Hawk, page 3
part #6 of Will Slater Series
Camilla’s eyes sparkled, aflame with something eerily resembling desire. ‘I like you.’
‘Sounds like that could be a dangerous game to play,’ Slater said. ‘Based on what the two of you are hinting at. Who are you both?’
Camilla shrugged.
Dani stared.
Slater said, ‘There is a mood, is there not?’
Camilla said, ‘Of course there’s a mood. Everything we do is deliberate. You should have figured that out by now.’
‘I don’t really know how to interpret it.’
Dani said, ‘You’re not supposed to. We’re supposed to just give off a vibe.’
‘Well, I can feel it.’
‘What’s it telling you?’
‘That I should head as far away from you two as possible.’
‘Then you’re picking it up correctly.’
Slater said, ‘But I think it’s a test. To sort the men from the boys. You’re putting the feelers out. You’re trying to let me know — hey, our husbands are involved in some shady shit — without making it obvious. But you’re still sitting here. And you’re still looking at me. And I’m still looking at you. Do I look deterred?’
Dani said, ‘Not at all.’
Camilla said, ‘Keep talking.’
Slater said, ‘Your husbands are the unscrupulous types, I imagine. And that’s putting it nicely. The way you threw that information around when you got harassed just before… I think they’re organised crime. That’s how you two know each other. That’s why you look like sisters. You’re wives of powerful men that go for a certain type.’
‘And what is that type?’ Camilla said.
Slater said, ‘Stunning.’
Silence.
Dani looked at her friend and mouthed, ‘He’s exotic, isn’t he?’
Slater grinned his trademark grin and rested his chin on a tightened fist, his elbow skewered into the chipped surface of the table. Like a parody of Prince Charming.
He said, ‘You’re getting a real weird vibe now, aren’t you? Because it seems like I couldn’t give a shit about organised crime.’
Camilla said, ‘You should.’
‘But you don’t want me to. You wanted someone like me to show up. Maybe just to shake things up. Stir the pot, so to speak. Someone who could give your husbands a run for their money on the danger scale. Am I checking the boxes?’
Dani said, ‘We should leave.’
Camilla said, ‘We should.’
But they stayed right where they were.
Slater said, ‘How are your marriages?’
Camilla said, ‘That’s a topic we’re not getting into tonight.’
‘We don’t need to get into it. I can tell exactly how your marriages are going. Because you’re still sitting here. And you didn’t turn and run when I put out the feelers.’
Dani said, ‘Let’s bring him to the hotel.’
Staring straight at Slater as she spoke.
Camilla said, ‘He won’t want that.’
‘Why not?’ Slater said.
‘You will get yourself killed. If our husbands find out you will be worse than dead.’
Slater sat completely still, and he made sure to stare unblinking into each of their eyes in turn. He said, ‘Do I look scared?’
They both said, ‘No,’ in unison.
Slater said, ‘I’m not scared.’
‘You should be.’
‘But I’m not.’
‘You enjoy this,’ Camilla said. ‘The danger. I can see it in your eyes. It’s like you weren’t alive when you were sitting at that bar with nothing to do. We saw you when we came in. You looked completely different to how you look now. You don’t want to get away with this, do you? You want to screw us and lord it over our husbands. You don’t want to slip away undetected.’
‘I gave up on wanting any particular outcome a long time ago,’ Slater said. ‘I just take things the way they come. The question is — how badly do you want to avoid your husbands finding out?’
They looked him up and down, making no apologies for the blatant objectification. He didn’t mind. He was doing the same to them.
Camilla said, ‘Not bad enough to stop.’
Dani said, ‘It’s not our fault if you get yourself killed.’
Slater said, ‘I’ve been told that a thousand times.’
‘And what happened?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘You talk a good game,’ Camilla said. ‘There’d better be a payoff at the end of the tunnel. We wouldn’t risk our reputation for anything less.’
‘Let me show you,’ Slater said.
Dani raised an eyebrow.
Slater said, ‘You’d risk your reputation every day of the week for it.’
‘That good?’ Camilla said.
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘If you’re exaggerating, we’ll tell our husbands what you did.’
‘Maybe I want your husbands to find out regardless.’
‘That danger. You live for it, don’t you?’
Slater said, ‘More or less.’
‘Has it been a while?’
‘I’ve had a few weeks off.’
‘A few weeks off from seducing the wives of criminals?’
‘Trust me,’ Slater said. ‘I’m not rusty.’
‘I believe it.’
‘What do your husbands do?’
‘A little of everything. They’d be on the Forbes list if their assets were in their own names.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Yes.’
‘Guns?’
‘Yes.’
‘And everything else?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d love to meet them.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ Camilla said. ‘You’re too dangerous for your own good. But you can still show us a good time.’
Dani turned to Camilla and said, ‘I need him.’
‘I need him too.’
Slater said, ‘Let’s go.’
He climbed out of the booth and led them out of the ruin bar with a hand placed on each of the smalls of their backs. On the way out he managed a final glance at the bartender, frozen in place in a freshly clean patch of linoleum flooring, jaw half-open in shock. The man couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Slater could tell what he was thinking.
