by Peiri Ann
I crossed my arms, propping the phone on my shoulder. “Three twenty-five. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it, I don’t have a choice,” she said morosely. “I have to drop off something or it’s my head. I’ll come up next on your list. Anyway. I got one. He’s about seven hours from you, in Louisiana. I’m texting you the exact location. Two I’ve got about two hours from you right in Texas. I’m sending the location for him in a separate text.”
I leaned back in the chair, hearing her distress deep in her soft voice, void of her usual confidence. Reagan was always self-assured, her voice always strong and direct. It slowly faded as she spoke.
“What happened, Tulip?”
“I messed up, Kit Kat. Messed with the wrong guy. I did what I was good at.”
What she was good at was stripping you for all you had. For these guys, she’d make them love her, trust her, then she’d take every penny.
“I thought he’d be a good hit, and he was,” she said. “He drove a Bentley, graduated from Harvard, Mom and Pops were loaded. We dated for a couple months before I made my move. I thought he was just some guy, you know, someone I could quickly get in, get out, stay clean, and jet. Skip town.”
“I suppose that didn’t go over so well.” While she spoke, I got directions to the destinations.
“I got about twenty mil.”
I sat forward, shocked. That was a lot of cash. One rule I had taught her, and our group swore to live by, was we never got greedy. “You saw it and got greedy,” I accused.
“Hacked the accounts, wired the funds to an unmarked account in less than five minutes. In less than two minutes from the money leaving the account, Denis Reynolds was calling me.”
“Who?!” Not him! “The Denis Reynolds?”
“The Denis Reynolds.”
“Shit, Tulip. You were dating his son, Hayden Reynolds. The fact that he never dated women wasn’t a clue for you to stay away?”
“He was around women all the time. I thought he just didn’t want a girlfriend.” She sighed loudly. “Anyhow, I had already blown a mil. I’ve repaid all but six-fifty. I have seventy-two hours from ten tonight to get him the rest or I’m dead. Courtesy of D. Reynolds himself.”
“I’ll give you the six-fifty, Tulip.”
“Oh, Kyle! You will?” she exclaimed excitedly.
“Yep, right after I follow up with your story.” Reagan was a good liar. She reminded me of one of the girls from those Cruel Intentions movies. “If it turns out you’re telling the truth, I won’t make you wait. I’ll have the money wired to you before ten tonight. If it turns out you’re lying, I’ll be over tonight to make you regret it,” I threatened.
“Mmm, sounds like a win-win,” she crooned.
I knew her story was a load of cow shit. “Win-win my ass. You’re lying! You almost had me going when you mentioned Reynolds. But one thing you were missing.” I held up my finger in front of the computer.
“What?” she huffed.
“Hayden likes dick more than you do. It’s their younger son Cormac who’s the ladies’ man.”
“Dammit,” she mumbled.
“Stop being greedy, Tulip. Thanks for the spots, I got your texts.”
“You’re still coming by, right?”
“Never.” I hung up.
I got the direction to the exact locations Reagan texted me. She also texted me pictures of their faces. I figured I’d take the longest drive first, get a little shuteye, then head back and get the second before twelve noon. I’d have the money in my account after I sent the “completed” text, and I’d go visit my mom before night fell. Oh yeah, and I’d make sure to wire Reagan, Grimmer, and Janet some money before two.
I had my plan all figured out.
No news is always good news… it’s much better than terrible news.
In this book I read, Before I Let You Go, this woman had lost every single family member she’d loved to an assassination error. Conveniently enough, the main character, Julie, was out of town at a real-estate agent’s convention. But when she came home, every single family member was slaughtered. Their bodies sprawled out in a pool of red vengeance by her front door. What hurt was she did nothing to the person that did it. The killer, the hitman, killed them by mistake—wrong family.
Her family was all she had and from that point on, she was ruined. Ruined like a melted oil portrait.
