Page 6 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

I don’t fight it anymore. It’s been more than three months now, and I’ve yet to need a nap. As soon as my head hits my pillow at night, I’m out like a light, then a timer could be set, and two hours after that, my eyes would open again, and I’m up.

It’s a blessing because time sleeping is wasted time for a man like me.

But a curse because being awake and alone for twenty-two hours a day wears on a man. I need women to help me pass the time. I need something to do with my mind, food to replace spent energy, and coffee to keep me sharp.

I’ve always been fit, healthy, agile, but now my sleep time is replaced with work, working out, women, and food. I consume thousands of calories in each twenty-four hour period, but I don’t get fat. I eat every hour or turn shaky from hunger. I drink coffee like it’s going extinct; I piss, then I start again.

The doctors never could find out what’s wrong with me, so it was declared an odd byproduct of my injuries and brushed aside. I’m a John Doe with no family and no insurance, so despite their intrigue, I was pushed aside pretty quickly and forgotten about.

Fine by me.

Once that first couple weeks were up and I realized my newfound time, I used it to dig. To dig into Ace, my mysterious friend who drops tips into my email inbox like they’re Tic Tacs. To dig into federal databases and follow the progress of known and unknown military criminals. To follow the progress of a case I worked for eighteen months before I was shot and killed – then brought back, then let go, only to be brought back again by a doctor that wouldn’t take no and a bullet in the brain for an answer.

I’m a “medical miracle.” A one in a trillion survivor of a headshot wound that passed through my skull and missed everything except – apparently – the part of my brain that deals with sleep and appetite.

It turned one switch down, and the other up.

Now people want to know me; they want to interview me; they want to run tests andhelpme find my old identity.

The day I was released from the hospital, I made myself a missing person again; I burrowed in, got an apartment, and here is where I’ve stayed since.

It makes it easier to research dirty fuckers when everyone thinks I’m dead. So I remain a ghost and tick a new guy off as often as I can as I work my way to the top.

I intend to take out the top dog, and by doing so, I’ll make my brother safe.

My ID now says John D. Hamilton; it’s as bland as names come, and throws up no alerts when I have to flash it at a bar or an airport.

But head wound or not, lack of sleep or not, I have no trouble remembering my real name.

I’m Jay Bishop; I turned thirty just last week. I have one brother, one father, and a deceased mother. I have no wife and no woman I would consider myself attached to. I’ve contributed to no children that I know of and have no intention of changing that any time soon.

I used to be an undercover agent, and my last assignment before mydeathwas inside a dirty club where Abel Hayes sold drugs, guns, women, and children. That fucker sold anything he could exchange for money and was unapologetic about the people he hurt in his quest for power.

My job wasn’t an issue, as such. I enjoyed the thrill; I even enjoyed my own slice of power. I’d been an agent most of my adult life and worked hard enough to keep up with my brother’s promotions. Two years younger than him, I wore the responsibility to keep him safe on my shoulders just as surely as he wore the same responsibility toward me. But I couldn’t possibly keep him safe if he slingshot ahead of me in the ranks and left me in his dust, so I worked hard; I took risks, and I kept up until the day we were both shoved onto the same task force.

I’d made it; I earned that rank and the right to run into a room with my brother and our guns drawn.

Drugs. Girls. Guns.

It was always the same thing: some prick wants to hurt people and buy power, so our people would set it up and send us in. We dismantled one outfit only to be thrust into a second assignment within weeks of finishing the first.

Abel Hayes’ club was the second, and though I only wanted to keep up with my brother, I was approached because of my tendency to take risks and get shit done, and while under, I was contracted to go underwhile under.

What do they call those? A double-double agent?

There was a rat in my own organization—there still is—and I didn’t know who was on our side anymore. The only man I worked with that I trusted was my brother, so I stuck close; I covered his back, and I worked to smoke our rat out before he figured us out.

I didn’t even know who my real boss was anymore. Eric DeWhit was our immediate superior. His superior was a dude by the name of Clune, and Clune’s superior was some other fucker who had no clue what it was to work on the streets.

Everything about my career was about the bureaucracy: who to impress, who to answer to, who to make happy—and most of all, who was running for office that particular year.

I didn’t know who my boss was anymore. I didn’t know what my objective was anymore. In my mind, myonlyjob was to keep Kane safe and to bring Abel Hayes down.

In the underworld that Abel belonged to, when you’re undercover and need to earn trust, you’re often told to do things your momma might not approve of.

Have sex with a woman. Kill a man. Dispose of a body. Snort a line of coke.

One time, one line when your choice is to do it or die doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. What damage could one line of cocaine do, especially when they held a gun to your brother’s temple?

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