by M. O. Mack
Because that was the cold hard truth, wasn’t it? None of this was really about her—she’d given up on life long ago. It was those poor women who’d given her the strength to finally leave Ed when she’d stood on her porch back in Jersey, nearly pissing herself as she thought about the consequences of defying her husband. She had to be strong. For them.
Emily turned to leave just as a phone rang. High-pitched. Loud. Not in the other room. She looked around and discovered another phone buried beneath those neatly folded newspapers on the desk with the monitors.
Wait. What am I doing? Don’t answer it. Just keep walking. Every time she had contact with a person tied to this damned place, she ended up in a bigger mess.
The phone continued blaring like an alarm in her head. But what if it was Sampson? She could tell him what happened. She could ask him to pay his guy. If it wasn’t Sampson, she’d simply hang up. Easy.
She stepped forward, grabbed the receiver and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Jane. Fucking hell, Jane,” the deep, scratchy voice whispered.
It was Mr. Cold Eyes.
“They have me cornered,” he panted.
“What?” Her blood thinned. “Who?”
“It’s a fucking trap. Didn’t Sampson vet the job you gave me today?” The desperation in his voice was palpable.
The guilt inside her spiraled, sending heat to her face. She set up this job. She, the woman who had no business setting up jack shit. “Um-um-I don’t know. Where are you?”
“Where the fuck do you think?” he spat, keeping his voice low.
Sonofabitch. She vaguely remembered the address—Lasso Lane or something. “Okay. Okay. What do I do?”
“Follow the goddamned protocol, woman.”
The protocol? I don’t know any protocols! “Sampson never told me what that is.” Her voice came out frantic and shaky.
“Then fucking call Sampson,” he snarled.
That was the one thing she couldn’t do. “He’s not answering. I-I just tried him,” she lied, hoping Mr. Cold Eyes would give her another solution. Sadly, he did.
“Then alert the other operators. Some of them have to be in the—”
“In the what? In the what?” Emily pushed, but the line went dead.
She stared blankly at the wall in front of her. There was no one to call. No Sampson. No operators. She had nothing. And it was all her goddamned fault because she’d sent him on that job.
I’ll call the police. She pushed the button on the phone to get a dial tone, but her finger hovered impotently over the nine. Would Mr. Cold Eyes really want the police showing up when he was in the middle of a hit gone wrong?
“God! Dammit!” She stomped her foot. “Why!” Why the fuck couldn’t she just get out of this fucking town, out of this fucking mess!
She tilted back her head and exhaled slowly, grasping at the last wisps of sanity swirling in her head. She couldn’t let Mr. Cold Eyes die. He’d stopped Rick from hurting her. He’d made sure Rick would never touch her again. And after being invisible for so many years, no one giving a shit if she lived or died, that meant something. Pathetic, but true.
She stared down at her black Converse, that Ping-Pong ball in her head going back and forth. Stay. Go. Stay. Go.
Go. The smart thing was to leave and never look back. But do I want to be smart, or do I want to be brave for once in my life? She was tired of living under the heel of fear. She wanted to be strong and good and everything Ed was not.
“Fuck it.” She marched into the next room, grabbed the only revolver she saw, checked to make sure it was loaded, and marched out the front door, locking it behind her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
And look at me Ubering to a gunfight. What could possibly go wrong with this plan? Emily directed the driver to drop her at the corner of Lasso Lane. It was dark out, but she could easily see the neighborhood was made up of your typical middle-class tract homes. Stucco, beige, cookie-cutter construction. Neat front yards. Flowers on mailboxes. They reminded her of the house she used to live in with Ed, but theirs had been in a gated community. Kind of ironic, since the gate was meant to keep out people like him. Criminals.
She thanked the driver and hopped out with the gun tucked into the back of her jeans, underneath her hoodie. A dog barked off in the distance, and a pizza-delivery guy drove by.
Now what? She couldn’t remember the house number for the job, so she wasn’t sure where Mr. Cold Eyes was holed up. Even if she found the place, how did one go about rescuing a hit man? How many people had him cornered?
Okay. Think. Think. He’d likely got to the job site, went inside to “take care of the rat,” then realized something was off. No rat, maybe? Then he’d probably tried to make an exit and found someone, or someones, waiting outside to ambush him.
It made sense, right? If he’d already gotten out, then Mr. Cold Eyes would be on the run, not hunkered down calling for backup.
First things first. Figure out which house he’s in. From there, she’d have to wing it.
Let’s do this. She removed her hoodie and tied it around her waist. She took out her ponytail and put her hair up in a sloppy bun on top of her head. She got out her phone, pressed it to her ear, and started walking. “Oh, hi, Mom!” she said loudly, starting a fake gab about some shopping trip, filling the conversation with lots of “Oh wow” and “No. Seriously?”
Yep. I’m just a regular woman, out for my evening cardio, chattin’ with my mother. Don’t mind me, hit man’s hit men.
