The Hidden_A Black Force Thriller Read online

  In fact, he almost welcomed a brazen attack.

  It wouldn’t end well for whoever opted to approach.

  He employed the same detailed strategy as the rest of the operations he’d undertaken for Black Force — he simply forced the finer details from his mind and relied on sheer momentum.

  It had worked well for him so far.

  He hoped it held such unbelievable results in future.

  Although something told him it would put him in a shallow grave.

  The construction site was unmistakable — Slater spotted the half-finished skyscraper immediately, awkwardly slotted into an enormous stretch of land between two shiny new buildings. He checked his phone, unsurprised that Lars had made no further attempts to contact him. Over the course of their shaky history, a rapport had been established between the two men that suited Slater just fine. He hadn’t fit into the traditional military structure — in fact, Lars revealed that Slater had been days away from a dishonourable discharge before Black Force made their offer.

  Slater had talent — there was no doubt about that.

  But he worked best when the situation walked the fine line between right and wrong, the morally grey area that black operatives needed to live in. Their work was suppressed, their existence denied, and that suited Slater just fine.

  Grateful that he wasn’t decked out in designer clothing — it would be hard to pass himself off as a vagrant otherwise — Slater stepped up onto the barren sidewalk in front of the construction site and set to work ruining his appearance. He stood in the lee of the enormous building, dwarfed by rusting scaffolding and metal walkways twisting skyward in an urban amalgamation of steel. It seemed like no-one had stepped foot in the structure in years. The entire skyscraper lay shrouded in darkness, its edges barely illuminated by the weak street lights.

  Slater hefted a jagged piece of metal off the ground and stabbed holes in his clothing at random, taking care not to cut himself at risk of succumbing to a cocktail of infectious diseases.

  Then it became a waiting game, something he considered himself adept at. He tossed the piece of metal back to the ground and scooped a heap of gravel and dust into his palm, wiping it over his face to convey a certain look. He always kept his hair in a simple buzzcut, but if it had been grown out he would have tussled it up.

  Many of the details concerning Ray D’Agostino and his involvement in something sinister were a mystery to Slater, but that was the way he preferred it. If Slater was to act like a homeless beggar in the hopes of getting arrested, he would rather be kept in the dark, allowing himself to make things up on the fly. If every part of the operation had been planned in painstaking detail, it wouldn’t have meshed with Slater’s natural tendencies.

  Lars had come to learn that over their brief shared history, so now his handler let him do what he wanted.

  Which, in this case, consisted of planting himself down in the dirt and leaning back against a partly finished brick wall. He let his head fall back against the scratchy surface, and there he waited.

  In full view of pedestrians and passing traffic.

  There wasn’t much to look at.

  The occasional vehicle trundled past, but none seemed to take any interest whatsoever in the vagrant sprawled out across the sidewalk. Slater imagined there were thousands of similar sights across Chicago — homelessness was not a rarity in this city. He kept still and made sure to break out in drunken mumbling whenever a pedestrian ambled by, which didn’t happen often. On the rare occurrences that it did, the passersby made a beeline across the street to avoid him.

  The minutes blurred into hours, and Slater felt right at home. He could wait all night, if that was what it took. In the field an operative sees what he’s truly made of, and Slater had come to learn that he could put himself through almost anything if he had a clear goal in mind.

  Right now, it was to find out whatever the hell D’Agostino’s deal was.

  So when he spotted the first patrol vehicle after at least two hours of inactivity, he made sure to roar an obscenity at the police car and flip two middle fingers in its direction. It crawled slowly past, its windows tinted and its pace measured, sporting the insignia of the Chicago Police Department on the side of the sedan.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t stop.

  Slater settled back into a seated position as the patrol car disappeared into the night.

  Odd, he thought.

  Ninety nine times out of one hundred, that would have kicked up enough of a fuss to warrant an arrest, especially considering the stereotype he was portraying. It didn’t take much in this day and age.

  Slater stewed silently, annoyed that he hadn’t been able to capitalise on such a wide opening. But if he had proven anything to himself over the last six months, it was his unwavering stubbornness. So he stayed sprawled across the sidewalk, overshadowed by the enormous construction site behind him. He would wait days, if that was what it took. Surely another patrol car would approach within the next few hours.

  Then, not twenty minutes later, he heard a screaming siren in the distance, approaching fast.

  Making a beeline toward his position.

  He sat up and realised the initial patrol car hadn’t stopped for a reason.

  6

  This was D’Agostino’s area.

  Whatever that meant.

  Whatever that implied.

  Slater pieced it all together in an instant, even before the Chicago P.D. sedan screamed around the corner, its lights sending blue and red waves across the surrounding buildings. The street was a ghost town — the cops had picked the perfect time to make the arrest if they had sinister intentions. There wasn’t a passing pedestrian or civilian vehicle in sight.

  No witnesses.

  If it was D’Agostino, then all Slater’s suspicious would be confirmed.

