by JB Lynn
He nodded. “As soon as you tell me it’s done.”
Our business concluded, he got up to leavethe cafeteria.
Before going, he shared one last bit of wisdom. “Ya know, I get that you want to blend in and all, but it might not hurt if you flashed those killer gams of yours once in a while.”
“Gams?”
“Gams. Sticks. Pins. Show a little leg.” He winked at me and strolled away.
I went and bought a chocolate pudding.
Chapter Fourteen
YOU’D THINK THAT with everything on my mind I wouldn’t sleep a wink, but I slept like Rip Van Winkle. My slumber was so deep that the only thing that woke me was Godzilla shouting in his most autocratic voice.
“Wake up, you fool!”
I knew bringing him into bedroom had been a mistake, but since he was on a hunger strike, it had only seemed fair to let him watch a late night episode of Iron Chef with me before I dozed off. His cage had displaced my reading lamp and alarm clock on my night table, so that he had an unobstructed view of the television. He was such a diva.
“Wake up!”
“Shut up,” I muttered. “Dead is good. Dead is all you’re getting.”
“Dead is what you’re going to end up if you don’t pay attention.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a man with a gun.”
That got my attention. “Where?”
“Here.”
I squinted into the darkness. With my clock on the floor, there was even less light in the room than usual. All I saw were shadows.
“Here? Where?”
“Standing in the doorway,” God whispered. There was no reason for him to whisper. It’s not like my intruder, assuming there was one, was going to understand him.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. Like the clock, the lamp was on the floor, so it wouldn’t make a handy weapon. Somehow I didn’t think a pillow fight would take out the prowler. I couldn’t just lie here waiting. I had to do something.
I could scream. Maybe I could wake my neighbors and scare him off.
He moved so quickly, I never even sensed him coming. A hand clapped over my mouth as I readied myself to yell.
Instinctively I lashed out. Remembering Patrick’s self-defense instructions I tried to gouge his eyes, break his nose, or get my hands on his throat.
“Go for the jugular! Go for the jugular!” God cheered, mere inches from my head.
If I could have reached his cage, I would have used it as a weapon.
“Hey!” My attack caught my late-night visitor off guard and he tumbled on top of me, pressing me into the mattress. I tried to knee him in the groin but he was too heavy. All I managed to do with my heaving efforts was to settle his pelvis onto mine.
“Take it easy, Mags,” he said breathlessly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Patrick! What was he doing here in the middle of the night?
“I’m going to take my hand off your mouth now, Mags. I need you to not scream. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
He removed his hand from my lips. “Don’t scream.”
“Have you ever heard of knocking?” I asked breathlessly, trying to ignore how good it felt to have his body pressed against mine.
“I didn’t want to attract attention.”
Fighting the urge to pull him closer, I instead shoved him off of me. He fell to the floor with a thud.
“That’s a girl!” Godzilla cried.
Ignoring him, I whisper-screamed in Patrick’s general direction, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Bringing you a gun. I told you when the time—”
“You said you’d be in touch.”
“Well, we certainly did our share of touching,” he quipped. In the darkness his accompanying chuckle was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. “Not that I’m complaining.”
The comment felt like a sensual caress, and my traitorous body responded. Remembering the warmth of his body on mine, how it had felt to have him nestled between my legs, had my blood heating and my heart hammering.
Fortunately, Godzilla chose that moment to pipe up. “Ch-eeeee-sy.”
“What is that squeaking noise?” Patrick asked. I could tell from the way the shadows shifted that he was getting to his feet.
It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. My brain wasn’t getting all that much oxygen, what with my blood rushing so much lower.
“That’s God.”
“God?” There was no mistaking the skepticism in my murder mentor’s voice. If he knew that my father was a murderer, he probably knew that my mother was . . . unstable. If he thought I was actually talking to God (the deity) I was screwed.
“Godzilla, God for short. He’s a brown anole lizard.”
“You have a lizard in your bedroom?”
I sat up. “He . . .” I couldn’t very well tell him that God had wanted to watch TV with me. “He’s Katie’s.”
“Oh. I understand.”
“You do?”
He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight. “Sure. He reminds you of her.”
It took concentration to keep my left thigh from rolling into him. “Something like that.”
“If that was true, you’d feed me live crickets,” God nagged.
I ignored him. The mention of Katie had reminded me that I was pissed off at Patrick Mulligan for more than just his breaking into my place and almost giving me a heart attack. “You told Delveccio I’m not ready.”
“You’re not.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“It’s my ass that’s on the line.”
“No!” I shoved him again, but this time he was ready for me.
He didn’t fall off. He didn’t even budge. He stayed as still as stone. As still as Katie lying in that big bed.
“This is my niece’s life that’s on the line. And now Delveccio says that if I don’t do it by the end of the week, he’s hiring Gary the Gun to take care of Alfonso and any liabilities. I’m a liability. So you don’t get to say I’m not ready.”
“You’re too emotionally involved.” Standing up, he walked out of the bedroom, leaving me there in the tangle of my sheets and thoughts.
