Modern Rituals (14 page)

Olivia touched James arm.

“September twenty-fourth for me,” Olivia said.

“How are our times so far apart? Olivia, we saw each other within minutes! Unless…oh, no…” James paused to swallow down a throat of stomach acid. “Unless they
kept
us sedated or something and switched us on when they wanted us to start whatever this is.” James said.
 

“Could this be some sick and twisted game?” Anthony said.

“If it is, we’d better figure out how to win,” James said.

“So, what is it then? Me and Tomas out to flick on the power? You, Olivia, Colette and Keto to the garden?” Anthony said.
 

“Sounds about right,” James said. “Everyone good?”

Nods all around.

“Good. Let’s do it.”

CHAPTER 3
 

And they came in the night,

sworn to shred their victims.

(Damascus 12:3)

1

Little Tomas’ couldn’t keep his hands out of the cookie jar. Despite many lashings, the allure of chocolate chips wrapped in chewy, sugary, mouth-watering dough bound him to thievery. The other orphans named him Robin Hood as he freely gave of his sweet spoils—for this he was loved and likewise loathed.

Caretakers struggled to control little Tomas. His cleverness knew no bounds—he exacted schemes to acquire all manner of pleasures—toys, sweets, free time, even attention and affection—he wanted it all. These troubles kept him from the very thing Tomas needed most: potential parents. His caretakers lost hope, tired of him sabotaging their attempts to place him in a home. Little Tomas never found a loving family. By sixteen he left the orphanage and sought kinship elsewhere.

Madrid, Spain’s underbelly, harbors a callous, unforgiving attitude toward delinquent youth, thwarting those attempting to escape the bitter polarization of the haves and have-nots. These economic pit holes breed crime and criminals: cartels and syndicates favor them as recruitment centers. Tomas picked up small jobs first—pick-pocketing someone here, running a begging fraud on someone there—and quickly made a name for himself as a gutsy, witty kid. Before he’d turned eighteen, the Sinaloa invited him into their organization.

He assisted lower bosses, paid his dues, and flew up the ranks, eventually landing in the esteemed “hit” division. This presented Tomas with a problem: he had never taken another’s life. He may have been a crime whiz, stimulated by its challenges, but murder—murder existed outside his vocabulary. Too late. To leave Sinaloa meant death. He had no other choice—it was either him or them.
 

He chose himself.

Business was business.

His first kill ripped from his conscience any shred of morality. Part of him died alongside that assignment. He committed his life to villainy, allowing poisoned honey to fill the fresh void in his soul.
 

Tomas made a phenomenal hitman—those without family often do. His fierce, unforgiving methods kindled resentments amongst rival groups that rose to a fever pitch, bolstering the Sinaloa Cartel’s reputation. His monetary and influential worth multiplied as his fame transformed into infamy, garnering him the name
Malvado
or
evildoer
.
 

Potential victims resided everywhere. Malvado targeted political officials, aristocrats, union leaders, business owners, black market dealers—there was no end. The young, old, powerful and meek—even school teachers who interfered with the Sinaloa’s recruitment efforts.
 

Years ran from him, his survival usually attributed to his luck or his dastardly intellect or both. Tomas grew older without realizing it—without feeling it. His longing for family—buried deep—echoed from an insurmountable distance. He had considered a change of pace—rather, a change of profession or better yet, a change of heart—many times. Instead, his mind swooned at money and power.

Until his final job.

Tomas received the assignment in an anonymous envelope sealed with red wax in the shape of a horned devil. This was par for course. As was his custom, he tore open the letter with his teeth, spitting bits of the wax onto the floor, and read the name, time and location. This name he knew not, though he knew the location well. His boyhood orphanage. An assignment would again change his life.

He held the letter in his hands, staring, reminiscing, wondering, intrigued by the act of fate set to return him from whence he came. The orphanage stood as a paragon of good, a holy place the sole purpose of which had been to divert Tomas from a path of evil. Though it had failed, the impression remained. The note gripped his attention until his eyes glossed over.

Departure time.
 

