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"Where the hell is Nightmute, Alaska?"
That was the first question Ethan Jericho had for his client when the offer came in. When the client answered, "500 miles southwest of Fairbanks," Jericho should have passed on the job. He had no obligation to accept it. When he finally arrived in the small village, with fewer than three hundred residents, he knew he should have never even entertained the offer.
However, the last six months had been a challenge for Cherry Vale Security. Relocating from Provo to Chicago had economic drawbacks that Jericho didn’t anticipate. Not to mention he still hadn’t recovered from everything he lost when the Provo Compound was burned to the ground. The Golden Phoenix Package hadn't taken off in same way as the old Advantage Treatment. After the debacle in St. Louis, Jericho decided it was best to lay low for a few months, which didn't help his professional situation. You can't hire a dead man.
After St. Louis, Jericho returned to his home on Chicago's South Side. He spent some downtime off the grid; not that he ever revealed what that meant. It was nice to be away from the business and the insanity of the past year. But without his presence, the day-to-day operations of the business struggled.
Rich Weaver kept things in the Colorado office running but even he was barely keeping Cherry Vale in the black. It was Jericho's end of the business that left much to be desired.
Getting the word out that he was alive and back in the game took some time. In all reality, he needed the work. Not just for the money, but to avoid the humdrum existence of doing absolutely nothing. He never should have taken this job, but here he was—and he had a target.
Parker Cassata: Age thirty-two. A low-level mob hitman who tried to go big time and failed. Cassata was doing twenty-five years at a medium-security joint in Wisconsin. Then, for some unknown reason, he was released after only serving three-and-a-half years. Not surprisingly, Cassata skipped town.
As Jericho shuffled down the cold Alaskan streets at 5:15 in the afternoon, it was already pitch black out. He tried to understand why anyone in their right mind would ever come here. Maybe that was the point. Who would come looking for anyone all the way out here? What better place to get lost?
Jericho entered the post office at the corner of Airport Rd. and Kaugia St. The post office looked more like a trailer than any government building he'd ever seen. At least it was only a twenty-minute walk from the Nightmute Airport; convenient since he couldn't trek a vehicle up this way, and the idea of catching an Uber in this part of the country was laughable.
Jericho stepped up to the front desk and found a short Inuit woman with a thick nose and deep tan. She was reading a newspaper and wasn’t paying attention to the office. Not that he blamed her; They probably didn't get much foot traffic around here.
"Excuse me."
She lifted her eyes from the paper—how much newsworthy stuff actually happened around here?—and jolted back at the sight of a 6'2", 235-pound black man with dreadlocks and sunglasses. Getting that reaction never got old.
Jericho smiled. "Hi, I'm here to pick up a package."
"Here?"
Jericho rubbed his thick winter beard. "That's right. The name is Irvin Guttenberg."
The tiny woman, with a name tag that read Trudy, raised an eyebrow. Jericho reached for his wallet. He showed her the Montana State driver's license. She looked at the man's picture, surprised the sunglasses were there too. Jericho shot her that million-dollar smile.
"Gimme a minute," she said.
Calling Nightmute a town was generous. Looking down these dark streets, he wondered why anyone lived here in the first place. With less than three hundred people and a scattering of shacks lined up along the coast, Nightmute might certainly be one of the best places on Earth to get lost. There wasn't a single restaurant, diner, or even a damn coffee shop in the town. There wasn't even a motel for a few hundred miles. There was only one reason to come here: so no one would ever find you. No one but Ethan Jericho.
"Here you go, Mr. Guttenberg," Trudy said, handing him a small, rectangular package.
"Thank you, ma'am."
"Is that your Bible?" she joked.
Jericho lifted the package. "It gets me through even the most trying day."
He opened the door to the mail-trailer and was immediately slapped in the face with a quick blast of arctic wind. He felt wind much colder and sharper in Chicago, but it still didn't feel good. Jericho tucked the package under his arm and shuffled back down the darkened road toward Kuuraralria St.
Strangely enough, Nightmute did have an airport. There was a time when Jericho would have touched down in his private GV. That was before the Summerville's and their wack-ass church blew up his stuff.
These days, he traveled like a damn tourist, catching a flight from Chicago to Denver to Anchorage. He couldn't believe the dilapidated plane in Anchorage even took off, let alone made the five-hundred-mile trip to the middle of BFE.
Jericho hadn't slept in three days. He was hungry, tired, and wanted to get this damn thing over with. That kind of attitude is fine if you're selling insurance or something, but in his line of work, thinking like that is dangerous. The frigid wind pushing its way into his lungs didn't help.
Usually, Jericho would take at least a few days trying to figure out the target's movement patterns and daily routines. Not that it was much of a challenge here in Nightmute.
Cassata took a job working at a gas station shortly after coming to town. He got off work at 5:00 pm. Following him back to the little shack he holed up in down the road would be easy. A quick bullet to the side of his head, and this whole thing would be done. One less scumbag in the world. Honestly, it was a nice change of pace to have a job where the target was an actual human being. Jericho grew a little tired of chasing things that went bump in the night.
Jericho walked up to the front door of the 600-square-foot shack with blue aluminum siding. He tucked the package under his arm and knocked on the door.
The door slowly creaked open, and Jericho instantly salivated at the smell of freshly fried baloney.
"Hello?" asked a man with Parker Cassata's face.
"Hello, Parker. I think we need to have a talk."