by Elena Monroe
Khaos removed the blank passport and pulled up Google to search her name. All we had was her first name, but he had already hacked into the Clave files to obtain all the names.
He liked to do his own recon before the long weekend.
I didn’t blame him. This was something people needed to be prepared for. If you weren’t, you ended up on YouTube trying to figure how to work a firearm.
“You always get so testy when it comes to the hunt. We’ve been doing it since we turned eighteen. Get over it already.”
He was right. Until I grew enough balls to not care, I didn’t do anything to stop what was happening around me. There was no real way to stop any of it. The Clave controlled the world from their mountaintop, like it was fucking Olympus.
The only thing I could do was choose who I killed.
Yes, I did kill people without any mercy, but I also made sure it was justified.
Except the valet. That one goes to the monster.
These people, here, were just riding the world of small annoyances. Harmless, chalked up to crazy, annoyances that fed into the fear they wanted to spread anyways…
None of this made sense.
“Just hurry up. I gotta make a phone call anyways.” It wasn’t a lie to distract myself, which was surprising. That was my go-to when escaping human interaction: seeming busy.
Dialing my new secretary, I figured she could help, and maybe she’d lay off if I gave her something to do. Pressing my phone to my ear as it rang, I paced the room. I hated waiting for anything, but I hated relying on other people more.
“Hey, I need you to do something. I need a private plane to the estate at 9 p.m. Nothing fancy. Just a small plane chartered to France. No paperwork. No trails.”
I could tell I had caught her off guard when the other end of the line went silent for longer than a pause.
“Hello?” Really hated waiting…
“Um… I heard you. I’m just lost. Are you leaving early?”
“No, giving a friend a ride.”
Lie. You just refuse to feed my desires.
The monster in me was pissed off, and I wasn’t going to enjoy the hunt. Instead, I was disrupting it.
“Okay, plane to France. No paper trail. 9 p.m. Anything else? Do they know where to pick your friend up?”
“Just tell them it’s for Grimm.” I didn’t even wait for a response, even though I was soaking in her voice as long as I could. She knew enough though.
Turning my focus back to Khaos, I asked, “You done?”
The small photo was printing from her Facebook page, and he was handling it with as much care as my repenting soul. Not like there were enough people for me to save to actually clear my soul. That shit was murky black with bad intentions and nightmares.
Standing up, he walked back over to his bag. “You’re really lucky I brought everything for this, crazy motherfucker, trying to save everyone we want dead…”
“Just the innocent ones.”
“You’re the best contract killer there is, and you refuse to kill just one tonight… for the Clave.”
He said it like I gave a shit who it was for. Clave, God, my family… None of that mattered if it wasn’t well deserved.
Sealing the picture down to the passport, he closed it and handed it back to me. “Does it justify saving one if ten still die?”
“Fuck off.” I snatched the passport and tossed it back in the Ziplock before sealing it back up securely. I couldn’t risk any of these pieces to her escape falling out.
ABIGAIL
I didn’t expect Grimm to call me at all on the weekend, let alone to do something I had no idea how to do.
I must have sounded convincing, because he hung up with the belief I knew exactly what to do to make his request come true.
Vic didn’t ask for the world on a string and expect me to deliver. Vic used the weight of his name to get what he wanted. My last name held no weight in water. Benson wasn’t even decadent or flashy; it was plain.
The grocery store wasn’t the place to scream out loud in frustration. People came to Trader Joe’s for craving fixes and healthy choices, not some girl screaming in the nut section like a crazy person.
I wanted to make homemade nut butter, not realize my boss is crazy.
The panic was setting in and shaking all my senses into joining the parade in my body. Bracing against my heart pounding in my chest, I Googled private plane companies in the area without knowing any specifics.
Was this a test? Was he challenging me in some impossible way? How did he expect me to rise to this occasion?
There were thousands of results for private plane companies near me, and I felt like I was hitting a wall.
The panic pushing me against the wall was cutting off fresh air to my lungs, and my palms started to sweat. I handled schedules, phone calls, meetings, passing information… not whatever this was. I had no contacts, no means, and no experience in this realm, but I was expected to know what to do.
My elbows were steering the cart for me, while my focus was glued to the screen for some kind of clue that it was the company Grimm had in mind. Fire, all black… some kind of dark theme to their logo… when my cart vibrated against my arms from crashing against the metal of another cart.
When I looked up, I saw the tousled golden locks of Hollywood’s poster boy, with the smile they all loved to adore spread across his cut features. His jean shorts rolled up at the thigh, white sneakers, and navy sweater were all clean cut.
It was his best trick: looking like a nice guy and winning awards for acting like one too. He wasn’t a good guy. He was an entitled asshole who thought he could smile through everything.
“What are you doing here?”
It wasn’t meant to sound insulting, but it did. This Trader Joe’s wasn’t anywhere near his house. Oscar was swimming in dangerous waters; no one cared who he was out here.
“Just in the neighborhood. You haven’t texted me back.”
