by Whitney G.
“I’m sorry.” I set my phone on the table. “I didn’t even realize I was doing that.”
“It’s okay.” He gently tapped my hand and signaled for a waitress. “New boyfriend?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I bit my lip before I could say something personal. We weren’t even halfway there yet. “We just really like each other.”
“Hmmm. Well, hopefully one day you’ll be comfortable enough to let him meet me over dinner.”
I nodded, saying nothing. I wasn’t getting my hopes up on rebuilding anything just yet. Even though my heart was ready to jump all in, he’d let me down too many times before.
The moment the waitress took our orders and walked away, my father gently grabbed my hand atop the table and looked into my eyes.
“Look, Meredith,” he said, “I am a terrible father, and I know that to my core. I was also quite terrible to your mother, and I wish there was a way to make things up with her, like I plan to make things up with you.” He looked more genuine than I’d ever known him to be. “I don’t want to take the time I have left with you for granted anymore, and I would like to meet up with you for once a week until…Until you feel like we don’t need weekly check-ins to be around each other. I really want to be a part of your life, and I want to show you I’m capable of being a good father. Please let me.”
I blinked, unsure of what to say. I felt tears pricking my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
“I’m also willing to file the cancellation paperwork for the campaign,” he said.
“I thought you did that already…”
“I did.” He smiled, squeezing my hand. “You have to go through five stages to file to run and fifteen stages to get out of it.”
I laughed and squeezed his hand in return. “Okay. We can start over. How’s every Sunday?”
“Perfect.” He let my hand go, and asked me about my day. Before I could answer, the hostess approached our table with a huge bouquet of flowers. It was three dozen white roses, with six black roses standing in their center.
“Oh, wow,” my dad said. “Who are those from?”
I opened the small envelope and blushed once I read the words.
I like you.
I’m outside in my car.
Come out and fuck me once you’re done.
(Is this ‘romantic’ enough for you?)
“My boss,” I said, putting the note away. “She’s really proud of me these days.”
“So, I’ve heard.” He nodded. “Tell me a bit more about that…”
Michael
Before
There was no easy way to admit it. I’d fucked things up in the worst way possible, and the only way things could possibly be salvageable, was if I were to suddenly burst into flames.
I was dating someone for the first time in damn near two decades. Someone who I actually liked outside of the bedroom.
She infiltrated my thoughts when I least expected it, made my nights better with her contagious, raspy laughter, and she kept my mind guessing with her random conversations about nothing at all.
Not only that, but I was willingly sending her gifts. Fucking flowers every day.
In all my years of work, I’d never crossed the line with a target. I’d infiltrated their lives in various ways—posed as a cab driver, pretended to be a security guard or a doorman, the new man at Central Park who has an obsession with feeding the pigeons, but I never said more than a few words at a time.
I was forgettable and memorable all at once.
There was no way that Meredith wouldn’t recognize me when it came time for me to handle her, and I’d lost track of what I was supposed to do to her in a few weeks. Well, I wanted to believe that was the case. I couldn’t focus on that right now, though. Not with another job in front of me.
I looked at my watch and set the timer before taking one last look around a soon-to-be dead businessman’s condo.
Five minutes. Forty-eight seconds…
This was always my favorite part of the job, the storytelling part. It was the closest I’d ever get to writing a damn book. Every scene had to be perfect, and it had to reveal exactly what I needed it to, in my preferred order.
I’d always specialized in self-inflicted wounds and accidents; I never did direct kills unless it was absolutely necessary. I’d freeze the brake lines on a target’s car overnight, so by the time they warmed up on the highway, they’d snap and force the car into a fatal tailspin; the crash investigators always pointed the finger at the manufacturing company. I’d add trace amounts of mercury to an obsessed coffee drinker’s cup, several months at a time. By the time they passed away and the autopsy was complete, their favorite mug being “on recall” was revealed as the silent killer.
I adjusted the picture frames on the wall, opened a few files that the responding officers would need to find, and made sure that the USB drive with his horrific crimes was in the middle of the coffee table. As I was adjusting the pillows on the couch, the door opened, and my target—the fifty-eight-year old CEO of a major toy company walked through the door.
“What the—” He dropped his briefcase onto the floor. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the last person who’s going to see you alive, Mr. Donovan.” I looked at my watch. Three minutes.
“Okay, so you’re a comedian.” He rolled his eyes and pulled out his cell phone. “We’ll see how much you laugh when the cops get here and charge you with breaking and entering.”
“I already called the cops,” I said. “They’ll be here in exactly two minutes and forty-nine seconds.”
“Okay, Clown-Man. Can you please just get the hell out of my apartment and—” He stopped once he saw all of the pictures I’d scattered all over his floor, his printed version of high crimes. Some of them starred his own family members.
“Distributing child-porn is probably one of the most disgusting crimes there is, Mr. Donovan,” I said, noticing how his face was losing color by the second. “But what you do is far more heinous than that, isn’t it?”
