9

JAMES’ WHEELS GO SILENT when they hit the carpet in the living room. I’m at my desk. My back is to him, so I can’t read his expression. But even his wheels sound dour and disapproving.

Gogo loafs over to him, and from the sounds of scuffling and breathing, I can tell she’s dropped her head in his lap, and he’s petting her. She’s becoming as much his dog as mine. Which is a good thing. It won’t hurt her as much when I leave her with him.

It looks like rain. I took Gogo out this morning because the weather had called for afternoon rains. The sky is swollen and gray.

James gives me a minute, because that’s what he does now. He waits, patient on the outside, roiling on the inside, like a cork plugged into a shaking bottle, fit to explode. He keeps it all contained. He thinks I can’t see how it eats at him, the inability to stand up, walk away on his own, throw his weight around like he used to.

I can imagine the stifling, claustrophobic frustration of it. It will be easier when he’s mobile, when he can stand.

He exhales a steady stream of air. It hisses through his nostrils. “You owe me an answer, Stranger.”

“Do I?” Now, I turn. He hasn’t bugged me about Mia in months. Hasn’t even mentioned my career and how it pays the bills. “Why?”

He doesn’t look at me, glares at the floor with his hands flexed on the arms of his chair. “It’s just one more month, Stranger. I’ll have the prostheses, I can get a job. I won’t nee—”

His jaw clenches tight as he breaks off. He won’t need me. I know that. He doesn’t need me now. Just the money and the house.

“I won’t always be so dependent.” His voice rises slightly, and he glares at me.

“You don’t have to do this...” He points at my computer as if it’s to blame. “You take these jobs because you want to make sure I’m okay, but I already am.”

I look around, thinking about that. These jobs. Like I’m a handyman taking odd jobs to make ends meet. Not a killer. Ending people’s lives.

In the last few months, this house has become more his home than mine. A stack of books covers a side table. Friends of his from around the world have sent cards and photos. He’s been tacking them up on a cork board over the sofa. Tasha brought him a fruit bowl. It sits on the kitchen counter. James ordered a rug for the living room online. He said Gogo would get cold this winter.

They’ll be fine without me. Once James gets his prostheses and can drive, he won’t even need me to get groceries.

If it were me, and I went from being big and fast, normally the tallest guy in the room, to spending my life on my ass, stuck in a chair, forced to accept help for mundane shit, looking at a future walking on titanium pegs, I’d be mad as hell.

If I could fix it, go back, I would. But I can’t. So I did the one thing I could do. Bought the house, hired the architects, got it ready for a guy in a chair. Found the nurse. Found a housekeeper who’d keep her mouth shut about the locked basement when she comes once a week to clean up after us. I stayed here, fucking helped him however I could.

I left him in a group home, joined up. He followed in my footsteps and now look at him.

It should have been me in the chair. He’d have handled this better than I am. He’d have helped me with a joke and a grin.

Because my throat is suddenly thick and I have no idea what else to say to make this minute better. “What do you want to know about, Mia?”

He makes a noise in his throat that tells me he thinks I’m lying. “Tell me about her.”

I type Heineken1987 into the password bar. James’ favorite beer and his birth year.

He moves closer, and I shift my chair so he can sit beside me at the desk. “She really is pretty.”

I don’t comment, but he stares at me for a long moment, before his posture relaxes.

I pull up a picture of Jeremy’s face from his social media. “This is the fiancé, Jeremy Dixon. He travels a lot.”

James leans forward and studies Dixon’s narrow face. The long nose, the light blue eyes, the slim jaw, long narrow nose. “You think it’s him?”

“Not a whole lot. Old money, took over his dad’s business. Mia thinks it’s going well, but he’s lost a few massive clients in the last months. The business isn’t doing as well as she thinks.”

“Maybe. He’s got a penthouse and a new Mercedes SUV. Works a lot supposedly.”

I shift. “Maybe. It’s just... Maybe he needs Mia’s money. That doesn’t mean he needs or even wants her dead.”

James is quiet for a while, clicking through the photos on Dixon’s social media account.

Since that day by the waterfall when she asked me if she could trust me, I’ve been chewing on the mystery in my hands. Who wants Mia dead? Who has the motive, the money and the means of finding me?

I have sifted through the internet, called Jeremy’s office and Mia’s father’s, pretending to be a prospective client. I cold-called Annie and Greg and Jeremy’s parents and a few of their friends, just to hear their voices. And there’s a lot of information to be found online.

“The firm manages endowments and trusts. They’ve got clients in China, South Africa, Luxemburg, London, France, the Caribbean, across the U.S.”

James glances back at me. “You think if it’s him, that’s how he found you?”

“Maybe. He must brownnose with government people on occasion but no one at a yuppy cocktail party mentions they know a contract killer. That doesn’t happen. Not even in Bond movies.”

“You mean you don’t advertise?” James laughs. A real laugh. I’m not sure when I last saw him laugh. We had little contact in the years after the group home. We’d meet up for dinner or lunch. Catch a ballgame when we were both on leave. Have conversations that consisted mostly of silence, and carry on our way. Silent ships with an ocean of unsaid crap between us, passing each other by once or twice a year.

His cheeks line with laughter, his head falling back a little. “Assassin for hire. Three hundred K a pop. Special summer discount, two for the price of one.”

