Prologue #2
After a few deep breaths and a jerk of his chin that cracks his neck, Mac leans forward in his seat.
Elbows perched on knees, he recounts how Felix showed just as their dinner wrapped up, dropped the bomb about being hired to steal the Volkevich USB drive containing the fortune in bitcoin, and the even bigger bomb of his new mission to take down the General.
I glance at Dimitri throughout, watching his scowl slowly deepen.
“He wants my—our, by extension—help tracking down the General. Said he was calling in my favor,” Mac finishes.
“And what was your response?” I ask, tone careful.
“Obviously, I told him to fuck right off. I only made that deal with the contingency that whatever favor he wanted wouldn’t put me or mine at risk. And tracking down and killing the General? That’s not just a risk…”
Dimitri finishes his thought. “It is suicide. At least we know Felix remains nearby. It will make it simpler to locate him,” he shrugs.
Mac’s brows lift, perhaps as surprised as I am that Dimitri is being so reasonable about this.
“Odd that he’d come to us about it,” I point out.
“He must know he’s damn near the top of our shite list. Why would he think we’d consider helping him?
And why would we help him with this task specifically, considering our loyalties?
” As far as he knows—as far as anyone knows—the three of us work for the General.
There’s no way Felix has any idea about the truth. I’ve never told anyone.
Once you tell someone—anyone—it’s not a secret anymore. Even the most loyal friend with the best of intentions can slip up. And with a secret this dangerous to everyone I care most about, I can’t let that happen.
You have to control the flow of information. And that’s precisely what I’m good at.
“Well, about that… Felix said some shit I can’t unhear.”
Dimitri’s eyes narrow. “Such as?” he prompts.
Mac blows out a breath. “What do we really know about the General? Or his motives?”
“Nothing,” Dimitri answers. I remain silent.
“Doesn’t that… I dunno… give you the scratch?” Mac says, running his fingers the wrong way against the stubble on his cheek. It makes a loud rasping noise.
“Not really,” Dimitri says, shrugging. Totally unbothered.
That famous Russian nonchalance rubs Mac the wrong way this time. “Are you for real? You don’t care at all? I didn’t figure you for the blind loyal type. What if he’s a bad guy who does bad things?”
“My loyalty is not blind,” Dimitri argues. “I owe this man for a new identity and a fresh start—”
“Technically, you owe me for the new identity,” I interject with a half-smile.
“—I have no interest in making an enemy of him.”
Dimitri glances at me, and I nod my agreement.
“Considering what he hires us to do, I think it’s very likely the General is a bad guy who does bad things,” I say, choosing my words.
I prefer not to lie. Bending the truth makes me feel better, so I’m careful not to offer more details than I need to. “But he also brought us together.”
I think I understand now. Felix knows the General is after him, he wants to fight back, and he wants Mac in his corner.
All that talk of having an exit strategy was his way of manipulating Mac into making a fear-based decision.
After all, he has Eleanor to think about now—and most hitmen don’t retire peacefully.
Mac rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, I’d sleep a helluva lot better if I knew I wasn’t helping a new power rise in the underworld of Ulysses.”
That surprises me. “A new power? In Ulysses?”
“I know we’ve done jobs all over, but look at the ones we’ve done since we settled here. An arms dealer. The fuckin’ mayor. The leader of the most powerful Bratva in the state... Are we taking out the trash, or are we eliminating the competition?”
I watch the question land and roll right off Dimitri’s frozen landscape of a face, but a frown forms between my brows that deepens with each question.
The General wants to take over Ulysses? I didn’t consider that possibility.
And it makes a twisted kind of sense for a man with a veritable army of hitmen at his disposal.
“So, Felix thinks the General sees him as competition?”
“Felix thinks he was set up with Kyle and the USB drive, and that the General wants him dead.”
“Why does the General not just give us the hit, then?” Dimitri scoffs. “That would be much simpler.”
I make a face. “Well…” I hedge.
They both fix me with twin looks of startled expectation.
My eyes dart between them for a few seconds, then I sigh.
Normally, I don’t share the details of all the hits we receive if I decide in advance we aren’t going to take the job.
But in this case, the information has just become relevant.
Whether Felix is friend or foe remains to be seen, but either way he’s involved.
They need to know. “Technically, the General did give us his name.”
Mac’s eyebrows lift, and he exchanges a look with Dimitri, who demands, “Explain.”
“The General always sends us names in batches. Part of my role is to parse them out. I start my research before we ever begin our surveillance—it saves time if I can eliminate someone because they don’t follow the criteria we all agreed to. ”
“Why didn’t we know this?” Mac asks.
“You never asked?” I shrug. When he scowls in response to that terrible answer, I fall back on snark to avoid suspicion. “This is my job, right? I handle intel, logistics, and data erasure. Do I tell you how to line up a shot?”
Mac crosses his arms and grumbles, “Still feels like something you should have told us.”
“I agree,” Dimitri says.
“Fine. Going forward, I’ll just send you both the list as I receive it, and we can make the call for each name together. Yeah?”
