Then someone deliberately ran into him from behind.
He felt the brush of a shoulder against his back before the assailant committed their full weight to the charge. When it came down to reaction speed, there was a staggering difference between himself and 99.9% of the general population. So he understood what was happening in a millisecond and tensed up like a coiled spring, rooting himself in place. The shoulder became forceful as someone tried to shove him off the platform, but now he sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.
He felt the force reverberate back into the guy’s shoulder, sending the assailant stumbling backward.
Slater turned around.
Saw a young good-looking kid, probably only a hair older than twenty, his eyes clouded with drink, his lips spread in an ugly smirk. He was everything Slater hated about New York. Not from the city, just visiting, treating Manhattan as a plaything to use and discard. Probably had a rich dad back home — wherever home was. The lighting was dark and pulsating, but Slater guessed he was Mexican.
Before Slater could use rational thinking to remember who the richest people in Mexico were, he reached out and snatched the guy by the throat and wiped the smirk right off his face.
Slater dug his fingers into the trachea, making him gasp for air. The kid’s long eyelashes batted several times over as he gasped and clawed at Slater’s muscled forearm.
But it was like slapping wet putty against concrete.
Slater had never seen a reaction quite like what came next. At least five men in suits poured out of the booth next to Slater’s like they’d been electrocuted. They were all in various states of panic. Wide-eyed, tight-lipped, cold-gazed. Hard cruel men, the lot of them. Slater instantly recognised their kind.
Then he made the connection, and released his grip on what he imagined was the son of a powerful cartel kingpin across the border.
The music boomed and thrummed through the space, drowning out any conversation that wasn’t shouted, so the scene played out before him like a silent movie. They surrounded the kid, who was pale and shaky and had red marks on his neck from Slater’s grip. They hustled him back toward the booth and then squared up to Slater in a tight procession, all equally angry.
Slater knew a single moment of weakness could get him mobbed in a situation like this, especially when alcohol was involved. Genetic reflexes meant nothing when he was curled up under five bodies, getting the living shit kicked out of him.
So he moved like he’d been electrocuted too.
Jerked forward with fast-twitch muscle fibres of a pro football player.
He shoved the closest guy so hard that the man came off his feet instantly, as if he’d been hit by a car. The guy toppled back into two of his buddies, who had to use all their attention to catch him and keep him upright. Slater used the next half-second to lunge sideways and seize hold of the fourth man, grabbing him by the lapels with a level of intensity he probably hadn’t felt in a long time. Slater used the moment of hesitation to push him backward, even harder than the first shove. The guy went sideways, crashed into the fifth man, and both of them went down in a heap.
Slater immediately turned back to the original trio, who were still scrambling for balance. He came within half a foot of them and then stopped short before they had fully righted themselves.
Above the roar of the music he yelled, ‘Let’s cool it.’
They didn’t react.
But they didn’t try to fight him.
He’d demonstrated a level of power they weren’t accustomed to.
‘I respect who you are,’ Slater yelled. ‘You should respect me. You saw what the kid did. I was well within my rights to react.’
No response from the suits.
Just the steady flow of drunk patrons all around them, and the deep vibrations of the bass thumping through the club. Sure, there’d been a sudden altercation right near the VIP booths, but it had happened fast. And it hadn’t escalated. This wasn’t a drunken brawl. It was a tense negotiation between two parties well-accustomed to violence. Not a group of inebriated finance yuppies swinging haymakers at each other because their day jobs didn’t let them channel their cooped-up aggression into something productive.
Slater stepped in closer and said, ‘How do you want this to go?’
‘We need to set an example,’ the first guy he’d shoved said. ‘We can’t be made to look like that. Not here.’
‘But you can tell I’m going to be a problem. Or you would have tried something already.’
‘It’s better for everyone if we don’t start a brawl.’
‘Then go babysit your child,’ Slater said. ‘Pleasure doing business with you.’
Reluctantly, the group of five trickled back toward their booth. It didn’t happen all at once — there was too much unaddressed machismo in the air. These men were enforcers for a drug lord. That carried certain expectations in and of itself. But Slater had ample experience with the cartels, and he wouldn’t be shy if it came to conflict. There wasn’t a bone in his body that would waver, even if it meant waging war with the entire faction out of a simple inability to back down.
And they could sense that.
So they backed down first.
Then the kid with the long hair and the ugly smirk shouldered past all five of them, drew a Colt M1911 from a holster underneath his suit jacket, and pointed it square between Slater’s eyes.
7
Rory said, ‘Off the books?’
King said, ‘Yes.’
‘Black operations?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you ever in the military?’
‘A long, long time ago.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was pulled out of the traditional military structure only a few years into my twenties. People far smarter than me identified certain talents in me. I’m genetically gifted.’
‘With your athleticism?’
King shook his head. ‘There’s no shortage of athletes. It was always
