Authors: Stuart Keane
A lie. A lie for the sake of murder.
Murder
.
What have I done?
The cool, damp hair on her shoulder reminded her of the shower, her first shower since ending two lives, one used to wash away the blood and horror and memories already embossed on her brain. She twisted her hair between her nervous fingers, water seeping from the locks and pattering the bed below. The tears had stopped, but the remorse didn’t.
Revenge was the plan.
You're one of them now
.
The words sent a shiver trembling down her spine.
Yes, she wanted justice for her family, but resorting to murder to achieve it?
You should call the police and inform Detective Inspector Scott. They ended the investigation because they were in the dark. You know where Rhodes is, you can ship him to the police.
Take him down legally.
Dani glanced at the bedside cabinet and looked at Scott's crinkled yellow card. She'd put it in the box with her personal belongings. She'd kept it, a reminder that some humanity existed in the world. After all, he'd stayed by her bedside, day and night, the only person who did. True, he had an agenda, he was doing this job, but he still cared for her wellbeing.
She owed it to him.
She also owed it to Teddy. And Mum.
And, in some way, despite it being his fault, her Dad too.
Her eyes closed and reopened, this time focusing on Alan's phone, which sat next to the card. It stunk of vomit; the bile had seeped into his pockets and smeared the phone during their little talk. Despite cleaning it, the device emitted a lingering, bitter stench into the air.
She thought back to that night. To her dead mother, to Teddy's head as it exploded in her face, destroying her innocence and her life in one gory second of violence.
She swallowed a hot mouthful of coffee and nodded firmly, her decision made.
She picked up the phone and started scrolling through it. Different folders, email accounts and multiple text messages whizzed by. She found naked pictures and swiftly skipped them, hitting the red trash icon as she did, providing some kind of useless humility service to the foolish women in the images. Besides, Alan wouldn’t need them anymore.
She backed out and found the phonebook. She scanned the numbers. Her eyes widened when she settled on one specific entry.
Boss.
She remembered it from earlier. It was all too easy.
She drank another mouthful of coffee and shook her head, breathing deep. Then, she dialled.
*****
"So you're telling me that you can’t find these pricks anywhere in London?"
Bradley nodded silently, not making eye contact. Andrews shifted nervously beside him, sweating. Rhodes, sat behind his desk with an empty tumbler in his left hand, was bobbing in his leather chair, thinking.
"London's a big place. I doubt you searched very hard. This is not the type of incompetence I expect from you, Bradley."
Bradley nodded. "With all due respect, sir, I'm not their babysitter. That's Andrews' job." Bradley hiked his thumb towards his associate.
"Hey, fuck you. I don’t babysit anyone," Andrews spat, his fear dispersing for a second. Rhodes glared at him, which soon reignited his nervousness.
"They're your responsibility, Andrews. You should know where they are at all times."
Bradley smirked. Andrews fell silent, wiping his slick forehead.
"Anyway, it doesn’t matter. For all we know the dumb cunts are pissed up in a gutter somewhere sniffing coke from a whore's shitty arse crack. If they don’t make their presence known by morning, send Sanchez. He'll find them. He always does."
"Sanchez is an assassin, sir," Andrews queried.
"Yes; and when they see him in their vicinity, they will soon fall into line. I might even have him tap one of them with a bullet, for maximum impact."
"Good idea," Bradley uttered. "This is a professional company. Have him shoot them in the dick; it might domesticate them a little."
It was Andrews' turn to smirk – a look that said,
'way to go, brownnose, and fuck you
.'
"Bradley, I want you to take off, get some rest. Andrews, bunk up in the dorms, we have an early start ahead of us. Sanchez won't appreciate being woken at the crack of dawn."
Andrews shook his head. "I wouldn’t worry, sir, I heard he doesn’t sleep –"
"– did I ask for your opinion, you daft cunt? It's because of you that they're missing in the first fucking place, I..." Rhodes stopped speaking and stared down at his desk, grinning. "Well, look at that, speak of the fucking devil." Rhodes snatched his mobile phone from the desk and tapped the screen. He glared at Andrews. "Cahill, where the fuck are you?"
A muted, digital hissing filled the room before Bradley and Andrews realised the handset was on speakerphone. They crowded around the desk, watching their boss, listening intently. Rhodes placed the phone gently on the oak surface. No words came through the speaker. "Cahill, can you hear me? If you fucking drunk dialled me, I'm going to personally cut your balls off."
