by Naomi West
He must be able to see it in my face because the whiny baby falls to his knees. “I-I know who you are. Y-you’re that h-hit man. Kennedy Squire.”
I pistol whip the guy across the side of his face and he crumples to the cement floor. Two bloody teeth dribble out of his mouth.
“Don’t say my name, you fucking asshole.” There’s nobody around to hear him identify me, but still, how stupid could this guy be?
Stupid enough to skip town on Enrico Esposito, I guess. Which is why I’m currently standing over him, pointing the business end of a Ruger 1911 in his idiot face.
“Please don’t kill me,” he moans, covering his eyes with one hand like he’s a kid playing peek-a-boo.
I reach down and crank his head back so he has to listen to me nice and clearly. “I’m not going to kill you, dickhead.”
His eyes flicker open with something that looks foolishly like hope.
“But I am gonna bring you back to Esposito.”
The hope flickers out like a flashlight with low batteries. Intense fear immediately replaces it. “You can’t. You don’t understand. I had nothing to do with all that. He wants me for the wrong reasons. He’s got me confused with somebody else.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say and smack the guy across his already bruised face. “I’ve heard it all. And you’re starting to really piss me off. Look. You can walk to the car, or I can drag you. But either way you’re coming.”
I roll my eyes as the guy starts flailing in my arms, kicking and scratching to get away from me. These motherfuckers do the same thing every time. They all think they can get away. I slam my foot down on the guy’s chest, effectively pinning him to the floor. Reaching into my back pocket I pull out a syringe. His eyes dilate with panic as he watches me squirt a little of the liquid out.
“No! Don’t. I’ll pay you. I’ll-“
His voice fades into nothing as the medicine I just jammed into his thigh immediately starts to work. It really is the good shit. I sigh as I hoist his dead weight onto my shoulder.
I lug the guy out of the apartment complex. I don’t even care if there are witnesses. I’m a ghost. Esposito makes sure that I’m a ghost. This whole thing only works if I can breeze in and out of whatever countries he needs me to.
He hired me to be his tracer a few years ago. I used to be a hit man, and a damned good one, for a mobster named Greco. He was pretty much evil personified. He taught me everything I knew when I was just a kid. And then when I grew a conscience he started blackmailing me with my mother and my sister as collateral. He knew I would never do anything that would potentially harm them. So I took people out for years at his command.
When he was finally dead. When I finally got out of there, I vowed I would never kill again. But then, I also had about zero marketable skills. What the fuck was I gonna do? Intern somewhere? Shit, I didn’t even have a Facebook.
When Esposito tracked me down and asked me to be his skip tracer, it didn’t take long to accept. Tracking people down used to be the only good part of being a hit man. It’s like a game. A puzzle. The longer I stare at the pieces the clearer the information becomes.
I know that Esposito is no better than Greco. That the only reason he wants me to bring these people back alive is so that he can handle the dirty parts himself. Sick fuck. But as long as I get paid, and I don’t have to garrote anybody anymore, then I’m good.
Even though I’m grateful that I don’t have to murder people for a living anymore, I’m still champing at the bit to get this skip off my hands. I’ve been off on a long run. Skip after skip for damn near three weeks. At this point I’m champing at the bit to go back to New York to see my mother and my sister. My dad died a long time ago, so I try to get home once a month and change the light bulbs, make sure there aren’t boys sniffing around Mara yet. And who knows, if I have the time, maybe I’ll head back to Ireland for a week or two. Spend a little time with the woman I love. Trying not to drown myself over the fact that she’s happily married to my best friend. Anyways. Old news.
I use the burst of adrenaline that comes from thinking about her as I shove the guy into the trunk space of my SUV. I handcuff him to the back of one of the seats. Just in case he wakes up and decides to get cute.
As soon as I’m on the highway, racing toward the airport, I key in the number to my burner phone. Normally it’s just a voicemail that I get, no name, no number, just a beep. I leave a code that no one else knows on the voicemail and hang up. That way Esposito knows that it’s me and that the job is done. I can almost taste the freedom. I’m about to be off the job.
This time though, I’m surprised when a voice answers. Esposito himself. Heavy Brooklyn accent and all.
“Squire.”
“I’ve got him,” I say.
“Fine. Pull to the side of the highway now.”
How the fuck he knew I was driving on a lonely highway, I have no idea. But I don’t ask. I follow directions.
“Get out of the car,” his deep voice says in my ear.
I slide out of the car as a dude on a junker motorcycle pulls up behind me. My hand instantly goes to my Ruger, but Esposito speaks again in my ear.
“Stand down, Squire.”
The guy on the motorcycle pulls his helmet off, shaking his dark hair back. I don’t recognize him, but at the same time, I do. I’d know that expression anywhere. It was the same one I had on my face for years. Part dead, part unsurprised, part ready for anything. He must be a hit man.
“Mikhail will take the skip from here,” Esposito tells me.
