“Let’s repeat our real first date,” I say, “minus the car crash, of course.”
“Our real first date?” His lips twist into a smirk. There’s a heat in his eyes.
I lean over the table, knowing my boobs—which really aren’t that alluring, but I know how to work what I’ve got—are spilling forward. “Yes.”
When I sayour first date, Brian’s thinking of bar food and beer in a dark tavern, tucked into a booth where we talked for hours after the car accident and then, a little drunk and in the heat of the moment, fucked in a storage closet that was left unlocked. I probably forgot to mention that part before.
ButI’mthinking of a bar in a shady part of town with one entrance—the emergency exit is illegally locked because otherwise people use it to go out back and do god knows what—where it’sdark enough you’d have to be a sharpshooter with night vision to actually hit your target.
“Well,” Brian manages. “It would certainly be—memorable.” He coughs an embarrassed laugh, his cheeks flushing pink.
Jesus, Brian, how are you possibly a bad guy?
“Great.” I signal for the waiter.
When I turn back to Brian, I can’t help but wonder how the hell I’m going to keep him alive if a whole team of people like me have been promised hundreds of thousands of dollars to off him. I take a small pull from the now-warm champagne.
To think, just a week ago I was feeling bored.
Chapter Thirty-One
Slipping out the front doorthree hours later is easy enough. After all, I promised to drive—and let Brian be the one to imbibe multiple beverages. He’s not much of a drinker; an old-fashioned as we chat out back a couple nights a week is pretty much it unless it’s date night. But tonight we retreated to the bar where we had our first date and ordered the same thing we did a decade ago—Reubens, fries, extra pickles, and too much alcohol. Which means now, as I’m tying my shoes and slipping my Glock into its special running holster, he’s dead asleep—nosomething extraneeded. We skipped the sex-in-a-closet activities. I don’t fuck someone I’m supposed to kill.
I double-check the windows, the doors, locking them and yanking shut the curtains. You can’t snipe someone if you can’t see them. Then I set the alarm system and step out into the warm, humid night. Fireflies twinkle, a magical show seemingly at odds with the reason I’m out in the darkness, running to meet a fellow assassin.
We have to meet somewhere private: no neighbor out smoking a cigarette or walking their dog who might overhear, nor at a bar where, knowing my luck, I’d run into someone from the girls’school, and dear lord, it would look likeI’mthe one having an affair—especially with Ian, a.k.a. tall, dark, and dangerous. It’s two miles to jog through the dark streets and take a left turn, entering onto the stone and dirt trail system of the same Episcopalian sanctuary.
His silhouette waits for me when I arrive. A garden wall edges what I know is lush, green grass, and he’s perched on it, staring at what would have been the sunset a couple hours ago.
“Hey,” I say.
“Meeting on holy ground. Again.” He snorts. “Feel like I’m in a vampire movie. You’re not going to bite me, are you?”
“I think vampires aren’tallowedon holy ground.”
“Hm.” He looks me up and down through the darkness. “Guess I’m safe, then.”
A beat of awkward silence. I step forward, settle onto the rock wall beside him. “I need your help.”
“Okay.” He turns, looks at me, hands loose in his lap. Utterly relaxed, motionless. Like a freaking vampire himself.
“It started with talking to John,” I say. I tell him everything—he already knows I asked for a bigger job, but I haven’t shared details about how the package arrived, what the riddle was. I explain how I went to the bookstore, that a man pointed me to the building, how I followed the town car to Austin, and then—the woman. Brian.Myhusband.
“Tell me about Brian,” he says.
“He’s a management consultant.”
“What does that mean?”
I start to explain, but what comes out is something likelots of meetingsandmaking improvements to businessesandoptimization. Basically, I’m regurgitating what Brian has said. But the more I tell Ian, the more meaningless I realize it is.
“So, you don’t know,” Ian concludes.
I shift on the cool stone. “No, not really. I thought I could just kill him, but it’s not that simple. He’s obviously more than a management consultant. He wasn’t in DC, but he sent these photos, lying about it.” I show him the images, break down when the cherry blossoms bloom. “And if he is doing awful things, I will kill him. I don’t want to—” My chest tightens as I even consider it. Imagining, once again, the results of Ian’s sniper rifle. “But if he’s hurting children or killing people or trafficking humans or—”
“I get it.” Ian sits there, still staring out into nothingness.
“There’s more. The real Brian Davis died.” I detail the internet searches, how I think the parents I met were merely paid actors. “And the car service he was using has Mafia ties. That doesn’t mean he does, but it increases the chances, right? But Brian—I just—I can’t imagine him hurting people.”
