by Michael Todd
He turned and folded his arms again. “You asked what I had.”
“Well, apparently, you have a good time waiting to happen, baby.”
JB stared at her, unamused. “I think I also have some bleach in the cupboard if that is more your style.”
Billie leaned back, frustrated. “Dammit. I have no choice but to kill him, but how?”
He lowered his arms and hopped awkwardly to sit beside her. “On any other occasion, I would send you on your way with absolutely zero questions of what you are doing. I have learned with you that the less I know, the better off I am.”
She tapped her nose. “That’s probably a good rule to have.”
JB sighed. “However, it is obvious that there is something important going on here and I can’t help but think it could severely impact all of us. So, with great reluctance, I have to put it out there. Why in the world do you need a non-traceable toxin to poison someone?”
Billie thought about it for a second. “Fuck it. I don’t work for them anymore. I guess I can share my shit with you. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? We die and Holly has to pump us full of goop again? We might come back as five-year-olds and then none of this is our business anymore. We can simply run around shitting ourselves and eating macaroni and cheese.”
He tried not to laugh. “You usually don’t shit yourself at five but go on.”
“There is another agent here at the Zoo. I worked with him in the past, and I saw him walk down the street dressed as a merc when Holly and I went to her apartment. He didn’t see me or Holly, so that is good.”
JB let the amusement go when he realized the situation was obviously more serious than he’d thought. “Do agents come to the Zoo a lot?”
She shook her head, then shrugged. “I think so, but I really have no way of knowing who and why. I was only told about the missions that I had to complete. Although I have to admit, in all the time I have been here, I have never seen another agent in the Zoo. Not even in the other towns. The point is, he is here, and I know he can be dangerous. I don’t know if he is here for me or not. He could be here on another mission that I wouldn’t know anything about but, if you remember, I am supposed to be dead.”
He nodded and wished he had his leg on so he could try to pace. “Okay, I get what you are saying. Whether he is here for you or not, he could blow your cover and that would be a bad thing.”
“A very bad thing.” Billie chuckled darkly.
JB turned toward her. “So why don’t you and I, as cousins, go out to wherever he is to see if we can get information on him?”
Billie narrowed her eyes. “I did follow him and found out he had a meeting in an hour at the bar at the hotel.”
“We can go there and spy on him discreetly. Killing is a last resort and the company or organization or whoever will still want to know who did it to their agent and why. You’ll have a whole new batch of agents roll in and that’s when it gets worse for all of us.”
She clicked her tongue impatiently to acknowledge the sense of that. “All right. We can do that. I think it might work. Even if he did see me, he might not recognize me. You know, with my anti-aging agent and everything. Let’s do it. Get dressed.”
JB glanced at his bag. “In what? The squirrel or the dancing taco?”
Billie wrinkled her nose in real distaste. “I see your point. Let me look in your closet.”
She went through Old JB’s clothes and selected a blazer and a pair of black dress pants. Those were paired with the dancing taco shirt and a pair of all black Chuck Taylors from the New JB’s attire. He dressed and stood for a moment, staring at himself. “I look like a tool.”
“No, you look like you match your age. Come on, we don’t want to miss him.”
Begrudgingly, he followed her downstairs and out the back door in his office. They headed to the hotel and kept their heads down so as not to attract attention. When they arrived, they found a seat at a small cocktail table in the front. They ordered two beers and Billie scanned the room. “He is here—in the back at a small booth. Shadowed, right corner.”
JB decided not to turn to look and make their surveillance obvious. “What is he doing?”
She paused as a man in a ball cap and merc clothes walked in and wove between the tables to sit across from him. The newcomer’s face was shadowed and then blocked by the agent. “It looks like he is having a meeting with a contact. The informant—my guess is that is what he is—slid an envelope across the table.”
He sipped his beer casually. “Can you see what’s in it?”
Billie sneered. “I don’t have go-go gadget eyeballs. Whatever it is, the agent is memorizing it. That’s not abnormal. They don’t usually take physical evidence back with them. It’s far too risky. We try to make our risk as close to zero as possible.”
JB smiled as the waitress walked past. “All right, so what do we do now? Maybe we should talk to the contact.”
“You may be right.” She pulled her lips into a scowl as she considered this. “If this has nothing to do with me, then it would be smart not to bring attention to myself by taking out the agent. We should probe the contact. Or, at least, distract him and get that envelope. But we need to be able to do it without him noticing it’s gone. Then I put it back and we head out.”
He shook his head. “That sounds like a lot of work. Why don’t you wear a mask and rob him?”
Billie turned her head slowly to look at him. “Wow. I’m so glad you didn’t go into the spy business.”
JB shrugged. “Hey, I never claimed to be a good partner in this stuff.”
She turned her attention quickly to her drink. “The agent is leaving but the guy took his hat off and looks like he might be staying. We could pull the angle of lovers looking for a third.”
