by Ian Hiatt
Why didn’t you just kill them both? You had him. You had him…
“My jacket? Where is it?”
I grab my own shoulders like it should be there, but I spot it behind the brothers, dangling on a wooden slat. I point.
Thomas grabs my hand and pulls me down. “Try to keep pressure on… on something.” He dashes away to his jacket and jerks a cell phone out of the pocket.
I’m leaning over Andrew, my hands pressed tightly on his chest, trying―for some reason―to stop one of his wounds from bleeding so much. Beneath me, his mouth moves and his voice falls silent as he tries to accuse me of doing this to him.
By the fence, Thomas frantically yells into his phone and he hangs up, coming back to me and his amputee brother.
“The ambulance is on its way, Andrew, just hold on.”
Ambulance? Damn. Ambulance means cops. Cops mean questions…
Even though the police force of Saint Roch City is as clean as the sheets in a rent-by-the-hour motel, there is the off chance I won’t be able to seduce my way out of this.
Splish.
Splosh.
Andrew groans beneath us as Thomas falls silent beside me.
Splash.
The placid surface of the cove is broken, turbulent waves moving of their own accord. The water’s edge is forty feet before us, and though we’ve dragged Andrew’s body far enough away from being a tasty morsel ripe for the picking, I don’t know that it will matter.
I stare at the water, and when I clench my hand again on Andrew’s body, I feel Thomas’s hand slide over mine.
“What the hell is that?” Thomas asks.
Beneath the polo shirt, my heart is crashing against my ribs, trying to escape while the rest of me sits crouched over my mark. The one who is supposed to be dead. The one who is supposed to have satiated my silent partner.
I swallow hard, and the soft sound of snow packing the earth is dwarfed by a low grunt and burst of water, like a whale clearing its throat.
“That… would be Bruce,” I say in a soft breath, more to myself than Thomas.
I’ve never been near a bomb going off, but I have to assume this is similar. With the terrifying speed of a torpedo, Bruce leaps from the water. Where once was a snow-speckled beach, now sits a thirty foot crocodile, and he’s eyeing the three of us with such hatred that my body begins to burn on the cold night.
Don’t ask me how a crocodile can survive in cold waters. I have no fucking clue. All I do know is that the other inhabitants of the waters off Saint Roch keep Bruce around as a pet. And they must know something about crocodile care that the rest of us aren’t privy to.
A guttural growl emanates from Bruce as he lumbers, watching us.
“The… hell?” Thomas says next to me.
“Don’t run,” I whisper. I don’t know if that really will pose a danger, but I know it won’t help. And my knife will be little more than an inconvenience during Bruce’s next bowel movement. I already know we’re screwed. Andrew mutters beneath us, and Thomas slips a hand over his mouth.
In the distance, the wail of ambulance sirens is getting louder, and Bruce tilts his head at the noise. He lifts off the ground and shakes his great body, the snowflakes falling on his back seeming to cause him discomfort as his hot breath―fetid even at this distance―makes clouds of smog in the air around him.
Behind us is the picket fence that we’ll never get the meat sack that was once Andrew Donahue over. I glance at Thomas and wonder if he’d be willing to leave his brother behind.
What do you care? Stab him and let Bruce finish the job.
I shake my head at the thought. This entire night went from stunning to complete clusterfuck in no time. When I meet Thomas’s eyes, I can see he’s doing the math, too. He bites his lip and looks down at his brother as Bruce growls again, no longer distracted by the growing sirens.
He lumbers like the killer in any teen slasher movie. No matter how fast you run, and no matter how skimpy your clothing, he’ll catch you. You’ll be nothing more than a notch on his dinner table. Thomas grabs Andrew’s arm.
“Help me,” he says quietly.
My eyes can’t decide if they should focus on the giant crocodile advancing on us, or my quarry, who should be traveling through the first problem’s digestive system right now.
“Layla, please…”
I grab on to Andrew’s free arm, and together Thomas and I drag him toward the picket fence. Behind us, Bruce grunts and I hear him kicking up sand. We reach the fence, and Thomas gives it a stiff kick, hoping that it might tumble at his non-Herculean strength. The boards stop just shy of laughing at his attempts when we see the bright red lights of the ambulance tearing up the driveway of the country club.
