Deliver the Goods Read online

  Deliver the Goods

  A Newton’s Gate Series

  Jamie Davis

  C.J. Clemens

  Contents

  Also by Jamie Davis

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  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

  Afterword

  Also by Jamie Davis

  Leave a Review

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 Jamie Davis

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read their work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help them spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting their work.

  Cover art by Nicole at www.significantcover.com

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Jamie Davis

  The Delivery Mage - A Newton’s Gate Series

  Book 1 - Deliver or Die

  —

  Coming Soon-

  Book 2 - Deliver the Goods

  Book 3 - Labor and Delivery

  Book 4 - Deliver Us From Evil

  Book 5 - Signed, Sealed, Delivered

  —

  The Accidental Traveler LitRPG Series

  (with C.J. Davis)

  The Accidental Thief

  Accidental Warrior

  The Accidental Mage

  —

  Accidental Champion Series

  (with C.J. Davis)

  Accidental Duelist

  Accidental Raider

  Accidental Dragoon

  —

  Extreme Medical Services Series

  Book 1 - Extreme Medical Services

  Book 2 - The Paramedic’s Angel

  Book 3 - The Paramedic’s Choice

  Book 4 - The Paramedic’s Hunter

  Book 5 - The Paramedic’s Witch

  Book 6 - The Paramedic’s Nemesis

  Book 7 - The Paramedic’s Doom

  —

  Eldara Sister Series

  The Nightingale’s Angel

  Blue and Gray Angel

  —

  The Broken Throne Series

  The Charm Runner

  Prophecy’s Child

  The Queen of Avalon

  Stolen Destiny

  The Mended Throne

  —

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  Facebook.com/jamiedavisbooks

  —

  Foreword

  Welcome to the Newton’s Gate Universe, where The Delivery Mage series takes place.

  What is the Newton’s Gate Universe?

  On New Year’s Eve of 2050, humanity launches Newton’s Gate, a gateway meant to enable interstellar exploration. But when the gateway explodes, our greatest achievement morphs into our greatest disaster. Portals begin to appear around the world. Some open and close briefly, others swallow entire cities, while some remain permanently active, linking Earth to a wide array of planets, galaxies, universes, dimensions, and alternate times. Earth has become Grand Central Station for all of existence, bringing humanity into contact with alien humanoids, fantastical creatures, and everything in between.

  One consequence is certain: chaos reigns everywhere.

  The NGU and the C.J. Clemens pen name have emerged from the combined efforts of over thirty authors, featuring series ranging from space opera to urban fantasy -- epic fantasy to steam punk -- thrillers to military sci-fi. Virtually something for everyone!

  Chapter 1

  Kurt Carter checked his datapad one more time. He sat in his classic ethanol-electric hybrid red sports car in the parking lot across the street from a seedy biker bar on the outskirts of Baltimore. This was the right place.

  His contact gave him this address as the prearranged meeting place with a representative from the Hell’s Gate clan. The hope was to discuss payment to settle a blood feud with the inter-dimensional biker gang so he could relax and get back to work without always having to look over his shoulder anymore.

  A few weeks before Kurt had been on what should’ve been a routine delivery through one of the nearby portal gates. While there, he got into a fight with several members of the gang and had to make a quick escape.

  That didn’t warrant the blood feud, though.

  No, it was the four gang members killed by his partner and gate mage, Marci. She took offense at being shot at in the last parts of the escape. She returned fire with a military-grade weapon that literally shredded the four gang-bangers advancing on them.

  It was their deaths that brought the blood price down on his head.

  So far, he’d successfully hidden Marci’s involvement in the deaths. He wasn’t just doing it to protect her life. It was also to prevent the possible series of running firefights that would erupt if she found out she was being hunted with a price on her head.

  Kurt figured he could handle this without raising the body count.

  Since returning from the delivery gig, he’d wound up caught in several altercations with members of the gang. He’d avoided just as many potential fights by spotting them before they saw him.

  He was tired of it all. It was time to talk about payment and what it would take to bring them down from seeking his head on a stick.

  Kurt hoped to try and work out a payment plan with regular installments. It would cost him more in the long run but he didn’t have the cash flow right now to handle a big payment.

  He’d initially hoped to pay off the blood debt in one shot after working a single high-priced delivery job. His broker, Trent, had worked hard to line it up for him.

  That all fell through the cracks when his ex-wife turned up needing him to help her out of a jam. He lost the opportunity to pay off the clan when another delivery specialist took the job in his stead.

