Kim Oh 1: Real Dangerous Girl

by Kim Oh

  “Really? Think you can fool me twice?” His face darkened. “That pisses me off, sweetheart. Really pisses me off –”

  He picked me up higher and threw me. My back hit the window, shattering the glass. I found myself on the sidewalk, surrounded by bright, glittering shards.

  With his shoe, Pomeroy brushed away the daggers of glass sticking up from the window frame. Then he stepped over it, towering above me once again.

  On the sidewalk, my hands left bloody prints, black in the moonlight. My raw fingertips caught the edge of the curb as I dragged myself toward it.

  I felt Pomeroy grab my jacket collar. He pulled me up, then threw me forward again. I landed across the motorcycle, knocking it over onto its side.

  “We got all night, Kim.” I heard his voice somewhere above me. “There’s more I’m going to do to you. A lot more . . .”

  My fingers dug into the asphalt. Then they touched something softer.

  The backpack.

  I pulled it under myself and clawed at the zipper. When Pomeroy kicked me in the shoulder, rolling me over onto my back, I had the .357 in both hands.

  I didn’t have to remember anything that Cole had taught me. It just happened.

  The first two shots caught Pomeroy in his chest, pushing him backward. He toppled, landing against the empty windowsill. He looked stunned, as I got to my feet and stood in front of him.

  The rest of the shots echoed down the unlit street. When the gun was empty, I let it dangle at my side. Its weight drew me down to my knees. The old man’s astonished gaze looked past me now, toward the moon.

  TWENTY-TWO

  And then I rode some more.

  Not back home, though I wanted to more than anything else. I just wanted to go there and let myself into that little space where the rest of the world wasn’t. And just lie down on top of my brother’s bed and wrap my arms around him. Just rock the two of us to sleep . . .

  There wasn’t going to be any sleep. I knew that. Not for a while, at least.

  I’d left Pomeroy’s body still lying on the sidewalk. Brushing bits of broken window glass from my jacket, I had slowly turned and listened. For police sirens, or any other indication that somebody had heard what had gone on. Nothing – in a broke small town like this, there was probably one police cruiser for the whole place. I knew I had at least a little time. Enough to go back inside and find a beat-up old first aid kit in the bathroom. It had the old kind of bandages, the ones with the skinny red thread you have to pull to tear open the sterile wrapper. I slapped a few on the worst cuts on my hands, then checked myself for any other damage. One side of my face was bruised and swollen from where the old man had hit me. That, plus my aching ribs and spine, seemed to be the extent of it.

  I had been mainly worried about the motorcycle. If it wouldn’t start up, then I was toast. I lifted it back upright and hit the ignition switch. There was a chug and a cough, plus the smell of spilled gasoline, and then the engine caught. I revved the throttle a couple of times to get it running smooth. I found my helmet and pulled it on, strapped the backpack with the emptied .357 to the seat, then climbed on and headed back to the city.

  There was somebody waiting up for me, when I got to the warehouse. I could see a faint blue glow filling one of the skylights. I set the helmet down, unzipped the backpack, and took out the gun. This late, everything was so quiet that I could hear the waves lapping against the pilings of the wharves.

  It wasn’t Cole waiting. I made my way to the walled-off area and found his Monica sitting at the wobbly table, with the portable TV and the ashtray set on top of it. The TV’s volume was turned down to a whisper as she sat watching with a cigarette in her hand.

  She glanced over at me as I came in. “How’d things go?”

  “What the hell do you care?” I figured she was in on it, on the whole mess that I had been set up for. There weren’t a lot of secrets between her and Cole.

  Carrying the gun, I walked over to the mattress. He was there, curled up under the blanket, asleep. The dim light carved shadows into the gaunt face laid on the pillow, his breath slow and ragged.

  With the toe of my boot, I prodded the ammo boxes scattered around, until I found one that rattled with a few bullets left inside it. I shook them out into the palm of my hand, opened the .357 and loaded it up. Then I turned back to where Cole lay.

  I pointed the barrel straight down at his head.

  Monica coolly watched me. “Sure that’s what you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.” I kept my finger on the curve of the trigger. “I don’t know anything. I never did.”

  “But now you do.”

  I looked over at her. “Like what?”

  “Who you are.”

  What that was supposed to mean, I had no idea.

  “I’m the same as I was before,” I said. “Except screwed over a little more.”

  “That counts.” She flicked ash from the cigarette. “But now you know what that is. You wouldn’t know, if it weren’t for him.”

  “What makes you think I wanted to know?”

  She didn’t have a smart answer for that.

  “Besides,” I said. “He set me up. I could’ve been dead by now.”

  “But you’re not.” Monica smiled. “Now I owe him five bucks. I wasn’t sure you’d pull it off. But he thought you would. Looks like he was right.”

  “I’m not following you.” The gun’s weight was starting to tremble in my outstretched hand. That’s how exhausted I was. “Right about what?”

  “Taking care of that old man. That’s why Cole phoned him and told him what was going on. Some of it, at least. So the old man would be ready for you. And pissed off. Then you’d have to take care of him. You’d have to be what you really are.” Another drag from the cigarette, then the smile again. “Whether you like it or not.”

