Chapter Twelve
I drop the girls off the next morning and find a new route to the pharmacist’s clinic.
By the time I get there, I’m out of coffee.
My consumption has doubled since I got the package, trying to solve the question of who will next die by my hand.
I risk visiting the same coffee shop drive-through Jennifer Patrick does and order the largest drip they offer, a whopping twenty ounces.
Then I park in a lot one shop over to wait.
It’s important to vary my route, my reconnaissance spot; the worst thing is for a mark to notice you, to realize they’re being watched.
It makes them do dumb things like leave town or remark to their spouse, I think someone’s following me, which never goes over well when they die two days later and the cops start asking questions.
Today, I sip my coffee and examine the package.
The poem. Or riddle, as I’ve come to think of it. Because that’s what it is, right? Something to figure out, to make sense of. When I’ve read it for the dozenth time, I pull out my work phone and swipe to the thread with Ian.
Nadia: Tell me I’m going to figure this out.
I type the message, hit send. Last night I texted a stream of exclamation points, and he knows me well enough to know that means good news. That I got what I wanted—the Big Job.
He answered with the thumbs-up emoji, leaving me warm and happy, like celebrating with an old friend and sometimes mentor.
Now, he replies with an unexpected offer: Want help?
The smiley face is so un-assassin-like of him, I snort.
And I do want help, I really do. But this is part of the game—making it hard to decipher so if it’s intercepted, no one will know what it’s for, or who, for that matter.
If anything, I’d assume some high school kid experimenting with poetry wrote a dark poem and dropped it when they thought they’d shoved it in their pocket.
Nadia: Not yet. Maybe soon. I’ll let you know.
Ian: Of course.
For a second, I consider asking Are you old enough to have a midlife crisis? What will you spend a lot of money on when you turn forty?
Instead, I smile sheepishly at my own thoughts—I can’t ask Ian that—and set the phone down.
Ian—whenever he’s forty, we’ve never discussed age—likely won’t have a midlife crisis.
Or if he does, he’ll take care of it swiftly and with precision, buying that expensive car or motorcycle, getting it out of his system, then moving on with life.
That’s his style. And mine, too, for that matter. It must be an assassin thing.
My gaze shifts over the dashboard. It’s nearly 9:30 a.m. The pharmacist will be out soon, and once she has her coffee, she’ll go sit at a little picnic table with a sun umbrella where she’ll spend all of her fifteen-minute break.
As I wait for Jennifer to go order her eight-ounce cappuccino, I mouth the words of the riddle again. Take a stab. Okay, so they want me to kill him with a knife—no, maybe that shouldn’t be taken literally.
Do it fast.
I glance at the date—it’s May seventh. According to the poem, they want it done on May tenth. So I have until Monday to figure it out.
No, that’s not right. It says on May tenth to take a walk.
So I don’t necessarily have to kill him that same day.
That’s merely the day I’ll identify my target.
Go to where the concrete stops…That could be anywhere.
It could be a park on a dirt path, or a lake.
Hell, it could be the ocean, on the Gulf Coast. It’s not even slightly helpful.
Another glance at the clinic, but there’s nothing. The reality no one told me about being a professional killer is that a lot of the job involves waiting—for packages with information to arrive, for the day of a kill, for the mark to wander out to buy a fucking coffee…
Twenty minutes later, I catch sight of movement in my periphery. A white jacket, floating in the wind. A woman with a tight bun on top of her head, a sly smile on her lips. My assumption is that she’s successfully made money on killing good people today. My lip curls.
She crosses the lot, orders her drink, leans into the window once again as she waits.
A second later my phone rings. I look down as my husband’s contact photo pops up. He must be in between meetings—he rarely has time to talk on business trips.
“Hi.” I mentally rehearse the plan I have for dealing with his midlife crisis. It might be too soon to suggest a weekend away, a new car—it might be obvious I’m trying to squash this whole baby thing with a spicy distraction.
“Hey.” Brian’s tone is warm, but people talking in the background obscure his voice. I have to listen carefully to make out his words. “Do you have a second to chat?”
“Of course. I always have time for you.”
Jennifer pays for her coffee and flirts with the barista. After a moment, she turns, headed back for the picnic table.
“What I was trying to explain earlier is that—” I try to listen to what he’s saying, but his words are merely the background for my suddenly razor-sharp focus.
“Hold on,” I say.
Brian sighs, goes quiet.
I stare across the parking lot at the pharmacist. She’s reached into her purse, withdrawn a thick hardback book.
“Oh, shit.”
“What?” he asks, alarmed.
“Let me call you back.”