I pull in, and indeed, it looks like nothing inside has been updated since the 80s. Light filters in from the windows far up above, but it’s deathly quiet in here.
She closes the door behind me, and I kill the engine and swing my leg over the bike, parking it.
“Well,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and looking around. “This is it.”
“It’s a fine place,” I say, taking my sunglasses off and tucking them into my jacket. “Your father should have been proud of it.”
“You don’t have to lie, but he was,” she says, laughing softly. “Sometimes I wish I’d been able to take after him and keep this place going, but you know how life goes.”
“That I do,” I say. “Do you know somewhere comfortable we can get settled in here before we start looking around old memories?”
“Good thinking,” Daisy says. “Let me go check out the office, make sure it’s not infested with hornets or anything.”
I chuckle as she heads toward a small office space at the back of the shop, just next to the rear exit. I furrow my brow as I notice the door is open—wide open, in fact. Daisy doesn’t pay it much mind, so I assume people around town are just honest enough that it’s never been something to worry about.
Then a noise at the opposite end of the shop snaps my attention away.
I look over to a stack of old crates full of auto parts, and I see a fallen, rusty muffler moving ever so slightly on the ground, as if something recently bumped into it and it hasn’t stopped spinning on its side.
My instincts kick in, and my whole body tenses.
If I were an assassin hunting a man in a small town, where would be the ideal place to hide out?
An abandoned mechanic shop.
I silently take one of my guns out, and I start making my way toward the crates, aiming it at roughly man-height where the muffler was.
I’m ready to shoot at any moment, finger on the trigger. I can’t let him know I’m coming for him, or it could endanger both me and Daisy. I pray a silent prayer that Daisy stays busy with the office for a few more moments.
If I’m careful, I can at least get the drop on the man behind the crates.
Once I’m close enough, I take a silent, deep breath, then round the corner with my pistol aimed.
...and I hear a scream.
I aimed my pistol about where a man’s head would be, planning to hold him at gunpoint. My barrel is about two heads above the face of the source of the noise—a boy of no more than nine years old, who falls on his rear and scrambles back with wide eyes at the sight of me.
“I’m sorry!” he splutters, face absolutely terrified. “I’m sorry! I’m sor-!”
He starts to repeat the same line over and over again, but I kneel down and lower my weapon, putting one hand on his shoulder and a finger to my lips.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” I say in the most soothing tone I can manage. “You’re not in trouble.”
“Promise?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “But I need you to tell me what you’re doing here. Who are you?”
The boy has mousy hair and a thin face—he isn’t treated well, clearly, and he looks nervous at my question. “Dad told me not to talk to strangers,” he says.
“Is your Dad nearby?” I ask softly.
Another pause, and this time, he wrings his hands. “Promise you won’t tell.”
I put a finger to my lips again and nod.
“I ran from him,” he says. “This place looked really cool, so I came here to hide.”
“Why are you hiding from him?” I ask, my tone as gentle as I can make it.
“He’s mean,” the boy says, and I feel anger rising in me. “He got meaner since we moved here. He yells at me to be quiet and not talk to people, so I came here instead.”
I open my mouth to say more, but something clicks in my mind. “...when did you move here?”
“Three days ago,” he says.
Three days.
What are the odds…?
I stand up and hold out a hand. “Stay here,” I say hurriedly, and I jog to the office to find Daisy. I need to get her and see if she can help me get information out of this kid for all our safety’s sake before we get him the help he needs.
But when I look into the office door, it’s empty.
My heart misses a beat.
She’s gone.
Daisy
“Help! Oh god, help me! Alexei!” I cry out, my heart thumping so hard and fast that it’s difficult to breathe evenly. My lungs are on fire, my throat tight and constricting with fear. It’s like the adrenaline pumping through my veins is paralyzing me rather than giving me added strength. There are a pair of rough, big hands grasping my upper arms in a vice grip, yanking me along and dragging me over the sharp gravel rocks toward the corn field that presses into the back border of the old garage lot.
There was a time when this place was a happy one, filled with light, fond memories that I would revisit on my down days. I have strolled by the garage a thousand times, just reminiscing about how lively and cheerful the place was back when my father was still alive to run the business.
There always used to be loud classic rock music bumping from the stereo system, the twang of dueling guitars, the pebbly roughness of rock ‘n’ roll singers projecting nearly a half mile down the street in either direction. My father ran a tight ship, and he personally trained every one of his employees, making sure everyone was equally competent in every area of the job. I used to love watching him work while I sat there swinging my legs, singing along with the music in my childlike soprano.
But even as a little girl I was afraid of the corn field behind the garage.
Something about it has always frightened me. Something about the vast expanse of green and gold waving lazily in the breeze, the dense stalks and peeling husks riddled with tiny squirming insects while mice and snakes scampered around on the ground.
My childhood fear is now coming to fruition.
I am being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the maze.
