“That isn’t possible,” Kyle said slowly, stuck in denial mode.
Bonnie smiled. A less than admirable part of her was actually enjoying the kid’s anguish. “You hear any scuttlebutt about jobs I’ve pulled lately? Say, in the past six or eight months?”
“Well, no. But I assumed …”
“Assumed what? No one needed anybody put out of the way anymore? There’d been a general outbreak of fellowship and good cheer? Nope. I’ve been turning down work, that’s all.”
“You’re telling me you’ve—you’ve reformed?”
“Guess so. I’m learning to color inside the lines.”
Kyle shook her head. “I don’t believe you. People don’t change.”
“Some people do. And I’ve got a powerful incentive.”
“What incentive?”
“For one thing, there’s all the attention I’m getting from local law enforcement. You noticed it yourself. There are people in positions of authority who know about my former sideline. They can’t touch me, not for the stuff they’re already aware of—”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated. Let’s just say I had a good lawyer and some bargaining chips to play. But that won’t help me if I mess up in the future.”
“So you’re scared?”
“Of a life sentence? You bet. But I’m also seriously committed to making a fresh start.”
“That can’t be all there is to it. You’re leaving something out.”
Bonnie was leaving a lot of things out. She was leaving out her long talks with Frank Kershaw, the man who’d taken her in off the street when she was a teenager and who, in recent months, had been quietly insistent that her chosen way of life had no future. He was the one who’d told her to color inside the lines, a metaphor he’d repeated so often that she was now using it herself.
So there was Frank. And there was the whole situation with Streinikov’s crew last winter, and the Long Fong Boyz and Frank Lazzaro before that. She might not be the sharpest quill on the porcupine, but even she could see that she’d used up her quota of good luck for this lifetime, and probably for several other lifetimes to boot. There was such a thing as quitting when you were ahead.
Which was not to say her fingers didn’t itch every now and then as she contemplated her collection of black-market firearms. Nor to say she didn’t miss the sizable addition to her income that her moonlighting activities had provided. But she was officially on the wagon, assassination-wise. Had there been an equivalent of AA for people like her—Assassins Anonymous, maybe—she could have honestly proclaimed, “I’ve been homicide-free for two hundred forty-one days.”
And a smug little twerp like Kyle Ridley wasn’t going to get her to backslide, no matter what kind of fix she was in.
“It’s not gonna happen, slugger,” she said with finality.
“It has to. I was counting on you to come through.”
“Then you’re up a creek, aren’t you?” She couldn’t keep the complacency out of her voice, mainly because she hadn’t tried.
“Come on. It’s one night’s work. It won’t even be that hard.”
“Sure, taking out a mobbed-up drug importer is a walk in the park.”
“Ordinarily, no. But I’ve got it all worked out.”
“I’ll just bet you do.” Bonnie sighed. “Take my advice, free of charge. Hop in your Hyundai and make tracks for a warmer climate. Spend all your cash on fuel and drive as far as you can.”
“And end up homeless, living in my car?”
“It’s better than not living at all.”
Kyle gaped at her. “This is bullshit.”
“Use your indoor voice. We’re at a family place.”
The girl was showing signs of real fear. That was good. Fear was what she ought to be feeling. Lots of it.
“Look,” Kyle said, straining for a reasonable tone, “I can understand your wanting to reform. I get it. But this is different. This isn’t some random hit. This is saving my life.”
“You so sure it’s worth saving?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not a big fan of heroin traffickers.”
“Oh, come on. Not that just-say-no crap. People have a right to put whatever they want into their own bodies.”
“Most of the H around here is scored by high school kids. Middle school kids, too. Twelve-year-olds.”
“Children grow up fast these days,” Kyle said indifferently. “Anyway, if some shop-class rejects want to try for a Darwin Award by shooting crap into their bloodstream, why should you care?”
“Oh, yeah. Way to win me over.”
“You don’t have to like me. You only have to work for me.”
“Looks like I’m not gonna do either. You’ll have to get yourself another hitter.”
“I don’t know any others.”
“Then do the job yourself.”
“It can’t work that way.”
“Then you’re in trouble.”
“You fucking bitch. You’re willing to let them murder me?”
Bonnie lifted her shoulders. “Not my problem. I got no skin in the game.”
The gondola was descending. At ground level the carny lifted the bar and set them free. Bonnie stepped out without a word and made her way back to the main drag. Kyle followed, her voice more urgent than before.
“You can’t just walk away. I can’t handle Shaban on my own.”
Bonnie stopped, looking back. “Funny. I thought you could handle anything.”
“Don’t be a moron. For Christ’s sake, how much do I have to dumb it down for you? He’ll kill me for something I didn’t even do.”
Man, even when she was begging for her life, little Kyle couldn’t find a way to be likable.
“Sounds that way,” Bonnie said. She walked on.
Kyle caught up to her, clutching at her windbreaker like a kid clinging to her mommy. “But it’s not fair.”
“Life seldom is.”
“Please.”
She looked down at the small figure wrapped inside her large coat. A girl who was afraid, really afraid, and not hiding it anymore.
“There’s one other problem,” Bonnie said slowly. “Even if we do take out your friend …”
“Shaban.”
“Right. Even if we remove Shaban from the equation, it won’t help. The others will figure out what happened, and then the whole crew will be after you. If you think running off with a shipment is enough to put you on a hit list, just think about how popular you’ll be once they’ve tagged you with the murder of one of their own.”
“But that’s the thing. They don’t know about me.”
“They may not know about the missing shipment, at least for now, but—”
“No, they don’t know about me at all. Only Shaban knows. He’s essentially a cutout. He selected me for the job, and only he makes contact with me. The others don’t even know my name.”
“So you assume.”
“That’s how it works with the Dragushas. Their operation is hierarchical, bureaucratic. There’s a leadership council that coordinates the activities of all the different families. Each family has its own executive committee—they call it the bajrak—sort of the inner circle. The krye, who’s the boss, the godfather, runs the clan—”
“That would be Arian Dragusha,” Bonnie put in.
“Right. The kryetars, the underbosses, report to him. And it’s all bound together by family connections and by besa, a code of honor like omertà. You see? Everything is compartmentalized. Shaban knows who I am. No one else does.”
“And with him out of the picture, you’re home free.”
“I thought I’d already made that clear.”
Bonnie let a moment pass while the crowd swirled around them. “Okay, look. I’m not committing to anything, but since you said you’ve got it all worked out, I’ll give you a chance to brief me on the details of your master plan.”
Kyle showed no reaction. She had to be at least a little bit relieved, but she was damn hard to read. No wonder she’d breezed through Customs without so much as a second look.
“I suppose that’s the best I can hope for,” the girl said flatly.
“It’s way more than you should’ve hoped for. Right this second, though, I gotta finish up my other job. How about we meet up at the Sand Bar in an hour?”
“The Sand Bar?”
“Right down there. Nice view of the water. We’ll talk, we’ll hoist a few. By the end of the evening we’ll be friggin’ sorority sisters.”
“I don’t approve of sororities. They’re an expression of an outdated classist and sexist system.”
“It was a joke, kiddo.”
“Of course it was. I know that. I’m only saying—”
“I don’t care. Get lost. I’m on the clock, and you’re cramping my style, Kyle.”
“Rhyme? Really?”
“What can I say? There’s poetry in my soul.”