  On top of that, there hadn’t been any other jobs for the last two weeks. Trent was pissed off at losing the commission on the delivery he’d lined up. One of the broker’s competitors had gotten the gig instead. Since then, Trent hadn’t answered any of Kurt’s calls.

  Trent would come around eventually. They’d worked together for too long for him to stay mad at Kurt forever.

  Still, this meant that he’d reached a bit of a dry spell when it came to income and it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

  So, here he sat outside a biker bar, near midnight, waiting to go in all by himself. Kurt shook his head and put the datapad down. It had taken him the better part of a week to track down a reliable source with contacts inside the Hell’s Gate organization.

  Usually, Trent handled these types of negotiations and if they’d been speaking right now, he would’ve dealt with this one, too. Instead, it was left to Kurt to figure out on his own.

  The guy he’d been able to find only talked over cryptic text and email messages. After several tries at arranging a meetup, the contact told him to be here this evening at midnight and they’d arrange for him to meet a representative from the gang who might, and they stressed the word “might,” be
willing to work out some sort of a deal.

  Kurt checked the envelope tucked in his leather jacket. It held five thousand dollars in crisp twenty dollar bills. That had been the arranged price to begin paying the installments he owed. The one thing he hadn’t been able to find out was how many of these installment payments was he going to have to make.

  Kurt got out of the sports car and shut the door sliding the thick bundle of cash into the special cargo pocket sewn into the back of his black leather jacket. His hand fell to his side where he checked to make sure the stun baton was still clipped to his belt.

  He didn’t like guns and preferred the baton as a non-lethal alternative when it came to a fight. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need it tonight.

  As he walked towards the bar’s entrance, Kurt wondered why they insisted on cash payment. It would’ve been much easier to do a credit transfer using electronic funds. He’d had to actually go into a bank and draw out the cash from the electronic teller while he explained what he needed over a holo-vid link with a customer service rep at the bank’s headquarters.

  The teller on the holo-vid was confused as to why he needed so much when no one used cash anymore. Kurt had shrugged and told her he was just old-fashioned. It was one more thing about this meeting that had his suspicions raised. He reminded himself to keep his eyes open.

  Kurt watched several patrons enter and exit the bar. His outfit of blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket should blend in pretty well, even though his close-cropped brown hair marked him as ex-military, or worse, a cop.

  Pulling the door open and stepping into the dim interior of the bar, Kurt winced as the screeching chords from a duo of electric guitars coupled with heavy drum beat blasted out at him from the entrance as he walked in. A live band played in one corner of the bar. The music assaulted his ears.

  Standing in the doorway and looking around for a few seconds, Kurt didn’t see anyone matching the description he received in the last text message. He was told to look for someone wearing a purple scarf and an eyepatch, of all things.

  Kurt thought it strange anyone would be wearing an eyepatch in this time of high-end prosthetics. It didn’t matter why they wore it. He looked around and saw no one matching the description he’d been given.

  He decided to take a seat at the bar. There was an open stool on the opposite side of the bar from the band. It offered him a decent view of both the front and back entrance to the club. If his contact came in from one of those entrances, he’d spot them before they spotted him.

  At least, that was the plan.

  The bartender, a heavyset bald guy with steel rings lining his earlobes from top to bottom on both sides, leaned over the bar to shout at him over the clamor of the band. “What all it be?”

  Rather than trying to shout over the noise of the band, Kurt pointed at the guy next to him drinking from a beer bottle and held up one finger.

  The bartender nodded and headed back down the bar to a cooler case. He slid open the lid and pulled out a bottle of beer. He returned, popped the top and raised an eyebrow as he held up a glass.

  Kurt shook his head and held his hand out for the bottle. The bartender smiled and handed it to him, putting the glass back on the shelf next to the others.

  The bartender held up five fingers spread wide and Kurt nodded. He handed over his credit chip and the bartender slid it into the wrist comp he wore. Kurt glanced at the plain metal band on his own wrist. A holographic number popped up. Kurt reached over and tapped in a two credit tip to add to the five credit cost of the beer and closed out the transaction. The bartender handed his chip back to him and Kurt returned it to his back pocket.

  He leaned back against the back of the bar stool while the band continued to thrash and scream from the stage. He could pick out no discernible melody from the song and their skills with their instruments were lacking.

  Every member of the five-person band including the two guitarists, the bass player, drummer, and the lead singer all shouted the unintelligible lyrics into their microphones. Kurt was about to look away and scan the bar one more time for his contact when something caught his eye. The drummer was hidden behind his kit, but he caught a glimpse of purple at one point.

