AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dean’s eyes turned inward, mesmerized by the barrel. “I’m telling you, I don’t know the contractor’s name. I just got a call that services were needed.”
“Who’s the target?”
“Didn’t get it yet. I swear.”
Great. Dean was an idiot, but there was a ring of truth in that.
“Listen, I’m cold. Can I get my jacket?” Dean’s eyes shifted again, his voice heavy with faked innocence now.
Shane looked at him, almost pitying him in his stupidity. The dumb fuck has a plan. He pulled the gun back. “Sure.” His assignment was to take out Casey Dean, world-class hitman, but if this guy was a world-class hitman, Shane was Princess’s date to prom. Some guys were all PR, no game, and Dean was sure as hell turning out to be one of them.
When Dean had put on his jacket, he looked downright confident, his eyes sly as they went to the desk. “So I really don’t know anything, but I’m definitely leaving town, just like you said. Okay if I get my passport from my desk drawer?”
Shane nodded. You bet. Commit suicide with my gun. That’s what I’m here for.
The man turned his back and opened a desk drawer, and Shane brought his gun up.
Dean swung around, a small gun in his hand, and Shane fired two quick shots, hitting him in the chest. Dean fell back, disappearing behind the desk.
Below, the music pounded, drowning out everything. Shane walked forward, gun at the ready, and rolled the man over, surprised to find there was still a spark of life in his eyes. Not surprised to see his two shots were so tightly grouped they appeared to be one hole, but not happy to see them an inch off target.
Fucking Joey, making him lose focus. Fucking Keyes. Fucking little Agnes, too, whoever she was.
A funny look came over the man’s face as Shane aimed the gun at his forehead. His eyes blinked rapidly. “Wait,” he gasped. “We can make a deal.”
“Oh, come on,” Shane said. “You know who and what you are. You lied. You’d have completed the contract because otherwise you’d never get another job.”
“No—” Dean said, and Shane fired, the round making a perfect black hole in the center of his forehead. Shane leaned over and checked Dean’s pockets, finding a business card with just a phone number on it. He pocketed it.
He pulled out his cell phone and hit number 3 on the speed-dial.
It was answered on the first ring: “Carpenter.”
“Painting’s done. You’ll have to help him on to the next world on your own, Reverend. I won’t be at debrief.”
There was a brief moment of silence. “Wilson won’t like that.”
“The target had no information on contractor or his target.”
“Roger.”
Shane put the phone away and picked up the voucher.
Then he crossed the room to the window, reached under his shirt, retrieved the heavy-duty snap link attached to the rear of his body armor, clipped it to a bolt holding a drainpipe, turned outward and jumped, the carefully coiled bungee cord snapping out until it jerked him to a halt three feet from the street and bounced him back up half the distance. As he went down the second time, Shane pulled the quick release and landed on all fours. Right next to his Defender SUV.
Keyes again.
Fuck.
At eleven thirty, an hour and a half after the kid had gone screaming through her kitchen wall, Agnes pulled another pan of chocolate-raspberry cupcakes out of the oven, stopped rehearsing her story for the next wave of police—It’s a nonstick frying pan, so it’s really very light, it couldn’t kill anybody—and wondered what Dr. Garvin would say about all of this. Well, she knew what he’d say. He’d look at her and say, “How are you feeling right now, Agnes?”
And if she said, “Fine, Dr. Garvin,” he’d give her that look that said, My ass, Agnes, except court-appointed psychiatrists couldn’t say that.
She tried to remember the list of terms he’d given her to help her describe how she’d felt when she hit her fiancé with the frying pan: Mean/Evil. Worthless. Revengeful. Bitchy. She remembered wondering where outraged and betrayed and sickened by the unsanitary assault on a dining surface had been. “He was actually doing her on my clean kitchen table,” she’d told him, in what she’d thought was a perfectly calm voice. “I mean, Jesus Christ, of course I hit him with a frying pan!”
“Hit who with a frying pan?” Joey said from the doorway.
Agnes looked up from where she’d been talking to the cupcakes. “Am I going to go to jail for hitting the kid with the frying pan?”
