Bernadette had been sitting on the toilet long enough for her legs to fall asleep. She didn’t know how men did it—sitting on an uncomfortable rim of hard plastic for hours at a time. Somebody needed to invent an ergonomic shitter, like all those fancy office chairs Bobby kept bringing home from Goodwill to put around the dining-room table. Maybe she’d invent one and make a million bucks.
A million bucks. Right. Not in this lifetime, girl.
She shifted her butt on the edge of the seat, but she knew she would be stuck there now for at least a few more minutes until the feeling in her lower extremities returned. Truthfully, though, she didn’t care. She was thankful for the quiet. She’d been ready for all the people Bobby had in her living room to go home. He’d given her the money to pay the mortgage out of the blue. She didn’t ask him where he suddenly got all the money to pay it, but she didn’t care. She was just happy to be out from underneath the house note for one more month. Regardless, now all of those assholes out there crowding up her sofa, acting like they lived there, were smoking her and Bobby’s personal stash, and they needed to get the hell out. Maybe her disappearance into the bathroom for the past half hour would offer Bobby up a clue. She shook her head. No, it wouldn’t. If anything, one of those mooches would be banging on her bedroom door any minute now needing another pint of blood. She was surprised they’d let her have this much time to herself already. She could hear Bobby now.
“Bernie, the boys need something to eat. Bernie, we can’t find the remote. Bernie, we’re done smoking up all your weed for free and now we’re going to break something by accident because we all have our heads shoved directly up our asses.”
She rubbed at the corner of her eye. It was dry and itchy—an inconvenient by-product of her favorite vice. Pot made her dull gray eyes bright green, but it made them itchy, too. It didn’t make her stupid, though. She wondered why it had that effect on Bobby and all their friends. She smoked out every single day, but still managed to work a full-time job at the IGA, pay the bills, and keep her shit together like a normal person. She was still hot as a firecracker, too, in her opinion, but Bobby? He was getting fat—and lazy as hell. Every time she walked in the door of her own house, it was like clocking in at a second job—being mother hen for “Big Bobby” and all his idiot buddies. It was like wrangling an entire kindergarten class of stoned five-year-olds. It made her crazy. If she could keep a job and still function as an adult when she was baked, why couldn’t everyone else? In fact, Bernie felt more comfortable with the idea of being an adult when she was lit up, but not Bobby and them.
Fucking morons. All of them.
She leaned her freckled forearms down on her numb freckled thighs and huffed at the springs of curly red bangs that fell across her face. The rust-colored coils blew straight up and then fell right back to where they were. She repeated that useless action three more times before finally tucking the bulk of it behind her ear.
“My legs are asleep,” she said into her phone. She had it on speaker so she could hold the thin plastic testing strip while she sat and talked to her sister, Jessica.
“Are you in the bathroom talking to me again?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Nothing. It’s just nice to know that the only time you think of me is when you’re taking a shit.”
“I’m not taking a shit, Jess. I just had to pee, and the reason I always call you from the bathroom is because it’s the only time I can get a moment’s peace around here.”
“Bobby being an asshole again?”
“No. He’s fine. He’s just on my nerves. He just got back after being gone for a few days and already I needed to get away from his band of merry men for a minute. They’re out there celebrating something. Maybe one of their lame asses got a job. But they’re being especially obnoxious tonight.” Bernadette’s hair sprang back into her face, so she set her phone down on the ledge beside her and used an elastic hair tie to pull it all back into a fat, fuzzy knot. “But I’ve been sitting here so long, I think my legs are going to fall off.”
“Well, move your butt around. You gotta get your blood to circulate.”
Bernadette slid around on the seat again, peered down between her legs, and repeated her sister’s advice out loud. The words had an entirely different meaning when she said them. “I wish my blood would circulate, Jess. I swear to God, if I’m pregnant with that idiot’s kid, I’m going to kill myself.” She held the pregnancy test strip under her stream.
“Don’t say things like that, Bern. Bobby loves you. And a baby wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to happen to you guys.”
Bernadette smirked at the phone. What an idiotic thing to say. “First of all, Jess, a baby wouldn’t be happening to us, it would be happening to me. Bobby’s practically an infant himself, so it would really mean I’d have two kids to raise. And second of all, yes, it would be the worst thing in the world to happen to me. I’m twenty-six and I haven’t started school yet. I’m still working at the fucking IGA, for Christ’s sake. This is not the way I pictured my life turning out.” She sank her head deeper into her slumped position.