Still nothing, only the long, muted hiss.
"
Cahill!
"
"Is this Ross Rhodes?"
The voice was unfamiliar, stunted, groggy sounding. It wasn't Cahill. Rhodes looked to Andrews and Bradley, both of whom shrugged. Rhodes looked down again, a grimace appearing on his face. "Who is this?"
"Is this Ross
Rhodes
?"
Rhodes cracked his neck and sighed. "Yeah, who wants to know?"
"Good." The person cleared their throat, the phlegmy harking distorting the sound. Silence followed for a second and all three men looked at each other, confused. "Good, then I have your attention."
The voice was female, lighter in tone, spiked with a lisp or a speech impediment on every third or fourth word. "Ross Rhodes, I believe you knew my father, Dennis."
Andrews' eyes widened and he looked straight at Bradley. Rhodes followed suit, flicking his fuming glance to his number two. Both had heard the story.
She was seventeen. She had the tightest body, newly developed. If it weren't for the job, I would have ruined her for life. I would have fucked her in every hole, enjoyed every scream and moan. Instead, I had to cut the bitch and leave her bleeding, leave her for dead. I used a pair of scissors and sliced her face, gave her a proper Chelsea smile. When I stabbed her, it tore her cheeks something rotten. I bet she bled out on her little brother's carpet thinking of me.
Bradley's face turned white in an instant. The sound of the voice punched him in the gut, crushing the air out of his lungs. He stumbled, placing a shaking hand on the wall to steady himself. Rhodes shook his head and loosened his tie, realising the problem that was arising here. "Dennis? Remind me."
"Dennis. Worked for you, wasn't very good at it. Had a wife and kids, two of whom you brutally murdered in a home invasion…sorry, hired someone to brutally murder. Ring a bell?"
Rhodes chuckled. "Ah, yes. Dennis. Incompetent cunt that one. He got what he deserved, no one who works for me is a fucking liability," he spat, glaring at Bradley.
"Ah, but I disagree. How do I know this? Let’s just say an eighteen-year-old girl outwitted two of your
best
men. Easily. You won't be seeing them again."
"Listen,
bitch
, I don’t know who you think you are –"
"– right now, I'm your worst fucking nightmare. You sent someone to kill me and he didn’t get the job done. You killed my family in cold blood. There will be severe consequences for that."
"This is hilarious," Rhodes quipped. "
Darling
, you have no idea who you're going up against, the magnitude of man power and security I have. Bring it, but you won't even get past the front gate."
"You don’t have a front gate," the voice responded, almost instantly. "You have a compound, yes, but access is by helicopter or tunnel or on foot, if these schematics are anything to go by. I guess asking your lackeys to wipe their phones, or keep private documents elsewhere, wasn't in the brochure?"
Rhodes fell silent, a shadowy wave of crimson darkening his cheeks.
"And I have the access codes, a security card and everything I need to get in."
"You listen here –"
"– no,
you
listen, Rhodes. You put out a hit on my father. I saw my family die on your orders, on your command. Bradley didn’t kill me, he let me survive on a whim charged by male bravado and bullshit, and because of this, I aim to bring you down. You can count on that."
Rhodes clenched his fist and punched the desk. The desk bounced, remaining unharmed. Blood oozed from a ruptured knuckle. "You just signed your own death warrant, cunt."
"Maybe, but I have fuck all to lose, and that's because of you, no one else. Tell Bradley I said hello, and I will see him soon. As promised. He'll know what it means."
The caller hung up.
"Bradley, what the fuck…
arghhh
!" Rhodes slid his arms across his desk, sending its contents to the floor, several objects smashed against the wall with a loud crash. Rhodes stormed over to Bradley and pinned him against the wall, a knife to his cheek. "
What the fuck did you do?
"
Bradley swallowed, a bead of perspiration trickled down his face, his eyes on his boss, not the blade. "I gave her the Chelsea smile as…she challenged me so I fucked her up. I cut her cheeks with a pair of scissors and stabbed her in the gut. I pounded on her, almost broke her bones. She shouldn’t have survived; she lost a shit load of blood."
"Newsflash, Sher-fucking-lock, she survived. You should have killed her, no loose ends. You know this; you know this better than
anyone
."
