by Nancy Bush
“What the fuck. I did everything I was supposed to do.”
“Except make sure there was no one to tell the tale.”
He leaned back, pissed. “I took care of Joe. That was the deal. That was the payment.”
“Plus any contingencies,” she hissed. “And there was a pretty fucking big contingency that you missed and she’s lying in a hospital bed just waiting to tell her tale.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he snarled.
She wanted to reach across the table and slap him. She was the pragmatic one. He was a dreamer and she’d always known it. She’d had a good marriage once, but then she’d started sniffing around for adventure and there he was. Who knew she’d find someone with a like mind?
“And we have another problem, two actually, for a total of three.”
“What are you talking about?” He tried to play with her fingers with his, but she pulled her mug of coffee toward her.
“Loose ends,” she hissed. “Loose fucking ends!”
“I told you I’m on it. I’ll take care of Julia tonight.”
“And the other two?”
“The kid’ll be easy. If you’re hinting about Phoenix, that’s gonna be trickier.”
“No loose ends,” she repeated. “That’s what the man said. That’s the mission.”
“I like it better when it’s just you and me, doing our thing. No jobs. No bosses . . . Just us having some fun.”
“I want to retire from my job,” she said. “I want enough money so that we can do what we want. That’s why we have to hire out.”
“Yeah, this one got more complicated than it was supposed to be. What the hell was that about taking the boat out? I about shit myself,” he confessed. “Had to work really fast.”
“You always planned to take him out at sea.”
“Not yesterday! I wasn’t really ready and then he took his goddamn wife with him.”
“And you like her and don’t want to hurt her. But she’s a loose end!”
“I’m going to do it. Shut your beautiful mouth. Save it for more important things,” he added suggestively.
“We just have to be clear, that’s all. You need to do your job and I need to do mine.”
“Remember the first time?” He gazed at the window into the far distance. “Gives me a hard-on every time I think of it.”
She struggled to tamp down her anger. He always did this. Always went to the romantic, ignoring all the signs of trouble. He was a creature of sensation, but then so was she.
“I remember,” she said shortly.
They’d been at a viewpoint overlooking the ocean with a split rail fence at the edge of the headland, a popular spot for tourists to take pictures. She’d stopped to assess her life, go over all the mundane pieces that had led her to where she was, try to figure out where she went wrong, where her road to “exceptional” had wound down to “mediocre.” Stuck in a job and a marriage that were both going nowhere.
He’d been driving by and seen her and had pulled in. “Hey,” he’d said, getting out of the car, and she’d been a little annoyed because she’d been trying to commune with herself.
They were the only people at the viewpoint apart from a middle-aged couple who were wearing matching shirts splashed with gaudy pink flamingos and matching virulent pink pants. They wore matching straw hats and had matching potbellies. They were taking pictures but couldn’t get in the shot together. The man hollered over at them.
“Hey! Yoo-hoo! Can one of you take our picture?” He waggled the camera at them, a huge Nikon that had been around a few years.
Neither of them had responded. They were making small talk of their own. They knew each other well, but it was pure circumstance that they were standing there at that time. Neither of them wanted to deal with the tourists.
“Yoo-hoo! HEY!” Both of them were clamoring now.
Under his breath, he said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they just fell over that cliff and died?”
“The world would be a better place,” she agreed.
“HEYYYY! OVER HERE!!”
They’d both turned reluctantly to look at the couple, who were waving at them frantically. Then they’d looked at each other and something happened. A sizzle of awareness that ran through her like an electric wire. She’d almost come just standing there, thinking about pushing the couple over the edge.
They sauntered over to where the couple was standing in front of the fence. Behind them was a sharp drop to jagged rocks below.
“Well, hi there,” the portly man said, thrusting out the hand not holding the camera. “We’re Jerry and Jeri Hofstetter. That’s how we met, you know. Our names being the same and all.”
“We went to grade school together,” Jeri added, smiling at her spouse and the clearly oft-told story.
“What are your names?” Jerry asked.
They hesitated, and then she said, “Bridget.” She’d always liked that name.
“I’m . . . um . . . Tom,” he said.
“You married?” Jeri asked.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” he said at the same time.
“We’ve been engaged so long sometimes it feels like marriage,” she told the couple, smiling at Tom. She should have known right then he’d be the weak link in their partnership. “We’re still searching for that perfect ring.”
Jeri had scanned both of their left hands as they’d approached like the nosy old lady she apparently was. With that answer, Jeri brightened and said, “Oh, Jerry and me just went out and did the dirty deed with a plastic ring he’d saved from when he was a kid!”
“Got it in a cereal box,” Jerry confided with a wink.
“Of course you did. That’s adorable,” Bridget said, smiling.
Jerry handed Tom the camera and he and Jeri scooched in together, their arms around each other. Tom aimed the lens at them and took a picture while Bridget stood beside him.
“I’ll take a couple more, just to be sure,” Tom assured them.
She could feel the excitement rising in him, rising in herself. Were they really going to do this? No. No way. It didn’t happen that way. A random thrill-kill from two law-abiding citizens? Uh-uh.