“C’mon, Bern. I had Peanut when I was twenty-six and my life didn’t turn out that bad.”
“You also had your degree already—and Steve has a job. Have you seen my life lately?”
“Maybe it’s time to think about getting your act together, then. Stop smoking pot every day. You’re only enabling Bobby anyway.”
Bernadette closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Her sister’s voice was beginning to have that tone that grated on her. She was slipping into mom mode. She hated mom mode. The banging on the bedroom door came right on cue. “Jesus, here we go.”
“I’m not starting on you, Bern. I just—”
“No, not you. Bobby’s at the door. Hold on.” She looked at the small blue lines forming on the tip of the plastic testing strip and wanted to scream. “What?” she yelled loudly enough to be heard through both the bathroom and bedroom doors. She heard a voice, but couldn’t make out the words. “I’m taking a piss,” she yelled even louder.
“Classy, sis.”
“Shut up, Jess.” She tapped the phone, taking it off speaker. The voice on the other side of her bedroom door rose to match her own yelling.
“I said there’s somebody here, Bern.”
“Well, who is it?” Bernadette said, and reached for the toilet paper only to spin the bare brown cardboard roll Bobby had left on the holder. “Goddamnit.” She held the phone to her ear. “Let me call you back. There’s someone here—no, I don’t know—yeah, I brought a test home from work. I’ll call you back tonight after I know for sure. I love you, too. Bye.” She held the plastic strip up and already knew that two blue lines meant positive. “Fuck,” she whispered as her eyes got wet.
“I don’t know, baby,” Bobby yelled from the door. “I think it may be the cops.”
Bernadette sat up straight at the mention of that word.
Cops?
She set her phone on the floor and tossed the positive test in the trash. She tried to stand up, but her legs were still asleep and she almost collapsed onto the linoleum. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She tried to hike her sweatpants and panties up over her knees, but her legs were so sensitive from the rush of blood reviving them that she had to stop moving altogether.
“They might be cops, babe, but I’m not sure. Do you want me to let them in?”
“I want you to stop yelling about cops across the house,” she said, as thousands of tiny pins and needles began to swarm her skin from her thighs down. Bernadette pushed herself off the commode and caught her balance on the bathroom counter. She opened the cabinet for a fresh roll of toilet paper, as if that was the most important thing to worry about at the moment, but she was high, and she couldn’t walk, and she was confused. Seeing the empty cabinet, which she knew she’d stocked the day before, confused her more. “Where’s all the fucking toilet paper?”
“What, baby?” Bobby knocked again. “You okay in there?”
Why the fuck was he knocking, anyway? He knew how to unlock the door. Why was she still looking for toilet paper? She knew she’d left at least a quarter ounce of dope on the living room table in plain sight and there was no telling what else Bobby had stashed around the place that she wasn’t aware of, so if cops were at the door, a wet spot in her panties was the least of her problems. She hiked her sweatpants up and shook her legs back to life one at a time.
“Bobby, don’t you let a soul in this house. I’ll be out in a minute.” She couldn’t believe she even had to tell him that. She unlocked the bathroom door and took a careful step over the mountain of dirty laundry on the floor in front of the threshold.
“I don’t know, baby. These guys don’t look like—” A thunderclap drowned out the rest of what Bobby had to say.
The sound caused Bernadette to jump. She flinched so hard she knocked over a jewelry armoire by the closet, and a cascade of cheap gold chains, tiny ring boxes, and multicolored costume jewels spilled all over the carpet.
Was that a gunshot? Oh, my god, that was a gunshot.
She began to hear yelling that quickly turned to screaming. Her heart sped up and pounded in her chest like a hummingbird in a box. Without thinking, she yelled out for Bobby and immediately regretted it. She was answered with another gunshot and more yelling—frantic yelling. Something fell over somewhere in the house. She thought she heard the sound of glass shattering, but had no idea what it could’ve been. She moved into the closet, her legs still not fully cooperative, and sank down onto all fours. The sudden eruption of more gunfire and chaos in the next room had her head spinning with sensory overload, but her hands had already begun clearing the floor before the rest of her even knew why. A fourth and fifth gunshot clarified the moment before everything went silent. She yelled for Bobby, but there was no answer. The yelling had stopped, too.
