Dark Sins

by Charlotte Byrd

  It's not something that the homeowner would ever notice unless they were specifically looking for it. But who's looking for a down screen in a 3,000-square-foot house with more than fifteen windows?

  I try the window next, again hoping that it's locked. It's not.

  Lincoln really wants this to happen. I wish I had a way out, but I don't.

  I am backed up into a corner and there are few options left.

  I climb into the house, closing the window only slightly behind me.

  I listen for the sound of the alarm, but it was deactivated a long time ago without the owners' knowledge.

  I tiptoe quietly, making sure that I don't step on any creaking floorboards. My shoes have thin soles specifically made for gripping the road, but also ideal for breaking and entering.

  As I head upstairs, I see the pictures of the family lining the wall. There are three kids, all various ages of teenage-hood, and a wife in a Chanel suit with a Tiffany’s necklace, and the mark himself. He is tall, broad-shouldered, heavyset with the casual, relaxed smile of a person who has committed millions of dollars’ worth of fraud.

  19

  Dante

  I think about all of the pensions and the retirement savings that this guy stole as I walk up the stairs to try to convince myself that what I'm doing is actually fine. The truth is it's not.

  I want him to go to prison. I want him to be tried and convicted and every last penny of his fraud repaid.

  The problem is that he already closed up that company and opened up another one with a different name and a different shell and a different offshore account.

  He's going to get away with it. I know this because I have been through the paperwork. I have seen the extent of his fraud.

  Donald Delinsky is a liar and a thief and everything in this house is bought with money that didn’t belong to him. The family has gone visiting the wife's sister at their lake house about two hours away. I made sure of this myself as well. There's no way that I would ever be here if anyone innocent would suffer. I don't know the extent of what his wife knows or doesn't know, but I know that the children deserve to have at least one parent around.

  When I head upstairs, I find Delinsky in his office working with his headphones on. He has three monitors in front of him with a stock market ticker as if he ever tried to invest a dime the legitimate way. The problem is that he's much better at raising money for fraudulent schemes than he is at making it through investing in stocks, options, or even futures.

  The job is almost too easy.

  He's sitting facing away from me riding his DeskCycle. He had purchased it a month ago. I saw it in the bank statements and he has been riding it religiously every day.

  Just to be safe, I slip on the ski mask because I can't have the blood splatter getting on me. I approach him quietly from behind and put the gun to his head.

  This is where I make the mistake.

  I hesitate, briefly, but it's enough. He turns around, grabbing a weapon from underneath the table and shooting it in my general direction. I barely move out of the way. The bullet hits somewhere behind me, an inch or maybe less from where I used to be.

  I discharge my weapon just in time to put him down. With my heart pounding out of my chest, I take a quick look around. My gun has a silencer on it, so the bullet would have been hard to hear.

  But his didn’t.

  The discharge reverberates in my head like a loud firework. Suddenly, I become very concerned over the fact that his neighbors or anyone right outside his house could have heard us.

  I hadn't expected him to have a gun or to be so quick in his response and that's Lincoln's fault. He should have known something as important as this.

  But I've made a mistake, too. I shouldn't have hesitated.

  I should have shot him in the back of the head while he was just sitting there instead of approaching closer and giving him a chance.

  Whatever mistakes I made, I made because it has been two years since the last time I did this.

  With my palms sweaty from anxiety and my chest starting to contract from the fear of getting caught, I know that I have to get out of here.

  If his neighbors heard anything and made the call, the police will be here soon. If I don’t want to get caught, I have to get out of the house as quickly as possible.

  I look at the gun laying on the floor where the dead Delinsky has dropped it and I wonder if I should take it with me. I hadn't touched it, but if I were to move it, then this would look like a hit, exactly what it was.

  Perhaps the presence of this weapon could be to my advantage. Perhaps if I leave it here, then the authorities will think that someone has come here, maybe just to rob him, and there was a gunfight as a result. It wouldn't point in the direction of a contract killer in particular. That's all I need, just a little bit of a diversion.

  Deciding to leave the gun, I run downstairs, my face still covered with the ski mask and my hands in gloves. I climb out of the window through which I came in, put the screen back on, and make it look like there was no breaking and entering at all.

  That's what the cops always want to know: was there forced entry, or was this person invited in? This will make it seem like the person who did it was at least an acquaintance.

  There's a trail in the wooded area running behind the house. As I head toward it, I pull off my ski mask and the gloves and tuck them into the front pocket of my sweatshirt, breaking into a casual jog, just like the kind someone would have who was just out here to exercise.

  I run for a long time until I get out of the development, following the directions on my burner phone, covering almost three miles in order to get back to the car that's parked just a few blocks away.

  I see no one, but I can't be sure who saw me.

  My consolation is that at least no one stops me. And the cops? They never even show up.

