A drive by of his store confirmed what Google told me and I was all set.
Clothing that I already had would work out, I decided. It took me forever to find a payphone. They’re an increasingly endangered species. I called the guy, ‘Flint,’ to say that we were on. His manner had not brightened. We arranged a meet. I gave him the location. A deserted lot outside of town.
“Don’t come with a phone switched on.” It shouldn’t need saying, but with ‘Flint,’ I thought it was worth a mention. “And be on time.”
He was late. Of course. His mistake. I saw it coming. He swerved into the lot at speed in a jacked up sliver pickup and with a sweep that threw up a cloud. And he was on the phone. His manner in person was just as ugly as it was on the phone. Only, live it came with gestures to invade your personal space. And breath you could weaponize.
He gave me what I needed. And a card with a number and his address. I was tempted to ask him how long he had been in the business. I gave him the money. He managed to count it and be ready to leave without thanking me. No handshake, no greeting.
With manners like his, he might have expected some comeback. As he started the engine, he lifted his phone to make a call. He was surprised and visibly annoyed when I tapped on the window. Rolling his eyes he rolled the window down. Sight of the nail-gun put a bigger look of surprise on his ugly mug. It stayed there even with the eight-inch nail sticking out of his ear.
He was a heavy fucker. I got him into the box on the back of his pickup and left it locked. Not that he would be getting out.
I arrived late at the target’s place of business. It was dark and he was long gone. I cruised by, slow. Then I returned with my lights off. The bushes by the roadside provided enough cover. I set up the pipe and primed it. Carefully sighted it and connected a remote controller through a burner phone.
I wrapped the phone in black tape, all but the camera lens. Then I checked that I could get the picture from phone’s camera up on the second burner phone I’d got to pair with it. I lashed a long rope tight around the whole rig and trailed it the twenty yards back to the highway.
Parked in a vacant lot on the far side of the road, I called the target. Told him I was in town and I wanted to tool up for a gang rumble. Gave him a lot of attitude, some buzzword slurs of a racial nature. He responded positively. Then I read out a long list of illegal weapons. Told him I wanted to collect late. Real late.
“Now or never, bud. And you’d better have cash ready.”
I told him to give me an hour.
He said, “I’ll be at the store. If you’re not there exactly one hour from now, forget it.” It was a long, dull forty-eight minutes in the dark while I watched his empty store. Dull was good. It meant witnesses would be scarce.
His bright red pickup sloweds in front of the store. Did every crook in this county drive an ugly-ass pickup? He stopped under a big lamp. He got out and stood in front of the door. While he picked through his keys he peered out into the night. I checked the image on the phone for the line of sight. At the same time, I had his picture from Arden up on my phone. This was definitely the right very ugly motherfucker.
I was glad he hadn’t brought any of his dogs. Although they were probably horrible critters anyway. As he turned toward the door, I pushed the button. The picture on the phone went totally white. The rocket trail bleached the image out completely. Though the windshield I watched the crackling trace of flame and the burst in front of the store. The bang must have been audible for a long way. His red pickup jumped and spun in the air on its axis.
My car shook. The bloom of boiling flame bubbled up into black smoke. Sparks flew up into the night. The pickup landed and crumpled nose down. I wasn’t sorry. One less plug-ugly pickup. It slumped in front of the black, smoking hole in the ground with the clumps of debris around it. Some wet, some dry. Mostly black or red.
No pug faced pawnbroker stood in the middle of it all. He will have been two or three of the nasty looking piles with smoke rising off them.
With my lights still off, I bumped over the central refuge and got out where I’d left the rope. The heat from the blaze was strong, even from the roadside. I felt it as I fumbled in the shrubs. Maybe the wind or something had moved the rope somehow. I had to go back for a flashlight.
I hated that. I didn’t want to be seen on any of the surveillance. I had to hope the blaze would mask it. It was a better risk than leaving a military rocket launcher with a fucking camera attached.
Eventually I got the rope and pulled. The rocket tube with the camera bumped toward me. It was hard not to hurry. If I hurried, I could fuck it up. But if anyone did come by, it would be bad. And if a cop happened along, that would be super bad.
It felt like an hour, but I was careful and patient. The hot tube, the black, taped up phone, all came bumping over the scrub and through the bushes. When I picked it up, I’d forgotten how hot the pipe was going to be and I dropped it. That sent the phone flying and it bounced back into the bushes.
While I scrambled in the bush after it, I heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. I put a hand on my Colt and drew it as I crouched in the bush. The truck slowed as it got nearer. I flipped off the safety catch. He drew into the curb in front of my car.
Then he speeded up and drove into the night.
As fast as I could I got the launcher and the camera into the trunk and got out of there. A mile down the road I was just slowing down to a nice, normal, inconspicuous driving speed.
Then I heard the whoop, whoop. Red and blue lights spun in the mirror. The cop was coming up fast behind me.
