“Hi,” I say a little meekly.
“Hello,” he answers gruffly.
Nervously tucking my hair behind my ears, I suggest, “Maybe you want a shower? Get out of those filthy, wet clothes?”
He nods and gives me a rather forced smile.
“Yes.”
Alexei trudges off to the bathroom to shower, leaving me hanging around awkwardly in the den. Suddenly, an urge to investigate possesses me, and I can’t banish the thought. While he’s in the shower, I quietly slip out the front door and run through the little uncovered patch of yard to the carport. With my heart racing and my hands shaking, I open up the truck on the driver’s side, relieved that it’s unlocked. I fumble around, my hands feeling out for his wallet in the same place I keep mine. If I could find his ID, I could dispel those nasty thoughts running through my head.
Instead, I feel something else.
My blood runs cold.
Underneath the driver’s seat is a warm gun. With trembling, clumsy fingers, I pop the clip out.
There’s one bullet missing.
Alexei
I pull my boots back on and stand up, seeing myself in the mirror of the dresser in the third outfit I’ve put on today, none of them too different from each other. A tight white t-shirt hugs my muscles above dark blue jeans, and I pick up a towel to finish drying off my hair.
Usually, putting on a fresh change of clothes is therapeutic for me. It’s one of the simple pleasures in life that makes me feel clean and better for it.
But I have a sense of what’s about to happen in the near future, either sooner or later. What I have done is not something that I will be able to hide from Daisy for long.
I’ve covered up murders many times before, of course, sometimes in person, others from a distance. But for some reason, mustering up a lie to tell Daisy feels both wrong and strangely difficult.
I could say I paid him off, gave him that twenty large and he ran off with his tail between his legs. It’d take her a while to believe me, and to feel safe, knowing he’s still out there.
But even the thought of not totally soothing all her worries about him leaves me feeling a bit cold. I want her to know he’s taken care of for good and that he will never be able to bother her or hurt her again.
The lie is still safest, though. For me. For her.
When I step out of my room and see the door hanging open, I realize that I might have to face reality sooner rather than later.
Daisy’s form darts toward the door from the outside, and then she’s inside, slamming the door behind her.
Her strawberry-blonde hair is soaking wet, clinging to her neck and shoulders, and trails of water run down her forehead and past those furious, wild eyes that are full of accusation and fear all at once.
But most of all, her face is contorted with anger. Her teeth are gritted, and her whole body is very slightly shaking. As she looks at me, her face goes even redder with rage, and she strides toward me and looks like she’s holding back the urge to try to shove me.
I have a head and shoulders on her, my body rock hard while hers is soft and feminine, but all that anger coiled in her body seems dangerous, even to me.
Instead of shoving me, though, she glares up at me.
And even this way, she looks so beautiful.
There’s such purpose in the way she moves, such spirited energy that makes her look so much more alive than anyone I’ve met in my life. It feels so strange to think these things about someone I’ve only really known for less than a day, but there’s something about Daisy that is simply different.
Of course she is.
A few days ago, I never thought I would do such a thing as taking a life without money being exchanged for it. In fact, I hoped I would be able to live out the rest of my life without shedding more blood.
But in my heart of hearts, I knew the whole time that this was a foolish thought.
Killing Dean felt good.
She glares up at me for a silent moment that feels like it lasts an eternity before she finally speaks a question that I do not expect.
“Who are you?” she hisses, her accent coming out stronger through thick anger.
What a question.
I left my old life behind me hoping to let it rest eternally, and in doing so, I have tried to act like a new person—more like what the young man who left Siberia was like before he took a life might have become.
Nobody can escape their past, though.
“Answer me!” she insists, taking a step closer when I don’t respond. I’m still as a statue, reacting to neither her movement nor her tone. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who do you suppose I am?” I say in a quiet, gravelly voice.
“I thought you were just some reclusive guy who’s running from something he doesn’t want to talk about like half the other mysterious strangers out here,” she rattles off.
I raise my eyebrows. She’s not too far off from the truth.
“Am I not?”
I hear her jaw pop from straining it so much, and she points out the door toward the truck. “I found a gun out there, Alexei.”
“Don’t you have a gun?” I say mildly. I’m not in too deep. Not yet. I just have to buy some time before I can find a way to make this all better.
“Yes, but-” she shakes her head, frustrated. “You know damn well what I mean! I found a pistol, Alexei. A pistol with a bullet missing, and was that a fucking silencer in there with it?”
“Why were you looking in my truck?” I ask.
“Because…” she stammers, desperately trying to come up with an excuse.
“Because you don’t trust me,” I finish for her, and she gives me an exasperated look.
“Why is it out there, Alexei?” she asks. “You know damn well how that looks. I need an explanation. What the hell did you go out and do?”
“I told you what I went out to do,” I say. Her eyes go wide, and her mouth falls open. “I went to deal with this. And I did.”
She reads my face carefully, shock growing on her expression.
“Where is Dean?” she breathes.
“Dean is no longer a problem,” I say simply. “You will not see him again, and he won’t bother Broken Pine any longer.”
