He’d suffered a pang of conscience before he’d done the job, though. He hadn’t been stone cold, not then. He’d wanted to make sure he wasn’t killing a saint.
He wasn’t. The guy was the CEO of a hedge fund who would buy perfectly functional companies and wreck them with his own debt. He’d leave work on a whim, and Eric spent some time tailing him, looking for the best opportunity to kill. He’d followed the guy for two weeks, amazed—and appalled—when his mark stalked women,differentwomen, practically one a day around their lunch hours, their day-care pickups, their trips to the grocery store.
The behavior was calculated and intimidating, and Eric’s initial skepticism—Angie had claimed to be terrified—began to dissipate. Of course she was terrified. This guy was everywhere. He’d purposefully bump into his marks sometimes, insinuate himself into their days, touch their hands, breathe on their necks while they were in line at the grocery store, lean too close when he spoke. Women recoiled—they knew what the guy was—but he was rich, and often he wielded some sort of control over their lives. He told one woman that he was glad to see which public school she’d applied to get her middle-schooler in—he’d love to put in a good word for her, right? All the while running his hand down her back.
It had been gross, demeaning, and Eric’s rage had built, but he’d been green, and he hadn’t been able to spot an opportunity.
Until one day opportunity struck him flat-footed. He’d followed the guy from work that day, wondering at the oddness of the hour—he’d left early—and then surprised by the direct route—straight to a modest apartment building on the wrong side of town.
Oh, this woman. She sold coffee at a kiosk in front of the guy’s office building. Sweet girl. She’d given Eric a day-old bagel on more than one occasion as Eric had lurked outside the building, probably looking hungry.
Eric had paused outside the low-slung two-story stucco structure, hiding in the shade against the wall, when he saw his target. He’d changed clothes in his car—that was Eric’s first impression. He was wearing all black, laughably so in the bright suburban sunshine.
The man carried a small kit with him, a fanny pack, which looked douchey, but itwaspractical. As Eric watched, the man used a lockpick at the window and then the blade of a slim knife to remove the window screen and bump the almost laughable lock.
The mark had climbed into the woman’s bedroom and grabbed her as she exited the en suite bath, with fresh clothes and wet hair from the shower. Later he’d learn it was to go to another job, but right now it didn’t matter.
This… thisswine, who had been scoping out, stalking, and intimidating not justonewoman butseveral, was now going to… to… to do what Eric’s father had been doing when Eric had crashed that rock down on the back of his head.
Before he could even think, the gun was in his hands, and they were rock steady, although he’d never so much as fired a weapon before.
Eric stood in front of the open window and aimed, and as his target turned his head and lowered the knife, he’d called out, “Lady,duck!”
She hadn’t justducked, she’d slid to the floor in a puddle of fear, and Eric had stared into the slack, dumb face of pure fucking evil and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.
The woman scrambled to her feet, and it had looked as though she was holding her breath. She gazed at Eric—white-faced, shaking, and shell-shocked by his own audacity—and then had mouthed, “Run,” at him.
Oh yeah. That.
He’d tucked the gun into the back of his pants and pulled his hoodie over it and then strolled away. It was the middle of the day. The few people who had heard the shots hadn’t started to gather yet, and as Eric rounded the second block, he heard the far-off shriek of sirens.
Years later he’d realized the woman had given him a five-minute head start, but even better than that—she’d claimed she never saw the man who’d saved her.Man—that’s what the newspapers (yes, in those days it had been newspapers) had said the next morning.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. When he thought about it now, he could count a hundred mistakes. He hadn’t known his weapon, he could barely fire a gun, he hadn’t hidden his face. Hell, he’d done it in broad daylight, for sweet fuck’s sake!
But back then all that had really hit him was that, as the story grew a short set of legs and lasted a week’s worth of a news cycle, the guy he’d killed had been DNA tested and had been fingered for nearlythirtysexual assaults in Boston alone.
He’d been a bad man. Averybad man. And whatever had broken in Eric as he’d imploded his father’s head with a rock, he felt no guilt whatsoever about what he’d done that day.
In fact, recalling the terror on the woman’s face before he’d fired that gun, he wanted to do more.
Eric took Angie’s $20K and got himself a decent apartment for a few months, and while he was holed up, he figured heshould take a page out of that scumbag’s book. Thirty assaults, and nobody had pegged that sonuvabitch. He’d had a burglar’s kit in that little black bag and, as the papers reported, tools for hacking into security systems, a small can of paint for painting over cameras, duct tape, and knives.
Lots of knives.
Some of his victims hadn’t beenableto identify him, becausethey’dbeen dead.
Okay, then. Eric needed to learn some things if he wanted to be a true professional, and he set about doing just that. He kept the gun, visited a shooting range with a fake ID, and learned how to handle a weapon. (And how lucky he was that the gun he’d been given had been cleaned and fired recently.) He’d gotten a laptop, pirated some Wi-Fi, bought another fake ID, and took some classes in security systems, pretending he wanted to get a certificate as an installer, and had learned how to bypass everything from cameras to hidden alarms.
He’d bought some new clothes and learned how to wear them so the woman at the coffee kiosk didn’t feel sorry for him and he didn’t attract attention.
He didn’t know how to set up a shingle—but he never had to.
About the time his money was running low, Angie called him. She’d been doing her “I bought a hitman” penance by volunteering in a woman’s shelter and had become part of a network, completely underground, that secretly relocated women and their children to get them away from abusive, often homicidal spouses.
The woman’s husband was powerful, a community leader, and he’d killed the woman’s only contact as she’d fled their home clutching her infant daughter to her chest.
They had her hidden, but the abuser knew people—cops, lawyers, judges—and there was a noose around the city. She was going to be found soon.
