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When the job on Beary was done, I should have left town right away. It was a small place and I didn’t belong. If it were now I would arrange it differently. Now, though, I wouldn’t be so jumpy about getting away. I’d have a little more faith in my work.
Something bothered me about it. Not the kill and not the target. Arden, the voice on the phone, the man who sent files via the cloud and money by wire transfers, he told me, “It’s a simple job. Quick. Easy.”
His tone of voice, the rhythm of his words was wrong. Reminded me of a car salesman. When he tells you about the great price, it’s because the car’s a heap and it’s going to die five miles out of the lot.
And there was another reason I wanted to hang around. But I told myself that was an awfully dangerous idea. One I should forget all about.
I should stay low. Keep quiet. Collect the money from the drop, stay in town for a day or two at most. Do some normal things. Whatever the things were that normal people did at normal times. I thought maybe I should ask one.
One person in particular came to mind. She looked like she might know some normal people. I wanted very much to ask her. Ask her that or something.
This was not a place or a time for entanglement, I told myself that. Even the bloody word, Entanglement, made me hard as a fucking telegraph pole.
The money came through all right. That was enough reason to get gone. Taking cash in amounts like that, whether it’s at a bank counter or it’s a Western Union or whatever, it can be noticeable. It could give people something to talk about. Something to remember. Give others something to follow.
In a normal walk of life, that’s the beauty of invoicing. Part payments, delays. Things can be hidden.
In this kind of work, though, trust is the most valuable and important thing there is. So you don’t ever want to use up the tiniest little bit unless you have to. Nobody trusts anyone for a second longer than they have to. It’s how it is. It’s how you see someone means what they say.
I’d something I needed to research at least, so I went to the library. It was fate. There she was. Alone.
Between the stacks with an open book. She looked up. Her eyes were wet and wide under her strawberry blonde curls. Her sweater heaved and her moist lips parted. It was discipline that kept me there. Fixed. Staring at her.
A long wool plaid skirt. How the fuck can anyone look so fucking sexy in a long, wool, plaid fucking skirt down to below her fucking knees? I wanted to shake her and ask her that. That or something.
Without all of my training I couldn’t ever have stopped myself from rushing, leaping right at her. On her. Shove her through the stack and bring the whole pile of books raining down on us. Rip her white cotton panties.
Grip her hair and look hard in her eyes. Hold her by the strawberry curls and fuck her. God. Fuck her. Feel her cool thighs tremble and squeeze. Slam my hard cock into her yielding, hot, soft, wetness.
She moved back against the books. Her feet were apart. I was fixed on her thighs under the skirt. Down to her knee. Fuck. The corners of her eyes twitched. The tip of her tongue pressed around her lips.
Standing still at that point was maybe the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I never saw anyone or anything I wanted as much as I wanted her. Right there. Right then. But I still had a killing that I needed to get some distance away from. Wrecking public libraries was nothing I’d any experience with, but I’d a hunch that it would bring you into contact with the authorities.
As slowly as I could, I went over to her. Prowled. Stalked. I had to hold myself in check every step. She might have thought I’d sought her out. Hunted her down. Cornered her here.
Do the witness. No loose ends. That kind of a thing.
And in one way she’d have been right. I wanted to do the witness alright. I wanted to rip her apart. I never knew that not fucking somebody could be nearly this damned hard. It wasn’t something I’d ever tried.
I got nearer and her scent shot my pulse racing. Her chin tipped and I saw her show me her throat. No sensible or intelligible thought was left in my head. My mind was drenched in red fog.
Her teeth pinched at her lip. I heard a shudder in her breath.
I seized her by the throat. My thumb was under her chin. I tipped her face up to mine. Her eyes were wide. I felt her nod. Though she couldn’t move. Her hips rocked to me. Like she dangled from my hand.
She whispered and her eyes pleaded.
“Not. Here.”
Her fingers reached for my waist. Her eyes flicked to the big double doors behind me. I understood. Not here. I didn’t know if I could stop myself. I breathed hard and felt her body against mine.
Tasting her sweet breath, smelling her hair, seeing the quiver in her lip, I had to take a kiss. But it would be so fucking hard to stop there. It was pretty fucking hard already. Her hands on my waist, I had to taste her.
I leaned my head down. Touched her lips with mine. Our mouths made a lock. Knowing I would have to stop was unbearable. I didn’t think I would want to stop ever. The whole fucking world could go up in flames and crumble to blackened dust and I wouldn’t care. I’d be glad. Then it would leave us the fuck alone.
Me and the most perfect woman on earth. Me and her breath. Her body. Her soft breasts. Her tightening thighs. Oh, God.
