Authors: Kathi S. Barton
The younger man started talking. “We got a contract that said to kill you. And anyone else that was in the house too. This was going to be my first one. They never said you’d be able to shoot back. That’s really fucked up.”
Lauren shot the kid in the head. Then she looked at the other man. He looked like he was going to lunge at her and she smiled at him. This was a good deal more fun than she’d thought it would be.
“Who took out the hit?” No answer, so she shot him in the shoulder. “See how this works? I ask a question, you answer. If not, then I shoot. I have no qualms whatsoever in killing you too. I had a really long list of shit that I had to do today, and you’ve put me behind. Who hired you and that idiot there?”
“You are as cold and heartless as they said you were.” She thanked him. “I didn’t mean it as a compliment. You really are a fucking cunt, aren’t you?”
“Oh, really? Well how sad. Because to me, it was a compliment. And yeah I am, probably worse too if you want to know the truth. Now answer the question before I kill you.” He asked her if she really could, and for an answer, she shot him again, this time in the leg where it knocked him to the ground. “Who did you get the contract from?”
“Goes by the name Briggy. Not a very scary name. Maybe he should come and talk to you about being scary.” She asked him if he was scared. “Yes. I am. You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He nodded and slowly moved his hand into his pocket. If he pulled a gun, this conversation was going to end now, but he took out an envelope and held it out to her. “What is it?”
“In addition to a picture of you and the men that you work with, there is the entire conversation that this Briggy person and I had.” She asked him why he had it on him. “Because unlike the man here, I figured we were gonna be shot to shit anyway. Just never figured you’d get the jump on us, and we’d be able to take a little of you with us when we went.”
“Yeah, life sucks like that.” Lauren reached for Hawkins and asked him to come to her. Then she told Colin what she was up to. He asked her if she was all right.
I am. They’re both…well, one is dead, and the other might make it if he doesn’t piss me off. Are you coming home?
Yes. I’ve already turned around.
She told him to wait until the police passed him.
Why? I mean, I’d feel a good deal better if I was there with you now and not waiting around. If you know what I mean?
I do, but I think it will play better if the fuckwads that run this town think I was the poor
helpless woman at home alone.
He laughed and told her she was far from helpless.
Yeah, I know that, but they seem to think I need protecting. Besides, I’m not sure who I can trust in the department as yet.
Colin told her that the police just passed him and he’d wait five minutes. Holding her weapon on the man as he lay on her porch, she asked him if he was going to tell the police what he’d been doing there.
“Will you kill me if I say no?” She said that she might anyway, but no, not if he was going to tell the truth. “Got nothing to live for. Once this gets out, that man that hired me, if he wants someone like you dead, then I’m not long for this world anyway. To be honest, I’d rather go out by your hand. I think it would be quicker.”
She never got the chance to tell him she wasn’t going to do it. The police and Hawkins came into the yard just as she held her weapon up and her finger off the guard and went to her knees. Lauren was tossed to the ground just as three police started to scream at her and the other man to drop their weapons.
Some days, she thought, it wasn’t worth getting out of the fucking bed.
Chapter 10
Jarvis Wingate moved from his living room to his kitchen and was just pulling down a cup to have a nice hot brew when something poked him in the back of the head. He’d been in the service and had been around guns his entire life before that. He stilled when the gun poked harder at his head.
“I don’t have any money here.” He did, but he figured if the guy was going to rob him, he’d have him lead him right to his own stash of weapons. He felt the man’s breath on his cheek before he spoke.
“It’s Hawkins. Don’t move.” He didn’t so much as nod at the man. “You’re being watched, did you know that?”
“Figures.” He felt the weapon leave his head, and he started to turn when he was told to finish what he was doing. “You mean my tea?”
As they were both whispering, Jarvis thought that Hawkins hadn’t heard him and asked again. The man laughed and told him to pretend he wasn’t there.
