Rise Of The King: Checkmate, #5 Read online

  “Good. Peter. What’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know!” He cries when I dig my blade in. “I literally don’t know. It’s not like he throws his personal information around all willy-nilly. His name is Pete; that’s all I got.”

  “How do you communicate with him? How does he pass on his orders?”

  “Text.” Folding his body, he digs a hand into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. “Check it, man. It’s under Pete; take his number.”

  I set Cole on his feet, but keep my hand on his throat as I accept the phone with my left hand. “What’s your passcode?”

  “It’s titties. Like eight-four-eight-four-three-seven, but only one T in the middle, because two makes it too long.”

  Pausing, I look back into his eyes in disbelief. “Are you fucking serious right now? Stupid ass motherfucker. Twenty-five going on twelve.” I slide my thumb over his screen to make sure the code he’s given is correct – T-I-T-I-E-S – and when I gain access and move to his text screen, I find Pete and his orders to be at the drop point this time last week. “Good.” I slide the whole phone into my pocket and step back.

  “Can I go now?” He takes a step forward with faux bravery. “You gotta take his number, then give my phone back. I need that for w–”

  “No.” Swinging my blade around, I open his throat and step back when crimson blood sprays over the alleyway concrete, turning powdery white snow to a massacre of red. “Seven families will never recover because of what you did. And that was just last week’s girls. You won’t do it again.”

  Dropping to his knees, then the ground, Cole clutches his throat and chokes on his own blood. His body convulses, his hands squeezing in hopes of undoing what I did. But I don’t walk away until he’s out. I don’t walk away until I know he can’t come back, because I know better than most that some assholes can survive just about anything.

  Some men are like cockroaches; nothing will take them down. So I don’t move when men bang at the club exit. I don’t move when police sirens wail in the distance. And I don’t move when my phone dings in warning. I only turn when the snow is more red than white and Cole’s body stops twitching, then I exit the alley at a jog and slide my bloodied knife back into my pocket.

  I’ll have to wash my coat in the bathtub again, then I’ll have to call Ace in to take care of another body before a kid finds him tomorrow on his way to school. But for now, I have a phone; I have a first name, and I have a number.

  It’s more than I had before I walked out of my apartment tonight.

  I live in the industrial district of a city that houses more than half a million people. If this were New York City, the artsy hipsters would’ve already sent property prices through the roof when they turned warehouses into condos.

  Thank God I don’t live in New York City.

  Here, the warehouses are still for the squatters, and cars left outside are still stripped as soon as you turn your back, unless you’re a dealer or a pimp. If you sell women or drugs, then you’re good for as long as you want to park, because if anyone wants to mess with a dealer’s ride, they find themselves stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey and tied to a lamppost in the snow until their feet fall off.

  I’m neither a dealer nor a hipster. I’m a dude with limited funds and a fabricated ID. I pay my rent with cash because leaving a digital trail seems foolish. So I’m stuck with a warehouse home and no heating, even in the dead of winter.

  For now, my lack of heating is unimportant because adrenaline runs hot in my veins – another man dead, a whole lot more to come – and my blood runs warmer from my jog. It’s closing in on four in the morning, so the streetlights are still on, but the further I run from the club, the more often the lights are blown out and the world is cast in darkness.

  That weather reporter was annoyingly accurate when he predicted ten inches of snow and a fuck-ton of wind to slam the shit into our faces. My nose burns from the cold, and my ears ache beneath my beanie, but I don’t slow, and I don’t hail a cab. I have gangster-wannabe blood on my boots and a bloodied knife in my pocket; I have to get my ass home and clean before they throw me behind bars and decide I’ve pushed my luck too far.

  It takes twenty minutes at a brisk jog with heavy boots before I reach my apartment building.