"I'm sorry, sir. I fucked up," Bradley stated.
Rhodes released his number two and pocketed his blade. He walked over to his desk. "Both of you bunk up; we have a fucking early start in the morning."
"You think Corey and Alan are still alive? You think she's bluffing?"
"No, she was telling the truth. There was something in that voice…"
"I'm surprised she can talk at all," Bradley chuckled. It didn’t go down well, his laugh met with utter scorn from his companions. Rhodes hissed and tapped his landline handset. A dial tone filled the office. He dialled eleven digital chirps and waited, glancing around the office. The phone began ringing.
"I bet he's asleep," Bradley said dejectedly.
Andrews shook his head. "Who, Sanchez? I heard he doesn’t sleep, like a proper sniper."
"Shut the fuck up, the pair of you, you're both on my fucking shitlist."
On the third ring, the phone was answered. "Yes?"
"Sanchez? I have a job for you."
"Certainly."
"It's urgent. I need you to do a trace on Cahill's phone."
"You know the fee," Sanchez said calmly, his Spanish accent mild, his English well spoken.
"Normal procedure, it'll be wired in an hour."
"Okay. Just the trace? I don’t do babysitting like that fuck, Andrews. I'm not a taxi service or chauffeur either."
Andrews lunged in and stopped himself, covering his mouth. Rhodes nodded, smiling. "No, I need you go to the location and execute whoever is there."
"Even Cahill?"
"Yes, anyone. Use extreme prejudice. I need no survivors and no bodies. Get a cleaning crew, use a nuke, I don’t care. Nothing can be traced back to me, understand?"
"Understood," Sanchez said. He hung up.
Rhodes looked at his men. "This bitch thinks she can fuck with us? She has another think coming. Bunk up."
She dried her hair with the same damp towel used after her previous showers, sighed and tossed it into the hamper. Her slick hair tickled her neck, rolling drops of water down her shoulders and back. She slipped a blue t-shirt over her wiry frame, one that stuck to the damp spots, rendering the ordeal more irritating than normal.
Dani closed her eyes, clamped her hands on the desk before her and breathed slowly.
Calm down. You're just panicked and scared.
No, I'm guilty.
You have nothing to feel guilty about.
I killed two men in cold blood.
You killed the first two men of a murderous crew, a crew who partake in prostitution, drugs and firearms. They've murdered people, possibly hundreds – including your brother and mother, not to mention your father. If you don’t do something about it – especially now you’ve announced your existence to them – they will find you and they will kill you, not to mention hundreds of other people, anyone who gets in their way.
You're doing a little good in a world brimming with evil.
You knew the odds when you signed up for this.
Dani sighed, her internal conflict coiling deep and complex in her stomach. She didn’t relish what would come next, what bloody destruction was going to happen at her hands, but Dani knew she had no choice. It was kill or be killed.
She pulled her jeans up her legs and fastened them. Stepping to the bed, she ran her fingers along the Beretta, the one that had killed Alan with brutal efficiency.
Brutal efficiency. You have nothing else
.
She had a plan, a blind plan, one that could change a hundred times by purely walking into the complex that belonged to Rhodes and his army. She knew it wouldn’t be like any kind of fiction, nothing like a Schwarzenegger movie or those action films that take billions at the box-office. This would be sordid, uncomfortable, violent and sadistic. Blood would run in rivers and bodies would fall like raindrops.
The sooner you become comfortable with that, the better.
Dani shook her head and punched the wall, her fist cracking the cheap, hollow plaster. The pain shooting up her arm dulled immediately as she retracted her fist and flexed the hand outwards, dust and white plaster falling silently to the carpet.
A knock on the door made Dani stiffen.
Two raps – knock knock. Quick, efficient.
Not the normal three, slow raps of the next-door neighbour, one who had all the time in the world to letch and perve over Dani on a rare appearance. Only twice had he caught her out with an unlocked door, and never again would he catch her fresh from the shower. The knock wasn't his, not motivated by lust or hormones. No, this was different.
It wasn’t the rapid knocking of her postman who, on his first visit, was paid handsomely to knock six times fast on future visits. No one knocked six times; it was unheard of, the perfect code for a wary Dani. Besides, she hadn't ordered anything and no one knew where she lived, she paid her bills up front, a year in advance, and at the post office. She had no online presence, no digital footprint, and no mobile phone.
