The Hitman and the Escort

by Natasha Stevens

  But I’d learned enough to go to work for myself.

  I moved to another coast. Discreet ads on websites at first, and then a client base fed by enthusiastic word of mouth. The “bro culture” climate of the times was such that going to escorts became the “in” thing to do, for everybody from Google execs to secret service agents.

  I travelled. I ate at the best restaurants. I wore fine clothes.

  I created myself again as every man’s dream.

  A nice clean beautiful respectful girl who would nonetheless fuck for money.

  The 21st century offered a lot of lucrative opportunities to a good whore.

  Vladimir

  I wanted to ask her why she had run, but of course, I know the reason, now.

  Because I had turned into a monster.

  Or really, that’s not correct.

  I had let my monster out. The hateful thing that had always been just under the surface.

  Protecting her from her father. Protecting her from my brother. These were just convenient excuses to let my own monster out.

  There would have been other ways to do it, and if I had been a man, I would have used my brain instead of my fists, my gun.

  But I was still a boy.

  An angry boy with a monster.

  She and I could have just walked away together.

  But I chose to solve my problems with violence.

  And I never stopped.

  So I found a home for myself in a world that needed monsters. That paid monsters well.

  I look in her eyes, and I want to fall into them. Every part of me wants the world to turn backwards, for time to reverse itself, to give me another chance, a chance to choose again.

  But that chance is long gone.

  Chastity

  He sits down, letting out a deep sigh, and despite everything, despite the murders I have watched him commit, I want to take him in my arms and tell him that everything is going to be all right.

  I could have done that ten years ago.

  Instead I ran away, and used drugs and fucking to bury my problems.

  But is it too late now?

  “Vlad,” I say, throat thick with emotion. “What do we need to do now?”

  He shakes his head. “The organization I work for will not allow me to cancel this contract. If I refuse to do it, they will send others after you, and they will send others after me.”

  “Can we … hide?” she asks. “I have … money.”

  He shakes his head. “They know your identity. My organization gave me all my false identities, so they know them. All my contacts are their contacts. They have access to government databases, police records, they can monitor phone and internet traffic …”

  “What can we … do?” I ask again. “How much time do we have?”

  “The video that I made will put them off for a while. But they paid for a body to be found. No more than a few weeks,” he says.

  “What can we do?” I repeat.

  He shakes his head again, looking out the window. “I have a few ideas. But it will be nearly impossible.”

  I sit in silence for a while.

  Finally, I ask, “Vladimir, do you have any warm clothes here that would fit me?”

  He looks at me and nods his head. “I think we can find something. You’re almost as tall as I am.”

  “Can we go for a walk?”

  He smiles at me, and for the first time it almost looks like a genuine smile.

  Vladimir

  I give her some sweat pants and t-shirts that are big on her, and one of my coats that hands off her, and we go outside.

  It’s a beautiful crisp morning, clear and cold. Not a cloud in the sky.

  We don’t speak much as we stroll the trails around the house, enjoying the fresh air and breeze whispering through the pines.

  “Ever seen any … bears up here?” she asks.

  I smile. “Only in the zoo.”

  “Bet you have some nice rainbows, though.”

  “Sometimes.”

  She reaches over and takes my hand and it’s like a shock for a moment and I jerk away.

  But then I look at her, and carefully, take her small hand in mine and hold it.

  PART FOUR

  Vladimir

  I park my SUV at the rest stop.

  It’s twilight, but the sun is hidden behind clouds already. It’s beginning to snow.

  I had arranged to meet a guy named Alan, a computer hacker and documents guy, one of the few guys I knew who didn’t have any direct connections to the Russians.

  He was going to bring me two passports.

  Expensive, real passports, new identities, stolen from dead people but developed with credit histories and now using our biometric data.

  I scan the whole area and I don’t see anything off the baseline.

  But then, I wouldn’t, if the Ghosts are waiting for me.

  There’s forest across the road and on both sides of the rest stop, and the road, two-lanes, stretches empty in both directions.

  A million places to hide.

  There’s a family of four, classic Americana, in a big white van. They’re all overweight, even the kids.

  They pull out of the rest stop and get back on the road.

  And I see Alan’s car, a new model Mustang.

  And another car. A Lexus with tinted windows.

  I know whose car it is.

  My heart freezes and I scan the tree line, the roof of the building in the rest stop that houses a toilet and a passageway with a few vending machines.

  No cameras.

  Vassily steps out of the car, wearing an expensive-looking wool trench coat. He is holding his hands at shoulder level, palms facing me. His stern face and grey hair match his grey eyes and the grey clouds.

  My contract arranger. My former commander.

  The boss.

  The Major.

  “We can talk, Vladimir,” he says, a note of warning in his voice. “I didn’t need to come at all. You know that.”

  Fuck it.