I shrug. No skin off my teeth if Esposito wants to change the plan. I reach back into the SUV and pull out my small bag. Tossing the keys over to Mikhail, he does the same with the motorcycle keys and the helmet.
“Bike sticks in fourth gear,” Mikhail says to me in a thick Slavic accent before he slams into the SUV and tears away. And then it’s just me and the junker bike on the side of a lonely French highway.
“You have a new skip,” Esposito says to me as I walk a circle around the bike, trying to figure out if I even trust it enough to throw a leg over it. My heart plummets. I was really looking forward to seeing my sister. Slitting my wrists over a woman I can’t have. Then again, maybe work is a good thing.
I grunt to let Esposito know that I’ve heard him.
“You’ll find the information in the storage compartment of the bike. This one is important, Squire. I want it done, and I want it done cleanly. No loose ends. I want both of them back here in my compound in a week.”
Both? I’m rarely ever responsible for bringing back two skips at once. But I don’t question him. I just grunt again by way of an answer.
Esposito chuckles. “You’re a cold fucking fish, Squire. That’s why I’ve always liked you.”
The line goes dead, and I immediately crush the phone under my foot, kicking its pieces in about twelve different directions. Don’t need anybody tracing it. But maybe there’s a little bit of temper in there as I grind the last little piece of it into dust.
Another fucking job.
I take a deep breath and let the temper slide slickly out of me. What does it really matter in the long run?
I flick open the small storage compartment on the back of the bike and pull out one small piece of paper and a passport with my face on it, the name Dwight Jones stamped under it. This time I’m Canadian.
I scan my eyes down the paper. Looks like I’m headed to Greece.
Chapter Two
Kennedy
I have to admit. Rowena Rourke is pretty hot. She’s got all this hair, red as a maple tree, and kind of exploding out of her ponytail. And this long body. Body for days. Legs long enough to wrap halfway around the hemisphere. Nice face too. The kind of face that you wanna see make all kinds of expression. And that ass. Good lord, that ass. An ass round enough to make a man grateful he has teeth.
I staked out their dig site for the better part of the day. Made her nervous. She knew I was watching her. A woman who
looks like that probably has a very strong radar for when a man is watching her.
The father, Pierson Rourke, on the other hand, doesn’t have an earthly clue of anything that is going on in the world outside what is directly in front of him. I’ve never seen focus like that before. The man knocked over two full coolers of water and stood on his own hat for an hour without noticing. Whatever they’re working on has him riveted.
I slip away from the dig site to head back into town. I want to check out their hotel rooms before they pack it in for the evening. I have to decide if it’ll be easier to take them from there or from their dig site.
The man at the front desk of their hotel is more than happy to chat about the guests currently staying there. Maybe he’s lonely. I don’t know. I don’t care. He tells me about the young couple in room seven who just eloped. About the family reunion that’s blocked off the entire second floor. And about the archaeologist father and daughter in room fifteen and sixteen. It’s too easy. I keep the front desk man distracted, asking him to point out sites on a map on the wall as I dexterously lift copies of their keys from below the counter.
I start with the father’s room. It looks barely lived in, though I know they’ve already been staying here for three weeks. There’s a small suitcase at the foot of the bed with a few pairs of khakis, socks, and button-up shirts folded a little haphazardly. There’s a toothbrush balancing on the sink and the sheets are wrinkled but still tightly tucked in, as if he didn’t take the time to pull them back.
No weapons, no back exits. Not even a window in the bathroom. Perfect. Easy as some motherfucking pie. Just the way I like it.
Rowena’s room couldn’t be any more different. The second I step in a female scent ricochets over me. It’s mouthwatering, floral and exotic. Coconuts and flower garden or some girly shit like that. Must be her perfume.
There are clothes everywhere. And I mean covering every inch. She wore a simple white t shirt and black yoga pants at the dig site today, but every color of the rainbow is represented here in the absolute tornado of her room.
There’s purple sweatpants cast over the television, mismatched socks littering along in a little trail to the bathroom, where there’s lacy undergarments drying over the shower rod. I raise my eyebrows at the sheer, emerald green bra. Picture it against her creamy skin. Yum.
Too bad she’s on the express train back to Esposito. Not that she’s my type in the first place. I don’t really have a type, sexually speaking. As long as she’s warm and willing, she’s my type. The more adventurous the better.
I start to lightly dig through her mountains of things. I’m searching for anything that she might be able to use as a weapon against me when I come to get her. I shift some books on her desk and pick up a journal that’s three inches thick. I flip it open to find notes on notes on notes. Rock type, soil level, history of the region, weather patterns, myths, legends. And diagrams. More diagrams than one eye should ever have to look at, let alone draw. There’s hand-drawn maps, overhead ones of the area and elevation maps of the dig site. There’s drawing after drawing of partial bones, fragments of pots and in one case an intricately shaded drawing of a footprint.
