Of course, thesomething about herI feel is along the lines ofshe’d be fun to kill, whereas thesomething about meportrayed in that twist of her lips tells me she’s thinking I’d be fun to fuck. I grip the plastic wine bottle tighter, envision asking her back to my hotel room. Taking her up via the staircase, pressing her into theconcrete wall, slipping the knife in my leg sheath just beneath her ribs and watching her eyes alight with shock—
I turn away from the soft smile she’s giving me and tell myself to keep walking. To walk away from her, this woman who is a real person, probably agoodperson.
“Hey—” she calls.
I don’t stop. I don’t turn.
I go back to my hotel room, set the shitty wine on the desk—I really shouldn’t drink more—and pick up my phone to call John.
“I need to kill someone,” I say as soon as he answers.
John snorts. Heavy drums and staccato notes come through the phone, and it takes me a second to place the video game:Mortal Kombat.
How annoyingly appropriate.
“That’s nice,” he says. “You have a contract. A contract that is now over a week old. And remember the one before that? The one you royally fucked up? Do you have any idea how much money it cost to cover that up? Money that came out ofmypocket, by the way.”
“I’ll pay you back. Just get me a contract. In San Diego.”
He huffs a sigh. “San fucking Diego? Nadia, kill your mark! He’s in Texas.”
John doesn’t know Brian isn’t in Texas. Which makes sense, I suppose; he’s not who hired Ian, nor who put the hit out on Brian.
“My mark is in San Diego,” I say.
“Then kill him.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is.” The music shuts off abruptly.
I trace my fingertips over the patterns of the comforter on the hotel bed, then think of how many people have likely touched this comforter, hadsexon it, and yank my hand away.
“I just need one more day,” I tell him. “Two at most.”
“You’re out of time. I’m not getting you another job.No oneis getting you another job, in fact.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I eye the mini bottle again, wonder if maybe the blond woman is still downstairs, if I could persuade her to go on a long walk with me…a walk she’d never return from.
“It means you’re done. You screwed up an easy job, and you failed to complete the big job you literally begged me for. No one wants to hire you.”
His words slam into me. But Iknewthis would happen. Ian said as much. I just thought…“Wait—we’ve worked together more than ten years, we—”
“Itold you, over and over, to get this job done. That he was bad, that you just had to believe me. And you didn’t. And then you—” He huffs a sigh. “Well, you know what you did. You lost control, Nadia. Or you don’t give a damn. Either way, my boss doesn’t want to work with you. And frankly, neither do I.”
“John, wait.”
“What?” He sounds tired, like I do when I’ve told Eliza to brush her teeth for the fifth time in ten minutes.
“What if—” I swallow. I think of what life was like before I knew that killing people helped, before I met John and he found jobs for me that included slaying bad people. And not just anyone, but people who could never be tied back to me. After all, killing Piper’s boyfriend made sense, and sure, I knew some other not-so-savory types. But if I only killed those people, it would create a pattern. A pattern that could be traced back to me. It would make me little more than aserial killer, practically dirty words. What I do haspurpose, whereas the other kind of killing is so often a waste of life. And John has never been wrong before; when he sayssomeone is bad, they always are. It’s just usually very evident to me why they need to be removed from this earth.
“What if what?” he snaps. He must be truly annoyed; he never talks to me this way.
“I’ll repay you. And—” The words are on the tip of my tongue.I’ll kill him. I’ll just kill him and get it over with.I think the words, but I don’t mean them, not really. Notyet, anyway.
“And what?”
“I’ll finish the job,” I say, unable to articulate what that means—ending my husband’s life. But I’m desperate not to lose my connection to John, mycareer. I just need to buy a little time.