  20

  Jacqueline

  It begins to pour as I take the cab to Queen Anne, an old historic neighborhood in Seattle that has lots of restored buildings by wealthy people who like doing that sort of thing. We’re supposed to meet at an intimate French restaurant, and as I walk toward it, holding my umbrella tightly against my head, I remember Noah and I talking about going to Paris and Rome and eating in restaurants just like these tucked into little alleys and little cobblestone streets.

  I wonder if this is why he picked this place in particular, and I wouldn't be surprised either way. Rain falls in sheets, and my whole back is soaked. When I come in, my feet are puddles. The host that's upfront takes my jacket to a cloak room, and I wish that I had worn something a little bit more elegant than this sweater. But it would probably feel too much like a date if I did.

  Noah sits in the corner of the room, lit up only by a small candle on the clothed table.

  "You look beautiful," he says, standing up as I approach.

  I nod, feeling a little shy.

  I don't want to be here. This feels just too intimate and private and not something I'm ready for, given the fact that I haven't told him that I'm with someone.

  I've always had this problem of elevating men's expectations. Isn’t it ironic that it's easier to tell a potential date that you have a boyfriend than the fact that you're simply not interested and that somehow if another man claims you as property, you have a better reason to say that you're not interested than if you're simply, well, not interested?

  A waiter comes around and asks for our wine choices and I secretly admit to Noah under my breath that I don't know much about wine. He orders a Cabernet for both of us and the waiter smiles and I realize that it's probably quite an expensive choice.

  “So, how have you been? It's so nice to catch up," Noah says, leaning forward, closer to me.

  The candle lights up his eyes and his hair falls slightly in his face in that sexy brooding way. Suddenly, the years that we have not seen each other hardly matter.

  Still, I feel like something is gnawing at me.

  "Are you se
eing anyone?" I ask.

  "No," he answers quickly, but not with any tinge of desperation.

  Nothing about Noah's ever been desperate and that's what made him so exciting.

  I wait for him to ask me back. This is my lead-in to talking about Dante, but he doesn't.

  He just leaves me hanging.

  "Tell me about your life," he says, even though we've already caught up somewhat earlier, I go into greater detail, this time touching on my mother's illness and my brother's death, but not yet bringing up the fact that I got the letter.

  I don't know how to bring that up, and I don't want it to dominate the conversation.

  "How about you? What have you been up to?" I ask.

  He starts telling me about his travels. He had dropped out of Cornell his second year because he got bored and wanted to travel around the world.

  "I've always been fascinated by the hobos who, you know, used to ride trains, live life out there on nothing but their wits and so, I wanted to do that. Maybe I read too much Jack Kerouac."

  "Yeah, I'd say so.” I laugh, secretly in awe. “So, did you ever end up riding any rails?"

  "Yes. From Fargo, North Dakota, to Spokane. I have to tell you it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. And there was a lot of hiding from security, so not exactly like the '30s. But it was fun; hopping on, feeling the romance in the air."

  "Are there a lot of cute girls to meet on the railroad tracks?" I joke and he smiles.

  We've always had good banter.

  "I hiked from the very Southern tip of California, right by the Mexican border all the way to Canada."

  "Following the Pacific Crest Trail?" I ask.

  "Yeah, kind of, but it wasn't really a planned thing. I veered off course quite a lot and it took more than five months, but had some great fun, met some awesome people."

  "And what about work?" I ask.

  "Well, I was a climbing guide, a hiking guide, surfing guide. I did a lot of guiding and then hitchhiked all the way to Alaska."

  "You did?" I ask. "Isn't that dangerous?"

  "Not as dangerous as you'd think. You're going mainly through Canada, and hitchhiking is pretty common there. It's true what they say about Canadians. They're a really friendly bunch. The lack of guns helps also."

  I laugh.

  Noah tells me about taking a cargo ship out to Hawaii and then backpacking through Europe for a summer.

  Suddenly, I feel like I haven't lived that much at all. I've been so busy with my everyday life, going to school, trying to make a living.

  I wonder if maybe I should've given myself more of a chance to have a little fun. We talk all through the salad course and then the entrees and we finish a bottle of wine before we start to reminisce about the past.

  It's a delicate subject and it scares me a little thinking about it because despite all the fun that we had and all the ways that I thought that Noah understood me and cared about me, he’d also hurt me in a way that only your first true love who breaks your heart is capable of hurting you.

  21

  Dante

  When I get back to the car, I call Lincoln immediately. I put the phone on a hands-free setting to make sure that no police officer has any cause to pull me over for any reason.

  "It's done," I say. "Do you want me to send photographs?"

  "No, I believe you. Besides, the clients will want the official confirmation from the police department and the news."

  "Fine," I say, not at all surprised.

  Photos can be easily faked, so can news reports and police statements, but those are harder to do.

  "How are you doing?" Lincoln asks when I'm about to hang up.

  I'm still using a burner phone and I'm going to get rid of it right after this phone call, so if I want to talk about this, this is really my only chance. The thing is this is the last thing I want to talk about.

  "How are you feeling?" Lincoln asks.

  I can feel the mild level of anxiety on the other end.

