Page 6 of Coup De Grâce
With my eyes on the target and my rifle at the ready, I took one last breath, fingered the trigger, and gave a light squeeze. “Target down.”
“Good. Get your ass back to the rally point.”
“Copy that.”
I quickly tucked Sally into the rifle case, then slung it over my shoulder to get to the rally point. The jarhead who was watching me never really took his eyes off me. Like me, he still relied on his training in both day-to-day operations and at times like this. It didn’t matter that he’d left the Marines over twenty years ago. Some things never truly left your bones.
Slipping through the darkness, I made my way across town to the vehicle that waited for me, tucking Sally into the back for safekeeping. I wouldn’t feel right about anything until she was back in the safety of my house under lock and key.
My house.
That was a unique way of saying, the old house where I rested my head.I hadn’t truly had a home since I walked out of OPS and left everyone, my wife and kids included, behind. This life on the road wasn’t really a life at all, but it served a greater purpose.
I pulled into the shipyard and killed the engine, but left the lights on. Hound was waiting for me already, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he paced in agitation. The man never truly settled down, and that was surprising considering the shit we had to deal with.
“What the fuck took you so long?” he snapped as I slammed the truck door.
At just under six feet, the man was more wiry than anything, but he had a bite to him that earned him his nickname Hound, along with the fact that he could sniff out a problem faster than anyone I knew.
Not that he had caught onto me yet, but I had a feeling he was growing suspicious because of the hesitation when I was about to take out my target.
“I did the job,” I replied, not showing even an ounce of uncertainty.
“You hesitated. I fucking saw you,” he snapped.
“What you saw was me checking the wind gauge a final time,” I said calmly. “The wind picked up?—”
“Yeah, I fucking saw you adjust—” He was always watching.
“And I had to be sure it wasn’t a gust of wind,” I cut him off. “I don’t pull the trigger until I’m sure I have a clean shot. If I was off even a little and he only ended up in the hospital instead of the morgue, we’d have one hell of a problem on our hands.”
Yet, he still didn’t fully believe me, that much was clear by the scowl on his face. He’d been retired from the Marines for well over twenty years, but that keen instinct hadn’t faded even a little.
“You should have taken the shot.”
“The job was done properly. This is why you wanted me on your side,” I reminded him. “I never explain myself and I never fucking pull the trigger until I’m ready. Get that through your fucking head right now.”
His nostrils flared in anger, but he backed off, finally accepting that the job was over and there was nothing more to say about it. “We need to head to Toronto.”
“New job?”
He shook his head. “A meeting has been called.”
We rarely met with anyone else. It was one of the rules of the organization that no more than five to ten members could meet at any given time. There were Shadow agents all over the fucking world—an elite group of men who pulled the strings and manipulated the markets to keep a stable economy all over the world. When things started going south, that’s when the Shadow Government stepped in, removing leaders and eliminating the waste.
There wasn’t a single country around the globe that wasn’t affected by the organization. But that didn’t mean we were doing the right thing. It became clear to me, the more time I spent withthese men, that what they felt was right and what was actually right were two different things.
The Syndicate, for instance, was a terrible organization that should have been dismantled long ago. But because of the billions of dollars The Syndicate moved around the globe, they were a necessary evil.
For these men.
It didn’t matter that the drugs produced and sold were killing millions, or that women and children were being snatched off the streets and sold. No, the Shadow Government felt these were all essential parts of society to keep the world spinning.
And that was something I couldn’t live with. However, taking them down was not as simple as one would hope for. Taking out the men of the Shadow Government was all that was required, but since they never met all at one time, it was impossible to figure out who was involved.
If I started taking them out one by one, all I would do is draw attention to the fact that I was a mole, a traitor planted in their midst to dismantle them and tear down the organization they all loved so much.
To tear them down, I needed intel. I needed someone who could aid me, and that man was my father.