According to the map on her phone, which she’d studied on the way here, Lasso Lane was about three blocks long, ending at the cross street up ahead. Sooner or later, she’d have to walk by the right house. Mr. Gray Eyes might hear her voice and signal to her or—
Or I will see a car with two sketchy dudes parked right out front of that house with no lights on. Like those guys right there. Her heart pounded furiously as she approached. What do I do? What do I do? There were likely more guys around back, waiting for Mr. Cold Eyes to come out, right? He’d said he was cornered.
I should shoot them. That’s what I should do.
No. That sounded horrible. She could never just walk up to a person and pull the trigger in cold blood, not even knowing if they were armed. What do I do?
Time was up. The men spotted her but weren’t making any moves. In fact, they seemed like the ones worried about looking suspicious, putting on a show, waving their hands and discussing something. Just two dudes sitting in a car, having a private chat.
She stopped five feet shy of the car, pretending to be engrossed in her phone conversation. “What! Mom! No! Don’t do it!” she yelled into her phone. “Don’t you dare go back to that man!” She started fake bawling. “No. No, Mom.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw the men watching her.
“No! No! You will not go back to him, Mom! He’s a bad guy!”
The hysterical yelling was beginning to get the attention of the neighbors. Lights were coming on in a few more driveways. Curtains moved as people looked out their windows. But, dammit, the men were still parked there.
Jesus. Do something.
There was only one stupid idea that came to mind.
She crossed to the middle of the street, stopped, and then yelled, “Oh, God. I think I’m having a heart attack! Someone call an ambulance.” She fell down in the street.
A man came running out to help. Then a woman.
The blue car drove off.
* * *
After a thorough and very nerve-racking once-over from the paramedics, where she prayed they wouldn’t notice the concealed weapon in the back of her jeans beneath the hoodie tied around her waist, they assured her that her breathing was normal and her heart rate was stable. Their prognosis for the fake affliction? They said she’d likely had a panic attack.
“Must’ve been that conversation with my mother,” she’d said. “Can you believe her? Getting back with Leonard? He smokes around her, and
he knows she has asthma! He’s a gambling addict, and he cheats on her every chance he gets.”
Surprisingly, everyone bought her little ruse, and she went on her way, refusing the ride to the hospital. No need for that since she’d miraculously recovered.
Emily thanked the paramedics, silently noting that while they had not saved her life, their presence had saved someone else’s.
After that, she grabbed an Uber, but as the car headed toward the office, she started having second thoughts. Did she really want to go back there? Her duffel bag was in the office, but those were all things she could ditch. On her person, she had her bank card, a little cash, and a driver’s license. And a gun with a huge barrel shoved uncomfortably down her butt crack. Now I really hate guns.
She could get a cheap motel room, lie low for a few days, then catch a bus out of town. Maybe she could pay one of those “birds” to fly her away unnoticed.
Or I could go back to the office, grab my stuff, and leave the gun. The last thing she wanted was to carry a loaded weapon. Dumping it for someone else to find seemed unsafe too.
As the car neared the office, her mind went back into Ping-Pong mode. Stay. Go. Stay. Go. But she needed to be honest with herself; the real reason she wanted to go back didn’t have anything to do with the gun or her stuff. She wanted to find out if Mr. Cold Eyes had made his escape during the ambulance commotion.
Maybe she’d go back, write a second note for him, and tell him to leave a message on her Google Voice number. That’s what I’ll do. Then off she’d go, away from El Paso, these hit men, and all the shade keeping her from her real purpose.
Once again, Emily directed the driver to drop her off a few blocks away. She hopped out and started walking toward the gas station across the street, but as she passed the side alley, she heard a psst!
She turned her head and noticed the tall, hulking shadow back near the dumpster.
Mr. Cold Eyes?
“Get the fuck off the street, you fucking idiot,” he growled.
Definitely Cold Eyes. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. Silly, because cars and trucks were zooming by in both directions on the busy street leading to the border crossing. Lots of eyes. And it was anyone’s guess if they were friend or foe.
As she approached, she noticed he was dressed in all black, including his baseball cap. A dark-colored duffel bag sat at his feet.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed her and slammed her back to the brick wall.
“Ooph!” He didn’t knock the air from her lungs, but it didn’t feel so great. “Let go, asshole.” She grunted, trying to jerk her shoulders free.
“What the fuck happened back there?” he asked, completely unfazed by her efforts, maintaining his tight grip. He was strong. She was not. And she knew if she said the wrong thing, she would be found the next morning in that dumpster a few feet away.
“I saved your life. That’s what,” she snapped.
“Not that. Who the hell vetted the job?”
So an ass-saving means nothing, huh? It had to her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here. “All I know is a woman came in, said she was there to meet Sampson. I told her he wasn’t there, but I’d take a message. So that’s what I did.”
“So then what, you just handed the message off to me? Those were men from a drug cartel!” He grabbed the front of her T-shirt and slammed her against the wall again.
Fucker! Emily felt the fight building inside but once again found herself repeating the old pitiful patterns etched deeply into her survival brain.
She raised her palms, every inch of elevation burning her pride. “I didn’t know there was a vetting process, and the woman seemed desperate. Her face was all beat up. I had to help!”