She knew where Bobby kept his gun—in the same place she kept her weed in case of a raid, in the floor of the closet. She slid another pile of dirty jeans and shoes she never wore across the cluttered hardwood floor to clear the space in the corner. The boards were loose there when she bought the house, and one night, while she and Arnie Blackwell were blasted on some killer shit Bobby had brought home from a hiking trip in Colorado, they’d decided to build a small hidden compartment under the slats. It took them two straight days. Bobby kept a handgun in there, even though none of them knew how to shoot it. Her hands were shaking so bad she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to figure out how, either, but she had to try.
The house had gone completely quiet beyond the room—even the stereo had stopped playing—and Bernadette sat there on the floor, quivering. Gun smoke had seeped in under the bedroom door and filled the room with a soft blue haze. The rancid smell of cordite stung her nose and her eyes watered. They itched so badly. She couldn’t keep a clear thought in her head. There was a brief moment when she thought that maybe whoever was out there had done what he came to do and left, but that glimmer of hope vanished when someone rattled the doorknob on the bedroom door. She used the side of her fist to bang on the end of the rectangular piece of wood at her knees and lifted it up by the edge. She tossed the lid of the hideaway hole on top of the pile of clothes and immediately thought she was going crazy.
“What the fuck?” She could hardly breathe and felt herself spiraling into something other than reality. Bricks of cash wrapped in plastic wrap and rubber bands were crammed in the homemade hole. More money than she’d ever seen. Nothing made any sense. Her entire world stopped working correctly at that moment. Everything went Picasso. She sat completely still and stared into the hole until someone knocked on the door again. She jumped. “What?” she screamed, and she started to cry. “What do you want?” She knew it wasn’t Bobby this time. Whoever it was out there was rapping his knuckles against the wooden door to a tune. It was maddening. It was like the sound of a child tapping out a secret knock asking for permission to enter a private clubhouse. She didn’t care about where all the money in the floor came from as she dug into it and flung it all aside. She didn’t even stop to think about how much it was. It had to be thousands—hundreds of thousands—but she just kept pulling out the stacks a handful at a time, hoping, praying that Bobby’s stupid gun was still in there buried underneath.
It wasn’t.
When she’d gotten to the bottom of the hiding space and scraped her fingernails around all four edges of the empty hole, she pushed herself up straight and slid her back up against the wall. Nothing made sense. Up felt down. Down felt up. She wiped at her face with the back of her hand, still squeezing one of the wads of cash.
What the hell is happening?
She thought about Arnie. He and Bobby had been gone for days and then all of a sudden Bobby comes home smelling like a goat, talking about buying a Harley. Bernadette just assumed they had been out being boys. A low-rent score. No big deal. Jesus. It was a big deal. She looked down at the bundles of money.
“Oh, my god, Bobby. What did you do?”
The bedroom door exploded with another gunshot and Bernadette screamed. She pressed herself tighter against the wall in the closet as splintered pieces of wood and molding rained over the room. Bernadette covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, too. She heard footsteps outside the closet door.
Bobby said it was the cops. Please, God, let it be the cops.
When she finally opened her eyes, a short Asian man in a bright blue sharkskin suit was standing in the doorway—smiling—and holding Bobby’s gun.
Fenn dragged Bernadette out of the closet by a fistful of her hair, while Smoke collected the cash from the floor. He tossed it all into a small wicker hamper—brick by brick—and acted as if he didn’t hear Bernadette screaming all the way down the hall to the living room that had been painted with fresh blood. Neither of the men who’d just murdered the six people in her house, including Bernadette’s unborn child’s father, had spoken a word until Smoke finished gathering up the money and joined them in the front room with the basket of cash.
Fenn had pushed Bernadette up next to the sofa, propping her up so that she sat between the dead bodies of Matt Conklin and Mike Goode—two friends of Bobby’s that now sat completely still, staring out of glassy eyes, both of them with fresh bullet holes in their foreheads. From the few brief seconds Bernadette had opened her eyes, while Fenn dragged her through the house, she saw Bobby’s two other friends sitting exactly as they’d been before she disappeared into the back of the house earlier, but now their goofy smiles had been replaced with slack jaws and half-frozen expressions of surprise. If not for the spray of blood and bone behind them that covered the sofa cushions and the floral wallpaper, Bernadette would not even have guessed they were dead—just simply frozen, trapped in time. Chris Kutcher and another man who Bernadette only knew as Randy—he’d been new to Bobby’s crew—must have made a run for it. Both men lay in crumpled heaps on the rug in front of her like marionettes whose strings had been cut midperformance. The white shag of the rug was mostly pink now, with swatches of red and black still growing larger under the bodies.
