Killer instinct tom walk.., p.1
Killer Instinct (Tom Walker Book 1), page 1
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Also By Bradley Wright
Tom Walker
Killer Instinct
Holy Water
Alexander King
THE SECRET WEAPON
COLD WAR
MOST WANTED
POWER MOVE
ENEMY LINES
SMOKE SCREEN
SPY RING
Alexander King Prequels
WHISKEY & ROSES
VANQUISH
KING’S RANSOM
KING’S REIGN
SCOURGE
Lawson Raines
WHEN THE MAN COMES AROUND
SHOOTING STAR
Saint Nick
SAINT NICK
SAINT NICK 2
Copyright © 2023 by Bradley Wright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Bradley Wright/King’s Ransom Publishing
www.bradleywrightauthor.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead,
or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
KILLER INSTINCT/Bradley Wright. -- 1st ed. ISBN - 9798387778513
For Danica and Kade. Three 2.
“The very essence of instinct is that it’s followed independently of reason.
Charles Darwin
“If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”
Ralph Emerson
1
As soon as Tom Walker shut the car door, he knew that the three men who’d picked him up were going to have to die. Otherwise, it was going to be him.
It wasn’t the driver sitting in front of Walker who gave it away; he’d known about Jim Randall for a while. He was the big man with the lisp. Intimidating in appearance, but not much more than a driver with a good right hand. It wasn’t Dan Reed in the passenger seat either. With his horseshoe bald spot and his grating Boston accent. Word was he had become more of the guy who handed out the next assignment rather than the cleanup man he used to be.
Walker, however, didn’t know the man in the backseat beside him. All he knew was that it didn’t take three men to deliver an assignment.
Walker was the assignment.
Inside the black Lincoln Continental it was dark. Just as it was outside. Dan had been smoking before they picked Walker up. The stench was still clinging to the interior. He wouldn’t stop fidgeting in his seat because he couldn’t wait to have another. The air conditioning was cold. Jim was the kind of man who’d sweat in a refrigerator. He would be greasy whether it was eighty-five or forty-five. The back of his neck was glistening. It was embarrassing really.
The man beside Walker? He was the professional. His large hands rested flat on his knees as he stared at the back of Dan’s head. He fit the same mold as Walker. Big and strong, but not so much that it took away his agility. It was easy for Walker to spot because for the last twenty years they’d been giving him top dollar to kill the killers. Walker couldn’t help but think that somehow these people had forgotten that that’s what they paid him to do.
Jim had introduced the man in the seat beside Walker as “Trevor Sthimpsthon.” He must be one of their up-and-comers. He was young, but old enough to have more than a few jobs under his belt. He kept his light brown hair trim, same for his midsection. But his broad shoulders were where his intimidation factor came in. The problem this young man had in his current situation was that he didn’t know what he didn’t know. Walker had been the same way when he started. Up to now this young man’s talent had always been enough to survive his dumb decisions, but he had never been in a car with Walker.
The only smart thing they’d done, other than keep the third man a secret until Walker was already in the car, was to make sure they picked him up just outside the airport. It would ensure that Walker had no weapons. Not that he needed any. They should have known that too. But Walker always had his pen with him. It wasn’t some James Bond gadget where a blade slipped out the other end with the push of a button. He used it to write, which he very much liked doing. And the pointed end would be plenty sharp enough to penetrate a man’s flesh. Walker fished it from the band of his watch, down into his left hand without Trevor noticing.
By the body language from the two in the front seats—fidgety and restless—killing him was supposed to happen in the car. Walker was going to have to make his move before they made it to the spot where they were planning to bury him. Every so often the car tires would whoosh as they ran through a puddle. The conversation on the way to pick up Walker had probably been a happy one due to the rain; Dan probably told Jim it would be much easier to dig a hole for Tom Walker when the ground was soft.
They’d been driving for about twenty-five minutes and hadn’t been on a main road for ten. They had crossed the state line into Kentucky just before they turned left. The trees had grown thicker as the road became narrower. Walker needed to pick the right spot to get out of the car. He needed a place to stay for the night and didn’t want to have to walk too far in case he was injured in the car wreck.
“You guys always so talkative?” Walker said.
Both men in front of Walker jumped at the sound of his voice. They were on edge. It was about to happen.
Dan cleared his throat. “Just giving you the courtesy of letting you rest after a long travel day.”
How sweet.
The reason they had given Walker for having him fly into the small regional airport in Huntington, West Virginia, then driving him somewhere out in the sticks in Kentucky was, of course, secrecy. Also because the job they were giving him was supposedly local. That’s supposedly why they’d chosen Walker—he’d grown up in the area. But after what happened last week, Walker knew this day was coming. He couldn’t just stand there and let the organization’s veteran assassin murder a pregnant woman in cold blood. Their favorite assassin was operating outside the only code that mattered to Walker in his violent business: only the bad people die. So their assassin had to die too.
