Contract Killer Wins the Game

"Clearly, I am not paying you enough," Dread said with a snort. His icy, calm demeanor had returned in full force. "I take this to be your resignation."

Dread's words confirmed a few of my suspicions. Ame served as the head of his security. This explained how she would know about any pathways connecting the security floor to the penthouse; why Dread had no problem firing and replacing Knox; why Dread Tower's infamous security measures had proved so easy for the Ghost to overcome; and her inner knowledge that Dread had hired Sheila to establish an emotional connection with me. Why she had decided to betray him, I still had little-to-no clue.

"I resigned the minute you used me as a pawn. You just didn't know it yet," Amunet replied. "I only played along to see how far you would go."

"Apparently not far enough," Dread said with regretful resignation. "So what now?"

"Tell me where Sheila is," I answered. The wall of bookshelves behind me was interrupted by a large set of bay windows which doubled as doors and led to an outdoor balcony. While Dread Tower stood higher than the skyscrapers around it, the auric glow of the city's lights leaked through the windows enough so that my eyes had begun to adjust in the dim darkness. I could see the side of Dread's face as he turned towards the sound of my voice. His eye shone like that of a wild animal. I also knew that the light turned Dread and me into perfect silhouettes framed by the windows.

"My dear boy," he said quietly. "I have no idea."

I tightened my grip, and Dread winced. "Don't play games," I warned.

"What are you two talking about?" the Ghost queried from the darkness. She sounded amused at the idea of a private conversation between Dread and myself. For now, I ignored her. Let her sweat it awhile, the way she didn't bother informing me of the extent of her employment to Dread.

"I hired her," Dread whispered through his gnashed teeth. It took a moment before I realized that he was talking about Sheila, not the Ghost. "But she refused payment after a month, stopped making reports. I figured it was a dead end. I let it go, and instead turned my attentions to our dear Ghost here. Figured I'd keep you busy with her while I attempted other, more legal avenues of dethroning your father."

"I said no games!" I hissed.

"Why would I lie?" he grunted, and I let up my hold, just a little. He had asked a good question. Dread had nothing to gain with this explanation. If he knew the location of Sheila, he certainly would used it for leverage to keep me from permitting him to die at the hand of the Black Ghost.

"Talk to me," said the Ghost from the other side of the desk.

"All done," I said. "Just exchanging pleasantries."

A new voice cut through the room. It said, "My turn."

BAM! A sudden flash in which I caught the shape of the voice's shapely owner: Veronica Dread. Simeon grunted, and his chair smashed into me. BAM! I let him go and hit the floor. BAM! I rolled, praying that she didn't plan on having to kill me as well. BAM! I heard shouts, the Ghost yelling something and Veronica yelling back. BAM! I moved by instinct. BAM! In the muzzle flashes, I saw the Ghost ducking behind the bar. It appeared Veronica had turned the gun on her. Veronica swiveled and ran, firing blindly behind her. BAM! BAM! BAM! Unlike the Ghost, Veronica's gun was not silenced.

My thoughts switched back on. I refused to believe that Veronica could have slunk into the room without Ame having heard her, and the only way she could have snuck onto the floor without alerting me was to have used the same passageway that the Ghost had, the one that linked the security floor to this one. A theory leapt to mind: the two women had worked out something between them, but Veronica had soured on the deal-- hence Mrs. Dread's and the Ghost's shouted-yet-inaudible words and the fact that Veronica had turned her weapon on the Ghost. Probably Veronica had planned on catching both her husband and Ame unaware and alone. Instead, Ame had included me and Skye in her plans at the last minute, flipped the game on its head, and played all of us. These thoughts flashed nearly as quickly as the bullets had torn through Simeon Dread. I glanced at his body and saw two new holes in his head. His eyes stared at the ceiling, but the shine in them was gone.

I didn't hesitate to check my guesses with the Ghost or to even check to see if she was still alive. Instead, I chased Veronica. She was now my only hope of finding answering to my questions or at least verifying my theories.

Plus, she had stolen the satisfaction of killing Dread from me, so she owed me as much.

An open door and the sound of fleeing footfalls led me to stairs that went up. Veronica was headed for the roof, and it took me only a second to figure out that her destination was Dread's private helicopter. If she had planned on assassinating Dread then she probably had put together an escape plan in case of failure. Already I could hear the start of a motor and the chopping whir of helicopter blades as they warmed for liftoff. I took the stairs three-at-a-time, the sound of my footsteps already drowned by the roar of the vehicle.

