| |
Gabriel Alden sat alone at the bar.
It was scarcely past ten in the morning, but he’d already been drinking. The time he’d spent trapped in that underground office had messed with his circadian rhythm—and his body was no longer able to tell whether it was day or night. He wasn’t particularly fazed by his predicament, but seemed to think it was rather appropriate. He had the kind of problems, he had decided, that could merit sitting on a barstool at ten in the morning. At any rate, no one would ever hassle him there.
He’d driven all the way across town, just to be sure.
“Another glass, Alden?”
Even the gracefully aging bartender—a man called Tony Gilbert, real name—had learned to keep to the shadows and speak quietly. Gabriel secretly adored him. He wanted one for his house.
“Sure, Tony. Thanks.”
His empty glass vanished, a new one appeared in its place. By the time the assassin lifted his eyes, the man was already slipping around the corner with a grandfatherly wink.
Yes, Gabriel adored him.
It had been too long since the assassin had come to the little haven, a favorite criminal haunt that had become a second home during his troubled teenage years. Despite the inherent chaos, it was a place that made sense, where things were ordered and efficient and transactional. A place where he could generally steal a seat at the counter and be alone with his thoughts—
His face went abruptly still.
He drained the whiskey in a gulp.
No, that’s not a place I want to be.
No matter how much distance he put between them, the assassin had been having trouble shaking off his latest encounter with the distressing young woman from the Abbey. Despite having stayed in the present, he’d found it nearly as unsettling as the first.
Camellia Thorn.
The name alone was enough to quicken his heartrate, to set his ears ringing with the sound of twisting laughter and echoes of his own mindless screams. She had been one of Vivian Kerrigan’s horsemen of the apocalypse. A slightly deranged young woman who’d watched in delight as he was strapped to a chair in an interrogation chamber and tortured to within an inch of his life.
Rae had retaliated with a burst of sun-fire. She had apparently not survived.
But while the name itself was enough to send him into a tailspin, it was her tatù that had burrowed like a splinter in his mind. The gift of self-reflection. A glimpse of what might have happened, what could have happened. A surgical spotlight, highlighting all of life’s painful regrets.
His mouth was parched and his neck was prickling.
The glass was empty, rattling around in his hand.
“Tony, could you actually just leave the—” He glanced around the empty tavern, but in a rather predictable turn of events, the invisible man had vanished from sight. “—bottle?”
He waited in vain for another few seconds, then lifted slowly to his feet.
It was a particular annoyance of his—when people simply took what they wanted and left their money on the counter. But he liked to believe that Tony would forgive him anything.
And he was in desperate need of a drink.
After casting another swift look down the hallway, he reached over the counter, grabbed his favorite bottle of whiskey, and settled quickly back into his chair. The money was left by the register with a generous tip. The bottle was opened and his empty glass was filled to the brim.
Gabriel raised it to his lips, letting out a quiet sigh.
Now we can do this properly—
“Gabriel?!” a familiar voice called across the room. There was a scraping of chairs, then it repeated the question, louder this time. “Gabriel Alden—is that you?!”
The assassin froze in dismay, watching as a young man detached himself from a crowd of boisterous street-hustlers on the other side of the tavern, and paced quickly across the bare stretch of floor to join him. He wore an oversized jacket and designer shades, with so many golden chains looped around his throat—he rattled expensively with every step.
Daniel ‘two-foot’ Boyde.
Not a single person, including the man himself, could remember how he’d gotten the name.
“I thought that was you!” He appeared a moment later, throwing open his arms and giving the assassin an unsolicited embrace. A cloud of cologne descended between them, thick enough to choke. “Mind if I sit down? We should catch up! It’s been way too long, mate!”
Gabriel glanced at the chains, itching to tighten them.
Read the room, Danny.
“I’m working my way into a bender,” he answered lightly, waving the bottle between them as proof. “I won’t be good company today, but another time—”
“Yeah, but how have you been, mate?” Danny repeated with concern, frowning like it was an existential question. He sank into the adjacent chair, resting his chin in his hand. “How are you?”
