I Hired a Hitman

by Alexis Abbott

  I frown in confusion, tilting my head to one side.

  “But you had all of these awesome ingredients on hand. Don’t take this the wrong way, but your kitchen seems like it should belong to a man who cooks all the time.”

  “Well, that’s been my intention. Occasionally I find the time to eat something substantial, but I spend most of my hours working. I can cook but not very well,” he admits.

  “Oh,” I reply simply. I take a bite of bacon and eggs and then continue a little cautiously, “Have you lived here very long? Not to pry or anything, but Broken Pine is a pretty small town. Most of us who live here have been here for years. Decades. My dad’s family has owned the same property since the turn of the last century. I know just about everybody by now, or at least I can recognize their faces.”

  Alexei sets down his fork, but doesn’t look up.

  “I have not been here very long. But long enough to know that this town is a safe haven. This little patch of country is a refuge. It’s off the beaten path, and I can tell that not too many travelers pass through here. But to me, it’s the most desirable point on the map.”

  I blink in surprise.

  “Really? Broken Pine?” I wrinkle my nose.

  He raises his eyes to meet my gaze, and there’s a stillness, a quiet fire burning there. I feel a shiver tremble down my spine.

  “Yes,” he says with a nod. “For a weary man who wants to slow down and live quietly, there is no better place.”

  “Where did you come here from? After Russia, I mean,” I ask.

  Alexei looks away again.

  “New York City.” He picks up his fork and keeps eating as I gawk at him in total awe.

  “New York? Really?” I gasp. “I’ve always dreamed of seeing New York City. But why? Why would you leave a place like that to come to a place like this? I mean, don’t get me wrong, Broken Pine is my home and it has its charms. But I can’t imagine leaving the big city behind to move all the way out here.”

  “I needed a change of pace,” he says.

  I lean forward, unable to control my interest.

  “What was it like there? The city that never sleeps! I bet it was amazing.”

  “It’s noisy,” he answers, “and filthy.”

  “Oh,” I say, a little put out.

  He tempers the mood with a smile.

  “Like you said, it has its charms. But I grew tired of them. I wanted something different. Quieter. More peaceful.”

  “Here everybody knows each other. The houses are spread far apart, but we still treat everyone like a neighbor,” I muse aloud. “It must be strange getting used to that, coming from a city where you can blend in. Where you can be anonymous. Just a face in the crowd.”

  “Even in a city that large, it’s impossible to disappear. There are always people who know how to find you, no matter how quiet you are and how elaborate your disguise is,” Alexei says in a low voice. Something about his cryptic words gives me an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like there’s something more he’s not saying. A lot more.

  But I’m distracted from the conversation by the sound of my cell phone chiming from the other room. “Oh, excuse me for a moment. That might be my boss or something,” I tell him, hastily getting up to go grab it. I walk into the bedroom and grab my phone from the dresser. I slide the screen open to see a new text message, but to my horror it’s not from my boss.

  It’s from Dean.

  I saw you go home with him last night, you little slut. If you think Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome can keep you safe from me, you’re dead wrong. I’m coming for you, and nobody on this planet can stop me.

  Alexei

  The terrified gasp that comes from the bedroom tells me everything I need to know about the message Daisy just got, and I feel my muscles tense. Immediately, I follow in after her and find her standing there with a hand to her mouth, looking wide-eyed at the phone.

  When she realizes I’m there, she tries to pretend like nothing is wrong, but she soon realizes I can read the situation too well.

  “What is it?” I ask, stepping forward.

  “I…” she trails off, trying to turn away from me, but I don’t plan on letting her act like whatever she’s looking at isn’t a big deal. I hold out my hand with a grave expression, and she’s hesitant at first, but she hands me the phone before sitting down on the bed and staring at the ground vacantly.

  I read the message, and my face goes ashen.

  How dare this sadistic hick think he can threaten a woman like that, much less this one.

  I read over the text one more time, making sure I haven’t missed out on anything and that it is truly from Dean. But there can be no mistake. I knew it in my gut the moment I watched Daisy reading it.

  I turn the screen off and toss the phone onto the bed, and Daisy looks up and meets the icy gaze I’m giving her.

  “I’ll take care of this,” I say.

  Every word has deadly weight to it. She looks up at me with those big, innocent, hazel eyes, and I can see every drop of fear and worry in that gaze.

  “What do you mean?”

  I put a hand on her shoulder and give it a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve been through more than enough, Daisy, and the people of Broken Pine clearly aren’t doing their job watching out for one of their own. I can’t stand by and watch this go on.”

  I walk to the drawer and pull out a towel, along with one of my bathrobes. It’s comically too big for Daisy’s small frame, and when I hand her the armful of fabric, she looks like she’s holding an entire blanket, blinking up at me in confusion.

  “My bathroom is spacious, and the tub is quite comfortable,” I say in a calm, even tone. “Let’s put plans for the day on hold for now. Go enjoy a bath and take your mind off this.”

  “I don’t want to have someone else feeling like they need to fight my battles for me, Alexei,” she says, but that fear in her eyes tells me how desperately she needs a hand where none have been offered.