No, this was alien, normal. Someone on a schedule. Someone who would probably knock again in a moment, then leave if no reply was forthcoming.
Then, it hit her.
Dani's eyes scanned the room, almost in half speed, and fell on the phone on the bedside cabinet. The mobile phone, one with a lit up screen.
One that was active, a modern day homing beacon.
Alan's phone.
How could I have been so dumb
?
Dani leapt from the ground onto her bed and pushed herself off the mattress, launching into the corner of the room. Seconds later, her front door exploded in a hail of silenced bullets and splintered wood. The gunfire obliterated the bed and the wall beyond it, puffing feathers and sharp plaster chips into the air. Dani landed with a crumple in the corner, her back objecting to the sudden impact, one that just saved her life. The stench of sulphur tickled her nostrils as she groaned, her body still aching.
The door swung inwards, loose on its broken hinges. A man walked through the entrance, a vicious MP7 submachine gun leading the way. He stepped into the apartment, his gaze fixed in front of him. Grey smoke rose from the silencer and Dani wondered if anyone had heard the dangerous commotion.
She hoped not.
Dani pushed herself to a standing position and slid along the wall, still obscured by the door peppered with jagged holes, her fingertips gliding along the rough paint. Through the largest hole – where the intruder had begun firing – she saw the man was Hispanic, with trimmed black hair, a coffee complexion and long brown coat. He stood about six foot tall and could have been anyone off the street. Dani noticed a unique blandness, a non-descript ordinariness to his appearance. In a crowd, nothing about him would stand out; nothing would alert someone to his presence.
He stepped beyond the door.
Dani pushed the door aside and the wood toppled off the damaged frame, hitting the carpet with a loud thud, alerting him. She ran forward, swung her left leg out and kicked the gun from the turning man's grasp. The weapon clattered against her bedside cabinet as she drove an elbow towards the intruder's face. He ducked, avoiding the blow, and swiped her one leg from under her, hoisting Dani into the air and launching her across the bed. Dani bounced off the mattress and rolled onto her feet, but her left foot slipped on the worn carpet. The man kneeled on the bed and drove a fist into her face, blasting stars across her blurred vision, knocking her to the ground.
The man laughed and stepped around the bed slowly. The door wobbled behind him, no longer in its frame, the last of the wood clattering to the carpet. Dani backed off, cornering herself. She pushed her back up against the wall behind her, poising her right foot against the flat surface.
The man chuckled again. "I heard you were a fighter. I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised."
Dani rubbed her nose gently, testing the throbbing flesh and bone. Nothing was broken. She fingered her scars on instinct and felt no pain there. The aches in her body subsided as adrenaline flooded into her bloodstream. "You must be Sanchez," she uttered.
"You did your homework, beautiful. Intelligence and brawn? Wow. If more women were like you, well, the world would be a vastly different place. No wonder Rhodes has a stick up his arse about you."
Dani said nothing.
"A quiet one I see? Have to admit, Bradley said otherwise about you, how you goaded him into letting you live. What a moron. Unlike him, you won't have that luxury with me." Sanchez reached behind him and closed his hand around a pistol in his belt.
Which is when Dani leapt.
Propelling herself from the wall, she swung a sharp elbow across her front, spinning her through the air. The most prominent bone on her body arced and lashed Sanchez across the face, shattering his nose and blinding him momentarily. He dropped the gun to the floor, clasping his hands to his broken face. Dani hit the carpet and rolled, ending up behind her foe. She took the silenced pistol from the floor and poked it into the back of Sanchez's knee.
She fired.
Bone and sinewy cartilage sprayed across the room, pattering the wall. Huge globs stuck to the paint, some rolled down slowly. Sanchez screamed and collapsed backwards to the floor, his bloody hands coming away from his face. Dani leapt up and pinned her foe to the carpet. Sanchez scrabbled for her face, so she broke his fingers, snapping each into a sickening right angle with a crack. Again, the man screamed, convulsing between her legs. Dani drove a sharp elbow down straight into his eye, shattering the eye socket and popping the eyeball with a soggy squelch, the yellow vitreous fluid shooting up into the air. Using both fists, she rained blow after blow into Sanchez's mutilated visage, splattering herself and the surrounding carpet with dark blood and vomit, which slowly seeped from the injured man's mouth.
