by Zahra Girard
It’s enough to make a man sick.
“Are… are… you one of them?” He says.
“I have no fucking clue what you’re going on about. I’m just a man, here to do a job.”
“Look, I’ll get rid of the records. Just let me live. I didn’t give the reporter much, not really, and if you let me live, I can go get rid of the rest and no one will know. I’ll pay you, too. I’ve got a 401K with almost one hundred thousand in it…”
I stop listening.
I don’t want to hear this.
I don’t want to find out that the man I was supposed to kill is actually a rat that just spread his taint to that fucking gorgeous woman back at the bar.
Tainting her is my job.
I cock back the hammer to my pistol.
“That’s enough, Elliot. Hold still,” I say.
My voice is cold, distant, deadly. The man is such a pathetic sight. On his knees, crying. Not even a man, really.
My footfalls echo through the alley as I stride forward. I stop just behind him. He stays on his knees, still crying, still with his hands folded like he has a prayer.
I press my gun to the back of his skull.
Hard. Hard enough to bend his head forward.
He shuts up.
Draws one quivering breath.
I pull the trigger.
Smoke and the hot scent of blood fills my nostrils.
A scream.
I look up.
Illuminated in the harsh glow of a streetlight at the end of the alley, wearing a look of horror and a stunning little black dress, is my Whiskey Gal.
I don’t think; I react.
Keeping the gun trained on her, I bring one finger up to my lips.
She nods — one quick jerk of her head that sends her hair fluttering around in a distractingly sexy way.
Fuck me, this woman is trouble.
I need to get her out of here and figure this shit out.
I know what I should be doing. I know what I need to do. I don’t leave witnesses. I don’t let rats bring down my family. I’m a professional.
But I don’t give a damn about any of that right now.
I want Evelyn. I need Evelyn. That fact stirs inside me like a living thing. Writhing and roiling through every fibre of my being.
Lochlan MacCailin can burn in hell for all I care. There’s no way I’m letting anything happen to that angel in a black dress.
I keep my eyes locked on hers as I stride forward, stopping only to scoop up Elliot Meyer’s dropped wallet. This is supposed to be a robbery-murder, after all.
She stays rooted in place, pupils dilated, chest flushed, and a look of stupefied horror on her face.
Hunching down, I bring my face right to hers.
“Whiskey Gal, if you want to make it out of this alive, you’ll come with me and do exactly as I say. The only way you survive is as my property. Got it?”
She nods.
She’s mine.
Now for the fun part. Getting the hell out of here and figuring out how to un-fuck this whole goddamn situation.
Chapter Six
Evelyn
All of my hopes and dreams just went up in a puff of gunsmoke and steaming-hot blood.
I just watched an execution.
My body is running at a million miles a second; my heart is thudding so loud in my chest I can’t even hear what he’s trying to say to me.
I feel like I’m going to faint.
And I feel so numb.
It’s like my mind is floating above my body and all I can see is that gun in my face and the crumpled, lifeless form that used to be Elliot Meyers.
Am I going to die?
A hand brushes my cheek and I start to scream, but that same hand slides over my mouth, silencing me.
My executioner holds me tight and still and after a while I feel like I’m in control of my body again.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.
No, but you did just make me your property.
I look in his eyes. They’re cold, but burning with such intensity that — even though I’m scared witless — heat surges through my body.
I just watched him kill someone, how can I be thinking about fucking him at a time like this?
There’s blood on his hands, but all I care about is how those hands would look caressing my body.
I blink.
He lets go of my mouth and I breathe deep.
“You need to come with me, ok? I promise, you’ll be safe, but you need to trust me.”
He sounds so sincere.
But then, he sounded the same way back in the bar and now look where we are.
“Ok,” I say.
That’s the only thing I can say. My head is still spinning.
He slips the gun back in it’s holster and immediately I feel a weight slough off my shoulders. Then he takes my hand and leads me out of the alley.
I tell myself we’re just out on a walk — a date — and everything is going to be fine. I’m safe, I’m happy, I didn’t just see a murder.
We get to his car. It’s nice, without being ostentatious. A black Audi, with leather everything. Like an automaton, I let him open the door and sit me down inside. He buckles me in, then gets in himself.
The engine quietly roars to life. We get on the road, heading south on empty Boston streets.
As the pistons in the motor fire, the gears in my head start turning. My mind settles back into my body and everything really hits me at once.
I just saw a murder.
A man was killed for talking to me. Executed. Gun to the back of his head, crying messy tears, begging for the mercy that he knows isn’t going to come.
And, sitting in my bra — right above my heart — is the cause. A little flash drive. A couple ounces of plastic and metal cost a man his life.
I’m still numb, but I can feel the tears burning down my cheeks. I can feel the pain as my stomach clenches so hard I worry I might puke. I can feel the sobs angrily tearing their way up my throat.
“Shh, it’s going to be ok,” he says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to be ok.”
“How can you say that?” I say, probably louder than I need to.
