She’s expecting me and is already driving a knife toward my side. I barely dodge it before grabbing a skillet and using it to pin her hand down. She knees me right in the nuts, making me groan and stumble back.
“Who the fuck sent you?” she hisses.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask. “I was just dropping your damn kid off! How was I supposed to know you were waiting inside?”
“Where’d you find the kid? Just off the street? You been playing the long game to get into my house?”
“Ha! You really think if I wanted to shoot you in the head, I would have to fake a family to do it? You’re not that good,” I hiss. “You’d be dead before you even knew I was after you.”
She has to know that this isn’t my style. While Lucas used to send me in to interact with the people I was sent to kill, as I grew older, I more often hunted them from the shadows than letting myself into their homes.
Sophia twists back then dodges into the next room just as Jackson and Nathan come out of the garage. The two of us freeze before doing our best to look natural.
She fluffs a pillow with vigor, and I pretend a photograph of them going rafting is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever seen.
“Rafting, eh?”
“YES!” she says, strangely loud before clearing her throat. “We went rafting. So much fun besides the part where Nathan fell out.”
“Or did you throw him out? Ha ha!”
“If I was throwing one of us out, it would have been Cam! He was all, ‘Woe is me, nature is boring.’”
“You’rehilarious.”
“THANK YOU!”
“It’s too bad you didn’t fall out,” I say.
“Right? Maybe you can go with us next time!” She mimes pushing me under the water while she smiles at me.
Jackson and Nathan seem to be absolutely oblivious to what’s going on here as Nathan jabs a finger toward the door.
“I’m going to go see Jackson’s car. You want to go with us?” Nathan asks.
Sophia beams at him as I see her hands fiddling with a drawer behind her back while I keep a knife and a gun held behind my back. I really don’t want to shoot her. The last thing I need is to shoot this woman in her family home in broad daylight, but I will also do anything it takes to keep my family safe.
“Noooo, that’s okay, though. You boys havefun. We were in here just… chatting away,” she says.
“Such a good chat too!” I exclaim.
Of course Waylon caught on earlier that something was up, but Jackson is far too excited about showing off the Mistress—aka his car—to catch on that I’m in a battle with some woman that I’m thinking about all the ways I could murder. Like… that cupboard looks good enough to store a body in until I could get Tucker to simply dispose of her.
I’m sure it’d go really well with a “Waylon, Jackson, let’s get going” and a “Where did Sophia go?” tossed in with an “It was SO strange, but she realized that she needed some milk andjust… sped off,” and a “But she didn’t take the car?” and a dash of “You know how she likes to get her steps in.”
“That cupboard there… how empty is it?” I ask, once the guys are gone.
She cocks her head. “Empty enough that your body will tuck nicely into it.”
“Oh? Good to know,” I say. She goes to jerk the drawer open as I shoot it with my silenced gun. She dives out of the way, rushing behind a reclining chair.
I kick it hard, slamming it into her as she flings a book at me, leaps over the back of the couch, and drives a kick right into my side. I dodge the fist that follows while I hold the knife and gun and question what the hell am I supposed to do? Honestly… I feel like both of us don’t really know what to do. If I was going to kill her, I’d have killed her back in the kitchen. And if she was going to kill me, I feel like she’d be trying harder. So… do we each really not want to kill each other? Or is the issue that she doesn’t know what to do with her family or mine if she does kill me?
I block another hit before I slam her against the wall and press the knife under her chin hard enough I draw a drip of blood. “What the fuck do you want?”
“What the fuck do I want? Who hired you?” she growls.
“No one fucking hired me! I was dropping your kid off.”
