by Strand, Jeff
Maybe her abilities could provide some sort of benefit if she were able to control them. That would take practice...and how could she do that? “Okay, I’m going to try to refine my ability to raise your arm with my mind. I should mention that until I get good at this, I’ll probably break your arm in a few places. Is that cool with you?”
Once, in the middle of a deep depression, she’d gone out into the forest and tried to practice on squirrels. It hadn’t worked, although it was difficult to get close enough to a squirrel to be sure. Then she’d gone even further into her depression because of the self-loathing she felt from trying to experiment on living creatures. She wasn’t simply cursed by her abilities; she was cursed by being an animal lover.
And even if she did become skilled at using her powers, could she ever truly trust herself to be vulnerable with somebody? What kind of genuine relationship could she have without high emotion? Not being able to argue with her because she could break a romantic partner with her mind...well, that would be a pretty big red flag for a potential mate.
That said, Allison could still go out in public. Have a nice restaurant meal by herself. Go on museum tours. Shop at the farmer’s market. She wasn’t hidden away in the shadows.
At home, she had books galore, the Internet, multiple streaming services, and plenty of nearby areas to hike. And she had Spiral. Some anti-social people might say she was living the dream.
So her life didn’t suck. But it was certainly a letdown.
The next day, a staff meeting was scheduled for 10:00 AM, so it was one of the tragic days where she had to fix her hair and wear a bra. After going through the standard uninteresting agenda items, her boss, Jamison, let out a long sigh that didn’t sound good.
“I’m sure the rumors are out there,” he said. Allison, who didn’t go into the office and thus didn’t participate in office gossip, hadn’t heard any rumors that would require a sigh before the discussion. She leaned forward, paying more attention than usual.
“I just want to assure you that the discussions of moving our work overseas are all very preliminary. No final decisions have been made, and we don’t know that it would impact everyone, and I honestly haven’t heard anything to make me think that they’re moving in that direction in the near future. It’s nothing that I personally would worry about.”
Allison became a little queasy. She’d been through this before. When the boss felt compelled to address the rumors and didn’t completely dismiss them, they generally turned out to be true.
“If I do hear anything, you’ll all be the first to know,” he said, obviously lying. “Again, don’t lose any sleep over it, I’m sure everything will be fine, and there’s no need to panic. Are there any questions?”
A couple of people had questions, to which Jamison gave insufficient answers.
The meeting ended, and Allison went back to work.
She had some savings, and she’d presumably get some sort of severance package, but she couldn’t collect unemployment. Unless she was severely medicated—and going into an unemployment office on downers was not a recommended course of action—she couldn’t put herself in that stressful situation. What if the employee was condescending?
She shouldn’t worry about this now. It was way too early.
She didn’t want to have to get a new job.
Stop worrying about it.
Allison needed a cat on her lap.
She left her office. She could work anywhere, of course, including outdoors, but she liked having a specific room that was only for her day job. Keep her professional life separate from her private life, so that she could watch a movie without feeling like she should be checking her work e-mail.
Spiral was asleep on the electric blanket. The heat probably felt good on his arthritic joints. Instead of risking total feline rejection, Allison picked up both the cat and the blanket and brought them into her office. She tried to sit down without disturbing Spiral too much. Her new cat stood up, stretched, then lay back down and returned to sleep.
Don’t worry about your job. It’s fine. Save your anxiety for when you know more.
She’d planned to go out for sushi after work (great happy hour specials; dine-in only), but she’d have to cancel that idea. She couldn’t be around innocent people right now.
2
“It’ll be fine,” said Daxton Sink. “Just relax.”
Sam tugged gently at his seatbelt. “I’m sick to my stomach.”
“Like you’re gonna throw up?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Give me notice before you do.”
“I will.”
“It’ll be easier than you think,” Daxton assured him. “You’re just gonna shove a gun in his face and squeeze the trigger. Bam. Dead. We leave. Nice and simple.”
“I guess so.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“What if I freeze up?” Sam asked. “What if I can’t do it?”
“I’ll be there to make sure that doesn’t happen. That’s why he didn’t send you alone. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being nervous. You should be nervous. You’re about to take a human life. That’s a big deal and it would be irresponsible of us to understate that. But I promise you it’ll be fine.”
“I guess it’s just that I don’t know how I’ll react in that moment. You know what I mean? I have no idea how gross it’s going to be.”
Daxton chuckled. “Most of the mess happens on the other side of his head. Little hole going in, big hole coming out.”
“I won’t see any blood?”
“Well, you’ll see some blood, I’m sure. But it doesn’t get real gnarly unless your aim is off and you shoot somebody through the eye or the nose or something. You won’t be shooting at a moving target. You’ll press the barrel of the gun tight against his forehead, and then squeeze the trigger. Pretty much foolproof.”
Sam nodded. “I just don’t want to mess this up.”
“I get it. You want to impress your future father-in-law. I’d feel the same way.”