“Shit!” Thomas kicks the fence again. Again. He tries to lift his brother up and over, but the dead weight―not dead enough for me―is not giving.
Bruce roars behind us, two tons of pissed off crocodile moving even closer, and I can feel the warm, putrid breath of the beast as I look back to see his open jaws. See the flakes of snow melting just before they can land in his open mouth. He’s not aiming at Thomas. Not even aiming at the crippled meal he was robbed of. No.
He’s only feet away and with one twist of his head, his jaws move to snap down on me. He hasn’t even bitten down and my mind already concocts the feel of his teeth digging into my leg. The sensation of being pulled to the water. Drowned. Eaten.
My arms tremble and knees turn to little more than jelly as I drop Andrew’s body, Thomas straining to hold up his dying brother as the crocodile rumbles forward.
The gaping mouth opens, and I’m much too close to seeing the throat of a crocodile when my arm jerks back and I’m pulled against the fence. My shoulder slams against the wooden slats that tear at my skin as I topple over, and my head hits the frozen ground behind it.
My eyes are filled with stars, and I hear an alarm clock screeching, plaintive and piercing all at the same time. As I slowly regain my senses, I realize it’s not an alarm. Not a siren. It’s Andrew Donahue, screaming as Bruce takes better hold of his leg with a bite that was meant for me. Andrew vomits blood over himself, and in the moonlight, Bruce jerks, whipping the poor kid down the beach with the glee of a child and his toy. The night cracks with the sound of splintering bones and purrs with the grumble of a satisfied reptile.
Bruce looks like an overgrown―vastly so―house cat, playing with a caught mouse. Andrew can do little more than squeal with all of the grace of a stuck pig as the crocodile gathers him up again in its massive jaws and lumbers to the water’s edge, so easily bored with his own game. Before slipping back beneath the frigid surf, there’s a soft whumpf of his jaws closing a final time. Andrew is no longer screaming.
My heart drops from my throat a hairsbreadth at a time. Only a few seconds have passed since my trip, and I crane my neck. My entire body is sore and when I lift myself up, the stars come back to my eyes, the dizziness overtaking me. Giving my blurry eyes a moment to adjust, I see Thomas crumpled beside me, his hand extended to my shoulder.
He pulled you over the fence.
His eyes are closed, and I see the blood seeping down his forehead, his coordination enough to sacrifice his own brother to save a stranger, but not enough to avoid the only rock on the beach―diving headfirst into it, in fact.
From the ballroom, the doors open and people surge out. The flashlights come up—Saint Roch police issue. The pulsing lights of red and blue in the driveway of the Manchester only make my stars and blurriness that much greater.
I wrap a hand around my knife and focus on the prone form of Thomas Donahue at my feet. The last kill I need under my belt to earn a cool eight hundred grand.
It’s not until ten minutes later, when I’m loping down the beach―keeping fences and dunes between myself and the shore―that I realize I shouldn’t have checked Thomas’s pulse to make sure he was alive before I fled. I should’ve slit his throat. I should’ve slammed his head back against th
e rock as many times as it took. I should’ve made sure to finish the damn job.
Instead, I could only wonder why some kid would save a girl he just met instead of his own flesh and blood.
don’t sleep that night, the evening flashing over my eyes brighter than the strobes of the ambulance waiting to whisk my quarry to the hospital. My quarry who I helped to save. Or at least prolong the life of. Someone willing to pay a million dollars to kill a kid is probably willing to try again.
My body throbs at every inhalation. Not at the pain of the evening, but the facts. What I did and more importantly, what I didn’t do.
By the time the sun is peeking over the tenement buildings of the distant East Passage, filled to the brim with every flavor of Asian you can imagine, I’m on my sixty-seventh rollover in the sheets. The soft, cool fabric is anything but, swimming in a brine of my sweat and aggravation. At this point, I’m better off burning them than trying to wash it out.
I know I should be scared. Terrified, really. I skipped out on a contract. In every way possible, I failed. My reputation is shot. But more than that, whoever put the million-dollar price tag on the Donahue boys will be wanting an explanation.
