Hangman (Jason Trapp: Origin Story Book 1) Read online

  Trapp leaned back and sighed. He had a whole lot of questions and precious few answers. He let his head fall back and circled his neck, opening his eyes to reveal a world flipped 180°.

  He found himself staring directly at Muriel. She tapped her watch. “Closing in fifteen minutes, dear.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Trapp tapped in another query, looking for any information relating to Odysseus Private Security, atrocities or corruption. He didn’t find much. Just an endless list of articles that mainly attested to Odysseus’ endless run of contract awards.

  And then the headline flashed up:

  CONVOY AMBUSHED, SEVEN DEAD

  “It’s closing time, I’m afraid,” Muriel said, her voice ringing out in the library’s quiet. She was softer than she’d been when he first introduced himself, but he detected a faint irritation in her voice now he’d invaded her sanctum for so long.

  “I’m done, I’m done,” Trapp replied, eyes locked on the computer screen, scribbling down the name of the lone survivor. A man called Alex Woods.

  On the other side of the street from the library, sitting in the back of a beat-up Ford F-150 with blacked-out rear windows and cradling a considerably more modern SLR camera was a man who wasn’t really called Mike Lee. He wasn’t an employee of an insurance company called Atlanta Life, either, though he really was from Georgia.

  “Gotcha,” he drawled, snapping several pictures of Jason Trapp as he exited, walking straight to a payphone just outside. He held the lens steady, waiting until his subject shoved his hands into his pockets, presumably searching for coins, and unknowingly also staring almost directly at the man surveilling him as he fed them into the machine.

  Lee’s finger trembled in midair, suspended over the shutter button as the temperature inside the truck’s cabin plunged twenty degrees in an instant. Did Trapp somehow know he was there?

  It wasn’t possible, was it? It couldn’t be. He’d purchased the Ford from a used car lot 30 miles away, paid in cash, and never driven it before today. There was no way Trapp could have made him, no way the retired soldier could pierce the truck’s tinted windows.

  And yet…

  Lee barely dared to breathe, let alone move as Trapp’s gaze fixed on him for what felt like an eternity, his lips unmoving.

  Finally, the spell broke. Trapp brought the payphone handset to his ear, and his gaze drifted away from Lee’s truck, sweeping up and down the street instead, quartering it, quickly scanning for obvious threats before returning for a more detailed inspection. Lee knew the look. He wore it himself. He would have to remember that.

  He snapped a couple of shots while Trapp’s face was still in clear view, then took a couple of seconds to compose himself. When he was done, he pulled a Nokia cell phone from his jeans pocket and dialed a number that wasn’t saved in the phone’s SIM card. It rang twice before the line clicked.

  “It’s him, I’m sure. What do you want me to do with him?”

  “Clean this mess up,” a man replied in a dead, emotionless tone, one which Lee knew belied his glossy, tailored image. A steel that was mostly concealed, and yet no less keen for it.

  Lee didn’t flinch. He'd expected the response. That was why he was here, after all. “And collateral damage? He’s staying with a local cop.”

  Again, there was no sign that this revelation fazed his employer. “Use your best judgment. But I suggest you resolve this situation with haste. You’ve got twenty-four hours to fix this. After that, I’ll be forced to send someone who will.”

  The line clicked again, this time dead.

  “Long time, no hear,” came the scratchy but passably audible voice of Ryan Price. Trapp grinned despite himself. It was good to speak to his old friend.

  “That’s my bad.”

  “I know…” Ryan replied dryly. “Anyway, how you holding up?”

  Trapp paused, detecting the concern in his friend’s voice and unwilling to address it. “Just fine. Listen, I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

  “All business, huh?” Ryan replied, voice tinged with unspoken reproach fullness.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Trapp said, balling his hand into a fist. “Listen, I met a girl. Let me buy you a beer sometime, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “But first, ask not what you can do for me, is that about right?” Ryan said, accompanied by a chuckle.