But I’m so worked up, I hardly notice I’m screaming.
Smirking, he looks over at me. “I own this fucking city, lass. What I want, I take, and anyone who gets in my fucking way doesn’t live long enough to regret it. Stick with me, and I’ll keep you safe.”
I can see the blood on his fingers.
He terrifies me. Deep down to my very core, he’s shaken me in a way beyond words. But even so, he comforts me. I believe him.
It doesn’t stop me crying. It doesn’t get rid of my pain. It just numbs it.
We keep driving. South. We’re in the Roxbury neighborhood, maybe.
He pulls into the parking garage for a highrise apartment building, into a spot marked ‘private’, then kills the engine.
Slowly, deliberately, he gets out of the car, walks to my side, and opens my door for me.
He extends his hand.
I take it.
“Come on, Evelyn, let’s get you upstairs.”
He leads me to an elevator, presses the button, and we stand there together, in silence, our breath fogging in the chill night air.
It takes a long time for the elevator to come, and the whole time, I can’t stop thinking about Elliot, knelt there on the pavement, gun to the back of his head. And Connor, standing behind him, almost nonchalant, and then pulling the trigger.
“You murdered him,” I say.
The elevator door opens.
Still holding my hand, he leads me inside. He presses the button for the top floor.
“I did.”
His voice is so casual, like he’s talking about the weather, or the score of last night’s Red Sox game. Not like he just took a man’s life — a man he didn’t even know, a man who was trying to do the right thing.
The doors shut on
us.
I realize I’m stuck in a steel box, alone, at night, with a killer. It’s hard to breathe.
My chest clenches and the oxygen feels like sludge in my throat, filling my lungs, suffocating me.
Connor wraps his arms around me and holds me to his chest. Somehow — I don’t fucking know how or why — his touch makes me feel a bit better.
He really does own me. My body knows it. It senses what he wants and it responds.
“I know it seems crazy right now, but we’re going to work this out. You’ll need to trust me. Completely.”
I stare at him, mute.
He lied to my face in the bar, he blatantly snuck off with another woman, he murdered a man right in front of me, and now he wants me to trust him?
I find my voice, three floors from the top.
“How can you say that? How can you ask that of me?”
It hurts just to talk. It feels like every word has talons dug into my throat, and I have to wrench them out one by one.
“I’m not asking. I’m telling. You’re in way over your head, Whiskey Gal. But then, you know that already. You’re smart. What you should also know is that I wasn’t lying back there at the bar when I said you were the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The elevator dings.
Time to get off.
Connor takes my hand again and leads me out of the elevator.
The hallway is dark, a few spare fluorescent lights cast an unearthly glow that casts unnaturally huge shadows everywhere. There’s just a few doors for the whole floor, all leading to large, penthouse apartments, filled with people who probably wouldn’t care if I screamed.
Considering they live next to a killer, I doubt they’d even blink.
He leads me to the end of the hallway and opens the door. I step inside, and I hardly see anything. I feel so detached, so numb, and, when the apartment door loses behind me, I feel trapped.
This place is my prison.
And no matter what Connor says, I’ll probably die here.
Chapter Seven
Connor
This is not my fucking job.
I put bullets in heads; I don’t fix ‘em.
But seeing that look on Evelyn’s face — even having the slightest inkling of what she’s feeling — it just cuts me up inside. I can’t see her hurt like that.
And knowing what might be in her future? The mess she will be in if word gets out that Elliot Meyers talked before he died and the reporter who spoke to him is still alive… No, I’m not going there.
I lead Evelyn to my living room and sit her down on my couch. The room’s dark, and I keep it that way, just turning on one small lamp to give me enough light to find my good whiskey and a couple of glasses. I pour us each a glass and hand her one.
She stares into hers and I see the tears shimmering in her eyes. Just the sight of them — the idea that she’s hurt — stirs me up like nothing else.
I want to fix it. I need to fix it.
I put my arm around her. At first, she shrinks away from my touch before settling in to the crook of my arm.
Glassy hazel eyes look up me.
She’s beautiful.
“You’re one of them, too, right? With the MacCailin family?”
“Yes,” I say. There’s no reason not to tell the truth. I have no regrets about my family. I’m proud of it and who I am.
“You killed him because he had information about your family, right? So why aren’t you going to kill me?”
Her voice gets stronger with each word, and by the end, she sounds damn near accusatory.
“Because I don’t kill women.”
That’s a lie. I’ve done it before — I’m a professional — but I prefer not to think about those few times.
She shakes her head. “I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Never said you were.”
“I know it’s the information that got him killed. And if I know what he knows, that makes me a target. So, tell me, how do I make it out of this without dying? You told me to trust you, so prove it, Connor.”
I don’t have an answer, except to take a sip of whiskey and avoid meeting her eyes.
I hate not knowing things. Life used to be so simple. They gave me a name, and I knew what I needed to do. I knew where I stood with Lochlan MacCailin, I knew my place in the family.
