Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
VOODOO
Istepped into the dimly lit bar, the air thick with the weight of stale cigarette smoke, old sweat, and tired secrets. The isolated location on some back highway in the middle of the desert set the stage like we were actors in some bad western.
Or worse…
Some Sons of Anarchy meets some Walter White knockoff. Neither were very appealing.
I was also really overdressed for any of the above. The Tom Ford suit had a cut that allowed for better weapons coverage. It also tended to soften expectations. Win-win in my book.
The bartender eyed me over a stream of blue smoke she currently exhaled.
Despite the presence of air conditioning—the old condenser rattled to life noisily and the ancient fans circulating air—the bar was warm.
Thankfully, it was mostly empty. There was no way either could keep up with a packed crowd in this space.
O'Rourke was already there, his silhouette framed against the shuttered windows that barely let in any light. “Two beers, Sandy.”
After stubbing out her cigarette, the bartender opened a cooler and pulled out two icy beer bottles. She set them on the bar, her flat stare sweeping from O’Rourke to me then back again.
“Thirty minutes,” she said. “Not one minute longer.”
She left the bar to flip the lock on the front door behind me, then she turned and headed back behind the bar and then out through what passed for their kitchen. This wasn’t a place you came for food, so I was happy enough with the bottles of beer.
Retrieving the cold bottles that had already begun to sweat, I crossed to where O’Rourke had taken the chair that put his back to the wall.
Nice of him to leave me all the other open spots.
The tension in the room was palpable, a living thing that seemed to coil around us like a snake ready to strike.
"Voodoo," O'Rourke acknowledged with a nod, his voice a low rumble. "Glad you could make it."
I didn't respond, just stood there, my eyes locked onto his. It had been a long time, not long enough in my book, but still a long time since we were face to face, much less preparing to have a conversation.
"Why am I here, O'Rourke?" I finally asked, my voice steady despite the churning in my gut. None of the guys had been happy about this meet. Not about the fact O’Rourke wanted it or that I was going to deal with him alone.
They liked it even less when I made it clear that they could be backup only—because I wasn’t a fucking idiot—so they were parked a couple of miles away. The location was too desolate and wide open so they couldn’t be any closer.
With a sigh, O’Rourke dragged out his chair then popped the bottle top off before he took a long drink and sat. “To have a beer.”
I just stared at him and set the unopened beer on the table. “I only drink with friends.”
“You used to be more fun,” O’Rourke said, an air of disappointment lingering around the words.
“Tick tock,” I reminded him. “Talk or I walk.”
The man paused with his beer halfway to his lips, then he shook his head with a chuckle. “Fucking poet.” He took another long slug, then set the bottle down. “I’ve got an opportunity.”
“I care, because?”
“Because,” O’Rourke said, his smirk firmly in place. “The people who hired me are not the ones footing the bill. Unfortunately for them, I vet everyone who tries to engage my services.”
“What happened? Did you manage to get a prosthesis for the conscience you amputated?”
O’Rourke chuckled at that, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
It never did. The man could fake warmth like the best of them, but I’d seen too many corpses and too many blown operations to ever mistake it for real.
He leaned back in his chair, tilting it just slightly so the front legs left the floor. His beer hung lazily from his fingers.
“You know,” he said slowly, “I almost walked away from this one. Almost.”
I didn’t answer. I let the silence stretch. He hated that.
“It’s funny,” he continued, his tone suddenly casual, light, like we were old friends reminiscing and not two men who’d tried to kill each other before breakfast a few years back.
“You do a little digging, start turning over rocks, and surprise, surprise—guess whose name keeps slithering out from under them.”
I said nothing. Just watched him.
He grinned like he’d scored a point. “I haven’t even told you what the job is, and you’re already giving me that look. The one like you’re deciding whether to put a bullet in me now or wait until you’ve had your next cup of overpriced coffee.”
The bastard sipped his beer again, long and slow.
“So?” I said flatly.
“So what?”
I leaned forward, planting my hands on the table, voice low. “You’re circling something. Either say it or don’t. I’m not here to play catch-up, and I don’t give a damn what rocks you think you’ve turned over. Just tell me what you’re trying to say.”
His smirk widened. The bait had landed.
“I was hired,” he said, dragging the word out, “to track a target. Isolate them. Assess threats, weaknesses. Standard gig. But then—then I ran the name through a few systems. Pulled some old files. Compared incident reports. Cross-referenced timelines.”
He gave me a meaningful look.
“Care to guess who kept showing up on the periphery?” he asked.
I held his gaze. “No.”
O’Rourke laughed again. “Jesus, you really haven’t changed. Alright then, I’ll skip ahead. The name they gave me? I think they were hoping I wouldn’t connect it to you. Or maybe they figured I wouldn’t care. But like I said, I vet my contracts. Especially the ones that stink of setup.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“So, there I am, considering declining. Not because I care, of course. But… let’s say I’ve learned that when you or your team is involved, things tend to get bloody. Fast.”
He paused, apparently waiting for me to respond.
I didn’t care, ready to just wait him out, but he had that obstinate look about him. Tired of this dance, I exhaled slowly. “What’s the job, O’Rourke?”
He leaned forward, finally dropping the chair’s front legs to the ground with a dull thud. His smile vanished.
“They want me to bring in someone. Quietly. A ghost, off the books. No body, no trace. Someone with very specific knowledge of a very dirty operation from a few years ago.”
His pause was dramatic. Fuck, I forgot how damn impressed with himself he was.
“Problem is,” he said, eyes boring into mine, “the only person who fits that profile... is you.”
