We were angels of death, hit men for the mob. You didn’t meet us and live to talk about it.
“I have more,” he said softly. “I can give you more.”
“And what, turn around and give some secrets back to the Russians?” I asked him. “Gian knows you’ve been playing both sides, and he is very, very fucking pissed.”“I haven’t,” he said. “I swear it. Please.”
“Gian says this is the price of your own greed. Good night, Mister Karsov.”
Abram and I pulled our triggers at the same time, putting bullets through Karsov’s skull.
He collapsed back onto the dirty mattress, blood spreading out around him.
Abram looked at me, slipping his gun back into his pants. “Easy,” he said.
“We’re not done,” I said. “Check downstairs. You know the drill.”
He made a face. “The guy doesn’t have family. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I gave him a look. “Go, Abram.”
“Fuck. Fine.” He left the room and headed back downstairs.
I moved back out into the hallway, keeping my gun out. I didn’t think I’d need it, but it was our job to make sure that there were no witnesses. Hit men couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be known. If our identities got out, we’d be under attack almost immediately. Too many people wanted me dead for killings I’d been ordered on to ever be able to give my true identity. That was part of why we worked in pairs; we were meant to watch each other’s backs, but also to split the killings between us. It was harder to get revenge if two men were equally at fault for the death of your family. But we rarely worked with the same partner twice in a row, since the bosses didn’t want us to get too familiar with each other.
I knew Abram, but not well. We’d worked together on a hit a year earlier, another in-and-out job. I didn’t know much about him, though I’d seen him hanging around. We kept a distance from each other out of mutual respect for the most part.
I looked through the first two rooms and found nothing. They were about as dirty as I was expecting, and full of junk as well. The guy was clearly a hoarder on top of his gambling and drinking problems.
I had only one more room to check. I went to the last door in the hallway and tried the knob.
It was locked.
Gritting my teeth, I got out my lock pick set and quickly worked it open. I pushed the door slowly in and stepped inside silently.
It was the cleanest room in the house. The bed was neatly made, though the covers were thrown back on one side. There were pictures on the walls and a clock on the side table, plus a little desk and a laptop against another wall.
I looked around and sighed. I walked over to the closet and threw it open.
She looked up at me defiantly, her lips hanging slightly open. I took a step back and felt like someone had kicked me in the chest.
She was beautiful, absolutely fucking gorgeous. Big green eyes, long, full hair, and a body like nothing I’d ever seen. She took a step out of the closet toward me, her body covered only by a thin white T-shirt and black panties. Her legs were long and muscular, and I could feel my cock stirring in my pants.
But what really drew me to her was the hideous bruise around her otherwise beautiful eye. It looked a couple of days old, and most of the swelling had gone down, but I was familiar enough with bruises on women to know exactly what it meant.
“Who did that to you?” I asked her.
She stared at me silently for a second. “The man you just murdered,” she said.
I nodded slowly and raised my gun. She didn’t flinch or move, just stared back at me.
“Well?” she asked after a moment. “Are you going to do it or not?”
I took a sharp breath. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to pull the trigger. I didn’t understand it, but I kept staring at that bruise and thinking about the state of the house.
This poor fucking girl. She was probably about my age, maybe a couple years younger, and she clearly had been stuck in a fucking hellhole living with her horrible father for a long time. And to top it all off, that dead bastard in the other room was beating her.
None of that should matter. My job was to kill her and leave. I wasn’t supposed to leave any witnesses.
“Get back in the closet,” I ordered her as I lowered the gun, “and don’t make a fucking noise.”
“What?” She stared at me, surprised. I could see the fear slowly creeping back into her face.
“Hurry. Get in.”
As she stepped back, I heard a creak in the hallway.
“Brooks? The fuck you doing?”
Abram stepped into the room and stared at us.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked again, raising his weapon.