Chapter 43 Talbot
TALBOT
“We are the Christmas champions!” Jake and Lawrence sing when I trudge back into the office.
“We should go out to a fancy restaurant on the company dime.” Elsa pumps a fist.
“No, we need that money to prepay for the job prep for Fitz.”
“Did you call him, Talbot?” Hudson asks. “Talbot?”
“You’re not usually like this after a hit. Anderson, is this what he’s usually like?” Jake flutters around me.
My older brother hands me a beer, cracking the top off with a dented snowman bottle opener.
I stare at the condensation dripping onto my fingers.
“Talbot, hurry up and file the report. Then try to call Fitz. Gracie wants to have some sort of pre-Christmas thing.” Hudson flips through the report he’s reading.
“Is her crazy-ass granny gonna be there?” Lawrence snickers.
“I didn’t kill him,” I say quietly.
“What the hell? There are photos of his dead body all over social media.”
I push the phone he holds out to me away from my face. “It wasn’t me. There was another assassin.”
“Another assassin?” Anderson and Hudson give each other concerned looks. “What do you mean?”
I shake my head, cutting them off.
“Didn’t recognize him. Didn’t seem like he was military.
Face was covered. Maybe former gang? Cartel.
Not mafia.” I run a hand through my hair.
“Had to have been casing the place. Probably had people on the inside. He knew exactly what time Austen was going to be outside. Just walked up, shot him, walked off.”
“You didn’t follow him?” Hudson demands.
“Misty came out.”
The only sound from Hudson is his teeth grinding so hard they almost crack.
“So do we... give the money back?” Anderson asks uncertainly.
“I mean, technically, we didn’t kill him.” Jake argues.
“Does Misty know that?” Anderson asks.
“Dude, Misty’s not important here. We can’t have the Svenssons and the Richmonds thinking we take money for work we didn’t do.” Hudson’s tense, angry.
“Do we give her all the money back or some of it?” Elsa asks. “This was our failure. Technically.”
“This was Talbot’s failure. Technically,” Anderson corrects.
“I didn’t know there was another assassin after him,” I argue. “He’s an NHL player. He’s not in the mob or a banker or a billionaire or something. No one hires hits on hockey players.”
“Talbot did spend a lot of time trying to deal with Austen,” Lawrence argues, “and technically, if Misty had let him do the hit when he originally planned, none of this would have happened.”
“So I think the standard seventy-five percent back is fine.” Anderson nods. “Roll over the additional ten percent into a new job if she wants.”
“Fine. What’s her number?” Hudson sounds disgusted. “Let’s call her.”
“I’ll go tell her in person.” I shove my beer at Lawrence and grab my hat and my jacket.
“Thank god you finally fixed that thing.” Hudson sighs.
“What?”
My older brother flicks the top of my gray skullcap.
I reach up and take it off, run the pads of my fingers over the yarn that carefully stitched the rip back together. Misty.
“I cannot lose her.” I know I sound panicky. “I cannot have this be the last thread connecting me to her. This is my chance to make her understand, to have her forgive me, to take me back.”
“She wants a family, not a guy who’s gone all the time,” Lawrence reminds me.
“I don’t have to be.”
“And then what?” Hudson rounds on me. “You’re going to what? Quit on me? Go move into her stepfather’s house?”
“I have money saved. I’ll open a cheese shop.”
“Seriously? You’d last about eight months.” My brother is such an asshole.
“And then you’d get bored, or you’d freak out on a customer and get arrested, and then want me to bail you out.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“You didn’t change a few hours ago. You made a whole plan to kill Austen—not because of the job but apparently because of some girl—and you almost executed it.” Hudson snorts. “Those aren’t the actions of a changed man.”
“We’re not good people.” Anderson drops an arm over my shoulders. “We are who we are. She’s not going to accept that.”
“So, what?” I ask quietly. “That’s it?”
“Yeah. Leave her alone. Go to Seattle.”
“I can’t.”
“Your funeral.”
The West house is dark when I jump the high metal fence then creep through the snow to the back door.
I stare at Misty’s window. Should I climb up?
Seems like she won’t appreciate the surprise of me appearing. I should probably knock on her bedroom door, explain myself.
The living room is dark. Only the Christmas tree, lights dimmed, glows softly in the corner.
The window eases open, and I pull myself through, somersaulting and landing in a crouch on the floor, holding my breath and taking in the room.
“You have some fucking nerve.”
I swallow a curse.
In the dark, I finally make out his profile. Ryan is sitting in the living room in a leather armchair, drinking whiskey. Ice cubes clink as he sets the glass down. He stands up to his full height.
It takes me a second, but I scramble upright then remove my knitted skullcap for good measure. “Sir.”
“You came into my house and lied to me. Lied to my face over and over and over.”
“I didn’t—I love your daughter.”
“You’re a hired gun.” He spits out the accusation.
I flinch. Misty told her family?
“Now my stepdaughter is going to jail.”
“No, I didn’t kill Austen.” I try to tell him.
“She paid you an ungodly amount of money to kill him, and now he’s dead.”
“There was another assassin.”
Hudson’s going to kill me. He’s going to kill me twice—once for admitting I’m an assassin and that there was a paid job, second time for having an in-depth convo about it, and probably a third time just for being a whiny little bitch to Ryan West.
“The worst of it is you lied about Misty. You said you would take care of her, that you wouldn’t hurt her, that she was everything to you.”
“She is. She was. She’s all of that.”
“You broke her fucking heart.”
“I’m here to put it all back together.”
Ryan snorts derisively. “I wish I played hockey as well as you manipulate people.”
It’s a low fucking blow right in the gut. I want to throw up, and nothing makes me want to throw up. “I didn’t mean to.” There’s a whine in my voice I need to stamp out. “I care about her more than you know. She changed something in me.”
“You’re a fucking piece of shit. Get out of my house.”
“I need to see Misty, sir.”
“The hell you do. Stay the hell away from her.” Ryan looks like he wants to punch the Christmas tree. “Fuck. I used to think Austen was the worst thing to happen to her. Now I realize it was you.”
“You don’t understand,” I beg. “I can’t just leave without seeing her. I’m dying here. It’s killing me. I need her.”
“Don’t mess with me, son.”
“I—”
A scream pierces the night.
Misty.
The man in black who was sneaking around the West house. It’s him. It has to be.
Ice fills my veins.
Whoever tried to kill Austen is after Misty.
I take a guilty look at my idol then sprint for the stairs.