And retribution.
Clutching my pillow in a clawed fist, I dwell over the tar pit I’m in. I haven’t spent a dime of the money, so that’s easy enough to patch up. There’s enough cash squared away to keep myself afloat until someone gets desperate enough to use an assassin that occasionally screws up. In my cruelest of thoughts, I realize the reason for having a broker. I’m safe in my crappy apartment, unknown to the rest of the world. Well, apart from my neighbor who doesn’t mind joining me in my midnight bathrobe strolls.
The only person who can possibly take any fall on this is Malcolm, and fond though I’ve grown of my handler, this is not a business of sentimentality. My nails dig into the fabric of my down pillow, threads of the sweat-soaked satin tearing beneath my nails. My semi-manicured-looking nails. Because I didn’t bother changing at all after I left the Manchester.
Should’ve killed him…
“Why the hell did you freeze up?” I ask the empty room. It’s what my mother would have asked. Would have scolded over.
You cannot have a conscience in this world, Layla. It is eat or be eaten. Morality is the thing that separates you from them. The humans. Your prey.
I have to assume not many kids get told stories that end with that lesson at bedtime. It wasn’t until my mother was gone that I realized not every kid was given a new blade on their birthday or recited Machiavellian tenets for their evening prayers.
So why didn’t I sink my blade into Thomas and push both of the brothers into the surf? Bruce would probably have loved to get both of them. Even then, it would still be seen as an accident. Brother trying to save brother from drowning. It would be heroic. Honorable even.
Hell, they might get a parade.
A beam of sunlight cuts through the glass of my double-door balcony exit, setting small flecks of dust glowing in its path. I blink and a sigh escapes me.
Stop. You can’t think about him like that. He’s your meal ticket. He’s just―
My body burns, and the sensation of being lifted off my feet returns.
No one will ever save you, Layla. They’ll kill you given a moment’s chance.
But I was still alive. And though I’ve been grabbed hundreds, even thousands of times, just as roughly, and with just as much need, it’s still different. The feeling still lingers.
Probably because when someone grabs me like that, they never live to see the next morning. I’m having pangs of panic while he’s probably sleeping just fine in his mansion on the outskirts of Saint Roch overseen by concierge doctors.
I roll over to make it sixty-eight, and my polo shirt, shredded and muddy, tugs at my body in annoyance. It would rather be hung up in my closet beside my other hunting apparel and trophies. But I’m exhausted. More than that, I’m depressed.
I’ve never failed before. Never. Something going so right went so wrong so quickly.
I jump as a barrage of knocks falls on my front door. It makes me think either someone wants me very badly or the city is suffering from its first earthquake ever. Without thought, I’m already gripping my boot knife, ready to charge my potential attacker.
Couldn’t have that reaction last night?
The knocking comes again, the miracle of wonderful craftsmanship keeping my door from rocketing from its hinges as the hounds of Hell bay. I peel myself from the bed, drop my knife on the mattress, and reach beneath the bed for the 9mm pistol I keep stashed beside my safe. It’s been months since I’ve fired it, and that was at a gun range on the Westside. Hardly combat.
Padding across the hardwood floors, I approach the door like it could blow at any moment, and I jump a little as it shakes against another knocking assault. I step lightly to look through the peephole.
I consider, seeing the person on the other side of the door. Clicking the safety off the gun, I slide the deadbolt open. They don’t wait for me to reach for the knob, the door opening instantly, and I leap back, bringing the gun up to level it at my visitor.
“What the hell happened?” Malcolm sputters, his face bruised and bleeding, a slow trail of red seeping from a gash on his lip.
An hour and a full first aid kit later, Malcolm is sitting at my never-been-used kitchen table, sipping from a mug of tea with shaking hands. For an assassin’s broker and a very gay man, he doesn’t seem to have any balls at the moment.
“They came to my home. My home, Layla. They didn’t knock. They broke the door down.” He takes a swig from his cup like he’s got the strongest drink known to man seething beneath the chamomile.
I still have the gun in my hand, and though I’ve now clicked the safety back on, I wonder if that was the right move. Leaning against a counter and holding a mug of my own tea that I have no intention of drinking, I stare him down.