  “Crap.” My brain felt tired. It’d been a long night. All I’d wanted to do was come back here and blow a hole through Cole’s head. And now I was caught up in another one of these weird discussions. “So why? Why’d he want to do that?”

  “Because you’ve got work to do. The two of you. And you gotta be ready for it. That’s all.”

  I started to see what she was talking about. Probably not a good sign.

  “Ready,” I said. “Okay . . .”

  “Think about it.” Monica seemed pleased with her explanation. “Going after McIntyre isn’t going to be easy. The two of you are likely to wind up in a pretty tight place. That’s not going to be the time to find out what you really are. Now you both know. Now you can get to work.”

  She was right, I knew. Now we could. Cole and me.

  “But if you want to . . .” She nodded toward the gun in my hand. “Go ahead. It’s not like I’m going to stop you. Maybe it’d be better that way.”

  My finger loosened from the trigger. I couldn’t do it; I knew that as well. I didn’t hate him enough. Or at least not yet.

  I lowered the gun, from where it had been pointing straight at the side of Cole’s head.

  “Why couldn’t he just tell me.” I didn’t even know who I was talking to, Monica or just myself. “That’s all he would’ve had to do.”

  “That’s not how it works,” said Monica quietly. “Not in this world.”

  The gun dangled useless in my hand. I was done for the night.

  “You’ll have to excuse Cole for not waking up and telling you all this himself.” She stubbed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray. “He’s on some pain medications that really knock him out. He doesn’t take them when he’s working with you.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just turned and walked out of the warehouse, carrying the gun with me.

  * * *

  On the ride home, I got that weird sensation again.

  The streets slowly rolled by. All the city buildings, wrapped in night, flattened insubstantial. Fakes, none of them real, painted on overlaid transparencies. I felt like I could pull the motorcycle over and climb off it
, then push my hand right through everything I saw. As tired as I was, that still scared me a little.

  I let myself into the apartment and threw my helmet and the backpack, heavy again with the gun, onto the couch. Feeling a million years old, I walked back to the bedroom.

  Donnie was waiting up for me. I knew he would be.

  “You’re really late.” He watched me as I sat down next to him on the bed. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe.”

  I knew I wasn’t. I was all messed up. Everything in the bedroom was flat and two-dimensional. I was afraid that its edges would curl upward, and the things I had just barely glimpsed before, with their cold dead gaze, would peer out at me. Watching and waiting.

  With my eyes squeezed shut, I wrapped my arms around him. I was afraid to let go. I was afraid to open my eyes. What if I did, and he wasn’t there, either? Not really there. Then where would I be?

  “Kimmie . . .”

  For a moment longer, I couldn’t. Then I opened my eyes and looked.

  And he was there. For real. Still.

  “Are you going to be all right?” He sounded worried.

  It took another moment for me to answer. Then I nodded.

  “Yeah, I think so.” I let go of him a little, so we both could breathe. “We’ll both be okay. I’m working on it.”

  He laid back down on the pillow and looked up at me. “You need to get some sleep.”

  “You’re right,” I said. I gave him a smile. “I got a job to do.”

  A special message from Kim Oh –

  Hope you enjoyed the book! I’m trying to get to the point where I’m making a living at writing them, so I’ll be able to cut back on the killing people thing and just do that as a hobby.

  If you did enjoy it, you’d be doing me a real favor by writing a quick review on Amazon.com. Thanks!

  My next thriller, Kim Oh 2: Real Dangerous Job, is available now – or turn the page for a special sneak preview!

  If you’ve missed any, you can get all my thrillers right here!

  Plus, I’m hard at work on the next Kim Oh thriller and hope to have it to you soon. If you’d like to receive an announcement when it’s ready, sign up for my newsletter.

  Or if you’d just like to chat, feel free to email me!

  You can also follow me on Twitter. I’m also on Facebook – so really, you have no excuse for not finding out when the next book’s ready.

  And don’t worry – I’m not that dangerous.

  Best,

  Kim

  KIM OH 2:

  REAL DANGEROUS JOB

  Sneak Preview

  PART ONE

  You should never regret killing people. The day will come when you’ll look around and see how many jerks are left in the world – and you’ll wish you’d done more.

  – Cole’s Book of Wisdom

  ONE

  “Here’s the deal,” she said. “Give up any notions you might’ve had about getting some action.”

  “Action?” I stared back at her. “Exactly what do you mean by action?”

  “You know.” Monica was in the process of putting on her exotic-dancer makeup. “With the opposite sex. Like having a boyfriend. Or just getting laid. As of now, you don’t have those options.”

  “Oh. That action.”

  Other kinds of action, I’d had already. Like killing someone. And if I were lucky – if everything went well – there’d be more of that kind. That was the job I’d put in for. And so far, I’d had a reasonable amount of success at it, inasmuch as somebody else had died instead of me. And it wasn’t just luck, you know. I’d put in the hours.

  Which made what I’d just been told seem a little unfair, as it started to sink in.

  “Wait a minute.” I watched her putting on eyelashes so big you could’ve parked a car on them. Are guys really fooled by those, or do they just appreciate the effort? “You mean . . . like nothing? Complete nada?”

