Meridian wanted to help his partner get closure for his brother’s death, because Ex hadn’t been the same since he’d gotten the news. Doing this would be the only way they could move on and get back to their jobs. He’d keep to his private thoughts what he really wanted. Like wanting Ex to be indebted to him. To look at him as if he truly was dependent on him and not because the program had trained him to be that way.
Being in Ex’s hometown, a place he held secret and sacred to his heart, was doing other things to Meridian that he wasn’t sure how to label. It made him react, and that was something he didn’t do. He’d been given small glimpses into the childhood Ex couldn’t let go of. Now he was about to become engrossed in it.
Slade pulled into the parking garage of the West Atlanta Downtown hotel and killed the engine. Ex tapped on the soundproof divider and waited for it to retract.
Slade met and held Meridian’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Will you be needing my services anymore tonight?”
“Actually.” Ex answered. “We have a business proposition for you if you’re interested. Can you meet us in the bar on the first floor at eleven?”
“Yes. I’ll be there.” Slade nodded.
Ex and Meridian moved through the lobby, never facing the cameras head-on as they made their way to the elevators. Ex was quiet until they got to their adjoining rooms. Meridian didn’t bother going to his own door, instead he followed his partner. When he was inside he positioned himself in front of the grandiose floor-to-ceiling windows in the living area. He didn’t have to watch his partner to know where his silent footsteps led him. After a few seconds he heard the tapping on keys as Ex woke his monitors. Meridian waited while Ex checked the video cameras he had around his mother’s home.
“What do you wanna do about the ones outside her house the other night?” Meridian asked, staring at the lights of downtown Atlanta. He wondered briefly what it’d be like to live back here in the United States. To have a real home, and a normal nine-to-five job. Blinking and turning his back, he wouldn’t let his mind linger on inconsequential wants for long.
“Eliminate them,” Ex said easily.
“They’re flunkies. They won’t have any useful information,” Meridian said as he stood in front of the cedar bar and added a couple cubes of ice into two tumblers then poured a miniature bottle of Skyy vodka into one glass and a VSOP cognac in the other. He set the vodka in front of Ex.
“No women or children, Mere. They should be grateful their deaths will be swift.” His partner pulled his gray eyes from the image of his mother’s dark home as she slept fitfully in her bedroom.
Meridian sipped the honey-colored liquid until there was nothing left, relishing the fire that worked its way down his chest and settled into his stomach. The burn was just as welcoming as Ex’s piercing glare which remained on him as he stood from the desk. Ex took his glass and shot the alcohol back in one gulp instead of sipping it like he did. They were opposites and the same in almost all ways.
“If we do this...” Meridian let the start of his thoughts hang out there, knowing Ex could finish it.
“Then we’re all in...”
“They fucked with the wrong man,” Meridian said, watching his partner closely.
“Agreed.” Ex’s voice sliced through the air like his knives. He looked composed on the outside, but he was a barely contained killer on the inside, waiting for the perfect time to strike. And he would soon. He knew his partner. And this plan they were about to execute had already been in the works the minute Ex had learned of Evan’s death.
Meridian went to the bar to fix himself another drink. He walked across the gleaming wood floors, his glass in his hand, taking in the rigidity of Ex’s stance as he watched him back. He could tell his partner was hurting, furious, and not shielding it well. What they were about to do was reckless and one hundred percent personal, something he knew they should put the brakes on, but he could see that Ex was too fired up to go back now.
Meridian was all too familiar with his partner’s minute mannerisms, ones no one else could see. Like the way the tic in his jaw jumped a couple of times when he was angry, before he’d catch it and throw up his shield. Or the way a vein would bulge in his neck just before he was about to pull the trigger on a mark. Even the hard clench of his teeth when he delivered a jaw-shattering punch to a man’s face. Meridian knew them all and a lot more.
“The ones who killed Evan are probably laying low until the heat is off.” Deep frown lines etched the center of Ex’s forehead as he sipped from his glass. “We’ll need to get around town, quietly.”
“Slade.” Meridian said, standing only a few feet from him.
“Yes,” Ex answered. He looked at Meridian in the same way, as if he could read what he was thinking, feeling. Sometimes he felt he had to work double-time to keep Ex from getting too deep inside his head. After staring for a long moment, Ex moved away.
“It’s almost time to meet him downstairs.” Ex went into the hotel safe and pulled out four stacks of US bills and put them inside his jacket pocket. “For his services, and his silence.”
Ex sat across from Meridian in a curved booth at the back of the bar. Luckily, there were only a few customers partaking that evening. The dark lighting was perfect for their incognito meeting. He’d chosen the bar on the first floor out of the four in the hotel because most of its cameras faced the entrance and it had two emergency exits. The less they were seen the better. It was also the most expensive, so the least occupied. There were two women sitting in the middle of the long bar, laughing with one another, and one lonely man at the end, whose slumped posture indicated perhaps he’d had a shit day, sat nursing his watered-down scotch. They still had fifteen minutes before the hour, so when the bartender came over he decided to order a drink to keep his hands busy.
The women at the bar glanced in their direction, then whispered to each other, their smiles obvious, their attention unwanted. Not that his opinion mattered. He believed they were staring at Meridian anyway. He was the more handsome of their duo, or so he’d been told. He tried not to look at Meridian in that way. He didn’t see his slick black hair, his startling dark eyes, fanned by even darker lashes. Ex worked not to notice the stern cut of his scruffy jaw, or his full lips. When he did stare it was because he was admiring his partner’s work, his skills when they were in the field. That was it. He watched Meridian the way he did because his unwavering loyalty always astonished him. Ex only wished he knew how much of it was real and how much of it was programmed.
“Your thoughts?” Meridian asked smoothly.
Ex licked his dry lips. He wasn’t sure what to say. After Slade sat down with them, there’d be no going back from what they were about to do. Was he really about to jeopardize their reputations, their careers, for his own selfish reasons? This was revenge, pure and simple. They weren’t supposed to do emotion.
“We got this,” Meridian said, running his hand over his oil-black hair.
Ex had locked eyes with his partner when he heard the women approaching in their high heels. Meridian didn’t look away until they were at the table. Ex gritted his teeth, annoyed at being interrupted.