Gabriel let out a quiet sigh.
Danny had never been very bright.
They had worked together once, just briefly, on a car heist in Cairo. It had been one of the last missions the assassin had received from Cromfield that hadn’t been directly related to the casual abduction of Rae Kerrigan—just a few months before he’d been sent to Guilder on deep-cover. The boy had been way too young to participate, maybe just nine or ten. A lookout, tasking with sitting beside a getaway driver—listening to the police scanner and shrieking helpfully if anything went wrong. The driver had been his older brother, the mission had been a disaster, and Cromfield had decided never to use the dysfunctional family again. But young Danny had the time of his life.
From that day on, he could proudly boast that he’d been in the field with Gabriel Alden.
It was a boast he made quite frequently.
“I’m good, Dan. How about you?”
“Just living the dream, mate!” The guy flashed a beaming grin, angling casually in the chair so the assassin could get the full effect. “Just got back from Ibiza with Kellen. Then we were house-shopping on Lake Como. He bought himself some villa, filled it up with a bunch of old things. Now he’s out shopping for a boat, if you can believe it. The guy can’t be stopped.”
“Oh yeah?” Gabriel said with a hidden smile, lifting the bottle to his lips. “Without a hint of warning, the guy up and buys himself a boat? Sounds like a midlife crisis to me.”
A quarter-life crisis. More like a charming phase.
“Yeah, he’s completely crazy,” Danny agreed with a grin, rummaging on the other side of the bar and grabbing a bottle for himself. “Says he wants to take up sailing. Total nutter.”
Gabriel glanced across the counter.
“Maybe he will,” he replied casually.
“Kellen?” the man repeated incredulously. “He’s never home! The guy just bought this big old house in Italy, but he’ll never see it. It’s always the next thing, and the next thing—you know?”
Gabriel stared a moment, then nodded.
Strangely enough, he actually did know. And not just the time crunch, not just the boat. It was a rush—living on that kind of adrenaline. It was hard to stop.
It used to be hard to stop. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t know,” he murmured, drinking again, “At what point...?”
He trailed off, frightfully aware that he was about to engage in a contemplative discussion with Daniel ‘two-foot’ Boyde. Maybe he should reconsider, maybe it was a line crossed.
The boy leaned eagerly forward, chains rattling. “What?”
“At what point, do you enjoy the house?” Gabriel asked thoughtfully, thinking back to his own little cottage, the lovely ballerina waiting inside. “At what point, do you sail the boat?”
Danny studied him carefully, like a doctor making an appraisal.
“All right,” he finally concluded, nodding to himself, “I’ve seen this before.”
The assassin rolled his eyes, regretting having mentioned it. “Here we go—”
“Now you had a particularly messed up childhood, so it’s difficult to gauge sometimes. But I can still tell you without a shadow of a doubt: this is classic burnout, mate.”
Gabriel chuckled, lifting the bottle to his lips. “Burnout, huh?”
“That’s what this is, mate!” the man insisted, thrilled to have solved it. “The early morning drinking, that hopeless look on your face. You, my friend, you need to take a very long and extended vacation. And for the first time in my life, I don’t mean that as a threat.”
The assassin chuckled again. “Maybe I’ll buy a boat of my own,” he answered.
The guy shoved him with a laugh. “Could you imagine?”
Yeah, I could imagine.
“Nah, man. I’m happy for you. A lot of us are.” Danny turned in sudden earnest, spinning his chair to face him. “You’ve outlasted the monster, bro! You defeated him!” He let out a raucous whoop, the way Jason and Benji cheered at video games. Gabriel lifted his eyebrows, nodding with the trace of a smile. “But seriously, man. You keep the bad guys on the outside, and the good guys on the inside.” He mimed it with his hands, making a clear division across the counter. He winked over the top of it. “You know what’s up.”
The assassin stared back without expression. “I’m sincerely flattered to hear you say so.”
“It’s not just words, mate. I’m saying you’re on the level.” He paused, almost imperceptibly, before seeming to make up his mind. “And I’d like to show a little gratitude.”
