The dead of night is the perfect time for mischief.
Hunter slipped nimbly out of bed, moving fast.
He didn't even glance at Slater, still asleep on the bed.
After their long separation the beautiful lockpicking master seemed truly to have fallen for him.
Torn between hope and fear, she had been especially passionate these past few days since their reunion.
The day before yesterday, in particular, Hunter had whispered a few lines so saccharine and shameless even he felt embarrassed.
Yet this career-driven strong woman apparently lapped it up.
The result was easy to imagine.
The day before yesterday, a fierce battle had raged from afternoon deep into the night.
There was only a brief intermission in the middle.
Yesterday, because the previous day had been so exhausting, Slater called in sick and took the day off.
The day before, the lingering passion had begun at dusk and didn't end until the dead of night.
Slater, the gorgeous lockpicking master, knocked off early for the second time, racing home long before her shift ended.
And today brought another brutal clash that lasted for hours.
Even Hunter—whose physique was more than triple that of an average adult male—
felt a trace of weariness after several days in a row.
Although Slater was a lockpicking master, she didn't work out much in daily life.
At most she did a little yoga or aerobics at home to keep her figure.
Her body had actually wanted to hang up the "no-fighting-tonight" sign.
Unfortunately, Hunter still had things to do.
So in the end, her wish wasn't granted.
Barring accidents, Slater wouldn't wake up until well after dawn.
Leaving Slater's apartment, Hunter didn't bother taking the keys.
With his current Lockpicking skills, slipping in and out of a high-end complex was child's play.
Outside the building, he glanced at the ford mustang parked in the lot but didn't head toward it.
Instead, he walked along the nearby street for a distance.
Only when he reached a secluded alley did he reach into his private space.
He smoothly pulled out a motorbike and swapped on a fake license plate.
After changing his jacket, he snapped on a motorcycle helmet.
The engine roared, and within minutes he had raced several kilometres to a park.
Carefully skirting a few homeless men sleeping there,
he parked in a hidden corner and slapped on a quick-change wrap of decal paper.
By moonlight, using a cosmetic mirror, he applied rapid makeup and donned a wig for disguise.
With that done, he slipped quietly out of the park.
Only after putting distance between them did he retrieve the bike from his private space.
He kick-started it and sped toward his destination.
Tonight, Hunter was going to kill.
"Why make things hard on yourself?"
"Isn't being alive better?"
Riding through the streets of Los Angeles, he weaved and shifted.
The closer he came to the city's bustling downtown core,
the heavier his mood grew.
Tonight he was here to take lives.
His targets: the gold-burglar Charlie Clock and several of his partners.
Hunter hadn't actually held much animosity toward Charlie.
He didn't care for the man's personality, yet he admitted Charlie had real charisma.
Befriending Charlie Clock would probably have been fun.
But they could never be friends!
For one simple reason.
Earlier, Hunter had beaten Charlie's crew to the punch and stolen the gold from Steve.
That fortune was worth thirty or forty million us dollars.
That alone was enough for Charlie Clock and his team to hate Hunter with a vengeance.
Later, while checking the surveillance around his villa, Steve had accidentally spotted Charlie's crew.
So Steve decided his former partner—
Charlie Clock, whom he himself had once betrayed—must be the mastermind behind the villa heist.
In a rage, Steve kidnapped the beautiful lockpicking master Slater, the woman Charlie secretly adored.
He then used Slater's safety to blackmail Charlie Clock,
forcing him to retrieve the stolen loot within a set time and exchange it for the hostage.
That night, Charlie Clock ended up taking the fall for Hunter.
And during the hostage exchange,
because of Hunter, Charlie was reportedly shot several times by Steve and his men, nearly losing his life.
Even so, the woman he cared about—
Slater—was rescued by Hunter and afterward slept with him.
By that point, Hunter had felt bad about continuing to set Charlie up.
He had even prepared himself for Slater to reveal his identity to Charlie and his crew,
expecting Charlie to mark him for retaliation.
Nowadays Hunter kept every valuable item stashed in his private space, so he didn't worry about being targeted by these international thieves.
He was also influenced by the original plot of The Italian Job, thinking that Charlie and the others hadn't even laid a finger on Steve.
So at most they were just eyeing him, planning to steal the goods.
Hunter figured the other party had no way to touch him at all.
Therefore, he never considered going after Charlie and his partners.
But it seemed the result differed from what he expected.
Three days ago, Hunter had just met Slant.
The next dawn, when he was about to take the ford mustang Dominic had given him for a rare spin,
Hunter unexpectedly found a note inside the car.
On the paper was a single line: "Stay away from that woman!"
Hunter casually tossed the note away and still spent the night at Slater's apartment.
Then yesterday morning, as he was about to drive out to the land-trading center to ask about buying a farm,
another note appeared in the car.
Again, only one sentence.
"If you stole our gold bricks, you're dead."
This morning, Hunter deliberately checked inside his ford mustang once more.
Sure enough, another note.
"Hunter Sun, this isn't over."
Clearly, they had already investigated his identity.
Two days ago they had merely warned Hunter to leave Slater.
But yesterday they began to suspect he'd stolen the gold bricks and issued a threat.
Today, it was a naked declaration of war.
Since they mentioned the gold bricks, narrowing down the target was easy.
So far, the only gold bricks Hunter had openly stolen were the parisian dancer bricks from Steve.
Besides Hunter himself and the now-dead Steve, and Steve's former underlings,
the only ones who knew were Charlie Clock and his crew, plus Slater.
Hunter naturally didn't suspect himself, and Slater could be ruled out.
The dead Steve couldn't crawl out of his grave, and even if his men knew the bricks existed, how could they threaten Hunter to stay away from Slater?
A simple deduction gave Hunter the answer.
If it had only gone that far, he hadn't planned to eliminate Charlie Clock and the others.
After all, Steve's gold bricks,
and the black money Hunter had taken from Stanfield, were both stashed in his private space.
No one but he himself could steal them.
Although Hunter was annoyed at being targeted by Charlie and company, he hadn't wanted to kill anyone.
But what truly enraged him was that today, inside his car,
they had placed a crude bomb made of several sticks of dynamite bound together and filled with black powder.
Though the bomb lacked an ignition device, paired with the note they'd left,
at that moment Hunter, who had long since lost any clear sense of good or evil after crossing over,
felt the threat of death and, selfish as he was, murderous intent finally stirred within him.
Hunter knew Charlie and the team could not be left alive.
At the very least, several key members had to die!
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