Fiona and the Fixer (The Hitman and the Fixer #2)

Chapter 1

1

DAX

“You want me to do what?” I tilted my head to the side to hold my cell in place while I used my teeth to tear through duct tape, a dead body on the floor at my feet. I’d already rolled him onto a tarp, thankful the guy’d died from an overdose and not a gunshot, which would have meant a bloody mess. Two long strips already held the two sides of the plastic closed to the guy’s waist. He was looking more and more like a burrito by the minute.

“Cat sit,” Jack said.

I knew people. Had a shit ton of acquaintances all over town. Hell, over the world, but Jack was my… what did women say, my ride or die? As a fixer and him a former hitman, it was pretty fucking accurate .

I stood, set a hand on my lower back and winced. My muscles were fucking tight.

“I thought you were already on your way to Hawaii.”

“We are. But our cat sitter backed out.”

“Just put out some food and water.” I didn’t have time for this. Hell, I didn’t have much time for anything. I was like a hotel concierge. I took care of shit when rich people didn’t want to get their hands dirty. I got paid a shit ton to do it. Like now, when my client’s brother-in-law did some hard-core partying and ended up dead in a hotel suite. Naked. Well, naked except for the women’s panties.

Yeah, I was that kind of fixer.

“I didn’t know she was backing out until after we left. Besides, this is Pancake I’m talking about.” Jack must’ve heard the crinkle of the tarp as I got back to my task because he asked, “Taking out the trash?”

The fact that he knew what the sound was even through the phone was telling. He had as much experience with wrapping up bodies as me. My dad had been a hitman/fixer, and he’d taught us everything he knew. Then we took over when he decided to retire and move to Florida. Business had been brisk ever since.

Especially this week.

I sighed. “Yeah. It seems like every day is trash pickup. I’ve already got one bag in my trunk to take to the dump.”

Meaning this was the second dead body I had to extract from a tricky situation and make disappear today.

“I thought you had that job in Miami.”

“Got back yesterday morning.” The weather had been amazing, but I’d had to escort a twenty-something back to Denver who somehow got lost in the South Beach bar life instead of being in her Poli-Sci college class where her parents wanted her. She somehow made millions on social media teaching others how to put on makeup. Fortunately, after I’d hunted her down, tossed her over my shoulder and got us on a private flight, all she did was film B-reels and tame her fake eyelashes.

After that, I repossessed a vintage Lamborghini from a woman’s ex-husband who refused to return it in the divorce. Not all jobs involved dead bodies.

Except… a client called after the repo who’d been partying with a male prostitute who took too much coke, slipped and hit his head on a coffee table, and died from blunt force trauma.

That was the body currently in the trunk of my car.

Then there was the guy I stood over and just finished wrapping in a tarp.

Lesson of the day? Don’t do drugs.

I went and grabbed the bellhop cart I brought up with me from the hotel lobby.

“You’re afraid Pancake’s going to have a rager and trash the house with all his new cat friends.” I couldn’t help but grin because while Jack had rescued the stray from behind a dumpster where he’d shot someone, the cat really enjoyed his new posh life.

“A real party animal,” Jack agreed, his words laced with sarcasm. “There’s enough food out for him until tomorrow. Then he’ll starve. Stay in the house so he doesn’t. He’s going to be lonely.”

For a former hitman, he was a fucking softie for his cat. I was, too. I, at least, didn’t want the thing to starve.

We used to do jobs together. Help each other out. It made life easier since our skill sets overlapped. Fun, too. Now he had a girl. Hannah. He sat beside her on the plane from Vegas and fell in love at first glance. It was as crazy as it sounded. He’d gone all stalker obsessed on her, gotten her to fall for him, too. He’d even moved to Coal Springs, a sleepy and quaint town up in the mountains where the most exciting thing that happened all year was when the school kids named the town’s snow plows things like Plowasaurus Rex and Han Snowlo.

I chuckled, lining the cart up parallel to the plastic-wrapped body. “Have you heard yourself lately? Six months ago, you did jobs for the mafia and now… your cat will be lonely ? Where the hell are your balls?”

“They’re on their way to Hawaii with me to spend two weeks buried deep in my girl. What are your balls going to be doing?”

“Me and my balls are just fine,” I muttered. I didn’t have a woman in my life for more than a night. Too complicated. Me and relationships didn’t mix. But the idea of going to the tropics to have non-stop sex was pretty appealing. I couldn’t use being a fixer as an excuse for no woman in my life. Somehow, Hannah wanted Jack even though his murder count was the same as some people’s bowling score .

Still, I’d seen what real love had been like between my parents before my mom was killed by a drunk driver. I saw every second of the aftermath with my dad, how he’d literally turned into a vigilante to get justice when the police couldn’t. I wasn’t risking my heart like that. People left. People died, I thought, staring down at a dead fucking body.

Grabbing the ski bag I brought, I tossed it on the wood floor and unzipped it. Yeah, just the right size. Even in October when there wasn’t any snow, no one in Denver thought twice about seeing me push a ski bag on a luggage cart through the hotel’s parking garage. I’d considered a golf bag, but I was too tired to saw the guy in half. Besides, that got messy.

