Luckily, the gate is guarded only by a keypad. Any real employees who might once have patrolled the entrance have gone; probably unpaid and bitter.
I lever off the top of the keypad box, pulling out its innards and attaching the main wires to a bypass machine with a code breaker. While it happily spins through a couple hundred combinations per second, I sit back and flex my muscles, knowing any neighbours will see my car and assume I’ve every right to be lurking outside.
The moment I’m not focused on working, thoughts of Lilac fill my brain. Her smell, her hair. The way her body melted back against mine as she surrendered the gun.
Fuck. Concentrate on the job.
But I can’t.
She floods into my head the same way she crawls into my dreams. Bad enough when I knew I’d never see her again, not unless I went looking, and I’m not self-destructive enough to do that. A thousand times worse when she stood before me in the flesh, so close I could touch.
I check the keypad, grinding my teeth as the flickering numbers on the display show that it’s still searching. I force myself to back away, otherwise the bat will be used on the code breaker instead of the man hiding inside the house.
My pocket buzzes and I pull out my phone, groaning as I see the text from Em. Most of the time, she’s the perfect girlfriend. Pliable, but not really invested. Happy to take my money, especially when it’s in lieu of spending time with me.
But now,now, she gets clingy. Em’s mistaken my horror for interest and is staking a claim.
Stupid Lilac and her stupid bloody vendetta.
Not that Robbie would still be hanging around either way. But the original plan was to scare him badly enough that he’d move north, get out of everyone’s way. The boy was an irritating mix of clueless and ambitious. Eager to do the work but helpless to do anything but fuck it up.
Tessa was the last straw. Uploading the video should have been his undoing. But even then, he didn’t get it. Three months after the world got clued in there was a new rapist in town, and he still lurked in the shadows, desperate to be involved.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I went back into the warehouse to beat the shit out of him and found Lilac ready to kill him instead.
The gadget finally hits the right combo, opening the gates, and I drive the car through before going back to retrieve the device. After three attempts to replace the pad housing, I leave it hanging. If somebody sees it and comes nosing around, they’ll get more than they bargained for.
Beyond the fancy gate, the front lawn is overgrown, and straggling weeds poke their determined leaves out of the concrete driveway; testament to the lengths that life will go to flourish.
A flash on my retinas triggers a memory. Blood seeping out of Robbie’s body onto the cold floor of his father’s warehouse. We used to bunk there sometimes when parental interference went from an annoyance to an imposition. His dad was always out of town. His mother always shacked up with some new bloke.
I shake my head to clear it, anger washing through my body like a red, red flood.
It’s her fault. Lilac. Bloody name sounds like it was dragged kicking and screaming from the twenties. The last lot, that is. Not the current era.
The images had been under control. The dreams still around but fading, first-kill jitters. I guess if that flashback heralds anything, another sleepless night is waiting at the end of my shift.
Fury makes me grip the bat tighter. I take the rush of emotion out on the mailbox, scattering fliers halfway across the front lawn.
Not a good look. Not part of the playbook.
Don’t draw attention, that’s number one. Or number two.
Number one is that you belong to the syndicate more than the syndicate belongs to you.
And the fact I’ve made a rookie error sends another crippling wash of rage through my system. I want to smash the bat against everything in sight, until I bring the slate stone dwelling in front of me to the ground, then knock the individual bricks until they’re level with the earth.
A pair of eyes peep out at me from beneath a net curtain. Frightened but letting curiosity rule their head.
Great. A kid in the picture. I guess the client knew I was coming and knows what I’m here for. He wouldn’t keep their child like a shield to ward off danger if he didn’t.
Imagine how low a person needs to be to endanger their son to get themselves off the hook.
The sort of person who doesn’t deserve mercy.
I gesture to the boy to open the window and hold a finger to my lips. The squeal of wood against wood is loud, even in the buzz of the suburban morning, but it’s also an innocuous sound. Not a noise likely to cause alarm.
After waiting for a ten-count, I head over. The boy already has one leg slung over the sill, halfway towards escape. A kid after my own heart.