  Slater briefly thought about the fact that he still had his phone in his pocket. He had ample opportunity to discard it, simply turning around and throwing it into the bowels of the construction site, but there was nothing damaging on the device. It had been sealed with military-grade encryption, and all the data that Slater processed from Lars was wiped off the phone within two minutes of receiving it. And in this era, it was perfectly acceptable for a homeless man to carry a cellphone. They were considered more important than housing to some.

  So he kept the phone in his pocket and tucked his knees to his chest, waiting for the police sedan to screech to a halt across the sidewalk in front of him.

  Which was exactly what happened.

  A man leapt out of the passenger’s seat even before the vehicle had come to a standstill. His black jacket hung over a muscular frame — the guy had good genetics, but it seemed he’d combined that with a solid workout regime.

  It was D’Agostino, alright.

  The guy was Italian, in his late thirties with a sturdy jawline and short, close-cropped jet black hair. He moved with athleticism as he crossed from the sedan to the pavement in front of Slater. As he moved, Slater realised there was something else there.

  Something more than simple agility.

  This guy was moving like a man possessed.

  Like a man caught in the act.

  But what act?

  Why was he so desperate to yank homeless men off the streets in this exact location?

  Slater figured he’d find out soon enough.

  ‘What’s up, brother?’ Slater said, louder than he should have, taking the time to stumble on his words.

  D’Agostino said nothing. He bent down, wrapped a powerful hand around the back of Slater’s neck, and hauled him to his feet. Slater figured he could have broken twelve bones in the space of three seconds if he so desired, but he had a role to play, and that role involved drunkenness and carelessness.

  So he allowed himself to be manhandled.

  For now.

  D’Agostino shoved him hard in the back, pinning his chest against the brick wall. Slater grunted and played up his outrage. ‘Whoa! What’
s this for? Get off me, man. What the hell is this?’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ D’Agostino snarled.

  ‘That doesn’t sound like the Miranda rights.’

  Slater had been expecting the use of unnecessary force, but not quite to the extent of what followed. D’Agostino utilised his strength to shove an elbow into the back of Slater’s neck, sending him face first into the wall. The crack that followed sunk through his brain, delivering a staggering bolt of agony along with it. Slater paused in time, making sure to keep his feet underneath him even though his knees grew weak. The pain was horrendous, but it peaked at the initial break. When the blood started to flow out of his nose, he brought himself back under control.

  For a terrifying moment, he’d almost lost control of his restraint.

  Then there would have been a body in the street, and an entire district of cops seeking justice for their commander.

  ‘You think any of that matters?’ D’Agostino spat. ‘Look at you.’

  ‘Not cool, man,’ Slater mumbled through bloody lips, even though he wanted to do a whole lot more than talk.

  But the operation trumped everything else. So he stood quiet, shoulders slumped so D’Agostino couldn’t get a proper look at his physique. The big commander yanked Slater’s arms behind his back and fastened them together with steel handcuffs, clamping down a couple of extra notches to cause maximum discomfort.

  Slater squirmed, but said nothing.

  ‘What am I under arrest for?’ he said, trying not to spit blood over D’Agostino as the man turned him around to face him.

  ‘Whatever I say you’re under arrest for.’

  ‘I’m just trying to sleep out here, man.’

  ‘Wrong place to sleep.’

  ‘Why?’

  D’Agostino said nothing. His face had turned to stone. He hauled Slater across the sidewalk and shoved him into the back of the squad car. The passenger — an unimpressive small white man in his early thirties with a badge on his uniform — opened the rear door to receive Slater. As Slater stumbled past him, the guy stared at the ground, refusing to make eye contact.

  Implicit in the abuse, but unwilling to say anything.

  No spine, Slater thought as D’Agostino crammed him into the seat.

  He didn’t need to play along for D’Agostino to haul him around. The commander had serious strength — Slater wondered if he was a recreational powerlifter — and he yanked Slater left and right with ease. The commander slammed the door on Slater and the pair of cops slotted back into their places — D’Agostino in the passenger’s seat, the other guy in the driver’s.

  Slater wondered how long it would take them to get back to the station.

  As the sedan peeled off the sidewalk, Slater let the blood from his broken nose flow over his cotton shirt. The garment had already been ruined, but the crimson wave added insult to injury. He watched D’Agostino like a hawk — even though the sedan’s cabin lay shrouded in darkness, enough of a glow from the streetlights filtered in to make out the commander’s facial features.

  D’Agostino didn’t take his eyes off the unfinished skyscraper as the sedan accelerated down the street.

  Only when they rounded the corner did he turn his attention back to the road ahead.

  Slater masked a wry smile.

  Police brutality was an issue, but not something a Black Force agent was ordinarily tasked with investigating. But police brutality in order to hide something darker…

  Slater remembered the way D’Agostino had acted around the construction site.

  Like an addict protecting his stash.

  Got you, you bastard, Slater thought.

  He gave himself the mental permission to use force if the situation required it, and then he sat back and waited for the madness to ensue.

  7

  Alone with his thoughts in the back of the sedan, separated from D’Agostino and his partner by a mesh screen, Slater had time to piece together what had happened.