But this woman that I’ve known for all of an evening just threw everything into question.
No, I chose this. Because she stirs something inside me that I just can’t quite place. Feelings and desire that go beyond anything I’ve ever known.
“Connor? How do I make it out of this alive?” She says again, firmer this time.
“Drink your whiskey.”
She does, then she looks me in the eye. The tears are gone now, pushed back to the edges and replaced with steely resolve.
“I want you to know something. My name is Evelyn Thomson. I’m from Tacoma, Washington. My parents are Gary and Judith Thomson. I have a younger brother, Matthew. He’s studying engineering at Boise State,” she says.
I interrupt her. I don’t like her tone — it’s too determined, too in-my-face.
“Why are you telling me this?”.
She just shakes her head and keeps going. “I work at the Boston Times. I send a lot of my paycheck home, because my dad got laid off from Boeing and they scrape by trying to help pay for my brother’s college. They depend on me.”
The gal’s words are putting me on edge. They’re biting.
I try to look away, to focus on something else, but she turns and grabs me by the chin and looks into me like she can see my fucking soul.
“My best friend, Karen, is a nurse at Boston Samaritan. She’s getting married in a just over a week and I’m going to be a bridesmaid at her wedding.”
“Evelyn?” I say. One word, but a question enough.
I’m unnerved by this determined young woman.
“I want you to know who I am, Connor. Because I doubt you think about any of your victims. So if you, or anyone else from your fucked-up family is going to kill me, I want you to know just how many innocent lives you are destroying.”
She practically spits the words in my face as a steely-eyed challenge. Each and every syllable a slap that leaves me stinging.
I finish my drink, letting the burning brown liquor roll around on my tongue, matching the searing feelings inside me.
Then, I look her in the eyes.
“Ok, lass. Two can play this game. You want trust? Fine. My name is Connor Halloran. I’m a killer for hire, member of the MacCailin crime family, a fucking true Irish son of Boston. I own you. And I swear to fucking god, the devil, the angels, and Saint Motherfucking Patrick, that I will keep you safe.”
Chapter Eight
Evelyn
“You should get some sleep,” he says.
He doesn’t stick around.
He sets his empty glass down, gets up, and leaves me alone on the huge leather couch, staring into my whiskey and wondering just what the hell is in my future and how long I’ll even be alive to have a future at all.
But his promise still rings in my ears.
And a part of me believes him. Trusts him.
I take two more sips and realize just how exhausted I am. It all hits me at once, and it’s like every ounce of energy in my body drains out and evaporates.
I saw someone die today. That thought alone is enough to make me shut down.
Far off down the hallway, a door opens and shuts and then Connor comes back into the room, carrying a pillow and a set of flannel blankets.
He stops at a fair distance, looking at me, concern evident on his face.
It’s strange to see a man like him — someone so openly bold, crass, and ready to flip the whole world the bird — looking concerned.
Connor kills people. He’s a criminal. He is dark and dirty as sin. But he wants to make me comfortable.
He holds the blankets out.
“You should get some rest. You can sleep here, if you want, or you can have my bed and I can take the couch. Whichever’s most comfortable for you. Though I have to warn you, I haven’t had a chance to tidy up. So the bedroom’s a fair fucking mess.”
His rolling, deep accent, is calming like a lullaby.
“I’ll sleep here, thanks,” I say.
Nodding, he spreads the blankets out on the couch, making a tidy little bed.
I stretch out on it once he’s done, and he lays a blanket over me. Then Connor shuts out the light and starts back down the hallway towards his bedroom.
In the dark, I feel so alone.
I can’t talk to anyone about what’s happened to me, because the second I tell them, I’ve put their lives in danger. I can’t leave, because right now, the safest place in Boston is this murderer’s apartment.
“Connor, wait,” I call out.
Halfway down the hallway, he stops. I see his dim shadow turn towards me.
“Yes?”
I don’t want to be alone right now. I can’t.
“Will you sit here with me for a while? Please?”
He’s silent a second. I hear one slow, heavy breath.
“Sure, lass,” he answers.
He comes back into the room, pours himself another glass of whiskey, and sits down at the opposite end of the couch. One hand tentatively settles on my feet.
I relax a little. I feel a little safer. A little more secure. Like somehow, I might have a little hope.
Connor doesn’t say anything. And I don’t either.
I just shut my eyes and count the steady beats of my heart until sleep overtakes me.
It takes a long time. I don’t know how long — hours, maybe — but through it all, Connor doesn’t move. He stays here, hand on me, a steady rock for me to cling to in this whole swirling mess that my life’s become.
Maybe, just maybe, I won’t drown after all.
* * * * *
I wake up alone.
The whole night went from a faint dream of hope to being filled with nightmares, with seeing the image that’s burned on the back of my eyelids: Connor standing over Elliot’s lifeless body.
It’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but as soon as I sit up, I pour myself a small bit of whiskey and down it in one gulp.