Sanguine Springs

  Dawn

  Allison glanced at Jael's open closet, before glancing down towards the empty duffel bag at her feet.

  Olive drab, faded canvas. Military surplus, by the look of it. Borrowed from Jael an hour ago with a simple instruction: "Pack light. We head out once the boys finish taking out the garbage."

  She pretended like she didn't know what that meant, but Allison had seen her uncle and Tony heading out of Jael's garage earlier, pushing a wheelbarrow with two shovels and a coil of rope.

  They were "disappearing" the fallen assassins. To her surprise, that didn't bother her. By rights, the thought of Brad and Tony disposing of bodies should have given her the ick. Maybe it would have, if she hadn't earned one body herself.

  Too much, Al. Let's pack.

  But pack what?

  Her belongings were carbon and soot, scattered across a quarter-acre of smoldering debris, destroyed in the explosion that had leveled her father's house. The rental car sat riddled with bullet holes in what remained of the driveway. Her laptop, her clothes, her phone charger—all of it gone.

  Allison sighed, feeling as empty as the musty duffel bag at her feet.

  She'd come here fleeing Los Angeles. Fleeing Hadley and his leering proposition. Fleeing the suffocating reality of being Tetherly's token hire, paraded around in promotional videos but blocked from making a real difference.

  Sanguine Springs was supposed to be a safe haven. Somewhere to reorient while finally taking time to grieve her father's passing. To understand the man she never knew, and forgive him for being a stranger for the last ten years.

  Instead, she'd ended up in the crosshairs, nearly dying herself.

  And now it was time to run again.

  She was tired. Tired of not knowing what to do. Tired of feeling like a failure in everything she touched.

  Tired of running.

  But for once, she wasn't alone. Uncle Brad, Jael, Tony, even Matthias. They'd all faced death last night. Fought together. Bled together. She couldn't understand them, didn't know how well to trust them—but she was alive because of them.

  Maybe this time, running made sense.

  If she could just find some reason to believe in Brad's Kansas contact, maybe she'd be at peace with the plan. But she remained undecided, her mind as troubled as the still-churning waters of Sanguine Pond.

  A sound broke her reverie. Raised voices. Inside, coming from deeper in Jael's house.

  One of them shouted a familiar name.

  The waters inside Allison froze solid. She turned, leaving the still empty bag and followed the noise.

  Jael stood in a dim room, arms folded across her chest, mouth set in a hard line, eyes like flint. The door was closed, trapping the scent of lavender, linen, and warm blood inside. At her feet sat a five-gallon bucket, molded from blue number 5 plastic, with a bent metal handle and cracked white grip. It sloshed, three gallons of cold water still inside.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I do not like this any more than you. But I have to know. Who sent you?"

  Johansen lay on his back zip-tied to a wooden chair, its front legs in the air. His head rested on the concrete floor, ear beside a brass floor drain. A soaked cotton hand towel still covered his eyes. The water streamed down chin and cheek, dripping into the drain. He breathed in, abdomen swelling with much-needed air.

  "Again," Jael said. Voice flat. Professional.

  She lifted the bucket. Poured. The water splashed across the towel, and Johansen's body went rigid, back arching against the chair. His breathing turned to wet, choking gasps.

  Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

  Jael set the bucket down. Waited.

  "I told you," Johansen gasped. "I don't know who ordered it. We never—" He coughed, spitting water. "We never met the client."

  Jael tilted her head, studying him. She crouched beside the chair, one hand resting on the bucket's rim. "Never?"

  "Never."

  "Really?" Jael cocked an eyebrow as lethal as a pistol and lifted the bucket again. "That hardly seems the way to run a team of mercs. Maybe that is why your Overbite was defeated by old men, a cripple, and two women." She let some water fall, splashing on Johansen's face, drenching his mouth and nostrils. A mere taste of waterboarding, without the towel in place.

  Johansen spat water from his mouth, shaking his head. "Horus Overwatch. We were the best. We may have been set up, but those men you killed were professionals; they've put more people in the ground than you could imagine."

  "Were," Jael said quietly. "You said 'were.'" She stood, brushing her hands on her pants. "Past tense."

  Johansen said nothing.