“Yeah, we both know that’s not going to happen. Have you been sent here to kill me? There is a lot of that going around.” Hawkins said he wasn’t. “Then I can only assume that you’re here for something else. Like…I have no idea. Too scared to think beyond you’re not here to kill me. Can I fix you a cup of tea, young man? I feel as if I need to do something, or just crawl in the corner with my thumb in my mouth.”
“I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you and I won’t. You’re not my target in all this. But this is the only room that only has one camera. It’s pointed, for some reason, at your fridge.” Jarvis waited for the water to boil in the water pot and thought about what he’d just said. “Yes, before you ask, they’re in the bathrooms as well. Mostly pointed at the sink.”
“Good to know the next time I have to take a crap.” He was trying for humor and knew that it fell short of the mark. “Why are you here if not to kill me? I have to tell you, if they were to send in your boss, Lauren, I’d have shit myself by now. She’s dangerous.”
“She sent me while she takes care of other things. I’m going to kidnap you. With your permission.” The tea bag that he was dunking in the now hot water stilled. “Keep doing it, sir, and I’ll explain the best I can. But you’re going to have to trust me a little here.”
“Lauren sent you.” He said that she had. “And let me guess, Joe has something to do with you being here in the middle of the night and thinking to kidnap me. I’m assuming that this is to keep someone else from coming in here and killing me.”
“Yes, it is. They want you dead.” He asked him who the
they
was. “Brigadier General Williams and the president.”
Jarvis sat at his little table, careful to keep his face out of the direction of the refrigerator. He’d had a feeling that he was being left out of something, and now he knew why. Not really why, he supposed, but at least someone was watching out for him. He quietly asked Hawkins if he could explain things for him.
“They figure you’re in the way of their plans. I’m not entirely sure what their plans are, but they mean to kill you, thus making Williams the VP in the next round of elections. The plan, as we know it so far, is to kill Lauren and me and use that as a way for voters to see him as a compassionate man. Some bullshit about how we were serving our country, and now we had only come home to die. By the way, they think that I’ve lost an arm due to the injuries over there. I’ve been keeping a low profile.” Jarvis said he’d heard that today, that he’d lost his arm. “Today someone by the hang tag of Briggy sent two men to see Lauren and to kill her and Colin. Didn’t work. She killed one and injured the other. He had a lot of paperwork on him but no name that the police can use. But she can and will find them. You need to be put up before that happens.”
“Briggy, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is Williams. He told me that once. For some reason he thought it was fucking funny that no one would ever guess it was him. He’s a moron, in the event you didn’t already know that.” Hawkins said they had thought so. “So, how does this work now? You beat me up a little, then take me out of here so they can see it?”
“No. I’m going to ask you politely to go to the garage, where you’re going to commit suicide.” Jarvis knocked his cup over and was mopping up the mess as Hawkins continued. “Lauren is there with a body she…you don’t want to know where she got it. But you’re going to go out there and then we’ll work from there. It’s the only way that no one will look for you. At least for now. When the shit hits the fan, and it will, she wants you safe. And dead is about as safe as we can make you.”
“You could have started with that, that it was a plan and not my actual death.” Hawkins laughed a little. “And then what, young man? Am I going to be in hiding for the rest of my life? Or is there more to this plan that I should know.”
“Yes, sir, you’re going to be living with my parents for a little while, then with a vampire friend of ours, before we ship you off to stay with Lauren. If it comes to that. But when we’re done, you’ll need to assume the duties of the presidency. We think you’re going to do a much better job. But we’re putting you in Lauren’s home last because of the breach she had this morning. We don’t want you to get hurt.” Jarvis cleaned up his mess and asked if there was going to be a note. “No. You’re just going to do it. Or so they think. We’re hoping that this will make them reckless enough to make a big enough mistake so that they hang themselves. And soon too.”
Jarvis knew of this man and Lauren, but not only from what he’d been told about them by Joe. Joe had claimed that Lauren had been sleeping her way to her position, and that once there, had decided that she was going to be a glory hound. Jarvis had never actually talked to her, but from everything he’d been able to find about her on his own, she was a more behind the scenes sort of soldier, giving credit to her men more than she took for herself.
