Jonah had called it. If asked to explain, he’d say it was the French cuffs, the faint shadows beneath the man’s eyes, or maybe the way his stride across the pavement toward the car had been a little shorter than what Jonah judged him capable of. Something about the man struck Jonah as tentative. Or depressed. Or tired. All possibilities. But Jonah wasn’t a doctor or a psychiatrist, just a killer with good instincts currently holding a length of shoelace to his mark’s throat.
The man’s aftershave smelled expensive, and he didn’t struggle much. Though Jonah had called it, the latter fact fucking annoyed the shit out of him. The guy was in ridiculously good shape. Jonah could feel the muscle tone and sense of power thrumming through the man’s body. He clearly worked out, went to a gym. And yet, his blunt fingernails tore weakly at the skin of Jonah’s forearms with something almost like resignation.
Jonah tightened his grip on the string and held steady, every muscle in his body locked and tense. Certain jobs were more about patience than viciousness; he had both in spades. In the rearview mirror, knocked askew during their initial—disappointing—scuffle, Jonah watched the man’s eyes roll wildly side to side as oxygen deprivation took its toll and he lost focus.
Close. Very close. Another twenty seconds or so, Jonah guessed.
When the man’s gaze suddenly locked onto Jonah’s, a jolt ran up his thighs, the tiniest suggestion of a thrill that the man might have found his spine late in the game. The kind of thrill Jonah wasn’t supposed to get. The kind the afore-mentioned psychiatrists studied. No,judged. The kind he’d not had when he first started this fucking job. But now? Well now, deep down, Jonah craved moments like this, anticipated them, some feral, animalistic part of his brain flexing its claws, alive and well despite time and advancing civilization’s best efforts to stamp those instincts out.
The man bucked forward, and grim satisfaction tightened Jonah’s stomach. They’d arrived at the final push. The last surge of fight or flight adrenaline. Jonah’s breaths came in shallow gasps of exertion, and his heart pounded the same way his mark’s did. There was a deep intimacy in these last shared moments that even Jonah was a little reluctant to acknowledge, knowing that, once he did, it’d be a sure sign that his lizard hindbrain had finally fully taken over.
Until that moment came, he could still claim a few lingering shreds of humanity.
Seconds passed, and then everything went still and soft. Jonah’s blood hummed in his ears as he relaxed his hold on the shoelace.
The man slumped in the leather seat as Jonah tucked away the shoe lace and pulled a small spritzer bottle of lab-grade DNA sanitizer from his back pocket. He sprayed the interior of the car liberally and gave it a quick wipedown.
Exiting the car, Jonah stopped to stretch, muscles singing and endorphins flooding him with a familiar euphoria. He imagined it was what a doctor felt when saving a life on the operating table. Except…not at all the same.
He stifled a chuckle and pulled the Cubs cap he’d brought with him low over his eyes as he stepped into the garage’s piss-scented elevator. He leaned back against the wall, the man’s name already fading from his mind, though he wondered over the specificity of the request.Shoelace.There must have been some significance in it that he wasn’t in on. He’d swapped classic cotton for a thicker nylon weave because he didn’t trust the cotton not to break, which would’ve been very fucking inconvenient. A bullet would’ve taken a fraction of the fucking time, though.
Jonah shoved the thought away to rest alongside the man’s name. Best not to wonder. It didn’t matter anyway. Death by strangulation was the same as death by bullet. Only two people—the client and the mark—knew the difference. Three if Jonah included himself, but he tried not to. He was nothing more than a shadow that slid into the corners at first light, the cock of a hammer, the click of a lock, a voice on the other end of a temporary phone number.
He existed transiently, and he liked it that way.
On the fifth floor, he exited the elevator, got into the SUV he’d rented for the day, and drove it three miles away to Sunshine Bakery.
The girl behind the counter glanced up at the chime of bells, her high ponytail swinging behind her. He observed the perky curve of her smile placidly until it started to fade, then he tried to match it when she asked for his order.
“You got the cinnamon bagel and mocha twist latte last time. Did you like it?”
Caught off guard, Jonah swung his gaze from the big picture window back to the girl’s expression, which remained inquisitive and friendly enough to make Jonah a little suspicious that this was somehow a trick question.
“It was good,” he ventured.
“Okay, good!” She beamed him another smile. “Just checking!”
Fuck, her energy level was too much for 8:03 in the morning, even considering what Jonah had just finished doing.
As she turned away to fix his order, Jonah eyed the drinks in the cooler behind the register: fresh-squeezed juices, soda, and a row of super sugary nuclear caffeinated shit that made his pulse speed up just looking at it. His gaze caught briefly on a certain brand before he forced it away.
Bagel and coffee in hand, he sat in a shaft of sunlight that poured in from a big picture window at the front of the shop and ate a third of the bagel in one bite before he pulled out one of the two phones he carried and selected the only contact.
No hellos. The line clicked, and the voice on the other end spoke. “I see you.” The voice was always different thanks to a modulation app, but the greeting was always the same.
He glanced out the window, scanning the sidewalk pointlessly, then pressed his middle finger to the glass. “See that, too? Pick somewhere else next time. The barista remembered my order from a fucking month ago.”
The voice laughed, the sound hollow and strange, slightly inhuman. “Some people enjoy that kind of dedicated customer service.”
“Not me.”
“Shocking.”
Jonah wedged the phone between his shoulder and ear as he dug into his pocket again and came out with the St. Christopher pendant that had been around the man’s neck. He pressed it to the glass. “See that, too?”
A rumbling, pleased sound came over the line. “Good work. Go back to the counter. Ask for the McClellan order.”
Jonah tucked the pendant away and stuffed the rest of the bagel back into the bag.
