He holds his fist out, and I bump it. “Be careful, brother, call if you need anything.”
Slipping my helmet on my head, I don’t answer. I turn away from him and start pushing the bike down the driveway a ways before I start it.
It takes almost an hour to get to the guy’s fancy fucking townhouse condo. I guess after he hit his midlife crisis, he divorced the wife and started over in one of the more affluential parts of south Tulsa. Everything about him screams rich guy wishing he was young again all the way down to his BMW convertible sitting in the little one-car garage.
As I walk by it, I drag the blade of one of my knives across the black soft top, the edge easily slicing through the material. The little camera in the corner of the garage turns from green to red, but nothing about me is identifiable, and nothing about it worries me. I’ve seen better equipment at Walmart.
The lock on the door into the house is a standard lock that I could pick in my sleep. The closer I get to this guy, the more excited the beast inside me gets.
As I walk up the stairs, I can hear the drywall flaking onto the hardwood steps as I drag the tip of my blade up the wall. One of the first things I learned as a boy was the ability to be invisible, to be quiet. My uncles practically beat it into me, Vasilei and Dimitri, to make the shadows our friend and learn how to become one with it.
But, I don’t want to be quiet.
I want the fucker to wonder what he’s hearing. He should be worried there’s an intruder in the house. The smell of fear is one of the best smells of the enemy.
The soft sound of footsteps on hardwood reaches my earsand I smile. His cheap alarm camera must have told him I’m here. Taking a slow, deep breath, trying to keep the excitement churning in me to a non-distracting level, I press my back against the wall and listen to him taking slow steps in the short hall around the corner.
He probably has a weapon, if Mason were here we would bet on whether it’s a gun or a baseball bat. I would bet bat, he’s probably the type that says guns kill people instead of the person controlling the trigger finger. Both of my knives are in my hands and I step around the corner and duck.
Damn! I would have won.
A bat crashes into the drywall and while he is trying to pull it out, I slide one of my blades into his side, careful not to hit any major organs. Yet.
The old guy grunts and lets go of the bat, shocked by the pain in his side, and he slaps his hands over the wound. He’s in his boxers and nothing else, and it’s obvious he likes to go to the gym. Too bad he doesn’t know what to do with the muscle besides show it off to whatever bimbo will come home with him.
His brown eyes meet mine, shock written on his face, as the blood seeps slowly between his fingers. All I am to him is a black outfit with a black balaclava on my head. But I make sure he can see my smile right before I punch him and knock him out cold.
It doesn’t take long to drag him to his bed and tie him up and I don’t feel like waiting for him to get his beauty rest, so the ice water I throw on his face and chest has him gasping and trying to sit up. The best part is watching him remember what’s going on, the blank state of confusion followed by the memories flashing through the mind, and then my favorite part, the fear that charges the whole body.
For some, they just freeze. Others immediately start to struggle and yell, and some even go right into hysteria andpiss themselves. I like anger and yelling, it makes the entire experience more enjoyable.
He doesn’t let me down.
“Who the fuck are you and why are you in my house?” He’s trying to pull his wrists free from the bounds, but knots were one of my favorite lessons from my uncles. He stops and looks at me. “Do you know who I am?”
The small chair from outside the bedroom, sitting next to some kind of dumb-ass small table, is next to the bed and I’ve straddled it. My arms are crossed over the back of the chair and my chin is sitting on my arm.
“Tulsa County District Attorney Anthony T. Blevins, Criminal Division?”
He stops struggling and narrows his eyes at me. “What do you want?”
“There are two things I want. The first is David Barone.”
His eyes narrow as he stares at me. He’s wondering if he should play dumb or not. Either way, he’s a dead man, but I kind of hope he makes me cut the information out of him.
“I don’t know who that is.” Good times it is.
I lightly slide the tip of my knife down the outside of his thigh, the skin opening up like a hot knife on butter.
His eyes almost pop out of his head as he watches the blood start to slide down the outside of his leg. “Wait! Stop!”
Stopping, but not taking my knife from his leg, I lift my eyes to his. “Yes?”
“I swear, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
With a sigh, I continue cutting my straight line to the top of his knee. “Did you think that doing the dirty work of the Cosa Nostra would make you untouchable? Dirty DAs are a dime a dozen.”
Letting his head fall back on his pillow, he stares at the ceiling, his breaths are ragged pants, his face red from the painthat usually takes a few seconds to hit the nervous system because my knives are so sharp. He barely felt a thing until I stopped. His leg is on fire right now.