He swallowed, looked away from me. “How much money do you need to make this go away?”
“This isn’t about your money,” I said, pulling a gun out of my pocket and setting it on the coffee table. “This is about someone wanting to even the score. Unfortunately for you, they’ve selected me to be in charge of the game.”
“What are you saying?”
“You’ve got two options,” I said. “Option number one: You can sit on that couch, think about all the horrible things you’ve done, and then pick up the gun and help balance the universe in the right direction.”
“What’s option two?”
“Same as option one, except I’ll pick up the gun and balance things for you.” I shrugged. “I’m always willing to help out a good cause.”
“No…” He shook his head. “I can’t…I have a wife and a family.”
“Your daughter is in some of the photos,” I said. “So is your niece. You won’t have a family once this gets out, either way look you look at it. You have millions of images…”
“No, no, no.” He shook his head and began to cry. “I’ve done good things with my life, and I don’t deserve to die. I can beat this habit, you know? I’ve donated to charity, given to the church, I’ve given thousands to the less fortunate.”
I tuned him out and looked at my watch. It never ceased to amaze me how fucked up people tried to talk themselves out of the inevitable. As if their few good deeds made up for their millions of shitty and harmful ones.
Horrible people were capable of doing good things from time to time. They didn’t need to be rewarded on those rare occasions.
“You’ve got forty seconds, Mr. Donovan.” I cut off his rambling. “Even if I were weak enough to let you go, you should know that I’ve already forwarded most of your collection to the police. That’s why they’re on their way here, and we both know what will happen if the public ever finds out the real reason why they came to your condo toda
y.”
I walked to the door and looked over my shoulder. “If I don’t hear the sound I need to hear within the next twenty seconds, I’ll come back and handle it myself. This is your chance to not be a bitch for the first time in your life.”
I stepped into the hall and stared at the seconds as they ticked by.
Eight, nine, ten…
I shook my head and gripped the doorknob, prepared to push it open, but the familiar, loud sound of a gunshot roared through the hallway.
I opened the door, saw the blood spatter all over the walls, then walked away before his neighbors could come up to his floor. Taking off my gloves, I slipped them into my pocket and made a mental note to call in an anonymous tip about his other ‘business partners’ later this evening.
I managed to make it to my car just as the sirens sounded from around the corner.
As always, I sent a text to the person who helped me do this. The man who thrived on crafting and ending nightmares since neither of us could ever escape our own.
My brother, Trevor.
“Yeah?” he answered on the first ring.
“The Donovan job is done.”
“What?” He sucked in a breath. “You weren’t supposed to do anything with that until three days from now.”
“I saw some of the pictures,” I said. “I couldn’t let him live to see another day.”
“Jesus Christ. This is the fourth one in a row, Michael.”
“Finishing jobs early is a problem?”
“No, but acting like you have some type of moral compass all of a sudden is. You’re not thinking about his wife, his family, or how this impacts all the other businesses that we run in this city. We have a schedule for a reason and I’m tired of—”
“He was getting ready to take and sell pictures of his own fucking daughter.” I cut him off, wishing I’d never had to see him discussing it. “Any person with a hint of morals wouldn’t say I did the wrong thing by getting him off early.”
“Coming from a person with no morals, I find that quite ironic.”
“It’s better to hurt certain people before they can hurt someone else,” I said. “I’m sure you wish I’d been able to hurt all of the people who hurt us years ago, don’t you?”
Silence.
“I fucking thought so,” I said. “Send me the next one when you’re done being emotional, so I can get the studying done.”
“Fine.” He let out a breath. “I’m over it. Is the scene clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Any prints or hairs you could’ve left behind?”
“None at all.”
“I’ll send you the next one this evening, then. It’s an easy one, super simple.”
“Wait,” I said, before he could end the call. “Walk me through the Thatchwood job.”
“Again? Seriously? Do I need to write it down for you?”
“That actually might help.”
“For the umpteenth time this week…” He let out a loud sigh. “Get rid of her and dispose of the body within the next few weeks. Since you seem to be struggling with some ideas, here are a few you’ve done successfully before: Blunt force trauma to the head and weigh her body down with sandbags, so that if she ever were to wash ashore the Hudson someday, the autopsy will confirm she died before she was drowned.”
I tapped my fingers against my steering wheel.
“Kidnap her in the middle of the night and shoot her execution style,” he said, calmly as ever. “Place her body in the trunk of an old car no one will miss and lower it into that lake no one knows about. Or, my favorite specialty from you, indirect. Kill her in her sleep with carbon monoxide or something she’s allergic to. Have I explained this clearly enough?”
“Yes.”
“Good. The quicker you finish her off, the quicker we can move on to the Penelope job. I’ve got your new passport with me. It’s under Tyler Mason.”
“Noted.”
“Can you guarantee to finish this Thatchwood thing within the next few weeks, or do I need to contract it out?”
