“As long as you leave her alone,” I said. “Leave her alone and I’ll go to you. I’ll make it up for you somehow.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“It was my last job anyway.”
“Indeed. And it was the best paid by far. You shouldn’t have botched it.”
“Is that your last word?”
“It is.”
“Then watch your back,” I suggested, “as attentively as I watch mine.”
A WALK WITH FOUR
SADIE
After a whole day riding on the Greyhound, getting off in Cedar Rapids was like setting foot on heaven itself. The walk to Millie’s house was exhilarating; my legs ached for some activity, and even though I was tired, I thanked being in the fresh air again.
It was early in the afternoon when I opened the door and entered the house. It was clean and tidy in the extreme, revealing her personality. Millie was the neatest and most organized person I’d ever known. She was also sweet and charming and sincere, but that was neither here nor there.
I left my handbag on the kitchen aisle, breaking the exquisite order of the house, as I always did, and walked right toward the bedroom, ready to sleep for a while. I had some calls to make, a life to recover, but what had waited for three months could wait for half an hour.
I took off my shoes and threw myself on the bed fully dressed, without even attempting to lift the cover. There was a small bedside table with a pretty lamp and a comfy chair in the opposite corner, with a pedestal lamp beside it and a second small table with some books on it. I fell asleep trying to make out their titles and authors.
“Hello, Sadie,” said the tall woman when I woke up.
The sun was already setting down. She was sitting on the chair, holding a book in her hand. And she was as beautiful as I remembered her. More beautiful, even. Her eyes seemed to shine with their own light, and her face was delicate and strong at the same time, hinting of some German ancestors. She was wearing a raspberry jacket over a white shirt and dark slim-fit pants, revealing her shapely figure.
“He-hello,” I said, propping my elbows on the mattress and staring at her, unsure about what to do.
“I must say I’m kind of disappointed,” the tall woman said. “I didn’t expect you to come alone. Where is Six?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, with a hint of a smile. “I’m Four.”
“You look older,” I quipped.
She couldn’t help smiling in full now. Her smile was so beautiful that I doubted any man would ever be able to resist it. Any heterosexual man, at least. Or any lesbian I guess, but I don’t know much about lesbians. That one time in college doesn’t count.
“My name is Lottie,” she conceded. “Lottie Harmund.”
“Sadie,” I nodded. “Are we going somewhere, Lottie?”
“If you don’t mind,” she said, with another luminous smile. I wanted to kill the bitch. But chances were she would kill me first the instant I attempted to do anything.
“I don’t know where he is,” I said as she waved toward the bedroom door, inviting me to go first. And it was true. Six could have left the Hamptons already. He might be looking for me, or chasing her, even. Or maybe he would go directly after Pam Overton. Now that I was out of his life, he was free to get his own life together as well as he could.
Only the tall woman got me now, and things would get complicated again.
“Are you sure you don’t know?” Lottie asked, standing up and leaving the book on the table before coming through the door after me. She had a gun in her hand. “I think you two got to know each other pretty well.”
“Maybe. But I have a rule. A hitman at a time.”
“Excuse me? You may have noticed I’m no man,” she quipped back. “I’m a hitperson.” She used her own key, a master key I guess, to open the front door, and made a gesture. “Let’s take a walk, Sadie.” As I was about to get out, though, she pointed to the handbag on the kitchen aisle. “We’ll take that. I’ll have your cellphone, please.”
I grabbed the bag and handed her the phone. I noticed the gun I had grabbed from the house in Grey Gardens was still there; I didn’t mention it, but I had the impression that Four must have seen it. How could she fail to check the handbag? I knew better than try to use it, with her pointing her own gun at me.
Only she wasn’t. She had tucked her gun in her own purse, and was now waving amiably, yielding for me to get out of the house first. Then she locked the door and we started walking.
There were people outside. Several people, or what looked like lots of people to me in that moment, knowing that they had no clue of what was happening and wouldn’t be able to help me. It was like the whole world was walking around Cedar Rapids without me being able to ask for help to anybody. My face had been plastered on national TV all day just two months ago, when news of the attack on the state senator Mark Cross had come out, but who would remember it now?
Four, or Lottie, seemed to read my thoughts, because she teased me. “Go ahead, look them in the eye. Let them see you clearly. Nobody will recognize you. Nobody ever does.” She seemed to mull a bit over what she had just said, and then added: “Look at them all you want, but don’t say anything. At the first signal of distress, you lose.”
You lose meant you die.
“Where are we going?”
“To meet a friend.”
A TEMPTING OFFER
SIX
Hey! I met your girl. She’s smart and fierce, but she misses you a lot. xoxo! Four.
The message had come much sooner than I would have thought. Barely a day had passed since Sadie left, and Four had already got her hands on her. I swallowed my anguish as I almost threw myself on the laptop and opened my suite of secure tracking apps. I had paid good money for those programs; they’d better be of use now.
I didn’t think it would be difficult, though. Four had messaged me through a normal SMS on a regular cellphone, which meant she wanted to be tracked. She didn’t need to specify where she was for me to come to her. She knew I would be able to locate her, and she would be waiting for me.
