HONEY and the HITMAN
BY
HANNAH MURRAY
Honey and the Hitman
Copyright © 2019 by Hannah Murray
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, business establishments, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of the eBook only. No part of the eBook may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the author, except in the cases of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Cover Design by I’m No Angel Designs
Edited by Morshe D. Araujo
Sensitivity Edits by Isabelle Felix
WARNING
This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which the purchase is made.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author
Other Titles by Hannah Murray
“Murder is like potato chips: you can't stop with just one.”
Stephen King, Under the Dome
Prologue
March 15, the Oregon Coast
Ethan Sullivan sat in his car in the dark and the rain and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he was doing with his life.
He was thirty-four. Other thirty-four-year-old men were getting promoted. Getting married. Having kids. Hosting backyard barbeques and super bowl parties. What was he doing? Sitting in a rented Ford Taurus that stank of stale cigarette smoke and locker room funk, waiting outside the Coast Road Motel in Cannon Beach for a wife-beating, child-abusing, union pension embezzler to come back from his nightly trip to the liquor store.
It was so goddammed irritating; if he weren’t already planning to kill the guy, he’d be tempted to beat the shit out of him just on principle.
He sighed and checked his watch, careful to keep his wrist below the car windows. Nobody was around; it had been raining steadily for three days, and the parking lot of the motel was all but deserted. Not a lot of people seemed to be taking beach vacations in Oregon in March, and it was easy to see why. The sea, visible just behind the narrow little ramshackle motel, was arresting and moody in the storm, and though he found it appealing, it was clearly an acquired taste. There was no one to see him check his watch or wonder why he was sitting in his car in the rain at 10:37 on a Tuesday night—hell, he could probably tap dance down the street with no one the wiser—but staying in the shadows was second nature.
He ignored the urge to shift in his seat with an ease born of habit. Movement drew the eye, so he didn’t move. Staying still was a remarkably effective way to hide in plain sight; anyone out walking the dog at this hour was unlikely to see him sitting in the rented sedan, simply because they didn’t expect him to be there. He stayed still, ass going numb, and kept one eye on room number eleven. Which didn’t require a lot of mental gymnastics, and he’d gotten good at multitasking over the years. So, he went back to pondering his existence while he waited for the Scum of The Month to make his appearance.
Was boredom the problem? Possibly. Lately, the commissions he’d been taking were a lot tamer than the ones he’d accepted when he’d first gotten into the game. After he’d hung out his shingle, the first three years had been full of megalomaniacal despots in exotic ports of call, vicious drug lords in Central America, and Mafioso wannabes in the former Eastern Bloc. He’d worked in nearly every country in Europe and Asia, a large portion of Central and South America, and one memorable and nearly fatal weekend in Tangiers. If he’d been using a real passport, he would’ve had to replace it in under a year. But lately, most of the work he was doing was domestic. In fact, the last time he’d traveled internationally for work had been Brazil, eighteen months ago. A corrupt politician with a fondness for underage boys, the more reluctant, the better. Ethan had been instructed to handle that one as publicly and as violently as possible, and the local media had practically salivated when the body had been discovered in a local dump, riddled with bullet holes and missing a few vital pieces. When the coroner had determined those pieces had been removed pre-mortem, it launched a media feeding frenzy.
The whole thing had left a bad taste in his mouth.
They were all leaving a bad taste in his mouth these days. He grimaced, uncomfortable with the idea that he might be burning out. Contract killing was a young man’s game; it was hard to murder people in cold blood without arrogance and a lack of a moral code—or at least one that was a little more flexible than most. You stopped thinking of people as people and started seeing them as targets. Of course, most of his targets—and all of them in the last half-dozen years or so—weren’t exactly the definition of an upstanding citizen.
Like the man currently shuffling toward room number eleven from Ed’s Liquor & Lotto. Stanley Morgan, aged forty-nine, trudged along with his head bent against the wind and rain. The collar of his battered sport coat was turned up in a hopeless attempt to keep his neck dry. He had a brown paper bag tucked under his arm, no doubt the fruits of his shopping expedition at Ed’s. He passed under the lone street lamp in the parking lot, and the harsh overhead light cast an unhealthy glow over his face.
Stanley had been on the run for two months, and it showed. His hair was grayer and plastered to his skull by the rain, thin in places. His face was craggier, the shadows under his eyes deeper, and his jaw was covered with a patchy beard that only added to the overall appearance of ill health. Once a dedicated gym rat who’d walked tall and proud, he was now round-shouldered and hunched, with a paunch born of too many fast food runs and too many trips to the liquor store.