I leapt through the open roof access doorway and nearly lost my head, decapitated by the spitting staccato of machine gun spray. One of Dread's men stood outside the copter, and apparently, he had been waiting for me. He looked to be the kind of tool who wore sunglasses at night, his hair shining with product in the silver rays of the moon. It didn't help his aim. No doubt Veronica had chosen him due to the size of his dick rather than lesser qualities such as capability or simple competency. I threw up my arm, squeezed a finger, and put a bullet through the front of one lens of his sunglasses and the back of his head. He staggered, fell. Shame to ruin such perfect hair.

The bodyguard had, in death, succeeded in his mission to keep me from reaching Veronica. Already seated beside the pilot in the small helicopter, I saw her blow me a kiss as the vehicle began to rise. My entire body vibrated to the beat of the whirring helicopter blades. I put two bullets into the glass in front of the pilot, but they ricocheted harmlessly into the night. I cursed. Apparently, I'd need a bigger or meaner weapon to deal a death's blow.

Fuck it, I thought and emptied my weapon. Cracks on the windshield spider-webbed but little else.The chopper continued to rise, and now I had an impotent gun. I went ahead and threw that at the glass, too. It bounced off and went flipping into the darkness. Again, I cursed, empty-handed.

"Allow me," Ame said, and I turned to discover her standing alongside me. She had something big, black, and bulky in her hands. I didn't get a great look at it, but it looked like an assault rifle on steroids. I know a good amount about small and light firearms and a little about rifles, but this did not fit any of those descriptions. It appeared to be something experimental or so new that it hadn't appeared in Hollywood action movies yet. I don't know where she found it. Maybe she went back to the guard floor or maybe she knew about a secret cache of Dread's as well as how to access it. Either way, Amunet a.k.a. The Black Ghost fired before I could stop her. She had never looked more like a Greek goddess, and her gun agreed, thundering like Zeus splitting the heavens with the largest lightening bolt of all time.

The front of the helicopter seemed to simultaneously crumple and explode, along with my hopes of getting any answers from Veronica Dread. Much faster than its ascent, the meteoric ball of metal and fire hurdled down, and I was thrown backwards in a roaring wave of heat. The helicopter hit the roof and exploded again. It landed on the body of the hunky bodyguard, squishing him, ruining his expensive suit along with everything else. Covered in fresh grime and dirt, I tumbled across the rooftop like dust bunny caught in a high wind, clawing for purchase amidst the cement and stone. I slid to an aching, throbbing stop about three feet from the ledge of the roof.

Black smoke obscured sight in a hellish fog. I crawled to the small wall at the roof's edge and pulled myself to my feet. Flaming debris lit the area around me like obscene Chinese lamps. I rubbed my eyes, and a wavering form took shape. Standing on the far ledge adjacent to me, the Ghost aimed her rappel gun into the night. Her hair drifted on the hot breeze of the ravaged, burning helicopter.

"Amunet!" I cried.

"Forgive me," she called over her shoulder. Her eyes shone orange and black in the reflection of the wreckage. "If it makes you feel any better, I hope you make it out alive." She turned. The rappel gun fired. A taut, spiderweb-line flew from it. I stumbled towards her. It didn't matter that she had played me and the Dreads against one another; I had expected something along those lines from the start. The Ghost was my last chance at answers. She could explain her argument with Veronica, why the Ghost had hid the fact she was Dread's security chief, and perhaps why Veronica had killed her husband in cold blood. She could not get away. I forced my wobbly legs to move more quickly underneath me. My right knee almost gave way, but I shook it off, accelerated.

The Ghost checked her line's stability. Satisfied, she attached it to her belt with a metal clip. I wasn't going to reach her in time, but I didn't-- couldn't-- stop. She looked over at me and gave me a nod. "Good luck," she offered and swung from the roof.

I fell to my knees. With the dramatic deaths of the Dreads and the escape of the Ghost, I felt the last thread, the last chance of finding Sheila, snap and disappear into the sky, trailing the fire's fading, red embers.

At the place where Amunet had stood a moment before, I hissed, "Fucking Batgirl!"