“If you’re desperate enough to ask me to watch Pancake, why not ask your future in-laws?”

Jack and Hannah weren’t engaged yet, but they would be sometime soon.

I could hear his dislike through the phone when he said, “Because if I do, when we get back Pancake will be stuffed and perched over the fireplace.”

Putting my cell on speaker, I set it on the cart as I started working the tarp-wrapped body into the ski bag, laughing as I did so. Hannah’s dad was a taxidermist and the Highcliff home was a vegan’s worst nightmare. There was a cow head hanging on the wall in the dining room and a very creepy squirrel in the powder room to name two of the dozens of roadkill he’d stuffed and had around the house. I’d only been there once and that was plenty.

“True. Brittany?” She was Hannah’s best friend .

“Dental convention in Albuquerque.”

I was standing over a dead body, so I didn’t have too much room to even think it, but the idea of cleaning people’s teeth for a living sounded awful. Obviously, there was a profession for everyone.

“ Nothing happens in Coal Springs,” I said as I squatted down and zipped up the bag. “Two weeks there would be boring as hell.”

Jack retired from his hitman lifestyle and moved from Denver to Coal Springs two months ago. While our roles weren’t the same, we’d worked together often. Hung out. Did shit. Then he settled down in the mountains with Hannah. While I was busy as hell, I was bored of the same old body retrieval routine. And a little lonely.

The only other people in my car today were dead in the trunk.

It wasn’t as fun without him.

My phone beeped indicating another call. I pivoted and grabbed it from the cart.

Max Pinter.

“Sorry, get the neighbor kid,” I told Jack. “I’m too busy with all the trash to get up there to feed him.”

“You need a break.”

I sighed. I probably did. I definitely did.

“You don’t want to get sloppy,” he added. He made a valid point. Getting sloppy meant getting caught. I was too good for that, but I had to wonder if I was too tired. Spread too thin .

“Aloha and all that,” I told Jack, before I swiped over to the other call. “Max, what can I do for you today?”

“You can fix the fuck up you made with my son,” he snapped.

I stood, cracked my neck left, then right, before looking up at the suite’s vaulted ceiling. I was used to angry and pissed off clients. They were all… bad guys who liked to use their money, power, or lack of morals and a conscience to their advantage. Today, though, I was tired and cranky and still had to dispose of two bodies.

“What’s wrong with Jason? The charges were dropped and any hint of being involved in a prostitution ring were scrubbed.” Just as he’d hired me to fix.

“He’s in rehab!” The way he shouted it made it seem like I’d handed off his son to a circus troupe to be shot out of a cannon.

I scratched my head. “That’s right.”

“He has a job. Working for me. Rehab isn’t an option.”

I was well aware of the job Jason had for his drug running father. At twenty-two, the kid was using as much product as he was supposed to be peddling to the other frat and football jocks at his university. Last weekend, he got a little too coked up and got caught up in all kinds of stupid shit, like a raid at a shady-as-fuck place pimping out drugged-up women. The drugged-up part was thanks to the dad’s never-ending supply. He should’ve done fifteen years, minimum, but through my connections, I’d fixed the evidence to clear him.

Except, a few days in jail had been enough to make Jason pretty much shit his pants. He’d wanted out from under his dad’s very dirty thumb, and I’d given the kid a chance. I fixed it so he had to go to rehab to clean his shit up.

Again, don’t do drugs.

“It was better than doing hard time,” I reminded, walking around the suite looking for anything else that belonged to Mr. Dead Body. Fortunately, he’d been tidy before he shot up and his heart exploded. Once I rolled the cart out of the room, it’d be just like any other departure. Empty and ready for housekeeping. “He can’t work for you if he’s behind bars.”

Max laughed. “Clearly you’ve never been to prison or know about how much drugs go through those places.”

“You wanted him to do time?” Maybe I missed the point of my job for him after all. Fuck, I tried to do the right thing and then this happened.

“Jail time is better than him going to rehab. Now he’s worthless to me ‘cause he’s also got five years of probation. I can’t have the police looking my way.”

Exactly.

I fixed things for Jason so he could get his shit together and get out from under his father’s control. I fixed it for Max, too, but maybe not the way he wanted.

“Get my son out of rehab.”

One thing I didn’t like was someone telling me I did my job wrong. I always did it right. That was why I was the best. That was why I was busy as fuck. I especially didn’t like being told what to do. “Look, Max. You paid me to fix the problem. I did. Our business is done.”

I hung up before he could shout some more. What these fuckers’ thought was that they controlled me. What they forgot was that I had all the power. I knew all the dirt. Knew where the dead bodies were. Literally. I could destroy them, and they knew it. While I felt confident Max wouldn’t be using me for any more jobs–no loss to me–he wasn’t going to stir shit up because I’d stir it up right back.

I closed my eyes. Sighed. “Fuck me.”

Jack was right. I needed a break.

I called him back.

“Yeah?” I could hear airport sounds in the background–general chatter, someone telling rows twelve through twenty were free to board.

“I’ll go up and feed the cat. Got a few jobs to do while you’re gone, but I actually can’t wait for a little boring small town life.”