TO DIE FOR

by Sandra Ruttan

  “Th-thanks Mick. I owe ya. I swear,” Twitch jammered, wiping a tear from his cheek as I turned to look back at him. “I’ll never talk to nobody again.”

  “I know,” I said. I pushed Angus’s hand back at an awkward angle and pulled against his finger again. The first bullet cracked through Twitch’s skull, right between his eyes, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  My hand squeezed Angus’s one last time. Then I pushed Angus’s hand down. The gun slipped from his grasp, falling to the floor.

  I’d planned on taking Twitch to the cabin in the woods, where I’d killed Johnny. It seemed like a fitting place to kill Twitch after all these years.

  Unfortunately, Angus Campbell had gotten in the way. But at least I didn’t have to worry about dealing with him later.

  The sirens were getting louder again and I drew a deep breath, had a momentary regret that I’d given up smoking, and eased my body back against the seat.

  Drugs, extortion, racketeering. Angus had a rep on the street and with the cops.

  And thanks to his visit to my office the evidence against me was locked securely in my desk, while I had the proof in the glove compartment that Twitch was Angus’s latest target.

  Proof with his fingerprints all over it.

  ***

  I mentally ran over my story in my mind one last time. Such a shame I was doing a favor for a friend, taking him to the airport, when a local criminal came to collect on a debt…

  Last Shot

  ** Alternate Ending **

  “Plenty of jobs out there involve killin’ and you don’t see those guys, cryin’ in their beer, moanin’ about it. Look, it ain’t personal. It’s business.”

  I lifted my gaze just enough to stare at Dack across the top of my glass, I was slouched so low. He was leaning back, tapping his fingers on the table, twisting around to scout the room, undoubtedly pissed that I’d claimed the corner table and the chair against the wall. I don’t like having my back exposed. Force of habit, I suppose.

  “Name one.”

  “Huh?” Dack’s eyes pinched together slightly as he turned from looking at the figure at the pool table, bent over, lining up her shot. Specifically, pulled his gaze away from the backside of the blonde broad’s pants, unless I missed my guess.

  And I seldom missed. In anything.

  “Name one of these fucking careers.”

  “Jesus, man. Butchers. Farmers. Cops.” Dack shrugged, but his face lengthened. He sighed and turned in his seat, facing me head-on. “Look, this is a job. It ain’t no different than what you did working for Uncle Sam and you know it. Only thing is you make some real money.”

  That, and I could go to jail. I didn’t point that out to Dack. He was a company man, through and through. If there was one thing I knew about him it’s that he would never try to get out of the game. It wasn’t just his job. It was what he was, and he was good at it.

  “MacDougal send you?” I lifted the glass to my lips and watched him as I took a drink. Good thing for Dack he was good with a gun because he was shit as a liar and he knew it. His eyes widened just a touch, the corners of his mouth twitched and in that second I knew without him saying a word.

  And when he looked me in the eye, he knew I knew. Dack blew out a breath as he shrugged again.

  “So what? Doesn’t make what I said wrong.”

  No, it didn’t. And it seemed to matter to Dack that I hear him, because he’d peeled his eyes off the blonde for more than ten seconds straight and still hadn’t turned back around in his seat. Instead, he was staring down into his glass as though the foam worked like tea leaves and if he looked hard enough he’d see his future.

  The only thing his staring told me was that MacDougal was worried. And if MacDougal was worried he knew I wasn’t happy about how the job went down. In the heartbeat between when I pulled the trigger and saw the head snap back as the bullet imploded right between the target’s eyes I’d earned myself a wad of cash and a nightmare.

  I could see still see those eyes. The surprise…

  I could see those eyes right now, smiling at me.

  The room came back into focus. There she was, sitting on a stool, leaning against the bar, her fingers tracing the edge of a half-empty glass. She saw me watching and flipped the hair off her shoulder, those cherry red lips widening into an enormous smile.

  And those eyes. Crystal blue, sparkling even in the dim light.

  She crossed her long legs. I could tell they were strong, because the short black skirt she was wearing showed them off nicely. Her white shirt was low and tight. I noticed, but it didn’t matter. The eyes were enough to get me to my feet.

  “Hey, what am I supposed to tell MacDougal?” Dack said as I started to walk past him.

  “That we talked and I’m fine.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve gone soft.”