  "Pissed off," I say. "I told you I was never going to do this again and yet, here we are."

  "Listen, I didn't put you in this position. I wasn't the one that borrowed all that money from the trust fund."

  "Yeah, but you have money and you could lend me some and I could pay you back in some other way that isn't this."

  "I don't know what to say except that I'm sorry, but I needed this done. Delinsky defrauded a few guys of $20 million and it wasn’t just some big fund. There were a bunch of people who invested all of their retirements with him. They lost everything. The thing is that he has it all in these offshore accounts, completely inaccessible. So there was no way to take them to court or do anything like that. You know that I'm telling you the truth, right?"

  "Yeah," I say, "I do. I'm still not interested in doing any more of your dirty work."

  I wait for him to say something else for a few moments but instead, he turns on FaceTime and I see him face-to-face.

  His eyes are practically sparkling with excitement. I know that he likes to do this kind of shit. I know that he gets off on it.

  This is the kind of stuff that he lives for.

  "You're going to be a father," I say, disgusted with myself more than I ever thought would be possible.

  "Exactly. Don't you just get sick of life sometimes? The same mundane sort of crap that just piles on and on, boring work, even more boring people. Don't you just get sick of it, don't you just want- ..."

  "No."

  "... some excitement? Something that makes you feel alive?"

  "I have that. I have my life. I have my girlfriend, who I love. No, I don't feel like it's exciting to shoot some stranger. Yeah, maybe he's a bad guy, but I'm not the one who should be his judge and executioner. If anything, one of the guys that he defrauded should be the one to put a bullet in his head. That would probably make them feel a lot better. What I'm left with is a whole bunch of shit; all of this guilt, all of this disappointment.”

  "You think too much, Dante,” Lincoln says. "This is what our dad taught us, okay? This is our family legacy."

  "To be hitmen? Great, thanks," I say, my voice drenched in sarcasm but he doesn't seem to get it.

  "I'm good at planning and all the research. I mean, don't you just love the fact that you rented this car and bam, there was an unregistered, unmarked nine millimeter with a silencer right underneath the passenger seat? I mean, when we do this correctly, when we work together, it's like, we're making music, baby. It's like a dance. Don't you think?"

  "You're a sociopath, Lincoln. I've told you that many times. You fucking terrify me."

  "I terrify you?" he asks with a scoff, tossing his hair and shaking his head. "You have no idea what you're talking about. I've never picked up a gun. I've never actually shot anyone. You, you are the one doing all the killing. You are the one who will kill anyone for the right price."

  "Fuck you," I say.

  Just as I'm about to press the button to hang up on him, Lincoln opens his eyes, glaring into mine and he says, "Father wants to see us.”

  My world turns to black.

  I have a lot of problems with our father. The biggest issue I have besides the cheating and the womanizing and never being around for us as children is this terrible thing that he has passed down to my brother and me as a way to make a living.

  It's this legacy of being hitmen that I found to be so alluring and dangerous and fun when I was younger and that’s what I’m horrified and disgusted by now, especially since it’s something that I’m unable to escape.

  I've never talked about this before. I've thought about it plenty, but I've never really come right out and discussed it, not even with Lincoln.

  I don't know how many hits I have to my name.

  They were all genuinely bad men, mostly responsible for lots of murders, mayhem, and destruction, but what does that make me, a good hit man?

  Is there such a thing?

  I've been toying with this idea for a long time.

/>   It plagues me and it's something that I'm ashamed of, even though there are people like Lincoln who think that these deaths are justified.

  What I hate most, however, is that it was our father who turned us on to it. He came back into our life and brought us over to the dark side.

  22

  Dante

  "When will the money be paid?" I ask, changing the topic. "I don't want to talk about him."

  Lincoln narrows his eyes. "Once there's confirmation, the money that you're owed will be wired to your account. Just like before."

  "Good," I say. "Then I'm out."

  "You always say that."

  "This time I'm serious."

  I feel my lower lip quivering. It's not that I'm not serious. I am. It's just that this line of work has a way of bringing me into darkness.

  "You know, I've always been very good at research," Lincoln says, ignoring me. "Didn't you like the fact that I got his family out?"

  "I wouldn't be there if they were there," I say.

  "Yeah, but it was still kind of a great thing to do, wasn't it? Did you know that I tracked them and had a last-minute invitation to the lake house? A surprise birthday party? Of course, they’ll find out that it was not a surprise at all when they find the body but hey, it worked, right?"

  "You won't be tracked, will you?" I ask, knowing the answer.

  Lincoln has a way of doing things online and keeping things secret that I can only dream of. He was always good with computers. He hacked into our elementary school system when he was seven and changed everyone's grades with Gs just because he thought it would be funny. There are no G grades, of course, they only go down to F. The administration wasn’t amused, but we were.

  If he didn't have his issues with gambling, he'd be a multi-multimillionaire now. But the thing is that he lives life on the edge. He likes it that way. He likes to skirt the law or, in this case, break it completely.