part0101

Banks scowled at it and tried to think of a good excuse to avoid answering it. This hadn’t been his best day. Most of it was spent staring at that same damn phone while he waited for the client to call. First prize would be to tell him his papers were ready and it was time to head to the nearest airport with first class tickets and a plane that would take him anywhere that wasn’t fucking New York.

Well, not literally anywhere. Somewhere with no extradition treaty, as well as most of the best comforts that modern society could buy. Switzerland was apparently very pleasant in this season. Their ski resorts would be open although it was still early in the year and wouldn’t be as packed as they would become during the winter months. The client would be able to put him up somewhere comfortable and allow him to continue his work for her and for the firm from afar.

But he’d waited all day and the phone hadn’t rung. Not once. He ran out of gin and started on the bourbon, and still, the stupid device remained obdurately silent. The guard changed two and even three times without the communication he hoped for. He was stuck underground with a strong likelihood that someone would try to kill him, and all he was expected to do was wait. By now, though, he was halfway sure the guards assigned to protect him would forcibly keep him a prisoner or shoot him in the back if he tried to escape, which meant he was not going anywhere. He wasn’t a naturally courageous individual.

That was when it had all started. He was into his third rum and coke of the evening, about five minutes after the guard shift changed again, and the newcomers listened to the comms in their ears. Something had gone desperately wrong up top, and they tried to identify the details. They had hustled him quickly to the securest room in the bunker—which resembled a safe with an oxygen pump to draw air in from the top.

Thankfully, a fully stocked bar—as ridiculous as the idea was—mitigated any other discomfort. They sealed him inside and told him they would alert him when it was safe to come out again. All his questions had been rebuffed with repetitions of their previous statement and he had been shoved into the damn room like unwanted merchandise.

And now, finally, the phone rang. They would either tell him it was safe to come out of hiding, or it was Savage to assure him he would find a way into the safe too and he should simply wait for his inevitable arrival. The lawyer wasn’t sure which was the more likely of the two scenarios, although he did know which he preferred.

He sighed as the phone continued its incessant demand. It had become annoying, and because not knowing was worse than anything else, he leaned over in his seat and snatched the receiver up from the cradle.

“Yeah?” he said, a slight slur in his voice.

“We caught him, sir.” The voice he already recognized as belonging to one of the men who had pushed him into the safe room sounded smug.

Banks needed a second to process that. “What do you mean, you caught him?”

“We have him here, disarmed and secured,” the man said and sounded like he almost didn’t believe it himself. “The area is clear if you would like to come and see him for yourself.”

There were no camera feeds to confirm that what he heard was the truth. For all he knew, it was an elaborate trap to entice him out of the safe room, but at this point, he didn’t really care. It was probably the alcohol in him, but he wanted this whole ordeal to be done and finished with, one way or another. Anything was better than simply sitting around and stewing in his own fear for hours.

“Fine,” he said and shook his head in a futile attempt to clear the fuzziness. “I’ll come out.”

He punched in the code that would unlock the door and pushed it open, not sure what he would find waiting for him.

Somehow, it looked exactly how he imagined it would. The safe room had been soundproofed to keep the occupants completely isolated so he hadn’t heard the battle that had caused the very obvious damage. Bullet pockmarks marred the walls and pieces of furniture were wrecked beyond repair. A handful of bodies still seeped red. He grimaced instinctively at the gory scene, one all too clearly visible as most of the lights in the ceiling were still intact.

And there he was—the cause of the fears that had hounded Banks all week. Savage looked like he’d had the almost literal shit beaten out of him. His face was bruised, swollen, and bloodied and his right eye all but completely closed by ugly, purple swelling. Blood trickled from his lips, which were split in several places. He was secured on his knees, held up by a pair of burly bodyguards who watched him closely to make sure he didn’t try anything.

He studied the prisoner for a moment, a little nonplussed, and reminded himself that this man had disabled four trained guards on his own. His record was impressive, but the man himself didn’t align with the larger than life persona he had created in his wild imaginings. He’d expected something like a force of nature or straight out of a Schwarzenegger or Stallone flick. This man, with his brown hair and average height and nondescript build and was even a little disappointing.

His file contained innumerable details that defined him as a lethal and efficient killer, but for some reason, the lawyer had expected something…more.

Banks sighed and accepted the weapon that was placed in his hands almost without question. It was a Glock, and it had been fitted with a silencer—no, suppressor was the right word for it. His time as a criminal defense attorney had taught him that much. It was a little too big for his hand, but in a pinch, it would do fine.

“You should know something, Savage,” Banks said and didn’t care that his voice still slurred from the sheer amount of alcohol he’d imbibed over the past few days. “I hope you know that it wasn’t anything personal against you. Your family wasn’t ever in any real danger. It was all to remove you from the equation so we could eliminate Monroe and Anderson, you pain in the ass.”

Savage looked at him, and despite the pain it had to cause him, he smirked and took a moment to spit blood onto the floor before he spoke.

“Somehow, none of what you said makes me feel any better about this.” He chuckled, which triggered a hint of annoyance to creep in beneath the lawyer’s smugness. The man who had turned his whole world upside down was on the wrong end of a gun and unbelievably, didn’t seem to give a shit.

Suddenly, he simply felt very, very tired. He didn’t want to have to care about any of this. He wanted to go back to work and continue with his life.

“You know,” he said and inspected the weapon in his hand, “my client wants me to make an example of you and to record it, too, and capture you suffering all kinds of unimaginable shit. Waterboarding, acid, electricity, the works. She wants it to be distributed far and wide to drive the point home that she’s the one everyone has to fear, not you.”

Savage’s eyes narrowed, but Banks ignored him. He raised the weapon and pressed the elongated barrel to his bruised and battered forehead.

“But I don’t think that’ll happen,” he said. He tilted his head to study his captive and enjoyed the feeling of power that holding a gun to someone else’s head filled him with. “I think I’ll say you resisted and I had to shoot you a couple of dozen times to make sure that you were annihilated, once and for all.”

“I can respect that,” the operative said easily and actually leaned into the barrel of the gun.

“Don’t think I don’t want to, though,” the lawyer continued with a smile. “I’d like nothing more than to fill you in on the kind of hell I’ve been put through over the past week or so, but I don’t want to give you the opportunity to find a way to escape. That would be too—”

He lost his train of thought when the elevator doors dinged behind him to signal that someone was coming down. It was safe to assume it was a team sent by the client when she found out that Savage had raided the bunker himself. They were here to ensure the job was done. He could appreciate that and wasn’t at all sure he wanted to go against the woman’s wishes. If these men wanted to take the man away and deal with him themselves, there wasn’t much he could do. All he knew was that if it were up to him, he wanted to Savage dead and be done with it.

Banks blinked when the door opened to reveal only two people in the elevator, a man and a woman. The man was on his one knee and looked down a scope attached to what appeared to be a very powerful rifle aimed directly at him.

“Shit!” he yelled before he could control himself and turned instinctively to face the elevator. He swung the gun away from Savage in the precise moment that the hand holding the weapon exploded in a spray of blood.