  I could hear him mutter the words under his breath as I walked away. Or did I imagine them? To be honest, I wasn’t sure. I knew Dack. Knew him well enough to know what he was thinking.

  You ever have one of those moments where you block out everything around you and just focus on one thing? The bar, the people, the noise of the balls sinking into the pockets of the pool table and the bad country music churning out of the jukebox all faded away as I walked up to her.

  “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”

  Jesus. First the eyes, then the body. Now the voice. Smooth and low and hypnotic, reminding me of that jazz singer I kept hearing compared to Billie Holiday until I went and bought the album.

  ***

  The next morning I dug around in the trunk in the living room until I found the Madeleine Peyroux CD and put it on.

  “Tough guy like you listening to this kind of music?” She practically purred the words as she wrapped her arms around me. No sarcasm, no criticism. All I got from her was the sense that she liked it.

  Like I’d just shown her I was deep. Sensitive. You know, all the catch phrases for women looking to settle down with malleable guy.

  The kind of guy who can be housebroken.

  That was never the kind of guy I’d been, but that moment, in the big, open room that made up two-thirds of the space in the place where I slept, I decided I could get to like being that kind of guy. Instead of the kind that had a bunch of boxes scattered around, a high-priced stereo perched on top of a crate instead of on a stand because I’d been living one day to the next for so long I’d never even bothered to replace the cheap futon I’d cracked with the last woman I’d brought back to this hole.

  And it had been a while.

  It was time for something more. The way the job had gone, the things I’d been thinking when Dack was trying to talk to me in the bar…

  Time for something better.

  I turned around and looked down into those guileless blue eyes. “You busy?”

  “This morning?”

  “I mean this week.”

  That was how it started. A couple quick phone calls and the tickets were waiting for us. Waikiki. Surf, sand, sun and sex. Didn’t even need to pack bags, I told her.

  “We’ll buy everything we need when we get there.”

  Somehow I managed to talk her into it. More or less between jobs, she’d said. Starting as an instructor in the fall. Doing the odd odd job on call, nothing she couldn’t be away from for a week.

  Which meant I just had to tell MacDougal, who grunted and swore when I called him.

  “You said I could take some time.”

  Silence. “Fine. When will you be back?”

  “A week. Maybe two.” I was pushing it, but then, you didn’t get to have MacDougal’s number until you’d been in for a long while. And once you were in you were in. He never cut bait on his own…

  Except the one.

  The one I was trying not to think about.

  I managed to forget as one lazy week turned into two, and before I knew it I’d spent three weeks in paradise with a woman I didn’t just like fucking.
I actually liked her.

  She seemed to have the street smarts to take it for nothing more than a fling, sex going nowhere but enjoy it while it lasts kind of casual attitude. None of this, “What does this mean?” crap, analyzing our relationship and shit.

  Nope, that was all down to me. She was checking out the pool boy while I was drawing a line down her bikini strap with my eyes, thinking every inch of her was perfect, wondering if she’d laugh at me for saying so.

  She did.

  Didn’t make me stop, though. And by the end of the third week she wasn’t watching the pool boy, or the surfers or anyone else. We didn’t get out of our room enough for her to see them.

  “How is it,” she asked during a candlelight dinner our last night in Hawaii, “that you can afford to take all this time off?”

  The shimmer of flames glowed on her flawless, bronzed skin, on the silk dress she wore.

  I shrugged. “I had a lot of vacation time due.”

  She paused, her wine glass dangling from her fingertips, a playful smile on her mouth as she looked at me coyly. “And your boss just lets you run off on short notice? Or are you the boss?”

  “No, I’m not the boss. But you could call this one of the perks for doing dangerous work.”

  “Hmmm. Dangerous? Not sure what I think about that.” She kept her gaze locked with mine as she took a sip of wine before asking, “What is it that you do?”

  I’m a hitman. I get paid to kill people. Yeah, I could just see that truth hitting home, the shock and disapproval if she knew what I was.

  “Well, to be honest, I work on contract. Sort of a trouble-shooter, you could say.”

  “Ah.” Her eyebrows rose as she nodded. “You get paid to solve problems.”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  She set her glass down, the smile gone. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t like your job?”

  Because I don’t. That’s what I wanted to say. Not anymore. There was a time when it was nothing but what I did and once it was done I forgot all about it.