  I step out of my own car, a non-descript Toyota SUV. My leather jacket is unzipped to allow me access to the Sig Sauer 227 .45 ACP in my belt holster. Of course, I have a few more goodies hidden on me, and in the car.

  And I’ll probably need every one of them.

  Chastity

  The cabin is so pleasant and homey, although I’m wondering if that’s just compared with the sex dungeon beneath it.

  It’s got a fireplace, and I sit in front of it with a glass of wine.

  Like a normal person, almost.

  We’ve been living together like normal people for a week.

  Almost.

  We didn’t talk about death, or prostitution. We talked about movies, about food, about travel.

  But it seemed natural. We were both honestly curious about some of the logistical parts of each other’s lives.

  After the long walk in the woods, I went back to bed, and asked him if he’d sleep next to me.

  He said no, because he didn’t want to wake up in the night and hurt me.

  I nodded and slept alone. I missed him.

  I woke up early the next day and cooked breakfast for him.

  He told me he had an idea.

  Vladimir

  The Major’s grey eyes are watching my hands, at first, but finally they meet mine.

  He’s waiting for me to speak.

  “My brother,” I say. A question, a statement, a threat.

  He nods.

  “You knew it?” I say.

  He shakes his head. “No. You think he arranged for a billionaire to be killed just to get at you? His group is very powerful now, Vladimir. And they want a seat at the table. Billionaires don’t die because of one man, or five men. It’s an agreement of dozens of powerful people. Extremely powerful people.”

  I shake my head now. “We’re the most dangerous killers in the world, and you’re scared?”

  He spits a laugh. “This isn’t the schoolyard, Vla
dimir. Not even the prison yard. It’s not about who’s toughest.”

  “And you want a seat at the table, too,” I say.

  He nods. “And you know what you need to do. You think of going to kill your brother, I’m sure, but that wouldn’t stop it.”

  “Alan. He gave me to you?”

  He shakes his head again. “He’s in the trunk, dead. You still think of this as a schoolyard fight. We’re not talking about crime gangs, or even soldiers. These are governments. They have access to satellites, Vladimir. Satellite photos of your place. They saw two figures walking. They knew you wouldn’t be out walking with a prisoner.”

  “You told them where my …”

  “Get it through your head, Vladimir! These people are at the top. Do I need to say it? FSB. Russian government. They followed you with satellites from the moment you drove off in the billionaire’s limo.”

  “A fucking … meth dealer, my brother is a meth dealer, who made deals with Skinheads,” I say, beginning to tremble with rage. “How does he connect with these people?”

  “He’s very rich and he’s now dealing with one of the biggest arms dealers in Russia,” he says. “You don’t need to use your imagination why the death of the billionaire that criticized the Russian government might make certain people very grateful.”

  “And he’s dead. And so is his wife. But the girl isn’t going to die,” I say.

  “I was afraid you would say that. I know that there’s no changing your mind.”

  He looks into my eyes, and I know then that he’s there to kill me.

  I guess I knew from the beginning.

  My brother might have suspected I was one of the Ghosts, but it would have to be the Major who confirmed that.

  Nobody else could do that.

  Chastity and I are both sacrificial offerings.

  Chastity

  We walked in the woods and watched movies together and talked of innocent and trivial things while he made arrangements to get some fake identities for us.

  There would be plenty of time to talk of serious things later.

  He doesn’t smile or laugh much, but I found myself laughing a lot.

  Maybe I’m just so fucking glad I’m not dead.

  And glad to see him again, no matter what.

  He doesn’t want to sleep in the same bed as me; he sleeps on the sofa.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I might hurt you,” he says matter-of-factly.

  On the third day, I got up in the middle of the night and crawled under the blanket with him on the sofa and he didn’t even seem to wake as he wrapped his arms around me and our hearts beat together all night.

  For once both of us slept peacefully all night.

  The next night we slept in the bed, and I swear I felt him trembling a little. We kissed, but that’s all, and drifted off together.

  The next night I took his clothes off.

  “I might hurt you,” he says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. I sit on top of him, and take his hard cock in my mouth, loving it and worshipping it with all the love of the first time. My heart was pounding.

  It felt like the first time.

  The next night I made love to him.

  He lay flat, his hands spread over his head, holding on to the headboard.

  There were quiet tears flowing down his face as I climbed on top of him and made gentle love to him, my hair falling over my face, and it felt like a prayer.

  It was just a beautiful as the first time, the first week we were together.

  Together we made time run backwards. Both of us were innocent kids in love again, if only for a few precious precious moments.

  And as the sun goes down on a grey day outside, I’m lost in a daydream about it, staring into the fire, so I don’t notice that the electricity has gone off until I hear the alarms.

  Vladimir

  The Major had been like a father to me.

  A mentor, a friend, a teacher.

  They’d been counting on that reaction in me. Some hesitation in doing what I would need to do.