Daisy puts a hand to her forehead and paces around the room, going to the window and letting her hand run down to cover her mouth and breathe heavily before she comes back up to me and looks me dead in the eye, trying to hold herself together.
“No more word games,” she says. “Alexei, so help me god, I need you to be straight with me and not mince any words.”
I do not reply with anything more than a stare, the tension in the air almost deafening both of us.
“Is he dead?” she asks, nearly having trouble forcing the three words out of her mouth.
The directness of the question, her tone... It manages to take even me by surprise. Like everything has just been stripped bare, robbed of pretense and excuses.
I could lie.
It would be the simplest thing in the world. I’ve had enough time during this conversation to steel my will, even against those endlessly beautiful and searching hazel eyes of Daisy’s. It would just be a single word, no, and I could tell her that he accepted my offer and left. I would have a few other loose ends to tie up, but that would be the bulk of the work done.
But that would be such a betrayal of Daisy that I’m not sure I could live with myself after the fact. The connection I felt last night with this innocent girl is something new and exhilarating. I am a cold man, I know that, but am I so cold that I can have such a feeling for someone and then turn to deception so soon afterward?
It might not even matter. She could be about to turn me in to the police. Whether or not she does, our relationship might be about to end in its youth.
No matter.
I know what answer I must give.
“Yes.”
The single word hangs in the air between us, and I watch all the color dra
in from Daisy’s beautiful, freckled face. Her lip quivers, but she holds her ground and finds the strength for another question.
“Did you…?” she asks, and she doesn’t have to finish the question. I will respect her request to be honest with her.
I nod.
Immediately, her whole body turns, and she tries to run for the front door as she lets out a shuddering gasp.
I catch her by the wrist and tug her back before she can do so much as take a step. I don’t grip her so tightly as to hurt her, but my grip is like a rock, and she can’t go anywhere.
“Let me go, Alexei,” she nearly sobs, keeping her voice to a hoarse whisper. “So help me god, I’ll scream and shout so loud the whole town will hear me if you don’t let me go.”
“He was a monster, Daisy,” I say. “You nearly said as much yourself.”
“He was a human being, Alexei!” she says, turning to face me with red-rimmed eyes.
“A human the world will be better off without,” I insist, taking a step closer to her. Seeing her shrink back is like a knife in my gut, but I can’t let her go like this. “He was a sadist, Daisy. He tortured the animals under his care, and he would have treated you just like one if he had gone on living. Look me in the eye and tell me that is not exactly what you’ve been afraid of since you caught him outside your house.”
She doesn’t respond. She just glares up at me, a glare full of defiance and disbelief.
“This was for you, Daisy,” I say firmly. “I do not kill without purpose, and I’ve been around the world enough to know a natural-born killer when I see one. Dean was a danger to every vulnerable person and animal in this town. Worse, he knew he could get away with anything he did. How many times have you heard someone say ‘boys will be boys’ before turning a blind eye to something he’s done?”
She winces, and I know I’ve struck a truth even she didn’t want to confront.
I don’t want to tell her point-blank that if I hadn’t killed Dean, it would be her in a body bag before too long, by his doing. I think she knows it, deep down.
I use my other hand to take her by the small of her back and pull her closer, looming over her and looking into her eyes. She doesn’t resist, but she is trembling.
“Daisy, I would not have done this if I didn’t fear for your life,” I say. “New York City. Moscow. Siberia. You think these places aren’t riddled with killers? I know one when I see one.”
“It takes one to know one, doesn’t it?” she says.
That stings.
We glare at each other for a long moment before I speak again in a slow, deliberate tone.
“Do you think I am like him?” I ask simply.
Her jaw sets, but many moments pass before she replies.
“No,” she breathes, letting her head fall a bit. “No, I...I don’t think so.”
“Men like Dean do not deserve to live,” I say emphatically. “They are men who live only for themselves, men who see women as things to take for themselves and hurt them when they fight back. I saw this firsthand. You saw this firsthand. Can you honestly say the world is not a better place without him?”
“I’m no killer,” she says weakly.
“No, you’re not,” I say, and I release her wrist to cup her face in my hands gently. “No blood is on your hands, Daisy. Not a drop. This is on me. This is a path I’ve walked many times before.”
She looks up at me with fear in her eyes again, and I nod.
“I would not have done this if I did not think I could do it quickly, cleanly, and quietly,” I say softly. “I know what I’m doing. I’m keeping you safe.”
Tears well up in her eyes, large tears of a woman who has been pushed to her limits and has nowhere to turn to. She starts to sob.
I draw her close and press my lips to her quivering ones, and her whole body shudders before I hug her to me. After a moment, she starts to put her hands on my sides.
There is a knock at the door.
She jumps back, eyes as wide as plates, and she looks toward the door in terror.
I don’t jump, but my gaze is locked on the door just as intently, my heart pounding.
Shit.
The sheriff.