“I’m actively ignoring you,” I turned the corner with my cart to hunt down English muffins, and he followed behind without the cart anymore.
“I apologized, babe. Come on...” His pouty expression wasn’t going to work on me this time. I was staying strong against the cycle of rage and regret we did.
“Oscar, I have more important shit to deal with than you. I have to find a private plane for my boss when he didn’t tell me what I am doing.”
I bit off a lot of information and spat it out in his face, hoping he would visibly see the stress and give up.
If only I were so lucky…
Oscar’s hands kneaded my shoulders without permission from behind me, making me tense up in a way that was going to give me a headache.
“I have connections… Just forgive me so we can move on. I’ll help you.”
My better judgment was yelling at me to stand my ground and not give in as I stared at the English muffins still not melting under his touch. I couldn’t even tell you the brands of any when I was looking right at the shelf; that's how much of my focus was being pulled into different directions.
It was like whiplash; I was being caught between two men of two completely different calibers.
Looking back down at my phone, I tried to vocalize my way through the problem. I could call every place on the list, drop my boss’s name, and hope one of them knew what I needed the way he said they would… or I could just forgive Oscar and accept his help.
That was the easy way out—the way I didn’t want to take out of this problem.
It felt like the kind of test that could easily end in me being fired. Grimm already didn’t want a secretary, and this was the perfect excuse to fire me if I failed.
Vic certainly showed no mercy as soon as I became more of a liability than an asset.
“Too expensive for my blood. You don’t deserve forgiveness…” Without intention, I looked around the aisle, trying to see if anyone was staring at how loud I just was.
Whispering into m
y ear, he said, “I can make life so much easier, babe. Just give in.”
It wasn’t that simple, giving in. People used that phrase here as much as hello and goodbye.
Lean in.
Give in.
Let go, and let LA…
LA was that kind of place, where every corner was full of ways to break down whatever was stopping you from leaning into the danger of this town. Ruthless. The people who didn’t lean in never lasted long. Those were the people getting chewed up and missing home.
I had been here too long to be one of those people.
Manipulating my body out of his massaging hands, I faced him. “This is a favor. I don’t forgive you.”
His smirk was testing my patience. I was giving in for the greater good, the easy way out, keeping my job… and it all made me feel weak under his big fucking smirk.
“Whatever you wanna call it, babe. Whatever gets you talking to me again.”
Oscar didn’t need me to talk to him or even forgive him. He had the world on a string. My disinterest was the best game of hard to get he had ever seen. Funny how men always call not being interested “hard to get”.
Men were so confident that it was unheard of for women to be not interested. LA was a breeding ground for confidence, so just imagine how much the word “no” sounded like a foreign language here.
“My boss needs a private plane to this big estate upstate in the woods. He said to just drop his name, but I don’t know who…” I looked down at my phone again, still hopeful it would suddenly become clear, and I wouldn’t need his help.
My ex-boyfriend’s help.
“This is LA. No one calls houses estates unless it’s obscene. Name?”
My shoulders creeped up, tensing, all the same questions on repeat in my head were now being repeated out loud, and it wasn’t making me feel any less competent. All I could manage was a shrug and tight jaw, not producing any words right now.
“Okay, what’s the event?” Oscar was actually being nice, for once, and I wasn’t making it easy.
Another bout of silence swelled between us. The space was getting smaller and smaller with each exhale.
“Well, babe, I wanna help, but I can’t do much here. Let me take you to dinner instead.”
My eyes squinted in resentment, because I knew all his tricks, even this one.
He truly was a good actor. Oscar could switch personalities, gears, bad habits, and make it hard to know who he truly was at all.
“It’s some retreat for the rich assholes of the world. That’s all I know.”
“The Hunt?” The carefree expression he normally sported was fading fast.
I mulled over his words in my mouth, until the word hunt was tough and tasteless, like a piece of gum that went bad.
“Maybe? It’s super private, super elite, super dumb...”
I couldn’t help the eyeroll. I never understood the one percenters of the world acting like the rest of the world was beneath them. We were the ones buying from their businesses, waiting on them hand and foot, their secretaries, and making their lives easier. We should be the ones praised.
“My parents are up state for that. Let me find out where it is, then we can work on the plane. Wanna wrap this up?” His finger danced in the air making a circle around my cart.
He was already trying to control every part of me, even how quickly I could finish my grocery shopping.
I still let my, now much more eased, mind drift back to how he knew I was here. Watching him carefully, I wondered where his abandoned cart with eggs and milk had gone as he conquered more space between us with his phone to his ear.
Finally picking gluten-free, rice-based English muffins, I tossed them in my cart, losing all steam to finish my shopping.
All my staple pieces no longer mattered much anymore. Leave it to men, and women not being able to figure them out, to kill hunger pains.
Not even waiting for him to come back, I rounded the aisle and headed for the checkout lanes.
