Free THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HUNT: Colt Ryder is Back in Action! by J.T. Brannan

company?’
    ‘I work for myself.’
    ‘Good. No need to hand in your notice then. Have you got any jobs outstanding, anything you need to go back to your offices for?’
    ‘Only this one,’ I said. ‘I’ll need to contact my client regarding the fate of Mr. Hooker.’
    ‘And what are you going to tell this client?’
    I shrugged my shoulders. ‘The truth,’ I said. ‘He went to the BioPark looking for a job and was turned down. Witnesses have him heading across the Mexican border soon after that. Unlikely we’ll ever see him again.’
    Another smile appeared across Badrock’s face, this one the largest yet. ‘An excellent answer, Mr. . . .’
    ‘Ryder,’ I answered truthfully, knowing that my fingerprints were all over the place anyway, and that a man in Badrock’s position could have them checked within hours. ‘Colt Ryder.’
    ‘Well, Colt,’ Badrock said, ‘never let it be said that I am ungrateful to my friends.’ He clapped his hands, and the dark-haired beauty that had been serving us reappeared from a doorway. ‘Sweetheart,’ the general addressed her, ‘see Colt here to his quarters, and make sure he has everything he needs.’
    ‘Yes general,’ the girl said as she looked at me with a mischievous smile. ‘It will be my pleasure.’
    I smiled back, sure that at least some of the pleasure was going to be mine.

Chapter Two
     
     
    The tray hit the back of my head hard, and I only narrowly avoided my face hitting the table by getting my hands there first, with just fractions of a second to spare.
    It was breakfast time at the Vanguard security accommodation block, and – despite the general’s seal of approval – I was not turning out to be the most popular guy there.
    I supposed it might have had something to do with the four contractors I’d smashed up the day before, back in Groban’s office.
    I was stunned, but that was never going to stop me; an instant after the tray hit me, I pulled one hand from its braced position on the table, grabbed the fork from in front of me, whipped around in my chair and buried it right into my attacker’s balls.
    The man cried out in a high-pitched, strangled scream as his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to his knees in agony, fork still embedded in his anatomy.
    There was only one guy, but I knew my response was going to create some more heat; I could already feel the men to my right and left tensing, getting ready to strike in retaliation.
    I moved before they did, elbowing the guard to my left in a backward swing that hit him right in the face and knocked him back off his chair; in the next breath, I caught the wrist of the other man, stopping the table knife just inches from my ribs, and smashed his face down into the table in front of him.
    I was on my feet in the next second, turning to face two new assailants running at me from the next table along. I dropped the first with a heavy thrusting front kick to the gut, then sidestepped the next and whipped a vicious Thai round kick across the man’s exposed thigh muscle, the pain from the scything impact putting him down immediately.
    Another man went down from a straight right, the big knuckles of my fist connecting hard with his jaw; and then another hit the deck from a side kick to the knee cap.
    But then there were too many people around me, arms and legs coming at me from all angles, fists and feet hitting, and then hands grabbed me and forced me to the floor and it was all I could do to cover my head with my own hands as the blows came raining down. There must have been thirty guards at breakfast, and I thought they must all have been hitting me at that moment, and I could feel the weight of them crushing me.
    Where was Kane when I needed him?
    A gunshot rang out then, and the blows stopped hitting me, the weight stopped crushing me.
    I heard shouting through the blood rushing in my ears, felt the men move away from me until I was just there on the floor, alone and bleeding.
    ‘. . .