Why the Devil Stalks Death Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Why the Devil Stalks Death

  Copyright © L.J. Hayward

  Smashwords Edition

  Cover Art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com

  Editor: One Love Editing, oneloveediting.com

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the author at www.ljhayward.com/contact.html

  ISBN: 978-0-9944571-7-2

  First Edition

  December 2018

  Also available in paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9944571-9-6

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  About Why the Devil Stalks Death

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Coda

  Acknowledgements

  Also by L.J. Hayward

  About the Author

  Jack Reardon uncovers secrets for a living, and the Meta-State spy is pretty good at it. Or rather he thought so until he met Ethan Blade—assassin, warrior, enigma. The unlikely pair have decided to give living together a shot, but Jack’s not entirely certain what he’s gotten himself into—or exactly who he’s in it with.

  Jack’s worries are compounded when he’s assigned to a police strike force hunting a serial killer. With each new puzzle piece, Jack considers the true nature of a serial killer—and how similar it is to an assassin. To one particular assassin who’s having trouble adjusting to retirement. Jack’s unsure how to help Ethan—or if he even can.

  When the killer strikes close to home, Jack must race against the clock to stop another murder, despite the price someone has put on his head. Could the matters be connected? Is a certain assassin at the centre of both? Surrounded by killers, the only one Jack wants near disappears, leaving Jack drowning in secrets. He’ll have to do what he does best—unravel the secrets, including Ethan’s—to stop the killer and save the life he and Ethan have only just begun to build.

  Déjà fucking vu.

  Okay. So it wasn’t a torture shack, but that didn’t mean it was pleasant in comparison. Sure, the intimidation technics were subtler—dull, uniform colour to the walls, floor, ceiling; sparse furniture; no clock; soundproof; temperature on the just-about-uncomfortable side of cool. And the psychological ramifications weren’t going to be as traumatic—it was a generic space, not one targeted directly at him—but Jack Reardon wished he wasn’t here. Wished harder than he’d wished for anything in his life—including when he’d wished to not be in the torture shack—to be back at home, before everything went haywire. Before all the shit happened that had led to here.

  Here. A police interview room. Table, two chairs. Cuffs locked to the table. Bland. One size fits all.

  Arrested for suspicion of murder.

  Jack laughed and it sounded a little scary. Unhinged. He shut up and tried not to think too hard about where he was. How he’d ended up here. Where the others might be. Steph and Adam. Ethan.

  Oh God. The expression on his face the last time Jack saw him, standing in the hotel suite doorway—shock, confusion, hurt. Then nothing. Just . . . nothing. And his words. Christ, they were still sawing through Jack’s chest, blunt and painful.

  The chain between his cuffs rattled, unexpectedly loud and angry in the silent room. Jack startled, realising only after that he’d been tugging on the lock securing him to the table.

  “God fuck it,” he growled and gave in to his anger for a glorious minute, pulling and twisting against the cuffs.

  Who gave a shit if those sanctimonious pricks undoubtedly watching him thought they’d broken him? It just felt good to let the worry and fear show for a moment. Not worry or fear for himself, but for Ethan and what he might do. Was he okay? Where was he now? How much had he seen? Heard? “Enough” was the answer Jack feared. Enough to send him back to his old ways. Would anyone survive his deadly anger? Would Jack?

  He couldn’t afford to think along those lines. He had to concentrate on getting out of here and finding out what the fuck was going on. And he wasn’t getting out of here if he lost his calm and began abusing the furniture.

  Sitting back in the uncomfortable chair, Jack settled his manacled wrists on the table. Closed his eyes. A few deep breaths later and his hands unclenched, fingers spreading over the smooth, cool surface. He worked his way up his arms, consciously releasing the tension from his muscles. Up into his shoulders, feeling the strain ease, the weight of worry and fear fade. Then down his spine, loosening his core so he slumped a little. Thighs spreading. Calves tightening, then relaxing. Toes curling inside his shoes, then stretching and finally stilling.

  Another deep breath and Jack went sideways.

  There had been occasions—usually troubling, panicking ones—when he’d managed a trance state with no preparation to access the implant. This wasn’t one of those. The cops were giving him plenty of time to think and worry and work himself into a mindset where he’d be more likely to say something he didn’t want to reveal. Time alone, in a featureless room, to wear down his patience and give the illusion of being confined for longer than actuality.

  He had wished for some time alone, but for fuck’s sake, not like this.

  The overlay from his neural implant appeared before his inner eyes. A remnant from his days in the SAS, the technology—equivalent to a smartphone grafted onto his right temporal lobe—was highly classified. No one in domestic law enforcement knew about it. They wouldn’t know to block it. His dummy phone, part of his cover, had been taken off him, so they believed him isolated. Yet, he was wary of calling anyone. What if they did know? What if they were monitoring any signals coming from the room?