The blue-gray smoke had begun to dissipate and Bernadette let her hands fall away from her face to get a look at the man who’d dragged her in there. He stood by the front-room window as still as the dead men next to her, and his eyes were as black and glazed over as his victims’. He was huge. He was a monster. He was holding a long shaft of bamboo, sharpened and stained black on the end. Bernadette saw nothing on this man’s blank and emotionless face that resembled a human being. She covered her face again with both hands to block out the sight of him—and to block out the bloody dollhouse her home had just become. Maybe it would all disappear. Maybe there was PCP or something in the weed she’d been smoking and all this was some big head trip. Maybe if she just caught her breath and counted to three it would all go away. She’d hear Bobby’s voice again from the bedroom door. She prayed to hear Bobby’s voice. Maybe it wasn’t his body this monster had dragged her past in the hallway. Maybe it wasn’t her Bobby lying out there missing most of his face and left arm. Her crying had gone from a frightened sob to a maniacal heaving sound that hurt her abdomen.
The shorter man in the suit began to speak. His words—his voice—drove away any thoughts Bernadette had of waking up from the worst dream of her life. This was real. These men were real. They had killed her boyfriend. They had killed her friends. They were going to kill her, too, and it was because of Bobby and Arnie Blackwell. She was sure of it.
“Did you even know my money was here?”
Bernadette didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She took her hands away from her face and looked at the man in the suit clearly for the first time. He’d set the gun on the table next to the basket. Bernadette looked at that, too, and said only one word. “Bobby?” It was most likely part of a longer sentence like “What did you do to Bobby?” or “How did you get Bobby’s gun?” but her brain would only allow one word to pass her lips. “Bobby.”
Smoke looked at the gun, and Bernadette thought he started to laugh. But just as her brain would not allow her to speak in complete sentences, it also wouldn’t allow her to process the sound of laughter. The room went silent as if the entire house had just entered a vacuum and begun to hurl aimlessly through space. The Asian man in the suit was holding his belly and Bernadette thought of how strange it was that without sound, his laughing looked so much like crying. The other man—the monster—still stood by the window, completely content inside the void. Bernadette thought—no, she knew—that this was how madness felt. She would be her own witness as she lost her mind.
The short man waved a hand in front of her face. He was talking to her and his words were slowly forming over the drone of space. “I’m very sorry for all this,” he said. “I can see by the look on your face that Arnold told me the truth. You really had no idea you had my money. Is that your gun, too? Did he take your gun without your permission?” Smoke shook his head. He looked like a disappointed father. “I’m sorry I laughed. It really isn’t funny for you. I know that. It’s very unfortunate for everyone, really.” Smoke looked around the room at all the people he’d let his pet monster turn into rag dolls, but there was no real compassion in his words. There was no real remorse. It was the exact opposite. In the same way that Bernadette felt a palpable indifference to the violence resonating off the bigger man, the smaller one practically beamed with pride in what they’d done.
Bernadette felt her stomach churning and did nothing to stop herself from throwing up. A stomach full of Hot Pockets and bile bubbled over her chin and spilled down the front of her button-up IGA work smock. She didn’t even make an attempt to wipe it away. Her brain wouldn’t let her. She was systematically shutting down, and the man in the suit could see it happening in her eyes. Now he looked the way he really felt. He was disgusted with her and he backed away. He leaned over and picked up the gun from the coffee table.
“Fenn, you don’t want to fuck this nasty bitch, do you? You’ll need to clean her up first if you do.” He looked at the big man and lifted both his hands in the air as if to say, Well?
“No,” Fenn said. That was it. Just one syllable from this man and the strange sound of him made Bernadette throw up again. This time everything left in her stomach was now down the front of her. Smoke looked even more disgusted with her. He raised the gun and pointed it at her. She just stared at the barrel, still lost in the warped reality of the last few minutes of her life. Everything from the first gunshot going off to this man in a suit pointing Bobby’s gun at her played out in her head all at once. She thought about her sister. She couldn’t remember if she had told her she loved her or not. The muscles in Bernadette’s face were loose and sagged. “Love—Jess,” she said in short bursts.
“Oh, how sweet you are. It’s a shame to kill such a sweet girl. We could have had a little fun first, but oh well.”
“Wait,” Bernadette said. Another word escaped past the gate of her traumatized mind, and then another one followed. “Pregnant.”
