Chapter 4
FOUR
LELAND
We pull into the driveway of Cam’s house to drop him off, and he leans into the front seat.
“Come inside. My dad wants to see this car, so I need to grab him,” he says. “He also wanted to show you the car he’s been building for like… my entire life. It’s like… a car body… that’s struggling to survive, but boy does he love it. Just go ‘Oh wow’ and he’ll be happy.”
“I’m very good at pretending to like cars,” I tell him. “I pretend to like Jackson’s every time I find him out there petting it.”
“I don’t pet it that often,” Jackson protests.
Look at us. Being a normal family, meeting the parents of our child’s friend. Like… can we get any more disgustingly normal than that?
We all get out of the car and Cam ushers us to the front door and inside.
“Mom? Dad!” he shouts.
I trail after Jackson as I look around the foyer feeling especially nosy and curious about what a “normal” family’s house looks like.
I guess maybe we could decorate more to really pull off the whole “family that has it together” thing.
Most of my decorations used to be weapons, but Jackson made me remove a lot of that when we were watching Mila, a young girl who we had for a while until we found her father.
After getting Waylon, we didn’t put many back out.
It wasn’t that we didn’t trust Waylon; Jackson just thought it was a healthier environment to put guns in locations where it made sense to find them.
Supposedly, the cereal cupboard didn’t “make sense” when Waylon pulled a box down and knocked a knife out from where I’d had it hidden.
These peculiar people have all of these decorations and pictures of their child… ooh… I could put pictures of my guns on the walls… oh, and Waylon. Hmm… I think if it’s a 2:3 ratio, Jackson could only complain two-thirds of the time.
I could sprinkle some Cayenne and Sarge pictures in there as well.
“Daaaaaaad,” Cam calls, and a man pops out of a room.
“Sorry! I was putting cookies in the oven,” he says before throwing us a smile and pinpointing me for some reason. “Cam says you’re a car man?”
I point at Jackson. “He is.”
“I’d love to see what you’re working on,” Jackson says.
Look at us… we’re so good at faking this normal family shit.
“I’m Nathan,” he says, shaking our hands as we introduce ourselves. “And of course I know Waylon. Let me just say, he’s been a fantastic influence on Cam. Cam had these friends we weren’t overly fond of—”
“Dad… why?” Cam asks, all embarrassed. We would never embarrass Waylon like that.
“Shush,” Nathan says as he pats his son’s back in an “I’m talking and you’re interrupting” way.
I pat Waylon’s back in a “Look, our child is better than yours” way.
I am so good at this! My child is even significantly better than theirs!
That’s when Cam’s mom comes rushing in. “Sorry, sorry, I was working outside, and my hands were all dirty, so I needed to wash…” She hesitates before smiling. “Wash them off.”
“I’m Jackson,” my dear oblivious husband tells her.
Her smile is perfectly in place. “Sophia.”
Instead of giving her a name, I smile back at her.
It’s not like she can’t figure out my name by simply asking her son, but the idea of just readily handing it over irritates me.
At times I had questioned changing my name to avoid situations like this, but when I gave up the life of being a hitman, I assumed it would come with quieter times.
“Come, come,” Nathan says as he ushers Jackson off. Then Cam directs Waylon to his room and Sophia and I are left staring at each other.
“It’s just… so nice to meet you,” she says as she keeps smiling.
I wave her off. “NO, the pleasure… all mine for sure.”
“Yeah? Noooo, the pleasure is mine.”
“Are you positive?” I ask. “I think it’s mine.”
“Haha… would you like a cookie? I have cookies,” she says while she backs into the kitchen.
“Oh, I would love nothing more than one of your cookies. Did you make them?”
“My husband did! Such a talented man,” she replies as she backs past the table. She continues to back her way around the kitchen island and picks up a homemade cookie which she sets on a napkin before sliding it across the counter toward me.
“These look… delicious,” I say, slowly walking around the counter.
“Oh please, you’ll make me blush.” I hear the slightest noise of a drawer opening. Sophia has her body positioned in a way to keep me from seeing it, but the noise betrays her at the last second.
“So. Delicious.” I slide the cookie off the counter and into the trash. “Just… perfect.”
“Thank you,” she says as she sidesteps around the kitchen island while I slowly draw my knife out. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“So much!”
“Would you like another?”
“I would but I just can’t right now! Too many sweets already today,” I say as I see her slip around the edge and take a quick step forward a moment before Cam peeks into the room. She freezes from where she’d been prepared to leap the kitchen island to go after me.