  Rather than make the one call he was desperate to, Jack collated all the data they’d discovered on the Judge into a single file and, after a long h
esitation, added Ethan’s vague offering as well.

  Recalling the assassin’s words sparked off that burning anger again.

  How could Ethan have done it? Kept it to himself while Jack worked at the deadly puzzle and, ignoring protocol, used Ethan as a sounding board? He’d listened to all of Jack’s frustrations and hadn’t said anything, not until . . .

  Forcing aside that memory, Jack ensured the pertinent information was in the file. He’d worry about it after he was out of here and the Judge neutralised. After Jack’s secrets were exposed.

  Peripherally, he heard the door opening and footsteps entering the room.

  Swiftly, he slid sideways again and opened his eyes. “You wanted something, Detective Connors?”

  The man leading the team investigating the Judge had come personally to Jack’s home to arrest him. He’d cited “suspicion of murder,” but Jack wondered if that was just an excuse to get him here. Jack hadn’t killed anyone. Lately.

  Connors was dressed in police detective de rigueur—basic suit, black leather shoes, white button-down, unimaginative tie. Not especially tall, rather compact, but powerfully built. He didn’t bother hiding his feelings—anger, grief, grim determination.

  It began to make sense. Suspicion of murder. The fact Jack hadn’t seen either of the Strike Force Infinity members since being brought in. One look from Connors undid all of Jack’s relaxation and twisted his gut into a tight, painful knot.

  Honesty, more so than any number of lies, was a sharp weapon.

  “What’s happened?” Jack asked.

  More silence from Connors, and then he reached into a pocket and pulled out a phone. He flicked through a couple of pages, settled on one, read for a moment, and then came to the table, gaze never leaving the screen.

  “Lieutenant Jack Reardon.” His voice was low and rough, like he’d smoked a pack a day for the past twenty years.

  “Mister, not lieutenant. I was discharged eight years ago. What’s happened, Detective Connors?”

  Connors sat, still perusing whatever information he had on his phone, probably a file detailing Jack’s life. What they knew of it, at least.

  “SAS.” A hint of approval in his tone. “Tough unit to get into.”

  “Tougher to survive. Care to tell me why I’m here, detective?”

  He glanced up then, eyes still showing all of those dark emotions directed at Jack. “Medical discharge.”

  Two small words that cut into Jack like a shard of ice. Eight years on and he was still tender about the whole situation. Sure, when he’d been discharged, he’d been injured and suffering PTSD. But that hadn’t been why they got rid of him.

  There was no way in hell Connors knew that, though, so the man was fishing. Jack knew the game. Now he knew it was being played, he also suspected the transparency of Connors’s expression when he walked in. It had been a mask, one aimed to inspire something in Jack he could use.

  “Yeah,” he said, tone neutral.

  “And now you’re a . . .” Connors consulted his phone again. “A security guard with the International Security Office.”

  Oh, yeah, they were playing a game. Connors hadn’t actually asked a question and yet Jack was answering them. The detective knew full well Jack was a specialist security advisor, not just a grunt. He was baiting Jack with little bits of misinformation, prompting him to correct them, generating a precedent for Jack telling Connors things he wanted to know.

  Two could play that game.

  “Specialist security advisor,” Jack said, setting up his own precedent.

  “Sorry. Yes, it specifies that on the next page. ISO. That’s in Canberra, yet you live in Sydney.”

  “That’s right.” Time to give a little more than prompted, show Connors his game was working. “It’s a mobile job. I work out of an office here, mostly.”

  Connors nodded thoughtfully. “ISO would keep you busy.”

  “Busy enough.”

  “Get to travel a lot.”

  Where the fuck was this going? “Fair bit.”

  Connors looked up at him for more than a moment, and one mask fell away, only to be replaced with another one. He smiled. “Always wanted to go to Bangkok, myself. I hear it’s quite beautiful.”

  Oh. Fuck.

  “That’s what I’ve heard, too.” Please, don’t let the cops know about Bangkok.

  “You’ve never been?”

  The first question and it was barbed six ways to Sunday. Even before the phone was turned around and pushed towards him, Jack knew what he would see.

  “Then someone who looks awfully like you, Mr. Reardon, was in Bangkok a month ago. Recognise him at all?”

  Shit fuck damn.

  Sure enough, that was a picture of Jack in Bangkok, trotting down the stairs at their hotel, adjusting the jacket of his dinner suit. He was scowling, black brows pinching together, the ambient light of the building behind him making his Indian-Caucasian skin into something like polished copper. Nothing about the picture pinpointed Bangkok.

