Epilogue #3
Before every job, I scrub myself down very, very thoroughly with antibacterial soap and a high-grit loofah.
Wash my hair several times and bind it up tight.
Clean under my fingernails. My clothes were freshly washed in free-and-clear detergent.
My shoes are brand new and clean-soled. Long sleeves, a black ball cap over my hair to prevent stray hairs.
I was careful about my path in, avoiding dirt and anything else that may leave my scent or any kind of trail.
It's not foolproof—they'll still pick up my scent given time, but it’ll hopefully give me enough of a lead to reach the gate and the eight-foot-high fence topped by razor wire.
The estate is just outside Zermatt. If I can get off the estate, there's a good chance I can lose them in the city.
I just have to get to the fence.
I reach it, and judge the jump as I approach at a run—ten feet to the top of the razor wire.
My mat is still laid over the razor wire, so I stop, back up a few feet, take a breath and prepare myself, and then sprint and leap, catch the lip, roll over the mat covering the wire, catch the lip on the other side, snag the mat, and drop to the ground.
Easy, once you’ve practiced it until you can do it in your sleep with your eyes closed. Well, your eyes are always closed when you’re asleep, unless you’re a wizard. You know what I mean.
Anyway, easy. And I’m off, none the worse for wear, and hopefully scot-free.
Except, you know, the tweaked ankle and the dogs, which I hear barking and snarling near the fence.
The first few steps are limped, but I've got plenty of experience running hurt, so I grit my teeth and push onward toward the lights of Zermatt at a quick jog.
Jogging I can do, I just don't like it. It's still way too jiggly for comfort, but it's not nearly as bad as an all-out sprint.
My brain wanders as I jog toward the city—Bob, my childhood, such as it was, my many single-use-only sexual partners, most memorably the one before last. Hector. A big, handsome lad from Argentina, the location of my job at the time. Lovely penis, bad breath, excellent at sex.
That only occupies my mind for a few minutes—the length of time it takes me to relive that short but extremely satisfying encounter; just like dick size, sex isn’t always all about how long it lasts. Take notes, folks, I know what I’m talking about.
My mind wanders back to the office. To Ionescu.
Why?
My mind does this when it wants to tell me something I’ve forgotten or don’t realize I know.
So…what am I missing?
I go over everything. He won't get anywhere with my fingerprints—they're not in any system on earth.
He had me on camera, but…
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Fuck me sideways, while running.
"Yes, I have a good angle on her face."
That, my dear friends, is what we in the business call a big fucking problem.
He has my face on camera.
Why is this a problem?
Well, the one thing Hollywood does right is how simple it is to track someone across the world if you have their face, the expertise, computing power, and a bit of patience.
It's not as easy as they make it look, but it's not hacking the NSA.
I make it to Zermatt, weaving from street to street at random, trying to avoid detection and hopefully leaving a hard-to-follow trail.
I'm about to cross a street and duck into an alley to catch my breath when a blacked-out contractor van squeals around a corner on two wheels, swerves, skids, and fishtails, and then rolls a good half a dozen times violently.
It comes to a halt, the engine smoking, the glass shattered.
An impulse—a stupid, foolish, idiotic, braindead impulse—sends me across the road to crouch and peer into the driver's window.
Curiosity? Mostly. Concern? A little.
Fuck most people. But then, sometimes, you just know you have to do something.
This is one of those times.
The driver—the reckless dummy who doesn't know how to corner at speed in a van—is a fucking hottie.
Long, shaggy blonde hair, messy and bloody and matted and tangled and filthy. Sharp, symmetrical features. Plump, kissable lips.
And then his eyes snap open—they’re piercing, electric blue, vivid and intense.
"Help." His voice is raspy and hoarse. He blinks at me.
Unbuckles, slumping to the ground, and then crawls out.
He’s wearing truly filthy blue jeans, equally filthy, once-expensive high-top sneakers, and no shirt.
He has roughly forty-seven abs carved by Michaelangelo himself; I’m a sucker for a nice set of abs, lemme tell you.
But his forearms—well, this is foreshadowing, but I’m an absolute whore for sexy forearms, and while I don’t notice it in this moment, later on I’ll find out that he has the sexiest forearms I’ve ever seen.
Shit, he has the sexiest everything I’ve ever seen.
In this moment, though? His abs catch my attention because they’re razor sharp and blocky and powerful.
The other thing that catches my attention are the cuts all over his body—which look suspiciously as if he's been tortured.
Tires squeal, and another black van rounds the corner—this driver knows what he's doing.
"Fuck me." Hottie just sounds tired. "No, no, I got it." This must be to me, because I’m just standing here staring at him, watching him.
He ducks into the overturned van, then drops to his hands and knees and crawls half in the window, rummaging for something.
The man’s ass is a work of art in those jeans. Like, damn.
Mama likey.
No, I don't have kids; it’s just a weird kink I have, okay? I refer to myself as mama when I’m turned on. Yes, I know it's fucked up, lame, and hilariously stupid. I just can't help it.
He finds what he's looking for and crawls backward and finds his feet—standing up is clearly an exhausting thing, as if getting to his feet takes the last of his strength.
His platinum blond hair is in his face, and he scrapes it back with one hand in that impossibly erotic way of sexy, long-haired men.
He turns as the other van’s doors fly open, disgorging one, two, three, four…six men in black BDUs, balaclavas hiding their faces, suppressed assault rifles at their shoulders.
"Fuck you."
BAM-BAM-BAM! He drops three in quick succession before they know what's happening, and then—BAMBAMBAM! The other three go down just as fast.
And just like that, there are six dead men in the streets of Zermatt, and Hottie Operator is shuffling and weaving toward me, dizzy, weak, drunk with pain and exhaustion.
"Please help me." The gun drops from his fingers and clatters to the ground at my feet, and then he collapses forward into my arms.
Um, shit.