He dropped his hands from the front of her shirt, and just like that, his rage turned to frustration. The air between them cooled. “She was probably one of their junkies. You couldn’t have known it was a setup.” He looked away, his gaze fixing toward the busy street at the end of the narrow alley.
She said nothing because the truth was, she’d screwed up. She’d played in a sandbox that didn’t belong to her. Hell, she didn’t have a plastic shovel or a tiny bucket—sandbox basics.
“What happens now?” she asked quietly. The truce felt fragile, like she could shatter it with one misplaced word.
“We clean up.”
“I’m no-not sure what that means.”
“Those men,” he pointed off toward the street, “work for one of three cartels who’ve been trying to get rid of us.”
“Why?”
“Because there are rules, and they don’t like following them.”
Rules? It was the second time he’d mentioned that. The first time was with Rick. The good news was, Mr. Cold Eyes wasn’t going to be asking for his hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
You so sure about that? she asked herself.
With a renewed saltiness, he turned his frustrations back to her. “You need to get ahold of Sampson and tell him it’s time to move.”
“Move? Where?” she asked.
“That’s his problem.”
This might be a good time to come clean. She’d let things go too far, and she was way, way out of her depth. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Sampson hasn’t been checking in.”
“I figured as much.”
Why didn’t he seemed surprised? “Does this happen a lot?”
“No.”
She stared up at his unshaved face, the shadows casting dramatic angles off the hard planes of his high cheekbones and masculine brow.
He added, “People disappear in our line of business. Hazard of the trade.”
“You think he’s dead?”
He shrugged, like it didn’t matter one way or another.
“But doesn’t that make things kind of over?” she asked.
“Over?” He chuckled bitterly.
“Sorry. But I’m new to the, uh, pest-control world. If the boss is gone, how doesn’t that put a wrench in things?”
“I never said it didn’t, but this work never ends.”
She sensed a deeper meaning there; however, none of this was her problem. “Whatever. Fine. It’s over for me,” she said. “I quit.”
“Jane, maybe Sampson left that part of the job description out, but you’ve been misinformed about your options. There is no out. There is no quitting.”
“Sorry?”
“You know too much, and once you’re in, you’re in.”
The rage percolated inside her, but unlike the other times, this rage bubbled to the surface. “Like hell I’m in.” She gritted her teeth.
He stared, completely silent. The unblinking look on his shadowy face told her he wasn’t fucking around.
But why was there no out? She had been hired to answer the goddamned phones! That was it.
She stomped her foot—the only option to prevent her from punching him or breaking her knuckles on the brick wall. “No. No fucking way.” She shook a finger at him. “I did not risk my life running from the psycho-frying-pan just to jump into the hit-man-fire.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“No,” she hissed, “I will not be quiet. And I’m done being told what to do by angry, mean, fucked-up men with guns. I’m done. Done!”
Where this sudden surge of bravery came from, she didn’t know, but one thing was crystal clear: The tectonic plate beneath her feet was crumbling.
Not in a good way.
In a very, very bad way.
She had been running on fumes to keep her head on straight, and now the stress of the past few years—the beatings, the threats, the rage—was finally catching up. The lid holding it all in was coming unscrewed. Yes, now of all moments. In the back alley of a nasty-ass gas station in the worst part of town, while facing a man who ended people’s lives for a living. Here, in this moment, was where she reached the end of her tattered rope. There was nowhere lower to sink. There was no more spac
e inside her heart to hold it all in. She’d been robbed of everything—her self-worth, her real name, her freedom. She’d lost it all, and on top of that, she would never feel safe again. She would never trust again. Add all that together, and she knew there would never be peace in her heart. No happiness. Just revenge.
“Answer honestly, Jane. Have you ever met Sampson?” he asked.
She didn’t reply.
“I’ll take that as a no. Which is very unfortunate because he was supposed to vet you before you actually started working for us, so allow me to fill in the blanks. Sampson is a meticulous organizer. He’s also an insane bastard, but he always has his shit together, which includes having a plan B. And C, D, E, and F.”
“Your point, Mr. Murder?” she growled.
He narrowed his cold eyes. “Speak to me like that again, and I’ll rip out your tongue and mail it to your parents.”
“Good luck with that. I don’t have any parents, and my tongue only gets me in trouble. Especially with men like you.” She paused, noting the room for interpretation. “I meant that in the talking context.”
“Do you have a death wish?” He folded his thick arms across his chest.
“Yes, but it’s not intentional. I’ll shut up.”
“Good choice. And now I’ll give you the opportunity to make another one; Sampson didn’t bring you in by accident. He knew something was going to happen, which means you were given that job for a reason.”
She arched two brows, waiting for him to deliver the punch line to his outrageous, senseless statement.
“He didn’t hire you to answer the phone, Jane. He needed an office manager, someone to coordinate for the operators.”
“That makes zero sense. Zero.” She held up her hand and made an O with her fingers. “He knew nothing about me or my skill set, so why do you assume he wanted to recruit me?” Sampson didn’t even know who she really was. All he got from her was a name, a Google Voice phone number, and an email.
“I never said anything about recruiting you. I said he had his reasons for hiring you.”
“So you’re saying there was a pool of applicants, and he picked me because…?”