Not only has this guy ignored my advice, it seems he’s deliberately trying to do the opposite. He’s got a death wish. He wants to die.
Slater winked to the man, waved farewell, and guided Camilla and Dani out into the night.
3
Slater came to in a groggy stupor at nearly two in the morning, and as he peeled an eyelid open he focused on controlling the postcoital lethargy as best he could.
Satisfying them both had been tiring, but he’d proved his worth. It had taken a couple of hours, but he was nothing if not persistent. They lay on either side of him, fast asleep, worn out from the rigorous physical activity. The three of them were tangled in sheets, their naked chests rising and falling with each breath.
He rubbed his eyes and managed a half-smile.
It had been a pleasant evening.
But that wasn’t the reason he’d seduced them.
Camilla had nailed it the first time.
‘That danger. You live for it, don’t you?’
He couldn’t deny it. He’d sensed their husbands were bad men, and capitalised. He didn’t ordinarily go for married women. Not his style. It didn’t seem morally pure. An interesting dichotomy, considering most of his career had been spent putting bullets in heads and slashing throats.
But that was his life.
Extreme violence, coupled with a perverse sense of right and wrong.
That’s the way it had always been.
And it would be that way until the day he died.
Which, judging by the comments Camilla and Dani had made earlier in the evening, might come sooner rather than later.
Camilla stirred next to him in the darkness. Slater propped himself up against the headboard and surveyed the room in the lowlight. He was on the top floor of a spacious townhouse in Budapest’s fifth district, one of the city’s most opulent and expensive areas. The ceiling sat far above their heads, masked from view by the frame of the four-poster bed they were lying in.
Camilla placed a hand on his chest and offered him a coy smile. There was none of the snark from before.
He’d proved himself, after all.
She said, ‘Hey.’
He said, ‘When do your husbands get home?’
‘A long time from now,’ she said. ‘Or you’d have been kicked out already.’
‘Maybe I want to hang around. Maybe I want to talk to them.’
‘That’d be trespassing, then. If we wanted you out, and you refused.’
‘That’s a strange stance for someone involved in organised crime.’
‘I’m not. My husband is.’
‘You seem thrilled to be with him,’ Slater said.
‘Life isn’t as simple as just walking away.’
‘Yes, it is. When you break it all the way down, that’s all it is. But you’re used to this life. So you’ll stay. And maybe you’ll keep sleeping around until you get caught, just to liven things up. And see where it takes you.’
‘You think we’re using you?’
‘If you want to call it that. I can’t complain. I’m doing the same to you.’
Camilla raised an eyebrow, highlighting her beauty in the dark blue room. ‘You are?’
‘I don’t like organised crime all that much.’
‘I can tell.’
‘I’d like to talk to your husbands. Maybe put them on a different path. I can be fairly persuasive.’
‘You trying to save the world?’
‘Piece by piece.’
‘Well, it’s too bad we’re kicking you out now.’
Beside them, Dani stirred.
‘What?’ she mumbled.
‘He was just leaving,’ Camilla said.
Eyes half-closed, Dani frowned and pursed her lips. ‘That’s no fun.’
‘Up for another round?’ Slater muttered in her ear.
She giggled.
Camilla frowned and said, ‘No, Will, you really need to leave.’
Slater shrugged, nonchalant. ‘It’s too late anyway.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You were both spent after we finished. You didn’t notice that I didn’t actually go to the bathroom. I took a quick trip down to that panel by the front door and flipped a few switches. Worked it out pretty fast. The silent alarm’s been ringing for the better part of an hour now. I assume that doesn’t go to the police.’
Camilla’s face fell. ‘What the fuck have you done?’
‘We’re about to find out, aren’t we?’
She used the hand resting on his chest to slap him hard in the sternum. ‘You moron.’
He smiled. ‘That’s not nice.’
‘Fuck you.’
Then the reality of the situation hit her, and she scrambled out of the four-poster bed, snatching at parts of her outfit that had been tossed across the room at random. Her bra was resting in one corner, burrowed into the plush carpet, and her panties lay balled up a dozen feet away. The three of them had been ravenous when they’d first entered the room, and the aftermath spelled it out fairly succinctly.
Slater calmly slipped out from underneath the covers and slid on his underwear and the same pair of smart dress pants he’d worn to the ruin bar.
Then, downstairs, the sound of the front door flying open resonated through the empty townhouse.
Screw it, he thought. I’ll just have to do it bare chested.
He figured that would be more humiliating for the new arrivals anyway.
He tiptoed across the room with bare feet, his toes sinking into the carpet. He reached the lavish double doors leading into the master bedroom and pressed his back against the wall nearby. The moonlight spilled in through the nearest window, accentuating the powerful physique he’d forged through hellfire over a decade of hardship. The barrel chest, the corded arms, the round deltoids, the veins like road maps along his forearms. He hovered there, watching Camilla and Dani intently, trying to figure out whether they would betray him or not.
He shouldn’t have given them the benefit of the doubt.