  Jael leaned down, close to Johansen's face. A strand of hair pulled loose from her ponytail slid forward, brushing against his nose. "You don't want to test my imagination, Herr Johansen." She reached for the wet towel, placing it over the captive's face. "One more time."

  "Wait!" Johansen shouted, shoulders twisting futilely against his bonds. "Where is Matthias?" His face twisted around, inhuman and featureless beneath the wet cotton.

  "He is getting the van ready," Jael replied. "The real question is, how many seats will we need on this trip?"

  She lifted the bucket with both hands.

  Johansen's breathing quickened beneath the towel. "Wait—please—"

  She poured the water over Johansen's head.

  The Dane yelled and sputtered, the wet cloth not quite muffling his cries. His legs kicked uselessly, the chair rocking. "Stop—can't—"

  Jael kept pouring.

  "Caine! Stop, dammit, Caine!"

  The water stopped. The hollering stopped too. Johansen heard the scrape as the plastic bucket came to rest on concrete near his shoulder. He gasped for air as Jael pulled the sodden cloth from his face.

  His chest heaved. Tears mixed with water on his cheeks.

  "Who is Caine?" she asked, tight fingers squeezing the wet cloth so that it dripped steadily into the captive's face.

  Johansen flinched at each drop. "I do not know. But the target package was a mess. Whoever did this had no idea what they were doing. They signed off the message with an initial and the surname Caine."

  "What letter was the first name?" Jael asked.

  Johansen swallowed hard. His Adam's apple bobbed. "I swear to you, I don't remember."

  Jael's fingers tightened on the cloth. More water dripped onto his face.

  Johansen shrugged, tears welling up in his eyes. "I don't—I can't—"

  "H."

  Jael turned, surprised to see Allison standing in the laundry room's open door. "Allison, I am sorry. This is not something I wanted you to see. I need to vet him before we make a huge mistake."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Allison held up her right hand, synthetic palm outward toward the Israeli woman. "Wait." She knelt, head cocked to the side, and locked eyes with Johansen. "The first name. It started with an H, didn't it?"

  Johansen's eyes went wide. His lips trembled.

  "That's it. H. Caine." Johansen's voice was barely a whisper. "That's all I remember. H. Caine." His nostrils flared as he cried. "Damn him, wherever he is!"

  The room went silent.

  Allison stood. "Let him go. He's telling the truth."

  "You know this H. Caine?" Jael dropped the cloth into the bucket. "Who is he?"

  "Hadley Caine." The words came out hollow. Mechanical. "VP of Human Resources at Tetherly. He—" She swallowed. "He tried something. A few nights ago. At dinner. I turned him down, then left the company. That's why I came here."

  The silence stretched.

  "You turned down his advances," Jael said slowly, "and he sent a hit team?"

  Allison's throat tightened. "He bragged about having access. To everything. Personnel files, security records, background checks. He said the system had more reach than anyone realizes."

  She looked from Jael, to Johansen, then at the rifle sling across Jael's back.

  "I didn't think he meant this. I figured he was a sleazy creep. A stalker, maybe? But hit squads? And whatever the hell they put in here?" She gestured at her prosthetic arm. "All I know is Hadley Caine is evil, and I left."

  She met Jael's eyes.

  "Apparently, he didn't like that."

  Jael studied her for a long moment, then turned to Johansen. "Caine. Is he the primary client, or did someone else hire you through him?"

  Johansen shook his head weakly. "Our asset packages are vetted before we see them. They're supposed to be, anyway. Caine was the first person to ever endorse a mission."

  Allison felt something cold settle in her chest. Not fear. Not anymore.

  Certainty.

  Her coworker. The man who'd propositioned her over wine. The man she'd thrown a drink at and fled from.

  Not just a creep. Not just a predator.

  A killer.

  Or at least, someone willing to hire killers over a personal slight.

  Allison turned to Jael. The two women stared at each other with unblinking resolve.

  "Let's go to Kansas," she said. Voice steady now. Certain. "But first, show me how to handle one of those rifles."

  Jael's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

  "Now that I can show you."

  Los Angeles

  Sunrise

  Hadley Caine ground his elbows against the nap of a Peruvian alpaca hair rug. His nostrils flared, some remote synapse of his brain noting the still-present scent of pack animal. Breath heaved out of his lungs, stopping just short of hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is panic.

