I tried to smile, hoping she didn’t find me enticing enough to stay. “Thank you.”
“Did we have sex last night?”
I stood beside the bed and folded my arms across my chest. Her mouth opened a bit at my muscles. I still had the same physique I had back in the military, and it still got the same reactions from women. They never knew the real me – knew Derek Conway – but at least, with the way I looked, they thought they did. Just another built, tough American boy, a modern G.I. Joe.
They had no idea what I did.
They had no idea who I was.
“No,” I told her, “we didn’t have sex. You stripped and then you passed out.”
She looked surprised. “We still didn’t …”
I gave her a dry look. “Sex is only fun when you’re awake, babe.” I stretched my arms above my head and she stared openly at my stomach, from the waistband on my boxers to my chest. Okay, now it was time for her to go.
I told her I had stuff to do in the morning and needed her to move along. I could tell she wanted to at least take a shower, but I wasn’t about to budge.
I had a plane to catch.
Alana Bernal was extremely easy to find.
At least for me. She had a Facebook page under Alana B. Her privacy settings were high, but I was still able to see her profile picture, dressed in her Aeroméxico uniform. She had a sweet yet beautiful face. Her eyes were light hazel, almost amber, both stunning and familiar at the same time. They glowed against her golden skin, as did her pearly white teeth. She looked like a lot of fun, and I could imagine all the unwanted attention she got from unruly passengers in the air. She looked like she could handle them with a lot of sass.
Once again I found myself wondering what she had done.
And once again I realized I couldn’t care.
That wasn’t my business.
Killing her was my business.
I drove to the airport, and for the next two days I began to stalk the employee parking lot, using a different rental car each time. Most of the flight crew I saw looked a bit like her but lacked the certain vitality she had. So I waited in mounting frustration, just wanting this job to be over with.
On day three, just as I was driving past for the forty-second time that morning, I spotted her getting out of a silver Honda, wrestling with her overnight bag. I quickly pulled the car around again and parked at the side of the road, plumes of dust rising up around me. There was nothing but a chain-link fence between us as she began the long walk toward the waiting airport shuttle. Her modest high heels echoed across the lot and she tugged at the hem of her skirt with every other step. Not only was she beautiful, but there was something adorably awkward about her.
What had she done?
No, I couldn’t care.
I looked down at the bag in the passenger seat and took out the silencer, quickly screwing it on the gun that I was holding between my legs.
She only had a few seconds of life left before I put the bullet in her heart.
I got out of the car, moving like a ghost, gun down at my side. In three strides I would make it over to the fence where I would take quick aim and shoot. She would go down and I would be gone.
I was one stride away when it happened.
A golden sedan pulled out of a parking space in a hurry and slammed right into Alana, knocking her to the ground. She screamed as she went down, tires screeching to a halt, and people started shouting from the shuttle.
The sedan reversed then sped around Alana’s crumpled body, not stopping to check on the woman they had just hit.
I’ve been in a lot of situations before that smack you square in the face – abrupt and brutal scenes that change the course of the day, the course of a life. They come out of nowhere, but you adapt, you roll with them. You refuse to be shocked. I should have been able to collect myself better than I did.
But seeing that car speeding away toward the parking gates and crashing through them as it fled the scene, well I seemed to lose all logic. Before I knew what I was doing, I was getting back into my car and driving after the hit-and-run sedan.
As I passed the broken gates to the parking lot I could see people – employees – emerging from the shuttle, one of them pointing at me. I had been spotted. Maybe as a witness, maybe as someone that was a part of the crime.
Only it wasn’t the crime they thought it was, but the one I didn’t get to commit.
I was fucking everything up for myself and I knew it. But seeing that car gun her down then keep going, as if the driver thought they could get away with it, brought back every debilitating moment from Afghanistan. I watched a lot of people get killed before I became the killer.
I would like to tell myself that I was going after them because they fucked up my potentially perfect assassination. That would make more sense than the truth – that I felt like a helpless soldier again, watching the world around him crumble from senseless acts. I was angry, angrier than I had been in a long time.