“They only asked me to see if I could get her to meet up with me,” he spits out, tears rolling down his face.
“Who?!”
“Them—Lance and Trevor—the two in the red and orange.” He chokes on a sob and shakes his head. “Please. I wouldn’t hurt her. I was just doing what they asked me to do. They said they’d clear my gambling debts. They said this would be the last job I’d do for Damien—”
“Damien has been dead formonths,” I drawl, glaring at him.
His mouth snaps closed, eyes bulging. “What?”
I practically flop onto the edge of the bed and press my fingers to my eyes, the piles of information suddenly stacking over and over and over making me dizzy.
“Damien has been dead, along with Erik, for months,” I hiss, eyes rolling up to meet his terrified orbs. “They didn’t ask you to do this for him. She wasn’t on somelist.”
“What… I thought… I thought he was just in jail. I didn’t know—”
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck.Fucking fuck.
I stand and cross the room to my bag as he goes on and on, yet I barely hear him for the blood throbbing in my ears.
This was personal.
This was revenge.
They’re after her…
They’re after her.
Irrationality pulses at my fingertips. I remind myself to breathe, but the walls are already too close. My fingers push a few things in my bag out of the way. I know what I’m looking for even if my mind is numb. It’s instinct, a primal urge to protect Bonnie in whatever way the world calls for.
They’re after her.
“—please, I didn’t know—” Jeff is saying. “I didn’t know. I won’t say anything—”
A gun equipped with a silencer lies in the bottom of my duffle. I reach for it and check that it’s loaded.
“No—no, wait!Wait!Don’t—”
I aim the gun between his brows, unable to stop myself—
They’re after her.
It’s the last words that go through my head as the gun goes off with barely a noise, the silencer muffling the shot. My heart skips when the metal flinches in my hand, and Jeff slumps in the computer chair, words ceasing, blood dripping down his forehead.
Dammit.
This wasn’t the way I wanted this to go. I didn’t want to have a clean-up. I wanted to leave him with the promise that I’d be back to finish the job, keep tabs on him and maybe use him later down the road if another client found themselves in something sleazy…
But that photo…
If it got back to Rad or one of those men that someone was snooping around this, that they’d been caught… it might put her in even more danger.
Now I have to make this look more like a black-market deal gone wrong, not some twisted, knife-happy vigilante.
I need to vomit.
I pull my mask off and glance at the time on my phone, trying to keep the nausea at bay.Fuck. There’s no way I’m making it back to meet Bonnie and Darcy after this.