I tugged her hair. Our lips were just touching but my whole body, my whole life, was in the seal between us. The connection.
What the fuck did I think I was doing? In an open, public building. I could be discovered at any moment. The toughest thing I ever did was to rip myself away from her.
If I hadn’t hauled myself away then I would have burned everything down. Stamping out of the fucking library I wished that I had. Nothing mattered. Nothing more than that. And I’d ripped it up. Thrown it away.
My chest and shoulders buzzed. My legs were tight. My jaw clenched. I made too much noise heading down the stone steps. And my balls ached. It wasn’t until then, I was almost to the corner of the street before I even thought, I could have said something to her.
No, I realized. I’d been way too fucking tense and wound up. If I tried to speak, something bad would have happened. Most likely I’d have just roared and growled incoherently like a fucking idiot.
I could have written something down maybe. But I was all about not leaving anything traceable. Maybe this new career wasn’t going to work out for me. Killing people in faraway places seemed like it might be my only option after all. Killing people was all that I really knew, but doing it here at home was starting to look complicated.
OW COULD HE do that? The bastard.
When he let me go and turned away I slid down against the stack. I shouldn’t have let him leave but what could I do? For what seemed like an hour I sat at the base of the bookcase with my legs wide and empty. My dumb skirt hitched and an open book face down on the floor.
I sat, trembling. It couldn’t end like this. If he hadn’t come I could have stood it, or at least I probably could. In my life I hadn’t seen anything like him. If I hadn’t tasted his lips I might have gotten over it. But that was too much. And I still didn’t know his name.
When I saw him come to the big glass double doors, I thought he had tracked me down and come to kill me. Now I wished he had. There was nothing left. In this prim, polite, drab little town, the library was the most exciting thing about it.
Nobody believed me when I said that I studied and qualified and took the job as a librarian because, deep down inside I’m a thrill seeker. Nobody got what I meant. All of the thrills this town has to offer are on these shelves. At least they were. Then. Before the world changed. Now he made the stories, the words, all tumble and fade into dull mumbles. Gray and brown nothingness.
Everything that mattered, all the life that there was in the world walked in, snatched the breath from my mouth, and sucked it out of me. After he turned his back and left, there didn’t seem any point in breathing again.
I didn’t see how
I would get through the rest of the day, much less the night. There surely couldn’t be more days after that.
How I got to my desk, I didn’t remember. How long I sat there I don’t know either. Thoughts drifted like steam off a coffee cup. Where they floated away to I didn’t know or care. I hadn’t even followed them. A tiny splash of water on my hand roused me. Not caring particularly I looked down to see the small puddle on the dark wood desk top. Another drop prickled out of my eye before I noticed that I’d left The Handmaiden’s Tale open, face down by the stack.
Fuck it. There were enough days when nobody came. If anybody had it in mind to visit the library this afternoon, to research their thesis, return a stack of books, just hide out and read, anyone coming for their weekly fix of crime or romance, they were going to be all out of luck.
I picked up my coat, didn’t even put it on. Grabbed my bag and left the book where it was, face down, ass up on the floor. We could have done that. Nobody had come to the library. We wouldn’t have been interrupted. No one would ever have known.
I’d find a bar. That would be a first for me. Maybe even get a fuck. That would make two firsts. All the time, all the years I’d thought that should be something at least a little bit special and never found anyone I felt special enough about.
Now I knew someone who was special enough and more besides. And it wasn’t ever going to happen. So it didn’t matter any more. As I locked the door I tried to care about it. Any of it. He wouldn’t have cared, though. A man like that wouldn’t care about an ordinary librarian. A girl like me. Why would he?
My mental map of our little town should have had all the locations of all of the dive bars, cocktail lounges and saloons. Maybe it did but I couldn’t call any to mind. As I stepped into the sun at the top of the library steps he was there. Right across the street. Leaned against the iron railings of the park. Easy as anything.
HE SIGN ON the library door said closing time was seven. I was ready. I could wait all afternoon. I could have picked up a book. This was my day for thinking of things too late. I wasn’t much for reading though.
At only two-thirty I saw her through the glass panels in the door. No other staff entered the building while I waited. Nor any borrowers with books under their arms. No visitors arrived or left. I watched her turn the key in the lock. For the first time since I was fourteen, I had butterflies.
She turned and raised her head in the sunshine. Even before she saw me, my heart banged like a steam hammer. Her frizzy curls and the peach fuzz of her face caught the sunlight and held it. Kept it to make a glow. The face of an angel and steady eyes like a ten-thousand dollar whore.