“Except for the fact that we are cousins so we can’t be lovers. There are plenty of people here who know who JB is and if they don’t know my face by now, they will pretty soon. We need to come up with something a little less creepy than family-style sex sessions with a random merc at a sleazy hotel. Besides, I know him. He comes into FUBAR on Thursdays.”
Hickok tilted her head to the side and frowned slightly. “Why can’t cousins be lovers? Of all the things that could be crimes, why is that one?”
JB looked at her, not understanding why she was stuck on that specific detail. “It’s bad for the gene pool. Not to mention the fact that it is considered socially and morally repugnant. I know some people do it out in the sticks but people with any sense of the repercussions tend to steer away from sharing chromosomes.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is there some strange reaction?”
He sighed and rubbed his face. “Yeah. It’s been proven over time that sex between those too close together genetically have a higher chance of creating children with mental or developmental disabilities.”
“Oooh.” Her eyes widened. “So banging your cousin could make mutant babies. It worked out in the comics.”
JB coughed and covered his mouth. “You are definitely not with the times on PC conversational topics, that is for sure. Nonetheless, we tend to stay away from banging family members, yes.”
She grinned at him, her eyes so comically innocent that he knew she’d simply had led him on. He shook his head but laughed and acknowledged the victory.
Billie finished her beer. “Okay. Here we go. You walk over and introduce yourself. Tell him that you were in FUBAR a while ago and saw him there. I will come out of the bathroom and you introduce me. I will use my mad skills to acquire the documents while you keep him chatting, then go to the back. When I have seen them and returned them without him noticing, I will tell you it’s time to go. Then we roll.”
He frowned in confusion. “But everyone thinks I got there today.”
She shook her head impatiently. “He won’t remember. I have a pill.”
JB looked wildly at her. “A what?”
Hickok grabbed his arm and pulled it demandingly. “Nothing.
Just go with it.”
Against his better judgment, he went with it and did exactly as she told him to do. Surprisingly, it worked perfectly and at no time did he actually see Billie take the envelope or return it. When she said it was time to go, he knew she had accomplished it. As they stood, she dropped a small pill nonchalantly into the man’s drink. It dissolved instantly.
She winked and grabbed JB’s arm to drag him out the door. “He will be out in about five minutes and wake up like it was all a dream.”
JB put his hands out. “So…is he here for you?”
Billie shook her head. “Nope. It has nothing to do with me so it is all good…hopefully.”
He walked quickly beside her toward the back door of the bar. “I really am not starting out this new life thing on the right foot.”
“You only have one, so…” She snickered as she opened the door for him.
Chapter Eight
Holly yawned. Her head rested on top of her jacket on the floor and her feet were propped up on the boxes. She was in the second row and no one would be able to see her from the entryway. She looked at her fingers, picked at the hangnails, and thought about all the times she’d gone for manicures in New York. That seemed like three lifetimes ago now and she couldn’t imagine taking the time to do something like that at this point in her life. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had her hair trimmed, much less taken the time to primp herself.
Now, she felt lucky to be able to shower every day. But what she did was more important than any of that stuff. Her mindset had changed, and to her, it was for the better.
“You gonna stay here all night or what?” Billie asked as she poked her head over the boxes.
Holly looked at her and grinned as she scrambled to her feet. “Oh, you know, I’m simply taking a little rest and relaxation in a pile of dirty boxes on the cold cement floor.”
Her friend shook her head. “Weirdo.”
They walked upstairs and into the apartment. Holly locked the door and put her hands on her hips. “You gonna tell me what that was all about?”
Billie sighed, opened her laptop, and inserted her scrambler. “There was an agent here. I followed him and figured out he wasn’t here for me but still, it worries me. All I can do at this point is to believe that they won’t be able to find me. Or that they really do believe I am dead.”
Holly sat on the bed and drew her legs up to loop her arms around them. “I assume it would be bad if they find you or don’t believe you’re really gone?”
Hickok chuckled grimly. “Uh. yeah. Like dead bad. Like so dead no goop could put me back together again.”
“That’s not good.” She grimaced.
“Maybe I should try to remove my fingerprints. Do you have a razor and some fire? I don’t think it will hurt too much. It’s only one layer of skin, really. People do it all the time. A little haircut, and no one will be able to trace me.”
Holly shook her head. “When you say people do it all the time, you mean crazy people, right?”
Her companion shrugged and pouted. “I guess you can’t exactly call me sane. For fuck’s sake, I have to hide from my prior job because in that business, if you quit, you are killed. Not a final check, not a bad recommendation, you are chopped into bits.”
She stared at Billie for a moment, unsure of what to say to that. “Well, we all make mistakes. But I don’t think it will do any good to remove your fingerprints. The goop that was injected into you is still working and is still in your system. It will repair your fingerprints, probably within hours.”
Hickok groaned. “I forgot about that. Damn. Okay. So that won’t work. How long will this goop stay with me?”
She frowned as she thought about it for a moment or two. “I’m not really sure. It could be a few months or it could be for the rest of your life. Only time will tell.”