AMN HIM. DAMN that man. Damn him. Damn him. How can he just show up here like that? A man like him. Out of nowhere. It was not fair. All this time I contented myself. I made myself content with my lot here. Adventure and thrills were things I looked forward to getting entirely from books. My life, quiet and uneventful as it was in this little backwater town, had been enough. Until last night.
Up until the moment when I saw him, crouched like a feral wolf feeding on a fresh kill.
Fiction. Literature. Books. Stories, they gave me all the nerve-jangling I expected. All that I needed. Thoughts of all those other comforts and distractions, the tides and soaring crescendos, the emotional dynamite of love, I had contented myself to enjoy all of that sensation through the words, the eyes, and the feelings of others. On the page. In stories.
Thoughts of men, relationships, all of that, I pushed it away long ago. Sinking with a contented smile, deep into the warm embrace of a man, a strong man, a man whose highest thought, whose greatest desire was to care for me, a man dedicated to protect me, cherish me — all of those happy dreams and fantasies of romance, of being lost and filled in intimacy, I had locked all those silly ideas away. Kept them all as fantasies.
Most of my fantasies of big, strong men were not as strong as him. Or as big. He was big and not only in stature. When he pressed against me, the size of his lethal bulge made my breath halt.
Flip was a nice distraction. He was a man, and an attractive one for sure, there’s no doubt about that and I had been pleased and flattered by his attention. The endless slow dance—I knew that I wasn’t ever going to let Flip get any closer. I think he knew it, too. And I was content. Or maybe that’s the wrong word. I was satisfied. No, definitely not that. My feelings all fluttered in the air like flecks of dust in the morning sun. Now I had no idea what I had or even what I felt.
All I knew was that I had been settled. Until a wild beast ripped through the night and tore into my life. Now I felt like a butterfly pinned to a wall. Still flapping my trembling wings but stuck, hopeless.
Whoever he was, he was a bad man, a very bad man and I hated him. And I wanted to beat him and crush him. Between my thighs. I had an image of my fingers, gripped in his hair. Holding his head. Pulling him. Hard. Of his nails on my flesh.
Him in his suit. All muscles. Hard but hidden in expensive clothes. Loose but cut to show his broad, powerful shoulders. A ta
pering triangle to the trunk and his slim waist. Breathtaking thighs and an ass you could die on. Or under. Dark eyes that smoldered.
Eyes that seemed to burn my name, even though I was sure he didn’t know it. He wouldn’t care what it was if he knew. He would just use it. Use it to get what he wanted. Use it to make me lick and part my lips. Tip back my head. Open my blouse and invite him to take.
In the hot, damp night my body clenched. My finger and thumb tugged on my breast. I sighed and rolled my nipple, feeing it harden. It was no good. A sparking current crackled from there to my rising heat. My hips flexed. My back tensed. My fingers made their own way down my fluttering stomach.
Under the sheets I clenched, arched, and moaned, hot. Wet in my useless nightie. Hot thinking of him. Of how he stood, pressed against me. His feet apart. His pelvis tipped, rocking into mine. His long, hard ridge, sawing. My thighs parted. I stroked where his bulge had been. Flicked. Lingered.
A current stirred, deep in my core. My fingers circled. My scent was unmistakable. I remembered the taste of his breath. The warmth of his tongue. The urgent hammer of his pulse. The hot, hollow, rising need in my chest.
My hips bucked. Rubbed me against my slow fingers. And they rubbed back. I twisted and writhed. A wave gathered at the bottom of my core. Familiar fingers circled. Pressed. Spread my hood to stretch and expose my aching bean while the fingers of the other hand went down on their own mission. Down and in. And up.
My stomach and my buttocks clenched. My breath halted and fluttered. My back arched and my head thrashed from side to side on the pillows. I cried out. I was glad I didn’t know his name. I would have used it then. And after. When I beat the wet pillow.
How could I go on with images like that catching fire inside me? I knew that he was the one.
SLUNG THE CAR into reverse. It skidded a moment. Then jerked when the wheels got a grip. The tires howled and smoked as it kicked backward. The cop tried to steer away. He wasn’t quick enough. The car shook and I was slammed hard into the seat. The cop’s tires squealed. He’d steered but he got a hard whack. I slung the car back into forward gear and I took off as soon as I felt the contact. There was a chance I’d smashed my rear end or transmission. That would be bad.
All kinds of things could go bad at that point. The cop could have been a good enough driver. He could have gotten lucky with just enough swerve. Then I’d have only bought myself a few seconds. The time it would take him to shake out of the shock. Even if I’d stopped him, he’d be calling it in right away.
Still, the big plus was that he may not have gotten my license plate down yet. It would be tough for him to read now. And at the least, I’d slowed him down.
There was no more I could do but get gone as fast as I could. Anything to avoid a shoot-out. Stuck out in the ass end of nowhere, a shoot-out with cops wouldn’t end well for me. Hurting cops is never part of a good plan. But I did need to be very gone, very badly indeed.