Tomas went about his preparations: he favored a silenced FN Five-seveN pistol—its concealable size was handy and its unconventional caliber packed a flesh-rending wallop. This he placed into a snug sidearm holster. He burned the assignment note—an obvious precautionary measure to remove any link between himself and the hit, but it also served as a ritual that readied his mind for the services to come. Before the last ember flitted into the air atop a strand of smoke, he stored a set of public records from a quick Internet search in his smartphone and dashed out into the night.

He arrived at an unmarked garage a mile from his home and pressed a remote key in his pocket. A garage door rumbled in the empty alley. Inside, a car—black like death—crouched in the shadows. He opened its door and sunk into the driver’s seat, running his hands over the Aston Martin’s fine leather steering wheel, then threw the transmission into first gear whilst revving the engine. He relished the delectable moment.

Smoke choked the garage as he tore the throttle, popped the clutch and let the tires burn into the foggy eve. A hundred kilometers stretched between him and his childhood home, and he intended to use the distance to steady himself—to consider contingencies.
 

Fortune birthed each kill with a litter of possibilities: some good, most terrible. Tomas breathed easy. He knew every nook and cranny in which to find cover and launch an attack. Yet, he scratched the back of his neck, as he often did when confronted with dread. His intuition screamed that the night withheld dirty secrets. He pushed the anxiety aside.

Manuel Velasquez.

The victim’s name coalesced in his thoughts. It nagged him from the recesses of his memory—a hidden ghost taunted. This vapid apparition would no doubt reveal itself by the evening’s end.
 

His Rolex flashed a quarter past midnight as the GPS warned of naught more than twenty kilometers to his destination—he'd arrived sooner than he liked. Ahead in the black folds of the road, his headlights severed the darkness and highway reflectors whipped past, hypnotizing Tomas and deepening his resolve—his purpose: to kill without question.
Malvado
grinned
.

Arrival.

A rusty, dilapidated gate lay open at the base of the long road leading to the orphanage, just as Tomas remembered. A quaint sign read
Orfanato de Ramirez
beside the gate. There little Tomas had played, and when he grew older, vandalized—he’d loved the sign’s tiny “t,” which had found its way under his mattress more than once. Now he spat at it and cut the headlights.

He pulled his car around the gate and parked in a well-hidden wooded area next to a path that led into the orphanage’s rear grounds. The moonlight favored him: bright enough to light his way but dim enough to obscure. Leaves crunched beneath his feet, and he paused and listened to be sure his approach remained unannounced.
 

The orphanage resembled a small Victorian mansion and had been owned by a member of the royal family. It sprawled three acres enclosed by wooded play areas and trimmed hedges. His memory replayed a picturesque scene of children frolicking in the daylight—little Tomas among them. He shook his head and pressed on.

The rear courtyard contained two entrances into the orphanage: a back door, perfectly visible and charming, enclosed by a large porch overlooking the grounds, and another hidden entrance in an abandoned gamekeeper house some distance away. Running beneath the ramshackle abode, an underground emergency tunnel pierced the orphanage’s basement.

Tomas circled the courtyard’s perimeter, keeping to the shadows until he arrived at the shack. He threw open a splintered door and entered. A latch, locked by a hunk of metal bearing a crusted dial, prevented him from entering the tunnel hatch in the floorboards. To this lock he placed his ear, alternating the dial three turns until it clicked and disengaged. Dust swished as he gently laid the hatch onto the ground.
 

A hole three feet in diameter descended before him, inset with a few unsound stairs that cracked with each footstep. Earth enclosed the tunnel, which was lined with hundreds of canister lamps on thick, wiry filaments. Tomas fumbled for a switch at the base of the stairs and dirtied his finger before connecting with it. It clicked. The lights nearest Tomas lit and flickered and, like a contagion, spread in succession down the tunnel.
 

He bent to avoid scraping his head against the ceiling, tweaking his gait into an awkward, bouncy crawl. He paused halfway down the tunnel when a sound cocked his ears, then he continued, arriving at a door much like the one through which he’d entered. He nudged it—resistance confirmed that it was locked from the opposite side.

