Page 47 of The Kings of Kearny

“I want in on whatever the payback is for this,” I said.

His expression blanked. “What payback?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jakob,” I said. “The Jokers or someone working for them came into the heart of Kearny and trashed the place of a woman they think is dating the son of Liam Larson. I know the Kings won’t let this stand.”

“You’re not a King,” he said. “You don’t get to be in on the payback unless you wear the leathers.”

“No one else beside you will even know I’m there.”

He frowned.

“I was an aerial gunner with one of the best records in the history of my unit,” I said. “Put me somewhere up high with a rifle, and if shit goes sideways, I’ll make sure the Kings get out of there alive.”

He gave me a flat look. “So you’re going to what? Take up position in some building and put bullets through their brains if they come at us?”

Yikes. Why was everything always so extreme with him?

“I was more thinking of through-and-throughs in nonlethal spots that would take them out of a fight,” I said. “I was top of my class in sniper school. I can do it.”

His scowl deepened. “What if you miss? What if they move and end up dying from the wounds? You’re not in the military anymore. These aren’t foreign enemy combatants; they’re American civilians. There’s no government oversight here authorizing the kill. You take one of them out, and you’ll be a murderer.”

There it was, the reason I didn’t judge anyone in the Kings for what they did. Most of them were combat vets. Like me, they’d had their humanity stripped away during war. They’d gazed into the dark core of human nature and learned what brutal, ugly creatures we really were. “Thou shalt not kill” turned into “Actually, it’s okay to kill who we tell you to.”

Authorized slaughter. What a batshit-crazy concept.

When the war was over, we were dumped back into civilian life with laughably inadequate training on how to readjust. Was it any wonder that instead of reacclimating, members of the Kings had found another cause to fight for? Another unit to join? One filled with people just like them, who saw this world with eyes wide open? Anarchy reigned supreme on the battlefield, and even if you left it, it never really left you. Civilization didn’t make much sense after that. We saw it for the thin veneer it was. We knew how little it took to strip it away, and so we’d stopped buying into the bullshit and started living our lives according to our own fucked-up moral compasses.

“I’ve been a murderer since I was twenty,” I told Jakob. “Government authorization never made my kills any easier, and it sure as shit didn’t stop the nightmares. I fought the Russians beside the Ukrainians to keep their country from being dragged back into the new USSR, and you’d damn well better believe that I’ll gladly take out a couple of Jokers if it means I’ll be protecting Kearny.”

He held my gaze for a long moment, and then finally he nodded. “You can be in on it.”

I let out a heavy breath. “Thank you.”

A knock sounded from behind us, followed by a creak as the door swung open. “Krista?”

Jakob and I whipped around. An attractive Latino man in his late twenties stood framed within my doorway. His dark hair was cropped short, and a pair of black-framed glasses perched on his nose. It was my neighbor from across the hall, Raúl. He was a graphic designer who worked from home. Judging by the unsurprised look on his face as he stared at my apartment, he’d been home when someone trashed it.

Jakob stepped beside me. To the untrained eye, he might look relaxed. His posture was loose, hands hanging free by his sides. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him rise onto the balls of his feet, ready to spring. I put a restraining hand on his forearm.

“Hey, Raúl,” I said. “This is Jakob. Jakob, myneighbor,Raúl.”

Jakob eased back to the flats of his feet.

Raúl, unaware of the danger he’d just been in, nodded at Jakob. “Nice to meet you, man.”

Jakob nodded back. “You too.”

“I’m guessing you saw something?” I asked Raúl.

He shook his head. “I heard something. It sounded like you were having a wall knocked out, so I called down to Brad.”

“Brad’s our super,” I told Jakob. I looked back at Raúl. “What’d he say?”

Raúl’s expression darkened. “He said management was finally letting you remodel your kitchen.”

Fucking Brad.

“He was in on it?” Jakob asked, taking a step toward the door.

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