By the time I got up and dressed, Patrick had the kitchen light on.
“Don’t you dare leave me in here!” God demanded.
Picking up his cage, I plunked it down right in front of where the infuriating redhead sat at my kitchen table, pawing through my mail.
“You’re a runner?” Patrick managed to not sound skeptical, but I noticed he made sure not to look in my direction as he asked the question.
“No. My friend Alice got me subscriptions to both those running magazines. She thinks I should tackle a marathon and raise oodles of cash for charity.”
“She’s a runner?”
“No. She just thinks I’d be less bitchy if I had a healthy outlet to relieve stress. When we were fifteen I came home to find my bedroom rearranged. She’d read a book on feng shui and wanted to clear my chi. Two years ago she took me on a silent meditation retreat so that I could relax. Do you have any idea how freaking boring a silent retreat is? No talking. No TV. No radio. I was ready to kill someone by the time we left.”
“Which brings me to why I’m here. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink or anything?”
“You broke in here, but you can’t crack the fridge open yourself?” Grabbing two diet sodas, I slid one across the table at him like a deranged barkeeper, before sitting on the other kitchen chair. The table wasn’t very wide, and my knee knocked his. The sexual awareness I’d thought I’d tamped down flared back to life.
I inched my knee away from his, but the energy was still there.
I could tell that he felt it, too, by how still he went.
“I’m sorry I knocked you out of my bed,” I blurted out. I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for knocking him to the floor,
or lamenting the fact we’d missed the opportunity to roll around in my sheets some more.
“Me too.” His voice was heavy with regret as his gazed bored into mine.
My mouth went dry. “I . . .”
He broke eye contact and focused on his soda. He cracked open the tab of the can and redirected the conversation back to the business at hand. “You seem tense. Rule Number Three is: Don’t get emotionally involved.”
I glared at him. Blank-faced, he stared back. It was almost as frustrating as trying to stare down the lizard. “How can you expect me to not be emotionally involved?”
“You’ve got to get control of your feelings. It’s dangerous. They can make you screw up.”
“So that’s how you do it? You just go around not feeling anything?”
He shrugged. “For me it’s a job. It’s a business. You don’t go getting all upset when someone calls and tells you they totaled their car, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Emotional distance is an asset in this world. You’re upset about your niece. You’ve already lost it once with Alfonso. And now you’re worried about Gary the Gun.”
“So you’ve never been emotionally involved with a job?”
“Well. . . . once.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m hungry!” God complained.
“Oh shut up!”
Patrick eyed me warily.
“Not you,” I told him. “God . . . zilla.” I tapped the glass nearest the pile of freeze-dried crickets on the side of his cage, before draping a placemat over the glass, blocking his view of us.
“That’s a petty trick,” God grumbled.
Ignoring him, I looked back at Patrick. “You tell me your story.”
“I went to confession.”
Throwing my hands up in the air, I said, “Okay, fine, don’t tell me about it.”
“I am trying to tell you about it.”
“But you’re saying you told a priest first? That I’m not your first? I don’t understand—”
Reaching across the table he caught one of my hands in his. He stared right at me with those October sky eyes of his and murmured seductively, “You’re my first, Mags.”
My stomach flip-flopped and my lungs forgot to do their job for a long moment. Patrick Mulligan might be a little old for me, and definitely unavailable, but damn the man was sexy when he turned it on. With just a touch, a look, and four words he had me melting. Heaven help me, if he suggested a return trip to my bed, I would lead the way.
“I went to confession to do a priest.”
I yanked my hand free of his and rocked back in my chair. Nothing like a cold dose of contract-killer reality to ruin the mood.
“Isn’t it some sort of extra bad sin to kill a priest?”
“Dunno.”
“So you’re okay with killing a priest?”
“Nope. I was good with it. Better than good.”
“Why would anyone want a priest murdered?”
Patrick took a long swig of his soda, letting me figure that one out for myself.
“Oh.”
“Uh huh. Kid’s father tried first, but he was an accountant. What did he know about getting the job done? So the dad, who was only looking out for his kid, he sits in jail, which in the long run was the best thing for him. While the priest gets away with a couple of flesh wounds, gets discharged from the hospital, and goes back to work.”
“And you went to confession.”
“Finished the job right. The dad who started it had the perfect alibi. His avenging ass was in lock-up when I did the job.” He drained the rest of his soda. A half-smile danced on his lips. I wasn’t sure whether it was because he’d enjoyed the drink or if he was appreciating the memory of a job well done.
“Did you get paid for that job?”
He shook his head. “In money? No. But knowing that I’d made the world a better place for that dad and his son and who knows how many others? That, as they say, was priceless.”
“So you got emotionally involved and it didn’t backfire on you.”
“I got lucky. Don’t get me wrong, I think that you being willing to do this for your niece is admirable. I think Alfonso Cifelli is a bastard and deserves to die. I just don’t want our mutual friend sicking Gary the Gun on you. He’s got no honor, no sense of decency. He gets off on hurting and killing people. He tracks and hunts them like they’re prey.”
