Page 5 of Rise of the King (Checkmate 5)

Ace knows all.

From: AcesAndEights

Subject: It’s cold as hell, huh?!

I know he adds that subject line to tempt me to open the email. The man I know only asAceknows where I’ve been tonight, what I’ve been doing, who I really am, and who I’m searching for. He knows as much as I know. In fact, he tends to know more, since he’s the brains of our outfit and feeds me the information I need to get my job done.

Ace is the guy who finds assholes like Cole Fenney. He tells me where to find the guy, what time he’ll be there, and what he’s doing there.

Then he’ll tell me how that relates to my mission.

I don’t understand Ace’s motives –why is he helping me? Why does he feed me information? How the fuck did he find me in the first place?But we’ve been in contact for the better part of two years already. He turned up in my email one day with a warning to keep his existence to myself and has neither turned on me, nor fed me shitty intel.

So I keep him, and every scrap of information he sends is taken seriously.

But that doesn’t stop me from dreading his emails.

Testing him, I don’t open it. I stare at it. Stare at it. Stare at it and lift a brow in challenge. He wants to know what happened with Cole. He wants to know what I found out, and though I fully intend to share my findings, I still continue to stare at my computer and sip my coffee.

Something is off aboutAcesAndEights. A man with my experience knows that nothing comes for free; no one has pure intentions, and everything will come back around and demand payment eventually.

So why does he help me?

Pushing away from my desk with a huff, I walk laps around my warehouse apartment and glance out at the dark skyline of a city I don’t ever recall moving to.

I used to be one man, a man with family, a job, a constant craving for women and… other things, and then I woke up a different man, with a different name, in a hospital bed, while a pretty nurse leaned over me and saw to my dressings.

Her tits were more than a handful, and her ass was edible.

My charts said my name was John D. Hamilton, and though I knew that wasn’t true, everyone else rolled with it, so I did too.

Having asparename never hurt anybody before, especially not a man in my field of work, so I ran with the John story. I let them think I have no clue who I am, and I let them foot the bill for months of recovery, surgeries, and physical therapy.

They want to help me remember.

They want me to process my trauma in a “healthy way.”

They want to know what – besides a bullet – is rattling around inside my brain. And they want to know how I can live on two hours sleep a night and not feel tired.

That last one is new to me, a blessing and a curse, that I have no clue how to explain. But the rest, the trauma, the non-existent memory loss, the new city, are non-issues for me. I’m coping exactly how I need to: finding whoever wants to hurt my family is how I cope, and taking them out is how I heal.

From the moment I woke in a hospital several states away from where Ishouldhave been, it was discovered I needed little sleep to function. At first, I called it insomnia. IthoughtI was tired and needed more sleep, so I’d turn over and force myself to lie still. I lay on those hard hospital beds for hours with my eyes clamped shut and my heart pounding because it’s not normal for a guy to sleep so few hours.

Anxiety crawled through my heart because I knew everything that had happened; I remembered everything, but my injuries had me strapped down against my will with no escape until I’d healed. If I couldn’t sleep, then logic was, I couldn’t heal.

And without healing, I wouldn’t be able to help my brother.

Fortunately, it only took a few nights for me to realize that even with so little sleep, I wasn’t tired during the day, so I started pushing my new boundaries.

I’d lie in my bed for eight hours straight at first, because that’s how much sleepnormalpeople need.

Then seven hours.

Then six.

Still, I was only able to sleep two, and the rest would be wasted anxiety and time.

I let it dwindle down to four, then three, and swore it couldn’t be real. I was so sure it would catch up to me, that I’d crash during the day and have to catch up with naps, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t make my body rest for longer than two hours.

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