She had $100,000 dollars, but it couldn’t look like a hit.
Eric had also spent a lot of his time reading books about assassinations, both fiction and nonfiction. This time, he had some finesse.
First he spent two weeks researching his target while acting as a member of the groundskeeping crew at the man’s Martha’s Vineyard estate. He’d actually loved that place—the wind, the glorious colors of the cliffs at Gay Head before it had been renamed Aquinnah. (And yes, he’d really enjoyed the dirty pun too, but he kept that to himself.)
He’d had a chance to see the man’s brutality firsthand when he’d backhanded his housekeeper. The woman had picked herself up and cleaned up the plate of breakfast she’d fixed for him, and then had set about making it again—but this time without chili powder, which Eric had figured would make it taste delicious.
Turned outthisscumbag had a slight allergy to capsaicin. It couldn’t have been triggered by the chili powder, but with just the thought of it, the guy went into monster mode.
Eric had told the woman quietly, and in Spanish, to take the next two days off. He’d do her job, he said. The boss would never notice.
And he hadn’t. Eric knew Spanish by then—the time on the streets, working in the grounds crew, talking to the other servants had given him a working knowledge. He spoke with an accent and used dye to keep his hair from bleaching, and the scumbag had never even looked at his blue eyes. Eric had cleaned the house thoroughly—thoroughly enough to find the stash of epi pens and, after some time on his computer, bleed out the drug and thenresetthe pen using air and nothing else. The syringe would deliver a big burst of air into the bloodstream.
The venous embolism would take three or so minutes to kill.
Carefully, Eric had cleaned the kit of all his fingerprints and then wiped down the house as well. That evening, he’d fixed his “employer’s” food to his specifications, and when he’d gone to take the plate away, the man had told him, “It didn’t taste entirely like crap.”
“You like my secret ingredient?” Eric had told him, smiling, and then had shown him the big shaker of chili peppers. Not powder. Peppers. A big shaking plastic bottle of death.
Shrieking, the man had rushed to his bathroom—the one in the back of the house—and as Eric set the dishes in the dishwasher, turned it to wash, and then wiped it down quickly, he heard the scrabbling through the cupboards, the swearing, the almost tearful begging to “Please please please please please….”
By the time Eric had gotten to the study, the man was sobbing in relief—oh yes. Yes. He’d gotten the drug in his system; he would be all right!
Quickly—using all his newfound skills—Eric erased the security footage on the laptop for the past three weeks. According to records, he’d never been there.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The employer, dressed in a linen pantsuit that probably cost what he paid the grounds crew for a month, was suddenly looming in the doorway, looking tearful and disheveled and woozy.
“How’s your head?” Eric asked as the computer whirred in compliance with his commands.
That quickly, the man’s left eye filled with red. He crumpled to the ground without even a whimper.
Eric wiped down the desk and his laptop on the way out. He knew the island well enough by now. He didn’t want to catch its one bus, so he walked, skirting the road where he’d be noticed. He ended up in Edgartown after a two-mile hike through thewoods. It was a lovely, charming tourist trap, and after finding a busy wood-and-brass inundated pub, he hurried to use the bathroom. He’d brought his own kit there too—a product to wash the dye from his hair and the bronzer from his skin. Something to slick it back. A washcloth to clean up the righteous sweat under his arms and around his neck. A clean pair of jeans and a bright, flashy shirt, like a teenager would wear when sightseeing with his parents.
He could still pass for sixteen.
Once he was fixed up, he slipped outside again, unnoticed, and threw his clothes away in a trashcan near an ice cream shoppe.
Then he bought himself some ice cream. And then some pizza.
He was on the last ferry to Cape Cod, where he took the shuttle to Hyannis and treated himself to a night in a decent hotel, and a steak.
The next day he was on the bus to Boston—and his $100K payout for a crime that nobody even knew was a crime.
And well on his way to a healthy career as a bad guy.
There were just too many people who seemed to need killing.
And it had been easy to do.
But now, with Brady’s life, hisfreedomat stake, Eric realized that keeping somebody alive was even riskier than killing them. But if anybody deserved to be alived rather than unalived, it was Brady.
Eric had death coming for him around so many corners—at this point, he felt like he’dinventedsome corners for it to peek its head out—but surprise! Eric had walked away, and he hadn’t deserved it. He’d take that stray bullet, that terrible surprise, if only Brady could walk away.
THE TRIPtook him some time. Computer first—bought at a different Walmart than last time, with a new ID and card—and then vehicle. He’d had some experience buying burner vehicles. Palm Springs was well off, with a thriving LGBTQ population. It was pretty easy to walk in and play Daddy, buying an SUV for his younger lover. Cash, if you don’t mind, wouldn’t want the wife to know.
It was never a scenario he’d entertained for his own life, but he’d killed a couple of people in similar situations. The thing about killing bad guys was you learned what they could get away with. It was like stealing their backstories—he’d always enjoyed that part. It was too close to the Charles Dickens quote about not paying extra for the warmth of a dying man’s blankets. “You should—it was the only warmth he ever had.”
