Money Can't Buy Friends

Left hand raised. Aim. Bang!

A thud could be heard as the body hit the floor. The man with the gun stood over the corpse, water droplets
running from his hair, down his face and onto the body. A few seconds later he turned swiftly and left the crime
scene, silently, a ghostly apparition.

Marco Walker was the kind of man who would buy people off, who would buy their loyalty and their trust. He
couldn't make friends. People were toys to him, pawns in a game. He could buy them and use them as he pleased,
for his own benefit. Sociopathic in his behaviour, in his inability to understand human emotions, in his
deceptiveness and his dominating nature. Marco was someone to be scared of. Not just scared, terrified.

Patrick Brady met Marco two days previously. His little brother was so sick that moving was becoming an ordeal.
But Patrick barely had the money to keep a roof over their heads and feed them enough to keep them from starving, let alone pay for the medical care to make his brother better. He was desperate.

…

The shadows in the dark corners grabbing at him with trailing fingers. A single spotlight shining on a chair in the
centre, highlighting its importance. The blurry shadows of two muscled men. This was what Patrick saw when he
first entered the presumably empty warehouse. Another figure, more slight and agile looking strutted across to
the chair and draped himself across it; his bleached blond hair and his white tank top standing out in the gloom.
An air of confidence surrounded him. Here was a man who thought that he could do no wrong.

“Brady, Brady... Irish, I do love the Irish me,” his voice echoed around the warehouse rebounding off of the dimly
lit walls, “you're here for a job then? Of course you are. Money. Here you go.” All while he was saying this he had
the most inane grin on his face.

“R...right, why? Why give m...me the money before I've done the job?”

“Because I can. And because I need your complete trust,” his voice dropped to a whisper now, 'I can trust you
can't I?”

“Course.”

“Brilliant, well that wraps up our little meeting then doesn't it? Get this stuff and bring it back here by tomorrow.
Money, details,” Marco handed over a smoothed out bit of paper and some crisp notes while standing up and
straightening out his tank top.

Seconds later he was plunged into total darkness. Assuming that Marco and his heavies were gone Patrick
hurriedly turned and left the darkened warehouse.

...

The expanse of disused, desert land stretched on for miles in every direction, nothing to be seen but a couple of
crates. They looked fresh out of the factory and were the colour of the Californian ocean.  These were the crates
that he was meant to be dropping back off at the warehouse to be destroyed. He wasn't meant to be looking in
them, it was a breach of the trust that had been bought. But it was oh so tempting.
No-one would notice if he just saw what he was meant to be destroying, surely no-one would ever be able to tell.
Undoing the catches on the crates, Patrick slid off the lid and looked inside. There were boxes of pills and other
drugs all intended to make people better. Opening another Patrick saw packets of freeze dried food, one being
enough to feed a family of five for a month. He couldn't do this. It would be immoral to do so. He would be
destroying drugs that would make his brother better. Drugs that would make hundreds, if not thousands of
people better. Not even bothering to think about the possible consequences, Patrick sprinted back to his car,
turned the key and sped off, as fast as he could. He intended to tell someone, make an anonymous phone call to
the police the first chance that he got.

Marco was waiting. 

This was new.

After having waited an hour it was pretty clear that he wasn't going show.

“A no show, how interesting,” Marco voiced aloud, to no-one in particular, “well, we best be paying our little
friend a visit then shouldn't we?”

His bodyguards knew better than to reply.

Looking out the window whilst watching the rain drizzle past his eyes, Patrick saw the silhouette that he was
dreading, and he pulled on his rain jacket and began to run.