The car was sluggish. It lurched to one side. Red, yellow, and white sparks arced in the mirror. A bent fender was dragging. The cop car’s lamps red and blues shone distantly through the sparks. That was about all. I couldn’t tell whether he was coming after me. If he was moving, even.
Swinging the wheel to the right and left, weaving hard, I got the fender loose. It didn’t come free. It still shot sparks. That made me pretty easy to spot and to follow. It clattered and bumped. But it didn’t drag the car.
I checked the mirrors again. The cop wasn’t following me. His buddies would be soon enough, though. I had to take a chance and stop. In the middle of the carriageway, I jumped out. The fender was mangled and tough to bend free. When it did come off, my impulse was to sling it to the side of the road. I knew that would be a dumb fucking move. Leaving evidence behind.
I tried to get it in the back. It wouldn’t fit. Fuck. Reluctantly, I took the precious seconds to bend the fucking thing in two on the fucking tarmac.
Without it dragging, at least the car ran the way it should. I got away and went wide around the outside of Gainboro. I slowed and tried to drive less conspicuously. I was cautious approaching the dark lot where the guy with the nail in his ear was in the box in the back of his pickup.
This quick job had more wrinkles than a cheerleader’s wet panties.
I hauled the guy out of the box in his truck. His repose in there can’t have been more than a couple of hours. It had done nothing for his complexion, or his looks generally. I dragged him into the driving seat of my car. With some amount of difficulty I retrieved the six-inch nail from his ear.
Then I hauled my bags out of the trunk. All apart from the rocket tube. I hesitated over the phone. In the end, I took it. Even a burner phone you’ve only had for a day, you never know what tales the fucker’s going to tell, do you. I put a heavy magnetic box under the driver’s side of my Toyota. Underneath the guy.
I closed up the car apart from the driver’s door. I patted the ugly fucker. “There’s something you might be able to do for me after all.” I told him. And I promised him that it wouldn’t hurt. I had a few cans of oxygen. As fast as I could I emptied three of them into the car and slammed the door.
I drove the guy’s pickup to the edge of the lot and back onto the road. Braking there, I looked back as I sent the signal to the magnetic box. The explosion folded the car in half as it threw it up into the air. The billow of flames inside blew the windows out with a big crash. In the dark I headed away. I drove just a hair over the speed limit until I got onto the highway. Then I bolted flat out along the straight dark road.
The rental Toyota that I burned was tied to a driver’s license, credit cards, a whole identity. An expensive one at that. I should avoid Garberville. Don’t go back there. Hole up somewhere for the night and get gone in the morning. Vanish into a big city. Miami maybe.
Then I remembered the money. The money in my hotel room mini-safe as well as the money I hadn’t collected. Okay, I’d find a motel or a roadhouse, maybe take a stripper out back. Get into Garberville early, pick up the money and scram. A picture loomed, smoldering in my mind. I tried to ignore it. A pair of shining eyes. Hot thighs under a wool skirt. I may need two strippers. To shove that picture back into the dark.
With two big fires behind me, and both of them with dead scumbags in the middle, troopers would be out looking for me in force. I needed to put some miles behind me and get off that road. Either side of the road, all I saw was empty stretches of nothing. No roadhouse, not even a chain motel. This had to be the most unpopular stretch of road in the midwest. Did nobody ever want to stop and linger along here?
I was almost back in Garberville when I found a truckstop. The Burning Bush was a sleazy, brick, single story. Over the door was a picture of a girl with a red spangled bikini bottom in flame. That’s wit, I thought.
An even seedier motel lurked by the side. The ‘O’ in the motel sign flickered. I parked out of view of the road at the side of the truckstop. That seemed the preferred location for everyone.
A few trucks were lined up in the shadows. I put the pickup as far from the road and behind as many trucks as possible. I went into the office and got a room, then I headed for the bar.
Stepping inside, the air was thick and warm. It was darker inside than it was out. On a tiny stage in the far corner, a girl wore a red bikini bottom, heels, and a necklace. She wandered around a shiny pole. Mascara smudged down her face. Lipstick smeared over her mouth. She danced, just barely. She rubbed her back up and down the pole, then she leaned forward.
In the shadows I made out five men, all at separate tables. Some of them may have been awake. Not there for conversation, though, I guessed. A healthy-looking brunette behind the bar brightened for a flicker as the door closed behind me. “Find yourself a table, honey.” She told me, “I’ll bring you what you need.”
She leaned on the bar. “I’m Danni.” Her voice was smoky and low. As she leaned forward she showed me quite a lot of what I probably needed.
I
picked a booth with a clear view of the door and a short route out. Danni came and perched on the side of my table. She offered a refreshing and reviving view of her thigh. As she took my order, she leaned forward to treat me to a view of her deep and accommodating cleavage.
Killian: The Hitman’s Virgin Page 4