  Hadley did not panic.

  Never mind the broken table, its shards of glass and twisted steel lying on its side. Ignore the laptop, saddle-shaped and defunct from crushing against a knee. The same for the bottle of wine, shattered and splattered against the wall, raining down like blood across the wooden visage of an African tribal mask. Napa's finest pooled like tears in the corner of the mask's empty eyes, a silent recrimination as it gazed wordlessly past the man face down on the rug.

  This? This wasn't panic. Venting, maybe. A little light pressure release. Not panic.

  Hadley did not panic. He locked shit down.

  How long had he laid there? Hours. Since the satellite shifted east along its orbital path, losing contact with the low-resolution battle scene. But even before then, he knew the strike was a failure.

  The last thing he'd seen was a flicker of movement. A vehicle, turning around and heading away from the rubble. Not one of the residents. A van. The one he had chartered for Horus's use.

  What happened? He had no clue, no line of sight or audio from the night's mission. He hadn't known to ask for it. This was his first death squad.

  It would be his last, too.

  This is what I get for outsourcing.

  He pressed his eyes closed, tight, and inhaled until his tailbone popped. His arms untensed, unhelmeting his head as his palms dug deep into the carpet's shag. Hadley pushed up into a kneeling position. He gazed at the sliding patio door, through the blinds, at the far horizon of sea and sky. A pink band of warmth could just be made out. The sun was rising in the east, cresting mountains, ready to ignite the day.

  Hadley made up his mind.

  It was time to leave.

  All the choices in his life, all the choices that had led him from the tepid student in Compton to the middle floors of LA's biggest technological industry, had been fueled by one of two sides of the same coin.

  Carrot and stick.

  Today, he saw both. The stick—retribution and punishment should he stay. He'd accessed company satellites without authorization. Deployed Tetherly's wetwork team on American soil. Against civilians. Orchestrated what was supposed to be a clean elimination.

  Clean.

  Nothing about this was clean.

  His golden parachute—those carefully collected secrets about Tetherly's operations—suddenly felt like a paper umbrella in a hurricane. This wasn't some off-books data mining. This was murder. A massacre, if the team had done its job.

  But if they hadn't? If he left now, he could be halfway across the continent before anyone noticed.

  And the carrot? The Horus team had failed. They must have. In no scenario would victory look like this. But their failure freed him. Shorn of Tetherly, cut loose from corporate chains, Hadley could hunt her down himself. No committees, no authorization, no witnesses. A disgraced renegade samurai, a death-hungry ronin. He liked that. Maybe he'd even play with her a little before he watched the light slip from her eyes. Inside his mind, a door creaked open, a hard boy whispering, lewd and leering. What could she do with that hand, or without it, too?

  The outer light grew in intensity as his eyes dilated; appetites rising, hard boys screaming to be given control, to satisfy every hunger in his soul.

  "Okay. Okay." He spoke aloud, trying to silence the near-audible yammering inside his skull. The sound of his own voice helped. A little. "Time to go."

  Hadley moved with purpose now, his motions crystallized into action. He found his phone among the coffee table wreckage and slid it into his pocket. Next, a passport—he'd need his passport by the time this was through. And cash. He had cash, too, in the same place.

  The bedroom safe.

  He stalked down the hallway, past more masks and expensive art that suddenly meant nothing. His bedroom was as austere as the rest of the apartment. A low platform bed with charcoal sheets. A single nightstand. The safe sat in the closet, behind a row of tailored suits and handmade shoes.

  Hadley spun the combination with practiced ease. Inside: forty thousand in hundreds, bundled and ready. His passport. A second identity, purchased years ago from a hacker in Frisco with a penchant for certain pictures. His automatic knife, its damanged blade bent back into shape with a pair of pliers. Good as new, almost. And a Glock 19, its 15-round magazine already loaded with Hornady Hydra-Shok 148 grain ammunition.

  Hadley knew how to work it. In theory. He'd fired a number of guns at a range in Vegas, half of which he recognized from film and console games. The Glock was ubiquitous. Simple. A killer's weapon, which is why he chose it.

