End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(7)
She broke into a radiant smile and said, “Speak of the devil.”
Chapter 5
Garrett shook himself awake like a dog wringing water off its body, the blackouts becoming something he was getting more comfortable with. After the killing, after the trauma, his brain would literally shut down, and he would collapse, catatonic. The first time it was scary. Now, with the third death, it was becoming routine.
He looked to his left and saw the dead prostitute. One more woman who didn’t want to connect, but he’d learned from the first one. Don’t use a blade. Too messy. It was just as easy to strangle the life out of them.
The first killing had been a disaster—the woman running around the small room with her hand clamped to her neck, the blood flowing like a water balloon squeezed by a child.
Make no mistake, it wasn’t the death that shocked him. He’d killed people before in the heat of combat, but never with a knife. Most had been with a bullet at a distance of eighty or a hundred meters. That killing had been another level of intensity entirely.
He looked at her dead eyes and thought, Why did you laugh? Why couldn’t you just give me what I paid for?
Like the other two women, all he’d wanted was what she had offered. A chance to connect with her. Someone who wouldn’t care about his deficiencies.
Everything had gone well, right up until she’d pulled his pants down. He couldn’t get an erection. She’d worked furiously, and he’d encouraged her on and on, and then she’d tried to cup his testicles. Located his shame.
“You got no balls? What is this?” she said.
And then the rage had struck. A red level of violence he had lived with for four years, which cost the woman her life.
He knelt down and recited the Lord’s Prayer, then glanced at the body, a niggling bit of his subconscious realizing that he was growing used to the killing. Scarier still, he was growing to like it, wanting to inflict pain in an attempt to release his own.
This time he was in a decrepit Airstream trailer on the outskirts of a greenspace in the center of the same neighborhood he’d killed the other two. Called Esposizione Universale Roma, or EUR, it was south of the city center of Rome, Italy.
Built by Benito Mussolini in preparation for the world’s fair in 1942, it was designed as a new urban hub celebrating fascism and his rule. World War II put a stop to that fantasy, and now it had the ignominy of being known as the red-light district of Rome. While the city looked away from the street walkers in the area, it still didn’t allow actual brothels, which meant the men and women had to get creative to ply their trade. In this case, a trailer on the edge of a park.
He rose from his knees and leaned over the soiled mattress where the woman lay. Ignoring her open eyes, he kissed her cheek, whispering, “I’m sorry.”
He glanced at his watch, seeing it was almost seven a.m. He’d been unconscious for nearly six hours, making him late for the meeting with his men at the Priory. Even worse, making him late for the command of the next attack.
He hurriedly searched the room for any traces he’d left, using his cell phone to call his men, not worried about anyone tracking him through the cell towers because he was calling through the Wi-Fi in the woman’s trailer. She’d paid for the service with a portable Mi-Fi device to show porn videos to prospective clients. But it hadn’t helped his mood. In fact, it did nothing but elevate the rage when he saw the virile men.
Using an app called Zello, he connected and said, “Hey, I’m running a little late, but I’ll be there soon. Are we good for today?”
“Yes. He’s headed south just like he’s done every single weekend.”
“We can’t make a mistake here. The PMU in Iraq needs to be blamed. Keta’ib Hezbollah.”
“They will be. We have the note ready to go.”
“What’s the timeline?”
“Probably an hour. Maybe more.”
“And Paris? What’s happening there?”
“I’m waiting on the news now. Nothing yet.”
He said, “Okay, I’m headed to the Priory. See you soon.”
He opened the trailer door, peering out the grimy window first to make sure he wasn’t seen, then jogged to his vehicle.
Driving north out of the neighborhood, he knew it would take him a good thirty minutes to get to the Priory in Rome’s city center, and every second was precious. He traveled as fast as he dared without drawing attention, eventually circling around the Colosseum, the crowds much sparser than they would ordinarily be on a June morning before the pandemic, but coming back to life. Reaching Via Sistina, he miraculously found a parking spot adjacent to the top of the famed Spanish Steps—a luxury even considering the lack of traffic due to COVID.
He leapt out of the car, not even bothering to lock it. He bounded down the wide steps like he was running from the police, ignoring the small smattering of tourists taking selfies on the ledges. Still wearing masks, they reminded him of sprouts of flowers after a horrendous winter—the first beginnings of new life in Rome.
He hit the lower level, reaching the Piazza de Spagna and the fountain there, then raced to the narrow alley of Via Dei Condotti. Full of expensive stores, it was the high-end shopping district of Rome. Most were closed still because of the pandemic, but a few were open, and the slowly recuperating tourist industry was helping that along, with more and more people coming to shop. He ignored them. While many were drawn here to buy the latest in fashion, he was going to a building that had been bequeathed to his organization almost two hundred years before.