  “I understand,” I say. “But you want this problem to go away, yes?”

  Her lip quivers a moment, and she nods her head.

  “Yes.”

  “I will take care of this,” I say again, this time in more of a reassuring tone, despite the dark weight the words carry.

  She nods, opens her mouth to speak again, then loses the words in her throat. She gives me a feeble, nervous smile, then makes her way into the bathroom and closes the door behind her.

  I turn and walk out of the bedroom and make my way down the hall to a closet. Opening it, it looks like an ordinary little room with space for a few brooms propped up against the wall and a vacuum cleaner.

  I flick the little lightbulb on and close the door behind me, then reach up and push the top shelf up.

  It activates the mechanism that makes the fake back wall come off its secure locks, and I gently, silently push it back and slide it to the side. Slowly, I lock the closet door behind me and step inside the room I worked so hard to keep hidden.

  It is a room that I hoped I would never have to step into again.

  With a flick of another switch, lights come on in the long, soundproof room, illuminating the racks upon racks of guns I have lined up on display.

  I have more pistols than I know what to do with, three assault rifles, two sniper rifles, a small stock of fragmentation grenades, enough knives to arm the town of Broken Pine, and a stock of clothes more suitable for moving through the shadows.

  My private arsenal is such that if the mafia I used to work for comes looking for me out here in the middle of nowhere, I can hold my own. It would take a small army to take me down, if I had enough time to know it was coming for me.

  But today, I knew that I have to carry out a very different job.

  Today, I need to carry out a job not unlike the ones I did for so long, trading stunning amounts of money for taking human lives. I was a hunter of men back then, a force in the shadows who did the bidding of murderers. There is blood on my hands
from my past. More blood than I can justify.

  Getting away from all that is why I came out here to Broken Pine in the first place. But it seems that I will carry that life with me wherever I go.

  I take a single pistol from the arsenal and begin to clean it, making sure it’s in working order. This pistol has a special sentimental value to me. It is the first weapon that was entrusted to me when I set foot in the United States so long ago as an enforcer for the Bratva.

  The humble Makarov pistol is in as good a condition as I could hope for, and I pull on a pair of black gloves before loading it and placing it into a little black bag along with its suppressor.

  But I still hold out some hope that I won’t have to use it.

  I move to a safe at the far end of the room and turn the dial until I hear a click, and I swing the heavy door open.

  Inside are stacks upon stacks of cash.

  This is my emergency fund—just shy of a million, stashed away over the years thanks to several high-profile assassinations. I have more than this in my accounts, but this is something I’ve been saving for a rainy day. I won’t even need to put a dent in it for what I plan to do today.

  I withdraw about $20,000 from the pile and place it in the black bag along with my gun and a few other tools I use for these kinds of operations. With nothing but my usual outfit, gloves, and my bag, I head out of the room and seal it behind me, listening at the door of the closet before opening it and stepping back out into my house.

  I hear the sound of bathwater running from my bedroom, and I take a deep breath. She listened to me. Good.

  With a final look to the bathroom door, thinking of that innocent face, I silently make my way out the door and head to my truck.

  I put the bag behind the passenger’s seat and take out a device I have stored under the driver’s seat.

  It’s a GPS tracker.

  When I left the bar with Daisy last night, I didn’t go straight to my truck and take us home. I put Daisy in the passenger’s seat and told her that I had to check on something in the bed of the truck, muttering something about a towel I forgot back there.

  In reality, I grabbed a GPS tracker while she wasn’t looking, then slipped into the parking lot. It was all over in less than a minute.

  I found Dean’s truck in no time. I recognized the truck from the store, and I saw a bumper sticker on the back—it was a little picture of James Dean, the rebel without a cause. The thought that Dean had taken to calling himself that was laughable. The sticker was just above and to the left of a tacky pair of truck nuts hanging below the license plate. I stuck the tracker under the truck just in case of something like this.

  I did it to protect her. From the moment I saw the look on Dean’s face when he saw us leaving together, I knew this problem wouldn’t go away on its own.

  Sometimes, I hate being right.

  The tracker shows Dean’s position at a diner in town. It must be his day off.

  I can’t deal with him there, so I pull out of the driveway and start heading into town more slowly than usual, keeping an eye on the tracker as I go.

  For the next hour, I waste time driving around the country roads, waiting. This is the hunter’s game. It’s strange—this is hardly the kind of setting one would expect a hitman to be doing his work. The sun is shining, and the smell of hay and fresh earth is in the air. As I drive by some of my neighbors, they give me a courtesy wave from their drivers’ seats, and I return them, as always.

  Everything about the day is idyllic, except for the rolling gray clouds coming in from the west. The wind picks up, and it starts pushing the ominous clouds closer to town. It will be raining heavily soon, if my instincts are right.

  Good.

  Finally, I see the tracker start to change positions. Dean’s lunch is over, and he’s on the move again.

  I watch the little dot on the screen heading out the opposite side of town down a long, empty road toward the closest thing this town has to a neighborhood on the outskirts. Country “neighborhoods” tend to be made of a smattering of houses along long stretches of road with a lot of space between each one. If your yard isn’t at least an acre out here, then something is wrong.