  “Something like that,” Trapp said, glancing down at the scribbled notepad in his hands. He gave Ryan the Graysons’ house phone number, and then a name. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll be late for dinner.”

  “It’s like that?”

  Trapp smiled. “You know, I guess maybe it is.”

  14

  Not for the first time that trip, Marcel Hawkins started to wonder how the hell he had ended up in this situation.

  Finch was in the 18 wheeler’s passenger seat, staring into the empty blackness of a bleak hillside in the state of Sonora, Mexico at two in the morning. The mercenary said little, when he acknowledged Hawkins at all, but he couldn’t work out whether he preferred it that way or not. Sitting in silence in a place like this, knowing what was to come – well, that gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  But somehow speaking to Finch was worse. The guy looked a little like he belonged behind some hipster bar. Except for his eyes. There was no life there.

  So maybe the silence was for the best.

  Only, they been here for an hour now, in the darkness, with even the cabin’s interior lights turned off. The bubble of cool air had quickly seeped away, and the atmosphere was now hot and sticky, probably worse than it would have been outside.

  Marcel saw fireflies dance across the horizon. He frowned and rubbed his eyes.

  No, not fireflies. Headlights.

  Strangely mesmerized by the desire to catch his first glance of the men they were here to meet, he didn’t catch the movement in his peripheral vision. His first warning that the reptile beside him had awakened was a viselike grip on his bicep. He turned his head only to see a flashing in Finch’s eyes as they were momentarily painted by the oncoming headlights that made him look faintly demonic.

  “His name,” Finch hissed, “is Miguel. Let me give you a piece of advice, Hawkins. Don’t look him in the eye. Don’t say a damn word. You’re not here to speak. You’re not here to look, understood? Monkey say, monkey see, monkey do nothing.”

  “You got it.” Marcel nodded, his head a broken, jerking Ferris wheel cabin. “I’ll do whatever you say, boss.”

  Finch nodded, apparently mollified, and returned to his Sphinx-like watch. And though Marcel tried to copy him in following the progress of the convoy of vehicles snaking its way toward them, he found it impossible this time to turn his attention away from Eric Finch.

  Maybe you should just run, Marcel thought wildly, his knee jittering wildly, heel tapping against the plastic mat on the floor of the truck’s cab.

  “Sit still, will you?” Finch snarled. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Marcel bit his fingers into the flesh of his thigh, physically preventing the limb from moving. “I’m just on edge, that’s all. These people…”

  “Are businessmen,” Finch snapped back. “All they care about is cold, hard cash. And so long as you don’t try and screw ‘em, you’ll be just fine.”

  The redheaded mercenary picked something from his teeth and flicked it onto the dashboard. “You’re not planning on screwing them, are you?”

  Marcel flinched, then shook his head, not for the first time recognizing that he was a long way from home—and further from anyone friendly. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Finch replied grimly. “Why would you?”

  Get a grip on yourself, man, Marcel thought, gulping. Or he’ll take the decision out of your hands.

  Out loud he said, “Listen, I know what I signed up for.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Sometimes things need to be done. Things that aren’t exactl
y aboveboard. And I don’t mind walking that line. So long as I get paid,” he added, in the belief that appealing to Finch’s mercantilist view of the world would make him seem more trustworthy.

  “So long as you get paid how?” Finch repeated.

  Marcel doubled down. “That’s why I am here, right?” He gestured at the 9 mm pistol burning a hole in his waistband. “To watch your six.”

  Finch reached for the weapon like a striking cobra, and pressed the muzzle against Marcel’s temple before he knew it was gone. Outside, the headlights grew closer until the first of the vehicles in the short convoy slowed to a stop. But Finch didn’t shift his gaze.

  “And you ain’t planning on screwing me, right?”

  “No!” Marcel practically squeaked. “I wouldn’t. You know that.”

