Black Ravens
Meridian
The Pacific air tasted like copper and salt.
Meridian crouched low on the perimeter wall of the cliffside villa, pausing to allow the night’s darkness to consume him.
Ten acres of imported marble, onyx, and triple-paned bulletproof glass sprawled down the rocky terrain until it reached the surf—a luxurious fortress of corrupted wealth.
The frigid wind pushed his hood against his cheek but couldn’t cool the heat that lived under his skin.
Always to his right, his partner, Ex, lay still on the slate roof—one shadow melded into another—watching the patrol pacing beneath them.
“Four outside,” their handler, Corvo, informed them through their undetectable earpieces.
Meridian listened to the timing of the guards’ boots hitting the cobblestone. Counted the cadence of their inhalations and cataloged the exhales. They were both distracted in the way boredom made most perimeter security officers. Not enough discipline and too much confidence behind the high walls.
One was tall and gaunt with sunken cheeks. The other was short, thick-necked, and carried too much weight. The last two seemed younger in the way they kept shifting their rifles as if they didn’t know what to do with them.
Ex brushed his gloved hand twice over his forearm: Ready.
Meridian answered with one tap: Go.
And the two men separated like oil meeting water.
Ex ghosted across the roof in a blur, as Meridian slid to the edge, and dropped silently onto the landing.
The tall one turned his head a fraction too late.
Meridian slammed his palm over the startled man’s mouth, raised his head to expose his slim throat, then unsheathed, sliced, and ended.
His Sakimaru, stiletto, double-edged dagger—Whisper—rested comfortably in his palm, a thirty-inch stalker that never made a sound.
The body fell to his feet, and Meridian stepped over it, as if what he’d done wasn’t murder, but just removing an obstacle from his path.
Across the patio, Ex appeared behind his mark’s back. In two swift moves, he gripped the younger guy’s jaw, cupped his other hand across the back of the neck, and wrenched it hard to the left, snapping the bone like dry timber.
He lowered the officer’s lanky body into the shrubbery as if he’d simply fallen asleep.
Meridian was already behind the pudgy one, who had the audacity to be scrolling on his phone. Unaware and unprepared. He deserved death.
He wrapped him in a chokehold that cut his voice, then his breath. Five seconds of resisting, ten until the pulse slowed, twenty to be sure before he let go.
The fourth one turned and Ex was there, blade in hand, and delivered one upward puncture beneath the rib cage. The guard’s last breath left his throat in a wet question of confusion.
The entrance to the villa was a display of indulgent taste bought with dirty money. Everything shone and reflected. Thankfully, his hood cut the shimmering down to a tolerable annoyance.
A long hallway, overcrowded with abstract art, led to a great room. Music mixed with the laughter and the moans of women came from somewhere deeper inside.
They crept in silence across the imported rugs, their heads on a swivel despite the confirmation from their handler that no other guards were present inside.
They paused at the archway of the primary suite, that had a sitting area and a massive bed on a raised platform covered in silk linens and naked women.
Their mark, Graham Graves—a prior Ravens investor, arms dealer, and plague in the US—lounged in the center of the bed, eyes closed, with his arms wrapped around two women’s waists, his mouth full of another woman’s breast, and the fourth kneeling between his legs.
The fifth was circling the floor and filming everything on her phone as if directing a porno.
Meridian stepped in first. Hood low, face concealed, Whisper back in the hidden compartment of his knee-length black armored trench.
