Page 72 of The Vigilante's Lover

I’m not sure which I’m more pissed about, getting dragged away from Mia, or this punk driving my car.

I don’t know any of the Vigilantes who collected me from the hotel in Nashville. They’re all southern born and trained, but they must have come through the program after I did.

I am, however, very familiar with the silo we’re heading toward.

It’s under the jurisdiction of Alan Carter, who runs the Missouri silo that Mia and I visited last week.

He isn’t likely to be at this one, though.

The Tennessee silo is a single-missile launcher and primarily serves as a first-stop mission control for Phase One Trainees who have just gotten their first Vigilante orders.

It’s where I got mine.

The Aston Martin roars along the highway at high speed. This guy must be at least a Phase Five Driver. He’s good. We weave through morning rush hour in Nashville like it isn’t even there.

The girl is in the front passenger seat. The other guy who came to the hotel is driving another car, but we’ve left him far behind. He’s not a pro driver like this sleazebag.

He keeps trying to put his hand on the girl’s knee, and she keeps finding ways to knock it off without causing a fuss. I want to break his hands, which is allowed in the Vigilante code. We can reprimand other Vigilantes. Even fight them. Just no murder.

Other than me, of course. I’m under a kill order. Fair game.

“So why aren’t you following Standard Execution Protocol on this?” I ask. On a typical preordered kill, you use a snuff dart and drive the body to the closest crematorium on the Vigilante books. They dispose of the body in a way that nobody ever finds it.

That’s why most funeral homes are so swank. They get a pretty penny for taking care of this bit of dirty work for us.

We’ve got two facilities in Nashville, and yet we’re driving away from the city. They must have some other plan for me first.

The girl turns around in her seat, knocking the asshole’s hand off her leg for the hundredth time. “Just following orders,” she says.

Sutherland’s, I assume. I wonder if Jovana has already made it to Washington. Damn it.

I’m restrained by a device I’ve never seen before. It’s some sort of electromagnetic handcuff. Sam would hate it. It’s inelegant, bulky, and probably requires more power than necessary.

The restraint consists of two metal circles that are magnetically sealed. Between the heavy cuffs is a silver power box. The whole gizmo probably weighs ten pounds.

“Can’t you send someone for my suitcase?” I ask. “Some Phase One?” I frown at my pajama pants and the T-shirt I was handed.

“You aren’t going to need your suitcase,” the driver jerk says. “Everything burns in the end.”

I sit back against the cushion. So they’re going to take me to a crematorium at some point.

I still have to wonder what is so threatening about me that they would need to snuff me.

Makes no sense. My killing another Vigilante was a violation of the code, and punishment was coming my way.

But it wasn’t a hanging offense. Not in our world, where collateral damage is part of the job.

I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to know why I was dangerous to Sutherland. Mia probably won’t ever know of my fate.

I picture her coming out of the bathroom, all fresh and ready for our trip to Washington, and discovering I’m gone.

I don’t think she’ll panic. Hopefully she spotted the ring and got the message from the thief knot.

Even though there isn’t anything she can do to stop what is happening to me, at least she’ll know I didn’t desert her.

Since I’m stuck for the foreseeable drive, I decide to take the dead man’s path for a moment and think about her. Nothing else in my life deserves my last thoughts.

She’s been different from the first moment I saw her, sleeping in that pristine white nightgown, tucked into a bedroom that looked like it still housed her high school memorabilia.

Now that I’m admitting things to myself, I know she caught my interest from the start. I wanted to push her, see where she would bend, how much it took to break her to my will, my needs.

In the end, she broke me.

The sky is blue and calm. The driver weaves around cars as traffic thins out. I picture the red ropes on Mia’s bare skin, how she shivered in the moonlight in that field when I stripped her. I almost laugh to remember how she called me out on shredding her nightgown when I had a scanning wand.

She was right. I didn’t have to take everything off. I could have detected a recording device without laying a hand on her.

But I hadn’t. And I learned how sharply her mind turned, even under extreme duress.

Now that I know how innocent she was, she handled that night with unbelievable poise.

I was abominable at the hotel, staring at her like a lecherous beast. The image of her pale luminous body in that room is etched into my memory.

I shift uncomfortably on the seat. I’m not willing to say I’ve given up the fight on this. Of course I haven’t. But an execution in a Vigilante silo isn’t something I could imagine anyone escaping. I for damn sure wouldn’t have allowed it to happen under my jurisdiction.

I’ve cut off contact with Sam and Colette for their safety. Good move, 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 to the 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 and table, 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.

“You’re destroying my pretty face for the casket,” I say.

In response, his elbow connects with my belly.

I bend over from the impact but don’t make a sound. When I straighten, I say, “I see you’re a much better fighter when the other guy is restrained.”

He clocks me one more time on the chin. I spin with it to avoid a concussion. The woman who led me into the room steps back and the door closes between us. Carter stands in the corner, watching.

“One more,” he tells Paulson.

While Paulson seems to ponder his next strike, Carter takes a skeleton key like the one I used to escape his silo and sticks it to the face of the table. He punches a button right as Paulson slams his knee into my gut.

With a sizzle and a spark, the electronics in the room go out. Carter tosses his own jacket over the dome. “That was a nice trick you pulled back in Missouri,” he says to me. “And the perfect scenario for what we’re about to do.”

I wonder darkly if they are going to torture me, something not ordinarily sanctioned by Vigilantes.

But he says to Paulson, “That’s enough. You can go.”

Paulson scowls but walks up to the scanner to pass through the door.

I shake off the blows. I’m apparently going to live to see another five minutes. And with the tech down in the room, we can talk freely.

“He could use another round of fight training,” I tell Carter.

“You’re exceptionally tough,” Carter says. “He works well enough for regular humans.” He motions to a chair. “Sit, before I have to explain to someone upstairs why my tech team is so slow at restoring the eyes and ears of the Vigilante network to this room.”

I drop into a chair. I have no idea what to expect now.