Chapter Nine
“Introduction - a presentation of one person to another or others.”
Dex
The first step in killing someone is recon.
Well, it seemed like a logical first step.
I’ve decided it would be easier to kill the Target by learning her habits and routine.
Then I could decide the best possible way for elimination.
Once I decided the best way to kill her, I could make a plan and carry it out.
Job done, and I could collect my actual body, get a pay raise, and live richly ever after.
I drove the Roadster until I was just down the street from the diner where I knew the Target worked.
I slid into an open parking spot down the street and got out to walk the rest of the way, stuffing my hands into my heavy black leather jacket and tucking my chin into my chest. The sidewalks were covered in salt, but there were still a few patches of ice and I avoided them, realizing my Converse weren’t the best for walking on slippery ground.
Maybe I should buy a pair of boots… Nah, I like my sneakers better.
As I got closer I tried to avoid looking at the spot where I died. But it was no use. My eyes went there automatically. The bench the bus took out was still missing. But other than that, everything else appeared unharmed.
It was as if the accident never even happened. As if I never died. Except it had… and I did.
I forced my eyes away from the area and toward the diner. The glass windows were lit up and the open sign on the door glowed red and blue. I didn’t hesitate to pull open the door and choose a table in the back corner, sitting against the wall so I could see everyone in the place.
A waitress with a black waist apron and white shirt came over and gave me a menu as I ordered coffee.
The place wasn’t that crowded. There were a few tables with people and a few others sitting at the counter, but that was all.
A cook worked behind the cook line and two waitresses were busy at the counter, pouring coffee and working the register.
I didn’t see the Target. I was pretty sure I’d know her if I saw her. After all, she was the last face I saw before I died.
I was slightly irritated my recon plans weren’t going that well, and I buried my face in the menu. I might as well eat. It would look odd if I got up and left without ordering.
A few moments later, a coffee cup slid onto the table near my elbow and a few packets of creamer were plopped down next to it. I was still deciding between the pancakes or the cheeseburger and I didn’t bother to look up.
“Need a minute?” the waitress asked.
I glanced up to wave her away, but my gaze held when I saw who it was.
The girl.
The Target.
She must’ve come from the back. I certainly knew her when I saw her, but this was more than recognition. Every memory from the last few seconds of my life came flooding back to me.
The way the cold ground pressed into me. The way my body felt shattered and broken. The way it hurt to breathe, and then I just didn’t. The way my eyes clung to the last sight I thought I would ever see…
Her face.
Her beautiful face.
Her hair was long and wavy—dark like coffee, but with lighter strands mixed in that reminded me of the swirling coffee cream I recently discovered. Her dark, catlike eyes were featured on her pale, oval-shaped face, and her slightly rounded cheeks blushed a pretty pink.
She shifted on her feet and tapped her pen on the pad of paper in her hand, and I realized I’d been silent too long.
“Yeah,” I said, clearing my throat and looking down at the menu I didn’t really see. “I’ll have the BLT.”
“You want fries?”
I nodded and she made a mark on her pad, turned, and walked away.
I picked up the coffee and took a sip. The bitter liquid burned my tongue, but it brought me out of the memories and lent some heat to my cold body.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as she worked refilling coffee, wiping down tables, and delivering food.
She smiled at most everyone, but it never reached her eyes.
To me, that meant she was more guarded than most people realized.
Odd, I didn’t get that impression the night I robbed her.
I don’t know how much time passed before she appeared with a plate of food and sat it down in front of me. I did a double take at the BLT… I thought I ordered a cheeseburger.
“Do you need anything else?”
“Coffee?” I asked as she looked right at me. I waited for some recognition in her eyes but none came.
She came back to the table with a pot of coffee and filled my cup to the rim, then walked away silently, filling other cups as she went.
I pulled out my phone and pretended to be involved with it as I ate the food one handed.
Really, I was trying to hear everything she said to get some glimpse into her life.
Turns out my guess she was more guarded than she let on was right.
She kept things light and friendly, but professional, so I was only able to get a few small details about her.
Like the fact she was allergic to peanuts.
I’d hoped for more knowledge so it was entirely frustrating.