  “You got it.”

  “Well . . . that sucks.”

  “What does it matter to you, anyway?” She glanced over with that sort of insufferable expression that really hot women get when they’re looking at the rest of us. Especially the tall ones like her. “It’s not like you were getting any before.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” I didn’t, but I could have pointed out to her that in the place called Before, I had been a nerdy little accountant girl, scurrying like a tiny brown mouse from my crappy job to the crappy apartment I shared with my younger brother. Hair skinned back in a rubber-banded ponytail, cheap white polyester blouses, knee-length skirts that you could’ve recycled as horse blankets if you could’ve found any horses that unstylish. Timid little thing; no wonder I hadn’t been getting any.

  Of course, now I had the sleek confidence that comes with carrying around a loaded .357 in my backpack. Knowing that if anybody gave me any shit, I could – if I wanted to – blow a hole in them big enough to ride my motorcycle through. I’d already figured out that there were at least some guys, a few of them even presentable, who found that sort of thing interesting. And now I wasn’t going to be able to capitalize on these developments, at least when it came to the sex thing? This struck me like having a couple million dollars in the bank, and being told that you couldn’t spend any of it. What was the point?

  “Don’t get cranked up about it.” Monica started putting away her makeup kit. “You didn’t even want it before.”

  “Correction.” Arms folded, I leaned back against the doorway of the warehouse’s minuscule bathroom. “It’s not that I didn’t want it. I just didn’t think I could have it. There’s a difference.”

  “Kim —” She turned her cold, level gaze at me. “If you’d wanted it, you would’ve gone after it. Like the whole thing about going around killing people. For that, you’ve shown some interest.” She patted me on the arm as she squeezed past. “Follow your dreams, sweetheart – it’s the only way to get ahead.”

  Getting personal advice from an aging stripper, with a homicidal sociopath for a boyfriend, was an indication that Now wasn’t exactly perfect, even if it was an improvement over Before.

  “Is this something you came up with on your own?” I followed her out. “About me not getting any, as you put it, action? This your idea?”

  “Hardly.” She picked up her purse, then nodded toward the figure lying on the mattress on the floor, chain-smoking and watching a little portable TV set on a wobbly wooden chair. “It’s his.”

  I looked over at Cole. He didn’t gave any indication that he’d even heard us talking. The Cartoon Channel had his full attention for the moment. With the overflowing ashtray set on top of the blanket that covered his useless legs, he sat with his back leaned against the wall behind him. With the TV remote and his cigarette pack and lighter, plus his own ugly black .357 arranged beside him, he was pretty well set up.

  “He told you to tell me this?”

  “Yeah —” She gave a nod. “He thought you’d take it better, if it came from another woman.”

  It was like being in a commercial for feminine hygiene products. Or maybe this was how women actually talked – I wouldn’t know.

  “Take it easy, baby.” Monica leaned over and kissed Cole on top of his head. “I’ll be home late.” Then she was gone, heading out of the warehouse.

  “Hey.” With the toe of my boot, I gave Cole a kick in the ribs. Our student-teacher relationship had developed to the point where I could do something like that without him picking up his .357 and drilling me between the eyes. “What’s this about my not getting any?”

  “Just trying to help you out.” Cole picked up the bowl of cornflakes that Monica had made for him, fished out the cigarette butt he’d accidentally dropped into it, then ate a couple spoonfuls. “It’s something that comes with the territory.”

  “Really? It never did for you.” I was aware that he had cut a pretty wide swath with the ladies – ladies like Monica, that is – back when he had been fully functional and a
ble to get around on his own. “You seemed to get all you wanted.”

  “That’s because I’m a guy.” He set the bowl down. “It’s different for guys.”

  Not exactly news to me.

  “You see —” Cole continued his lecture. “Chicks dig what I do for a living.”

  Used to do, but I wasn’t going to point that out to him. I’d already figured out that there was only so much you could needle the guy about, before he actually would pick up his .357 and let you have it.

  “Does something to their heads.” He tapped the side of his own with his forefinger. “And when somebody like me nails a lot of ’em, it makes it even worse. I’d walk into a room full of women, I could hear their brains shutting off and the hormones rising.”

  This was the sort of thing I had to hear from him on a daily basis. The fact that he was probably right didn’t make it any more enjoyable.

  “So if, say, I was on some kind of a job – like I used to do – and it involved blowing away a female target, then the job would be easier. Because of the hormones thing. Defenses are down, so to speak. You’re in, you’re out. So to speak.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’d be how you’d describe it, all right.”

  “But it’s harder for you. Guys don’t react the same way.”

  “I thought you all got off about girls having guns. Gets you excited. You see it on TV all the time.”

  “That’s why you should watch cartoons.” Cole pointed to the portable set on the chair. “They’re more realistic. But here’s the scoop, Kim. Yeah, guys’ll get interested because you’re all dangerous and stuff – but that’ll just shut off half their brains. When they pick up the wavelength that you’re not spreading it around, like the rest of the women they know, then the other half of their brains shuts down. Then you blow them away.”