And as soon as I pinpointed the origin of her message to a single city, I knew exactly where I could find her. Sadie had mentioned that her sister Millie lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and when she left, the first thing I thought was that she could go there for a while. She certainly couldn’t go back to her own home, as the FBI and maybe even the CIA would have put a permanent watch on it after that night in Mark Cross’s office.
I knew I was walking right into a trap, but what could I do? Just stay alert and think fast. I couldn’t leave Sadie at the mercy of the Scope. Or worse: if Pam had told the truth when she said she had lost contact with Four, Sadie was now at the mercy of a rogue finger, someone who had no one to answer to. Just like me.
I grabbed two guns, a knife, my secure phone, a burner, the laptop, some fake IDs and a wad of money, and jumped in the car. The sooner I made it to Cedar Rapids, the better my chances of finding Sadie alive and well.
* * *
The woman who opened the door in Millie March’s house was not Four. At least, not the Four I remembered from some years ago. She was taller, thinner, with lighter hair. She matched the elegance of that other woman, though, and a certain seductive air that would be an asset for any female operative. She wore a simple black dress and her tiny earrings reflected the moonlight.
“You must be Six,” she said, leaning on the doorframe. “I’m Four. Well, the new one,” she giggled. “Come in, please. We have lots of things to talk about.”
That made some sense, I thought. It meant that Pam had been telling the truth when she said Four had fallen off the grid. She had decided to replace her already. But which Four had tried to shoot us in the parking lot after I fucked up the job? The previous one, or this tall slender girl who was looking at me with a mixture of desire and pity?
I entered the house. Four followed me, closed the door, gra
bbed a bottle of wine and two cups, and offered me one.
“First things first,” I said, keeping my hand around the butt of my gun, ready for any surprise. “Where’s Sadie?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mario,” she said, with an expression of authentic pain, “but your princess is in another castle.”
She was still holding the cup in the air, expecting me to grab it. I refused.
“I didn’t come here to play games. Where is she?”
“She’s in a safe place. She won’t be harmed if you behave.”
“Oh, come on. That’s a lie. You’ll kill her as soon as...”
I stopped, only now realizing that what I was saying made absolutely no sense. As soon as what, exactly? I had zero leverage to negotiate for Sadie; there was nothing I could give them to buy her life. If they wanted to get rid of the loose threads, they could have just killed her anytime without regrets... and yet, there was this new Four, talking with me. It made no sense.
She leaned over until her exquisite breath filled my nostrils. Her eyes were glowing like magic gems in some fantasy novel. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and alluring, sounding more like a purring cat than a woman. But all that sweetness was lost on me. Not only because I knew I couldn’t trust her, but because I still had Sadie’s scent inside me, her big eyes tattooed in my retinas, the sound of her voice meandering around in my ears. In comparison, everything else seemed a poor imitation.
“Kill the mark, Six. Come back on the grid. Report to Pam. Save the girl. You know there’s one way.”
There’s one way... What did she mean?
“I can’t kill the mark now. You know that,” I objected. “He’s a fucking candidate, for Christ’s sake. And now, he’s been guarded from all sides, day and night, every second.”
“Too bad.” She got even closer, until her black dress was grazing my coat, her breasts pressing softly against my chest. “But we can arrange something else.”
I don’t like feeling disoriented. I’m a man of action: there’s a clear goal, I go and do whatever is needed to reach it. It almost always ends with a bullet through someone’s head. The execution may be complicated, but the idea is simple. Now, it was different. I tried to figure out Four’s intentions, and besides the fact that she craved for me in a physical way, I couldn’t make sense of it.
“What do you mean?”
I’m half a head taller than her, so she was looking up to meet my gaze. She seemed to be imploring me instead of negotiating for her hostage. Her mouth was open in a silent moan. She exhaled as if she was giving way to a deep arousal.
“Bring the girl to Pam,” she said. “Give her a number.”
“A number?” I pushed her back, shocked. She moaned as if she were in pain when the contact between our bodies was lost. “Do you want me to turn her into a finger?”
Fingers. That’s how Pam Overton called the Scope’s operatives. We never knew exactly how many we were or where each one was or what they were doing at any given time. In this business, information is essential, and it must be protected at all costs.
“Why not?” Four protested. “She’s smart and fierce. You could work together.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“And you are completely mad. For her.”
She had a point. If I had killed Mark Cross and Sadie March with a single bullet, as I was supposed to do, I would have retired by then. But Sadie looked at me and everything changed. Four had found the word: I was mad. It was madness what made me move my hand to the right, shooting at the glass instead of putting the bullet through their heads. It was madness what made me run away with her and turn my back on the Scope. It was madness what had made me break virtually all the rules in the hitman’s code.
The solution she was offering was not madness. It had been done, in fact, or so the legend says. A female finger had spared the life of a witness once. A male witness, a young man who caught her eye and made her arm flounder in the air and then go down in defeat. She couldn’t kill him, but she had to do something to neutralize the danger, so she introduced him to the Scope. This saved his life.