Dani took a second to breathe. Sanchez murmured to himself, acidic bile and crimson bubbling from his damaged face. His left eye was swollen shut, his right eye a bloody, pus-filled gouge in a face rife with cuts and welts and puffy flesh. His hands slapped the carpet, his body reacting to the oncoming shock and escaping adrenaline. Dani scooped up the gun again and pointed it at Sanchez's face.
She blinked.
She fired, the bullet puncturing his forehead.
Sanchez ceased to move, his arms returning to the carpet and remaining there. Dani closed her eyes and breathed slowly. She than clasped her hands around the man's neck. Her bloody fingers slipped and careened on the slippery flesh as she struggled to find purchase. Eventually she did and gripped, squeezing the neck and jugular, closing off any possible oxygen to the dead man's brain. Her arms bulged with muscle, every inch of her body flexing its weight into her lethal grip, ensuring the man wouldn’t come back. Dani felt her teeth aching as they pushed against one another, felt her neck muscles contract as she squeezed the corpse below her.
After five minutes, she released her grip and flopped back onto the carpet, sweaty and groggy. She wiped her face with a tingling forearm and stared at the intruder. Sanchez lay in a pool of dark blood and vomit. A foul stench polluted the air and Dani realised the body had voided its bowels.
Disgusted, she stood up and stumbled to the bathroom. She lifted the toilet lid and vomited into the bowl. Once done, she leaned her sweaty forehead on her arm and groaned. After a moment, she felt a burning inside her, one she mistook for heartburn. It grew and bulged inside her, laboured her breathing, made her gag slightly.
There was no mistaking it.
The feeling was unadulterated rage. Pure and simple.
The game had changed. Mere moments before, she'd felt guilty and hesitant, afraid to become one of them, what she assumed would be a regular feeling for anyone in her situation. That was before; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent bystander caught up in a murder, one she miraculously survived.
This time, it was different.
This time, it was pre-empted murder, an assassination attempt, a violation of her personal space – again – and a defiant show of retaliation from a man who was running scared from Dani, the one person who could bring his empire to the ground.
It changed the game.
This time, it was different.
And Dani now felt a difference, apathetic to her emotions and a moral compass. This man, the man responsible for bringing her life crashing to the ground, had to pay. No longer would she feel guilty for taking their lives, no longer would she doubt the violent actions of her vigilante justice.
No longer would she hesitate.
No longer would she fear Rhodes and his army. After all, she had nothing to lose because of him; he'd taken everything from her.
At that moment, her path became clear, a stark clarity laid her destiny before her.
Would she die? Maybe. Would she suffer? Most likely.
Would she reap justice for her family? Totally.
Would she get revenge on those who wronged her? Yes.
Dani smiled, the muscles of her face contorting her grin into a macabre grimace, one born of desperation and anger, one etched with payback. The young girl felt her sanity slip, her grip on reality fall to the wayside, and she welcomed it, felt a freedom that she'd never experienced before. Everything suddenly seemed brighter, more colourful, a lot less terrifying.
Teddy appeared in her mind's eye, his chubby face crying, then exploding and rewinding, she saw his young brain and skull spray outwards like a firework, like a small stick of dynamite had gone off inside his cranium, then climb back into her brother's reforming skull, like an exploding watermelon but in reverse. Dani saw the image repeat itself over and over and over.
Several times.
Dani gripped her temples, scratched and clawed at her skin, drawing blood, pulling hair from the roots. She screamed; her face aimed at the ceiling, her neck muscles coursing with hot, boiling blood. Her eyes widened and she felt a chuckle escape her lips, a small laugh signaling her loss of grip on reality. She closed her eyes, exhausted.
She saw her mother's frail body obliterated by buckshot meant for an animal, saw her father die at Bradley's hand; his face caved in slowly and brutally by the man's huge weight and realised she hadn't actually seen this, but the image was so vivid and detailed and authentic, it seemed real. It knocked the wind from her rasping lungs, made her gasp and clutch her blood-soaked chest. Dani twitched and shuddered, but couldn’t shake the images from her fragile mind, couldn’t escape their macabre grasp and couldn’t push the horrific, gruesome thoughts away. She saw the grotesque murder for what it was – a massacre.
Something clicked in Dani.
Something evil, something sinister, she felt the darkness coiling around her heart.