Walker had agreed to traveling to Kentucky because they told him that Karen Maxwell, the head of their little secret organization, would be waiting at the place they were driving him. That she wanted to discuss a raise now that Mitchell was dead. It’s not that he believed that; it was just that he wanted a face-to-face so he could decide how he wanted to handle the situation. Now, that wasn’t important. Since they were going to kill him, it meant they’d chosen to side with a bad man. Walker was no saint, but he’d never willingly accepted a job where he knew good people were the target. He wouldn’t be a part of something like that, even if it was the only job he’d ever known. Besides, it was clear to him that he wasn’t headed to visit the boss at this point, so his choices were limited.
Walker watched the rearview mirror for Jim’s eyes. When he looked over at Trevor beside him, it was time. The pen was ready. Walker hoped his next move wouldn’t break the pen. It writes better than any other he’d found. Ideal situation would have been Trevor on Walker’s left side so Walker wouldn’t have to reach across his body. But Walker had to play the hand he was dealt. If Trevor was quick, he could get to the pistol in his shoulder holster before Walker got all the way to Trevor’s neck. Walker supposed he was about to find out why they chose Trevor to kill him. He had to assume the young man was good.
The road began to veer to the left. In the right corner of the windshield Walker caught a glimpse of a wooden fence in the headlights. The kind of fence that keeps horses in. That meant there would be a barn. Perfect for a night’s rest without disturbing anyone’s sleep. The road straightened back out so Walker jabbed right with his pen. Instead of blocking his attack, Trevor went for his gun. He thought Walker was only throwing a punch. A fatal mistake on Trevor’s part.
His talent wasn’t good enough to overcome his error. He didn’t kill Walker, but he was quick enough to pull the trigger as Walker sank his pen into his carotid artery. His gun fired just as soon as it cleared his leather coat. The first round shot where Walker’s seatbelt connected, unstrapping it. When the seatbelt came loose, it pulled Walker’s arm as he grabbed Trevor’s gun hand, and when Trevor squeezed the trigger again, the second round darted through Walker’s left thigh. Though he was already bleeding out, Trevor pulled the trigger again, but only after Walker was able to redirect the nose of his gun toward the back of Jim’s seat. Trevor was too busy trying to keep the blood inside his body to get off a fourth shot. He wasn’t going to be successful; Walker had hit the artery flush.
Walker’s next move was to brace for impact. Trevor’s third round had gone right through the top of Jim’s neck, who slumped in his seat as his foot went heavy on the accelerator. The engine wound up. The road followed the creek below them on the right and was about to bend back to the left again. But the car wasn’t going to follow. From the passenger seat, Dan was desperately trying to slow the speeding, but it was out of control.
Walker tucked his pen inside the lapel pocket of his coat as he curled up into a ball. Next to him, Trevor was still leaking blood from his neck. As the car sped through the turn, it went airborne. It felt like the wheels of a jetliner lifting from the runway at takeoff. Walker’s body was suspended in midair—rising completely off the seat. Then, with the force of a runaway train, the car slammed into the embankment on the other side of the creek.
2
When Walker’s eyes opened, he stared at what looked like old dusty beams in a barn. It was hard to tell because his vision was blurry and the pain in his head was unlike any he’d ever felt. Like his brain was in a vise and the squeeze would pop it at any moment. The light was faint. That didn’t help. It had a blue hue that seemed a pre-sunrise glow.
He attempted to sit up but fell back immediately. Blinking didn’t much help his sight, but he could see enough to tell that what he was holding was a handful of hay. His senses were overloaded from the ache in his head, but the smell of horses slowly crept in. He couldn’t understand why the hell he was in a barn. And he couldn’t comprehend why the hell he was in so much pain.
A second attempt at sitting up was successful. Then came the pain in his leg, and it was sharp. He wiped at his eyes, but the blurred vision was still coming and going. Walker’s jeans were blood-soaked above the knee. There was a hole straight through his bloody pant leg. When he tested it with a squeeze, it was clear there was a hole in the top of his thigh as well. That wasn’t the strangest part. What really spooked him was that he didn’t even recognize his own hand. What the hell is going on?
Walker rolled his neck to try to work through the pain, but that only brought more.
Where the hell was he?
What the hell happened to him?
Movement helped a bit. He could see clearly around him now. He was lying in an oversize stall, surrounded by square bales of hay. There was a light brown leather messenger bag beside him, sitting alongside a lightweight jacket, neither of which looked familiar. Off in the distance Walker thought he could hear a buzzing sound. Maybe a small engine? Then the horses in the surrounding stalls began to rustle. A whinny and a grunt followed. Someone the horses knew was coming, and here Walker was in a strange barn, bloodied, concussed, and God only knew what else.
