Ballistic by Trey Dowell

Description:

Danny has a simple job: he makes people pay for their mistakes. Unfortunately, even hitmen screw up too. When an exhausted Danny escorts an unreliable accountant to his final audit in a run-down hotel, he realizes the moneyman isn’t the only one scheduled for termination. And when you need a professional, lightning-quick gunman dead, they don’t just send one man—they send all of them.

Alone, facing multiple killers, he has to move fast and shoot faster. Worse, Danny knows the leader of the team—the legend who trained him—lies somewhere in the depths of the hotel…waiting. A short work of crime fiction from our Fingerprints line.

Excerpt:

It’s 2 AM.

My brain is swimming and it’s difficult to stand steady, let alone focus on the job. I’m working on less than three hours of sleep over the last three days. Normally I’d tell myself to just suck it up and keep going, but that little pearl of wisdom got old 48 hours ago. Back then I was cranky. Now I’m past the point of internal motivation.

I’d say the world is moving in slow motion, but God that sounds so lame. Besides, on a normal day, it’s not a cliché…everything does move in slow motion for me. Call it a difference in perspective; I move at normal speed, everybody else seems to crawl. Everybody else thinks they’re normal, and they think I’m crazy fast.

Except right now I’m a zombie, and fast sounds like a long-lost friend. Everything around me swirls, and I imagine brain gears grinding to a halt. Luckily my body’s autopilot managed to get me this far: into the dilapidated empty hotel, up an ancient elevator, and down the hallway. There are two guys with me, but in my state, they’re little more than talking blobs in a foggy room—Blob #1 came up the elevator with me, and Blob #2 was waiting for us in the room. I’m barely aware of what they’re saying, and this is…bad. I need to be in the game, so I do the only thing I can to shove myself back into their world. I rub the back of my neck and let my hand slide around toward the front until my middle finger finds the soft skin underneath my ear and next to the back of my jaw.

I push as hard as I can. One of Oaker’s tricks, and if Oaker is nice enough to share anything with you, you damn well better listen.

You probably think the pain cuts through my fog like a knife, but in addition to being more cliché than me, you’re wrong. It’s like taking a guy who’s so nearsighted he can’t see the alarm clock and then sliding a pair of coke-bottle eyeglasses over his ears. Trouble is, first time I did this little trick, the coke bottles gave me 20/20. Now it’s more like 20/80, but at least it’s enough to let me focus.

Blob #1 is Vincent Anthony, my coworker, and his smooth quiet voice is trying to convince Blob #2, Harvey Teetle, that his accountant rear end is going to make it out of this hotel room alive. Which, of course, it won’t. It’s Vince’s job to make sure, and I’m the “just in case” guy. Just in case Harvey runs. Just in case Harvey fights. But before Vince gets to have his fun—and make no mistake, Vince thinks of this as fun—he has to find out exactly what Harvey told the IRS about our employer. My job is to stand quietly behind Harvey and wait like a good little back-up enforcer.

My arms are folded across my chest, and although it makes me look impatient and bored—and I am—the stance is functional too. My hands are buried in my armpits, but they’re also inside the folds of my suit coat. You can’t tell by looking, but my fingers are only inches away from nickel-plated .45s nestled in dual shoulder holsters. I might be crazy fast, but in my current condition, the head start makes me feel better.

Harvey, on the other hand, looks a lot like a rabbit in need of a hole. I almost feel sorry for him, but heavy emphasis on the “almost.” I’ve almost felt sorry for all of the Harveys in my career. Different faces, different names, different stories—all with two important things in common. First, they made a critical mistake—they stole, got greedy, crossed the wrong person, whatever—and got caught. Second, they all beg like dogs when their time comes.

Harvey continues the string on both counts. He got caught, and is now begging for his life like a champion. The tune sounds a little different this time, though, and I know the reason.

Me.

Not just the way I feel after three days of running from one job to the next…three days of “vital matters” only I could be “fully trusted with”…but something else. For the first time in my life, I’m empathizing with a mark.

Because, like Harvey, I’ve recently made a mistake. In fact, I’ve been making the same mistake almost every night for the last two weeks. Some nights, if I’m feeling especially energetic, I make the mistake two or three times. Problem is, my partner-in-crime during these nights is the mistress of the guy who signs my paychecks. Stupid, I know, but sometimes these things can’t be helped.

But kinship with Harvey ends there. Our defining difference is I’ve been smart enough not to get caught. Harvey thinks he’s smart enough, but sadly, is mistaken. Mistaken and less than two minutes from being put down. Sweat stains his collar, and his head flicks from side-to-side, looking for a way out. My vision-correction is wearing off though, and I’m having serious trouble listening to his conversation with Vince. All I can tell is Harvey is scared, and Vince isn’t.

Then something changes.

Even through the thickening haze, I can tell something is…off. Vince isn’t talking to Harvey anymore. He’s talking to me.

“Right, Danny? You’re a smart kid. Always have been. You don’t make stupid mistakes, but even if you did, you’d come clean. You’d tell the truth, just like Harvey here’s doin’. Like the Old Man always says—‘truth sets you free’.”

I can ignore Vince’s botched Bible-paraphrasing, but what I can’t ignore is how he’s saying it. He’s using the same tone of voice with me as he was with the accountant. The same condescending “I’m-the-best-friend-you-ever-had” tone. To marks, it sounds comforting, which it’s supposed to. You want their trust all the way up until you end them. But to me—a guy familiar with fake sincerity—it has a totally different sound. A ringing, red-alert kind of sound. Thankfully, the ringing is loud enough to shatter my fog and let me see everything as it truly is.

And then I know.

It’s a setup. The whole thing. I’m not as smart as I thought, and our employer sent Vince to personally illustrate the point. With the fog gone, the room is in clear focus, edges sharp, and colors brilliant. My brain gears are now spinning so fast they’re liable to go off the tracks, but their furious pace allows me to see the not-so-distant future.