Tom took one more shot, then pulled back and looked at Bridget through heavy-lidded eyes. He was feeling it, too, their eye contact hot enough to burn right through her. She was thrilled anew that she was about to come. With no body friction. Holy mother of God!
When he stepped toward Jerry and Jeri, she did, too. And then they took another step. And then another, crowding into them.
“Whoa,” Jerry said. Looks of confusion crossed both of their fat faces.
And then, as if choreographed, they both put their right hands out and pushed them over. Jerry flipped over the rail and bumped once and was gone. Jeri’s purse strap got hung up on the rail for a nanosecond, so Bridget picked up her foot and kicked her over. The Hofstetters’ dying screams were cut off by a hard thunk-thunk as they landed, followed by a cascade of pebbles as their bodies bounced off the cliff-side into the ocean.
Bridget and Tom looked at each other. “Damn, woman,” he breathed, and then they both dashed to their cars, he still with the old couple’s camera.
They drove off madly, both in the same direction, Tom in front, Bridget following. She wanted him inside her and she called his cell and told him so. He warned her to slow down and he did the same. They drove as carefully as they could given that inside they were thrumming with sexual need. When he pulled onto a lane that led past a bed-and-breakfast on the east side of Highway 101, away from the ocean, then went on past the place and wound into deep woods, she was on his bumper, practically panting.
At a small clearing in the woods, miles above the ocean, they both stepped out of their cars. She ran to him. He opened the door to the backseat, grabbed her, and threw her inside. Her head banged hard onto the seat but she didn’t care. They couldn’t rip their clothes off fast enough, and then he jammed himself inside her and
she screamed with pleasure so loud that he clamped his hand over her mouth. “Careful, ‘Bridget.’ At that decibel level someone might hear us.”
Afterward they laughed like maniacs. He lay atop her on the seat, his pants down around his ankles, hers hanging from one still-shod foot. When their laughter broke they stared at each other with smiles in their eyes.
My soul mate. My love. My secret passion.
Now she looked across at him and had different thoughts. Yes, she could still feel the high and desire that had come after killing the Hofstetters, and a number of others since, but it was hard to reach that same level again. Her desire wasn’t as high, wasn’t as strong, wasn’t as good.
And the Hofstetters had nearly been their undoing. Right there, at the very beginning! Some passing motorist whom neither of them had noticed had reported seeing a couple of sedans parked at the viewpoint and thought there’d been another couple with the Hofstetters. The search had gone on and on and for several months she’d been crazy with fear that somehow they would be found out. The fear had served to heighten her sexual need and she’d rendezvoused with “Tom” in remote places several more times, always somewhere outside the area they lived.
And then time had passed and nothing had happened. They’d gone about their lives and the Hofstetters became a cold case. When she was with him the need, the memory, the desperate desire was reflected in his eyes. She knew he could see it in hers.
They decided to kill again, but somewhere else. The nearest big city was Portland, so that’s where they went. It wasn’t easy. Neither of them could get away for long and the excuses grew thinner and thinner, not to mention finding a mark they both agreed on. She didn’t want to take out a mother with a young child, and he didn’t want to kill any man supporting his family.
They agreed their kills should be singles, childless couples, or anyone over the age of fifty.
And then they found Monique. He/she—they never knew what to call him/her—was part of the LGBT community and therefore a perfect mark. Neither of them cared a whit about Monique’s sexual identity. He/she could be whoever they wanted, for all they cared. But his/her sexual identity sure as hell was a great smoke screen to hide the blame for whodunit, and sure enough, as soon as his/her body was discovered, the media declared Monique’s death was a hate crime. Everyone was riled up and the search was on, but Bridget and Tom were long gone. They’d wooed Monique out of a dark bar and into a back alley with the promise of a three-way, then Bridget had grabbed the baseball bat they’d planted earlier and had bashed in his/her head. Tom took off Monique’s boa, and together they wrapped it around and around his/her neck until Monique’s chest stopped rising and falling. They waited precious long seconds more to assure themselves he/she was really dead, then they racewalked to their respective cars, drove to the nearest freeway exit with a cheap motel, and screwed their brains out for a couple of hours before driving back the two hours to the coast.
After that, they claimed Portland as their hunting ground. There was no reason either one of them would be there, let alone want anyone dead. The homicides seemed unrelated and so they were.
But he—Tom—had a big mouth, something she hadn’t foreseen. He’d hinted about their extracurricular activities to someone who had their listening ears on. He’d said that he knew how to commit murder and get away with it. And that person, over time, finally asked if there was any way he could have one whistle-blowing little shit taken out, once and for all—theoretically, of course—and Tom had told the man that anything was possible.
Luckily, he’d never brought her name into it, even as Bridget, but it had really sent her pulse skyrocketing with fear.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” she’d screamed at him.
“I’m thinking of the future, darling. There may come the time that we need to run, and to do that we need cash.”
She’d argued with him to the point of slapping and shoving him, and then he’d done the same to her, and somehow they’d wound up screwing on the hood of her sedan. And she’d pushed her doubts aside and even gotten into it when they’d hustled Denny. She’d pretended she had a husband named Ricky who was a stone-cold killer. The bartender at Tiny Tim’s might be able to describe Tom and Bridget. That had been a risk. But no one knew Denny was dead yet, or no one cared apparently, because it had been over a month and there’d been nothing. Not a word about him going missing. Nada. He was that much of a loser.
