Page 18 of War Games

The woman doesn’t stop to see what I’m going to do, just keeps running until she reaches the stairs, which means I only have a few minutes before the front desk calls the cops. But I won’t need a few minutes. I’ll only need seconds.

Making my way down to 309, a sense of elation pulses through my veins. Don’t get me wrong, I kill men every day, finding the hardest targets on the planet and taking them out, and while it’s exhilarating, the chase is different. This right here is purely for fun, and I find myself giddy with excitement, just like I used to when I was a teenager making my first kill.

Reaching the door Graves just tossed the woman out of, I settle to the left and knock. “Housekeeping,” I call out in a cheery tone.

Naturally, there’s no response, and all I can do is grin, barely able to contain the thrill pulsing through me. I knock again, this time a little slower. “Turndown service? Fresh towels?”

“You don’t want to fuck with me,” Graves roars.

“Uhhh . . . yeah. Actually, I think I do,” I tell him, enjoying the banter. After all, I don’t often get to indulge in these situations. “Why don’t you be a gem and open up the door? I promise, I’ll make it quick. You’ll barely feel a thing.”

BANG! BANG!

The bullets whiz past my face at speeds my eyes can’t possibly try to track before plunging into the wall on the opposite sideof the hallway. “Well, shit,” I laugh, glancing back at the door Graves shamefully hides behind. “I thought we were going to be friends.”

I quickly assess the door and the two massive holes staring back at me, and with their positioning, the holes might have compromised the integrity of the door just enough for me to be able to kick my way through it.

Figuring that I’ve got nothing to lose, I make my move, quickly stepping in front of the door and slamming my boot into the fractured wood. The door flies off its hinges, the majority of it splintering into tiny pieces while I race forward, not allowing my momentum to slow even a fraction.

Graves stands at the opposite side of the room, his gun locked and loaded before him. Only he wasn’t prepared for me to burst through, and his response time is far too slow.

He pulls the trigger twice more, trying to track my movements across the room as I run toward him.BANG! BANG!I sidestep, anticipating his shots and avoiding the bullets like a ghost in the night, and I don’t stop until my body slams into his, my big hand wrapping around his throat.

I disarm him in a flash, the gun quickly becoming mine. His eyes are wide, staring at me as though he can’t comprehend how I managed to get inside the room.

I slam him against the wall, the damage to his neck and face from Crimson Rain’s sharp brass knuckles staring back at me. He’s a fucking mess. He deserves to die just so that the rest of us don’t need to look at him a second longer. If you think about it, I’m doing him a favor by ending his miserable life.

There won’t be long before the woman who occupies this room makes it down to the lobby and calls for help, so I do what I can to make this quick. “It’s a real shame, you know,” I start. “If you had simply opened the door like I asked, we could have done this in a much more humane way.”

He stutters but can’t get a single word out. Instead, he wets his pants like a scared child. All I can do is shake my head in disgust. “Are you serious? You’re a fucking serial killer, man. Get it together.”

“I . . . I . . . I—”

“Hushhhhh,” I say, lifting a sole finger to my lips as I look over the small stab wound Crimson Rain left in his neck last night. “She really did a number on you. It’s a shame she missed the artery.”

“She was a fucking bitch. She deserved everything she got.”

“Come on, now. We don’t speak ill of the dead. But I’m curious. If she deserved everything she got, then pray tell, what is it you deserve?”

“Let me go,” he begs. “We can work together. I’ll hunt them down, give you the credit.”

A sharp laugh booms through my chest. “In what world would I possibly require your help? You are at the bottom of the food chain. You almost let a woman get the drop on you barely three seconds after the games commenced. You and I are not on the same level.”

Using my free hand, I reach for his neck injury, pushing my fingers into the small stab wounds and widening the holes as he roars in agony.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d very much like to get out of here,” I inform him. “There’s a cold shower calling my name.” He barely gets another cry out when I sink my two fingers deeper into the wound, taking a firm hold of his skin, then with everything I’ve got, I tear my hand away, ripping his skin clean off his neck and breaking right through the artery that Crimson Rain missed last night.

Graves drops to the floor, blood spurting across the room, and as the bright red bodily fluid splatters over the front of my leather jacket, disappointment floods me. “Are you fuckingkidding me?” I mutter, looking at Graves with an accusatory glare as though the asshole could somehow control the rapid splatter of blood coming from his torn artery. “Do you have any idea how fucking expensive this jacket is?”

Graves clutches his throat as his blood spills over his fingers and soaks into the carpet beneath my feet. His skin quickly loses color, and I let out a heavy sigh before stealing the white duvet off the bed. After laying it down on the ground, I position Graves over it, and then before he’s even finished dying, I take his identification card and roll him up in the thick blanket.

Hauling him over my shoulder, I stride out through the shattered door and back into the hallway before casually strolling down to the elevator, feeling the exact moment his body gives out and the fucker finally dies. After hitting the button, it arrives within seconds and I smile to myself as the soft ding sounds through the hallway.

I make my way onto the elevator and press the button for level six while listening to the soft drip, drip, drip, of blood soaking through the blanket and splattering on the elevator floor. The door opens on the sixth floor, and I stride out into the hallway before smiling to myself as I find the hotel’s housekeeping cart abandoned in the hallway.

The maid is nowhere to be seen, and as I stride past the cleaning cart, I dump Graves’ body right into it, the once white blanket now the brightest shade of red. I don’t skip a beat as I continue down the hall to room 611, and after swiping my access card, I enter my room, grab my shit, and get the fuck out of there.

Despite the lack of cameras and the effort made to keep my face hidden from both staff and other guests, it’s too fucking risky. In the next ten minutes, the hotel will be locked down with police tape stretching from one end to the other and when that happens, I need to be anywhere but here.

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