It was late but Holly knew there was no way she would sleep anytime soon. She walked over to the coffee pot and turned it on. “Have we figured out exactly what we will need money-wise to get started with everything?”
Billie stopped typing and turned her head. “Actually, I did some calculations while JB and I were in hiding. I figure we need to take enough trips into the Zoo to raise about a half a million dollars, give or take a hundred thousand. That will really set us up for success. That is if we survive.”
Holly stood there and held her empty coffee mug and her mouth hung open. “Did you say a half a million? I mean, I’ve made some bucks going into the Zoo but never anything close to that. Seriously, that amount of money will take us forever.”
Her friend nodded as she scanned through something online. “It is big money for the Zoo. Even full Pita at this point won’t bring you that much in one payment. But it isn’t big money for an assassin. That kind of money is really easy to come by in the business. Sometimes, that could be one job, at the most two. It could be only the down payment, depending on how difficult a target is.”
Holly shook her head and poured coffee into her mug. “I don’t know about all that. I thought the whole purpose of you dying was to get out of the business. Besides, it seems counter-intuitive to go in and kill people to make the money so we can save people’s lives. It’s not exactly what I would think of when I looked for good ways to make money for my first start-up.”
Billie chuckled. “Yeah, I’m not sure you would find that in any of your entrepreneur books. Assassination for Dummies. Buy this and get How to Fund Your Start-Up for fifty percent off the cover price.”
She smiled and shook her head at Hickok. “I don’t think we would feel good about it if we knew people died for it.”
Her friend scanned the page she was on and Holly narrowed her eyes. “What website is that?”
“Uh, it’s on the Dark Web. A specific site I have a membership to.”
Holly raised an eyebrow. “And this has something to do with assassinations?”
Billie pointed to the screen. “Aha! Right here there are two good requests for the assassination of people who would help mankind out more if they were dead than they do alive.”
“Could they be that bad?” She still had difficulty even thinking about it.
Hickok looked at her with a serious expression. “I’ve met some people…well, let’s say you wouldn’t want to breathe the same air as them. Yes, they can be that bad. If it helps, the income from their death will allow humanity to have a brighter future. Perhaps because of their unwilling sacrifice, heaven will have mercy on their souls—”
Holly shook her hand. “Stop. Good Lord, just stop.”
She chuckled but at the same time, truly felt her friend was full of shit. They needed the money, though, and she had to have faith in her partner that she wouldn’t take innocent lives. She had to believe that regardless of Billie’s past, she was a good person and when given the choice, would do the right thing.
Despite her misgivings, she took a deep breath and sipped her coffee. “I can’t believe I am about to say this… So long as they are truly bad, I guess we will do what we have to do.”
Billie nodded at her. “Oh, they are truly the worst.”
Holly left the other woman to whatever she had to do to set that up. She understood why she had to do it but she still didn’t want any part of it. While she had killed animals out in the Zoo, it wasn’t the same to her as killing people. There was a certain amount of morality that she struggled with when it came to that kind of thing, even if they were the worst of the worst.
She cleaned the apartment, washed clothes, folded and put away others, and finally took a shower. When she finished, she figured Billie would either be asleep or watching one of her movies, but instead, she was still typing away online. Holly dressed in her pajamas and tossed her towel in the bin before she scrunched her wet hair with her hands. She grabbed another cup of coffee and stood beside Billie to look at her computer.
Her friend didn’t look up but continued to type. Holly yawned and turned to rest her ass on the e
dge of the desk. She knew she might be a little irritating but she was anxious, especially after what they had discussed. “What are you doing now? I figured you would be done with all your black ops stuff by now.”
Billie smiled. “Oh, I finished that before you got in the shower. It’s fairly simple once you are already in the system. You claim the jobs you want, they send you the info on where to meet up with the contacts, and the client gets your obviously fake information to book your flights. That’s it.”
Holly nodded. “Well, that sounds convenient. So, what is this?”
Hickok leaned back in her chair. “This is for Marcus.”
“I thought you weren’t talking anymore. You know, with him having to start a new life too.”
Her companion laughed. “I was trained to find anyone, anywhere. I keep tabs on him because I like to make sure he is doing okay. He was my handler, but he has no expertise in actually protecting himself. I walked right into his kitchen and killed him.”
Holly shook her head. The idea of that freaked her out every single time. “Okay, so you keep tabs. What are you sending to him?”
Billie smirked. “I’m finding technology probably outside of Marcus’ ability to purchase and sending it to him.”
Holly tilted her head to the side and stared at the machine on the web page. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Not that the actual moving robots in the video that used it helped to make it any more realistic. “I thought he did programming and hacker stuff.”
“He does. Which is why I know he wouldn’t be able to afford all the fancy stuff for his hobbies. He is a technological genius, but he uses it to create droids and robots. I told him he could cure the world of all disease or end world hunger, and he said that would simply flood the Earth with too many people.”
She raised her brow. “How Scrooge of him.”
Billie chuckled. “I know. It’s adorable. I can already see him open it and blow his load right there in front of the delivery guy.”