3. Angel
THREE
ANGEL
How I pulled the short straw to stalk this chick in the daytime and watch her comings and goings, I’d never know.
Well, okay, so I did know.
Once you covered up my insanely stunning looks, I was the only one of us who could pass for normal when pressured. Ro was too overbearing, and Nash—well, there were many things wrong with him, but that was beside the point.
With my white-blonde hair tucked safely into an old, weathered ballcap, a hoodie thrown around my shoulders, and faded jeans encasing my legs, I looked like just another citizen of Port Wylde, out for a stroll.
I could have brought the Torino out and had her look it over, pretending to be a client. I could have gone about this a number of ways. But I didn’t like to be seen. My appearance might not be memorable right now, but my violet eyes, a rare genetic quirk of my mother’s lineage, were definitely something you didn’t forget.
I could not risk getting too close.
The cold wind of early spring bit into my skin, cutting through the layers of clothes like they were nothing. I shivered against the chill and wrapped my arms tighter around my chest, hoping it would let up soon. Stalking a target in the rain was one of the worst things to do from the outside of a car. It was too late for regret now, though. I was here, and she was at work, and the goal was to find out the easiest time to approach her and form a plan of action.
In my ear, the fucking headphone crackled, and then Ro’s telltale grumble arrived, right on time.
"Status?"
I swiped a fine mist of fog from the front of my sunglasses and peered in the direction of the machine shop again. "She’s been bent over the hood of this fucking Ford for two hours now. Either she’s living a life of constant dehydration, or she’s Superwoman. I’d have gone for a piss by now."
Ro was not amused. "How about intel we can use, you prick?"
I waved my hand and rolled my eyes, knowing he was watching me from somewhere. "Yeah, yeah, I was getting there. Lighten up, asshole." My eyes scanned the office of her workplace, taking note of each individual in there, picking out the workers from the customers, cataloging every piece of intel for later. "Five customers today, three bays, one car in each. Looks like she’s working with two other mechanics today and one secretary. One of the guys looks like he might be trouble, but the other two are scraggly waifs. Wonder if they get enough to eat at home?"
"So taking her at work, maybe after a shift, would be an option."
I nodded to myself. "It’s one option. We would have to guarantee she was the last to leave, though. The less bodies around, the better." I perked up as one of the thinner boys approached her bay, obviously hunting for a tool. He stared at her for a long moment before tapping on her shoulder, the pervert. Men were all alike. Tits, ass, and single-minded thoughts about sex. We were really a deplorable species.
I decided to stroll across the street and see if I could pick up any of the banter in the shop without being spotted. Luckily, there was a group of ruffians standing around the corner store door, passing around what could only be a meth pipe as they laughed over a shitty joke and catcalled women who walked in or out alone.
Fucking scum. What did I say? This city was filled with them. It was the reason our business was always booming. A town filled with scum usually invited other scum, so there was never a shortage of people needing to be taken out for justifiable reasons.
The stench of their illicit drugs made my nose itch. I wasn’t sure how meth worked, but if that was what they were smoking, at least I couldn’t get a second-hand high from it. The only other option was crack, and they didn’t seem like your typical crackhead .
My mother had been a needle girl, personally. It was a miracle I wasn’t fucked up coming right out of her womb.
She overdosed to get away from her husband when I was just six. Or maybe she was intentionally overdosed. Hard to tell. Wouldn’t be the first time the man I called Father had killed someone to get what he wanted. And he hadn’t wanted a strung-out stripper as a wife, after having a kid ruined her body. His words exactly at her fucking graveside.
What a family we made.
I tilted my head and closed my eyes, pretending to nod off as I focused on the sounds coming from next door.
Whirring from a power tool. A smoker’s cough, likely from the older gent with the oversized uniform jumper. The steady clang and ping of metal on metal, tools being utilized, parts being removed. Occasionally, the fiery fizzle of a welding machine made me glad I’d chosen to listen instead of watch.
And then, the sound of her voice mingled with that of her lecherous coworker.
Bingo.