I didn’t flinch. Not when he dropped the bomb, not when he leaned in like he expected some kind of reaction. That was the game. O’Rourke was baiting, poking at old wounds, trying to get a read on whether I’d known someone was hunting me before he showed up with the warning disguised as a threat.
Arms relaxed, I just waited. Casual. Controlled.
“That’s cute,” I said, voice low, even. “But you’re dancing around it again. Who hired you?”
O’Rourke tilted his head, running a finger along the condensation on his bottle. “You know how this works. Names cost.”
“And if you were really going to decline,” I said, keeping my tone steady, “you wouldn’t be sitting here tossing out riddles like a Bond villain who’s two minutes away from triggering his own death trap. You want something. So cut the shit.”
He grinned at that, but it was all teeth now. No humor.
“Old habits, I guess.”
I didn’t blink. “Name.”
He let the silence breathe. The air buzzed with it.
Then: “Does the name Vega mean anything to you?”
It did. But it could mean a lot of other things too, so I wasn’t going to just jump at this first bit of bait
I just shrugged slightly. “Vega’s not a name. It’s a direction. Could be a hundred players.”
“Could be,” O’Rourke allowed with only the faintest hint of doubt, swirling his beer, “but in this case? It’s not.
The job came down through a third-party broker out of Santa Fe.
But the funding, the chatter, the protocol?
Black string budget. Not cartel, not corporate.
This is deeper. Shadow-funding, limited oversight, built for total deniability.
The kind of thing that makes politicians nervous and keeps internal affairs chasing their tails for years. ”
That tracked. The Vega I knew wasn’t a person—wasn’t supposed to be, anyway.
Vega was a codename. A myth wrapped in intel that was always just out of reach.
Last I heard, it had ties to an ops division that was shuttered during a clean sweep six years prior.
Not shut down—shuttered. Buried. No paper trail, no accountability.
Just ghosts.
“Job specifics?” I asked. This just sounded like a lot of horseshit. For all that the government loved its shadow ops, this was just a step too far.
O’Rourke smirked again, like I’d just asked for the weather. “Surveillance. Tracking. Pattern disruption. And then extraction. Real quiet. They were very clear about quiet.”
Which meant kill or capture. No witnesses. No heat.
My eyes scanned the room as he talked. The bar was empty, still, but too perfectly so.
Dust on the old jukebox in the corner, sure.
A stack of unread newspapers on a shelf, untouched in weeks.
But the fans overhead were freshly cleaned.
No dust buildup. And the cooler? Overstocked with beer that didn’t match the brand signage out front.
Like someone had staged the bar just enough to sell the illusion of wear without actually being in business.
Even the bartender—Sandy—had disappeared too fast. Thirty-minute window, locked door, no questions. No locals had wandered in, and no highway noise filtered through the boarded windows.
This wasn’t a meet. It was a box.
“You chose the location?” I asked.
“I suggested it.” O’Rourke arched a brow. “You agreed to it.”
At my continued stare, he almost smiled.
“They secured it.”
Of course they did.
“How many exits?”
“Back door through the kitchen. Side hatch behind the bar. Basement tunnel leads to the next lot over if you're feeling theatrical.”
I clocked that. Marked the routes.
“And you’re just handing this over?” I asked. “All this intel? For what—some warm fuzzy feeling that you’re finally doing the right thing?”
He gave a short laugh, but his eyes didn’t waver.
“No, Voodoo. I’m telling you because if I walk, they’ll just send someone else.
Someone faster. Someone dumber. And because, as much as I might enjoy watching that play out, I’m also not stupid enough to get caught in the middle of it when the bodies start dropping. ”
He paused, then leaned forward, lowering his voice.
“They’re not just trying to bury you. They want the whole op—whatever happened in Odessa six years ago—erased. Every name, every loose thread. And you, my old friend… you’re the last thread still out in the open.”
My fingers tightened around the neck of the beer bottle, still unopened.
Odessa. It had been a bloodbath. Not just on the ground—but in the data.
Files wiped. Burn notices issued. People ghosted or gone.
And I’d walked away with a hard drive no one knew about, a list of names that never made it into official record.
O’Rourke watched me now, waiting to see how I’d move.
I set the bottle down gently. “You said you were considering declining. What’s stopping you?”
He smiled, but it didn’t last.
“The fact that I still don’t know if I’m talking to the asset they want eliminated—or the one holding the kill switch.”
What would he prefer?
Experience and intel said he wanted both.
The bastard thrived in the middle—playing sides, stacking chips no one else sees until the game’s over. That’s always been his angle: don’t just pick a side—own the outcome.
If I was the asset they want eliminated, he got to play the informant. The guy who tried to warn me, kept his hands clean, maybe collect a favor down the road. or a bounty, if things went sideways.
But if I was the one holding the kill switch?
That was leverage.
It was also the kind of insurance O’Rourke liked best. He’d want to cozy up just enough to stay close to the fire, without getting burned. Make himself useful. Buy time. Get a copy of whatever I was holding, maybe sell it before I even realized it was gone.
So what would he prefer?
He’d prefer I was the kill switch—but I didn’t know it yet.
That gave him the edge. That gave him the time to figure out how to make the most off of both sides.
But the thing about O’Rourke? He was a snake who thought he was clever enough to watch you bleed without getting his boots dirty.
Problem for him? I had thicker boots and skin now.
I also had backup which he should remember. The guys were quiet, didn’t mean they weren’t right there—waiting for my signal.
Then, for the first time since I walked over to the table, O’Rourke glanced over my shoulder.
I didn’t move. But I recognized what it meant.
We weren’t alone anymore.
Showtime.