How was a guy supposed to do recon with an uncooperative Target?
Long after my food was eaten along with two pieces of pie and a third cup of coffee, I was the last guy left in the diner and she was finishing up her shift. The tab was already paid and I pretended to nurse my coffee when really it had gone cold long ago.
She came toward my table with a rag in her hand and wiped down the tables beside me. I got up from my seat, figuring this was the worst night of recon ever. I drank bad coffee, ate a sandwich I didn’t understand (salad and bacon on bread… really?) and learned exactly nothing.
I headed for the door when she stepped in front of me and slipped on some water that had spilled on the floor. I caught her around the waist as she fell.
We both seemed to pause in the moment, standing in the center of the empty room, looking like we’d been dancing and I dipped her.
“We keep meeting like this,” I murmured, thinking of the night she slipped on ice and I caught her. Only this time I wasn’t trying to steal her money.
Her eyes widened and her voice was breathless. “Do I know you?”
We both straightened and I stepped back. “Of course not. I… You just remind me of someone.” I adjusted the glasses on my nose.
She stared at me like she was actually just seeing me for the first time all night. Then she seemed to shake herself and smile. “Thanks.”
I nodded and went past her to push out the door into the freezing night.
Outside on the sidewalk, I paused to catch my breath.
What was I thinking? I couldn’t say things like that.
She’d think I was a freak and stay as far away as possible.
That would make it hard to kill her. Unless I did the killing from afar.
Yeah, maybe that would be better than this recon stuff.
I walked a few paces from the diner. When I got home, I’d make a plan on how to kill her from a distance.
Behind me the bell on the door jingled, indicating it swung open again. I didn’t bother looking back.
“Hey!” someone called.
I stopped and turned.
She was there, rushing toward me, pulling a dark-green coat around her. She had snow in her hair. I didn’t realize it was snowing.
“Yeah?” I asked, wondering if she was really talking to me.
Now that she had my attention, she seemed to grow a little shy. I just stood there and waited as I watched the snowflakes take up residence on her head.
“Do you have a car?” she asked.
I nodded and motioned down the street toward the Roadster. “Right down there.”
She glanced at the Roadster, then at me. “Is that thing any good in the snow?”
I shrugged. “Guess I’ll find out.”
“Oh, is it new?”
I nodded again.
“Can I have a ride home?”
My eyes snapped to her face. She wanted a ride? From some guy she didn’t know? Maybe killing her wouldn’t be that hard after all. Maybe she already had a death wish.
She seemed to know what I was thinking because she said, “I know, it’s kind of weird of me to ask… but it’s really cold and I don’t feel like walking.”
“Don’t you usually take the bus?” I blurted, thinking back once again to the night I died. Inwardly, I kicked myself. I needed to stop saying things like that. You’d think for two people who knew each other for exactly two minutes, there wouldn’t be any history for me to keep bringing up.
She glanced at the bus stop and then back at me. She didn’t seem to think what I said was unusual and I was relieved.
“I don’t really like the bus,” she said quietly.
We both stood there awkwardly for long seconds before I remembered it was my turn to talk. I pulled the keys from my pocket.
“I’ll give you a ride. Come on.”
And before I knew it, we were climbing into the tiny space of the two-seater.
She glanced at me and smiled tentatively when I turned the heat on full blast and it was only then I realized I just told myself I was going to stay away from her. Far away.
So much for that idea, I thought as I pulled away from the curb.
* * *
I drove slowly because once she wondered if my Roadster might not be very good in the snow, I started to wonder that too.
I hadn’t had any problems up until this point so I just tried to enjoy the fact I was riding around in a car that cost more than a hundred grand.
(I looked it up online). She didn’t say anything on the ride, except to give me directions, and I didn’t try to make small talk.
She didn’t live that far from the diner and when I pulled up in front of her apartment building, I left the engine idling at the curb. She glanced out her window and upwards so I assumed her apartment wasn’t on the ground floor.
“I almost died the other day,” she said quietly, still gazing out her window.
My hand tightened over the gearshift when I realized she was talking about the day I got crushed by that bus. When I didn’t say anything, she turned in the seat and looked at me through the dark.