  Then Connors swiped to the next picture.

  A wider shot, getting in the name of the hotel—Millennium Hilton Bangkok.

  At least he was on his own in the picture.

  “That’s me,” Jack admitted. Goddamn, this was going south rapidly.

  “Really? Did you just say you hadn’t been to Bangkok?”

  “Actually, I didn’t. All I said was I’d heard people say it was beautiful.” Jack shrugged. “It is, if you like the heat and ignore the pollution and political instability. Bloody lovely in that case.”

  “Obviously you didn’t enjoy your stay.” Connors pulled the phone back and flipped through a couple more screens.

  Thankful they hadn’t seemed to get a shot of his companion, Jack smirked. “Had worse trips. Had better ones, as well.”

  Connors settled on a new page and frowned at it. “You see, what confuses me is that there was no ISO operation in Bangkok on the dates you were there, Mr. Reardon.”

  He didn’t give Jack time to answer the non-question this time, just going directly for the killing thrust.

  “And your . . . companion for the evening. Not an ISO employee as far as we can ascertain.”

  Detective Connors shoved the screen back at Jack. It displayed a new picture—Jack on the street outside the hotel, still scowling, this time directly at the man next to him, who looked pretty damn fine in his own dinner suit. Connors flicked through a series of photos of them on the steps of the hotel, then in a taxi. Jack’s expression in the photos went between a scowl and forced neutrality and back again. His companion was always smiling, mostly at Jack’s uncomfortableness, his glee teasing and annoying.

  The last shot, of them at their destination, reversed their expressions—Jack snickering, the other man grumbling. Over their head was a recognisable sign, and a slender, smiling Thai man beckoned them into a shadowed entrance.

  “So, Mr. Reardon, why were you in Bangkok? Business? Or pleasure?”

  Jesus fucking shit.

  “Ah, Bangkok,” Lewis Thomas said, throwing his arms wide as he sang the opening lines to “One Night in Bangkok.”

  “No!” Jack snapped. “I’ve warned you how many times?”

  Unrepentant, Lewis grinned and fixed the drape of his suit jacket. “Come on. It’s Bangkok! How can you resist?”

  Jack scowled. “Very easily. Anyone would think you’d never been outside of Australia before.”

  Before Lewis could respond, their taxi arrived outside the Millennium Hilton. Giving his friend and colleague a warning glare, Jack stalked over and got into the back seat. Lewis followed him, making lip-zipping motions that would have worked better to soothe Jack’s grumbles if the man hadn’t been smirking at the same time.

  Thankfully, Lewis made good on his promise and shut up while the taxi pulled out and, discreetly informed by the concierge, headed for their destination.

  At first blush, Bangkok was much like any other capital city. Roads teeming with traffic and b
ordered by tall buildings of steel and glass. But then suddenly there would be a temple or an old villa, ancient stone and gold and peaked roofs. Or an ultramodern, climate-controlled megamall, and one street over, a bustling, vibrant street market with more history than Jack’s whole family. On the Chao Phraya River, there were wooden longtail boats alongside sleek motorboats.

  As fascinating as the contrasts were, Jack was over it. They’d been in Bangkok for three weeks, about two weeks longer than even the most excited tourist. Three weeks of not taking in the sights in a river cruise, or taste testing his way through every street-side food cart, or gaping in awe at the lavish temples. Instead, he’d been swimming through the seedy, dark underside that could be found in any city around the world.

  He was ready to go home, and hopefully, after tonight, that would be possible. Job done, subject secured, he could go home and . . . what? Hope like hell Ethan had shown up? It had been nearly four months since they’d last been together in Vietnam, after the fiasco in Canberra. Granted, Jack had been away from home for the last three weeks, but Ethan had proven proficient at tracking Jack down if he wasn’t in Sydney when Ethan wanted him. What if he’d run into trouble getting into Australia? What if he was hurt?

  What if he’d changed his mind?

  Jack shrugged off the thought and concentrated on the here and now. If everything went to plan, he’d have something to smile about. Maybe.

  Lewis gazed out the window at the rolling scenery, unconsciously fidgeting in his suit. Unprepared for this turn of events, they’d had the suits tailored that morning and, unable to stand still long enough for the snappy Thai woman to take exact measurements, Lewis’s dark blue, slim-fitting suit wasn’t quite as roomy in certain areas as it should be.

  “I still don’t understand why you need me for this part,” Lewis muttered. “I’m not a field asset.”

  How about that? Jack had something to smile at already. “And yet, you are entirely . . . suitable for this bit.”