  I smile at him. “Vassily, when they called us Ghosts, they were more right than they knew. We barely exist. We’re seen and heard occasionally. But we’re dead.”

  He nods, and as he steps back and pulls his handgun out of his belt and fires, a blindingly precise and practiced and smooth motion, and I close the space between us with an effortless leap, pushing the gun barrel down with one hand and I hit him in the throat as hard as I can with the other hand, crushing his trachea.

  He makes a wheezing, rattling noise as he starts the process of asphyxiation.

  The shot echoes up and down the empty road and birds flap out of the trees.

  That’s how quickly death comes.

  I grab him by the collar of his coat and pull him between me and the building with the toilets as a guy in a black-and-grey flannel coat peers out from the corner, fifteen yards away, handgun in front of him, and opens fire.

  The bullets hit Vassily’s body and I fall behind the car and I fire back around him.

  The guy ducks behind the building.

  I know he’s going to do one of two things; duck lower to change his position and then pop back out to shoot again, or run around the building.

  I aim my gun at the wall at the approximate position of a man squatting.

  He ducks lower and pops back out again, and I shoot him in the head twice.

  He disappears behind the corner again for a moment, and then crumples onto the pavement.

  Someone with a rifle opens fire at me from the trees across the road. I roll and crawl forward, putting the car between me and the gunner.

  Another bullet thunks into the doors of the Lexus, which probably has a moderate level of bulletproofing. I’m squatting behind the wheel and engine block.

  I search Vassily’s pockets for his keys, and find them.

  The shooting stops and I open the driver’s side door and get in, sliding into the driver’s seat, keeping ducked low as more bullets hit the windows, and I start the engine and leave scorched rubber and blood behind me as I peel out over Vassily’s body.

  The side window stars but doesn’t break as a bullet hits it.

  I speed back towards the cabin.

  Chastity

  Alarms.

  He told me what to do.

  I get up, still wearing nothing but a pair of panties and one of his t-shirts, and run down to the closet, pulling open the secret panel, hitting the keypad.

  I hear something that sounds like a thunderclap, but I guess it’s just the front door being smashed open.

  I take a deep breath to make sure I don’t screw up the keypad combination, and the door is closing behind me just as several men rush into the cabin.

  Vladimir

  I use my cell to call the number of the phone at the cabin, but there’s no connection.

  I concentrate on driving as fast as I can.

  The roads are starting to get slick with snow. The Lexus has a full tank, anyway. It had taken me two hours to get to the rest stop, but I’d gone slowly, paying careful attention to the cars around me and the things I passed.

  Looking for the trap which I’d then walked right into.

  I look down at the blood staining my jeans, draining out of me over the expensive leather seats and onto the floorboard.

  Shit.

  Chastity

  I go past the second door and down the ramp and into the room he described as the Panic Room.

  I make sure the door is sealed behind me, and turn on the ventilation system. There’s bottled water, dehydrated food, energy bars, blankets, weapons here. A person could hold out here for a long time.

  I don’t know anything about guns, but I pick one of them, a pistol, up out of the wall rack. I remember people in movies pulling the top part back, and I try to do that and it won’t move.

  I put the gun back in the rack.

  He’d offered to show me how to shoot but I�
�d just shook my head.

  The room is basically a big closet, steel lined. There are monitors and a telephone line to the outside.

  The thought of calling 911 under the circumstances seems a little silly, but I pick up the phone anyway, and am not terribly surprised to find it’s dead.

  The screens are operational still; cameras show me the woods around the house.

  And there are men everywhere.

  Men with helmets, bulletproof vests, and big rifles.

  Vladimir

  I’m not very surprised to find that the Major’s car has an excellent medical kit in the glove compartment.

  There’s a high-end field dressing, self-adhesive with anti-microbial and quick-clotting substances on it, and I open my jeans and slap that on the bullet hole in my upper leg.

  It’s a big hole. It will slow me down, but the femoral artery wasn’t hit.

  Thankfully.

  And then I get back on the road.

  I can’t drive as fast as I like, because the snow is starting to come down harder now as the sun goes down.

  But this gives me some time to focus.

  Forget about all the extraneous emotions that have been distracting me recently.

  I think of how happy I’ve been for the last week, with her, and then I put that in a box and close it.

  Happiness won’t be necessary tonight.

  I forget about emotion and concentrate on doing the job I will need to do.

  Chastity

  I can’t stop shaking.

  So many men!

  It’s difficult to count them, because the different cameras might be showing men from different angles.

  I see at least seven or eight outside the house, and several trying to break through the doorway down to the underground bunker.

  I can’t hear anything. It’s very quiet in the shelter room. There seems to be a speaker but maybe it’s turned off.

  How could I have gotten involved in this?

  And more significantly: how can Vladimir get me out of this?

  I should hope that he sees what’s going on and just drives in the other direction and keeps going and gets away.