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I slammed the knife through the back of his hand.
The smell of lemon and new car leather wrapped around me as I slid back into my SUV. I tugged off my black gloves, and tossing them in the seat next to me, I video-called my clients. They both answered, their faces stricken. The woman, exceptionally young to be the mother of a teenager, looked ready to pass out as she stared at the phone screen. Behind her, her husband waited calmly for news, his salt-and-pepper hair swept to the side. From what I had gathered, he was the stepdad, but he’d married Priscilla when her son had been a toddler, and he’d soon after adopted the boy.
“It’s taken care of,” I told them. “All the evidence has been printed out and pulled up on his monitor in the basement. Even the local PD can’t miss it.”
Priscilla’s features melted in relief. “And… and him?”
“Authorities are on their way to arrest him,” I assured her. As Priscilla’s eyes closed, and she fought tears, I caught Gregory’s gaze over his wife’s head. His eyes asked silent questions, so I gave a solemn nod. His expression lost some of its tension. One nod in return. He’d asked me to make sure the son of a bitch suffered before I turned him over. Best part of my job.
I hung up and chucked the phone onto the seat with my discarded gloves, exhaling slowly. As far as assignments went, that had been the easiest in a while. It needled me that I had felt any emotion over it at all. Probably another sign that my phasing out of this career was a wise one.
I’d made sure to take simpler cases this year, easing away from my operations one small commission at a time until I only had a few operatives wrapping up loose ends. By December, we’d be done, and I’d be retired at the age of thirty-five. And have an almost perfect property, apparently. Jake was probably right, and despite saving money for years and running a successful “security detail” business for a decade, I was a good million short of what I really wanted. Regardless, I still had enough to retire, and my operatives would have generous payouts to do what they wanted once they were done.
I started the car, and with Depeche Mode blaring over my speakers, I headed back to the safe house. That was another reason I was ready to be done with my career already—I didn’t have a home. I had a few safe houses that my operatives shared as bases of operations, but I often hopped between them, hotels, and house rentals. It had gotten old like six years ago. At the moment, we’d been sticking close to our base of operations in Denver, and I planned to close down the house in Philadelphia next month. The last to go would be San Diego, and then, hopefully, I’d have a place to land in Montana.
As I navigated the open, wide streets of downtown Denver, a call came through on my car’s speakers. I tapped a button on my steering wheel. “Ghost.”
“Hey boss,” Tabitha said. Her voice held an ominous mixture of trepidation and annoyance.
I checked the clock. It was nearly midnight. “Christ, what is it? You realize I haven’t eaten my dinner yet, right? Choose your words carefully.”
Silence crackled for a couple seconds. Finally, she admitted, “The Thornes are here.”
“Here,” I repeated. “Here, where?”
“Monroe Street.”
My mouth opened, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d given them the safe house address last year when I’d caught Mattie the first time. I didn’t think they’d be dropping in for a house call at midnight, months after I’d terminated our services. I pinched the bridge of my nose and brought the car to a stop at a light. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know. To talk to you, I guess,” she replied with clear irritation.
“No.”
“They said—they seem pretty desperate. You might want to hear them out,” she hedged.
I sighed, long and low and ending on a growl of frustration. “I’m five minutes out. Tell them not to get too comfortable.”
“Can do.” Tabitha hesitated. “Sorry.”
I hung up, muttering under my breath about the pitfalls of hiring operatives Tabitha’s age, and hooked a right turn. I hadn’t heard from the Thornes since May when I’d lost Mattie for the last time. And it was the last time because I wasn’t wasting another minute of my life chasing after that spoiled brat. I’d never lost a target—not one time had I taken someone into my custody and had them so much as sneeze without my permission.
Except Mattie. I’d lost Mattie three times.
It was bad for business to put myself in a situation where I might fail a fourth time. And besides that, we were done offering retrieval services. I had one operative guarding a pop star on her tour through South America, and another wrapping up an assignment in Philly, and then we were out. I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the last three months of my career chasing down a deviant in a bunny ear hoodie.
I drove my SUV through a mostly abandoned industrial complex, pulling into a refurbished garage on the bottom floor of one of the buildings. We’d outfitted the second floor to be a safe house and base of operations, and I knew once we moved out, I could get one point-two million for the building when we were done. All part of the plan.
I parked my car in a spot near the elevator, punching a fob on the sun visor to close the enormous aluminum door behind me. Vehicles filled the empty lower level, some of them company vehicles and some of them my personal acquisitions. I passed by my black R8, running my hand over the well-polished hood before reluctantly crossing the dingy concrete floors to the utilitarian elevator. It hummed to my level, grinding to a halt, and then the double doors opened to a tiny, metal-lined box.
As I rode the elevator up, I twisted a thick ring on my pointer finger, thinking. There were a few reasons the Thornes would have gotten desperate enough to actually show up at my safe house. One, Mattie was dead—possibly murdered—and they wanted me to find out how she’d died and bring her justice. At the thought of Mattie lifeless and discarded somewhere, a droplet of sorrow seeped through those widening cracks in my emotional armor. Shut that shit down, I chastised myself mentally. She doesn’t deserve your pity.
Two, Mattie was very much alive, and they had a lead on her whereabouts. Or three, they had no idea where she was and were feeling frantic.
In any of those cases, my plan of action remained the same. I would show them the door so I could nuke leftover Chinese and collapse on one of the couches. The elevator beeped, the doors opened, and I stepped out into our open-floor penthouse.
We’d refurbished the industrial building with matching living spaces on either end of the long floor. With two full kitchens on opposite ends of the three thousand square foot space, there were two living areas in between, complete with couches, TVs, and gaming systems. Along the back wall, desks outfitted with monitors and PC towers acted as our tech base. I found myself facing a darkened, quiet space with one light on in the kitchen to my left. Tabitha had brought the Thornes to the granite counter island, and they sat on polished barstools in front of cold cups of coffee. From the looks of it, neither of them had touched the coffee.
They both stood as I walked slowly into the light. We hadn’t spared any expense with the kitchen, outfitting it with commercial-grade cooking equipment, a double-door stainless steel fridge, wide, generous, granite countertops, and plenty of utensils. Despite that, we all ordered out ninety percent of the time. Go figure.