“So? What the hell happened? You seemed to have no problem killing one of them? Why aren’t they both dead?”
I swirl my drink, watching the fine particles of tea moving like a small cyclone. “I told you it wouldn’t go well.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. It was an easy job, and you fucked it up! You fucked it up royal.”
I put my mug down. “What’s the damage? They want their money back, right? I’ll get it to them.”
Malcolm laughs. Straight out laughs and shakes his head, the condemnation of a pet owner when the dog pisses on the rug. “It was my money, if you recall. And no, Layla. They’ll get their money back when they come here and gut you like a fish. These are not the kind of people you screw with.”
“Okay, so I’ll bail then. They don’t even know where I live.” I pause and grip my gun tighter. “Unless you led them here, of course.”
“No. I’m not stupid, Lay. I wasn’t followed. I’m here because they’re giving you twenty-four hours. They want the youngest dead by tomorrow. Cause an explosion at the hospital. Tweak some drugs. I don’t care. But by tomorrow he better be nothing more than a stiff.”
He doesn’t even crack a joke at his own line, and I realize that he’s not the flamboyant Malcolm I’m used to.
“And yes. I’ll take the money and give it to them. It’s payment for you not making this clean. If we’re lucky, that will be the end of it.” He stands and walks to the door, leaving his tea still steaming. “You really screwed this one up.”
He leaves, plenty of his tension sticking around after he’s gone. Playing with the grip of my pistol, I know with absolute certainty he’ll give me up the first chance he gets. Looks like I’ll be in the market for a new handler when this is done.
Not to mention a new apartment. New appearance. New everything.
I glance down at the damp mess of my shirt that looks like more of a sodden rag on my body now. Stripping it off, I go back into my bedroom, the stuffy feeling coming back to me. Even the rogue beams of light flitting through the curtains of the room don�
��t bring any source of levity to the situation, and I flop down onto the bed, wishing I could literally fall into sleep. Unconsciousness would be amazing right about now.
moke clings in the air of Naja. It might as well be a third person in every conversation, weighing in by simply weighing down. As I sidle up to the short marble bar tucked in the corner, waiting for my unreliable contact to show up, I can’t help but take deeper inhales as the fog of the place settles in. It’s not an unpleasant aroma, quite the opposite actually. The woman at the far end of the bar is sucking ash out of a delicately wrapped cigar, and the teens in the booth at my back are taking hits off a hookah. The smells seeping from those sources are not overpowering, and they’re not what puts a mind at ease here.
Sophia, the owner of the club and mother to my neighbor, pipes in intoxicating scents on a light mist. Bundled up in my hoodie of unendurable stench so as to dissuade any admirers, I can smell my attempt failing. My body and mind are swept away in the bliss of perfumed air. I give a silent prayer to a God I don’t believe in that no one will think to look my way.
The air of Naja is but the soft chord that begins the song of the place, though. A piano player strokes the ivories on a stage behind me while the saxophone player, taking a breather, sits at a stool down the bar from me, gripping a glass of scotch tighter than he would his instrument. The bartenders are quiet but attentive young women, moving up and down the sleek granite counters, handing customers drinks or the specially crafted cigars. The brunette with serpentine eyes, likely a relative of Sophia and Cassie, gives me a short glass with ice and golden whiskey without my having to ask.
“Now that is a drink,” a young man a few seats away says, leaning toward me. His unruly black hair sits atop a pale face like a soiled mop. “If you don’t mind me saying so.” His voice is spiced with an accent I can’t place but sounds familiar nonetheless. I ignore him, instead looking past the cavalry line of vodkas, scotches, and tequilas behind the bar.
A mirror stretches away from the corner on both walls, and behind me, to the left of the sparse stage of the club, is the VIP area where Sophia always takes up residence. She’s puffing on a cigarette herself, the tobacco a foot or so from her lips, dangling from the grip of an emerald-shaded holder. Her eyes alight at the young bodies moving about the club. Drinks in hand, smoke in the lungs, and they retreat all too slowly from a dance floor they were swaying on moments ago when the saxophone player was wailing on the brass instrument that now leans against the elegant piano.