When her eyes found me her face lit up. It took on a power. A surge electrified me like every hair and every inch of my skin came alive. I felt bigger. And part of me was a lot bigger.
And then her face changed. She saw someone. I followed her eyes. Walking toward her. A man. I stiffened. He was a plain-clothes cop. And I heard the sound of her voice. A cavern inside me glowed. Anger boiled in my stomach like sulphur.
Was I certain that the man was a cop? One look and you know. The walk, the shoes. Look at those fucking shoes. Somewhere in every town, every city, there must be a shoe store where only cops go shoe-shopping. They sell extra-robust, thick-soled, hard-wearing brogues, Oxfords, lace-ups of every kind. And boots. Buckled boots with heavy welted soles. Like this flatfoot wore.
You can see it in the way they act in a public place. The assumption of authority. It’s there in the clothes they wear, especially when they try to dress like normal people. Always there’s some detail, some combination of color and style that nobody else would make.
And the walk. Cops walk in a way that shows they think they’re better than you. They can go anywhere. Do anything. Say anything they like to anyone. So they think. They’re trained to march, but they never lose the swagger.
From across the street I couldn’t make out what she said to the man. The plain-clothes cop. He was obviously glad to see her. I wanted very much to hear what she said. Almost as much as I wanted to knock him down and take her away.
Her face was a mass of hasty yesses and no’s as she shielded her eyes from the sun. Her other hand was palm down, flat toward the ground. Her feet shuffled. Like she wanted to escape.
Escape to me? With me? Or from me, perhaps. I would be an idiot if I didn’t take account of the facts. She saw me kill a man. She was frightened. In a woman, fear and a powerful arousal can look a lot alike. Especially if you don’t know the woman.
Sometimes, the two go hand in hand. Had she told anyone she’d been at Beary’s office last night? Did someone see her there?
I don’t do regret. Never have. But I was fighting down the feeling that I could have missed the chance. The most important chance I’d ever had. And I let it go. When she said, “Not now.” I could have pressed it. Pressed her.
Not against her will. But it’s not wrong to ask more than once. Ask in a couple of ways.
Seeing her led away by a cop did nothing to raise my mood. I could do nothing about it. But I walked across the street anyway. Got a better view.
She didn’t look back. I was sorry and glad. There was a thought. I didn’t believe it, but it was possible. She could have called the cop. Told him to meet her. Said she had something they ought to know. Something about a killing.
I didn’t believe it but you can’t go assuming things. That was my platoon’s motto. Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups. She walked away. With him. Her hand behind her. Flat to the ground. Like a fucking schoolboy my heart jumped. Just because she was talking to me.
The fact that she’s talking to you, I told myself, And even when she’s talking with her hand, still doesn’t mean she’s not lying. I didn’t believe that she was. Not for a second. But you don’t discount a thing just because you don’t believe it.
I wanted to follow her. Even though I knew it was a bad idea. More than that, I wanted to drive up alongside her. Pull her into the car. Get gone. I had a strong sense that she’d like that. The more I thought about her, the more I saw her, the deeper and stronger my feelings got. That could cloud my judgement. I knew that. But I wanted her.
For a moment, a hot moment, the thought caught fire in my head. Go. Get her. Grab her. DO. IT! Just the thought of action made my body hum. Bad idea. But I wanted it. I wanted her. Now.
Messing with a cop though. Now. Right now. That could turn out pretty bad. Before you go into anything, make sure of your exits. I always expected the work to lean hard on my training. I never thought that meeting a girl would do the same thing.
There was nothing that I could usefully be doing, nothing worthwhile that I could gain or learn. I should get gone and cool my fucking heels. Hide out in a hotel bar. Leave town. Come back in a week. Or not.
Either way, chill. The fuck. I went up the library steps to get out of the street. If I’d stood there any longer, I could have been conspicuous.
Did she arrange to meet the cop, where was she going with the cop, how did she know the cop, how close were she and the cop, inside my head I was raving like a nut. If I didn’t get calm and get a grip, I would be jabbering.
The fact that it was a man, and that the man was a cop made it hard. I read the library opening hours again. That didn’t distract me much. My phone rang. I put my hand in my pocket. Pushed the button to make it silent. That only made it buzz. I wasn’t going to answer it. It stopped. Looking down the street I could still see the two of them.
I wanted to break something. I went down the steps and crossed the street. I walked to my car as normally as I could. All the while knowing that trying to look normal is the surest way to make yourself conspicuous. It makes you look suspicious, too. You act suspicious. Your movements are all wrong. I got into the car.
Killian: The Hitman’s Virgin Page 2