  He ignored the throbbing in his nose, even when the pain drilled up through his brain and intensified behind his eyeballs. He’d suffered all manner of grievous injuries before, and this was just another broken bone to compartmentalise and deal with later. His eyes were watering, but he ignored it. He focused on what he could control.

  The initial patrol car had spotted him. At first he’d thought they’d foolishly passed him by, but D’Agostino must have specifically requested to be notified of any vagrants hanging around that area. It was something to do with the construction site — Slater was sure of it. The pace at which D’Agostino had hauled him off the sidewalk and put him in handcuffs wasn’t a normal response to a squatter. Slater hadn’t even done anything inherently hostile — not yet, anyway.

  He would give D’Agostino reason to fight back soon.

  By then it would be too late for the police commander to do anything anyway.

  But he needed more information. Either through provoking the man, or striking up an innocent conversation that managed to whittle out some more details. Slater didn’t figure D’Agostino would let anything incriminating slip out, so option number one seemed to be the best choice.

  Piss him off.

  ‘You sure pulled me in quick, man,’ he mumbled through the metal screen. ‘Almost like you got something to hide, hey? What are you hiding, brother?’

  He conveyed the ramblings like that of a mindless drunk, but he wondered if D’Agostino would jump at the accusation.

  Sure enough, the commander twisted in his seat and pushed the barrel of his Glock semi-automatic sidearm against a gap in the screen. ‘One more word out of you…’

  Slater feigned terror. ‘Hey! Relax, buddy. Relax.’

  ‘I told you to shut up.’

  ‘You can’t kill me, you know? That ain’t legal.’

  D’Agostino glanced across at his partner and laughed, an attempt at a mocking display, but it wasn’t genuine. Slater saw right through it, saw the panic suppressed behind the man’s eyes. D’Agostino was playing the bad cop, but he wasn’t doing it because he wanted to. He was doing it to distract from something else.

  Something his partner didn’t know about, it seemed.

  The other cop would turn a blind eye to D’Agostino’s over-the-top measures, but he didn’t know the reasons for them.

  Slater didn’t either, but he knew the commander was cleansing the construction site of vagrants.

  D’Agostino probably didn’t want anyone sniffing around that area.

  Has the other cop clued into that yet?

  Slater decided to test his luck.

  ‘What’s a big time commander like you doing out here, boss?’ he said. ‘This doesn’t seem like your job, man. Why you so interested in me for?’

  D’Agostino sent the Glock’s barrel straight back in the same direction, pointed at Slater’s head again. He didn’t mind. He’d had weapons pointed at him before. He doubted the commander would do it in the sedan. Too messy. Too much clean-up.

  And, even though he’d dished out some violence in front of his partner, Slater didn’t think D’Agostino was ready to kill someone in front of the man. He would do it later, when the station was quiet and attention had died down.

  Slater would be ready for it.

  ‘Point that thing at me all you want,’ Slater said. ‘It’s not scaring me, buddy. As a matter of fact my friend got picked up from that exact place a week ago. One of my old squatting pals. You know what happened to him? I been lookin’ for him.’

  Once again, he laced the drunken outpour with an undercurrent of truth. He was hoping for a visceral reaction, for D’Agostino to order his partner to stop the car and haul Slater out into the middle of the street, demanding the truth about what he knew.

  But none of that happened.

  D’Agostino kept his head screwed on straight, and even though his eyes burned with fury he twisted away from Slater, passing the rambling off as delusional.

  ‘Bums,’ he said to his partner. ‘Fucki
n’ useless, the lot of them.’

  Despite his best efforts, D’Agostino was unable to hide the rage in his voice. It boiled under the surface, threatening to burst out in the sedan. Slater hoped the man could keep it contained until they got to the station.

  He was prepared for whatever would follow.

  8

  The blood had formed clots in Slater’s nostrils by the time the police cruiser rumbled back into the station.

  He sat still and patient with his hands squashed into the small of his back, pinned together by the biting cuffs. The circulation in his wrists had been cut off, so he squirmed from side to side in an attempt to alleviate the pain.

  He channelled the pain into motivation.

  Everything D’Agostino had done to him, he would use to propel him forward.

  And a semblance of a plan was beginning to form in the back of his mind.

  There was no doubt that D’Agostino was involved in something. Suspicion had turned to certainty, at least in Slater’s opinion. The simple act of sitting on the sidewalk outside the construction site had resulted in being hauled off to the station with a broken nose. A completely unnecessary display of force, all carried out by a police commander in charge of an entire district who shouldn’t have been tasked with making arrests like that in the first place.

  Slater knew what was up.

  D’Agostino had instructed any patrol car that spotted loiterers by that particular construction site to contact him immediately. He might have disguised it under the veil of orders from his superiors, but he was paying careful attention to that unfinished skyscraper.

  There was something in there…

  And he was keeping it a secret. Slater could tell by the way he puffed his chest out, pumping himself full of false bravado, as if pulling vagrants off the streets was the most noble cause in existence. All to distract from the fact that he didn’t want someone stepping within a foot of that construction site.

  And he didn’t want his partner to know that was the reason.