Free The Executioner's Game by Gary Hardwick

life became a distant, faded dream, hidden under layers of missions and aliases and secrets. Detroit, his family, and the young, sweet Vanessa and the Cricket were ghosts locked in some faraway country. There were women, but they never lasted long; and there were friends, but they were all within the structure of E-1’s family. The agency became his life.
    Luther became one of Alex Deavers’s killing machines, a man possessed of deadly skill and cold, controlled emotion. He often wondered which was deadlier, the blow that killed or the lack of emotion that catalyzed it.
    Luther also became a patriot. Most Americans didn’t know the price of freedom, but he did. He’d visited the ghettos and hellholes of the world and had seen the look of loss and need inthe eyes of the hungry and dying that would make a common homeless man’s stare look like a smile. Americans went through their privileged lives not knowing why they had cars, skyscrapers, NBA teams, and thirty-one flavors. Someone else in the world paid the price for our advantages, usually with their lives.
    Luther believed in America, but he was practical about it. If his country wasn’t the leader of the world, another country would have assumed the position, and it would be no less protective of its interests. A true patriot knew that everything in life was the lesser of two evils.
    This was how he and the other E-1 agents justified their occupation. The men and women they eliminated were plagues on humanity. If they were allowed to live, they would undoubtedly cause the deaths of countless innocents. So by terminating them, they actually saved lives.
    â€œExit,” he heard Hampton say.
    â€œGot it,” he said almost at the same time.
    They were in sync as usual, he thought. He felt the music merge with his excitement as the Ford Explorer rolled off an exit and into the city of Baltimore, where he hoped that his mission would end quickly with the elimination of Alex Deavers.

East Baltimore
    Luther and Hampton sat in the Ford and watched ships unload at East Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The sun was out, but it was blocked by hazy clouds that made everything seem dismal and gray. Besides, it was nearing the horizon. Soon it would set, and the night would rise, taking the town to darkness.
    The area was generally unkempt, and the steady wind was filled with the smell of fish and the ocean. Something about this place unsettled Luther. He didn’t know whether it was instinct or the fact that he hadn’t been in America in a long time, but something had his mind on a yellow alert.
    Luther was settled near Wagner’s Point in Baltimore. That’s where the Métier had come into port.
    Dockworkers hurried about with a measured energy that suggested they had a long time to work and a short time to live. Luther remembered that feeling, the state of normality enjoyed by ordinary people. It seemed so distant now in his world.
    He was trying to figure out what Alex Deavers was thinking when he so cleverly deceived them by switching ships. Of course he was covering his tracks, but with the government’s information-gathering ability, it seemed an almost impossible task to get away cleanly. Still, Alex was too smart to have randomly chosen this city. It was too close to D.C., too close to E-1, to be anything but a calculated effort. Again, the question was why.
    â€œI know that the wolf came here because it was the last place we’d expect him to,” said Hampton. “But that couldn’t have been the only reason.”
    â€œIf I know Alex, he had something hidden here,” said Luther. “Money, a contact, maybe a weapon.”
    â€œGod, I hope it’s not one of my weapons,” said Hampton.
    Luther pictured Alex sneaking off the boat, paying off whoever had assisted him, then getting transportation. And Deavers had covered his tracks well. The locals and the FBI hadn’t found a single person willing