  The last of the vehicles stopped outside. A car door swung open, and boots bit the dirt. Every sound was magnified in his mind, every flash of light, every dancing shadow a harboring of his certain death.

  Finch dropped his arm and tossed Marcel’s pistol onto the trembling mercenary’s lap. He reached forward, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a brown envelope, which he threw beside the gun. It bounced off Marcel’s bladder, and might easily have caused him to empty it.

  Marcel didn’t dare touch it. He breathed out slowly, attempting to gain some control over his fear. “What is it?”

  Finch spat, finally turning his attention to the man outside. “Your cut. Open it.”

  He did as he was told, the jerky movement of his numbed fingers tearing the paper. In the cabin’s gloom, it was difficult to make out an exact figure, but he saw three bound stacks of hundred dollar bills. That was thirty grand, right?

  Suddenly bereft of oxygen, he sucked in a lungful of air. The bungee cord snap back from near-certain death to sudden wealth was almost too great of a roller coaster for his body to bear.

  “What do you want me to do?” he whispered.

  Finch grinned. “Let’s go give Miguel his money.”

  15

  Trapp allowed his momentum to build as he tumbled down the flight of stairs that started just before the doorway to the kitchen in the Grayson house. He catapulted off onto the flat and killed his speed dead by grabbing onto the doorframe like a fighter jet catching against an aircraft carrier’s arresting wires.

  “How can I help, Sarah?” he called out, raising his voice a little to announce his presence. He’d learned over the past few days that the sheriff’s wife was getting just a little hard of hearing.

  The woman in question spun slowly around, revealing that she was holding a wooden salad bowl piled high with chopped leaves, bell peppers and sweet little cherry tomatoes. All were picked fresh from the yard out back that was her pride and joy.

  “I took your clothes while you were in the shower, Jason,” she said, setting the salad bowl down on the nearest worktop and covering it with a sheet of Saran Wrap. “They’re in the wash now.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Trapp protested.

  “I know I didn’t.” Sarah winked. “But while you’re a guest in my house, I’ll continue doing it all the same. Besides,” she said, ostentatiously wrinkling her nose, “they needed it.”

  Trapp grimaced ruefully as he wondered—not for the first time—why this family was being so kind to him. “You could say that again.”

  “They needed a clean!” Sarah laughed.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Trapp asked again, guiding the conversation back to the firmer ground of how he could repay their charity. That was what he liked about working with his hands—what he’d loved about soldiering, for that matter—the sense of tangible progress. You could see what you’d achieved at the end of a day’s work. Preferably while cradling a cold beer.

  “Not a whole lot,” she replied. “Maybe just take the salad bowl out, and that little jug of dressing. Keep them both in the shade, mind. It’s hot out there, and we won’t be eating for another half hour.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Trapp said, grinning as he clicked his heels together and threw the family matriarch a mock salute. “And after that?”

  “Just grab a beer from the cooler outside and hang those tap shoes of yours up for a bit. We’re not eating anything fancy. Just steak and salad.”

  Trapp did as instructed, and after setting the salad bowl down on a heaving wooden trestle table outside, he learned that Sarah Grayson’s definition of the word “simple” was a million miles off from the one laid out in the pages of Merriam-Webster. There wasn’t enough food to feed an entire army, but it was close.

  Sheriff Grayson was manning the barbecue outside, under the thick canopy of a tree that grew about halfway down the manicured section of the family yard. They owned a couple more acres, Trapp knew, a few fields that surrounded the property, and had once housed Sarah’s ponies before the last passed. As he approached, the old cop raised his barbecue tongs in greeting.

  “Expecting company?” Trapp asked, accompanying the question with a little upward flick of his eyebrows.

  The sheriff just rolled his eyes. “You’ve met my wife, I take it?”

  “Point taken.”

  Ron Grayson nudged a blue cooler box with one foot and said, “Grab yourself a beer, son. You’re looking dry.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Trapp carried out his orders with relish, and the two men stood there in companionable silence, listening to the cicadas in the distance, which was accompanied a few minutes later by the hissing sizzle of steaks grilling over charcoal, once the sheriff judged that the coals were ready.