“Hey, Mom, can I show Waylon the pool?”
“You can show him anything you want,” she responds, never looking away from me. Does she really think I’m going to stab her while her child watches? Then again, in her line of work, she’d have taken out the whole family in a case like this.
“Ohhh… kay? Weird… whatever, let’s go,” Cam says, but Waylon hesitates. Surely, he can’t see the knife tucked against my leg, but there must be something that makes warning bells go off.
“Uh… is that okay?” Waylon asks me.
“Sure is. Have fun. But not too much fun,” I say, assuming he’ll be safe with Cam. He’s been alone with him all night, after all.
“Thanks?” Waylon seems uncertain, but he does go out the door with Cam, leaving me alone with Sophia.
“Ha ha… teenage boys. Adorable, right?” Sophia asks.
“So much!” I say. “Just the cutest.”
“They’re so cute it makes you feel like you’ll do anything to protect them, you know? Literally anything.”
With a flick of her wrist, she flings a knife at me that I avoid a second before it embeds itself in the wall.
It was clearly a distraction as she rushes a drawer that likely has a gun in it.
There’s a plate on the counter that I throw at her face, and she ducks it.
She uses the sound of the plate hitting the wall and shattering to yank open a cupboard.
Sophia gets the gun out, but I throw a ladle so hard that it smashes into her hand and she involuntarily drops the gun with a “Fuck.” I swing up onto the counter and over it, slamming her into the far counter.
She’s expecting me and is already driving a knife toward my side. I barely dodge it before grabbing a skillet and using it to pin her hand down. She knees me right in the nuts, making me groan and stumble back.
“Who the fuck sent you?” she hisses.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask. “I was just dropping your damn kid off! How was I supposed to know you were waiting inside?”
“Where’d you find the kid? Just off the street? You been playing the long game to get into my house?”
“Ha! You really think if I wanted to shoot you in the head, I would have to fake a family to do it? You’re not that good,” I hiss. “You’d be dead before you even knew I was after you.”
She has to know that this isn’t my style. While Lucas used to send me in to interact with the people I was sent to kill, as I grew older, I more often hunted them from the shadows than letting myself into their homes.
Sophia twists back then dodges into the next room just as Jackson and Nathan come out of the garage. The two of us freeze before doing our best to look natural.
She fluffs a pillow with vigor, and I pretend a photograph of them going rafting is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever seen.
“Rafting, eh?”
“YES!” she says, strangely loud before clearing her throat. “We went rafting. So much fun besides the part where Nathan fell out.”
“Or did you throw him out? Ha ha!”
“If I was throwing one of us out, it would have been Cam! He was all, ‘Woe is me, nature is boring.’”
“You’re hilarious.”
“THANK YOU!”
“It’s too bad you didn’t fall out,” I say.
“Right? Maybe you can go with us next time!” She mimes pushing me under the water while she smiles at me.
Jackson and Nathan seem to be absolutely oblivious to what’s going on here as Nathan jabs a finger toward the door.
“I’m going to go see Jackson’s car. You want to go with us?” Nathan asks.
Sophia beams at him as I see her hands fiddling with a drawer behind her back while I keep a knife and a gun held behind my back.
I really don’t want to shoot her. The last thing I need is to shoot this woman in her family home in broad daylight, but I will also do anything it takes to keep my family safe.
“Noooo, that’s okay, though. You boys have fun. We were in here just… chatting away,” she says.
“Such a good chat too!” I exclaim.
Of course Waylon caught on earlier that something was up, but Jackson is far too excited about showing off the Mistress—aka his car—to catch on that I’m in a battle with some woman that I’m thinking about all the ways I could murder.
Like… that cupboard looks good enough to store a body in until I could get Tucker to simply dispose of her.
I’m sure it’d go really well with a “Waylon, Jackson, let’s get going” and a “Where did Sophia go?” tossed in with an “It was SO strange, but she realized that she needed some milk and just… sped off,” and a “But she didn’t take the car?” and a dash of “You know how she likes to get her steps in.”
“That cupboard there… how empty is it?” I ask, once the guys are gone.
She cocks her head. “Empty enough that your body will tuck nicely into it.”
“Oh? Good to know,” I say. She goes to jerk the drawer open as I shoot it with my silenced gun. She dives out of the way, rushing behind a reclining chair.