I reach the bottom and stand over Trent, looking down at his battered body. His face is a crimson mask, with blood flowing freely from a gash he’s sustained on his forehead from the fall. It looks like he’s broken his ankle too, given the shape of it, and from the quick, ragged way he’s breathing, I suspect he’s got a couple of busted ribs on top of all that.
He’s done.
I reach behind me and draw my remaining Beretta. I take aim at his head and feel every ounce of pain and guilt that I’ve carried on my shoulders for so many years just… float away. He looks up at me, and I see regret in his eyes. And fear. Wilson Trent is afraid of me.
“Any last words?” I ask him. “Any more insults you want to throw at me? Do you want to brag some more about killing my family, perhaps?”
He closes his eyes slowly, taking as deep a breath as he dared.
“Go to Hell… Adrian,” he rasps.
I smile. “Been there, bought a holiday home…”
My finger tightens on the trigger as I prepare to end this miserable bastard’s pathetic life, but I feel a hand on my shoulder that stops me. I spin around to see Josh standing there. He visibly winces with every deep breath he takes. His right arm is hanging loose, close to his side, which looks to me like a dislocated shoulder. He has blood around his mouth too, and coupled with his painful breathing, I suspect he also has busted ribs and some internal bleeding to go along with it.
“Christ, you look like shit,” I say.
“Thanks,” he replies with a weak smile. “Listen, Adrian… you can’t do this here.”
I shake my head. “This ends right here, right now, Josh. Everything we’ve been through has led me here. It’s over.”
“And I completely agree — this is over. But you can’t blow his fucking brains out while you’re on TV…”
He points over to the big screen that, sure enough, is still broadcasting the drama and giving the security guards my exact location. Outside the ground, over the screams of the crowd, a cacophony of sirens grows louder by the second.
I sigh and curse to myself. I’m this close, but I still can’t end the prick.
I look down at Trent, who’s slowly crawling back up the steps, pausing every few seconds to cough up some blood. The crowd has given us a wide berth now, and I know that the stadium security isn’t far away, with the cops close behind.
I walk over to him and crouch down over him, pressing my gun to his temple as he lies face down on the steps.
“Open your mouth,” I say to him.
His eyes widen in horror, as he realizes what my intentions are.
“Oh, Jesus…” I hear Josh whisper behind me.
But I don’t care. I can’t fire my gun? Fine… But Wilson Trent is dying before I leave this stadium, one way or the other.
“I said, open your fucking mouth!” I repeat.
Reluctantly, he does, closing his eyes tightly. I stand up and take a look around. People have fled the immediate area, but the rest of the crowd are on their feet, trying to see what’s happening while security do their best to usher them away to safety. On the field behind me, even some players have stopped their pre-match training, wondering what all the commotion is.
My eyes meet Josh’s uncomfortable gaze. We stare at each other for a moment, and then he slowly nods, giving me his unspoken blessing before walking off up the steps.
I take a deep breath. An image of Janine and Maria flashes into my head. They’re running together in a park. The sun’s shining and they’re laughing together. They both look so beautiful. But the image soon disappears and everything is black and empty.
I step forward and, without breaking stride, bring my boot down hard on the back of Trent’s skull, the force driving his head forward. With his mouth open, the step splits his head horizontally, taking his jawbone almost clean off and killing him instantly.
There are no screams of shock and horror around me. No mad rush or panic to flee the area. There’s just… silence. Every person in the crowd who just witnesses Trent’s demise is standing and staring at me.
I have no idea what I thought I’d feel like when I finally killed him. I guess I figured I’d feel relief, or happiness maybe… But I feel nothing.
I walk up the steps toward the exit, where Josh is waiting for me.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod silently as a wave of numbness slowly wash over me.
“You feel you got the closure that you wanted though?”
I regard him for a moment, trying to thinking of the honest answer. But I come up with nothing. There’s just an empty void where my soul should be. No closure, no celebration, no regret… nothing. I just feel dead inside, and for the first time in my life I’m afraid. Without saying anything, I simply walk off, leaving Josh standing there, surrounded by the carnage I’ve created.
33
I quickly retrieved my other gun from Trent’s box, and then we managed to make it back out to the parking lot and into the Winnebago, where Frank was waiting, with minimal fuss. We’d navigated the panic-stricken hordes of fans rushing to the nearest exit simply by feigning the same fear, blending into the masses and easily dodging any security guards.
The real police are arriving just as we’re driving off. We sitting in a queue, anonymous, like any other vehicle scrambling to get away from the horrors inside the stadium, so no one gives us a second thought as we drive past.
“Is it done?” Frank asks after a few minutes of silence, fighting through the traffic and anxious to put some distance between Heinz Field and us.
“Yeah,” I reply, sounding vacant.
“And did everything go down like you’d planned?”
I reach into my left pocket and pull out a small box, no larger than a USB pen drive, with a switch on it. I hold it up for him to see. “Like a charm.”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “I still don’t get how it worked…”
“They’re basically an EMP over Wi-Fi,” I say, explaining absently. “I bought a handful of them from Oscar Brown. They’re the size of a button and very expensive. A standard EMP will let out a blast that disables all electrical equipment, but is essentially harmless to humans. These things are black market, designed by some tech firm in Japan. They emit a small pulse as normal, but at a higher amp, causing it to affect the human heart. When Josh frisked the bodyguards, he slipped one into each of their pockets, and then all I had to do was flick this switch, and all their hearts stopped simultaneously.”
“So, to Trent, it looked like you just clicked your fingers and killed them with your mind or something?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“You should’ve seen him,’ Josh shouts from the back. “It was beautiful!”
Frank smiles to himself as he looks ahead at the road. I don’t think he’s smiled once since he walked into my hospital room yesterday evening. I guess a lot’s changed in those twenty-four hours…
We fall silent as we head into the center of the city, toward Trent’s penthouse. The second part of the plan involves taking control of any physical assets on the premises, ensuring Trent’s legacy is completely buried. It’s not going to be easy — aside from the few legitimate businesses that occupy the first couple of floors, the rest of the thirty story building houses several illegal enterprises run by many of Trent’s less-than-reputable employees. Getting to the top floor from the bottom will be close to impossible, so we need patience and discretion if we’re to make it undetected.