Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,87

to get. August swiped the rest of the explosives from August’s vest and checked them out. There were some malleable ones with timed detonators he could—

The door to the kitchen broke. Shouts ensued, and August shut the door to the SUV as quietly as he could, then ducked behind the car right next to it, a gorgeous and rare L88 Coupe version of the 1967 Corvette Stingray. My first star-crossed lover. August quickly set a charge, then reloaded his gun and slunk to the far side of the garage, where he’d get a better view of whichever goon drew the short straw and came in next.

Only it wasn’t a goon.

It was Victor himself.

This was the Victor from the interrogation cellar. Gone was the ridiculous hair and flamboyant laughter. This Victor was lean right down to the bone, his head shaved bald, making him look like a particularly expressive skull. He wore a suit that was way too good for him, and his eyes moved constantly, like a bird of prey tracking its next meal. He held a remote in one hand, and a small wrapped package in the other.

“August,” he called out, a smile on his gruesome face. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot, so to speak. I want to make it up to you—no tricks! Just a friendly chat.” He waggled the remote and the package. “I come to you holding the means of my own devastation. I’ve got enough C-4 in here to blow myself and most of this room up. I’m also holding a dead man’s switch, so if you shoot me—” He mimed a big explosion with his hands. “Boom! You and Ricardo go with me. Not, I think, what either of you have in mind.”

Don’t get distracted. He could hear Ricardo’s voice admonishing him in his head. That’s all this is. Still, he had to take the threat of mutual annihilation seriously. He lowered his weapon and stepped quietly to the next car he could reach.

“How on earth did the two of you come to an accord?” Apparently Victor liked the sound of his own voice enough that he was willing to keep talking, regardless of whether he knew he was being paid attention to or not. “You were supposed to kill each other, for God’s sake. And here I thought for sure the fires of competitiveness would do their work for me. After all, you’re second in line on Rate Your Hit, August. Right ahead of me but behind Torralba. Don’t you want to be first? Don’t you want to be the best?”

There was genuine curiosity in his voice, and hunger too. What had Ricardo said about him? They’d trained together under the same guy, and Victor blamed Ricardo for killing their mentor. Apparently he blamed him enough to try to take him out via patsy, namely August, because…they were supposed to be obsessed with bettering their hitman rankings?

Did this guy not know how many Instagram followers August had?

“You could still have a chance to be the best,” Victor continued. “I see now that I underestimated you. What you lack in professionalism, you more than make up for in your ability to manipulate people. That you could get Ricardo Torralba, of all people, to come play the rescuer…it boggles my mind, it really does. You can go, right now.” He smiled again. “I’ll even tell my men to let you out with no further damage. Just leave Torralba with me. I know he’s wounded, otherwise he’d have shot me already, explosives be damned.

“We all want to be the best at what we do,” Victor said, his voice almost a croon. August set another charge, listening during the brief lulls between Victor’s showboating to the sound of footsteps outside the vast garage door. They were surrounded. Would he risk the lives of his men with a suicide bomb? “This is your only chance to get there, August. Live to fight another day. There’s no other way out for you, and I want to get my hands on Torralba before he dies.” Victor sounded downright eager. “After all, nobody understands him the way I do.”

He might blow his crew up along with him just because he was that much of a narcissist, August concluded sourly. He needed to get himself and Ricardo out of here fast. It was a good thing he’d affixed the explosives to separate triggers on his own remote. They were planted far enough apart that he could nicely