Chapter 45 Talbot
TALBOT
“You didn’t get a celebratory lay after you told her that she’s getting her money back?” Elsa jokes when I return to the field office.
I slump down on my chair like I’ve just been hit by a freight train of a defender. “She went back to her ex.”
Silence.
“The one you killed?” Anderson asks slowly, like he’s not sure he heard me right.
“Did she sneak into the morgue?” Elsa asks with a laugh.
I’m exhausted. “He isn’t dead. Faked the whole thing.”
Anderson whistles low.
“This is why you don’t stick your dick in crazy,” Lawrence says sagely.
“Terms and conditions apply,” Jake drawls. “Not if your dick is the crazy one.”
I stare at the wall like maybe if I look hard enough, it’ll open up and swallow me whole. Then I stand up. “I can’t fucking stand you all.”
“Where are you going?” Elsa asks, voice faintly amused.
“Bar. Rink. Doesn’t matter. Just not here.”
“You need to call Fitz,” Hudson calls after me, “especially since you cost us that last contract.”
I can’t shake the sight of Misty’s tearstained face. “I thought you’d changed.” A changed man would assuage his sorrows with community service, maybe whittle some toys for orphans. I just want to go shoot something.
I stop with my hand on the door. My jaw flexes. “Fuck.”
My phone is buzzing. Speak of the devil.
I answer. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I’m not impressed with the level of customer service here,” Fitz says like he’s ordering a pizza and not about to pay us to do something really illegal. “Let’s make it a Christmas present for my brother.”
“Salinger hates Christmas.”
“He’s going to like his present. Stock prices are going through the roof.”
I look around at the thrifted decorations Elsa and I hung all over the office earlier in the month. They already look decrepit. The Christmas tree needs water.
I’m itching to see what Fitz has for me.
What was I thinking, seriously, that I could ever change? Ever toss my knife, my gun into a river? Hang up my bulletproof vest?
I’m not the type of guy who comes home for Christmas. Misty is right not to want to be with me.
“I can’t do Christmas,” I tell him gruffly. “Best I can do is by the thirty-first.”
“Don’t tell me Misty actually is letting you take her to that Motel Six in Colorado,” Fitz snorts. “Take her to Seattle. You guys can do a working vacay. I’ll give you a five percent discount on a hotel room at the Soundview. But don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to give discounts for just anybody.”
“I’m not going to—she went back to her ex,” I admit.
“Then why can’t you finish my job by Christmas?
Oh, oh... You actually thought you were in love with her.
” Fitz tuts. “Too bad I’ve had my fill of Hallmark movies this Christmas, or I’d think it was sweet.
So you’re going to be nursing your broken heart this holiday season.
The assassin and the unemployed stay-at-home daughter. ” Fitz snickers.
“She works at a café. Part-time. I’m actually not sure if she’s getting money for it—I think she might just be helping out.”
“It’s so sweet my teeth hurt.”
“…the one she hired him to kill…” He’s repeating the story to one of his brothers in the background. “Yeah, the hockey player, yeah dude, I know.” Then Fitz is back on the phone. “Wait, McCarthy says Langley is dead, so did she get back together with his corpse?”
“He faked his own death.”
“Okay, I’m flying you out to Seattle. No, no, you don’t have to kill anyone yet—god forbid you actually do the job I’ve hired you for—I’m a billionaire, so I have to hear the whole story, all the gory details.
I get bored easily, you know, buying anything and everything I want.
You’re going to get that pancake robot, and you’re going to like it,” he yells at someone.
“Ungrateful wretches,” he says cheerfully.
“It doesn’t matter now. I’ve lost her forever.”
“You’re spiraling. Come to the West Coast—it’s rainy and depressing here. You want to drink yourself into a coma over some girl who chose an NHL millionaire over you? You can snuggle under the covers and cry into your eggnog.”
“Just send me the details of the job. Use the secure line this time—don’t just text it to me. Get McCarthy to help you if you can’t handle it.”
“Mouthy. And she really didn’t like that, huh? I thought girls all like the bad boy with the tattoos and the questionable decision-making skills.”
“She said she loved him,” I say quietly. “Still. After everything. She looked me in the eye and ran back to the guy who broke her.”
I stare at the floor. My jaw aches from clenching it so hard.
Outside, the snow is starting to fall again—soft, relentless. Just like her voice in my head. Just like the way she kissed me.
A pause. Then Fitz says, not unkindly, “Yeah. That sucks. So I guess you won’t care if I swoop in and sweep her off her feet?”
“Did you not hear me?”
“I heard you say that you were incapable of competing with Schrodinger’s dead zombie hockey player.
We had a real connection there at that weirdly sticky sky suite.
Boston seriously needs a new stadium.” I can practically see him leaning back in his wingback leather chair.
“It’s okay, not everyone has billions of dollars and a charming personality at their disposal. I’ll invite you to the wedding.”
“Greg is right about you,” I snarl into the phone. “All you Seattle Svenssons are pieces of shit.”