Page 8

8 Thomas Grant

After a cool ‘good morning, Rock’ flung at me, Andie spent most of the morning in a meeting. For this I was grateful. It gave me a moment to withdraw from the world, whilst I noted numbers and sums and names in a ledger in the endless dance of money spinning from one bastard to another.

Everything I had learned yesterday, had been a shock, which like every other sensation, quickly faded into a state of numb acceptance and cynical deliberation. The layers of betrayal, treachery and brutal games peeled away before my eyes to reveal the rotten core of our state.

Now, as I worked, my mind raced to dismantle everything I knew about my life and past, and rearrange it like furniture pieces on a blank canvas of a new present. I studied the room, examined where everything was. The thing about moving furniture was needing to reorient oneself to fit the new layout. This was perhaps the hardest part, breaking one’s habits and finding balance where once there was sure footing.

The room has changed, now I needed to change how I moved within it. Layers of secrets, lies and deceit have led to the singular, pin-sharp moment of my life. As my mind spun and refocused, I rearranged not only myself and where I stood in the world, but also my mission and Rain’s plan. The world no longer looked the same to me, and perhaps I was looking at it through broken, distorting pieces of a mirror, but who I was and what I now wanted had just as abruptly changed with it.

My hands froze on the cheque. I now knew what it was I had to do to dig Ma out of their shallow grave and place them in a proper one where they could finally find rest. Or perhaps it was another lie I told myself as grim plans forged and took shape inside my mind. Rain thought to recruit me. By the time I was finished with him, with all of them, there would be no recruiting me, for I was about to go rogue.

Names swirled in my head, Kyle Snow, Lane Parson, Jamie Carlson. All of them were involved, all of them had somehow staged the misery and slaughter that stretched far beyond the walls of my home. A plague of violence and death in the name of corporate contracts and the flow of gold.

A slight draft stirred my hair as the door of the bank opened and closed. A paralysing chill suddenly spread over my body. There was something different about the presence that had just entered the bank, compared to others that had done the same that morning. The scars on my stomach began to throb dully.

I lifted my face to stare at Tomas Grant.

Everything in me stilled. Which was strange in itself. Instead of a crushing sense of sick panic I had spent years fighting whenever confronted with my past, everything in me focused on a singular point of the present. Instead of memories of violence assaulting my senses, I saw nothing but the gruff, long, scarred face of the man who had butchered my Ma and stabbed me with the same knife still covered in their blood.

Strange it was that I was so aware of someone, so focused on them when they felt nothing of my presence. It was the injustice between victim and perpetrator, the imbalance to their respective importance to each other. The perpetrator was always the centre of the victim’s world. Just like Grant was the centre of mine.

A visceral sense of dark anticipation, powerful and all-consuming swept through my body. The arousing levels of brutal violence took my breath away. Perversely, I was elated to see the bastard.

He queued behind a Herm before approaching the counter and pulling out his deposit booklet from his pocket. The clerk regarded it mindlessly and sent a junior assistant to the record’s room to fetch Grant’s accounts ledger. A moment later, the young assistant returned, handed the book to the clerk at the counter, and went away again. The clerk opened the ledger, picked up the pen and blinked. Slowly, they looked up at Grant and spoke those violence-inciting words. There is no more money, Sir.

‘What do you blood mean there is no more money to withdraw!’ roared Grant.

My eyes fluttered shut just a little, in cherishing that sound of outrage, absorbing the rage of the man who had so irreparably broken me. There was a certain dark beauty to this moment filled with such pure and primal essence of violence, as life and death circled each other.

‘Sir … please … look for yourself,’ the clerk stuttered.

Thomas Grant snatched the ledger, stared in disbelief then yelled at the clerk. ‘You bloody thieving Herm! Get Gene Shale here right now before I gut you and everyone in this blasted bank.’

The clerk tumbled out of their chair and rushed to fetch Gene.

Gene Shale was a slight, bespectacled Herm, who was covered in cold sweat before they faced the enraged Gendrian, whilst armed security guards eyed him wearily.

Casually, I got out of my seat, picked up the ledger I was working on, and looking down into it, as if oblivious to everything around me, began to make my way closer to the tills at the front of the bank.

‘I am sorry, Mr Grant,’ Gene was saying whilst patting their forehead with a handkerchief. ‘There is no mistake. See, you withdrew the full amount … three days ago.’ Look it says so here.

Grant lowered his face to the clerk. ‘I did nothing of the sort. Look at my bank book.’ He stabbed his little book with a finger. ‘If there’s been a withdrawal, someone else took my bloody money, and you’ll give me back my every last penny.’

‘Of course, of course. If there has been a theft, we will of course reimburse you.’

‘Then get me five thousand now.’

Gene Shale swallowed noticeably. ‘I cannot do that, Mr Grant.’

Grant glanced behind him to see the security guard move closer. ‘Why the hell not?’ He managed to keep his snarl almost civil.

‘We need a couple of days to … to reconcile the ledgers, count the money in our vaults and … and of course find out what exactly happened. It may be a clerical error … There should also be a withdrawal slip, so we’ll need to track it down to establish who was the one to count the money and question them of course. But rest assured, if there has been a crime, we will take full responsibility.’

Another security guard came into the room. Grant’s eyes darted to them. ‘Be sure that you do. I’ll be back tomorrow, and if my money isn’t here, I’ll take it from your flesh, Shale.’ With that he stormed out of the bank.