Somehow, it made me feel a tiny bit better.

***

I didn't stay on my knees for long. My fight-or-flight response kicked in, and since there was no one left to fight, I kicked my ass into gear and got moving. I took Dread's personal elevator to the third floor, praying that it didn't shut down in the aftermath of the helicopter crash. I figured the penthouse had been reinforced in case of such an attack, albeit with one in mind of the more mundane underground-criminal-world kind a la Godfather III.

On the third floor, I exited the elevator, found the fire exit stairs, and left in a mass of confused, panicked people. I figured it would not do to be seen on Dread's private elevator by too many eyes once someone discovered Simeon Dread had been assassinated in his office. People exchanged tentative-but-knowing rumors that Dread Tower had been hit by another terrorist attack. After all, the building now stood as the Western World's symbolic statement of the power of the dollar which drew extremists like honey draws flies or like the late Veronica Dread drew boners.

I walked a few blocks before catching a cab since pandemonium reigned outside Dread Tower and it gave me a chance to do some thinking.

It was now clear that the Ghost had been a part of a scheme with the Dreads as well as between the Dreads. Simeon had admitted hiring the Ghost to kill me, then changing his mind, later to keep me "busy" and out of his hair while he tangled with my old man. Veronica had ambitious plans of her own so had attempted to turn the Ghost against Simeon, but this must not have worked out the way either woman wanted it. Veronica had personally taken it upon herself to murder her husband and then attempted to turn her gun on the Ghost. Maybe to pin Simeon's murder on the Ghost, so Veronica could assume ownership of Dread Incorporated? Clearly, she had an escape plan involving the helicopter. Maybe she had planned to torch the security floor and the penthouse from afar in an attempt to truly make it appear to be a terrorist attack on the Tower. Clearly, Veronica had underestimated the Ghost's intelligence and ability. Now Veronica was a burnt heap of smoldering hair and flesh, indistinguishable amongst a tangle of twisted metal wreckage. Shame for such enviable female cleavage to be lost in the sands of time and to the fires of vengeance.

To be honest, the entire Dread-Ghost triangle was of secondary consequence to me. I was most concerned with how Sheila and her mock-kidnapping/the real murder of her uncle fit with everything else that had happened to me. Before becoming a shooting-range dummy, Simeon said that he had hired Sheila to (in my words) fuck me and file reports to him. He also told me that Sheila had later refused to do her job. Why? Had she found true feelings for me and couldn't force herself to be betray me to Dread? Wishful thinking, probably, but Dread wouldn't have kidnapped and killed her for that; he would have simply stopped paying her. She couldn't go to the police or even to me without destroying the lie on which she had built our relationship. Had our relationship truly meant something to her? I remembered the way she looked into my eyes, and like a true sap, I thought so, yes. I also believed Dread when he said he had nothing to do with Sheila's abduction.

Who had the balls to offend and assault me directly? Who would benefit from taking Sheila away from me? Who had the gall to sacrifice a half dozen men at The Deep End just to distract me? Who was cold enough to order the murder of Sheila's uncle just to cover his or her tracks?

Then it hit me. The answer to my questions was... the same kind of man who was evil enough to mold his own son into an instrument of immoral destruction, who would use his son as a sociopathic contract killer. The kind of Machiavellian schemer who would play dumb for decades just so that his son would constantly underestimate the rotten, black, dead piece of shit that served for the man's heart.

Pops.

***

The nice thing about confronting the old man was that I didn't have to kill my way to him. Most of the men between him and me were people I considered the closest things I had to friends. They offered me consoling words, knowing that the loss of Sheila was still fresh and little hope was held for her recovery. Did any of them know that Sheila had been stashed away by the old man? Had some of them even helped secure her? It didn't seem likely. The old man was too smart for that, and I felt that a lot of these guys liked me enough that they would have difficulty fucking me in the ass that hard. Apparently, Pops had no such reservations.

He was in the living room, reading a dime romance novel-- he liked to read the dirty parts aloud-- and watching a reality show about catching people in wife beaters or too-short tank tops cheating on one another. The masquerade Pops put on for me had never seemed so obvious, and I cursed myself for not having seen through it sooner. No man capable of building such a powerful illegal empire could be so obviously and obnoxiously stupid. I had assumed he was an eccentric who had gotten lucky, but this explanation was superficial and built on childish, familial assumptions. I knew I was smarter than that, or at least, I thought I was.