I got it. How ruined Julie was…
That was me, in my hallway, phone fallen from my hand, clicking against the hallway’s hardwood floor. I’d lost my balance and had fallen against the wall. The wall, at that moment, was my tether. It held me up and kept me from hitting the floor. I was ruined. I was unable to hear the officer’s final words after telling me my own mother and father had passed away after being in a car accident, courtesy of a drunken prick who thought it would be a good idea to drive.
The officer fucked up by telling me who it was. She didn’t know who I really was. And before I took out Kyle, twenty-six-year-old Hayden Reynolds would be first. Supposedly he was out on bail. Based on what police detective Dana Lianas from Missouri said, his parents were loaded.
Rich people never went to jail. They always got off scot-free. No. I believed in justice. In my book, if you committed a crime, you should be punished for it.
If I were to get caught for the things I’ve done, I would expect to possibly face life in prison or the death penalty and I accept that. Your color, your account balance or who you fuck should not justify how you are punished. Everyone should be treated equally. That person, Hayden Reynolds, should be held responsible for killing my parents. It was against the law to drink and drive and he should be held accountable for their murder. Since the goddamn government couldn’t make sure of it, I would.
More anger than I could handle riled in me as I screamed out. Sadness enclosed my entire body as I slid down the wall to the floor. I slammed my fist into the floor gritting my teeth, bulldozed with too many whirling emotions of sorrow, fury, defeat, revulsion, and resentment.
I thought long and hard about crying. I wanted to cry. I could’ve cried. But screaming was how I chose to release my pain, because if I cried, I’d want to be comforted. And there was no one here to comfort me. So what would I do? Lie in the hallway of my loft by the wall that held my phone and just… cry? Cry until my tears dried?
I was seventeen when I left home to take on a career as a privately contracted assassin. Fifteen when I started training. I was supposed to be strong and… alone. Death was supposed to be a blow in the wind, along with the desire to be wanted or cared for. I made up my mind a long time ago, crying only helped when you had someone to console you. To pick you up from the floor and say, “It’s okay, Val. I’ll be here for you.” They’d rub your back as they lay down with you and provide consoling words like, “Let it out. It’s fine. I understand.”
No one was going to come around the corner and say those things to me. No one was going to hold me until I stopped crying. My life dictated that I’d be a loner. Left to comfort myself.
I cringed, hurting, fighting back the tears, fighting back the want to be held at that very moment. To be consoled by a “It’s okay, Val.” I screamed again as a striking pain shot through my chest.
It was too much for me to take on by myself. I was hurting too bad and I could use a friend. I couldn’t handle this one alone.
Too lazy to stand and put the fallen phone back on the hook and dial another number, I grabbed my cell from my pocket and dialed Janet Porter while the landline beeped busy.
“Hey, Val. What’s going on?” She was already concerned, and I hadn’t even told her yet.
I took a deep breath and released it. “I just got a call from a detective who said my parents were in a bad car accident.”
“Oh no, Val. Are you okay?”
I broke and the tears streamed from me like a rushing waterfall. “She said… they didn’t make it.” I choked up.
“Oh no, Val. Give me a minu
te and I’m on my way.”
“Thank you.”
“You know it. You’re my best friend. Of course.”
“The door is open. I’ll see you when you get here.”
“Kay. Bye.”
I couldn’t move. My body seemed anchored to the floor. It was the only thing that kept me from floating away. Like a balloon losing its air and spinning in random swirls before it died, deflated on the ground, I would stay in the same spot until someone peeled me from the floor.
I was a fit of tears, balled in the fetal position, waiting on Janet.
My computer and phone constantly beeped, informing me of new e-mails, incoming and outgoing calls from Shultz’s phone and his whereabouts. For the first time in a year, I wasn’t the least bit concerned with that assignment. I refused to move myself from that spot on my floor.
