Page 152 of The Vigilante's Lover

I’ve cut off contact with Sam and Colette for their safety. Goodmove, truly. If I’m a dead man, I don’t need to drag them with me. Hopefully they will think to help out Mia. She has nothing now, not even a home. At least there is that neighbor woman.

We exit to a smaller highway and begin a winding path through the piney woods. I remember this road well from my first Vigilante days. I was an unusual age, starting the program young, the summer I turned twelve. So I was just thirteen when I arrived at this silo for my first mission.

At the time, my father held a director position, running the Miami syndicate. Even so, he was waiting at this silo with my orders.

It was a simple job, the sort of thing they asked young Phase Ones to do. I was to infiltrate a gang of petty thieves who were eluding the local law enforcement. Normally we’d stay out of small-time stuff like this, but one of them had been stalking a thirteen-year-old girl, and they wanted me to get the boy to make a big enough mistake that he’d be carted off to juvie and out of range of this girl.

The boys were planning a minor haul at a garage in a suburb of Memphis. They didn’t know it was also a meth lab.

I hooked up with them by staking out the same garage and acting like it was my turf. This went the predictable way. I had to fight one of their guys, and when I beat him inside six seconds, a knife pressed to his throat, they agreed we could do this job together.

The mission went perfectly. The bulk of the boys made off with the tools and spare parts they were going for, but I showed the target boy the bigger haul, the meth. I didn’t have to do a thing after that. He returned to the lab on his own and was nabbed by the cops in a sting on the whole operation, one we knew was coming.

That girl would be in her mid-thirties by now. I hope she’s lived a calm and happy life due to our intervention.

The entrance of this silo is smaller than the Missouri one, just a metal door. As a Vigilante assigned to it, I would enter by one of the hatches out in the field, going down a long ladder to the tunnel that led tothe control room and the silo itself.

But since I’m a prisoner who must be led in, we take the door instead of a hatch. The driver drops us off, and the woman leads me up to the rusting facade. All the openings to silos look abandoned. This one is particularly convincing, covered in graffiti and laced with vines.

“Is that asshole always your driver?” I ask her.

“Unfortunately,” she says.

“Perfectly legal to break his fingers,” I say.

She almost cracks a smile as we approach the silo entrance.

The iron gate swings open, revealing a set of bright steel doors. Two Vigilante guards wait inside. There is no glass data hall like in most silos, but nobody needs any information as we enter. They all know a dead man walking when they see him.

I’m surprised to see Alan Carter himself as we pass through a series of security checks.

“Slumming it?” I ask him. “Didn’t want to miss the festivities?”

His face is poker straight. “Executing a Vigilante is serious business,” he says. “I’m doing everything by the book.”

“Really?” I ask. “I wasn’t given a snuff dart on sight. That’s by the book.”

“You were in the presence of a special,” Carter says. “She bought you a little time.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be grateful.

“Now that we’re off protocol, what’s it going to be?” I ask him. “Poison? Old-fashioned bullet? Something new and exciting?” My voice is deadpan.

“Take him to interrogation,” Carter says.

That’s an odd choice for completing a kill order. When I raise an eyebrow, Carter adds, “We don’t have an execution room.”

Few silos do. When that sort of mission is called for, it usually happens off site.

When we enter the small room, I recognize the white walls andtable, the black dome recording our every word and movement.

And Paulson.

That damn Vigilante is everywhere. He’s probably not too happy I stole his car in New Mexico.

Or that I’ve creamed his face both times we’ve met.

I’m only two steps in the room when he leaps forward and takes a potshot, his fist slamming into my jaw. My hands are still locked into the magnetic cuffs, so I just accept the blow without flinching.