As I flip through the book, however, the drawings go from clinical and scientific to something much more creative. Dreamy almost. They take on a cloudy quality. There’s a few of a room, from the inside and the outside. A tomb? And then there’s a few of a coffin. If we were in Egypt, I would have called it a sarcophagus. But we’re in Greece, so I don’t know what the fuck to call it. The last drawings in the book are of what’s inside the coffin.
A child. A boy so peaceful and ordinary looking that he could very well be napping down the street at this very moment. But that’s not why she’s drawing him. She must believe that he’s there, at the dig site. Or whatever’s left of him.
Man. Our jobs are really fucking different.
I toss the journal back onto the desk. It skids along the surface and knocks against the lamp where she’s hung something. A necklace. A small gold locket in the shape of a heart. I flick it open and see that inside is a small pressed sprig of lavender. Snapping it closed, I step away from the jewelry as if it were magic. Maybe this woman is a romantic. Which makes her double-time not my type.
As for who IS my type in the love sense, there’s only one for me. The most beautiful woman on earth. Black hair down her back, golden skin, deep brown eyes and a body like an hourglass. Alessia Patrizzio. Well. Alessia Guinne. And she is downright good-and-married to Dare Guinne. One of the best, most loyal friends on earth. And not just legal married. Full on, light–of-my-life married. There’s no question they’re the right people for one another. But still. It doesn’t change the way I feel about her. She’s perfect.
Dare’s gotten me out of more than one jam. Actually he’s the whole reason that I finally got away from Greco. He took out Greco in order to protect Alessia. And after that, I ended up living with them for a while. He and Alessia basically talked me back into self-worth. Convinced me I was more than a murderer. That there was life stretching out in front of me.
All while he got her pregnant over and over. And they fell more and more in love and kill me. Just kill me.
For a second I sit down on Rowena’s bed and feel really fucking sorry for myself. And then I hear footsteps.
And fuck. A key in the door.
She’s back. And I haven’t even finished checking her things. She could have an automatic weapon stashed in her underwear drawer and I wouldn’t even know. I’m not generally worried about my chances against a women weighing in at about a buck twenty. But Alessia completely disarmed me once and she’s even smaller than Rowena. I’m not taking any chances. I’m never this sloppy when it comes to tracing a skip.
The doorknob turns and I go with my instincts. I roll off the bed onto the floor and then completely under the bed. It’s a tight squeeze, I’m not a small guy. I watch as her boots come tromping into the room, poofing out small clouds of dust from the dig site with each step.
I can only see her from about the knee down. I watch as she toes off one boot then the other. Next come the socks, and then her white t shirt hits the floor. She breathes a breathy sigh of relief as her light blue bra hits the floor and the noise makes my pants a little tight. Then her pants and underwear join the party on the floor. I watch as her bare feet walk around the bed and into the bathroom. She hums a little song as she goes.
The shower curtain slings back and steam starts to billow out from the bathroom. Her humming gets louder and for a second I strain to hear what song it is.
Until I realize what the fuck I’m doing and I’m out from the bed in one smooth slide. I glance back, see her shadow against the shower curtain, just an hourglass shape. And then I open her door and disappear into the night.
Chapter Three
Row
At this point, I’m used to the locals and the tourists who occasionally gather outside of our dig sites. They’re always clearly marked as licensed “archaeological research zones” and it piques interest. Plus, my crew has enough digging tools and brushes to inspire visions of Indiana Jones. But the curiosity always wanes after twenty or so minutes when the crew inevitably doesn’t find a mummy or ancient jewels in a chest.
Most of my job is not glamorous. It’s defined by tedious, repetitive work with very little action. I love it.
And apparently so does the guy in the Yankee’s cap who came back to watch my crew work again today. No. Strike that. He came back to watch me work.
I stand up from the hole I’ve been crouched in for the last hour and reach my hands toward the sky. My back cracks in happy gratitude for the stretch. I ignore the penetrating stare of the man watching me and instead focus on Mount Olympus, a humble gray blue in the distance. And just to the side of that, the salt flats stretch out like a single bright tooth at the lip of the ocean.
For a second, I wish I could lunge forward straight into Warrior B. Or any yoga pose for that matter, j
ust to stretch my body and calm my mind for a second. But I’m still acutely aware of the gaze of the man behind me.
The sun is just starting the slant sideways in the sky. For most people, this would mean that quitting time is around the corner. But not for my father and I. We always work long hours, but for some reason, on this project my dad has been working like a bat out of hell. It’s the closest we’ve ever come to finding Iaichos and I can tell it’s motivating him. I’m sure we’ll be out here for most of the evening again.
In that case, I decide it’s time to refill my water bottle and get a snack from the cooler, but as I turn, I run smack dab into a man’s chest. A hairy chest. With a gold chain peeking out of a deep v neck. Christ Jesus. Again? Thought I took care of this yesterday.
“What are you doing here, Stavros?” I don’t even bother to look up into his eyes. I stare past his shoulder.
