“Yep.” Soren found the latch, gave the window a single gentle testing tug, then spread his fingers wide along the side and yanked. The window gave with a quiet pop and slid open with a hiss. “We’re supposed to be behind a motel fiddling with some other guy’s window so we can get inside and kill him. Damn, Glasses.” Soren grinned as he gestured Tobias inside. “That’s a murderous stare if I’ve ever seen one.” He climbed inside after the doc. “People make a lot of assumptions about murder, and they watch shows on TV that make them think they’d immediately pick up on something going down. But the truth is, most of it’s mundane. The people and things you think are suspicious often aren’t. I suspect you get that if you think about it, yeah? Aside from mafia guys, you’re the one seeing those serial killer types who everyone will say, ‘he kept to himself, I would’ve never guessed,’” he mimicked. “I just apply that shit on a larger scale.”
Tobias cocked his head and then, to Soren’s surprise, nodded. “Fair point.” Soren checked out the doc’s ass as he crossed in front of him and peered out the peephole of the door. “Are you looking at my ass?” Tobias’s brows pinched together as he tossed a glance over his shoulder.
“I was. It’s a nice ass.” Soren shrugged haplessly and dug through his pocket before producing the garrote he’d stuffed in there earlier. He tossed it in Toby’s direction. “This’ll be nice and quiet.”
“Unintentional poetic justice?”
“Maybe that, too.” Soren smiled, thinking about a bloodthirsty, infuriated Toby garroting his piano teacher. “Just helping you fulfill your destiny. Maybe I could have a second career in life coaching.”
“A life coach for murderers? Brilliant. Your marketing strategy will require a lot of creativity, I hope you know.” Toby’s voice held notes of amusement.
“It’ll be all word of mouth, of course.” Soren dropped into an armchair near the window while Toby rolled his eyes and posted himself against the wall behind the door.
It was a good setup. The guy they were there for, a small-time but vicious contract killer named Rocky who’d pissed off someone Ronin was associated with, would likely only spot Soren once he’d stepped inside the door and turned his head. Toby could then easily step in behind him and swing the door shut.
“We’re not a bad team.” Toby’s tone was musing. “Have you worked as a team before?”
“You’re fishing again.” Soren thought about giving him a harder time, then dismissed the idea. Truth was, he kind of liked Toby’s prying. He wasn’t close with a lot of people and the ones he was close with weren’t particularly interested in the whys and hows of who he was and what he did because they were similar. Tobias’s interest seemed genuine rather than clinical most of the time. He got how the psychologist earned trust among his patients. Of course, it also helped that Tobias was his own version of pathological, just like his patients. “I’ve done tandem jobs before.”
“With people you trust?”
Soren squinted in thought. “No, more like with people I know I could kill if I needed to. I don’t trust anyone in this world, but that’s as close as I’ll get.”
“But you have long-standing friendships. You’ve said so.”
“What qualifies as a friendship in this line of work probably wouldn’t in the ordinary world. And it doesn’t mean there’s trust.” Soren shrugged. “There’s always a certain amount of uncertainty built into this lifestyle, and a sense of mutually assured destruction. The people I consider friends...I’d kill them if I needed to.”
Toby smiled. “You’re lying.”
“About which part?”
“I’m not sure you’d kill your friends. At the very least, you’d be reluctant.”
Soren started to protest until he realized Tobias was right. He frowned, perturbed. When had that happened? When had Madigan, Ronin, Sadie, and some of the other guys started feeling more like family than coworkers he could replace at the drop of a hat?
“I think you’re lonely,” Tobias continued, his voice softer, beguiling. Damn, he was good. And, this time, he was definitely prodding.
“Nah.” Soren huffed out a breath, but that same feeling niggled his stomach. He met Toby’s eyes.
“It’s annoying isn’t it?” Tobias quirked a brow.
“When you dig around in my head?”
“Mm-hmm, and when I’m right, too.”
“Yep.”
A half hour later, a scuffing noise outside the door grabbed their attention. Soren lifted his chin in question at Tobias, and he nodded an affirmation as the door handle turned.
Rocky spilled inside, tripping over the threshold, obviously drunk.
Toby caught him, and Soren bit back a smile as the guy started to say something that sounded very close tothanksbefore realizing what was happening.
Toby kicked the door shut as the guy went wide-eyed and started struggling in his grip. “I’ve got it,” he said sharply when Soren started to rise to help.
And he did, for the most part. Soren settled back in the chair, watching the show with a half-smile as Tobias locked the garrote around the guy’s neck and they moved in a struggling, disjointed dance over the carpet. Toby was good at avoiding bumping into the furniture and making noise, too, shifting his weight as necessary and so deftly that Soren felt a tinge of pride. If he was honest with himself, he’d figured Tobias would’ve needed more help at first, but he took to it with the same finesse and inherent skill that his friend and mentee Madigan had. It was true that there were natural born killers, guys out there who had the muscle and skill for it the way others had a talent for baseball or soccer, it just wasn’t polite to talk about. But Toby was clearly one of them.
By the time both men fell to the floor, Rocky clearly losing his hold on life, Soren was full-on grinning for how efficiently things had gone.