  “How do you take your steak, son?” Ron asked, flipping the thick T-bone about ninety seconds after it first met the heat.

  “If a good vet can resuscitate it, that’s just fine by me.” Trapp grinned.

  “Right answer.”

  Not long after that, three thick, bloody steaks were loaded onto a platter, covered with a little scrunch of aluminum foil. The two men walked them over to the trestle table, where the two remaining members of the household were waiting, each equipped with a small glass of white wine that was twinkling in the dying rays of the evening’s sun.

  “Well, look who the cat dragged in,” the sheriff remarked with a raised eyebrow at his daughter. “And who would have guessed it, just after all the hard work’s finished.”

  “As if, Dad,” Shea protested, a little wrinkle at the corner of her lips indicating that her words were more heat than flame. “Mom did all the hard work anyway. You guys just have to stand there with your beers playing caveman. You don’t fool me.”

  “She’s got you there, Ron,” Sarah remarked, leaning back in her seat and taking a sip of wine.

  The sheriff grunted as he set the steaks down, but Trapp caught the warmth in the man’s half-hidden smile. “Who’s saying grace?” he asked instead, changing the subject as he settled into the empty seat next to his wife.

  That left only one spare, next to Shea, and Trapp shot her a shy smile as he took it. She replied in kind, and that immediately sent the hares running in his mind.

  She’s just being polite, dummy.

  “I think I will tonight,” Sarah announced, employing a tone of voice that was at once both soft and kindly, yet clearly brooked no chance of an argument. Then again, she said it most nights, so the family had long since learned to play ball.

  “Fine by me,” Ron said, extending his hand.

  They formed a loose, slightly angular circle around the table as they reached out and grasped each other’s hands, heads bowed in prayer. Trapp took Sarah’s proffered digits but hesitated a second before linking up with Shea. She had her own head dipped to the ground, but the beginnings of a smile creased her cheeks and made him question whether she knew what was running through his head.

  Or maybe he was overthinking it.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Sarah began, the sound finally prompting him to clasp Shea’s hand, for which he received a comforting squeeze in response. “For sending Jason to our
house—”

  Trapp’s eyes almost flared with surprise. He was neither used to—nor wanted—to be the center of attention. He manfully struggled to keep them closed, setting his jaw and doing his best Buddha impression.

  “—We are all lost at times in our lives,” she said, her voice seeming to choke up for a fraction of a second, “but with your strength, we find our way back to your love. For that, I am truly thankful. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Trapp repeated dutifully.

  The whole table fell silent for a few seconds as everyone’s arms dropped back down to their sides and their eyes readjusted to the light.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Sarah prompted, gesturing at the feast laid out before them. “Dig in!”

  Trapp hung back, replaying her words in his mind as the tinkle of Shea’s laugh rolled out across the yard as she responded to some comment from her dad, and serving implements clinked against crockery.

  Was that what he was—lost?

  And if so, had he found what he was looking for?

  He wasn’t allowed to linger in his introspection for long, though the question still smoldered at the back of his mind. Shea was too vivacious for that, always quick to offer up a joke, to prick her father’s ego when he found himself on a roll telling some story or other. “Come on, Dad. You think you could try some new material for once?”

  She was a little gentler with him, he realized, often choosing to deploy a needle rather than the broadsword she fenced her parents with. Still, the wit was obvious, and always preceded by a slight, sly smile on her lips, and the tiniest flaring of her nostrils.

  You’re real funny, chica, but never try your hand at poker.

  “So, Jason,” Sarah called out across the table, “how are you finding life in our little town? Bored yet?”

  Trapp set his cutlery down neatly by the side of his mostly empty plate. He took his time considering the question, never one to speak his mind before settling on a position. Still, the answer was quick in coming.