Hawkins, too, had been a man that Joe had disliked. But unlike the woman, Jarvis had spoken to him on the night that they had been to the White House and things there had gone terribly wrong. He looked at Hawkins as he was ready to go out of doors, and moved back to his tea pot and unplugged it before speaking, his back to the man and hopefully the camera. Jarvis closed his eyes before asking what he’d been thinking about for some time.
“He tried to have his wife and son killed, didn’t he? Joe, I mean. He hired those people to come in and kill his family. It wasn’t about him at all. It was his lovely wife and son that were the targets that night.” Hawkins said that they’d only recently found out themselves. “He blames you two for them being alive. You messed up whatever plans he had, and now he thinks of it as your fault. Doesn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.” Jarvis nodded once. It was enough to get him going and do what he needed to stay alive.
Jarvis had heard about his good friend Tony being killed, and he had a feeling it was just a matter of time before he joined him. So far all they’d been able to tell him when he’d asked was that he’d been the victim of a random act of crime. He no more believed that than he did Joe being a good man. As he made his way out to the garage, he stopped long enough to tilt his head up to the softly falling rain and let it wash some of the nightmarish quality of the night and day off him. Jarvis went into the garage with a heavy heart. He didn’t want to die. No, he wasn’t going to die, at least not tonight, but his feelings on what was going on around him, about him, were sad. Hurtful too.
“Hello, Jarhead. How’s it hanging?” Jarvis felt the big arms of Tony wrap around him tightly even as the door behind him closed. “Christ, this had been a shit storm. I’m so glad you’re okay with this. It was sort of a spur of the moment kind of thing.”
“The paper said you were dead. That your body was missing.” Tony looked fit as a fiddle to him. “You’re all right. You need to tell…ah, so Lauren has you safely stashed away as well, does she? I’m going to have to thank her in ways that she won’t like. That woman…she—”
“No. I was murdered last night. Well, nearly so. My mate found me and brought me back.” Jarvis knew that his friend was a tiger and had always thought it funny that he was Tony the Tiger. But the joke, like the Jarhead one, was just between the two of them. “I’m partly vampire and all cat now.”
“Partly?” Tony explained. “So you can be out during the day and eat if you want. How the hell did…Christ, did he have you killed too?”
“I’m still trying to figure it out, but I would say yes.” Jarvis looked at the beautiful woman that was dressed in black clothing as she moved toward him. “Mr. Vice President, I’m Major Lauren Burcher. I’m glad that we can keep you from harm. But we have to get this going. There are people I need to knock the shit out of as soon as possible.”
“So am I, Major, so am I. What do I do now? I’ve no one left to mourn me overly much. Do you need me to, I don’t know, go somewhere right this minute?” She told him that Victoria was going to take him away as soon as he started the car up. “Good. Prints and all. And no note?”
“No. I want people to think on this a little. Like, did you commit suicide or were you killed? Tony being dead will make people wonder, and that’s just what we want. Then tomorrow, when it is apparent that you’re dead, I’m going to sprinkle a few things around; you know, spice up your life. And so you know, a great many people will mourn your passing.”
He wasn’t so sure. When he was asked to go ahead and start the car up, he reached in over the body. It took him two tries to get it started. The man in the seat could have been his double.
“We had to make it look good.” He nodded at Lauren. “Sir, I swear to you, I didn’t kill him because he looked like you.”
“Good heavens, I know that.” He did too, he realized. “It’s just that, well, he could be my twin.”
“Dental records will say that it’s you. Blood too. We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to kill you off to keep you safe.” He looked around the garage and asked her where the men where that were supposed to be protecting him. “Gone. And have been for several days. That’s why we moved tonight. I was afraid that they were going to make their move sooner than we wanted them to.”
As he was wrapped up in the arms of the beautiful woman who said she was taking him to the McCullough’s home, he looked at Lauren again as she and Tony set up the car to look like he’d really killed himself. It occurred to him as he was standing in the kitchen of someone else that they knew just what they were doing. And that scared him more than he could say.