"So, ah, Hannah, you doing anything after work tonight?" He took a breath when she didn’t respond, and his following words came out in a whoosh. "Because the guys and I were all gonna go to the bar for some drinks after work to celebrate Ronnie’s coming retirement?—"
"Sorry, I don’t drink," she grumbled from beneath the hood of the fancy sports car she was working on. Her voice was muffled by the hood and the environment’s sounds around her, but something about it felt vaguely familiar. Perhaps I’d run into her at a late-night gas station run. Or maybe she’d been at the grocery store when I was. Even more likely was the thought that I was imagining things.
Probably that last one.
Because I knew I’d never seen this girl before in my life .
"Oh, well, neither does Annie from payroll, but she’s going, so maybe you two could?—"
"Not interested, Tony," she hissed, her temper flaring at his persistence. "Thanks for thinking of me, though."
Tony either didn’t know when to take a hint or was completely oblivious to anything outside of the yes he was so obviously looking for from her. "Hannah, you never go out with any of us. Don’t you think it’s about time you had some fun?"
The dead silence after his words made my skin crawl. I’d dated before, had plenty of women come and go in my life, to know that a silence like that was one you ran from. Far away, as fast as you could.
"Tony’s about to die," I muttered to myself, chuckling a bit at his impending doom. "Here lies a stupid motherfucker, who couldn’t take no from a woman and crossed the line."
The telltale slam of the hood of the car was enough to make me instinctively prepare to flee, but I steeled myself as my inner voice reminded me I was not the one in the line of fire this time.
"Tony," she began, all the pleasantry drained from her voice. "This is my job. I work here. I chose this job because I don’t like dealing with people. The last guy who pressured me into something is resting peacefully beneath a bed of dirt. So unless you’d like to join him, I’d fucking back off. Okay?"
I peeked an eye open to see her smirking at him, a very large ratchet in her hand, hoisted like a weapon prepared to strike. She looked like she one hundred percent meant what had just come from her lips, and if Tony’d been a smart man, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him piss himself.
But Tony was not a smart man, as evidenced by his fearless doubling down.
"Aw, come on, Hannah. We all know you’ve never killed a man. That old story doesn’t work on me."
He took one step forward, like most predators do when they’re trying to figuratively or literally back a woman into a corner. But he didn’t count on this woman stepping forward to meet him, tipping that ratchet against her shoulder in mock relaxation.
"If you don’t believe I killed him, you’re more than welcome to find out. Keep pushing it."
This was a yes, in Tony’s addled mind. I was beginning to wonder if the exhaust fumes had gotten to him over the years, working in this career field.
Tony was not one to be deterred, apparently. He’d never met a woman he couldn’t persuade. Or, in his case, likely bully into the answer he wanted.
"Come on, Hannah," he whined, that pathetic sound men made when they thought fake pandering would work on a woman. "Everyone wants you to come with us, and you’re Ronnie’s favorite?—"
Hannah lifted that tool from her shoulder and pointed it at Tony, the tip of it landing square in his sternum. "I said no. There’s two letters in that word, and since graduating high school is a prerequisite for this job, I assume you learned two letter words, and their meanings."32 Her eyes narrowed, and I smiled despite myself. "No."
I was stunned—or really not, considering the progression of this conversation—that he seemed to ignore the weapon in his chest and shoved a step forward, closing the distance between them to nearly a foot. "Okay, listen, I was trying to be nice, but if you wanna play that stuck-up bitch card, Flagg?—"
Her foot moved so fast I would have missed it if I’d blinked. She nailed the prick right between the legs, watching him go to his knees with a prideful look of triumph on her lips. Tony gasped for air, crumpling into the fetal position, hands clutching his dick—or what was left of it, thanks to that well-placed kick of hers.
I heard an older gent yell out in their direction from the other side of the bays .
"Everything okay down there in bay three, Flagg?"
She smiled widely and chuckled, still staring at Tony’s limp and now crying form on the floor. "Yeah, Ron. Just squashing a few cockroaches over here. We really ought to spray for these pests, you know. Big John’s been skimming the pond for this scum lately."
Ron’s gnarled laughter echoed as he turned back to his work. "Okay, Flagg. Just don’t kill anyone."
