Chapter 2
Shaw couldn’t work out why the dancers were dressed as rabbits.
He’d been chewing on it for an hour, the same patient way he worked any detail that didn’t sit right. He had nothing.
Pastel everything. Go-go boys working the podiums in pastel ears and powder-puff tails, grinding to a crowd that ate it up like the getup meant something.
Some theme the whole room was in on, and Shaw outside it—the way he was outside most things people seemed to agree on without being told.
He let it go. Whatever gimmick this was, it didn’t matter to the job.
The rest of the Dunham brothers’ place was two floors of noise and colored light, a disco ball flinging scraps of it across the floor. Bass he could feel in his back teeth. Glitter on every surface, including the customers. A fog machine losing a slow war with the air conditioning.
Shaw sat in a corner booth with a whiskey he didn’t intend to drink and waited for a man to make the mistake of being alone.
This was the part nobody romanticized about being a hitman: the waiting.
Hours of it, spent being human furniture.
Shaw was good at being furniture. You dressed like you belonged, kept your hands still and your face shut, and eyes slid off you like rain off glass.
He’d built a career on being the man nobody could describe to a sketch artist.
A gay bar tested that skill. Here, a big quiet stranger nursing one drink in the corner didn’t read as invisible. He read as available.
“Haven’t seen you here before.” Shaw hadn’t seen him coming; the guy was already folded into the booth. Thirties, friendly, good-looking in a way Shaw could note the way you’d note the weather—a fact about the room, nothing that moved him.
He used to feel that kind of thing. The job had worn it down to nothing—now a good-looking stranger barely registered. Shaw didn’t even look at him. “Keep moving.”
“…Cool,” the guy said, after a moment. “Fuck you, too.” He went back into the crowd, where he belonged.
Shaw went back to work.
Rick Dunham was the job, and Rick Dunham was easy to watch. The man moved through his own club like he thought he owned not just the building, but everyone in it as well.
Shaw didn’t need to know the reason behind the hit. He’d worked enough of these to know the shape. He’d seen Dunham’s type a hundred times. Someone who took because he could, hurt because it made him feel big. The world was full of them.
There was a second one, too. Shaw caught him by the staff door earlier: Gary Dunham, softer than Rick, calmer, a good haircut and a better smile, working a handshake like a man running for office.
A brother. The business half. Shaw watched him long enough to file him—variable, not the target—then let the look go before it could land.
The contract was for Rick only. The brother was someone else’s trouble, or nobody’s. Either way, Shaw didn’t care.
One of the servers caught his eye—dressed in white satin, bunny ears crooked on his head. His tail was a ridiculous thing, a powder-puff of white fixed just above the curve of his ass, and it bounced every time the bunny moved.
Shaw’s gaze went to it, then went back twice more before he caught himself doing it.
He’d never once thought a rabbit could be sexy. Until now, apparently.
But that wasn’t the job. The job was Rick, and when Shaw looked back, Rick was watching the bunny too, his lazy interest gone hard and certain. Shaw had cleaned up after men wearing that look more than once.
The trouble all night had been getting Rick alone. Rick never was—always out on the floor with a drink in his hand and a crowd around him. Shaw had watched the hours bleed off and the chance hadn’t come.
That was bad. Shaw had done his recon: Rick always went from his bar back to his family home. Shaw wasn’t a bleeding heart, but he drew the line at killing a guy in front of his family, even if the target was an asshole who deserved it.
It had to happen here.
Finally, around two, the floor thinned out. Rick watched the bunny slip toward the back, then went after him—off the floor, away from the last of the stragglers.
It was the first real opening Shaw had gotten at Rick all night, and the night was nearly gone.
The only catch was the kid back there with him. Shit. He’d have to play this fast and hard.
Shaw gave it a minute, then followed them.
The staff door opened onto a hallway, the hallway onto a back exit. Behind him the club was already shutting down, the music killed and most of the staff long gone. The only thing to hear was his own footsteps. Years of practice had worn those down to nothing.
