It didn’t matter how wicked the hedge fund bandit might be, what Raza and Putilov were forcing Fahad to do to him was pure, concentrated, unmitigated … evil.
Fahad’s cab was stuck in gridlock on Manhattan’s Second Avenue on the Upper East Side. Because of the UN’s Anti-Inequality conferences and hearings, the entire East Side looked like a parking lot. He would have taken the new Second Avenue subway except he had a very large suitcase containing weapons and ammunition, which he did not want to tote around in public. He was an Arab; he didn’t want people—or, even worse, some racial-profiling, compulsively curious cop—asking him about its contents.
Goddamn it, he was sick of this assignment. What the fuck was he doing here anyway? He didn’t need the money that bad.
The job violated everything he had learned about personal and professional survival in his two decades as a paid mercenary. He should have turned Raza down ice-cold, gone to ground if necessary, and never looked back.
So why hadn’t he rejected it? The answer to that one was easy. He’d never been short on guts, but even he didn’t have the stones to say no to Raza, Marika and Kamal, not if he wanted to keep his balls in his nut sack.
He also did not want to get on Putilov’s bad side, even though Putilov was dumping on him difficult, dangerous last-minute work. Putilov had ordered Fahad to hit a famous woman journalist, Jules Meredith, whom, even he, Fahad, knew about. Since she was notorious critic of Islam, he had no qualms about taking her out. A woman such as Jules Meredith, he was almost willing to kill for free.
Almost.
There was one obstacle. When Meredith exited her building in the morning, he wanted to shoot her from an apartment across the street. That way he’d have an easier time escaping. But first he had to gain access to one of those windows.
So Fahad had studied the occupants of the most strategically placed coops and finally settled on the one he wanted. The owner was a rather attractive woman, whom he’d shadowed and staked out for the last three nights. Tonight, he planned to meet with the woman for the first time in a neighborhood bar, which she habitually frequented, convince her to take him home and then fuck his brains out.
For a man of Fahad’s acumen, wiles and expertise, he knew her seduction would be no problem at all. He might even enjoy cajoling, enticing and screwing her.
One thing was sure: That Muslim-hating bitch could die a thousand deaths for all he cared.
He would definitely enjoy killing Jules Meredith afterward.
He understood intellectually and in the abstract that according to society’s norms, taking the life of anyone was wrong, but he had no qualms about the laws of nations or the codes of men. He made his living murdering people, and afterward, he didn’t apologize for it. It was what he did, who he was, what he’d always been.
So be it.
But what about the hedge fund guy? What he was going to do to him shook Fahad to his nonexistent soul. That was some truly monstrous shit. It didn’t matter how wicked the hedge fund bandit might be, what Raza and Putilov were forcing Fahad to do to him was pure, concentrated, unmitigated evil.
Just take it one step, one minute at a time. Do it and don’t look back. You can get through this.
But despite the pep talk he’d given himself, he wasn’t sure he could carry it out. Even Fahad al-Qadi wasn’t that cold.
Goddamn Raza and Putilov to hell!
They were two truly scary people.