An involuntary shiver shook me to my core as I remembered the man from the hospital who’d frightened me so and seemed to enjoy it.
“The guy is scum,” Patrick declared.
“I thought you’d . . . take me out, if I don’t do the job.”
He looked away, suddenly absorbed with studying the drawings Katie had done for me that were plastered all over the fridge. “I just said that to scare you. I don’t kill innocent people. I have a code.”
“The man’s a murderer, and he’s going to lecture you about some code of honor?” God called.
Paying no attention to him, I asked, “A code?”
“Yeah. I only take jobs where the victim deserves to be dead. If Delveccio needs to take out a witness in order to affect the outcome of a trial, I’m not the man for the job. Unless the witness happens to be some sort of low-life violent criminal. But if it’s just some Joe Schmoe, he knows not to come to me. He gives those jobs to Gary the Gun. You would be a job that would go to Gary. Delveccio knows I’d never hurt you.”
“Oh.”
He leaned toward me, a wide, boyish grin suddenly making him look a decade younger. “Now that we’ve got that misunderstanding cleared up, do you like me just a little bit better?”
I nodded.
“Good. I hate playing the heavy. I don’t get my kicks from scaring people.”
“Then you shouldn’t have broken in here in the middle of the night.”
“I forgot to give you a phone.”
“I’ve got a phone.”
“No. I brought you a dump phone. Only I have the number and I’ll only call it from another dump phone. That way there will be no record of our calls.”
“Ask him if he brought any fucking crickets!” God shouted.
“Geez that thing is loud.” Patrick pulled the placemat off the cage and stared at my little reptilian companion. “Why is he chirping like that?”
“He’s on a hunger strike. I gave him freeze-dried crickets but he wants the real thing.”
“Alive!” God said.
“Live ones,” I muttered.
“It must be hard on him.” Patrick actually managed to sound sympathetic when talking about the reptile. “He’s in a different place, being fed different food.”
“See!” God boomed. “Even this gun-toting miscreant understands.”
“He must really miss Katie,” Patrick mused.
I stared at him. That thought had never occurred to me. I looked down at God questioningly. He had suddenly busied himself with picking up a dried cricket and examining it.
“The least you should do is get him the food he’s used to. You wouldn’t want him to starve to death.”
“I’ll think about it,” I muttered.
“I’m starting to like this guy,” God said. “He’s a wise man. You should listen to him.”
“But more importantly, Mags. We’ve got to put together a plan for you to kill Alfonso, and keep you alive.”
Chapter Fifteen
THERE AREN’T ENOUGH hours in the day to live a real life and be a killer-in-training. There isn’t enough coffee either. That was my conclusion the next day as I sat at my desk at Insuring the Future.
My middle-of-the-night rendezvous with Patrick had left me sleep-deprived, not to mention grouchy. While he’d brought me a gun along with the phone, I didn’t have a plan with which to use it. He was convinced that the best way to kill Alfonso was not to go chasing after him, but to figure out a way to make him come to me. Personally I didn’t think that kind of thinking made much sense, but t
he redhead was the experienced professional, so I sort of nodded my head in agreement. He’d promised to call within twenty-four hours with a plan of attack.
Meanwhile, I had to follow Life Lesson One to the letter: Don’t get caught, which meant that I had to keep showing up for my crappy job. Barely able to keep my eyes open, I spent the morning taking an inordinate number of calls from people claiming their vehicles had been damaged by hail. I kept a close eye on the clock, watching the minutes roll by, as I waited for my lunch break. I had high hopes I’d be able to run out to my car and catch a quick nap.
Suddenly I smelled pepperoni.
That was never a good sign. Pepperoni meant my boss Harry was lurking nearby. I looked over one shoulder and then the other searching for the department’s manager. Sure enough he was standing behind me.
“Hi Harry.” It wasn’t often that I hoped for more work to do, but I offered a fervent prayer that I’d have to answer my phone. Soon.
“Hello, Margaret. How are you feeling today?” He stepped closer and patted my shoulder, a gesture that was probably meant to seem comforting, but was just downright repulsive.
Fighting the urge to shake him off, I forced myself to stay still. I stared at the phone willing it to buzz. Nothing happened. “Better, thanks.”
“Good. Good. You missed a meeting yesterday. I’d like you to come by my office so I can fill you in.”
“I read the memo.” That was a lie. I’d seen the memo on my desk and folded it up into a small square to tuck under the short leg of my chair to keep it from rocking.
“Good. Good. I just want to go over the details, the finer points with you.”
His hand was still on my shoulder, but now he was kneading my tense muscles. I wondered if I could make a case for harassment. Of course if I did that, I’d draw attention to myself, which was probably not a good idea. Patrick had stressed over and over again that I should make every effort to fly under everyone’s radar. His example of being the state’s hero cop and losing out on making money with his side business was a pretty convincing argument.