“Help me, please!” I shriek, reaching up with trembling hands to claw at my captor’s grip. But he is silent and efficient, yanking me closer to clap a hand over my mouth. He quickly muffles my desperate cries, and before I can try and vise his hands away from my lips, he uses his other hand to grab both of my wrists and pin them together with what feels like a zip tie.
Moments later, he crouches and holds my head between his knees tightly, whipping out a filthy red paisley bandana that smells like stale cigarette smoke and sweat. To my horror and disgust, he ties the bandana securely around my head, stuffing the musty fabric into my teeth to staunch my attempts at screaming for help. Within a few terrible minutes, my mouth is gagged and my hands are bound, and suddenly I am a thousand times more helpless than I was before.
I start whimpering in terror, kicking and wriggling to get away from him with every little ounce of strength and determination I have left. But this hardly helps. In fact, all it does is make my captor angrier.
He yanks me to the ground and gives me a swift kick to the ribs, effectively knocking all the oxygen out of my lungs. I cough and splutter for air, hyperventilating through my nose as the bandana makes it nearly impossible to breathe through my mouth. The pain is intense, radiating from my ribs up and down over my entire body.
Tears burn angrily in my eyes as I instinctively pull my knees up closer to my chest, curled in the fetal position on the filthy ground. My eyes roll to the side, wide and round with fear as I look up at the man hovering over me with a hateful scowl. I can hardly make out any of his features, though, because of the aggressively bright sunshine. It’s noon, and the bright light through the corn stalks turns everything a hazy citrus-greenish color. Between the fear, pain, and lack of air to my lungs, my vision starts to swim and my head pounds mercilessly.
I shut my eyes and cough, shivering even as my body sweats in the summer heat.
“Quiet,” the man hisses. H
e reaches down to pull me back up into a sitting position, then hoists me up over his shoulder. My face is slumped down over his back and every step he takes causes me immense pain from jostling the undoubtedly bruised area where he kicked me.
I can’t see much, and my mind is flooded with panic and agony. It’s too full. Too frantic to form any coherent, helpful thoughts. All I can breathe in is the smell of cheap body spray mingling with musky sweat. Everything is pain and dread as the mystery man carries me away, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of tall stalks, farther away from the only man with any chance of saving my life—again.
I don’t know why this is happening. I don’t understand. It all happened so quickly, and I’m still struggling to catch up and get my brain up to speed. I was in the garage, walking out the back to look around for danger while Alexei spoke to… spoke to someone. And then suddenly, the danger I was looking for found me instead.
But why me? Who could possibly be after me?
I’m nobody.
The man repositions me, hoisting me more securely over his shoulder and I groan with another rush of incredible pain. I close my eyes, feeling weak and sick to my stomach, angry at how easily I can be captured, how easy a target I am.
In the crosshairs together.
That’s what Alexei said.
I should have known to be more careful. Being with Alexei has made me too cocky, too brazen, too sure of myself and my place in the world. But how was I supposed to know that something like this would happen right now? Now, in the bright, cheery light of day.
My mind, confused and overwhelmed, retreats into the dark but comforting crevasse of my old memories. Of being a little girl, only six or seven, and lying in my bed.
I was staring up at the ceiling, my heart pounding and my eyes burning with tears. My night light on the wall had burned out, the little bulb needed replacing. And I was suddenly plunged into the kind of all-encompassing natural darkness one can only experience out in the country, away from the ever-present glow of the city lights. The room was pitch-black and I was terrified, whimpering and crying in my bed.
A moment later, there was a knock at my bedroom door and I yelped in terror. My father came rushing in, pushing the door open to allow a thin pillar of light filter in from the hallway. He knelt at the side of my bed and asked if I was okay.
“Did you have a nightmare, sweetheart? Are you okay?” he asked me, truly concerned.
Tears were streaming hot down my cheeks. I shook my head.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” I told him.
I can still see in my mind’s eye the slow spread of his smile across his softening features. Pity and love reflected back in his gaze. He kissed me on the forehead and told me, “That’s perfectly normal, Daisy. Everyone is a little bit afraid of the dark. But here’s what you’re going to do: the next time you’re in the dark and you’re scared, I want you to close your eyes and picture the sun. Imagine you’re outside running around in the bright light. Pretend it’s daytime and you’re happy and safe. Nothing bad ever happens in the daytime, right?”
I remember nodding.
His logic was sound, at least to my childish ears.
“Okay, Daddy.”
He tucked me back in and said, “I love you.” Then he left.
I closed my eyes and I did what he told me to do. I smiled to myself in my little bed, imagining that the warm glow of the sun was on my skin, and suddenly, I was no longer afraid of the dark.
Nothing bad ever happens in the daytime, right?
I jolt back to the present moment, suddenly choked up and more fearful than ever. Daddy, you lied, I think to myself. Sometimes bad things do happen under the happy light of the sun.
But I can’t just give in. I have to fight.
