Monsters The King & Slater Series Book Eleven Matt Rogers Copyright © 2021 by Matt Rogers All rights reserved. Cover design by Onur Aksoy. www.onegraphica.com Contents Reader’s Group Facebook Page Books by Matt Rogers Preface Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Part I Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Part II Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 Chapter 76 Chapter 77 Afterword Afterword Books by Matt Rogers Reader’s Group About the Author Join the Reader’s Group and get a free 200-page book by Matt Rogers! Sign up for a free copy of ‘BLOOD MONEY’. Meet Ruby Nazarian, a government operative for a clandestine initiative known only as Lynx. She’s in Monaco to infiltrate the entourage of Aaron Wayne, a real estate tycoon on the precipice of dipping his hands into blood money. She charms her way aboard the magnate’s superyacht, but everyone seems suspicious of her, and as the party ebbs onward she prepares for war… Maybe she’s paranoid. Maybe not. Just click here. Follow me on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/mattrogersbooks Expect regular updates, cover reveals, giveaways, and more. I love interacting with fans. Feel free to send me a private message with any questions or comments. Looking forward to having you! Books by Matt Rogers THE JASON KING SERIES Isolated (Book 1) Imprisoned (Book 2) Reloaded (Book 3) Betrayed (Book 4) Corrupted (Book 5) Hunted (Book 6) THE JASON KING FILES Cartel (Book 1) Warrior (Book 2) Savages (Book 3) THE WILL SLATER SERIES Wolf (Book 1) Lion (Book 2) Bear (Book 3) Lynx (Book 4) Bull (Book 5) Hawk (Book 6) THE KING & SLATER SERIES Weapons (Book 1) Contracts (Book 2) Ciphers (Book 3) Outlaws (Book 4) Ghosts (Book 5) Sharks (Book 6) Messiahs (Book 7) Hunters (Book 8) Fathers (Book 9) Tyrants (Book 10) Rogues (Book 11) LYNX SHORTS Blood Money (Book 1) BLACK FORCE SHORTS The Victor (Book 1) The Chimera (Book 2) The Tribe (Book 3) The Hidden (Book 4) The Coast (Book 5) The Storm (Book 6) The Wicked (Book 7) The King (Book 8) The Joker (Book 9) The Ruins (Book 10) “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche Prologue 1 A hot evening wind blew up Hyde Street, carrying dank and rotten smells with it. To Jack, the stench was all-encompassing. He couldn’t move like he used to. Cartilage wears away, inflammation flares with each misplaced step, and before you know it you’re old and geriatric and the world’s passed you by. If not for his success in the boardroom, he’d have been forced to grapple with the inevitability of ageing a long time ago. His career kept him on his toes, kept his mind sharp, but soon that would go, too, and there’d be nothing but family and friends. Retirement wasn’t something he wanted to consider yet. He shuffled through the Tenderloin as purple dusk stretched over San Francisco, and it wasn’t just the knee pain that made him grimace with each step. For reasons unbeknownst to him, his contact wanted to meet in the grimiest and most crime-infested neighbourhood in the city. The guy was doing him a favour, though, so Jack wasn’t about to protest. He stepped gingerly round a homeless man passed out on the sidewalk, an empty needle still hanging from the injection site in his forearm. The overwhelming scent of urine rolled off the vagrant’s clothes, swept up by the wind. Jack pressed a hand over his mouth, patting down his silver moustache and beard, and kept walking. He recited what he would say when he arrived. He’d written the speech down on his notepad the night before, but the pad was tucked away in his jacket. Longhand was a habit he’d carried into Silicon Valley and would’ve labelled him a relic of the past if he hadn’t been doing it since he was thirty. Now sixty-seven, the practice finally matched his age. The night occupants were out on the 300 block when he arrived, a stretch of Hyde Street notorious for its destitution. The junkie with the needle in his arm had been an outlier at the edge of the Tenderloin, but here on 300 it was a sea of poverty and heroin. Jack understood the importance of keeping a low profile, but his contact had gone a little overboard. It wasn’t that his surroundings bothered him. Throw a stone through any high-rise in San Francisco and you’d hit a rich tech guy who likened the homeless to vermin, but Jack had never entertained that stance. He was known by board members past and present as a teddy bear, a passionate director with a heart of gold. Instead of degrading anyone, he looked for the explanation behind actions, using them to devise a way forward, a solution. Tonight’s meeting was one of the rare situations where he just couldn’t find a clean fix. Circumstances had forced him down a messier road. The nature of the meet required him to be outwardly cold and callous, a world away from his usual compassionate demeanour, and he looked up at the address he’d been given with a face like thunder. A dreary apartment building, old and subsidised. Five vagrants congregated together on the sidewalk in front, mutually lost in a morphine wonderland. Jack could slap them in the face and they still wouldn’t know where they were. If his contact had come here to maximise witnesses, he wouldn’t find competent ones. Jack moved wraithlike through a lobby lit by only a couple of brilliant white bulbs, creating an entwinement of glare and shadow. He took a groaning elevator up three floors. It deposited him with a hiss of decompressing metal in a musty corridor that carried the same smells as the street below, only less oppressive. Faint bodily fluids and odour. Far from the gleaming high-rises with sparkling water on tap. He looked