All I could think about was calling my mom and dad and hearing them tell me everything was going well. Hearing them tell me how proud they were I pursued my dreams. Whatever dreams I had sold them because there was no way I could tell them I was a secret agent of an agency that branched off the CIA and I basically stalked and killed people for a living. No, I couldn’t tell them that. And at that moment, I felt guiltier than ever for lying to my parents for all those years. For telling them, I had pursued a career as a supermodel, stealing the life of one of my favorite characters in this novel by Phillip Casselton called Away in My Dreams. Anderson was the girl’s name. She left home and pursued her dreams of being a supermodel, but was murdered at eighteen. Or so the book made you suspect. But really she’d faked her death, had her boyfriend played his role so well he’d gotten millions from a donation they set up. They lived off it for the rest of their life.
My life was no storybook. Stealing Anderson’s ‘life’ had seemed pretty legit at the time. Now, I wished I had told them the truth. Even though they would have disapproved, I wouldn’t have felt so bad about lying to them. But they had died with a lying daughter. What a disappointment I turned out to be.
Maybe I should be happy they would never know who their daughter really was. How devastating it may have been to find out their daughter was a professional assassin. My mom would have probably offed herself if she knew all those years of etiquette classes and training were flushed down the toilet, or that I preferred to carry a gun instead of a purse.
My dad, on the other hand, probably would have patted me on the back and offered me a glass of Scotch, a seat in one of his big comfy chairs in his man cave, and started treating me like his son instead of his little girl.
“Val!” My loft door slid open. “Val,” Janet called again. “It’s me. Where are you?” The latch clicked as the heavy door slid closed.
I sat up, trying to catch my breath. “I’m here, Janet. In the hall near the phone.”
“Oh Val.” She came around the corner with a large bottle of vodka, a lime cream pie, and two forks. I love her. “Val, I am so sorry. I brought stuff.” She was the perfect friend. “I knew you needed stuff because I would need stuff if I sounded the way you did when you called me.” She bent down to hug me.
I wrapped my arms around her and buried my tear-streaked face in her neck. “Thank you so much, Janet.”
“I am so sorry, Val.”
Janet’s sincerity was so real, so honest.
She was such a good friend. I had no choice but to love her short haircut, odd pear shape though she wasn’t wide, long neck, and very tight skin. She was brighter than the sun and I loved every bit of her bubbly personality.
“You don’t have to tell me you’re sorry, Janet. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But I’m sorry just seems like the right thing to say.” She sat next to me and cracked open the bottle.
I snatched it from her once the top was off and took it straight. Then I broke, hard.
“Val, you just let it out,” she said, rubbing my head. “You let it all out. I promise I’m not going anywhere. Well, not until like maybe ten. But until then, I am a shoulder for you to cry on.”
I ignored her and wept against her shoulder between swigs of her vodka bottle.
“I just wish,” I sobbed, “I had the chance to tell them goodbye. You know. Tell them… I loovvee theeemmm,” I cried.
“I know, Val. I know. I felt the same way when I lost my cat.”
“Your cat?” I asked, confused, looking at her through tears.
She wiped my face. “Yes, my cat was hit by a car. The only thing I wanted was to tell him I’d loved him before he died.”
“OH NOOOOO,” I cried loudly. If that wasn’t just the news to make this moment even worse. “The guy that hit him was probably drunk tooooahh.”
“Ooohhh Val,” she cried with me. “He probably waaaaasssss.” She snatched the bottle from me and threw back a gulp as she cried.
Like two big babies, we moaned and cried loudly; she over her cat that was possibly road-killed by a drunk driver; I over my parents who I knew were murdered by Hayden Reynolds, who would not be living past tomorrow.
The moment I could gather my stability and stop crying, I was heading out on a manhunt.
“You know, Val, it’s like they say.” She stuffed a forkful of pie into her mouth. “It’s unexpected.”
I washed my pie down with another gulp of vodka that was now as smooth as water. I tried to tell her that I thought I had enough, but the words came out a garbled mess of unrecognizable syllables.
“What?”
My second attempt was worse than the first.