My jaw hung open at her brazen independence. I wasn’t used to interacting with women who could hold their own against a man. If we took her on in the open, on her own turf, we’d need to be prepared. She wasn’t likely to go down without a fight.
Nash would just fucking love that.
I watched her for the rest of the day, meandering about to get a good view of the shop itself and the surrounding layout. Around dusk, Ro bumped into me behind the alleyway where employees parked their cars and tossed something wrapped in foil at me with a frown.
"You forgot to take a break for lunch, Angel," he pointed out, his brows furrowed. I swore this man would mother hen over Nash and I until he dropped dead, likely from elevated blood pressure.
I unwrapped one end of the foil and inhaled the lovely scent of street food—a veggie burrito, likely from the corner vendor. He served a small variety of shit, but it was always guaranteed to be fucking amazing.
"Tito’s?" I mumbled around a mouthful of food, lifting the foil-wrapped delicacy in his direction.
"Mmm."
We ate in silence until the sounds of the bay doors sliding closed alerted us to the shop closing up. We stepped into the shadows of the nearby alcove of a run-down building in unison, waiting, watching, always alert.
We didn’t have to wait long .
First out to his car was Tony, the boot-licker now walking with a limp. I couldn’t help but grin at that, knowing how he ended up that way. Behind him by a few minutes was an older woman, accompanied by a gangly man I hadn’t watched very closely earlier, and a beefy dude wearing a patch on his shirt that said "Big John"—likely the owner or manager at least. The men saw her to her car and then dispersed to their own, finally leaving a single vehicle in the parking spaces, and two people in the shop.
I wondered which one of them walked to and from work.
"Okay, Ron, listen, I’m not drinking at the bar with all those fuckstains we call coworkers. You don’t even like them; I don’t know why you’re entertaining this stupid party."
There she was, walking arm in arm with the older gent in the baggy clothes. He looked every bit of seventy, if not more, with weathered hands that appeared gnarled from time and overuse. Laugh lines framed his face, and his hair had gone grey all over, though it was no less thick from time.
Ron patted her hand as they approached the last car, smiling indulgently at our target like one might at a granddaughter. "It’s free booze and some cheap gifts. I don’t have many friends left around here, might as well milk the open bar, right?"
Her laughter had me in a chokehold. She’s your target. A criminal, like the rest. No matter how pretty her voice, her laugh, her smile, she’s still your target.
How many more times would I have to remind myself of that?
Hopefully not many.
The old man got behind the wheel of the car, and before he pulled away, his driver window rolled down, and he pinned Hannah with a hard stare. "You sure I can’t give you a ride home? It’s almost dark, you know. Not safe for a girl like you to be walking alone."
She shrugged, her eyes softening at the man’s offer. "Thanks, Ron, but if I switched up my routine, I’d just be letting the ghosts of my past win. I can handle myself."
He sighed in resignation, his hands tightening on the wheel. "Yeah, I know you can. I’m worried about the asshole who tries to go up against you. Who’s gonna pay his hospital bill?"
When the grizzled man pulled away, our target set out on her own, putting her hand in a side-strap messenger bag resting on one hip. She pulled it back out just enough to show off the handle of what might’ve been mistaken for a gun but was clearly a knife to a trained eye.
Oh, Nash was really gonna love this one.
Ro and I marched down the road a safe distance away, watching her and making note of her route home.
She lived in a neighborhood where the crime rate was high, and the missing persons reports were even higher. It boded well for us—if someone actually noticed her absence, she’d likely be pinned to the impromptu neighborhood notice board—forgotten, just like all the others up there.
Not my problem.
One more thing to remember until the job was done, then promptly forget. Useless information that had no bearing on us outside of this contract.
Sad, nonetheless. That so many people could just disappear. Sure, some of em probably had it coming, but the kids? The teens who likely ran away for a better life? Probably didn’t have death or kidnapping or whatever horrible thing befalling them that had claimed so many faces.
Had things been different, my face might’ve been up here, one more lost soul, forgotten by all but a select few, and some not even that.
This could have been me.
The thought was as sobering as it was chilling.