Yours(3)
Dan shook his head.
“What?”
“The guy is lying on the bed, dead as roadkill. His leg is still gushing blood from the femoral artery.”
Dan’s jaw dropped halfway down his face. I didn’t think he’d eaten a single bite of his brunch. Oh well, his loss. I continued my story.
“The ladyboy comes out of the bathroom. She’s totally naked, dick flopping around in front of her, blood on her tits. She’s drying the knife off. I stare at the body, then up at her, then back at the body. She smiles and winks, and puts her finger to her lips. ‘Shhh,’ she says.”
I look at the two men sitting across the table from me and wait for their reaction.
“Shhh,” I repeat. “Can you fucking believe it?”
“Holy shit.” Dan looked like he was going to throw up.
“Talk about government inefficiencies. They’re talking to the wrong vendors.” Rien said. He forked a bite of pancake into his mouth.
I dropped my fork onto my plate.
“That’s what you took away from the story, Rien? Government waste?”
“Well, they overpaid you by like, two hundred ninety nine thousand—”
“You boys can’t appreciate a good hitman story when you hear one.”
“Ugh, cut in the leg,” Dan said, rubbing his thigh.
“Want to hear the story about how Vale put a gun to my head?” Rien asked.
“Wh—are you for real?”
I laughed.
“That was your own damn fault, Rien, and you know it.”
“Why do you even hang out with this guy?” Dan asked Rien.
“Do you know what it’s like to kill a man?” Rien asked, his eyes narrow.
“No.”
“Well, there you go. It’s hard to find a kindred spirit when you’re a killer.” He popped the last of the pancake into his mouth.
“Hey now,” I said, lifting a hand. “I am not your goddamn kindred spirit.”
“Yeah? Tell Dan here about what happened to your last girlfriend.”
Jen. I did not want to think about her right now. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out.
“Shit.” It was headquarters. They only called this number when they needed something done urgently. I sighed.
“I gotta get this,” I said. I stood up from the table and pushed my chair in.
“Wait,” Dan said. “What happened to your last girlfriend?”
I leaned forward and stole a strawberry from Rien’s plate. I looked sideways at Dan with the most menacing glare I could.
“I killed her,” I whispered.
Dan’s face went pale.
I put the phone to my ear. Behind me, I could hear Dan asking Rien if I was telling the truth.
“I need you at the Los Angeles airport,” the voice said. “A man will be waiting outside the first terminal. Follow him.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
“Right now? I’m at brunch. And I have a barber’s appointment—”
“Right now. This one’s important.”
The voice hung up and I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock. I turned back to the table.
“Gotta go,” I said to Rien. “Big boys have an assignment.”
“Now? You haven’t even started your pancakes,” Rien said.
“Can’t. Orders are orders. You want them?” I slid the plate over to Rien, who looked way too fit to be demolishing three short stacks of pancakes.
“This is your idea of control?” Dan asked, incredulous. “This is doing what you like, when you like? You just wait for the call to go—” his voice dropped to a hush, “—to go kill people!”
“Sure. I like to follow orders,” I said.
“I like to kill people,” Rien said. “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life, am I right?”
“I am so not cut out for this,” Dan said.
“Fine. More bodies for us, huh, Rien?” I slapped them both on the shoulders. Rien grinned.
“You two are fucking psycho,” Dan said, shaking his head. “Fucking psycho.”
Chapter Two
Jessica
“Guys? Hey guys? We missed the downtown exit.”
I pressed my face to the window. The metal and glass dome of the San Diego library disappeared behind the other buildings as we sped down the freeway.
“Hey, Mimi. Guys!”
“Do you think she knows yet?” Mimi asked, ignoring me. She winked at April in the rearview mirror.
“Knows what?” I asked, totally confused. I turned around in the passenger’s seat of Mimi’s SUV. “What don’t I know?”
“Oh, Jessica,” April said, reaching forward and patting my shoulder. Next to her, her boyfriend James chuckled.