Page 8 of Fire for Effect

Then a rather inconvenient bullet to the chest left me incapacitated. Agent Sierra had to get into my papers, to figure out what to do with me while I was unconscious. By the time I got the firefly tattooed over my chest scar, Sierra had scoured the internet like a stalky ex-girlfriend and found out everything there was about my secret desire. She’d nagged me incessantly about it ever since.

“Thanks for letting us know we have a leak.” I covered the mixed emotions swirling in my gut with a lazy chortle and rested a shoulder against the wall, not letting on that the implications of that information were monumental.

“If your people go after that bitch, as you called her, then they better bring a whole fucking Army,” I said with as little emotion as I could.

Because I will bring an Army of my own to hunt you fuckers down.

My pulse thrummed in my ears. How the fuck did they know about her? How did they know her association to me?

I had to get word to her, but not by phone, email or anything that could be traced. I had to go to her, in person. I’d bring a team if I had to.

Except she’d never allow that. She’d make me explain how, and why, and what for… and frankly, that was a conversation I wasn’t ready to have.

The coin in my pocket burned. The Challenge Coin with a three-headed dog of Cerberus on one side, and the letter K on the other. The coin that could be shown to any Federal agent, and have her funneled to a person in DC who could get word to me. The coin that she could show to anyone and raise a flare that would descend help in the form of the fucking US National Guard Special Forces, if necessary.

The coin I hadn’t given her because she’d know what she meant to me, and how she ranked in the hierarchy of scumbags in my life. And she wasn’t ready to talk about that night.

“Agent Kilo,” the CIA Director, was still calling me by my designator, but it was useless.

If Matthews knew who I was, what did it matter? Dad could shove it.

“Mr. President?” Dad turned to President Lau, silently asking him for the words that would end this conversation.

I looked over at the screen, thumbing it from safe to fire. Click. Click. Click.

“Get rid of him,” the President said, his face sour. I had thought his anti-Death Penalty stance was purely politics, but he looked disturbed. Like he didn’t want to approve of this extrajudicial killing.

Well, I’ll be…

Director Griffith pressed something on the console to cut the sound. Oscar, and my partner Sierra both covered their ears, as I lifted the pistol to Matthews’ forehead.

Just because I could, I added, “The only person that’s allowed to talk shit about her… is me.”

He grinned, his eyes full of mirth. Fucker was going to go down swinging.

“You don’t even know who she really is, do you?” He taunted, that evil laugh rising in his chest again. It was an irritating sound and it gave me great pleasure to silence him forever. “The things we’ll do to Trinity Blaze Guerro…”

I fired a single shot between his eyes. The pop echoed through the rotten barn that was our base of operations for this mission. Blood splattered across the ground, soaking into the swept dirt as his head fell back.

“Well,” Sierra said, pulling a chainsaw from the wall. “I plotted out where to dispose of him.”

The lifeless form kinda resembled a person sleeping in an airline chair, his head tilted back, and mouth wide open. His legs were splayed out in front of him like he was man-spreading.

People truly died the way they lived.

I shoved him with my foot to topple him to the ground, his fall kicking up dirt.

“We each get 5 pieces,” Sierra continued, turning on the saw. She shouted over its whirring blades, “And when you look at it on a map, it makes a smiley face!”

I tried not to laugh. But damn, it was hard when we did such twisted wet work.

Chapter 3

Your Dad Sucks

Taz

Mourningkill, New York

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