Ahead, two voices: Rick’s, low and pushing, and the bunny’s, higher and strained.
Shaw paused at the door. Listened.
The smart play was to wait. Let Rick finish whatever he was doing, let the bunny clear out, then handle the target alone before he could get to his car. Clean shot, clean exit, no witnesses.
But something in the kid’s voice made Shaw’s jaw tighten.
“—really flattered, but I don’t mix work and personal stuff?—”
The forced lightness. The careful deflection of someone who’d learned the hard way not to escalate. Shaw had heard that voice before—different people, different situations, but always the same note underneath. Someone navigating a person who had more power than they did.
He knew that dance. Had done it himself, back in a different life.
“—rules are made to be broken?—”
Shaw’s hand tightened on his gun.
The smart play was to wait…
But Shaw had never been as smart as he should be.
He pushed through the door.
The alley was nearly dark, the one bulb over the door barely denting it. Shaw took it in fast: the dumpster he could put a body behind, the long dark stretch down to where he’d parked.
Just as he’d figured: the bunny against the wall.
Rick Dunham was too close to him—one hand on the kid’s waist, leaning in with the ease of a man who thought that personal space was his to fill.
The kid wasn’t shrinking from it, though. He stood his ground, cigarette still smoldering between his fingers, expression pure annoyance.
Up close, he was smaller. Younger than Shaw had called it from across the room—early twenties, eye makeup smudged at the corners. He’d pulled a jacket on over the satin bodysuit, not that that helped cover it, and had either forgotten the bunny ears or decided they weren’t worth taking off.
A man twice his size in his space, and the kid looked more annoyed than afraid.
Shaw brought his gun up.
Rick was no fighter, but he hadn’t lasted this long in his line of work without picking up certain instincts. His hand shot out and hauled the bunny in front of him by the arm.
“Stay back!” Rick’s voice cracked, pitching high with panic. “Stay the fuck back or I’ll?—”
Shit. Men like Rick never went down clean. They always found something soft to hide behind.
Shaw stepped forward, gun trained on center mass.
The kid was scared, but he wasn’t falling apart.
The bodysuit had slipped at one shoulder, baring a pale line of collarbone.
His mouth was soft, pressed hard now. His gaze never settled, flicking from the gun to the dark end of the alley, hunting for a way out.
Shaw had pointed guns at plenty of people. Most of them begged or froze. This one was doing neither. This bunny had a spine.
“Let him go.” Shaw kept his voice flat, almost bored.
“Fuck you.” Rick’s arm tightened around the bunny’s chest. “You want him, you go through me. I’ll snap his fucking neck, I swear to god?—”
The kid shot Rick a look of pure contempt. Shaw almost laughed, and he never laughed on a job.
Rick must have seen it. His other hand went to his pocket.
It came out with a knife.
Fuck.
Shaw could have waited. Could have found an angle, a moment when the bunny wasn’t in the way, a clean shot that didn’t risk hitting the wrong person. That was the professional play.
But the bunny sucked in a sharp breath of fear, and Rick’s knife caught the light.
Shaw lunged.
Rick slashed. The blade caught Shaw, not the kid. It lashed across his ribs—burning pain, a wet line of fire—but Shaw was already inside Rick’s guard. He drove his elbow into Rick’s throat. Cartilage crunched with a wet gurgle.
Rick staggered backward, releasing his hostage, the knife clattering to the ground.
The kid stumbled to the side, putting distance between himself and both of them.
Shaw grabbed Rick by the collar. Looked into his panicked, bulging eyes. Saw the terror there, the dawning realization that all the money and power in the world couldn’t save him now.
Good.
“Someone paid me to make this hurt,” Shaw said quietly. “But I don’t have time. So you get quick instead. Count yourself lucky.”
He emptied his gun into Rick.