“But I didn’t because someone saved me.”
I swallowed, my eyes locked on hers. “Wow,” I said, not really sure how to respond. Why was she telling me this?
“Maybe you heard about the accident? It was in the newspaper.” She continued to watch me.
I couldn’t read her expression clearly because the only light in the car came from the dash as the streetlight in front of her building was burned out.
Judging from the part of town we were in, that lamp probably hadn’t had a bulb change since the nineties.
But even in the practically nonexistent light, I could see the whites of her eyes, and they were focused directly at me.
“I don’t read the paper,” I replied. “What happened?”
Even though I knew what happened, even though part of me said not to even talk about it, I couldn’t help but want to know how she remembered that night.
“I’d just gotten off my shift. It was late, like tonight…” Her voice faded and the whites of her eyes suddenly disappeared. She closed them, like the memory was painful.
Then her eyes reopened and she said, “I was walking home and there was this guy… He was on the sidewalk too. A bus came around the corner and slid on a sheet of black ice. I froze. I knew it was going to hit me, but I couldn’t seem to move.
But then he pushed me out of the way and the bus hit him instead. ”
“Wow,” I echoed again, wishing this body came with a better vocabulary. My stomach cramped as I remembered the feeling of the bus plowing into me.
“He died right there in the snow. He didn’t have any ID. I don’t even know his name.” Her eyelids closed again and she took a deep breath.
“Didn’t the newspaper say who he was?” I asked curiously.
She shook her head. “I don’t even think they knew. I called the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“You called the hospital?” Why would she do that? Why would she care?
“I wanted to go to his funeral. To at least tell someone what he did, that he saved me—a complete stranger. I wanted to tell him thank you.”
“You did,” I replied, remembering. She said thank you that night. On the street when she leaned over me. The echo of her words whispered in the back of my mind.
“What did you say?” she asked, her voice losing a little bit of sorrow.
Dumbass. I mentally yelled at myself. Way to make the Target trust you. Say suspicious things so she would run every time she caught a glimpse of you.
I pushed my hand through my hair—surprised to feel it shaking—and took a breath.
There was no way she could think what I said was suspicious.
There was no possible way on this earth she could know I was the guy who got flattened by the bus.
To her, I probably looked like some dude who babbled stuff because he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying.
I mean, this was probably the first time I ever listened to a girl talk.
“What I meant was you did say thank you. Right now. Where ever he is, maybe he heard you.”
She sat there for a long second, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. I hope he heard.”
She seemed like she really meant it.
My stomach cramped again and I felt a clammy sweat break out on my forehead. My knee started bouncing up and down, knocking the bottom of the steering wheel.
“Are you all right?” she asked, leaning a little closer.
I lifted my hand to adjust my glasses, and it was visibly shaking. I buried it in my lap and hoped she hadn’t seen. “Yeah, I just didn’t get that much sleep last night,”
My knee was still bouncing up and down and all of my insides felt jittery and bouncy. Maybe those three cups of coffee weren’t a very good idea.
“You don’t look too good,” she said, reaching across the small interior of the Roadster to brush her hand across my forehead.
I jerked and grabbed her wrist, pulling her closer toward me.
My sudden movement startled her and she fell forward when I yanked her. Her hair fell over her shoulders and brushed against my hand. She wiggled, trying to pull away, and I realized I was squeezing her.
I let go and she moved back into her own seat, rubbing at her wrist.
“I have to go,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
“Yeah. Sorry about that. You just took me by surprise.” I swallowed back the rising bile. What was wrong with me all of a sudden?
She pushed open her door and cold air rushed inside. I didn’t realize how hot it was in the enclosed space until the frigid air slapped me in the face.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, completely out of the car but leaning down to speak.
I nodded and she shut the door, stepping onto the sidewalk toward the stairs of her building.
I didn’t hang around to watch her. I was still jittery and my heart hammered in my chest. I sped down the street, not thinking about the icy roads or my car. I didn’t even look in the rearview mirror to see if she made it into her building.
It wasn’t my job to keep her safe.
As the voice in my head so boldly reminded…
It was my job to kill her.