Man Like Mateo Thunder

Chapter 3

Mateo’s busted sedan's engine caught on the second try.

Mateo swung out of the alley with the headlights off and found the van's tail lights four cars ahead. He kept them there. Her bag lay open on the passenger seat. The car smelled of her shampoo and of the coffee she drank on the way to work.

He thumbed the satellite phone with his free hand.

"Sovereign?"

"Sofia has been taken. Black van, four men, heading east toward the docklands. I'm behind them."

There was half a second of silence on the line. Elias had served him eleven years and had never once heard that tone. "I can have a team at your position in fourteen minutes."

"She doesn't have fourteen minutes."

"Sir, with respect. You are alone, unarmed, and in a car that should not be on the road."

"I'm aware of the car." The van ran a red light. Mateo followed it through. "Find out who sent them. And send your team anyway, quietly. When I'm finished there will be things to clean up, and my wife will need to believe someone else did it."

"Someone else, sir?"

"A security contractor. Heavy-set. Owed me a favor." He was already building the lie. "Make him exist."

"Consider it done. Sovereign..." Elias hesitated. "Bring her home."

Mateo cut the line. Ahead, the van turned off the main road and its lights went out.

The van tore through blocks of decaying industry toward the city's forgotten docklands. Inside, Sofia drifted between consciousness and the dark. Her cheek burned where the man had hit her, and her mouth tasted of blood. Every bump in the road brought nausea. Fear kept her rigid.

"Boss said not the face," someone said above her.

"Boss isn't here."

The van jerked to a halt. The side door screeched open. Hands grabbed her by the collar and the skirt, hauled her out, and dragged her across raw concrete.

They dumped her in the middle of an unfinished high-rise floor. Rebar twisted up toward the ceiling, and the autumn wind blew straight through the windowless walls. Dust hung in the beams of portable halogen work lights.

"Get up, corporate rat." A boot nudged her shin.

Sofia got to her knees. She wiped blood from her chin with a shaking hand and lifted her head. Four men stood over her.

The leader stepped forward, arms crossed over his armored chest.

"You really thought you could take that municipal contract behind Rodrigo's back?" he said. "Rodrigo runs logistics for Victor's inner circle. Everything in this city belongs to them. Including your little victories."

Her heart hammered, but her voice held. "The contract is legally binding. It was awarded to my firm through a fair municipal review. If anything happens to me, the city council and the federal investigators will have Rodrigo's and Victor's names on their desks by morning."

He laughed, a dry sound. He crouched, took a fistful of her hair, and pulled her head back.

"Investigators? Let me explain how it works down here, little girl. Victor and Rodrigo own this city. Your contract means nothing. You are going to log in to your company's portal and transfer the contract rights to Rodrigo's shell company. You'll state that your original filing was a clerical error."

"And if I do?" she asked. "You let me walk out of here?"

"If you do, you go home to your scrubber with all your fingers." He let go of her hair and patted her cheek, the bruised one. "That's the best offer you'll hear tonight."

"Rodrigo could have bid for it. The review was open to everyone."

"Rodrigo doesn't bid. Rodrigo collects."

Sofia stared up at him. The contract was three months of eighty-hour weeks. She hadn't done it for glory. The upfront commission was the exact sum needed to clear Mateo's debt to Victor. It was meant to be his birthday miracle, the key to the cage.

"I'll never sign it," she said. Her voice carried through the empty floor. "Kill me. Throw me in the river. The authentication keys are locked behind my biometrics and my corporate server. If I don't authorize the transfer myself, from my terminal, the contract locks. You get nothing."

He backhanded her.

She hit the concrete sideways. Her head bounced, the room spun, and her ears rang. Blood ran warm from her split lip.

"You arrogant little bitch!" He planted a boot beside her shoulder. "You think threats protect you? We don't need your cooperation to break you. We have all night."

He nodded to the three men behind him.

"Strip her. Let's see how brave our corporate genius is once my boys have passed her around. When she's broken, we record her confession, sign the transfer with her thumbprint, and dump her in a landfill."

Terror went through her like cold water. Two of them lunged, seized her arms, and pinned her shoulders to the concrete. One tore her blouse open at the collar.

Sofia squeezed her eyes shut. A tear cut through the dust and blood on her cheek. I'm sorry, she thought. Mateo, I tried to save you.

Six floors below, Mateo left the sedan in the shadow of a cement mixer and looked up. One floor was lit. He counted the men's voices on his way up the stairwell: four. He heard his wife say she would never sign. He heard the blow that answered her, and the order that came after it.

He had planned to be patient. He had planned to draw them out one at a time, into the dark, where she would not have to see.

He put his shoulder to the fire door instead.

The iron fire door at the far end of the floor burst inward, tore from its hinges, and slammed into a concrete pillar.

The men spun around.

Mateo stood in the doorway.

He did not look like the bookkeeper who scrubbed floors. His coat moved in the draft. His face showed nothing, and his eyes were fixed on them with a stillness that made the room feel colder.

The leader stared at the lone man, then brayed with laughter.

"Look what crawled out of the gutter. The scrubber followed us. Did you lose your mop? Did you come to beg for your wife's life?"

Mateo said nothing. He kept walking, his footsteps even on the concrete.

The leader turned to his men, grinning.

"This works out perfectly. The husband wants to be a hero, so let's give him a front-row seat. Tie him up. He can watch."

The men laughed. They let go of Sofia and turned to face him, drawing knives.

Mateo stopped. He looked at the leader.

Then his shoulders slumped. His head dropped. He took two steps backward, eyes darting around the ring of armed men.

"N-no," he stammered, his voice cracking. "Please! Don't hurt me! I don't want any trouble!"

The leader roared, pointing. "Look at him! He's shaking! Go on, run, you spineless maggot! Let's see how far you get!"

Mateo stumbled around and bolted back through the doorway into the dark corridors of the building.

"Two of you, after him," the leader said, waving a hand. "Drag him back by the collar and we'll start the show."

Two men took off at a sprint, knives out, grinning behind their masks. They rounded the corner into a narrow service corridor lined with pillars.

The dark closed over them. There was no shout and no clang of metal. A wet thud. Then the sound of something heavy going down.

In the main room, the leader turned back to Sofia, held down now by the one remaining guard.

"Now, where were we?"

A minute passed. Then two.

The leader frowned at the corridor. "What are those idiots doing? It doesn't take two minutes to catch a crying accountant. Go check."

The guard tightened his grip on his knife and stepped into the shadows. Five paces past the pillars, he stopped.

His two comrades lay face down in the dust, their limbs bent at angles limbs do not bend to.

Before he could shout, a shadow dropped from the ceiling behind him. Hands closed on his head and twisted. His neck cracked, and he was dead before he reached the floor.

"Hey!" the leader called. "What's going on back there?"

He stood alone over Sofia now, and his instincts had finally caught up. He drew his pistol and took two steps toward the corridor.

On the floor, Sofia had curled onto her side with her arms over her head and her eyes shut tight. She did not see what came next.

Mateo walked out of the dark into the halogen light.

The leader never raised the gun. Mateo crossed the distance, caught the barrel in one hand, and drove his palm up under the man's chin. Teeth broke. The jaw gave. The leader hit the concrete wall and slid down it, unconscious.

The room was silent.

Mateo stood under the white light. The trembling accountant was gone. His back was straight, his eyes were cold, and there was fresh blood on his knuckles.