Ethan sighed as his quarry passed through the wash of light from the streetlamp and plodded on to his motel room. From his observations, Morgan was drinking himself into an early grave, making Ethan feel superfluous; the guy would likely be dead within two years at the rate he was pickling his liver. Not to mention the heart condition Ethan was currently planning to take advantage of. Stanley’s early death was all but a certainty, but Ethan was getting paid a pretty penny to expedite the process; about a quarter of the value of the insurance policy that would pay out upon his seemingly natural death. He supposed since there wasn’t any other money, the soon-to-be widow needed the cash. All of Morgan’s assets had been seized, and according to the accountants, most of the embezzled funds had been spent on trips to the craps tables in Vegas and Atlantic City. What hadn’t been tossed away on the dice had been spent making Stanley look like the high roller he had no hope of ever being.
Stanley wasn’t a very imaginative thief.
He was, however, a very imaginative abuser. Ethan’s jaw tightened as he recalled the information his research had netted on Morgan’s wife and son. The abuse suffered by the boy had been largely psychological, only veering into the physical in the few mon
ths prior to Stanley’s disappearance. But the wife? If hospitals gave rewards points, Mallory Morgan would’ve been a platinum member. Her medical record was as long as his leg and included emergency room visits for “unexplained falls” and “clumsiness” to hospitals throughout the greater Pittsburgh area. It was the first rule of domestic abuse: never let the little woman go to the same ER twice, or the “fell down the stairs” bit was bound to wear thin.
He couldn’t really blame her for wanting Stanley dead, even without the insurance payout. And in fact, he’d cut his rate for the job in half.
Ethan had a soft spot for widows and orphans. That his actions would be directly responsible for their being such was neither here nor there.
Morgan reached his hotel room and struggled to open the door without dropping the bottle of what was surely gin. Morgan only drank gin, though the current brand he was enjoying was a far cry from the Bombay Sapphire that, in his previous life, had been his signature drink. Ethan held his breath, hoping the asshole would be able to manage to hang onto the bottle. If he had to sit there while the jackass made another run to the liquor store to replace a broken bottle, his ass would be permanently numb.
Morgan finally managed to get the door open and stumbled inside, he and his precious cargo disappearing as he slammed the door behind him. Ethan watched the light flicker behind the closed curtains, and out of habit, waited for a count of five before he reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out the small, square monitor and switched it on.
The picture was slightly washed out, like an over-exposed photo, but the view of the disordered motel room was clear, and he grinned to himself. “God bless paranoid parents,” he murmured, inordinately pleased with the baby monitor.
It wasn’t the finest in surveillance equipment, but nobody was going to look twice at someone buying a video baby monitor. He’d found what he wanted at a Target just outside of Portland for less than a hundred dollars, which meant paying cash would be unlikely to raise any eyebrows. He’d had to cover the infrared lights with electrical tape, as even the most unobservant of men might notice red lights glowing in the dark, but that was all right. It meant he’d only be able to see as long as Morgan left a light on, but it would be enough.
He’d placed the camera in the room earlier that morning, letting himself in through the bathroom window after Morgan had ventured out for a late breakfast and the maid service had come and gone. It sat just under the television monitor, small enough to blend perfectly with the surrounding electronics. He doubted Morgan would spot it, but even if he did, the device was mass-produced and all but untraceable.
He’d positioned the monitor to give him a clear view of the bed, the only real piece of furniture in the cheap little room, and now had a clear view of his quarry. Morgan sat on the side of the bed in the glow of the lamp, wrestling with the cap on the bottle of gin. He listened to the muffled curses, the satisfied grunt when the bottle cap finally gave way, and watched Morgan raise the bottle to his lips for a long pull.
Well, damn. If the son of a bitch was going to drink straight from the bottle tonight, the plan Ethan had set into place during his morning B&E session wasn’t going to work. “Fuck,” he muttered out loud, the word an almost soundless whisper in the darkened car. He didn’t want to have to come up with something else, and he really didn’t want to be stuck on the wet and gloomy Oregon coast for another day. If the fucker didn’t—
Ah, there. Morgan was getting up from the bed and heading for the bathroom, bottle in hand. Ethan’s thumb moved over the toggle that would allow him to rotate the camera and track Stanley’s progress across the room, then stopped. Thought the camera was small and the movement nearly soundless, it was a risk. After a heartbeat, he decided not to take the chance and left the camera focused on the side of the bed. He contented himself with listening to Morgan shuffle across the room. There was a pause, a crinkle of paper, then the clink of glass on glass. Ethan grinned with satisfaction as Morgan came back into view, now carrying a squat glass half full of liquid in addition to the bottle.
Ethan set the monitor on his lap, using the tail of his dark work shirt to cover the screen so the glow couldn’t be seen from outside the car, and checked his watch to note the time. The drug he’d carefully painted on the rims of the two glasses provided by the motel wouldn’t take long to kick in, sped along by the alcohol Morgan was helpfully chugging. He figured he had about thirty minutes before Stanley was unconscious, followed swiftly by cardiac arrest. He would check the monitor in fifteen minutes and adjust the timeline if necessary.