Maybe it was time for a real in-depth self evaluation.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," the old man mumbled. "I usually don't see you outside of allowance day. To what do I owe this honor?"

"Cut that fucking bullshit," I said and took a seat on a leather couch. "Just tell me why."

Pops placed the paperback on an end table, smiled, and said, "Be more specific."

Within the couch, Pops had most likely hidden a gun. He had a habit of stashing small caches all over the house since his ability to deceive was only matched by his paranoia. I knew at least that much held true regarding dear old dad, so I crossed my arms and allowed my hand to slip a bit past the mock cushion. In answer to his question, I stated one word: "Sheila."

Pops cleared his throat, reached over to grab the remote, and turned off the television. The protests of a high-pitched, overweight trailer park woman were cut off mid-sentence.

"Veronica Dread came to me," he said, and his foolish facade metamorphosed. In its place reposed a reptilian, Machiavellian countenance which suffered no fool. "She wanted it all. Dread's power, his money, his very life. She offered a partnership. The proposal reeked of opportunity. I could not pass it up."

He spoke freely, despite our mutual paranoia. The house was a fortress, staffed only by the most vetted, most trusted men. Pops still had it periodically swept for bugs, but this was more for tradition's sake. The days of secreting a listening device into criminals' televisions had long past. Agents of various government branches were much more likely to hack email or listen to cellular phone calls. Right, NSA?

His words made it clear why Veronica had been embezzling from her husband. She'd been financing a campaign for Simeon's total destruction at the hands of his enemies. I wondered how Mrs. Dread currently fared in hell and how long it had taken before she blew Mephistopheles. Meanwhile Pops kept talking. Apparently, his penchant for exposition had been another truthful aspect of his character.

"I designed a plan to destroy the Dreads, and the first step was to connect you to Veronica. I told her to get you to trust her with the ultimate goal of hiring you to assassinate Simeon. She proposed having you murder her brother. She was to witness the crime, confront you, gain your trust, and set you on a path which led to her husband."

It had worked like a charm. I said nothing and let the coldblooded crocodile who wore my father's face continue.

"Veronica had persuaded Simeon that you might be the weak link in the organization." At this, Pops smiled without humor. "Considering the familial connection and that fathers often have soft spots for their sons." The smile let me know my own father had no such feelings. "They approached a young woman, your Sheila, and paid her to manufacture an excuse to initiate a relationship with you. Obviously, the idea was that she would feed information to the Dreads, except that proved fruitless because you'd tell her nothing of your own crimes and you know next-to-nothing of mine. In any case, it seems that vivacious young Sheila became attached to you and started to refuse to tell the Dreads anything.

"When I, myself, learned that my psychopathic son had engaged in a legitimate romantic relationship, I realized that Veronica had been correct in spite of her childishly manipulative vapidity. You were the weak link my organization. What is the use of a emotionless killer who discovers he does, in fact, have emotions?"

He told me this without averting his eyes. He was guiltless. Business came first, then family. Sometimes family, not at all. I kept my poker face and remained motionless. My finger touched metal and rubber-- a grip. I had already known that I meant little to Pops but a killing machine, one that had a sole purpose and one that would be useless if its purpose was compromised. I was expendable. Hearing it from his own lips still stung, but I couldn't let it show. I had Sheila to think about.

Pops said, "That is when I hired the Black Ghost to kill you. I told you that she was after me, a ruse to lure you to your demise. When she failed, I believed that perhaps I had been hasty in my conclusion. You still might be of use if you could go toe-to-toe with the Ghost and escape with your life.

"At this point, I surmise that Simeon Dread became suspicious and somehow divined a connection either between Veronica and you or Veronica and me. I am not sure how he was tipped off. My guess is that the Black Ghost suggested it. After hearing of your escape, Veronica Dread no doubt let something slip to her husband, and Simeon met with the Ghost. He also met with you. I believe these meetings were on the same night, the night of the Dread Tower fiasco. The first one. It is after these meetings that Simeon seems to have somehow grown wary of his wife and her machinations. As Dread's bodyguards were little more than hapless gorillas in suits, or rather... tuxedos, I believe he hired the Black Ghost under the impression that she would keep him safe, at least from his wife. Clearly, this did not go as he planned."