  What is now a five-story apartment building for poor folks, was once a printing press with a dozen chimney stacks on the roof and massive windows on the upper levels as though the rich owners enjoyed looking out at the world they were building. The apartments have no rooms, per se, because walls are expensive. Instead, they’re open floorplan living, with a divider to hide the toilet from the dining space.

  I take up the entire fourth floor, and my upstairs neighbor is either dead and rotting, or a ballet dancer light on their toes. The tenants on three make the typical amount of noise any family of four makes, but compared to number five, their lack of silence annoys the shit out of me.

  My building was constructed in 1892 according to the plaque on the front, right above what used to be signage that read Benton Printing. I don’t know where the Bentons are now, but I’m pissed they never thought to insulate their thin-ass walls or double-pane the glass.

  Back in the day, the coal fires that powered the presses would have kept everyone warm, but those suckers haven’t operated in at least fifty years, and as I pass through the front door and into the foyer with overflowing mailboxes, my fingers almost stick to the doorknob and tear the skin from my hand when I release it.

  It’s so fucking cold, I can make cloud animals with my fogged breath.

  Jogging up the stairs, one flight, then two, then three, I stomp on the third and take sick pleasure out of waking those assholes at four in the morning the way their kids wake me at midnight every damn day.

  Stopping at my apartment door, I lean back and glance from one end of the hall to the other, then back over the stair banister to make sure no one is following me up, then up to the floor above me to make sure my zombie neighbor isn’t coming down to snoop.

  When I’m certain it’s clear, I push my key into my front door and let myself in. It’s no warmer inside than it was out; the only difference is the lack of wind. My ceilings are too high to keep the place warm without spending a fortune, and the space is too open to maintain a patch of warmth. Closing and locking the door, I shuffle forward as tremors take control of my body and make my teeth chatter. I move toward my bathroom and shuck my dirtied coat and jeans off. Flipping the taps on and peeling my boots and socks off, I dive into the shower until the boiling water defrosts me enough that my teeth stop slamming together.

  It’s so fucking cold, my toes ache against the porcelain of my old claw foot tub. Even with hot water running down my body and the steam rising to mark my ceilings, the cold is deep inside me like it’s eating my bones.

  Every day I live in this place, I dream of going home. I dream of going back to where I’m warm and never hungry. I dream of summers with my brother, back when things were easier and life wasn’t so fucked up.

  We’ll get that again. Soon. But not until I find Cole’s boss’s boss’s boss.

  The day I execute him is the day I get to go home.

  Leaning over the side of the tub and dripping onto the floor, I grab my jeans with shaking hands and fish my things out: phone, wallet, Cole’s phone. Tossing them aside, I stand tall again, drop the denim into the bath and start washing the blood out until my shower runs red. He got more on me than I realized. If a cop drove by on my run home, I’d be in the pen by now, with no chance of parole.

  Leaning back out of the tub, I repeat the process with my coat and lament the fact they’ll take a long-ass time to dry. Tomorrow, I’ll have to wear my shitty coat so the cold can bite me that much more.

  Within ten minutes of arriving home, I pull extra pairs of socks on, fresh jeans over top of my sweats, a winter hat that covers my ears and face to below my brows, and my shitty coat. It’s not my favorite because it’s no
t as warm as the other, but it’s better than having no spare coat at all. My wet clothes hang on the shower curtain rod and create icicles that drip clear water rather than red. Tomorrow or the next day, once they’re dry, I’ll switch them out and go back to digging my hands into my favorite pockets until my world goes back to normal.

  Swinging through my kitchen and rubbing my hands together for friction, I flip the button on my coffee machine and suck in the aroma of instant coffee like it’s the finest thing I’ve smelled in all my life. As I watch the drops slowly fill the pot, I plan my five minutes alone with the heavenly brew and imagine my plans for the rest of my day. It’s Monday, February twenty-fourth, and not quite four in the morning. I’m not going back to bed, which means I have a whole day ahead of me. A whole day of talking to my contacts, of scrolling someone else’s phone, of finding Pete, and ticking off another enemy before they get to mine and hurt the only person on this planet I love.