Ethan frowned when a soft ping sounded in his right ear. The burner cell phone in his breast pocket had an old school wired earpiece attached—no Bluetooth, wireless was too easily compromised—and had been threaded through his clothes to minimize its visibility before being hooked over the top of his ear. It was black except for the last six inches, which he’d covered in flesh-toned first aid tape to make it blend with his skin. It wasn’t perfect—flesh-toned anything was never the tone of anyone’s actual flesh—but it was enough to shield the wire from all but the canniest of observers.
The ping sounded again. Only one person had this number, and he wouldn’t be calling to talk about the weather. Ethan reached up and pressed a button on the phone through the shirt pocket. “Go,” he said softly.
The voice in his ear was equally soft. “Thought you’d like to know; some new players are entering the game.”
Ethan’s posture didn’t change, he didn’t move at all, but he mentally came to sharp attention. “When?”
“Puck drop scheduled for early tomorrow morning,” the voice replied. “Coming in from a non-local farm team.”
Well, shit. “Thanks for the head’s up.”
“No problem.” There was a slight, barely perceptible hesitation. “Do you need someone on your wing?”
Ethan frowned slightly at the unusual question. “No, I’ll take this one in alone.”
“Roger that. I’ll look forward to the game highlights.”
Ethan allowed himself a small smile as the call disconnected. Michael was a man of few words, and the hockey references a little weird, but the warning had come through loud and clear. Someone was coming for Stanley Morgan, so it was lucky he’d already planned to end his association with Stanley tonight.
He allowed himself a brief moment of annoyance at the added complication, though his plans would remain largely unchanged. If the feds were coming in—and it was a near certainty that the outside players Michael had alluded to were federal law enforcement—then he needed to be on his way out of town before they arrived. Which meant it was imperative for things to go smoothly tonight; he simply wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to ad-lib. This was the problem with working domestically; the FBI was a pain in the ass.
It couldn’t be helped. A quick glance around reassured him that he was still alone on the darkened street, so he lifted the tail of his shirt to quickly check the monitor. Morgan was laying back on the bed, shoulders against the headboard, sipping steadily from the glass in his hand. The bottle of gin was missing nearly a quarter of its contents, and Morgan’s face was already going slack, his movements thick and uncoordinated. He didn’t have to check his watch to know only five or six minutes had passed since Morgan had begun drinking from the tainted glass; it was working faster than he’d expected.
For the next several minutes, he checked the monitor at regular intervals, watching Morgan get droopier and sloppier as he continued to drink. Finally, twenty-two minutes after he’d started drinking, Morgan slumped against the thin pillows, seemingly unconscious. The empty glass rested on the mattress, still clutched in his hand.
Ethan squinted through the slightly dirty windshield. The wind had picked up, but the rain had stopped—time to move.
He turned the monitor off and slid it into his pocket. He pulled the dirty, sweat-stained trucker hat down further over eyes the color of mud, shadowing a face covered with black stubble and a l
ayer of grime that advertised a disaffection for personal grooming. The denim jacket covering his shoulders was just a shade too large, giving the impression that he was smaller than he was. He slipped from the car, the door closing soundlessly behind him, and walked with an unhurried slouch toward the beach steps just past the motel.
Anyone glancing his way would see a round-shouldered man, perhaps a bit taller than normal, a dirty hat shielding his stubbled face, shoulders hunched up toward his ears as if to ward off the cold. The denim jacket had a shearling lining that was as grimy as the hat. His hands were tucked into the pockets of faded jeans, his feet encased in boots worn down at the heel and frayed at the tops.
He walked past the motel, down the beach steps toward the water. He stood on the sand, facing the view of the stormy ocean as the wind whipped at him. Taking his time, he scanned the beach for signs of life.
Nothing. Not even the gulls were out and about tonight, and most of the private homes along this stretch of coast were dark. Only a few had lights shining in their windows, but they were far away, and not a concern. Turning his back to the sea, he spent several moments making sure the same was true for the back of the Coast Road Motel. He could see the lights on in Morgan’s room, but the rooms on either side of him were dark. He knew there’d been a young couple occupying room number ten the night before, but he’d seen them packing small cases into a ten-year-old Toyota just before noon, and it didn’t look as though anyone had taken their place. Room twelve had been empty the night before and looked to still be vacant. But since he couldn’t be sure, he’d assume both rooms were occupied and proceed accordingly.
In this business, it paid to be overly careful.
Satisfied that the coast was as clear as he could hope for and wanting to take advantage of the lull in the weather, he didn’t waste time. He moved in the same deliberate manner back up the beach steps, but this time he shifted to the left three steps from the top. He stepped onto the sparse grass that sprang up in the sand bordering the motel, and as soon as he was between the motel and the beach, moved swiftly to the windows of Room Eleven.
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