But then new panic. All of a sudden the man wanted them to take out Joe Ford. Had hinted that if Tom didn’t take the job, he would be exposed. And that would mean Bridget would be exposed as well because Tom was basically weak. She’d wanted to throttle him for putting them in this position and yet . . . the man who’d hired him paid well. The rumor was the man had lost a ton of money through bad investments and he blamed Ford.
“Get rid of Joe Ford,” the man ordered.
Tom had argued that it was too soon after Denny, but his worries had fallen on deaf ears. The man gave him three days and so he and Bridget had hustled around, putting a new plan into place. Their original one had included burning Joe’s boat, but then yesterday, at the last minute, Joe had apparently gotten wind of what was coming down and had changed his own plans. He suddenly took the boat out himself, with his wife, and they were gone. Tom and she had been forced to scramble around and run by the seat of their pants. Plan B meant Tom had to intercept The Derring-Do, claim his motorboat had run out of gas, and ask if he could get a lift. Joe Ford had helped Tom aboard, but before he could ask what the problem was, Tom hit him with the gas can and sent him overboard. Julia had run, but he’d caught her and pushed her into the ocean as well. With that, he’d poured gasoline all over that boat, stem to the stern, then dropped the lighted match as he dove into the water. He’d watched the boat go up in a whoosh as he climbed back into his own boat, one he’d liberated from its mooring at the marina, and motored out to sea. Once he was several miles out, he turned north and kept going all the way to Seaside, where he ditched the stolen boat at a private dock where he knew the elderly vacation homeowners never came. He’d wiped the boat down, though seawater and the elements would probably take care of any DNA material he might inadvertently leave. It could be weeks before anyone found it. Meanwhile, she had purposely put herself in a bar at the entrance to the bay, in full view of people who knew her, so when the boat went up, she was one of the first to gasp, point, and shriek for help.
Tom had gone to a bar in Seaside afterward, which had kind of pissed her off for no reason she could name, but then they’d rendezvoused at the rest stop and trekked into the woods and that had all been good.
Now, however, the fallout was starting to concern her. The man who’d paid them for Denny, and who was paying for Joe Ford, had assured Tom he would be safe, but that was before Joe’s wife saw Tom on the boat and survived. And that was just one of the problems that were popping up like mushrooms, all because Tom had gone rogue.
Yes, the money was nice, but getting locked up for murder would make that a hollow victory, wouldn’t it?
“She has no memory,” Tom said now. “I’ve got some time to take care of her.”
“That’s a rumor,” she reminded. “And even if it’s true, what about when she remembers?”
“She might not remem—”
“You want to bet your freedom on that? I sure as hell don’t!”
“How’m I gonna get her in the hospital, hmmm?”
“You better figure out how.”
“I said I’d take care of it, and I will.”
“What if she recognizes you?”
“It won’t do her any good, because it’ll be her last few minutes of life.”
“I mean, what if she remembers before you get to her.”
“Stop worrying.”
His lackadaisical attitude drove her insane. If he didn’t take care of the problem, she’d have to, and was she supposed to do it alone? What if she failed? What if she was caught?
“They’re releasing her tomorrow,” he said now.
“How do you know? Did you get a call?” She glanced toward his cell phone, which lay beside his hand on the table.
“Sure did.”
“What if she remembers tonight? Or, maybe she already has and we just don’t know it. What about that?” Her voice was rising and he shot her a sharp look.
“You gotta take it easy.”
“You’ve got to take it more seriously.”
He sent her a ghost of a smile. “I got a dick that’ll slide right into you and have you screaming for more.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’m coming over there.”
“To my side of the booth? What are you talking about?”
“I’m gonna make you howl.”
The place was practically deserted, but there was no way that was going to work. She started laughing. He was so easy to turn on. As pissed off as she was at him, the idea was turning her on, too, but she could handle the heat. He couldn’t.
To her surprise, he jumped from his side of the booth and slid into hers, jamming his hand between her legs.
“Stop it!” she hissed, slapping at his hand. For an answer, he unbuttoned her jeans and slid his other hand inside, wiggling his fingers. She tried to squirm away, glancing around with wild eyes to make sure they were alone, but he was insistent.
She wanted to kill him!
“Okay,” she gasped. “Okay!”
He pulled himself away from her but stayed on her side of the booth. “Don’t worry about Julia Ford,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll take care of her.”
“All right.”
She was all jazzed up in spite of herself. She wished she could be part of the killing, but it was too dangerous. Still, the thought of it made her blood run hot. She smiled to herself, relieved and a bit bereft when he slid back to his side of the booth, then threw some money on the table.
“We gotta go,” he said.
She walked to her car, her head full of images of Julia Ford, imagining her wide eyes filled with sheer terror as she came at her . . . and then the image switched to Tom as she attacked him, the question in his eyes turning to horrified realization as she stuck a knife between his ribs once, twice, three, four, five times!