I placed the ledger I was holding on the nearest desk, and swiftly followed Grant.

Outside, my senses sharped on my target. It took me less than a heartbeat to absorb the scene around me, down to the most insignificant detail. A Herm with a pram. Three cars drove past. An attractive, Gendrian woman in a coffee shop across the street, seemingly reading, yet her attention was focused on me. Our eyes met briefly, and I instantly noted the tense readiness of a fighter in her body. An agent then, likely one of Wild’s.

I turned to follow Grant, who was marching down the road with a singular purpose of one who was thwarted and needed to lash out. He jumped into a pale blue car and with an angry spin of wheels, drove off.

I pulled out the keys Wild gave me, and jumped into a green Ferry Cavrolitta, meeting the woman’s sly, malign gaze as I did so, before driving off after Grant.

Though I kept my distance, if he wasn’t blind with rage, I suspected he would have seen me by now regardless. Behind me, some cars back, I saw a flash of Rain’s red corvette.

Grant turned sharply around the next corner, I raced ahead to catch sight of him. In less than a heartbeat from when I saw him again, I took in enough detail to abruptly abort my pursuit, and instead of turning after him, I drove straight ahead past him. As I did, I noticed him watching me in his rear-view mirror.

I was rarely this clumsy as to be seen by a suspect I was pursuing. Rain was not going to be impressed. I glanced in the mirror me to see his car behind me make a casual turn into the same street as Grant.

I took the next right and came back around, parking on the corner of the street where I last saw Grant.

I jumped out the car and peered around the corner of the alley, just in time to see Grant enter the back of an abandoned brick factory. An instant later, another shadow, slipped in after him, the shadow’s face was hidden now behind a dark scarf. Black Hawk.

Quickly taking in my surroundings, I slipped into another piss ridden alley trailing the broken fence line of the building, before slipping through another door at the back.

Angry, echoing voices reached me from deep inside the building. One of them was Grant’s.

I raced towards them, my feet light and silent.

‘I don’t have your blasted money. I’ll have it tomorrow.’

Taking out my gun, I crept silently along the corridor.

‘My payment is due today, Grant,’ said another voice, not as deep but silkily dangerous. A voice that raised the hair on the back of my neck with recognition. ‘You know how I hate late payers. I usually take an appendage for each day I’m late in getting my money.’

‘Listen, chief. Some bastard made a mistake at the bank. They said they’ll give me the money tomorrow.’

‘Today, Grant,’ the voice was calm, cultured.

I took another step forward towards the open door and saw Rain’s gun appear around the corner down the corridor, followed by his steely eyes in a half-hidden face. His gaze met mine, stunning violence shimmering there.

Silently, I pointed at the room ahead of me with my revolver and took another step forward.

Abruptly, he shook his head, his gaze demanding I retreat, the full darkness of his soul now aimed at me. Oh, I knew that darkness, saw it as a reflection of my own. Bloody hell, he was a reflection of my soul, a kindred spirit. For a brief eternity we challenged each other, but he knew there was no real battle here, for I was closer, and I was on a ten-year hunt. The devil lurking in my soul had latched onto Grant and my body now followed. I flattened myself against the wall, as I edged closer to the voices. I wanted to see the face of the other bastard, the one Grant referred to as chief. Needed to confirm what I already knew.

‘I don’t think you are hearing me, Grant.’ A shot rang out followed by a cry of pain from Grant.

‘Fuuuuck! You shot me, you bastard.’

‘Get me my money today, or I will blow off another one of your fingers.’

‘I’ll get you your fucking money,’ Grant snapped and his pained steps staggered towards the open door.

The world retreated, and suddenly I was alone in it with just Grant. Ice flooded my body. My soul and time itself froze on a brink of a single choice I had to make. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow, no hate or rage. I became suspended in a strange place, where no one and nothing could reach me. Vaguely, I could see Rain fiercely shake his head, his eyes wide with sudden understanding that he was too far to stop me, to stop the inevitable conclusion of this day.

In the same moment that Rain dashed out around the corner, Grant stepped out cradling a bloodied hand.

I moved.

Grant turned towards me with a start.

I pointed my gun at his head.

It seemed an endless moment, in which I recognised that I should feel something, anything, gleeful vengeance, stale hatred, anger. Anything but the emptiness, the hollowness and the simple wish to end him.

His eyes grew wide. ‘You …’

‘Me,’ I said and pulled the trigger.

In that frozen moment, I saw the bullet slowly tear into him between the eyes, saw it exit the back of his head in an explosion of flesh and bone. The detail of that gore imprinting onto my memory in such detail as to make an artist envious. And in that brief blink, I relieved it a thousand times, it seemed to me.

Then it was over.

Grant lay on the floor, still twitching in death.

I stepped forward, pulling out my second gun, briefly meeting Rain’s impassive gaze and turning with both weapons raised to face the room beyond the open door.

In a moment, where time stood still, I took in the old machinery, the chains hanging of the wall, the grime of the floor, the broken windows and burnt out roof, and three occupants staring at me in stunned surprise.

Then time moved, and I spun away just as bullets flew past me.

I noted only that Rain was already ducking behind his own corner, as I raced down the corridor, turning sharply as bullets gave chase. Plaster and brick exploded near my head as I turned again, and leapt out of a low, broken window, landing smoothly on my feet before running out onto the street. A few quick turns, and the pursuers lost me.

I strolled to my car, got in, and calmly drove off.