The buzzing grew closer, so he did all he could to get to his feet. As soon as he made it upright, the barn spun, and Walker couldn’t keep the vomit from exploding from his mouth. The horses didn’t appreciate his hello, and they all began talking to each other. There was no door in the middle of the stall where he was at the back of the barn. Easier for loading and unloading hay, he supposed. The barn stretched out in front of him. All stalls down the left side. Stalls down the right as well, but they ended in what was probably a tack room closest to him. Beyond the stalls the double doors of the barn were open. Framed like a picture were rolling hills of green grass. A dirt path the size of two tire treads disappeared off to the left.
Before he could move from where he was feebly standing, a utility four-wheeler pulled up and shut off just outside. Walker limped to his left as quickly as he could and hid himself behind the adjacent stall. A golden light popped on in the barn, and the horses whinnied their approval. Through a slit in the stall’s yellow pine, Walker could see a woman saying hello to the first horse on her right.
“Y’all hungry?” she said.
A couple grunts and squeals came in response.
“Yeah. I thought so. Sorry I’m late. Got caught up watchin’ the news. I’ll get you fed and out for some exercise in no time.”
The woman walked from the stalls straight into what Walker supposed was the tack room. She was medium height, probably close to five foot seven. In good shape. Tight blue jeans, untucked plaid button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and a brown ponytail bobbing behind her. Walker had no idea who she was. She made a few noises rustling around in the room, but then there was silence.
That’s when Walker heard the unmistakable click-clack of a pistol being readied to shoot.
“All right, where are you?” she said.
She moved back into the barn. She was scanning for an intruder. Walker felt like a kid hiding from his teacher after he’d thrown a penny at the chalkboard. There was nowhere for him to go. She was going to find him. He thought it better to surrender on his own than surprise her. Bad things tend to happen when guns and surprises are involved. Walker had no idea why he knew that, he just did.
“Come on now,” she said. “I don’t really feel like killing anyone today. But I will.”
Walker believed her. She didn’t seem the slightest bit shaken. Just ready.
“I’m back here, ma’am. And I’m unarmed,” Walker said.
She turned his way and extended the gun. She looked him up and down.
“Trespassing’s an easy way to get shot on a farm.”
“I know it is.”
She studied him for a moment. “If you know that, then why the hell are you here?”
“I-I really don’t know, ma’am.”
“What the hell kind of answer is that?”
“Not a good one,” Walker said. “But it’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Okay, well, let me start you out with an easier question then. Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Tom, ma’am. Tom Walker. I’m going to walk on out, hands up. I don’t want any trouble.”
Walker took a couple steps into the open and faced her.
“If you didn’t want trouble, you should have stayed off someone else’s property.” Then she pointed at Walker’s bloodstained jeans. “Besides, looks like trouble already found you.”
She looked younger than Walker had initially imagined. A lot of natural beauty.
“Okay, Mr. Walker, I’ll ask you one more time. Slower, so maybe you can understand this time. What the hell are you doing in my barn?”
Walker lowered his hands but didn’t move forward. “It’s not that I don’t understand the question. I just don’t know the answer.”
Her face scrunched in confusion. “What am I supposed to do with that answer? That you don’t know how you got here. Did you bump your head or something?”
Walker stared at her. Then gave a sheepish grin.
“You don’t know that either, do you?”
“I do not.”
“I suppose you don’t know how you got the bloody jeans either?”
“I do not.”
A siren sounded in the distance. She turned and looked outside, then back to Walker. “That for you?”
Walker shrugged. He had no idea.
She let out a short laugh. “All right. Well, other than your name—Tom Walker—just what in the hell do you know?”
Walker had to think about it for a minute. It was the first time he had the chance to ponder the fact that not only did he not know how he got a hole in his leg and ended up in this woman’s barn; Walker didn’t really know who he was other than his name. It was hard to process. He clearly was a full-grown man at the moment, but the last memory he had was of when he was a boy.
“That bad, huh?” she said. Still holding the gun on him. For that, Walker couldn’t blame her. “Okay, let’s try this.” She let her gun hand down and held it by her side. “Take a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”
Walker followed her instructions. But all he felt was the pounding in his head and the burning in his leg.
“Anything?” she said.
“Nothing.”
“Last one,” she said. “What’s the last thing you remember happening to you?”
Walker reached inside his mind. He was trying to pull something—anything recent. Anything that would tell him how he had become a man with zero recent past, shot in the leg, concussed, and alone in a stranger’s barn. But the only memory he could compute was one that felt both like it was yesterday and also many years ago, and regardless, it didn’t explain why he was standing where he was right now. And it was making his head swim, because in that memory he was only fifteen years old and he had just choked the life out of his foster father who had just finished nearly beating Walker’s foster mother to death.