  The gun felt heavy in his hand. Real, as if its weight made it warmer, somehow alive-feeling. He tossed it to the bed, wondering belatedly if its safety was on, then grabbed a leather duffel from the top shelf. Clothes—he'd need clothes. Something casual. Something that would let him blend in with the mouth-breathing yokels he would pass on his way to his prey.

  Jeans. T-shirts. A dark blue pullover hoodie. He threw them in without folding. The money followed, then the passports, and the Glock wrapped in a spare black t-shirt. Finally, the pouch containing his infiltration tools—along with a newly purchased out-the-front automatic knife.

  Hadley hefted the bag. Light. Just the essentials, perfect for the hunt.

  It was time to go; find a flight to New York, and pick up the scent from there. He let out an unconsciously held breath, long and slow, then left the room. Hadley passed through a gauntlet of aboriginal masks, their eyes no longer judgment-free. He paid no heed, walking towards his front door.

  The door knocked. Hadley froze. A delivery? Mistaken address?

  It knocked again. No voice.

  Hadley's hand slipped down, into the leather duffel. His fingers found a shirt, bundled and heavy, swaddling the Glock.

  Inside a jeans pocket, his phone rang.

  His phone rang.

  The sound cut through the apartment like an air raid siren. He shouldn't be getting any calls. Not now. This was his personal cell, a number given only to his friends, and Hadley didn't have any friends.

  Chilled, unsure of his next move, Hadley retrieved the phone and read its glowing screen. A local number, identified somehow by the command ANSWER ME in all caps.

  Hadley stared at it. It rang again. And again.

  And the door knocked a third time.

  He didn't want to answer. The hard boys didn't want him to answer. But something compelled his thumb, forcing it inexorably downwards, till it contacted the green "Answer" icon on the haptic glass.

  "Mr. Caine." The voice on the other end was calm. Measured. Reasonable. "This is Thomas Newton. I believe we need to talk."

  Hadley's blood turned to ice.

  "Mr. Newton." He said, then stopped. Why is he calling me?

  "I'm glad to see you are already packed. I'd like you to come over. There are a few things I'd like to talk to you about."

  Hadley looked from left to right and back again. How had he seen him? His penthouse was clean.

  "My associate is waiting to make sure you arrive promptly at the Tetherly campus. His name is Mr. Brooms. Please don't keep him waiting. He has issues with impatience, I'm afraid."

  The phone went dead, its screen black in Hadley's hand. He pressed a button. Then another. No response. The device had shut off entirely.

  Ahead of him stood the penthouse door; the barrier between Hadley Caine and whatever the future might hold.

  Steadily, smoothly, without a sound, the doorknob turned, and opened.

  Outside, standing on the hexagonal patterned carpet, a man stood. Thin, hatless, in a suit of gray, his bald head lined with wrinkles. The man had piercing eyes, watery blue and unusually round. His nose hung like a crooked hook over worm-thin lips, lips twisted into a patronizing smirk. He held a boutique shopping bag in one hand, and a pair of automobile jumper cables in the other. "I'm Brooms," the stranger said, his voice like stale water. "You have one minute. After that, I open the bag." Emotionless, he raised the bag and gave it a shake.

  Hadley dropped his phone, sliding a second hand into the duffel bag to unwrap the pistol.

  "Mr. Caine, leave the Glock behind." Brooms stepped forward, entering the apartment. "It won't help you anyway." He paused and looked at his wrist, forehead skin suddenly corrugated as he noted the time. "Forty-five seconds, Mr. Caine."

  Hadley's shoulders sagged. Compliant, he removed the gun, still wrapped in its makeshift cotton holster, and set it on the back of his couch. He was not happy about this change of fortune—until the hard boys piped up, quieter than ever before. Whispering, whispering about the over-loooked Switchblade knife still in his bag. Silently, he zipped the leather duffel shut.

  Half a minute later, two men entered the hallway. A tall, slender man of indeterminate age, and an athletic, casually dressed Adonis, his face void of any expression. The gaunt man led the way, escorting the younger man efficiently from the building. Then, they were gone without a trace, leaving the hallways as empty as the eyeholes on a wine-soaked tribal mask.