As soon as Camilla recognised that Slater was lying in wait, she screamed.
Slater narrowed his eyes and gave her a withering look.
‘That’s not going to work,’ he hissed.
Thumping footsteps sounded on the stairwell, racing up toward the master bedroom. Slater tensed up in anticipation.
At the last second, he muttered, ‘Actually, that might have helped.’
The two men burst into the room with exaggerated bravado, Glock pistols in their hands, their chests puffed up like peacocks. They looked ridiculous. They came in out of position, narrowing to squeeze through the slim gap between the double doors. Both doors sat slightly ajar. It created a perfect runway for Slater to line up his offence.
The first guy came in with a near thirty pound weight advantage over Slater, all commercial fitness, like he’d dedicated half his waking existence to bench pressing a barbell. He had a beefy artificial body, but the equivalent of male breasts did nothing to prevent Slater’s elbow from detonating off the side of his head and robbing him of his consciousness. As the guy collapsed forward Slater stripped the Glock off him and used it to pistol whip the second arrival in the nose. He smashed the butt of the gun on the bridge of the guy’s nose with pinpoint accuracy.
Like cracking a whip.
Lash.
The second guy recoiled, horrified by the sudden explosion of nerve endings across his face, but he didn’t go down.
With a near lifetime of experience in MMA, Slater changed levels by ducking low, and looped his arms around the man’s lower thighs. He picked him up and dumped him on his head. All technique. He used what he saved on power to quicken his timing. So by the time the guy rolled forward with his head spinning, realising he’d probably just been concussed, Slater was already on top of him. He pinned him down and wrestled the second Glock away and threw both guns across the room.
Then he slapped the second man in the face.
Hard.
It sounded like a gunshot.
Camilla screamed again.
Slater said, ‘Now that’s really not going to work.’
Dani just sat there on the bed, half-amused.
Slater got the sense Dani was a fierce woman.
Camilla, on the other hand…
Camilla said, ‘Lukas, I swear—’
Slater held up a hand above Lukas’ head, threatening another vicious slap to her husband, and she went quiet.
Lukas bucked, trying to lever Slater off him.
Slater slapped him again.
This time, harder.
The man audibly whimpered and cowered into a ball.
Slater clambered to his feet, and all went still.
He had total control.
4
Slater said, ‘We’ve got a few things to discuss.’
But it wasn’t going to end there. To these men, reputation was everything.
Lukas had experienced the full wrath of Slater’s power — two open-handed slaps had puffed up his cheek and turned his jaw numb. One eye was already swelling shut.
He curled into a ball and offered no resistance.
The unnamed man, on the other hand, had just crawled out of temporary unconsciousness. He was brash and big-headed, and he didn’t quite have a grip on how dangerous Slater was. And in a business like this, hesitation equaled death.
A man without a sinister reputation had nothing to live for.
He reared to his feet like a newborn giraffe and stumbled toward Slater with his fists raised.
Camilla flashed a horrified glance at Dani, as if silently saying, Aren’t you going to say something? That’s your husband.
Dani just kept the half-smile in place.
Slater moved his head forward a couple of inches, as if going through the initial wind-up before a punch. He telegraphed it from across the room. He stuck his chin right out there and widened his eyes and tensed up his shoulders.
To his credit, the unnamed man crawled out of semi-consciousness just in time to react accordingly. He braced for impact, bringing his elbows up in a ludicrous defensive posture, as if Slater couldn’t simply slip a jab straight through the guard and shatter his nose.
But instead Slater kicked the guy’s legs out from underneath him.
The guy went completely sideways in the air and tumbled back to the carpet. He hit his skull against the floor and went right back to sleep.
Slater looked at Lukas, and raised an eyebrow.
The big Hungarian was in no state to protest.
Slater said, ‘Okay. Where were we?’
In heavily accented English, Lukas said, ‘You wanted to discuss a few things.’
Slater looked at Camilla and Dani, and pointed at Lukas. ‘See that? Finally, someone reasonable…’
Camilla screwed up her face in disgust and said, ‘Lukas, this man—’
‘Burst into your room and assaulted you both?’ Slater interrupted.
Camilla said, ‘Yes.’
‘That’s the avenue you want to take?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t like getting accused of rape.’
‘It’s not an accusation, it’s the—’
Slater cut her off by turning to Lukas and saying, ‘You’ve got a lot of enemies?’
Lukas didn’t respond.
His tone deathly cold, Slater said, ‘Answer. And make sure you tell the truth. Or I’ll know.’
Lukas nodded.
Slater said, ‘You take precautions to protect you and your family against these enemies?’
Lukas nodded again.
Slater said, ‘You have CCTV in the house? In case of a dire emergency? In case something horrifying happens to you or your loved ones and you need to seek revenge?’
A third nod.
Slater said, ‘You have CCTV in this room?’
A pause. Then a half-hearted shrug, followed swiftly by a fourth nod.
Camilla’s jaw slackened and she paled. A hint of anger flushed hot in her eyes, followed swiftly by crippling guilt.