  I start heading his way, and when I’m about halfway through town, I see the tracker come to a stop at a house. He might be home, but it could be a friend’s house just as easily, so I take it slowly and keep watching.

  To my surprise, I see him start to move again soon, heading further down the rows of side-roads and houses.

  This makes me curious.

  I drive toward the first place he stopped, and I see a long gravel driveway leading to a cozy country house that looks like a patch of paradise. There’s a mailbox at the front of the driveway, and hanging from it is a little sign with a name painted on it in white paint.

  Jenson.

  It’s Daisy’s house.

  Immediately, I feel my blood boiling. Dean stopped by Daisy’s house to see if she was home. If she had been, there’s no telling what would have happened today. Any reservations I had left over about dealing swiftly and harshly with Dean evaporate, and my grip on the steering wheel tightens.

  I check my GPS again. Dean’s signal has stopped at another house a few miles away.

  I put my truck into gear and roar after him.

  Before long, I find myself slowing down and driving by a shoddy-looking bungalow at the end of a dirt path, up against some woods and brush. The yard isn’t maintained at all, and there are even a few car parts not far from a rotting wooden carport.

  Dean’s truck is parked there, and nobody else’s.

  There’s nobody on the road as far as the eye can see in front or behind me, and because of how much open space there is out here, it’s difficult to sneak up on anyone—but that won’t be necessary today. Not with what I have planned.

  As I hear thunder start to rumble overhead, the gray clouds casting a shadow over everything now, I pull down the driveway, but instead of pulling up beside Dean’s truck, I bring mine around the back. There’s a little space between the back of the house and the woods, and in those woods, I see a dirt trail with truck tracks on it. I make a mental note to use that way to make my exit, whatever happens here.

  I bring my vehicle to a stop almost right up against the back of the house. He knows I’m here, there’s no doubt about that. And that’s just fine.

  I quickly put my suppressor on my pistol and tuck it into my jeans behind me, grab the bag, and make my way toward the back door.

  I see Dean’s face at the kitchen window as I approach, and he quickly moves to the door to yank it open as I reach it.

  “You? Your Russky ass had better have a good goddamn reason to be here, or I’ll-”

  My fist flashes up faster than he can react, and my knuckles catch him in the nose, sending him staggering back and clutching his face. I hear rain start to pour on the house just as he cries out in pain and opens his eyes to glare at me as he takes his hands from his face, blood trickling down his nose.

  “You fucked with the wrong guy, you son of a bitch,” he snarls, and he puts his fists up, but I put a hand up instead.

  “That was just for the cow you tortured,” I say calmly. “I’m here to discuss Daisy.”

  His jaw tightens, and he doesn’t lower his fists, but he doesn’t lunge at me, either. For a split second, I notice his eyes dart to a corner of the kitchen behind me. If I know these country people by now, I’m sure there’s a shotgun leaning in that corner that he wants to get to. If it comes to that, I won’t let that happen.

  “Don’t got nothin’ to discuss,” he says. “Come in here and pop a cheap shot on a man on his own property, and you want to talk about it? Ha! It’s none of your fucking business, understand?”

  “Talk might have been the wrong word,” I say with a cold smile. “How about tell?”

  I set the black bag on the counter, and I pop the buttons open and open it slowly and deliberately, wide enough that he can see the piles of
cash inside.

  If there’s one thing that will get his attention, it’s that, and he proves me right. His eyes go wide at what he sees, and he looks at me in complete bewilderment.

  “What the fuck is this?” he growls.

  “This,” I say, “is yours, if you’re smart. I’m here because you’re a piece of shit, Dean, and Broken Pine would be a better place without you. The way you’ve been carrying on with Daisy is unacceptable.”

  “She’s my girl, you chickenshit,” he snarls. “And you got no right comin’ in here and playing homewrecker!”

  “There’s no home to wreck, Dean,” I say. “You’re fooling yourself. She doesn’t want you.”

  “Probably because your commie ass has been planting lies in her head!” he snaps, but I just tap the bag of money to get his attention again.

  “This is $20,000 in untraceable cash,” I say. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to take that bag as a gift from me to you. You’re going to get in your truck, and you’re going to drive far, far away, out of state, and start a new life for yourself. Neither Daisy nor I will hear from you as long as we all live. You don’t have a lot of brain cells left, but surely that must sound good even to you.”

  He scoffs, and a smile crosses his dull face.

  “I got a better idea. I take that cash and Daisy on a little trip while your stupid-ass is recovering in the hospital.”

  He throws a punch at me.

  I catch it.

  He looks stunned as I stand there, holding his fist in my hand almost effortlessly. He’s my size and build, but he doesn’t have the kind of experience I have controlling his body and fighting in hand-to-hand combat.

  I crack a smile.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  I bring my fist into his stomach, and he coughs as I knock him back and release him. The next second, he rushes past me to dive for the shotgun that is indeed leaning in the corner of the kitchen.

  He has sealed his fate.

  In a fluid motion, I reach for my pistol, pull it out, and aim it at the back of his head.

  Thunk.

  Dean’s blood and flecks of brain land on the shotgun, and his body goes limp next to it, dead.