Chapter Thirty-One
Slipping out the front door three hours later is easy enough.
After all, I promised to drive—and let Brian be the one to imbibe multiple beverages.
He’s not much of a drinker; an old-fashioned as we chat out back a couple nights a week is pretty much it unless it’s date night.
But tonight we retreated to the bar where we had our first date and ordered the same thing we did a decade ago—Reubens, fries, extra pickles, and too much alcohol.
Which means now, as I’m tying my shoes and slipping my Glock into its special running holster, he’s dead asleep—no something extra needed.
We skipped the sex-in-a-closet activities.
I don’t fuck someone I’m supposed to kill.
I double-check the windows, the doors, locking them and yanking shut the curtains.
You can’t snipe someone if you can’t see them.
Then I set the alarm system and step out into the warm, humid night.
Fireflies twinkle, a magical show seemingly at odds with the reason I’m out in the darkness, running to meet a fellow assassin.
We have to meet somewhere private: no neighbor out smoking a cigarette or walking their dog who might overhear, nor at a bar where, knowing my luck, I’d run into someone from the girls’ school, and dear lord, it would look like I’m the one having an affair—especially with Ian, a.k.a.
tall, dark, and dangerous. It’s two miles to jog through the dark streets and take a left turn, entering onto the stone and dirt trail system of the same Episcopalian sanctuary.
His silhouette waits for me when I arrive. A garden wall edges what I know is lush, green grass, and he’s perched on it, staring at what would have been the sunset a couple hours ago.
“Hey,” I say.
“Meeting on holy ground. Again.” He snorts. “Feel like I’m in a vampire movie. You’re not going to bite me, are you?”
“I think vampires aren’t allowed on holy ground.”
“Hm.” He looks me up and down through the darkness. “Guess I’m safe, then.”
A beat of awkward silence. I step forward, settle onto the rock wall beside him. “I need your help.”
“Okay.” He turns, looks at me, hands loose in his lap. Utterly relaxed, motionless. Like a freaking vampire himself.
“It started with talking to John,” I say.
I tell him everything—he already knows I asked for a bigger job, but I haven’t shared details about how the package arrived, what the riddle was.
I explain how I went to the bookstore, that a man pointed me to the building, how I followed the town car to Austin, and then—the woman. Brian. My husband.
“Tell me about Brian,” he says.
“He’s a management consultant.”
“What does that mean?”
I start to explain, but what comes out is something like lots of meetings and making improvements to businesses and optimization. Basically, I’m regurgitating what Brian has said. But the more I tell Ian, the more meaningless I realize it is.
“So, you don’t know,” Ian concludes.
I shift on the cool stone. “No, not really. I thought I could just kill him, but it’s not that simple.
He’s obviously more than a management consultant.
He wasn’t in DC, but he sent these photos, lying about it.
” I show him the images, break down when the cherry blossoms bloom.
“And if he is doing awful things, I will kill him. I don’t want to—” My chest tightens as I even consider it.
Imagining, once again, the results of Ian’s sniper rifle.
“But if he’s hurting children or killing people or trafficking humans or—”
“I get it.” Ian sits there, still staring out into nothingness.
“There’s more. The real Brian Davis died.” I detail the internet searches, how I think the parents I met were merely paid actors. “And the car service he was using has Mafia ties. That doesn’t mean he does, but it increases the chances, right? But Brian—I just—I can’t imagine him hurting people.”
Ian makes a derisive noise. “You never really know anyone. Have I ever told you, for example, that I help with my daughter’s Girl Scout troop?”
“What?” I stare at him in shock.
“Yep.” A half laugh. “They love me. Think I’m the best dad. No one would ever suspect what I really do.”
I’m not sure if I’m more surprised that he has a daughter—for whatever reason, I just assumed he had a son—or that he helps with the troop.
I can’t see it, his tall, imposing form kneeling down to help with crafts or to set up a tent.
He seems more like the father-from-a-distance type, not a gentle giant ready to offer a helping hand to a little girl in a brown uniform trying to earn her baking badge.
Then his meaning settles in. No one would suspect he’s a killer—just like I would have never suspected Brian isn’t the kind, gentle soul he pretends to be. It’s just another role he’s playing, another part he’s cast himself in.
My phone vibrates against my hip and I check it, concerned Brian’s woken and found me gone from the house. But it’s my work phone. John. Nadia, stop fucking around and kill this guy. I don’t think you understand the repercussions—
I sigh, shut the screen off, blink into the darkness, blind from the light of the phone.
“What?”
“It’s John. He wants the job done and done now.
But it’s not that easy. I don’t want to kill Brian until I know what he’s done.
He’s my husband. I love him. What if they’re wrong?
Or what if—” I take a steadying breath. “What if he’s having an affair, and her husband found out, and he’s super rich and—”
“Jesus, Nadia. You’re going deep here. Just kill him. You’ll find someone new. I told you, people are replaceable. Friends. Husbands. Everyone.”
I shut my mouth. Soak in his words. Spoken like a true psychopath.
And once, I would have agreed with him. I’m fidgeting, wringing my hands, and I force them still.
I could tell Ian my truth—that beyond the fact that I promised my grandmother I would only kill those who deserved it, I need Brian.
I need our family, together, in one piece.
Without them, I’d fall apart. I’d become her, the monster lurking beneath the surface, ready to break through the waters and claw her way out.
“It’s not that easy,” I say instead. Because this is Ian, killer extraordinaire.
“It could be.”
“They hired you to kill him. I’m assuming that means they may have hired others too.”
He bobs his head. “That’s a fair assumption.”
“I’m stuck. I was going to kill him, but it will destroy my life if I do.
Destroy me. So I want to know what he’s doing before I do it—I want to be sure, so I don’t regret it for the rest of my life.
And if I don’t kill him, John will never work with me again.
The agency will never work with me. I’ll have to freelance, if I’m not blacklisted or killed first.”
In other words, my life as I know it is over.