Sam’s fiancé Olivia was the daughter of Dominick Winlaw. She was a scorching hot twenty-one year-old with an ass so spectacular that Daxton completely understood why Sam would forego pursuing his master’s degree in elementary education in favor of doing dangerous jobs for Mr. Winlaw. Daxton certainly wouldn’t mind being ten years younger and fifty percent more handsome; he’d try to marry that ass, too.
“You know, there’s another option,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll kill him, and we’ll say you did it. Tell Winlaw you performed like a champ.”
“I don’t really want to lie.”
“That’s fair. Just throwing out the offer.”
Sam rode silently for a moment.
“Maybe in the actual moment we can see how I feel about it.”
“Nope,” said Daxton. “No way. We finalize the plan before we knock on his door. I’m happy to kill him for you, but it’s not going to be a last-second decision.”
“Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Sorry.”
“We can work out the lie afterward if you want. If you feel good about it, we’ll say that you shot him. If you don’t, we’ll say that he made a sudden move and I shot him. Winlaw won’t be mad about that.”
“I feel like I should do it myself, though.”
“Your call. Just trying to be helpful.”
“You know what? I really appreciate that. You kill him. I’ll do the next one.”
“Sounds good.”
The GPS announced that their destination, an apartment complex, was one mile away.
“Killing people isn’t fun,” said Daxton. “Only a raging psychopath enjoys it. But I’m not gonna lie, if you handle this the right way, you can get a real adrenaline rush out of it. Not the part where you actually pull the trigger, but the stuff leading up to it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sam.
“We’re there to kill him. That’s the on
ly possible way it ends. That poor son of a bitch has already been thrown off the skyscraper, and we’re there to watch him hit the pavement. But he doesn’t know that. So we mess with him a little. When we put the gun to his head, we tell him to give us the key to the safety deposit box.”
“What safety deposit box?”
“There isn’t one. That’s the point. He’ll say he doesn’t know what we’re talking about, and we’ll pretend to get all pissed off and say that we’ll kill him if he doesn’t hand over the key. How will he try to get out of it? Will he keep insisting that there’s no key and try to get us to believe him? Will he play along until he can figure a way out of this mess? We toy with him until it stops being fun, then we kill him.”
“It doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“Maybe fun is the wrong word. Believe me, when you’ve got a scumbag shitting his pants in terror, it’s a powerful feeling.”
“Is he a scumbag?” Sam asked. “Nobody told me what he did. Mr. Winlaw said it was irrelevant. Do you know?”
Daxton shook his head. Truthfully, there was only about a fifty-fifty chance that the guy deserved what was coming to him. “No, but he was right about it being irrelevant. Not our decision to make. We certainly won’t be murdering a saint, if that’s what you’re worried about. Maybe we should play it straight for this job.”
He pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex and drove to Building C. It was two in the afternoon and most of the spots were empty, so he was able to park right next to the outdoor staircase that would lead up to 207.
“Time to decide,” he said. “Do you want to kill him, or do you want me to?”
“You can do it.”
Daxton forced himself not to smile. He didn’t get to kill many people. “I’ll do the talking. You won’t have to do anything but check the other rooms to make sure he’s alone. If I do give you any other instructions, you obey them immediately, without question, like I’m a military commander. Got it?”
Sam really looked like he was going to throw up, and then perhaps burst into tears. But he nodded, unfastened his seat belt, and got out of the car. They walked up the stairs and went over to apartment 207. Daxton knocked on the door.
A thin, bearded man in his late fifties answered. Poor doomed Nate looked just like his picture.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“We’d like to come inside,” Daxton said.
“We don’t allow solicitors here.”
“We work for Dominick Winlaw.”
Nate’s demeanor immediately transformed from “annoyed” to “sad and defeated.” He nodded and stepped out of the way. Daxton and Sam walked into the apartment. Decent place. A lot of clutter and some boxes stacked against the wall, as if Nate was getting ready to move out.
Daxton immediately took out his pistol, which already had the silencer attached, and pointed it at Nate. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the couch.
Nate plopped down upon the sofa without protest.
“Are we alone here?” Daxton asked.
“Yes.”
“If my associate checks the other rooms, he’s not going to get a nasty surprise?”
“No.”
“Check the other rooms,” Daxton told Sam.
Sam just stood there, as if he hadn’t realized Daxton had spoken to him. He looked ready to double over and vomit all over the floor.
Daxton snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Hey, check the other rooms.”
Sam nodded and hurried off.
Daxton returned his attention to Nate. He had the look of a guy who’d known this was coming, and trying to move out of the apartment was only a half-hearted effort to escape the inevitable. They just looked at each other for a moment.
“Not gonna tell me I don’t have to do this?” Daxton asked. “No offer to double whatever I’m getting paid?”
“Would it help?”
“Nah.”
Sam returned to the living room. “It’s clear.”