“Good,” Mac agrees. “So, wait, you’re saying Felix was one of the names? That means he’s right. The General is after him.”
“Why would he want Felix dead?” Dimitri presses. “He is just a cleaner, da?”
Mac shakes his head. “Calling Felix just a cleaner is like saying Michael Jordan was just a baller. Cleaning crime scenes pays well, but he’s got powerful connections, and he’s building an empire of his own.
He’s got his own network of spies and informants, too.
Maybe the General’s right to be threatened by Felix. Maybe he is competition.”
Dimitri inclines his head thoughtfully. “In my mind, this changes very little. The General wants Felix dead, and we want to kill him.”
Mac blows out a breath. “Look, I’m all for taking his ass down because fuck that guy.
And I’m not saying we should work with him or trust anything he says, but he might have a point about the General.
Not knowing who this guy is—if it even is a guy, or a woman, or a group—or what he’s up to, or what part we’re all unknowingly playing in whatever game this is… ”
“This never bothered you before,” Dimitri observes quietly.
“Yeah, well, not knowing doesn’t work for me anymore. That’s why I got out of the military, ya know?”
Dimitri shakes his head. “The General is anonymous for a reason. He does not want us to know who he is. A powerful man who can protect his identity is a terrible enemy to make.”
“Maybe if we’re careful—”
Dimitri cuts him off. “James, this path will only lead to having targets put onto our backs.
You are… used to safety behind a long-range weapon.
You had security in your position as a soldier.
You could not ask questions of your superiors, perhaps, but the worst you had to fear was a dishonorable discharge.
“Being a hitman is a very different thing than being a soldier. We are the hand that holds the gun; the handler is the arm that points it. This is the only balance of power that can be allowed. I have watched many hitmen become targets themselves for asking questions.”
Big D has a point, and as a former-Bratva-enforcer-turned-career-assassin, he’s the most qualified of us to make it. Mac knows it, too. “I suppose a hitman who can’t be controlled is worse than a loose cannon.”
“Da. He is a loose cannon with perfect aim who usually knows how to disappear.”
Mac blows out another frustrated breath. His eyes cut to me, and I know he’s noticing how quiet I’ve been. “What’s your read on it, Wes?”
I rest my elbows on the arms of my office chair, steeple my fingers, and tap my pointers against my top lip.
My eyes dart back and forth, not seeing—calculating.
“You’ve both got reasonable points. But the lack of information about the General seems intentional, and that implies dangerous secrets—and if I’m participating in some kind of hostile takeover, I’d quite like to know.
“It’s just… I can’t find the General, Mac,” I say honestly, so close to the truth that it makes my pulse race.
“I’ve tried. None of my usual methods work.
I’ve tried accessing the code to the platform he uses to contact us, but it’s completely locked down.
I traced the email, and it takes me through maze after maze with nothing but dead ends.
Our payments are bitcoin, scrubbed abroad and redirected back to us in a way that’s totally untraceable”—as well as totally familiar—“so, whoever he is… he’s protected by his anonymity and he knows it. ”
“See, but that just makes my point,” Mac jumps in. “What’s he hiding? What’s he hiding so well that not even Wes can find him?”
“I must admit, I’d quite like to know,” I agree.
“But how would we proceed if you are the best and even you cannot find him?” Dimitri asks.
We could do what I’ve been doing all along. Only this time, they can help. “We can focus on the targets. If we can figure out what all our targets have in common, we might be able to figure out the General’s motive and thus who he is.”
Dimitri grunts his agreement.
“You mean what they have in common other than the fact that they’re scumbags?” Mac points out with a half-smile.
“Yes, other than that. Obviously he’s not some sort of vigilante hero with deep pockets. His purpose is self-serving, or perhaps even personal. I think we ought to continue to take the hits, but do some digging of our own.”
“This is still risky,” Dimitri argues.
“But Wes is the best,” Mac jumps in, shooting me a grateful smile. “And he’s careful. He knows how to cover his tracks, right?”
“Kind of the job description,” I say, flashing Dimitri a rueful smile. “We still have laptops and tablets and cell phones from some of those dickheads. I can start going through our old files.”
“Very well, though I still think we should focus our efforts on finding Felix,” Dimitri grumbles.
“I’ll do both to the best of my ability, and proceed with the utmost caution,” I promise, holding up two fingers.
“I’ve already got flags for Felix in all the usual places—there’s not much we can do about him until he pops up again.
In the meantime, I’ll get stuck in with the old targets and see if we can’t uncover something about the General’s motives. ”
“The real question is, what does he want with a shithole like Ulysses?” Mac says.
“Indeed. Follow the money. It’s always the money,” I remark distractedly as I pull my keyboard towards me. Once I crack open a new can of energy drink, Mac and Dimitri shuffle out of the room to let me do my thing.
Which I’ll be doing out in the open from now on—an exhilarating, anxious thought. This new territory of partial truth is going to be a tricky one to navigate.
Good thing I’m the best at what I do.