Jonah
It might’ve been a mistake bringing Cas with him. Not because Cas was actively distracting—he was fiddling with his laptop silently—but because Jonah was distracted by his presence in general. Not once had he ever brought someone with him on a job. It was dangerous, for one. But more importantly, it was stupid.
He decided Cas must’ve drained him of his last few brain cells when he’d been on his knees in the kitchen earlier, then quickly stalled that line of thought as a mixture of heat and a thin thread of guilt flushed through him. This would complicate things between them, and it hadn’t been exactly cut and dry before.
There was no guarantee Cas wouldn’t jet at some point if the situation went too sideways.
But then Cas caught Jonah’s eye and grinned and, well, he’d missed that fucking grin. It flared inside him, bright as anything, a wholly different kind of heat. Purer. Like happiness. And more transient.
Guys like Jonah didn’t get happily ever afters. He’d learned that long ago. The best he’d hoped for was a quick death and minimal suffering when his time came.
Jonah forced a wan smile in return before turning his back and dropping to a crouch in front of his gear.
The sun baked down on them, the tar roof absorbing every bit of heat and concentrating it on the soles of Jonah’s shoes. He’d directed Cas to the shadow of a decrepit old greenhouse while he’d dropped his gear at a nearby roof pipe.
Out of ten buildings in the area he’d scoped days ago, this one was the best bet and had the upside of being abandoned. No paper trail, no doormen. Not even squatters, as far as Jonah could tell—and he’d been thorough in his scouting.
All the windows on the lower levels had been shot out, and they’d had to hug the wall climbing stairs with broken risers, wobbly supports, and no railings to the third floor where the fire escape doors hadn’t been welded shut. Something about the building was familiar, though; maybe it was somewhere he’d passed a couple of nights when he was younger.
Jonah removed a pair of high-powered binoculars from his bag and moved to the wide ledge that ran around the building, gazing out over the labyrinth of alleyways that surrounded the borough’s main thoroughfares.
“What’re you looking for?”
“The Red Sea,” Jonah murmured absently as he locked in on a series of metal doors leading into a wider alleyway. He studied the arrangement of dumpsters and trash cans. The particular door he was looking for had a keypad on it, but he didn’t know whether the meeting would be happening inside or outside, so he figured it best to plan on only having seconds to make his shot.
“We’re a little landlocked…Oh! I know that place! The Ethiopian place? Bestkitfoever. What’s—” Cas trailed off and rolled his eyes as Jonah fixed him with a stare. “All right, all right. No more questions. Fine.”
“Theirkitfois good,” Jonah agreed, then set aside the binoculars and unzipped the gun case, staring down at the sleek mix of aluminum and carbon fiber. Madigan said he’d gotten hard the first time he’d opened the case. Jonah didn’t think he was lying, either.
Jonah went through his mental checklist line by line, handling each component carefully until he had everything set up, the scope calibrated, and the sound suppressor replacing the muzzle brake. There wasn’t much wind, and the distance wasn’t outlandish for either his skill or the gun’s capabilities, so after another look through the scope, he decided he was set. Besides, that was what the extended magazine was for. Unlike Madigan, Jonah wouldn’t feel like a failure if it took him more than a couple of shots. The only thing that mattered was dead.
He checked the time, then dropped down into the thin shadow of the roof pipe, back to the metal cylinder. Cas had resumed his typing, oblivious.
“Did you find a signal?”
Cas made a scoffing sound. “Listen to this guy…Did I find a signal,” he mocked with a chortle, and the corner of Jonah’s mouth hooked up, the smile more genuine this time. “J, I could find a signal at the bottom of the ocean if I needed to. I could find a signal on the eighth ring of Saturn. I could find a signal in Madigan’s ass, even with his thick skull permanently lodged up there. That one might be a bigger challenge than the ocean or Saturn.” He smirked.
Cas had definitely had way too much fucking syrup.
“Did you take your meds?” His friend Hooper had dropped them off an hour after pancakes. Jonah had made Hooper wait on the threshold while he inspected the pills cautiously, until Cas had swooped in and snatched the bottle from his hand, declaring them legit after a cursory look. Still so fucking trusting in some regards. Maybe Jonah should’ve been more grateful for that, though.
“Yup.” Cas’s grin waned. “So, now we just…”
“Wait.”
“But what are you waiting for, exactly? Like, what’s the sign?”
“A meeting.”
“Who’s this guy meeting with?”
Jonah rubbed a hand over the sweat dampening the back of his neck. “Don’t know, don’t care. I make the shot, pack up my shit, and we go. Everything else is none of my business. And let me remind you, you promised to mind your own if I brought you.”
“Aren’t you ever curious, though?” Cas took his hands off the keyboard and fiddled with a strand of hair.
Jonah started to say no then caught himself at Cas’s imploring expression. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “But knowing too much…it’s another liability.” A thin film of memory settled over the back of his mind, and he had to fight to peel it away. He’d stopped asking more than basic questions years ago. “If I got picked up…” He shook his head. “It’s just better not to know.”
“Have you ever gotten picked up before?” Cas shoved the laptop aside and pulled one knee up to his chest.
