Chapter Thirty-Nine
My gun’s holster sits inside my leggings, the elastic keeping it snug against my skin.
A sheathed knife presses along one calf.
The part of me that makes me different—able to kill people and feel no remorse—has spread silky smooth through my entire being.
I don’t hesitate. Don’t think, don’t feel.
I just do, and right now, that means I’m going to kill my husband.
Does that make him an ex-husband? No, it makes me a widow.
A black widow?
I must make a noise—a snort of laughter, maybe—because when I look up, Ian’s gaze is focused on me, filled with concern.
“What?” I snap. “Are you coming? Let’s go. I’ll split the fee with you.”
Ian stands, holds a hand up as if to block me. “You can’t go now. You’re drunk.”
“I had a glass of wine and two sips of a margarita. I’m perfect. And Brian is the walking dead.”
“Nadia.” He steps in front of me.
I lift one eyebrow, daring him to get in my way.
“For one, he’s not alone.” Ian holds up a finger, then raises a second. “Two, maybe you don’t feel drunk, but we have been drinking. We never drink on the job. You know that.”
“He’s selling people like cattle. He’s cheating on me. And I’m killing him.” I hesitate a second. “Shit. I never asked if he wanted to be buried or cremated.”
Ian frowns at me. “Seriously?”
“Maybe burial at sea? Maybe instead of being a widow, I can be the wife of a man who went on a business trip and disappeared…That’s kind of mysterious. Although I would like to collect life insurance, so maybe we should make it look like an accident.”
“Jesus Christ. Listen—”
“No, you listen. I’ve lost the only job I love—the job that lets me stay sane—trying to make sure he’s somebody worth killing.
I all but convinced myself he’s not—” I look blankly at the wall for a long moment, again trying to imagine it—Brian, doing those things.
The man who sits and drinks coffee with me most mornings, who is infinitely supportive.
Of course, we all have two sides. “But he is. How did I not see it?”
I blink at Ian as though he will answer the question for me.
Ian’s usual sardonic humor has evaporated. His eyes are filled with nothing but focus, nodding along, stepping closer, like he might do something wild like hug me.
“I know, Nadia, I know.”
“God damn it.” I actually stamp my foot—not unlike how Evie does when she’s mad Eliza took the last cookie. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. How was I so stupid?”
That’s when I realize I’m not even mad at Brian—I’m mad at myself. Maybe if I’d paid better attention or asked the right questions or done a background check or—
The possibilities are endless.
“This is not your fault, Nadia. Most people are not like us.”
“But he apparently is. And the worst version too. And I somehow missed it!”
Ian seems to think for a moment, then snatches up his jacket, and mine too. “Okay, well, we can’t kill him tonight. But that doesn’t mean we have to just sit here. Let’s do something. You’ll go stir-crazy sitting in this hotel room. We’ll go for a walk on the beach or get drinks or—whatever.”
I wrinkle my nose, suddenly feeling very much like my older sister. Petulant. I want to say no. Or demand he call John and get another job. Can’t I just kill somebody, already?
But after two days of following my husband around, going out does sound good.
Brian needed protecting. Now I’d almost invite someone else to off him—almost. Except I want to do it myself.
Maybe I’ll watch the realization in his gaze right before I pull the trigger.
Or maybe I’ll take a page from my favorite fictional assassin, Villanelle, and slip a knife into his chest over and over while I hold him intimately close.
The idea leaves a trace of a smile across my face. I could sacrifice the life insurance money for that.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”
—
We walk along the beach, shoes clutched in our fingers, bare feet skimming the sand, the salty water lapping over our toes as it rolls in and out. Ian brought the whiskey, and we take turns, passing it back and forth. Well, more like he occasionally wrestles it from my grasp and gets a sip.
“My first job was the best, though,” he says, “the moment I knew I was going to be okay. It was a moment of clarity, when I realized why I couldn’t have a normal career. Or normal relationships.”
I nod along, knowing exactly what he means. And while my first kill was not a job—it was Piper’s boyfriend—I felt the same way. The relief in that moment, the ease, the first time anything had felt close to ordinary. Even if it wasn’t anyone else’s ordinary.
“Do you ever wish you were like everyone else?” I ask.