Sometimes, jobs go quickly and easily. Other times, even if you take every precaution and make all the right moves...something goes wrong in a way you cannot predict. All it takes is for one unnoticed bystander to hear something strange for the police to get involved.
And in a small town like Broken Pine, the reclusive Russian farmer built like a professional fighter and living alone outside town is a prime suspect for just about anything.
“Daisy,” I whisper, getting her attention. “I can’t control you, nor do I want to. All I can say is please, for both our sakes, don’t say anything. Let me handle this.”
I don’t give her a chance to reply before I cross the living room floor and pull the door open, my mind racing with all my experience telling lies to the authorities.
Daisy
My heart is racing a million miles a minute. I hurriedly wrap the robe more tightly around my body and duck out of the way, pressing myself against the wall as Alexei walks over to answer the door. I watch with wide eyes, breathing heavily as he opens the door slowly and cautiously.
I’m torn, wondering if it would be better or worse for the sheriff to find me holed up in a murderer’s house. I know the fingers will already be pointed at me, since Dean told everyone that I was his girl. And as far as everyone else knows, he’s a good boy who must have been treating me well.
Nobody would ever believe me if I claim that he is—was—a menace to society and especially to women. Even though everyone I know seems to like me and respect me, I cannot be certain that they would side with me if it came down to a question of Daisy versus Dean.
The Ashcrofts have been living in Broken Pine for many generations, nearly as long as the Jensons have. The families have lived side by side, bound in friendship and neighborly love for as long as most folks still living can remember. Broken Pine isn’t exactly known for its family feuds or, well, conflict in general. There’s never anything worth fighting about here, really. At least on the surface.
I strain to hear the first words said, since I can’t see who’s at the door from this angle.
To my surprise, the voice I hear sounds like it belongs to a child. A little girl’s high-pitched, excited squeal of, “Alexei!”
Not half a second later, a tiny girl who could hardly be older than four or five comes barreling through the front door, arms outstretched. She runs straight up to Alexei, throwing her little arms around his leg. She’s got gorgeous coppery-red curls pulled into two twin pigtails, flouncing as she hugs Alexei tightly. He chuckles and bends at the waist to pat her on the back as a second voice enters the conversation.
It’s a man’s voice, but not Alexei’s.
“Hey, man. Good to see you!”
Alexei looks up and holds out his hand for the mystery man to shake. They greet each other like old, treasured friends as the little girl clings to Alexei’s leg with a huge grin on her freckly face.
“How’re you doing?” Alexei asks.
“Great, great. Can’t complain. Not that that stops me most of the time,” the man jokes in a very familiar country drawl. “Lily here has been keeping me busy, as usual.”
“We went camping last weekend!” Lily burst out excitedly.
“We did, that’s right,” says the man with a good-natured laugh.
“That sounds like a real adventure,” Alexei says. “Come on in.”
I gasp and panic, wondering if I should bolt across the house and hide in the bathroom or something, not wanting to be caught hanging around this murderer’s house in a robe. That might look a little bit compromising.
But before I have a chance to even make that split-second decision, the man and his daughter are walking into the house, and the little girl spots me instantly. Her brown eyes go wide and ecstatic at the sight of me.
“Alexei! There’s a lady here!” she gasps, pointing at me with the tactless innocence of a child. Both men look over at me, and as soon as the second man’s eyes fall on me, he squints and tilts his head to one side in confusion.
“Hey… Daisy Jenson?” he asks, scratching at his chin thoughtfully.
It hits me that I recognize him, too. It’s Bradley Downing, an old classmate of mine from high school. He was a couple grades ahead of me, a senior when I was a sophomore. But I remember seeing him around school.
In a town like Broken Pine, the classes are pretty small, and you get to know everyone quickly enough. I realize, though, that I haven’t seen him since high school. Last I heard, he married his high school sweetheart, who happened to be a girl from my grade, Jenny Parsons. She and I were never close friends, but I remember her being a sweet and pretty girl whom everyone got along with. I feel terrible that I never kept up with her and Brad after they were married, but once Daddy died my life kind of got a little crazy.
“Brad,” I say, wrapping the robe more tightly around myself and forcing a smile.
“Boy, I never expected to see you here,” he chuckles. “How you been?”
“Fine. Just fine,” I tell him, feeling extremely awkward standing here in my robe.
“Good to hear! Look, I’m sorry I never got around to your daddy’s funeral,” he says suddenly, shaking his head. “Lily was just a toddler when it… it happened, and I couldn’t find a sitter. It’s hard for a single dad, you know. But I do want you to know how sorry I am to have missed it. I should’ve been there.”
“Oh, no. No worries. I’m sure you and Jenny had your hands full,” I tell him, smiling, completely missing the single dad part.
His face falls instantly. Alexei’s jaw tightens and he glances at Brad’s face with a concerned look. Brad sighs and ruffles his fingers back through his hair, looking like he’s trying to say the right thing.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Jenny, uh, well, she died. When Lily was born there were… complications. You know. These things, they just happen sometimes,” he explains stiffly.
I feel my cheeks burning.
I Hired a Hitman Page 8