  Until MacDougal had me take out one of his own. I hadn’t even realized I knew her until that split second between me pulling the trigger and her head snapping back from the impact.

  A split second that seemed to be on permanent slow replay in my brain every time I thought about that job. The look of surprise…

  “Huh?”

  She smiled. “You were a million miles away.”

  “Just a few thousand.” I reached for my glass. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “If you don’t like your job anymore, why not do something else?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. You ever get that in your head, the thought that maybe it’s your last chance to have a whole different life?”

  Her smile widened as she propped her head up on her hand, elbow resting on the table beside her plate.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “A bit melodramatic, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just, I’ve been having this feeling, like I should get out. Do something different. You know, have an apartment with furniture, some place to call home. I’ve been thinking this could be the last shot I have at a normal life.”

  “And is that what you want? Something normal?”

  The candlelight flickered in her eyes, which had the gentle curve of a smile to them. No mocking, no doubting, just questions.

  “Maybe it is. Maybe something normal would be good.”

  ***

  I didn’t think about what I’d do. All that was on my mind was getting out. There were others who’d done the same, been in the game, then cashed out. All a bit before my time, part of the reason I’d climbed as far up the ladder as I had, but MacDougal always spoke well of them.

  Said he understood. Said the life wasn’t for everyone, not forever anyway.

  “Gonna get out while you’re young and can still do somethin’ proper.”

  That’s what he said when I told him. Nodding, a half-smile on his lips though the eyes turned down just a touch at the corners. Approving, but sad. Like he was going to miss me.

  “But I still need you,” he told me. “I need you to do one last job.”

  “I-”

  He stood up, holding his hands out to his sides. “Look, Johnny. I can’t stop you from going. Hell, you know I shouldn’t. You’ve always been loyal, kid. One of my best. Time comes when a man has to make choices about what he wants. Not every woman out there can sign on for this kind of life.” He pointed at my face. “Ah. See, I knew. A woman. Nothin’ wrong with that kid.”

  MacDougal walked around his desk and clapped me on the shoulder. “I just need one last job from you, is all. I’m a bit short, what with you taking off on me and one of the new recruits away. All this family shit interferin’ with business.” He stepped back, sitting on the edge of his desk. “One last job, then you’ve got that clean slate. What do you say?”

  Now I was sitting in a vacant, parked up against the gap in the cardboard barely covering the window, waiting for my target to cross the street. Before I never really thought about the who and why of it all. Just went where I was told to go, did what I was paid to do and forgot all about it. End of story.

  I checked my watch, a gift from Jules. Thought of the way her eyes reminded me of the sea. Five more minutes and I’d be cashing out for good.

  Maybe buy a place up north a bit, on the coast. Maine. Someplace quiet.

  The image of a house and Jules and kids and a boat was all forming in my mind when I heard the crunch of broken glass from behind me and started to turn.

  “Jules.”

  No smile in her eyes now, standing there in black leather pants and jacket, a white shirt pulling up slightly as she raised her hands. I heard the pop, the truth hitting home with the impact of the bullet. That night. In the bar. Dack. Her. All too easy to get her to go away with a stranger. No need to worry about staying longer and longer and changing her plans.

  No job to interfere.

  In MacDougal’s office. I’m a bit short, what with you taking off on me and one of the new recruits away. All this family shit interferin’ with business.

  “Jul…”

  Her face looking down on me as the room went dark.

  ***

  “How’d MacDougal know?”

  Jules turned as Dack walked into the room, nodding at the body.

  “Thought it was obvious he’d gone soft.”

  “Not about that. About you. How’d he know Johnny would go for you?”

  Jules slid her gun into the holster. “He didn’t. Only thing he knew was how much that last hit got to him.”

  Dack nodded. “And you look like that girl MacDougal had him take out.”

  She pushed the left side of her mouth up to form a cold smile as she tucked her shirt in. “Lucky for Johnny.”

  “How d’ya figure?”

  “Anyone else MacDougal would’ve just popped him first hint of doubts. He gave Johnny a chance to decide. He chose a pretty face and a picket fence. If that’s all it takes to pull a man out of the game, he shouldn’t be in it.”

  Jules zipped up her jacket. “In this business you aren’t either in or out. You’re in or you’re gone,” she said as she turned and walked away.