  As the drummer went through his gyrations pounding on his instruments, Kurt leaned to the left to try to see more. One of the cymbals obscured the top half of the drummer.

  He waited a few seconds for the guy to move forward and come into view again. The drummer, moved around quite a bit during the song, shifting just enough for Kurt to get a good look at the purple scarf around his neck.

  No, scratch that, her neck.

  So, it looked as if he was going to meet his contact after all. Kurt hadn’t seen an eyepatch but maybe she left it at home. All he had to do was wait until the band finished their current set.

  Kurt settled back and finished his beer while he waited for the band to stop screaming.

  Chapter 2

  Two beers and twenty minutes later, the band finally took a break. Kurt got a better look at the drummer during one of her frequent drum solos. He wondered if her purple scarf was just a coincidence since she definitely had two good eyes.

  Still, as he scanned the rest of the bar’s patrons, no one else came close to fitting the description given to him.

  The set finally ended and Kurt got up to head around the bar to talk to the woman. It wouldn’t take long to figure out if she was his contact or not.

  As he strode up to her, she glanced in his direction and gave him an annoyed look. It was then Kurt saw the T-shirt she was wearing. He realized right away why he’d missed the point of the eyepatch description. There, emblazoned across her chest were the words “Eyepatch Thrash Metal.”

  He laughed despite the seriousness of the situation. She wasn’t missing an eye. She was going to wear an Eyepatch band T-shirt.

  “Excuse me, you arranged to meet me here.”

  “That depends. Are you Kurt?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Why didn’t you tell me you were in the band?”

  “It wasn’t me you were talking to. It was an associate of mine.”

  “Oh, sorry. I’d assumed the person I was talking within the messages would be the same person I was meeting tonight.” Kurt looked around the bandstand. “Do you have a place we can sit and talk for a few minutes?”

  “Sure, come on over here. We can take a few minutes back here where we stash our gear.”

  Kurt followed the woman over behind the small stage. There was an open area where the soundboard was set up to mix audio for the bands and there was also space for equipment cases and bags right by the mixer. Two stools sat there and Kurt took one of them while the drummer sat on the other.

  “What’s your name? I can’t call you eyepatch.”

  “It’s Jill, but that doesn’t matter because we are only going to meet this one time.”

  “What do you mean? I was hoping we could make an arrangement to handle these payments and not have to involve anyone else.”

  Jill shook her head. “Look, my boyfriend’s a Hell’s Gater. I thought maybe I could work something out through him and make some extra cash at the same time as a finder’s fee. Then he got suspicious about all my questions. He wanted to know why I was asking about the clan’s blood feud. He got pretty hopped up about it. I don’t think this is going to work out.”

  It was Kurt’s turn to shake his head. He couldn’t give up. “You need to try again. There has to be a way to get this worked out. I brought the money if that’s the issue.” He reached into his jacket for the envelope.

  “The money’s not the problem. The Hell’s Gaters want blood for blood. When I brought you up to my boyfriend he got super pissed and said this debt was about respect and money couldn’t buy respect.”

  Kurt didn’t like the sound of that. This was going from bad to worse. “Look, Jill, how about I give you some of the money and you keep trying to find a way to make the payments. I expected you to keep a porti
on for yourself, so take a percentage, just work it out for me.”

  Jill raised her voice and her eyes darkened. “You don’t understand, dude. They want to make an example out of you. I don’t think any amount of money is going to work out a deal with them.” Jill paused as she glanced over Kurt’s shoulder towards the bar’s entrance. “Shit, Finn’s here. You need to go. My boyfriend can’t see me talking to you. He’ll take it out on me.”

  Kurt turned to look and saw a group of Hell’s Gate clan members entering the club. Most of them headed towards the bar for a drink, but one of them headed for the club’s corner and the bandstand. That had to be Jill’s boyfriend.

  “Dude, I’m serious, you need to get out of here. Every one of them knows what you look like and if Finn spots you talking to me, it’s going to be bad for both of us.

  Kurt pointed behind her. “Look, you go around the back of the stage and come out the other side. Wave to him and get his attention. I’ll try to sneak out in the other direction. The back entrance to the bar isn’t that far from here and I should be able to slip out before anyone sees me.”

  “I hope this works. I’m not in the mood to deal with a beating from that idiot tonight.”

  The statement raised Kurt’s sense of right and wrong. He didn’t like people that beat up their significant others, male or female. “Look if you need a safe place, I can find one for you.”

  “You worry about your own relationships. I beat on him as much as he beats on me, I just said I wasn’t in the mood for one tonight. Get out of here while you still can.”