Smoke smiled and uttered another syllable that made Bernadette’s abdomen seize. “So?”
She stared at the man and accepted it. She waited to die.
A sharp whistling sound came from behind her in the kitchen. Bernadette thought it was her imagination at first, but she saw the man in the suit shift his attention past her and look at where the sound came from. He heard it, too. He looked surprised, but before he could do anything—say anything—another shot rang out so close to her that it robbed Bernadette of her hearing for real this time. She screamed again but could only hear it in her head.
The man in the suit still stood there before a second shot rang out and put him down. The monster by the window lunged toward her. She kept screaming, but two more shots rang out through the droning in her head, and the bigger man fell forward onto the coffee table, smashing it to pieces. Bernadette kept screaming as the short man’s blood oozed out of him and the slick pool inched its way closer to her. She was barely aware of the third man walking out of the kitchen behind her, a man with no face, a figure composed completely of shadows. He sat beside her and made a noise she couldn’t make out. Her ears were still ringing. She was still screaming. He was holding her hands now. He wore gloves and he was handing her something. He was handing her a gun. He was saying something. His words began to cut through. He was telling her it was okay—that she was safe now. He kept repeating it in her ear as he sat with her.
He kept saying “It’s okay” and “You’re safe now” until the mantras finally quieted her. She was holding a gun now, and then the dark man was standing up. He crossed in front of her and leaned down to touch the first man he’d just killed. He moved like liquid—smooth and relaxed. He was touching his neck. He was feeling for a pulse. Bernadette’s world was beginning to come back into focus and she could make out the details. She screamed and the man removed his hand from the small dead man and moved closer to her.
This man wasn’t made of shadows at all. He was just dressed in black and wore a mask. His clothing was tactical—military, maybe. His pants were covered in Velcro-fastened pockets and he wore a tight black fleece hoodie, zipped up to the top of the collar covering his neck. Not a bit of skin showed on the man from head to toe. Bernadette avoided the man’s eyes. She couldn’t bear to see another pair of eyes like those of the other two men who had invaded her home. She sat against the sofa surrounded by dead people and held the small gun the man in black had given her. She kept it pointed at him, but he didn’t seem to mind. She watched him pick up the gun her attacker had been holding and do something to it so the part holding the bullets ejected into his gloved hand. “Bernadette,” he said. He knew her name. She squeezed the grip of the gun, unaware or unable to do anything else with it. “Bernadette,” he said again, and held the two parts of the dismantled gun out in front of him for her to see. It was a calming gesture. The third time he spoke her name she answered.
“Please,” she said. “Please—don’t—hurt—me.” Her voice came out in short, suffocated bursts of sound. The gun she held outstretched in front of her shook under its own weight, but she didn’t let it lower.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “The men who did this are dead. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
“Who—are—you?”
“That doesn’t matter right now. The only thing that matters is that you’re safe now. Just breathe and try to calm down. The police are on their way.”
“The police?”
“Yes, the police, but I need you to focus. Just breathe and focus.” He spoke softly with a soothing tone, and soon Bernadette began to do what he said. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“That’s good. Very good.”
She pulled in more of the rancid, copper-tinged air and heaved it back out.
“All right,” he said. “Now listen to me carefully, okay?”
Bernadette nodded and let the gun lower a few inches. Her arms burned and she wanted so badly to just let it drop to her lap.
“The person who gave Bobby this money, a man named Arnie Blackwell—”
“He’s not here.” Bernadette had regained her bearings and her voice. It was easier to speak. “I didn’t even know the money was there.”
The man stood silent and Bernadette wished she’d said nothing. He moved toward the front window and then back to where the bodies were on the floor. He took short, deliberate steps as if he was measuring the distance with his footsteps. He faced her again and Bernadette immediately looked down at his chest to avoid eye contact. “But you do know the man I’m talking about, right? Arnold. Arnold Blackwell.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, so he didn’t tell you about the money?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know who these people are?” He kicked at the smaller Asian’s lifeless body at his feet.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
Bernadette looked at the dead men but didn’t have to in order to answer.
“No. I’ve never seen either of them before in my life.”
“Okay, Bernadette. I believe you, but I need to ask you one more question, and I need you to be very sure of your answer, all right? It’s very important. Do you understand?”
She nodded again. “Yes.”
“Do you know where I can find Arnold’s little brother?”