“Not really. I can see the ad perfectly.” He holds his hands up, like he’s framing the camera shot. “A lone woman, crying into her pillow. Her husband bangs on the door, screaming. She’s terrified. A deep male voice-over.” He pitches his voice low. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help? Is there someone in your life you need taken care of? The assassins of Hit For You Enterprises can help. Call today. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. You aren’t alone. You have... the Hitman on your side. She reaches for the phone, visibly relieved. We close on an optimistic piano riff. Saving lives, one body at a time.”

I do laugh. A little. Mostly just because it’s nice to see him happy. “You done now?”

There are plenty of assholes who do advertise in certain forums. “It’s more like five K a pop for some ex-con to knife someone down.”

“No one outside government people for the most part. Someone who’d been involved in black ops with me, someone on a committee, maybe CIA. Most of my jobs come from governments. With government budgets.”

James rubs his hands together. “So... Okay, theoretically, Dixon—or his dad, the original owner—could have gotten tipsy with someone who knows something they shouldn’t. Your name is dropped. Dixon remembers.”

No one namedrops assassins, complete with email addresses. I thread my fingers behind my back and cradle my head in my palms. “I don’t buy it. I don’t even know who hires me, usually. And they don’t know anything about me.”

“An email address is all they’d need, though, right? Maybe someone listening in on a conversation between two senators, who knows. But, it’s possible. Right?”

I stare out at the mountain, the leaves in browns and oranges, play out the scenario a few times. It’s highly doubtful. “I guess.”

“They look alike,” he says. It’s true. The same narrow face, pale blue eyes, dark brown hair.

“She was a reporter until a few months ago. She was put on bedrest early in her pregnancy. The babies are a few months old. She hasn’t gone back yet.”

I nod. “Best friends since college. Mia loves her. She’s the twins’ godmother.”

I pull up Annie’s husband’s face now. Greg. “This is Annie’s husband. Of all of her friends and family she’s mentioned, he’s the only one smart enough to mention her physical safety and the potential risks inherent to her work.”

“I didn’t say that. But I respect what he said to her even though it pissed her off. Also, I can’t imagine someone who wanted her dead encouraging her to look out for her own self-defense.”

James studies the light brown hair, the big white teeth, the self-satisfied grin. “Unless he was asking so he could isolate holes in said self-defense.”

“That would be like looking for holes in the sky. She has zero self-defense beyond a flimsy lock on her door. She just assumes everything will be okay because it always has been.”

“It could be any of them. I just think... I don’t know. I want more information. Whoever took out the hit has money to blow. Two fifty is a lot. Makes me think it’s not about the money. It’s more personal than that.”

I put up Mia’s father’s face next. “Keith Whitten. Her dad. Private wealth manager. Clients include a general, a governor, some low-level celebrities, a few sport’s players, and a lot of lawyers, doctors and miscellaneous business persons.”

James studies the guy’s face. He looks exactly like what you’d expect a rich east coast guy to look like. White hair, dark suit, cautious smile, respectful eyes. He looks like old money.

“So he has maybe an even better chance of some kind of late night, cigar and scotch talk with someone who knew of you.”

I lift my shoulders. “I guess. But why would he kill his own daughter? He’s a signatory on her trust. He wouldn’t benefit in any way I can see.”

“Maybe. It’s weird to assume someone with money problems has that much cash lying around, though.”

Next comes Mia’s mom. Coiffed honey-gold hair, enormous gold and diamond jewelry. I got this picture from the website of the tennis group at their country club. “She’s a lady who lunches. She and Mia talk every single day. They’re close. She’s never worked. Isn’t on social media, and Mia says she doesn’t even really understand how to text. Apparently, she signs them all love, Mom.”

I bring up Mia’s sales page and show him the bad review. “This could be nothing, but there’s an ugly feel to it. A few similar posts on her social media, and a few that smack more of men just harassing her because she’s pretty, but she deletes those instantly.”

James gets distracted by the cover and the blurb of Mia’s latest release, Shame. The couple on the cover are basically naked and full on kissing.

He grins, looking happier than he has since before the accident, and I find my own face smiling in response.

James flips through the screen again, rereading the information I’ve gathered on each of them. It’s all there in a word doc. The photos, the information I’ve found to date.

There’s a lot to be found online, but I need more. I want financial details on them. I want to know who’s loaded and who’s struggling.

I put Danny Whitten’s face up. “He’s running an acting agency. His family doesn’t know that. They think he’s a lawyer. But aside from that, he and Mia get along. He’s got a girl named Penny. Decorator or something, zen shit. He’s in LA.”

He looks at me, his eyes, so unsettlingly like mine, serious. All humor evaporated. “Yeah, we. We’re going to save this girl, Stranger. Together.”

I’ve never saved anyone before. Even in the army, I was black ops. Silent strikes in the night. Me and a small team. I take lives. I don’t save them. “You want to be my Robin?”

He spreads his hands wide. “I mean, I was thinking more like Watson, but I’ll take Robin, long as that’s what this is? Saving her.”

Even if I hadn’t already decided a long time ago that Mia was safe from me, I think I’d agree just to see him so happy. “Yeah.”

James sucks his lips between his teeth. “We need information. Let’s go see this fool Dixon. I want to read his mail, know what kind of bills he’s got. Same with his sister and her husband. The dad too.”

Stranger: What are you doing right now?

That makes about as much sense as anything else, so for now, I’m happy to let him find whatever happiness he can from playing detective.

Mia: Writing. You?

Stranger: Thinking about you.

Mia: That’s sweet.

Stranger: I think about you a lot, Reed. I want to see you.

Mia: Me too.

Stranger: Tonight.

Mia: No.

Stranger: When?

Mia: Soon. Maybe. I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.

­­­9

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