Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) by Ben Bequer, Joshua Hoade
Authors: Ben Bequer, Joshua Hoade
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There were guys lighting cities on fire, killing supers and their families in their homes. Coming after me would be stupid.
I had options and opportunity. It had been at least a day and still nobody had come looking. Maybe the plane going down had not been intentional, but something had happened to hide it from people who would be looking. There was no way the plane wasn’t being tracked. Maybe Haha had orchestrated the whole thing so that my doppelganger would have the optimal chance at killing me. I wouldn’t put it past him. Worst case scenario, I had a day, maybe less.
I also had some money stashed away, money not even Sandy knew about. Trust was never an issue between Sandy and me, because I never trusted him. He had been a good lawyer and maybe, eventually, a friend, but one of the few things I know about myself is that nobody ever gets the whole truth. I always keep a little back. In this case a little consisted of an account hidden so deep that the only record of its existence was a twenty-two digit account passcode I had memorized. Hey, it’s not paranoia if they are, in fact, after you.
It wasn’t a fortune, but certainly enough to live like a king somewhere south of the equator or east of extradition. A village or small city deep in South America, dark-skinned beauties more concerned with my pockets than my past. My Spanish wasn’t bad, and I had always wanted to learn Portuguese.
I trudged forward, content that there was something approximating a plan. Something nagged at me though. Haha had dressed some impostor as me and used him to kill a bunch of people. I won’t call them innocent. Nobody is innocent, but these guys were at least professional. They had families, or if not that then people who cared for them. The question I kept coming back to was how many more? Who else would suffer for his vendetta? If I went into hiding, what would Haha do to draw me out?
If I turned myself in, there would be no discussion. I would be neatly squared away in whatever deepest, darkest pit they could find. That was assuming I allowed them to imprison me. The thought of creating more widows and orphans didn’t appeal to me as I strode across the countryside, but anyone trying to strap a pair of those goddamn manacles on me would be courting death. Anything I said would be construed as desperation, and that wouldn’t have been totally inaccurate. Of course, with me in prison, anything Blackjack 2.0 did couldn’t be attributed to me, but that silver lining was quite dull to me.
No.
I couldn’t allow it. This ridiculous little game he had started was bound to cause more damage, and that was hinging on the fleeting idea that Haha would keep it small. Lack of ambition was never Haha’s problem. He and that poseur masquerading as me would both need to be taken off the board, and I was probably the only thing on Earth who understood his warped sensibilities enough to try.
Once they were dealt with, I would surrender.
Maybe.
Or maybe I would drop Blackjack 2.0 off on their doorstep along with a virus to wipe Haha from existence, and make them beg me to accept a pardon. They thought I was a marionette whose strings they could pull? I would make them understand that working with me was a better option than being garroted by those strings.
* * * *
I ran up a promontory rock enough to see the peninsula stretched for miles, then swept back to a shoreline where a few small villages lay. I moved as fast as my shoes could carry me over the rocky ground, climbing down the side of the rocky outcropping and down to a sandy shore that stretched for a hundred miles.
The nearest structure was an abandoned shack, wooden roof sunken in, emptied and devoid of any food or clothing. A few miles off was another small shack, and several men stood by a low rocky wall that surrounded their land, watching my approach. One of them scooted inside and
I had options and opportunity. It had been at least a day and still nobody had come looking. Maybe the plane going down had not been intentional, but something had happened to hide it from people who would be looking. There was no way the plane wasn’t being tracked. Maybe Haha had orchestrated the whole thing so that my doppelganger would have the optimal chance at killing me. I wouldn’t put it past him. Worst case scenario, I had a day, maybe less.
I also had some money stashed away, money not even Sandy knew about. Trust was never an issue between Sandy and me, because I never trusted him. He had been a good lawyer and maybe, eventually, a friend, but one of the few things I know about myself is that nobody ever gets the whole truth. I always keep a little back. In this case a little consisted of an account hidden so deep that the only record of its existence was a twenty-two digit account passcode I had memorized. Hey, it’s not paranoia if they are, in fact, after you.
It wasn’t a fortune, but certainly enough to live like a king somewhere south of the equator or east of extradition. A village or small city deep in South America, dark-skinned beauties more concerned with my pockets than my past. My Spanish wasn’t bad, and I had always wanted to learn Portuguese.
I trudged forward, content that there was something approximating a plan. Something nagged at me though. Haha had dressed some impostor as me and used him to kill a bunch of people. I won’t call them innocent. Nobody is innocent, but these guys were at least professional. They had families, or if not that then people who cared for them. The question I kept coming back to was how many more? Who else would suffer for his vendetta? If I went into hiding, what would Haha do to draw me out?
If I turned myself in, there would be no discussion. I would be neatly squared away in whatever deepest, darkest pit they could find. That was assuming I allowed them to imprison me. The thought of creating more widows and orphans didn’t appeal to me as I strode across the countryside, but anyone trying to strap a pair of those goddamn manacles on me would be courting death. Anything I said would be construed as desperation, and that wouldn’t have been totally inaccurate. Of course, with me in prison, anything Blackjack 2.0 did couldn’t be attributed to me, but that silver lining was quite dull to me.
No.
I couldn’t allow it. This ridiculous little game he had started was bound to cause more damage, and that was hinging on the fleeting idea that Haha would keep it small. Lack of ambition was never Haha’s problem. He and that poseur masquerading as me would both need to be taken off the board, and I was probably the only thing on Earth who understood his warped sensibilities enough to try.
Once they were dealt with, I would surrender.
Maybe.
Or maybe I would drop Blackjack 2.0 off on their doorstep along with a virus to wipe Haha from existence, and make them beg me to accept a pardon. They thought I was a marionette whose strings they could pull? I would make them understand that working with me was a better option than being garroted by those strings.
* * * *
I ran up a promontory rock enough to see the peninsula stretched for miles, then swept back to a shoreline where a few small villages lay. I moved as fast as my shoes could carry me over the rocky ground, climbing down the side of the rocky outcropping and down to a sandy shore that stretched for a hundred miles.
The nearest structure was an abandoned shack, wooden roof sunken in, emptied and devoid of any food or clothing. A few miles off was another small shack, and several men stood by a low rocky wall that surrounded their land, watching my approach. One of them scooted inside and
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