The sound was louder than Shaw would’ve liked—a contained space like this, the echo bouncing off brick walls, probably audible half a block away. Rick crumpled, and Shaw let him fall, stepping back as the body hit the concrete with a wet thud.
Done.
Shaw put a hand to his side. It came back red. He pushed two fingers into the seam and felt something push back at them, steady, in time with his own pulse. The blade had run between his ribs and nicked something small on its way past.
He could hold that shut. But he couldn’t hold it shut and drive.
Shit. Knife wounds always made him woozy. He could handle broken bones, but something about being sliced up always got to him. Already the edges of things were going soft, the alley tilting a half-degree off level, and he knew where that led if he didn’t move.
Then: sirens. A gunshot in a brick alley carried, and this part of town never went long without a cruiser on it.
It wasn’t long before they checked back here, behind the club.
This was bad.
Shaw’s car was two blocks out. He could make it—maybe—though driving anywhere while bleeding like this was optimistic at best. No backup to call. No contingency on file for passed out behind the wheel and crashed.
Working alone had its downsides. Bleeding out in an alley with sirens closing in had to be near the top of the list.
He turned for the car—and stopped.
The bunny was still there.
Shaw had written the kid off the second he broke loose, assumed he’d bolted like anyone would. Wrong.
He stood a few feet off in the dark, Shaw’s blood spattered across the white satin, watching. Not running. Not screaming. His gaze moved over the wound in Shaw’s side, then over Rick’s body on the concrete, taking them both in like he was pricing them.
A witness who’d seen all of it was the kind of problem Shaw usually solved with the gun already in his hand. He didn’t reach for it.
He made a call. A stupid one, probably. The kind you made when you had no other options left. “Five grand if you drive.”
Money did what the gun couldn’t. The kid’s head came up, his face sharpening, the fear shoved clean aside. “Cash?”
“Cash.”
A breath. The sirens were closer now. Shaw had maybe a minute left on his feet before the blood loss put him down, answer or no answer.
The bunny should say no. Should run and forget he’d seen any of it—what any sane person would do.
“Deal,” he said instead.
Shaw almost grinned. Mercenary little thing. He liked that more than he should. “Car’s over on Fourth. Black sedan.”
He dug the keys out of his pocket with fingers that were starting to shake, tossed them across the space between them. The bunny snatched them out of the air one-handed. “You drive, I navigate. Let’s go.”
They moved. His legs had mostly quit on him, but he got into the back seat, the leather cold against his sweat-soaked back. The bunny took the wheel and pulled them into the street fast enough that Shaw barely got the door shut.
Shaw kept waiting for the flinch—the moment it caught up with the kid that he was hauling a bleeding stranger away from a fresh body.
It never came. The bunny ground the gears and grabbed the wipers instead of the lights, but none of it slowed him down. Whatever made a person stop and think twice, the kid didn’t seem to have it.
“Where am I going?” The bunny’s voice was calm. Focused. Like this was just another night and not a felony in progress.
“Left at the light.” Shaw pressed his hand harder against his side. Blood was soaking through his shirt now, warm and wet, and the gray in his vision was getting thicker. “Then straight for three blocks.”
“Got it.”
The city slid past the windows, streetlights smearing into orange and white. Shaw gave another direction, then another, each one taking longer to surface than the last.
He’d handed his life to a kid he’d known five minutes. Shaw didn’t do that. He’d built a career on never having to.
Trusting people was how you got hurt. And here he was anyway, bleeding into the upholstery, betting everything on a stranger in bunny ears.
The kid drove them on through the empty streets, the sirens thinning out somewhere behind. “Hey.” The bunny’s voice, distant. Worried? “Hey! Where am I going?”
Shaw tried to answer. His mouth wouldn’t shape the words; nothing below his neck would do what he told it. The dark came in softly, and some tired part of him wanted to let it.
“Where the fuck am I going? Hey—stay with me!”
The last thing he caught before he went under was the bunny’s voice, sharp with frustration and something that might have been concern:
“Fuck!”
And then nothing.