If one has to believe the story, his first task was to put her down, which he did quickly and flawlessly. But some believe that this is a fake ending, tacked on by Pam or someone else to dissuade people from trying to do the same.
Some even believe that Pam was that female finger, and his boyfriend is out there somewhere, completing assignments for the Scope with ruthless determination.
It could work... but it would end Sadie’s life as she knew it. I knew she had a way out of this; she could still somehow return to her books and her proposals and her political career. She could use her smarts and her fierceness to become a powerful woman in Congress. One day, even, in the White House. Turning her into a finger for the Scope would kill that dream instantly.
“The answer is no,” I said. “I’m taking Sadie with me. Tell Pam she can fuck off. What will it take?”
“It will take nothing,” Four said. “Pam doesn’t want to lose you. But she needs to know she can trust you again.”
“She can’t trust me,” I replied. “If I see her, I will blow her head off. Also, why don’t you take Sadie to Pam?”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” she replied, with an exaggerated sigh. “You got me. I lied. We lost her.”
“What?”
“Your girl, as I mentioned, she’s smart but also kind of fierce. She escaped. We don’t know where she is.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was. Listen, I know you are gonna go after her now, but—” she said, and she got closer to me again, “are you sure you don’t want to stay for a while?”
“Very sure,” I replied. “Nice to meet you, I guess.” I turned around and opened the door.
“I was not the one who shot at you in the parking lot,” she said. “It was the other Four.”
“Good to know.”
I stepped outside. As the door closed behind me, I could still hear her voice, half mocking, half pleading.
“Hey,” she said. “Send my greetings to Nine.”
THE HAND CLOSES
SADIE
Six hours earlier
The room was not exactly uncomfortable. There were two chairs and a table. They had made me sit on the chair and wait. My warden was a huge guy who made me think of Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies. His beard was neat and much shorter, though, and he had a general aspect of cleanliness that didn’t match the fictional counterpart.
“We’ll have a talk in due time,” the guy said before leaving the room. He was so sure I wouldn’t attempt anything stupid that he didn’t even lock the door.
Lottie had left a while ago. She had confiscated my handbag, and warned me that I’d better behave if I wanted to get out in one piece, a warning she uttered with textbook cordiality. Then it was just Hagrid and me. And Hagrid really, really didn’t like to talk.
The chair became uncomfortable after like an hour, so I sat on the floor for a while. There was a window, but it was locked shut. There was nothing to see outside anyway: Four had brought me to a regular house, just like any other in the neighborhood, and the view was nothing special, just the same view everyone else had. I missed being atop a hill in the Hamptons. I missed being with Six.
I was not sure that attempting to escape would be a smart course of action. But I was tired of waiting, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, I would be able to do it. Lottie seemed to have her shit together and her ass sewn shut, but Hagrid looked less neat. I bet I could outrun him if it came to that.
I decided it would come to that.
When I was ten, I learned some karate and taekwondo. I don’t know why –dad didn’t want to see me acting “masculine”, and mom didn’t care about martial arts at all, but I guess they both wanted me to know how to defend myself in case someone tried to abuse me or something.
Ironically, I had almost been abused a few weeks ago, and at the time I felt com
pletely defenseless; I could only freeze and ask Mark to please stop. But now, in this situation where I couldn’t conceivably do anything to escape, the whole thing came back to me in a rush: the katas, the basic forms, the kicks. I had loved the dollyo chagi as a kid, and I always used it to knock down Billy, one of the other students. I had kind of a crush on him, I guess, but it’s hard for anyone to make any advances on you when you’re knocking them down all the time, so if he had any kind of feelings for me as well, I never knew.
The bottom line is that I remembered that kick perfectly. You raise your leg until your knee is above waist level, let it linger for a fraction of a second accumulating energy, and then shoot your foot upwards and sideways until your leg is completely extended. If you’re lucky, at the other end of your leg is your target, i.e. the thing or person you want to smash. A correct technique ensures that your instep or heel will hit the target in full force, which explains how Billy ended up riddled with bruises so often. I knew how to do that. I could do it again anytime.
So, naturally, I screamed.
“What’s your name?”
Hagrid didn’t answer. I screamed again.
“WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING NAME?!?”
Again, no answer. But I had faith. I had read a book by Stephen King in which there is a beach populated by ugly little monsters that look like a mix between a lobster and a scorpion. These monsters make a sound very similar to a question, so people tend to stop and hear them against their best instinct, and the monsters can then attack them, clawing at their feet to make them fall. If I kept asking questions, the guy would come. I had faith.
“WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING NAME, FUCKING ASSHOLE? HOW DO PEOPLE CALL YOU? DO YOU HAVE ANY NICKNAMES? DO YOU DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?!?!?”
He opened the door and got in.
“What the fuck is wr—”
By the time he started articulating his own question, my knee was already lingering above my waist level. He never finished the word “wrong”. My instep reached him right in the middle of his face, making a very satisfying noise, and sending him tumbling to the floor.
A Vote For Lust: A Bad Boy Political Romance Page 7