“Good.” Daxton aimed at the center of Nate’s forehead, between the second and third wrinkles. Right before he was about to squeeze the trigger, he noticed that Sam had turned away. “Hey, kid!” Daxton wasn’t old enough to think of a twenty-two year-old as a “kid,” but he wasn’t going to use his real name, even though the only witness would be dead in a few seconds.
Sam didn’t look at him. “What?”
“You have to watch.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re taking credit for the kill, you have to know what it looked like. If you can’t even watch, then you need to tell your daddy-in-law that you’re not cut out for this line of work.”
“Okay, okay,” said Sam. He took a few deep breaths, then turned back toward Nate.
Blood shot from the side of Sam’s neck as a gunshot rang out.
Sam clutched the wound as a second shot got him in the back. He fell to the floor. Daxton caught only a glimpse of the woman as she ducked back into the hallway.
Shit!
Nate started to get up. Daxton shot him in the face, then hurried across the living room and pressed himself against the wall. He tried to ignore the gurgling, gasping sounds from Sam and focus only on fixing the more pressing problem. He slid across the wall toward the hallway entrance, ready to shoot at the first sign of movement. Nothing.
He peeked around the corner into the hallway. No sign of her. Two open doors and one closed one. He hadn’t heard a door close.
How long until the neighbors called the police? This was supposed to be quick and quiet.
“I don’t have to kill you,” Daxton said, speaking at a normal volume. “I didn’t see you if you didn’t see me.”
No response.
Daxton walked down the hallway. Door number one or door number two? If she was standing motionless just inside one of the rooms, gun raised, he’d have a problem, but otherwise, unless she was a fucking ninja, she’d make some sort of noise before she tried to kill him.
He waited, listening for any clue to where she was hiding.
Every second he stayed in this apartment made it more likely that he’d be caught, but he couldn’t flee the scene with the woman still alive. When Winlaw had his meltdown, at least Daxton could say that he hadn’t left a witness.
He stood silently.
Breathing. Quiet but rapid. She was in the room to the right.
Was she hiding or was she ready to shoot?
The kind of woman who would come out of her successful hiding spot to shoot at them in the living room was not the kind of woman who’d hide in a closet to await her doom. Daxton would hear if she was opening a window, so the only credible option was that she was planning to shoot him as soon as he stepped into the doorway.
If he fired at her blind, he might get lucky.
He might also get his hand shot off.
Worth the risk.
He quietly moved to the right side of the hallway. Switched the pistol to his left hand. And then, very quickly, he stuck his hand into the doorway and fired off three shots. As he pulled his hand back out of the way, he heard a body drop.
He carefully peeked into the room.
The woman looked like she was in her fifties. Nate wasn’t married, so apparently he had an age-appropriate girlfriend. Daxton would’ve been happy just to have clipped her on the shoulder, giving him the opportunity to burst in there and finish her off, but two of the three shots had done some serious damage. She lay on the floor, eyes wide open in shock and horror, two expanding red splotches on her chest.
She hadn’t dropped the gun, so Daxton shot her in the forehead.
He hurried back into the living room. Sam hadn’t died yet, but even if Daxton called 911, it was far too late to save him. His neck was still spurting blood. He had maybe a minute left.
Daxton, hand trembling, took out his cell phone and called Winlaw.
“Is it done?” Winlaw asked.
“It went really, really bad,” Daxton tol
d him. “We need fixers here immediately. There’s three dead bodies and a lot of blood. Two loud gunshots fired.”
“Is—?”
“Yes, Sam is one of the bodies. I’m getting the hell out of here. I’ll call you soon.”
Daxton hung up the phone and fled the apartment.
3
Sometimes it was difficult to gauge Mr. Winlaw’s emotional state. This was not one of those times. He was positively enraged.
“Do you know how much it cost to get fixers out there when the police could’ve been on their way?” he asked, pacing around his tiny office. Winlaw was extremely wealthy; this office was just for show when he played the role of Dominick Winlaw, small business owner. “You’re lucky they went at all. You’re lucky the cops didn’t find the bodies. You should be in prison right now, and then I’d have to spend even more money making sure you got a shiv to the side. I can’t believe this. I absolutely cannot believe this.”
Daxton said nothing.
“I have to pretend that I don’t know what happened to Sam,” Winlaw continued. “Olivia will know that I had something to do with it, but I have to play this little game where I say that maybe he was a piece of shit who got cold feet and ran away. Do you understand what that’s going to be like? Do you know the kind of strain you’ve put on our relationship?”
“I’m sorry,” said Daxton. “I don’t know how Sam missed an entire person when he was searching a two-bedroom apartment.”
“Did he check the closets?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask him if he checked the closets?”
“No.”
“Then this is on you, right?”
“I assumed that he’d check every place a person could hide,” said Daxton. “So if you’re asking me if I mistakenly believed that he wasn’t totally incompetent, then yes, it’s on me.”
“The entire point of you being there was to make sure there were no problems. Which means that I’m holding you personally responsible. This is one hundred percent your fault. Do you understand?”
Daxton decided that to continue to plead his case would serve no purpose. He simply nodded.