Ian shrugs. Digs his toes into the sand. Stops to peer out at a light somewhere across the water—a boat, perhaps? “Maybe when I was a kid. When people looked at me like there was something wrong with me.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Classmates staring at you like you’ve said something weird or scary, but you don’t know why.
” And it wasn’t just kids I went to school with—it was my family too.
How I acted earned me concerned looks from my mother sometimes, but Piper and Graham never got them.
It was just one more sign I was different.
My mother loved me regardless. We have a reasonable relationship now, exchanging a text every few days, and I pepper her with cute photos of the girls.
We see each other once or twice a month at family dinners, and we’re civil.
We hug. But, like Piper, she’s always known I’m a little off, and we’ve never been close the way some mothers and daughters are.
We aren’t BFFs, we don’t go shopping together while sipping lattes, and I never call her to ask advice.
This line of thinking inevitably leads me to remembering my early days with Brian, how our relationship had become a refuge—a way of hiding in plain sight.
And soon, that will be gone. Hell, it basically already is.
I deflate a little. The effects of the booze, the ocean, Ian’s company, all fade.
“Hey. It’ll be okay. You don’t need him.”
I force a smile, but inside, I’m unconvinced.
I mean, what am I going to do when he’s gone?
Invite Piper to move in? And what if I can’t control myself without our day-to-day life together?
Not only did I not ask Brian what he wants done with his body after he’s dead, but we never sorted out a proper who gets custody of our kids if something happens to both of us plan. What if I die?
Graham. They’d have to go to my brother. I won’t force Piper to give up her dream of being a single cat lady, even if she never gets herself a cat.
“Would it help if I stuck around for a while? In San Antonio? Until you sort things out?” Ian’s words come out in a soft voice, but I can hear him just fine, and I realize he’s right beside me. We stand in the sand, gazing out across the water.
“You would do that?” I ask. It’s not that I think he’d make a great uncle to the girls—though maybe he would, if he’s all but a Girl Scout troop leader—but he might be able to help me learn to control her. The monster. That would be helpful.
“Of course.” He shifts his body, turning to face me. My brow wrinkles, and I look up at him. “Haven’t you always wondered?” he says.
“Wondered what?”
Ian takes a half step closer. His body is near enough to mine that I can feel his warmth, smell his aftershave or deodorant or—whatever it is that gives men their smell.
“Us.” His voice comes out deep, giving that one-syllable word far more meaning than it might otherwise have.
“Us?” The numbness is suddenly gone. Shock roils through me, leaving me at a loss for words, for thoughts.
“You.” He presses a finger gently into the space just beneath my collarbone, and his touch on my bare skin feels hot. Wait, what is happening? Ian’s close, he’s talking in a husky tone, he’s touching me, he’s— Oh.
“And me.” He removes that finger, jabs backward at himself with his thumb. Clearly indicating his meaning. “Us.”
My mouth falls open, and I find some words, though I’m not sure they’re quite intelligible. “I—I did at first. When we met. But then—Brian, and then I—you—”
A smile floats across his lips. “We’re perfect for each other. We’re the same. We understand one another like no one else can.”
His words penetrate my boozy brain. Suddenly, it seems so obvious.
How many times did I wish I could tell Brian the truth?
How often had I stared at him as he fell asleep, words on my tongue I could never utter aloud?
Ian and I are not identical in our psychopathy, but we both know what it’s like.
We grasp how to deal with it. We understand that for all we’re badasses now, we didn’t feel that way growing up when we were different from everyone else.
People don’t understand us. People fear us.
But if we were together, then life might be easy. Or easier, at least.
In a flash, I picture us in a house together.
I ignore the fact that he’s married, that I’m married, and let myself imagine a world in which I’m coming home from finishing a job and he’s got the kids tucked into bed.
Kids who I know are safe, because he is there.
Ian greets me with wine and a kiss, a How’d it go?
, and for the first time in my life, I can tell the truth.
I could say something like, “Well, I had to shoot her a second time!” or “Flawless. No one will know it wasn’t an accident.
” And he’d get that gleam in his eye, the same one I have, and say something like, “I knew you could do it,” or “I’m proud of you. ”
“Holy shit.” It’s all I can manage. Because in a way, it sounds like heaven. It sounds like the relationship I’ve always wished I had with Brian, the exact opposite of how we actually function.
And then Ian’s arms wrap around me, his lips press to mine, and we’re in the sand, tearing each other’s clothes off.