“I’m not understanding what you’re saying. It’s all gibberish, Val. I think you’ve had enough. Maybe you should eat more pie.”
I nodded and shoved another forkful in my mouth. It was tasteless but cold and soothed my sore throat.
“When was the last time you talked to them? Take your words slowly.”
I cleared my throat, hoping it would take away the slurs that were present in my speech. “Yesterday… morning,” I replied.
“Okay, that’s not too bad. I know you and let me say this, Val. They know you loved them. And they loved you. Don’t think about ways you could’ve changed some things. You don’t want to crowd yourself with that type of negativity or focus on things you don’t have control over. And lastly, Val, don’t be vengeful. Keep a happy heart.”
“Thanks, Janet. I feel so heavy. And drunk. And a little hungry. I just want to kill the bastard that did it.”
“I’m not sure of everything you said, but I got kill and bastard.”
I nodded. “Good enough.”
“Good enough?” she guessed. I nodded again. “Okay, that’s enough vodka for you, my lady friend,” she said. “I will be staying the night over here with you. I had other plans but this is way more important than staying with my friend’s mom.”
“What friend?”
“Oh, my guy friend Lewin.” She became uncomfortable talking about Lewin. She had mentioned him before; I thought nothing of it until she made a call and the same instant, the alert for Kyle’s incoming calls beeped from my computer. Luckily, my computer was always locked and only I knew what each sound it made meant.
“Hey, I know I said I’ll be staying at your mom’s house but I have something else to do. I stopped by for a few hours earlier and she was fine.”
I tried to focus on her facial expressions but my head was spinning.
“Hey, don’t be mad; I have a life too, you know. And it does not revolve around you,” she blurted angrily.
“Janet, it’s fine, you can go be with his mother.”
“Do you hear this?” she blurted into the phone. “My friend needs me. She can’t make coherent sentences. Say something else, Val.” She tucked the phone in my face.
“Something else.”
“See?” She whipped the phone back to her ear. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” She slammed the phone down on the empty box the pie had come out of. “God! Men! Can you believe them? They think the world revolves around them or something. Like
, um, Lew and I have been friends for years. He’s the greatest. But sometimes he can be such a, I don’t know… too much.”
“You don’t have to stay, Janet. If it’s a problem, you can go be with his mom.”
“I’m not sure about everything you’re saying, but I picked up on mom. So I’m going to assume you’re telling me to go, but I’m not leaving. I love him, but I love you too. His mom is clearly alive and right now you need a friend. Come on. Let’s get you showered, clothed, and on the couch with a loaf of bread to suck up that alcohol.”
“Bread?”
“Bread?”
I nodded.
She nodded.
“Bread.”
She helped me from the floor and tried to take the bottle from me. I held it tight, clutching it to my chest. “You don’t have any bread?”
I shook my head, feeling something cold squish between my toes. “Eww!”
“Well, I understood that. You just stepped in the pie, didn’t you?”
“I’m going to track this stuff to the damn bathroom,” I groaned, irritated.
“It’s okay, I’ll clean it up.” She dragged me to the bathroom. “I’ll clean up your whole place. I can tell you don’t do between-Tuesdays cleanups. There are clothes everywhere. For a person as organized as you, you’d think your home would be spotless.”
“Uh huh,” I muttered, trying to keep my eyes open.
I never asked questions to find out how peoples’ names came up on hit lists. And I can’t exactly explain how I got involved in this line of business. It just happened that, as I was walking out of the Purcell building the day I quit, I ran into one of my army buddies. Ralph Watson was his name. Tall dark-skinned guy with a tattoo of one of those evil skull faces on his bald head, with the white face and black around the eyes. He made it his business to bow his head when he met people, just to freak them out because he had a white face on his black head. I found it pretty freaking hilarious.
Ralph told me it was hard finding work after he was sent home from being blown up, and he ended up working with a man that let him use his army skills to make money. Best damn sniper I ever met, Ralph was. And when he mentioned that, I got an idea of what he was involved in.