and over and over again until the day they died.

  Which was human nature.

  It took a certain level of madness to do what King and Slater did.

  And she’d willingly come along for the ride.

  That was nothing to scoff at.

  King said, ‘It gets easier.’

  She reached out and took Slater’s hand. ‘Even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.’

  King didn’t immediately respond. He looked all around the parking lot, watched the sun finally dip behind the row of houses opposite the disability home. The golden light dimmed a touch.

  He said, ‘How the hell did we end up here?’

  Slater said, ‘Could be worse. Could be dead.’

  ‘Always a plus.’

  He turned one final time and saw Violetta exit her crouch, bend down, and touch her forehead to Beckham’s. They both had their eyes closed. One last moment of connection before their new lives began. It didn’t faze King one bit. There was no room in his heart for jealousy.

  Never had been.

  When they parted, she wheeled him toward the entrance doors.

  King, Slater and Alexis all instinctively stepped forward — the natural impulse to assist.

  Violetta looked at them and shook her head.

  They all stepped back.

  Understanding.

  Beckham nodded a farewell to the three of them, and his gaze lingered on Slater. King knew, then and there, that Slater’s words had stuck with the man. Whatever they’d said to each other, it would affect them both long after they left this parking lot.

  Then Beckham was gone, vanishing into the centre.

  Violetta came back out fifteen minutes later. She looked like she’d lived a decade since she’d first approached Beckham.

  She walked up to the three of them and said, ‘Funny how life unfolds, isn’t it?’

  Slater said, ‘What did you talk about?’

  King knew better than to ask.

  She looked at Slater, but didn’t answer.

  Alexis squeezed Slater’s hand.

  Slater understood, and shut his mouth. Probably made a mental note not to ask again. What was said was between Violetta and Beckham, and nobody else.

  King said, ‘How do you feel?’

  She sighed. ‘Good, all things considered. I never thought I’d see him again. I never thought I’d get the chance to talk things through.’

  Then she looked at Slater. ‘Thank you. For whatever you said to him.’

  Slater opened his mouth, but Violetta held up a hand.

  She said, ‘I don’t need to know.’

  Another moment of understanding.

  Then respectable silence.

  They stood that way for close to a minute, as if trying to shake themselves from a lucid dream. But it was very real, and it had all unfolded exactly like this, so eventually they peeled off in pairs — Slater and Alexis heading for the Hyundai, King and Violetta for the Ford.

  They’d rendezvous at their temporary stronghold and work from there.

  And do what? King wondered.

  All in due time.

  He took the passenger’s seat, and Violetta drove. It was a short ten-minute journey to the Airbnb they’d rented under a false, untraceable profile.

  Violetta ran her hands along the wheel before she threw the car into reverse.

  King said, ‘What?’

  She said, ‘Ever wish you had a normal life?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, and stepped on the accelerator. ‘Me neither.’

  92

  Slater and Alexis arrived in Spring Valley first, a couple of miles west of the Strip.

  They used the gate code the owner had provided through the Airbnb app to access what was practically a compound. The walls were high for a private residence and the grounds were considerable, although they hadn’t been tended to in quite some time. Most of the grass was dead, and patches of dirt riddled the lawn. The house was impressive, though — a one-storey sprawling homestead made of brick with a sand-coloured tile roof. The weak light of dusk gave the setting an idyllic aura.

  They pulled the Hyundai to a halt in the courtyard, got out, and found the key under a pot plant on the front porch, just as the instructions conveyed. They unloaded what meagre possessions they had, dropping them in a sizeable living area with an open bar and an eighty-inch television mounted to the wall.

  Then they waited.

  Slater leant on the back of the sofa and said, ‘If you ever want out of this life, tell us.’

  ‘And go where?’ Alexis said. ‘My old life doesn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘But you can start fresh,’ he said. ‘With your new identity. You can be normal. You don’t have to do … what we do.’

  ‘I made the choice,’ she said. ‘I don’t go back on my word.’

  ‘Is this what you want, though?’

  She moved to him, and sat down on his thigh. ‘Yes. It is.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the low rumble of the Mustang’s engine reverberated through the compound, and a minute after that King stepped inside.

  ‘What was the hold-up?’ Slater said.

  Violetta answered that wordlessly when she came in with two jumbo bags of electronic goods from a tech store.

  ‘New laptops,’ she said. ‘And a bunch of other stuff.’

  She dumped it all down on the great slab of wood that constituted the dining table, and set to work arranging it into the foundations of a makeshift intelligence centre. It would never be as good as the real thing, but they didn’t need the real thing.

  All they needed was enough to work.

  King looked around. ‘So this is home.’

  ‘For now,’ Violetta said. ‘Until we grow tired of it.’

  Slater said, ‘I think we should clarify a couple of things before we settle in.’

