And most of all I hate that I care.
When Norse, the fifth man of my detail arrives, I tear myself away from the window and from Ava. “What’s happening?”
“The object, whatever it is, is up for auction. It will close in forty-eight hours.” Norse runs a hand over his shorn hair. It’s winter in Lima, which in most places means cold. Here it means wet, humid, and foggy. Norse’s cotton shirt is plastered against his chest. As he unbuttons it, Garcia throws him a replacement T-shirt.
Garcia was a sergeant in the army, responsible for making sure that the troops were all properly outfitted and armed. A good sergeant can mean the difference between everyone getting out with all their limbs attached and some newbie losing his toes to gangrene. Garcia was the best that there was. Now he’s mine because the army doesn’t handle its toys well.
They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training them, making them into cold, unfeeling machines, but they lose interest in the older soldiers because they have this never-ending flood of new recruits. The nonstop supply makes us all disposable. Use them up and toss them out was the unstated motto. I’ve been gathering up the army’s trash for the last ten years or so. Norse, Garcia, Davidson—all army discards. We take our skills and guns and hire them out. Ironically, the U.S. government is one of our best customers.
Except this time, our payment for a completed mission is Davidson.
“Do we know who the buyers are?”
“Two bids—one from North Korea and one from Libya.”
“There’ll be more,” Garcia says.
I nod. There will be many more because what is being sold are secrets. Secrets big enough that the government felt compelled to kidnap and hold hostage one of my own instead of offering money.
Would we have taken the mission if there was only money on the other end? Probably. The mercenary jobs my men and I carry out are lucrative but not to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s what Duval’s auction will command. It would take us ten years of killing high-priced targets to be able to play in Duval’s pool.
“Ava has a visitor!” Bennito calls out.
We all rush to the monitor bank. The left one shows her rising from her bed. She is nearly fully clothed. About the only thing she doesn’t wear to bed are her shoes. Sometimes during the day she will wear a belt and before bed will remove it.
She slips on her shoes—another sign of her intelligence. She won’t be caught barefoot by a surprise guest. The door opens to reveal Fouquet. He speaks rapidly, backing her into the room and then slamming the door shut behind him. He has a hand around her wrist. Ava shakes her head and gestures at the ever-present purse. Fouquet raises a hand and Ava flinches back.
A low rumble sounds in my throat and I’m halfway to the door when Garcia grabs me. “Don’t do it.”
“I’m not going to stand here and watch her get beat by that fuckstick Fouquet,” I growl.
“And if you go busting over there, then what? What happens to the auction? What happens to Davidson?”
Over Garcia’s shoulder I see the men all standing and watching. Bennito looks frightened and Norse and Rodrigo resigned as if they knew the life that they were building was too good to be true for men like them. Killers. Forgotten. The refuse of humanity.
I wipe a hand down my face. Responsibility for them all weighs heavily but it’s a burden I gladly carry. This is my family now. These men would die for me and I’m not going to put them in harm’s way for a woman—not even one as smart, clever, and beautiful as Ava Samson. Because really, what would be the use? My fantasies about Ava are just that—fantasies. No woman would touch me. No woman would have me. Especially not one as fine as her.
And even if she did, I’d have to turn her away.
I give Garcia an abrupt nod and turn away from the door.
“Update?” I ask Bennito.
“Yeah, um, Fouquet left. He didn’t hit her . . . hard. It was more like a love tap.” He tries to smile but it fades quickly when none of us laugh. No one here is on board with a woman getting struck—ever. “Okay, yeah he hit her like a fucking asshole and she’s in the kitchen putting ice on it.”
He slumps into his chair. The tension is high in the room as Fouquet is still present. I imagine he was telling her that the sale was going to happen and what her next tasks are.
“We need sound,” I say for the hundredth time. Ordinarily we’d get sound but there’s a low constant hum that interferes with any vocal noise. Duval has something inside the hotel room that blocks any radio frequency collectors. “Norse, you and Bennito keep track of the bids. Rodrigo and Garcia, I want you to start tailing Fouquet. He’s fresh from a two-year prison sentence. No doubt he’s fucking his way across Lima. Since he hasn’t raped Ava yet, we can only presume that his brother is keeping him away for some reason.”