  I can’t lose this war, and putting a hit on someone I love is motivation enough to stay under the radar and work myself to the bone until every last man who took part in our destruction is eliminated.

  Nobody fucks with mine and lives to talk about it.

  As soon as the coffee pot is full, I pour into a tall thermos mug and drop a little milk on top. Taking it and Cole’s phone to my desk in the center of my apartment, I drop down in enough clothes to make me look thirty pounds heavier than I am, but they keep me warm enough to keep the frostbite at bay and all my toes intact.

  Staring at my laptop screen, I breathe through the tingle that runs along my spine when my email predictably dings.

  Ace knows all.

  From: AcesAndEights

  Subject: It’s cold as hell, huh?!

  I know he adds that subject line to tempt me to open the email. The man I know only as Ace knows where I’ve been tonight, what I’ve been doing, who I really am, and who I’m searching for. He knows as much as I know. In fact, he tends to know more, since he’s the brains of our outfit and feeds me the information I need to get my job done.

  Ace is the guy who finds assholes like Cole Fenney. He tells me where to find the guy, what time he’ll be there, and what he’s doing there.

  Then he’ll tell me how that relates to my mission.

  I don’t understand Ace’s motives – why is he helping me? Why does he feed me information? How the fuck did he find me in the first place? But we’ve been in contact for the better part of two years already. He turned up in my email one day with a warning to keep his existence to myself and has neither turned on me, nor fed me shitty intel.

  So I keep him, and every scrap of information he sends is taken seriously.

  But that doesn’t stop me from dreading his emails.

  Testing him, I don’t open it. I stare at it. Stare at it. Stare at it and lift a brow in challenge. He wants to know what happened with Cole. He wants to know what I found out, and though I fully intend to share my findings, I still continue to stare at my computer and sip my coffee.

  Something is off about AcesAndEights. A man with my experience knows that nothing comes for free; no one has pure intentions, and everything will come back around and demand payment eventually.

  So why does he help me?

  Pushing away from my desk with a huff, I walk laps around my warehouse apartment and glance out at the dark skyline of a city I don’t ever recall moving to.

  I used to be one man, a man with family, a job, a constant craving for women and… other things, and then I woke up a different man, with a different name, in a hospital bed, while a pretty nurse leaned over me and saw to my dressings.

  Her tits were more than a handful, and her ass was edible.

  My charts said my name was John D. Hamilton, and though I knew that wasn’t true, everyone else rolled with it, so I did too.

  Having a spare name never hurt anybody before, especially not a man in my field of work, so I ran with the John story. I let them think I have no clue who I am, and I let them foot the bill for months of recovery, surgeries, and physical therapy.

  They want to help me remember.

  They want me to process my trauma in a “healthy way.”

  They want to know what – besides a bullet – is rattling around inside my brain. And they want to know how I can live on two hours sleep a night and not feel tired.

  That last one is new to me, a blessing and a curse, that I have no clue how to explain. But the rest, the trauma, the non-existent memory loss, the new city, are non-issues for me. I’m coping exactly how I need to: finding whoever wants to hurt my family is how I cope, and taking them out is how I heal.

  From the moment I woke in a hospital several states away from where I should have been, it was discovered I needed little sleep to function. At first, I called it insomnia. I thought I was tired and needed more sleep, so I’d turn over and force myself to lie still. I lay on those hard hospital beds for hours with my eyes clamped shut and my heart pounding because it’s not normal for a guy to sleep so few hours.

  Anxiety crawled through my heart because I knew everything that had happened; I remembered everything, but my injuries had me strapped down against my will with no escape until I’d healed. If I couldn’t sleep, then logic was, I couldn’t heal.

  And without healing, I wouldn’t be able to help my brother.

  Fortunately, it only took a few nights for me to realize that even with so little sleep, I wasn’t tired during the day, so I started pushing my new boundaries.