The question almost didn’t register. It was a strange question and Bernadette felt like she was slipping back into that place between real and not real. “What?” she said.
“You do know that Arnold has a brother, yes?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. William, but what do you want with him? He’s only a kid. He’s eleven. He likes fish sticks.” Neither of them knew why that random detail had come to the surface.
“Bernadette, we are running out of time. You can do this. Focus and just answer the question.”
Bernadette didn’t understand why they were running out of time. He said the police were coming. She let the gun in her hands fall even closer into her lap. The man in black took a step closer and squatted down in front of her. “Your boyfriend and Arnold did something very stupid and these men killed them for it.”
“Bobby is dead?” she asked, but she already knew the answer.
“Yes. He’s dead. Arnold is, too, and the same people who killed him—bad people like this—are now looking for William, too.”
“But he’s—”
“A little kid. I know, but thanks to his brother, he’s a little kid in a lot of trouble. I need to find him before any more of these bad people do, so I can protect him. I need you to help me find him. So please, Bernadette. Think real hard and tell me where I can find the boy before it’s too late.”
“I—I—” Bernadette fumbled for the words, but again she didn’t know why. She already knew her answer. “I have no idea. Arnold only brought him here once. Having a kid here made Bobby nervous. Oh, God, Bobby. Is he really—”
“Stay with me, Bernadette. The kid. Where is the kid?”
“I told you. I don’t know. I don’t even know where they live now. Arnie moved right after his parents died. I swear. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“Bernadette, look at me.” The man’s voice hardened. She didn’t want to look at him. Something in the pit of her stomach told her that if she did, it would be the end of her. He repeated himself, and she knew from his tone she had no choice. She let the small-caliber gun fall completely into the lap of her sweatpants and she raised her head to meet the man’s eyes. They were a swirl of storm clouds with hints of ice—nothing like the glassy black stones of the men who had murdered her Bobby and her friends. They were sad eyes—desperate eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help you. I would if I could, but I honestly don’t know.”
He studied her face for the lie. He didn’t stare at her so much as through her, like someone trained to recognize what others couldn’t. He saw nothing—no twitches or involuntary shifts—no signs of betrayal. She was telling the truth, but the man’s own eyes revealed no sign of rancor at that discovery. They held no anger or rage—only disappointment. He stood and began to walk with the same calculated footsteps back over to the space in front of the window. He placed his feet in exactly the same spot the monster had stood.
“I believe you,” he said. Only then did Bernadette realize that her savior in black tactical clothing was still holding Bobby’s dismantled gun. She watched him shove the magazine back into the handle and rack the slide. He still had that look of disappointment in his eyes as he aimed the pistol and shot Bernadette in the belly. His decision to shoot her in the gut was deliberate. He clearly knew how to stage a scene.
She stared at her killer as she held her hands to her belly. Blood oozed out between her fingers, and she watched the man who shot her put Bobby’s gun back into Smoke’s hand. He pressed the dead man’s fingers tightly onto the grip and trigger just in case his own gloves had wiped it clean. Bernadette watched him carefully shift the details so the room told the story he wanted it to. She watched her killer turn her into a murderer, too. When he was done, he sat with her. He held her stare without remorse, but with that same disappointed look. His sad blue eyes were the last thing she saw before her own eyes glossed over and she faded from this world to the next.
The man felt her neck for a pulse, then removed his balaclava. He crouched down next to her and lifted her freckled hand. It was still holding the small-caliber unregistered handgun he’d given her. He aimed her hand at the wall and pressed her finger on the trigger to fire another round. He shifted her arm and fired again, making sure to cover her hands and chest with the gunshot residue she’d be tested for.
He laid her hand back in her lap, careful to avoid the blood still draining from her abdomen, but made sure her fingers stayed curled around the grip. He stood and looked around to take it all in before carefully stuffing the cash into a trash bag from the kitchen. He laid it on the kitchen counter, then returned the wicker basket to the closet in the bedroom and reset the hideaway in the floor to look untouched. He made his way back into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge for a Coke or a cold beer. There was nothing in the refrigerator but a two-liter bottle of flat Mountain Dew, so he passed on any refreshments. He shut the fridge and went to pick up the bag of cash, but it wasn’t there. He froze for a second before spinning around with his gun out. He surveyed the room. It was quiet. Everyone was still dead, but the big man—the one he had put down himself—was gone—and so was the money.
“Damn.”
He cased the entire house, busting into every room. The place was empty. He left the way he had come.