Two floors below Kasimov’s suite, Martin Franks paced in his room. He whistled that Kansas tune again. Carry on, my wayward son…
He just couldn’t get the damn thing out of his mind.
But every time Franks passed his unmade bed, he glanced at the FedEx envelope lying there, bulging with documents regarding his target. He was always up for a challenge and never a man rattled by the implications of an assignment.
But this?
This was…
He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
But it was, wasn’t it?
He picked the envelope up, shaking his head in disbelief. I’d never have to work again.
Franks’s heart raced a bit at that thought before excitement was replaced by anxiety. Being a hired gun had made life simpler, turned his darkest impulses clean, orderly, and paid for. What if he stopped after this, made it his last for-hire job?
After several long moments he decided he could stop professionally and yet sate his particular hunger by continuing to look for those moments of chance, those prime targets of opportunity, like the logger.
Franks smiled. The logger.
He closed his eyes and let his mind dwell on the instant where he’d dodged the chain saw and driven the knife deep into the sawyer’s neck.
Wasn’t that something?
But wouldn’t this be something else again?
My biggest Houdini takeout ever.
Franks opened his eyes and read the payment schedule once more. With that kind of money, he could vanish into Bolivia or Uruguay, and…
He shut off that line of dreaming then, turned cold and professional, and forced himself to focus entirely on the assignment and whether or not he could get it done. He started by setting aside the target’s name and title and all the potential implications of the hit.
None of that meant a thing to Franks, at least for the moment. He drew out more documents from the FedEx envelope and studied rather than scanned them, as he had the first time through, seeing patterns and possibilities, the risks and the penalties.
An hour later, Franks believed that he was up to the task from a technical perspective. Only then did he pull out the photographs and biography of his target. Only then did he consider the idea of being tried and hung for his crimes.
Is it worth it?
He immediately knew the money alone was not enough. But Franks closed his eyes and imagined getting the job done and seeing himself slip away clean, and the sum of the payout plus the thrill of achievement was enough.
He opened his eyes. He felt a familiar want tickle and churn in his stomach. He looked to the photographs of his target again and started to whistle the Kansas tune.
In Franks’s mind, the job was already done. He picked up the burn phone from the bed and dialed. The phone rang twice before a computerized voice told him to leave a message at the beep.
“This is Conker, Peter,” Franks said. “I accept.”