Chapter 1 #4
She nods. “I needed to know, before I handed you something this delicate, that you were the kind of woman who finishes a job even when it gets uncomfortable.” She glances, one last time, at the back seat. “Now I know.”
“Or now you have leverage.”
“I’ve always had leverage. What I need is someone loyal because the target you’re going after is very well protected. I can’t even get to him now. He’s guarded by a den mother who has an army of protection around her. It’d be easier to hunt a shadow. And it’d be easier to kill a ghost.”
“Oh goody,” I snark. “Well sign me up, then.”
“I’m serious.” Her tone changes. “What’ll two million buy me?”
“The job done.” I trill my fingers over the barrel of the gun resting in my lap, one hand still loosely cradling the handle. “But three, and I’ll do it with a positive attitude.”
I give her my best smile. The one I keep behind glass. It’s a beautiful smile, warm and bright, and fraudulent.
“I like a yes-man. Three million it is.” She inclines her head.
“A quarter now. Another quarter when you bring me your plan—I like to know how a thing will be done before it’s done.
It’s the planner in me. The final half when it’s finished, and I’ve confirmed it.
” She walks to the back of the car and pops the trunk, and lifts out a backpack, plain black.
She tosses it into the passenger seat. I wait until she steps back to unzip it, my pistol still a warning in my hand.
It’s heavy with cash and consequence. But there’s more under the bundled hundreds.
“Identification. Your deposit. A phone you will answer every fucking time it rings, day or night, no exceptions. And the brief on your targets.”
“Targets?”
“Yes, multiple. Only the first one is a challenge, but he knows where the rest are. Start with him, then clear the room.”
“Start where?”
“D.C.” She points to the bag. “It’s all in there. Read it somewhere private. Read it twice. Then burn it. Clear?”
I nod but I don’t sift through the backpack yet.
There’ll be time. An adrenaline junkie who’s just buried her best friend doesn’t sit down to do homework—she finds the nearest fast thing and points it at the horizon and lets the wind take the worst of it off her face.
I’ll read the brief when my hands are steady. They’re not right now.
But I’d never admit that.
I reach into the cupholder. The keys are sitting right there. A single key and a worn leather tag. I close my hand around them.
“So be it,” I say, shoving the key into the ignition. I love that. Everything is a push-start these days. This car is expensive enough to keep up with modern times, but classy enough to embrace history. This is good. I love the feel of turning a key and listening to the engine roar to life.
The roadster wakes up under me with a low animal sound that goes straight through the scar in my chest, and I rev it once, hard, just to hear it, just to feel something the size of what I’m feeling answer back.
“Get out of the way,” I bark over the engine.
Salisbrie’s eyebrows go up in surprise. It’s the first time all night her face shows an uncalculated reaction. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she shouts at me.
“I came here to steal a car.” I put my hand on the gearshift. “I’m finishing the job.”
Then I let myself relax, just slightly, and I roll my eyes at my own theater, because the truth is plainer and uglier than the line.
“Relax. Can I take a joyride or not? I have a thing for fast cars.” I gesture vaguely at the dead woman in my back seat, at the whole ruined evening. “Consider it a signing bonus.”
Something almost like respect crosses Salisbrie’s face. She steps back, out of the path of the front wheels.
“Fine. But you bring it back. This garage belongs to a friend of mine, and any damage to the car comes out of your payment.” Her gaze cuts, deliberate, to the bullet hole in the back seat, the dark stain spreading into the onyx leather, and her mouth curves.
“Some of it already has. You have an hour.”
“Three.”
“One.”
“Three,” I insist again, and I put enough into it that she hears it’s not a negotiation, it’s a fact I’m informing her of.
She studies me. Then shrugs magnanimously, like a woman who can afford to lose the small ones, because she has her eye on winning the war. “Three. Don’t make me look for you.”
She won’t have to. I’ll be back. But not from a three-hour joyride—though I do, damn, do I want to drive until the engine drinks the whole night out of me.
I need three hours, because somewhere out past the city lights there’s soft ground and a quiet place, and a woman who closed a wound for me once with a sewing kit and spent the last four years planning our way out of our shit positions.
There were supposed to be clear skies, cocktails, foreign beaches, and a new set of names. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
And the least I can do is find a shovel and bury my best friend somewhere she can rest in peace.
I need three hours to make this…not right…not okay. Just something I can learn to live with.
I drop the shift into gear, and I drive.