If I didn’t need the information and connections, I would have made this my out. He was distracted, and I was letting myself slip into some dark place. I liked control and being the sole proprietor in my decision making, and that was slowly disintegrating before my very almond shaped eyes.
Dramatic? Sure. But have your seemingly perfect life get shaken like a snow globe, then talk to me.
The woman checking me out had an earpiece in and was in the middle of a conversation, ignoring my presence as she scanned my items one by one. Knowing what I did about LA, she was probably an agent or actor waiting on a call from an audition she went on.
I smiled politely at her as she bagged my items and Oscar paced in the distance, always hovering close. Finally off the phone, he tucked his phone back into his pocket, and he stood next to me with his elbow on the counter next to the credit card scanner. I could smell his expensive cologne, the hairspray he probably used, and the smug attitude that had a kind of scent that felt familiar, but at the same time distant.
That kind of smug attitude always felt familiar. We all had memories tied to some ex, a crush, a lousy date, the one we wanted to fix, but couldn’t.
Oscar was all of the above. He hit every box for not working out.
“What were you doing here, again?” I was hoping to catch him off guard. I liked firm answers, not laissez-faire answers that didn’t actually settle my constant suspicion.
“Your weird roommate with the pink hair said you were here, okay?”
His eyes looked off, and his smirk accompanying his confession made it seem like a lie. Almost everything he said was a lie, so I left it alone.
“So who do I call for a private plane with no paper trail and knows who my boss is?” It was a loaded question.
“When did he say he needed it?”
My eyes squinted at his question as the card reader beeped for me to take out my card. I yanked it out, still wondering how he knew all the right questions and answers.
“Nine. Who do I call?”
I grabbed my groceries in the single bag she managed to use for my English muffins, tea, veggies and peanut butter I settled for instead of making my own almond butter like I wanted to.
With his arm around my shoulders, I walked through the exit, and he leaned into me even further. He was a human leech.
“Let me take you to dinner, and I’ll handle it all, dollface…” His sultry voice, devoid of any true life experience, hummed in my ear.
“I should probably call my boss and confirm the plane. Plus I need to work out, meal prep for work... “ My voice trailed off with excuses I knew he wasn’t listening to. Oscar only heard what he wanted to, and right now, I wasn’t saying anything he wanted to hear.
Opening my car door for me was all part of his good guy act. He seemed like the perfect gentleman at all times. That mask never broke, slipped, or became invisible.
“Go home, do you, and I’ll pick you up at 8. You owe me one.”
I did owe him one now, and I didn’t like having unpaid debts. Unpaid debts always bit you in the ass; I knew from personal experience.
My dad borrowed money from the wrong people at the wrong time, right before the financial crash of 2008, and that was a debt they made sure he paid. They trashed his deli, harassed my mom for his payment, and I’m sure there was more they both kept from us. Now the PTSD of unpaid debts was something I would like to avoid.
“Fine. One date and only because you did this for me. Friends, Oscar.” I had to make sure the friends part was the clearest.
He held his hands up as I closed my door and pushed the button on the window letting it go all the way down. “Anything for you, dollface. I’ll see you at 8.”
Oscar was a bundle of triumphant vibes as he walked back to his car that stuck out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood. A Bentley, all red with chrome detailing, valued at probably the same price of two modest houses.
Rich prick status.
I couldn’t confirm everything was
done perfectly, since none of it was actually done by myself the way Grimm intended, but it was done and my breathing was finally back to normal.
One ounce of panic and my mind ran a mile with it. I would dig up every worst case scenario and serve it to myself on a silver platter.
With my hand on the center console, I closed my eyes and tried to breathe in one solid, normal breath. I felt my tight chest start to release, and I started to relax into my seat, finally.
I was a real catch: failed model, fired secretary, not sneaky at all apparently, expected to do things I didn’t know how to do (pack on that failure complex strong), an ex who just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and prone to anxiety attacks, hence the inhaler in my car.
Grimm had better appreciate his private plane, because the lengths I went to deserved a gold star—a real gold star. We both knew he could afford it.
GRIMM
The gunshot rippled through the air, disrupting the soundwaves and peace of being in the mountains all at once.
Elbow to elbow with the other elitists of the world, I watched them play dress up with their weapons and fucking military outfits, like it would instantly give them the skills they needed to hunt down desperate-to-live players.
They looked like dress-up dolls, cult addition.
I had to bite back the laughter, soiling the inside of my mouth. Every year it got me the same way. My arms folded over my chest, I had to put in effort into not making fun of everyone around me.
It was hard enough thinking this wasn’t some kind of bad dream, but to see Russian Barbie next to me now outfitted in green riding pants, knee high boots, and a tackle jacket holding her spare rifle bullets made it even worse. What you wore didn’t matter one ounce; leave it to the rich fucks of the world to lean into a theme.
Vic shot his fist into my arm, making me lose my balance and shift my weight to stop myself from falling over as my body shook with a hostage laugh.
He wanted me to break off a mouthed sorry. Wasn’t happening.