  I’d lie in my bed for eight hours straight at first, because that’s how much sleep normal people need.

  Then seven hours.

  Then six.

  Still, I was only able to sleep two, and the rest would be wasted anxiety and time.

  I let it dwindle down to four, then three, and swore it couldn’t be real. I was so sure it would catch up to me, that I’d crash during the day and have to catch up with naps, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t make my body rest for longer than two hours.

  I don’t fight it anymore. It’s been more than three months now, and I’ve yet to need a nap. As soon as my head hits my pillow at night, I’m out like a light, then a timer could be set, and two hours after that, my eyes would open again, and I’m up.

  It’s a blessing because time sleeping is wasted time for a man like me.

  But a curse because being awake and alone for twenty-two hours a day wears on a man. I need women to help me pass the time. I need something to do with my mind, food to replace spent energy, and coffee to keep me sharp.

  I’ve always been fit, healthy, agile, but now my sleep time is replaced with work, working out, women, and food. I consume thousands of calories in each twenty-four hour period, but I don’t get fat. I eat every hour or turn shaky from hunger. I drink coffee like it’s going extinct; I piss, then I start again.

  The doctors never could find out what’s wrong with me, so it was declared an odd byproduct of my injuries and brushed aside. I’m a John Doe with no family and no insurance, so despite their intrigue, I was pushed aside pretty quickly and forgotten about.

  Fine by me.

  Once that first couple weeks were up and I realized my newfound time, I used it to dig. To dig into Ace, my mysterious friend who drops tips into my email inbox like they’re Tic Tacs. To dig into federal databases and follow the progress of known and unknown military criminals. To follow the progress of a case I worked for eighteen months before I was shot and killed – then brought back, then let go, only to be brought back again by a doctor that wouldn’t take no and a bullet in the brain for an answer.

  I’m a “medical miracle.” A one in a trillion survivor of a headshot wound that passed through my skull and missed everything except – apparently – the part of my brain that deals with sleep and appetite.

  It turned one switch down, and the other up.

  Now people want to know me; they want to interview me; they want to run tests and help me find my old identity.

  T
he day I was released from the hospital, I made myself a missing person again; I burrowed in, got an apartment, and here is where I’ve stayed since.

  It makes it easier to research dirty fuckers when everyone thinks I’m dead. So I remain a ghost and tick a new guy off as often as I can as I work my way to the top.

  I intend to take out the top dog, and by doing so, I’ll make my brother safe.

  My ID now says John D. Hamilton; it’s as bland as names come, and throws up no alerts when I have to flash it at a bar or an airport.

  But head wound or not, lack of sleep or not, I have no trouble remembering my real name.

  I’m Jay Bishop; I turned thirty just last week. I have one brother, one father, and a deceased mother. I have no wife and no woman I would consider myself attached to. I’ve contributed to no children that I know of and have no intention of changing that any time soon.

  I used to be an undercover agent, and my last assignment before my death was inside a dirty club where Abel Hayes sold drugs, guns, women, and children. That fucker sold anything he could exchange for money and was unapologetic about the people he hurt in his quest for power.

  My job wasn’t an issue, as such. I enjoyed the thrill; I even enjoyed my own slice of power. I’d been an agent most of my adult life and worked hard enough to keep up with my brother’s promotions. Two years younger than him, I wore the responsibility to keep him safe on my shoulders just as surely as he wore the same responsibility toward me. But I couldn’t possibly keep him safe if he slingshot ahead of me in the ranks and left me in his dust, so I worked hard; I took risks, and I kept up until the day we were both shoved onto the same task force.

  I’d made it; I earned that rank and the right to run into a room with my brother and our guns drawn.

  Drugs. Girls. Guns.

  It was always the same thing: some prick wants to hurt people and buy power, so our people would set it up and send us in. We dismantled one outfit only to be thrust into a second assignment within weeks of finishing the first.