He delivered the words with a flourish, leaning back to see how they’d landed. Not terribly well, if he was being honest. It took a moment to register, then Gabriel started to smile.
“Are you offering me a bribe, Danny?”
The boy faltered, trying to get back his rhythm. “It’s merely...it’s merely a token of my appreciation, for all that you and that new crew of yours do to protect our fair city. I can’t imagine it’s easy, surviving on a government wage.”
For a split second, Gabriel was almost tempted to tell him about the yacht after all. But he feared the moment was somewhere behind them. And the kid was plagued with momentum enough.
“Really moving up in the world, huh?” he asked indulgently instead. “Making enough to offer bribes to law enforcement? Next thing I know, you’ll be assembling your own crew.”
“Like a rags-to-riches stereotype,” Danny declared, laughing again. Not only was he drinking from the bottle, he was already buzzing from the night before. “But seriously, Alden. You’ve gotta let me buy my way into your good graces. If you won’t take money, at least sample our product.”
He reached into his pocket, placing a tiny bottle of pills on the counter.
In direct view of the road, such an amateur.
“What is it?” Gabriel asked, lifting the bottle between two fingers. Like the rest of them, he kept himself appraised of the latest street-drugs. He didn’t recognize this one. “A new opioid?”
“Just a little party-candy,” Danny answered with a smooth grin, “kids are taking it down at the clubs.” He flicked the glass. “A single pill and all your problems just disappear, mate. For the next three to four hours—you’re nothing but smiles. No worries, no stress.”
The assassin pursed his lips, then slipped it into his pocket.
I know someone who could use that.
“That much product,” he replied, offering an involuntary warning. “You have someone watching the storage? Watching it at all times? Lots of people out there looking for powder.”
Wake up, Gabriel! Not every problem needs fixing!
“Yeah, I got my guys Ravie and Ramon.” The boy puffed up his chest at the assassin’s blank expression. “Oh—you haven’t heard of Ravie and Ramon? They’re these twins from Romania, probably not their real names. Anyway, they handle all my security now. I have full-time security.”
Gabriel’s lips twitched, but he nodded slowly at his drink.
This was why he didn’t often use Danny Boyde as a source of information. They’re these twins from Romania. Probably not their real names. But the guy was just looking for a little attention. Most of the people who played at this level were harmless. Many could be steered towards something else.
“Full-time security,” he repeated, tracing his fingers down the glass. “Should I be keeping my distance? Is there someone in the shadows, watching me through a scope?”
The boy laughed uproariously, like they were the best of friends. Already, the group of men he’d come in with were watching jealously—waiting with increasingly impatience for a moment they could interject. Gabriel took a final swig of the bottle, determined not to be there when it happened.
“Ravie and Ramon?” he repeated, making a mental note to check the immigration database for false passports entering from Romania. “They wouldn’t be the ones standing by the coatrack?”
Danny whirled around in dismay, spotting two boulder-looking men standing sheepishly by the doorway. His mouth fell open, and he threw up his hands.
“What the actual hell?” he demanded. “Who’s watching the stash?”
The men eyed each other nervously, both unwilling to answer the question, both shoving the other forward. It wasn’t until a few seconds passed, that Gabriel realized the problem.
They don’t want to answer in front of me.
“Why aren’t you at the warehouse?” Danny repeated impatiently. “I told you specifically—”
“They’re clearing the streets,” one of the man answered in a mumble. “Some new guys; they said to get off the streets. That there’s about to be a big hit.”
Gabriel set down the bottle slowly, staring across the room.
“What kind of hit?” he asked sharply.
By now, the entire bar had gone silence. Even Danny was looking nervously between them, like he sensed they were about to cross a line. The man cringed under his gaze, refusing to answer.
No, don’t be shy.
The assassin pushed to his feet, approaching him slowly. Not until they were standing face to face, did he repeat the question. He did so deliberately, quietly. In a way that couldn’t be refused.
“Who’s taking the hit?”
The man visibly braced himself, dropping his eyes to the floor. “The Council.”
Gabriel was already running out the door when his phone started to ring...