  She looked up from the mass of hardware. ‘Like what?’

  She seemed disgruntled. She was supremely efficient — just like King, just like Slater. They’d been in the house for three minutes, and already were slotting the pieces into place to establish it as their base of operations.

  In that sense, Alexis was the most human of them all.

  Slater said, ‘I was the first to step away. I kickstarted all of this. I need to know the pair of you are in it for the same reasons.’

  King stared at him. ‘Where you go, I go.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘We understand,’ Violetta said, straightening up, suddenly recognising the importance of the conversation. ‘We’re all on the same page. It was impossible for you to continue your role officially, and the same goes for King. There was too much oversight, too many chefs in the kitchen. It didn’t gel with how the pair of you operate. You see problems, you fix them. When the shadow world was sourcing the problems, you constantly questioned them. Which meant you were always clashing with me, because I was the one handing down the orders.’

  ‘Exactly,’ King said.

  ‘I always tried to look at the big picture, too,’ Violetta said. ‘It’s a great concept, in principle. But it doesn’t work on the ground floor. I saw it with my own eyes.’

  She turned to Slater.

  ‘When they asked me to help get rid of you,’ she said. ‘That was for the greater good.’

  ‘Which makes sense,’ Slater said. ‘They can’t have all their operatives going rogue when they please. They need to set an example. They can’t make exceptions.’

  ‘But that just couldn’t be,’ she said. ‘The moment I started conspiring to keep you alive, I realised what you two had been telling me all along.’

  Slater said, ‘To really follow the greater good, you need to be a ruthless sociopath.’

  ‘Which I’m not,’ she said. ‘None of us are.’

  ‘So no government,’ King said. ‘No oversight.’

  ‘I’m done,’ she said. ‘Speaking for myself. I can never go back. Not after what happened. If we’re going to do this, we do it independently.’

  ‘Like mercenaries,’ Slater said. ‘But working for ourselves.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  King said, ‘Until when?’

  They all looked at him.

  He said, ‘Is there a finish line?’

  Slater said, ‘Not for me.’

  Violetta said, ‘I’ll never be able to live a civilian life. I’m too far gone.’

  ‘Good,’ King said. ‘Just checking we’re all on the same page.’

  ‘For as long as our bodies hold up,’ Slater said. ‘We do this.’

  Violetta nodded.

  King nodded, too.

  Alexis was quiet.

  The missing piece of the puzzle.

  Slater turned to her. ‘I don’t take back what I said earlier. If this is too much…’

  She said, ‘It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me.’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want,’ he said. ‘But you know what I did for you yesterday. I’m willing to do it again, if that’s what you want. If you leave, it’ll crush me. But you deserve to do what you want.’

  ‘I want this,’ she said. ‘The civilian life never felt right. I felt like an imposter in it. Here, I feel … nothing. The tiny voice in the back of my head that always poked and prodded … it’s gone. I don’t know what that means. But it’s a step in the right direction.’

  Slater soaked it in.

  It was the first time she’d revealed part of what made her tick.

  She added, ‘If we do this, I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.’

  King stared.

  Violetta stared.

  Slater said, ‘You don’t have—’

  ‘Training? Experience?’

  He didn’t say anything.

  Alexis said, ‘Then consider what happened over the last few days my initiation. Look at me. Do I look rattled? Sure, I can’t break bones or hit a target with a pistol. But I think I’ve proved I can handle stress better than anyone. If you need me for anything, I don’t want you to hold back. I don’t want to be the damsel in distress.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Slater said. ‘You’re far from that.’

  King added, ‘And we can teach you to break bones. We can teach you to shoot straight.’

  Slater glanced over.

  King said, ‘What?’

  Slater said, ‘You’re right. We can.’

  All four of them looked at each other. They were positioned like four corners of a big square, and now they tightened the space between them, stepping closer. Slater went to the dining table, picked up one of the Glocks, crossed the space, and pressed it into Alexis’ palm.

  Slater said, ‘Now we’re all outlaws.’

  King took a deep breath and said, ‘Home sweet home.’

  KING AND SLATER WILL RETURN…

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  Books by Matt Rogers

  THE JASON KING SERIES

  Isolated (Book 1)

  Imprisoned (Book 2)

  Reloaded (Book 3)

  Betrayed (Book 4)

  Corrupted (Book 5)

  Hunted (Book 6)

  THE JASON KING FILES

  Cartel (Book 1)

  Warrior (Book 2)

  Savages (Book 3)

  THE WILL SLATER SERIES

  Wolf (Book 1)

  Lion (Book 2)

  Bear (Book 3)

  Lynx (Book 4)

  Bull (Book 5)

  Hawk (Book 6)

  THE KING & SLATER SERIES

  Weapons (Book 1)

  Contracts (Book 2)

  Ciphers (Book 3)

  Outlaws (Book 4)