“No need to get anyone else involved.” I realized that Meredith was now calling me on my other phone. “I’ll do it.”
Michael
Before
“Hey Mer! It’s me, Gillian.” A soft voice came over the condo’s messaging system several days later. “Jake & I just landed in Paris and I’m just returning your call. I can’t believe that you’re actually dating someone! An older man! Maybe that’s what you’ve always needed, huh? How many flowers has he sent you again? Oh, and can you please stop sending me detailed text messages about all the amazing sex you’re having and stick to emails? Little Jake just asked me what the phrase ‘tongued me down until I came on his face’ meant, so…Yeah. Call me back!”
Beep!
I tugged on a pair of gloves and walked over to the frames that covered Meredith’s living room wall. There were pictures of her playing around inside private planes with her best friend, pictures of her playing alongside her mother when she was younger, and countless photos of her posing inside of various fashion offices. Her cursive handwriting marred the edge of each photo, capturing the essence of the moment with short phrases like, “I’ll always love this woman like a sister,” “I miss you every day, mom,” and “Flying high with the best friend a girl could ever have.”
I was about to move on and look around the next room, but I saw a familiar image in the lowest frame. A photo of me. Me in bed, holding her against my chest after another round of sex.
What the…
I lifted the frame off the wall and stared at it. She was smiling with her eyes shut, her naked body flush against mine as I foolishly slept. Squinting, I read her cursive inscription: “This man said he’d ‘ruin’ me. Little does he know, he’s saving me…”
FUCK.
I returned the frame to its rightful place, and turned around.
The flowers I’d sent this morning were sitting on the glass table in her entryway. The ones from yesterday and the day before were holding guard in her reading nook.
I need to get this the hell over with…
I made my way to her kitchen and did a double take. This one room was twice the size of an entire basic condo in the building. Everything was immaculate and white—the appliances all designer grade, the countertops and shelves all grey granite. Even though she was a former heiress and was born into a wealthy family, this was the type of kitchen that belonged in a multi-billionaire’s condo. The type of kitchen that would never work for the type of scene I needed to create.
Then again, it was worth a try.
I walked over to her refrigerator and pulled out the tray of yogurt jars on her top shelf. She insisted on eating three of these a day, even though we’d once argued that she didn’t need to.
Pulling out the small red packet from my pocket, I double checked to make sure I had enough to fill each of her jars. The packet was full of dried and flavorless peanuts—the flavor so faint, she’d never see it coming.
She’d make it at least four scoops in before choking, and since I’d already filled her epi-pen with water the last time I saw her, her attempts to self-medicate would be futile. Just in case she tried to reach the paramedics, her cell phone wouldn’t be able to reach 9-1-1; I’d programmed her phone to reach mine if she ever dialed it.
Housekeeping would find her in the morning, the job would be done, then. I’d be on to the next.
I unscrewed the first row of jars and opened the packet. I held it over the yogurt, and then I stalled. I counted to thirty seconds and vowed to pour the packet in forty-five.
But sixty seconds passed. Then another sixty.
By the time I looked at my watch again, an entire half hour had passed and all I’d thought about was that picture on her wall. That and the feel of her against me from last night.
This man said he’d ‘ruin’ me. Little does he know, he’s saving me…”
I tapped my fingers against the counter and decided to gi
ve it a few more minutes. I returned the yogurt to the fridge and decided to do the entire thing in five minutes flat, before the sun went down.
Maybe this is a bit too harsh…Maybe I should explore the carbon monoxide route, or the—
The sound of Meredith’s front door opening interrupted my thoughts.
She’s home three hours early?
I slowly moved into her parlor room once she hit the lights and walked into her bedroom. I stepped behind a bookshelf in her oversized library, quickly thinking about the layout of her condo.
She pressed play on her voicemail and immediately called Gillian once it ended, putting the call on speaker.
“Well, that was a quick call back,” Gillian said. “How the hell are you off work so early?”
Good fucking question…
“My boss sent me home since she’s about to um, how can I put this? Start a firing spree for everyone who’s left in the building today.”
“Lucky you.”
“I know.” Meredith moved into the kitchen, and I caught sight of her. “I’m sorry about the text message thing. I just got so excited. I swear this man eats pussy better than any man on the planet, Gillian. Like, I have never orgasmed so much in my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to let him go.”
“This sounds so very romantic. I should put this in my next book.”
“You should!” Meredith laughed as she grabbed one of the yogurt jars from the refrigerator.
For some strange reason, my chest hurt with each and every scoop she spooned into her mouth.
“So, outside of the sex, do you like him?” Gillian asked. “Like, do you feel like you’re getting to know him as a person?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I feel like he knows a lot more about me than I know about him. I mean, it could be because I talk a lot more than he does, and he’s always asking me more questions, but…” She paused. “This is going to sound bat-shit crazy, but I think I liked him from the first night we met, and I think he felt the same.”