Even for some adept intruders, this might portend an insurmountable task, but Tomas smirked. He retrieved a hair-thin metal wire from his pocket, slid it through the gap in the door’s frame and wrapped it around the U-shaped hook of the lock’s base, then attached the wire’s ends to a remote key fob. He pressed a button and watched as the wire transformed from an invisible strand into a string of orange fire—Tomas kept it free of the door’s frame as it melted the lock’s stem. He released the button and waited for it to cool, then moved it higher and looped it under the freshly cut stem to lift it from the latch.
 

Done. He hesitated.
 

His fox ears twitched.
 

Silence.
 

He nudged open the door and slid in.

Inside, a monstrous furnace welcomed him. An amber glow emanated from its jack-o’-lantern grill where it sat amongst pipes, washing machines and dryers. The basement evoked vivid memories—it had been a long time since he’d hidden in its dark corners. Some nights little Tomas had slept here, either to affirm his freedom or just to cause trouble. Now he sought neither.
 

Tomas examined his phone: the public records confirmed the house’s layout identical to his recollection. The front foyer connected to dual grand staircases and the great hall, and from the entrance, a northern and southern auxiliary hallway ran to the kitchen, several living rooms, three guest bedrooms, servants’ quarters, nursery, infirmary, library, and the basement, where Tomas stood now.

His Rolex read 1:43 a.m. as he headed up the stairs. Though the house’s occupants most likely slept, he kept an eye on the stairways for mischievous kitchen thieves—little Tomases—as he passed through. He traversed the northern hallway, keeping to the rugs whenever possible to dampen his footsteps, aiming for his hit point: the library in the estate’s southwest wing.
 

He peeked around the corner at the end of the hall, finding an empty nursery, the servants’ quarters and the southern hallway. Over the southwest entrance’s archway hung a convincing reproduction of Diego Velázquez’s
Old Woman Frying Eggs
, which depicted an old woman preparing a meal for a young man—a reminder of the hospitality provided in the orphanage. Tomas drew his gun.

A pair of ornate, wooden doors—now closed—led to the library. He placed his ear to one and heard nothing. He turned the handle slowly, deliberately, until a click signaled release. He peered through a tiny crack—tall shelves, packed tight with books, lined the walls and encircled a lit fireplace. The room, with its tall wainscoting, recessed ceiling and ostentatious moulding, exuded Victorian elegance.
 

Its quiet vacancy unnerved Tomas.

1:47 a.m.—roughly thirteen minutes until he needed to be in position.

He stepped inside, causing no more noise than a pin drop. Two lavish armchairs, upholstered in emerald green velvet and built of rich, brown oak, faced each other across the room. Beside them sat a wide coffee table, upon which a child, bound by rope, lay unconscious.
 

Tomas froze.

“Hello Tomas,” said a stranger, who stepped from a shadowed corner of the room.
 

Tomas raised his gun, sight set on the stranger’s forehead.
 

“There’s no need for that. My name is Manuel. You were sent here to kill me.”

Thoughts stormed in Tomas’ mind, quelled by a single question: “Did you hire me?”

“I did indeed,” the man said. “You see, I’ve been watching your work with great interest for many years.”

“Who are you?”

“I am a man before whom your bosses tremble. And I am here to make you an offer.”

“What kind of offer?”
 

“Oh, Tomas—such a thorn in my side you’ve been!” Manuel said, grabbing a tuft of his peppered, curly hair. “Such a thorn!”

He clicked his tongue and smoothed the front of his grey suit, then straightened a red pocket square on his left breast. Tomas measured his every move.

“It is my intention to convince you to work for me. What’s the saying? ‘If you can’t beat them, join them?’ I believe that’s it, yes. Well, you’ve beaten me and countless men under my guard. It cost me a great deal of time and energy to discover your identity, but here we are, together in the same room,” Manuel said, smiling with white, abalone teeth.
 

The fireplace cracked and flickered, producing a glaring, orange light that reflected in Manuel’s glasses, shading the rest of his face like an underexposed photo. Tomas found it difficult to judge his facial expressions, relying on Manuel’s inflection and body language for signs of danger.