I summon what little power I can manage, channeling my fear into anger. I somehow swing my legs, bending them to knee him in the ribcage, almost in the exact same spot where he kicked me earlier. He groans in pain and shock and immediately drops me. I fall to the ground with a horrible thump, agony shooting through my prone body. I nearly bite through the bandana as I squeal in discomfort. But as the man reaches to grab me again, I pull my legs back and then jab them forward, kicking him squarely in the ankles with both feet. He crumples to the ground, momentarily disabled.
This is your one shot, the voice in the back of my head tells me.
Run.
With my heart racing so quickly I can hardly remember to breathe, I scramble to my feet and take off through the green stalks, my hands still bound and my mouth stuffed with the bandana. I can feel the sharp leaves and ticklish corn silk brushing against me as I run. I don’t have a single clue which direction I should go. I’m too short to see over the heads of the stalks, and the blinding noon sun makes me disoriented. It doesn’t matter. I know if I only keep running I will find the edge of the field eventually. And besides, I can’t turn back and risk being caught by my captor again.
I don’t even dare look behind me.
I just run.
Alexei
My heart is pounding, and the adrenaline coursing through my veins keeps me from even feeling the green stalks my sprinting body is pushing aside.
I have a knife in one hand, gripped tight and ready to fight. A gun won’t be of much use in these fields, but I have mine still loaded and at the ready at my side.
I never should have taken my eyes off Daisy, even for a second. But I had no idea we had ended up right on top of our pursuers. It all clicked in my head the moment I realized Daisy had been taken.
Whoever is after me came here dragging along his unfortunate son, who ran away from him at the first chance. He then went looking for his boy, tracking him to the auto shop right around the same time that we showed up there.
Bastard probably heard us pull up and hid.
And he’s good at leading me on a winding chase through the cornfield.
I swear, the stalks distort sound in here. My hearing is excellent, and I’ve been tracking them as well as I can, but Daisy’s captor is moving fast and strategically. This is no amateur. I catch his trail one moment, but when I think I’m closing in on him, he changes his direction, and I hear him behind me. The three of us would look like damned fools from a bird’s eye view.
But when I hear him cry out, my heart leaps, because I know Daisy has hurt the son of a bitch.
That’s my girl.
But I also know that her action has put her in danger. This man isn’t after Daisy, not in the long term. He’s after me, and if Daisy is an expendable way to get to me, then he doesn’t have any reservations about killing her.
At the same time I hear the cry, I hear sudden, hurried footsteps running—these ones are faster than the man’s, and I know it has to be Daisy running as fast as she can.
For a split second, I have a choice.
I can try to follow the kidnapper and try to take him down, or I can head for Daisy directly in hopes of cutting him off.
It’s a decision I make in no time.
Changing my course, I race after Daisy’s footsteps.
After barely ten seconds of sprinting full-tilt, I see the edge of the cornfield, and I realize why the chase through the rows was so chaotic—he was taking us on a loop, winding us in circles the whole time.
Bursting out of the field, I see Daisy still running away from it, and she looks over her shoulder at the sound of my exit.
Immediately, she comes to a stop, running back in my direction.
I catch her as she jumps into my arms, and I hug her for half a second before I take the gag out of her mouth and use the knife to cut her free.
“Oh my god, Alexei!” she gasps.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I say, cutting her off. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, I left him behind when—”
She gets cut off again, but this time, it’s by the sound of an engine roaring toward us. On instinct, I grab Daisy and pull her to the side just a moment before a truck com
es barreling out of the cornfield, headed straight for us.
I feel the bumper brush against my back, barely missing us as I hit the ground with Daisy cradled in my arms.
When I look up, I recognize the truck, and all my questions are answered.
“Move!” I shout to Daisy, and I stand up to run with her, back toward the auto shop.
The truck doesn’t follow us, though. It speeds off down the road, barreling toward the countryside.
He’s trying to get away.
We dash back into the auto shop, where I catch the little boy crouching by the shutter door I came in through.
“I wasn’t doing anything!” he squeaks as soon as I rush inside with Daisy.
“Who is he?!” Daisy asks.
“Later,” I tell her, then look to the boy. “Open the doors!”
He scurries to the mechanism he watched Daisy use earlier, and he hits the button just as I jump onto the motorcycle, and Daisy gets on beside me. I rev the engine, and I roar past the boy’s wide-eyed face, blazing down the road to follow the man who tried to hurt the person I love.
Love.
That’s a word that’s going to take some getting used to.
I see the truck of the kidnapper up ahead, and I know I’m going to be gaining ground on him fast. My motorcycle can blaze faster than a truck can, no matter how much ground he has on me. The only question is how well armed he came.
“Who is that?” Daisy shouts at me as I lean forward, reaching for my gun to make sure it’s still there and ready for use.
“Demyan. An old ‘friend’ of mine,” I shout back. “A rival. Real bastard. He took the jobs I turned down—killed innocents.”
“And now they’re sending him after you?”
“No,” I say, “This is a personal grudge. He wants to kill me of his own accord to get favor with the bosses. That’s why he brought his kid along—he doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s doing.”
I Hired a Hitman Page 15