“Yeah?”
“What would’ve happened if I would’ve dialed 24-34-24 into the safe like you told me?”
He swallows. His face blanches as white as the skull bones.
“I…”
“You told me 24-34-24. But when you popped open the safe just now, the combination you used was 10-20- 10.”
He smiles weakly. “You caught that?”
“Yeah. I have good eyes. Could’ve been a fighter pilot.”
He shrugs. “It… uh… it would’ve blown up in your face.”
“I figured.”
“Does that mean…”
I fire into his back twice, through his skin and into his heart. He flops forward, dead before he can finish the sentence.
I wasn’t lying when I told Flagler I wouldn’t kill him. But attempting to trick me into tripping a bomb puts a foot on the throat of my mercy.
CHAPTER FOUR
I walk into the warehouse, and for the first time, I realize I’m soaking wet. The cool air hits me as I step through the door, and I shudder as though a ghost walked on my grave. Like I said, though I haven’t been on an assignment, not really, it feels like an assignment. The tiger is a tiger, and though some may forget, may think of the animal as domesticated, as tame, the beast remembers what it is, and watches, and waits. Instincts, though dulled, are resurrected like Lazarus. Smiles turn to screams. Familiarity turns to non-recognition. And love? Love inevitably turns to grief.
I played the game against a worthy opponent for the first time in over a year, and I came out on top. A feeling is growing inside me I’m not sure I can contain. I’m not sure I want to contain it.
The tiger is a goddamned tiger.
Risina has her back to me when I enter, and maybe she feels a change in the air, a charge, like an electric current ripping through the walls, because she bolts upright, nearly overturning her chair as she spins.
“You scared me,” she says breathlessly. Her eyes find what’s in my hands. “Is that…?”
I nod at the skull, holding it up like the gravedigger in Hamlet.
“You know whose it is?”
I shake my head, and she laughs. The sound is like a hypnotist’s snap, a bell ringing, because whatever foreboding premonition I brought into the room disappears in that sound. That laugh, that look on her face, that simple prism in her eyes sustained me through so much it almost seems surreal, absurd, that I questioned going on without her.
And maybe that’s it, what I haven’t been able to get my head around until now: maybe the key isn’t absence but proximity. Maybe the key isn’t sending her away, but pulling her closer. Maybe Risina is my battery, my power source.
“So we make the exchange with Bacino? That skull for whatever information he has on why your name is involved.”
“That’s it.” And she’s touched on the biggest problem in all this: if Bacino just wanted his skull back, and kidnapped Archie to get me to do the dirty work for him, why would he cite me specifically? It doesn’t add up, it’s not simple, there’s a piece missing. That’s the way of the killing game: it’s a messy business.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Risina says. Then, a second later… “Archie, not Bacino.”
Smoke strolls into the room, his eyes downcast, his hands fidgety. I liked Smoke when I first met him, and I chalked his nervous disposition up to being a fish out of water, but now I’m suspicious. There’s no doubt the time I spent out of the game dulled my skills; maybe it dulled my senses as well. I feel like a diver coming to the surface after a long time in the deep.
“Something wrong, Smoke?”
He meets my eyes, then quickly looks away, his head bobbing like a chicken looking for seed. “Nah, just anxious is all.” I think that’s all he’s going to say, but he adds, “I swear I feel like I’m being watched or followed or some shit.”
“You mark anyone? Same car in two different places, same eyes in a crowd, even if the face is different?”
Smoke shakes his head. “Nah. I don’t think so. Like I said, I’m anxious. Wanna get this over and done with. Get Archie back. It was just a feeling, was all. Maybe I been drinkin’ too many sodas or some shit.”
I watch him twitch some more, like he doesn’t know where to put his hands, so they stay in perpetual motion.
“In this world, you gotta trust your instincts, Smoke.”
His eyes shoot up and search mine to see if there’s any malice behind my words. Am I talking to him or about him? Am I challenging him? I don’t give him anything, my face as unreadable as a cipher.
There’s something he’s keeping from us, something that has him as skittish as a deer, and I’m sure Risina spots it too.
“So now we wait for the meet, I s’pose,” says Smoke.
“No.”
His eyes shoot up again. “No?”
“Uh-uh. Playing defense is how you get backed into a corner, how you end up broken or dead.”
Risina offers, “We take the fight to him?”
“That’s right. Word of what happened to Flagler won’t hit the streets until tomorrow at the earliest…”
“What happened to Flagler?”
I look at Risina carefully, and the question dies in the air.
“Oh,” is all she manages and her cheeks color. I have to remind myself how new she is to this life. It’s another crack in the wall of my plans to keep her close, but that laugh. I have to concentrate on that laugh.
“So we hit him tonight before he has a chance to plan for our arrival. We meet him on our terms. If Archie’s alive and Bacino has him, we’ll get him back.”
Smoke nods, seeing it. He raises his eyebrows, and it looks like he’s genuinely relieved. “I s’pose you want to see the original file on Bacino again.”
“Yeah, we should all go over it and figure out the best place to hit him.”
I like to confront a man in his bed. It’s the second most vulnerable place to hit a target, short of his shower or bath. It is where a mark’s defenses are at his lowest-even if he’s stashed a weapon under a pillow or beneath the mattress, the added effect of being groggy cancels any advantage. The romanticized notion of a hunted man sleeping with one eye open is bullshit. Once a mark is down for the night, it is exponentially easier to put him down permanently.
I don’t need to kill Bacino; I just need him to know how easy it is for me to get to him. I need to embarrass him. I need to make him regret summoning a hit man named Columbus.
According to the file made up for Flagler, Bacino lives in a mansion in Highland Park. He’s alone, except for a half-dozen bodyguards, the occasional woman, a pair of dogs, and his older brother, Ben, who collects a salary but does little to earn it. Ben is supposed to be some sort of chef, cooking for his brother, but the file mentions his real job is a gofer, an errand boy. Groceries need rounding up? Ben does it. Coffee needs brewing? Ben does it. Car needs a wash? Ben does it, but not much more than that. Whether or not he knows Rich collects skulls is not mentioned in the file. They live on opposite sides of the house, and Ben is a foot shorter and a hundred pounds heavier, so I’m not worried about confusing the two.
The bodyguards live at the house and rotate out, two-two-and-two in eight-hour shifts to cover the clock. The guys are ex-cops or ex-military, and they indicate Bacino isn’t trifling with his detail, isn’t just trying to create an exaggerated sense of security the way some people put security company signs in their yards even though they never turn on their alarms.
