Sold to the Hitman(2)

The other upside to this job is the pay. This is one hundred grand I’ll be making with a clean conscience, for whatever my conscience was worth.

The target is ahead of me, still staggering, but I’m impressed by his ability to keep his eyes forward. Drunks are often easily distracted, but I can tell this is a walk this sod has made many, many times. He has a remarkable ability to shake from his mind that he’s guilty of murdering a young woman.

I wonder how his candor would change if he knew this stumble home would be his last.

The target was finally reaching his apartment, and I slowed to a halt and pretended to turn off into an alleyway as he bent over near a storm drain to start puking his guts out. I’m silently thankful I won’t have that mess to deal with in a few moments.

As I hear the target stop, I slip out from the alley and watch him head around the apartment building towards his own underground residence. Despite my bulk, I’m able to move behind him like a shadow drawing ever closer.

When I was being trained, my partner at the time thought it was amusing, the sight of such a large man dressed in all black slinking around like a predator. He was the first one to call me Shadow, and it seems to have stuck.

Still far enough back that I’m out of sight, I hear the target’s keys scrape and clatter on the metal lock as his drunken stupor makes him struggle with the door, and memories of my last job flood back to me.

He struggles with the lock, his hand shaking violently with fear as he feels the cold barrel of my gun pressed to the back of his head. “Faster!” I bark, and he drops the keys with a whimper. When he finally manages to get the door open, I take him by the scruff of his collar and toss him inside, and he sprawls out onto the floor of the sparsely furnished home he can barely afford. The man is jelly, looking up at me with tear-streaked eyes.

“Please, sir!” he gasps, gesturing wildly around the room as if offering its contents to me. “All of this, my house, my car, you can take it all, but please —”

I silence him as I put a cloth to his mouth, pressing it tight into his teeth as I lean forward, keeping him from making sudden movements. “Enough talk,” I order in a still voice.

The sound of the clicking lock brings me back to the present, and just like that, it’s time to act.

I start to close the distance behind him as he jiggles the knob of the door, pushing it open with a little effort before he stumbles inside when it finally gives way. By the time he’s got his bearings back, I’m within arm’s reach of the door. When he tries to throw the door shut, it meets only my hand.

“What th-” is all he has time to get out before I’m on him, the cloth in my hand muffling his scream as I press it into his mouth, holding the back of his head in the other. He’s too startled to resist me as I spin him around, forcing him to the ground with a sharp kick to the back of his knees. His legs give out easily.

I kick the door shut with a quick motion. He’s starting to jerk around under me, and I know I don’t have much time. The couch is next to the door. In a fluid motion, I grab one of the stained pillows and press his head into the ground, cloth in his mouth, and I cover his head with the pillow.

The next instant, I draw my pistol from the back of my belt, a silencer placed upon the tip of the barrel, and I aim it at the pillow.

Two quiet thumps of the silenced bullets hitting the pillow, and the target’s struggling stops.

I stand up from the man’s lifeless body as blood begins to trickle out from under the cushion. I reach over to a blanket draped across the back of the couch and toss it over the man’s body. He won’t be missed.

“More will come for you if they don’t think you’re dead,” I tell the cowering man as he looks at me incredulously. I’m looking him dead in the eye, speaking carefully, as if giving instructions to a child. That’s all this poor man is in the world of the mafia. “I know you to be innocent. My boss does not care, but I do.”

He claps his hands together as if in prayer, putting his forehead to them. “God bless you, sir, I can never —” But I cut him off.

“I have a safe house. I will take you there, and I will have food brought to you until it is safe for you to leave the country — that’s all there is left for you now. Start anew. You will be thought dead. You won’t be missed.”

I push the memories away once more. That hit was going to be the last time I ever found myself in such a position. That day, as I spirited away that innocent man to a safe place, I vowed to know the character of my targets. If I was to be an executioner, I must also play the judge.

I look down at the man I’ve just killed. Blood is starting to soak through the blanket. Without another word, I push open the door with my gloved hands, closing it behind me and sealing away that wretched man in the pigsty where he made his lair.