Chapter 4 – Patient Research

I landed on the ground, not because of the hit – it wasn’t that hard, though somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought a rib might be bruised – but because my body decided it was just the right time to get rid of the alcohol in my system.

Fortitude only goes so far, and I wasn’t able to hold it in any longer.

My mind tried to count the number of shots I must have done with Jim, the security guy, as I retched into the shrubs near the edge of the park.  The commotion going on around me barely made sense as I fertilized the rock garden and reminded myself over and over again why I didn’t make a habit of drinking too much.

I hated puking.

Just hated it.

Even when I was a kid, the very notion of puking was abhorrent.  The slightest feeling of nausea had been enough to nearly send me into a panic attack, and if I had an actual stomach bug, I would cry and scream between stomach heaves.  I honestly thought major organs or other important bits of my insides would come out if I threw up too much.  I remembered the feeling of terror and helplessness as I knelt over the grimy porcelain bowl at the convent and tried to keep my insides actually on the inside of me.

There was one nun who would smack me and tell me to stop being such a baby; I think I had been about four at that time.  Needless to say, that didn’t help me get over my fear of vomiting, and though adulthood had given me a more realistic perspective on the whole thing, I still hated it with a passion.

By the time I was starting to get a bit of control back, everything seemed to have quieted down.  It didn’t make any sense at all, but the commotion that had been all around me as I was sick had vanished.  The scent from the ground below me was nearly enough to make me puke again, so I started pushing myself backwards and onto the walkway – trying to get away from the stench in hopes of saving myself.  My knees scraped the rough asphalt, and I cringed as I finally regained enough sense to look around me.

Odin sat next to me, wagging his tail and lolling his tongue to one side.

Some guard dog.

He tried to lick my face, which was just disgusting.  I pushed him away as a pair of feet came into view right in front of me.  Dirty tennis shoes and bright white socks over hairy calves bounced around in my vision as my head spun in a steady circle.  I knew I needed to lift my head to see who it was, but I didn’t have quite enough muscle control.

“You look like shit,” a familiar voice said.

My fingers rubbed into my eyes to try to un-blur my vision while the other hand wiped a sleeve across my mouth.  It took a minute, but I was finally able to look around with some clarity only to find both the kids who had come after me were gone.  In their place, Terry Kramer was grinning down at me.

“What the…” I shook my head, earning me more woozy feelings in my head and stomach.  Terry blurred in and out of existence while I tried to keep myself from puking again.  With herculean effort, I swallowed back bile and willed myself not to be sick as I looked up at Terry.  “What are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass,” he replied with a big grin.

I looked around, but I didn’t see the two kids anywhere.  There was a little switchblade-style knife lying on the walkway next to the grass a couple of yards away, but no one around to wield it.  Looking over the park, I saw no signs of anyone walking around, so they must have gone around the front of the building.  It didn’t make sense – they had come from the park.

“Great timing I got, huh?” Terry said as I forced myself back onto my feet.

Wobbling slightly, I reached down to Odin’s neck and grabbed a hold of his collar.  My fingers worked their way around to the edge to the leash, and I wrapped my hand around it.  He wasn’t going anywhere, but I needed something to help ground me.  I kind of needed him to help get me off the ground, too.

With shaking knees and Odin as leverage, I managed to stand up but continued to stare at the concrete as it spun around in my vision.  I had to focus.  I had to get the shit out of my system, so my body would stop revolting against me.

I turned towards the decorative pile of stones and puked again.

“Oh, man!” Terry exclaimed.  He took several steps backwards to avoid the splatter.  “You’re in bad shape!”

Responding to him would have been pointless, not to mention impossible given the current situation, so I didn’t.  Besides, I had the feeling opening my mouth again would cause problems.

“You’re really lucky I was walking by,” Terry said.  “Those kids might have given you some hurt.”

A lot of potential responses bopped around in my head like a Teen Beat celebrity, some with words and others with actions.  At least one response included my knuckles.  I might have tried to say something, but I really was a little afraid that if I opened my mouth, I was going to puke again.

I needed to brush my teeth and drink half a bottle of mouthwash.

“Where you going?” Terry asked as I picked up Odin’s leash and started back towards the building.

I pointed at the door of the apartments and then moved up to swipe the security badge you needed to get in late at night.  Terry stayed at my heels, but when he started to walk in with me, I put a hand out to his chest and stopped him.

“What the fuck?” he said.  “I just saved your life, and you don’t even let me in to wash my hands or something?”

“Not exactly in the mood for company,” I said.

“I just saved your ass!”

There were very few things that annoyed me more than someone who fished for compliments.  Whether it was a chick wanting me to tell her she didn’t look fat in the fucking dress, a server batting her eyelashes for a bigger tip, or a punk wannabe thinking I needed to thank him for hanging around my apartment at an opportune time, I found the very act pathetic and undeserving of praise.

“What the fuck are you doing around here anyway?” I asked.  Now that my mind was going in that particular direction, I did find it odd.  I’d never seen Terry around this area before.  “You don’t live anywhere near here.”

“I was down at Sweetwater’s watching the game and having a beer,” he said.  “I needed to walk and clear up my head, so I cut through the park – figured I’d take the Red Line – it’s the only one running this time of night.”

The places he was talking about were close, at least.  I shook my still fuzzy head and waved a hand at him.

“Go home,” I said.  “I’m going to bed.”

The door shut behind me, and I didn’t look back to see whatever annoyed expression might have been on his face.  Instead, I let Odin lead me to the elevator and then down the hall to the apartment.  I didn’t even make it to the bed, but just the few steps it took to get to the couch and pass out.

As the room spun around and around and consciousness started to leave me, I realized the walk from Sweetwater Tavern and Grille to the Red Line train was the opposite direction from my apartment.  There was no way a Chicago native like Terry would have walked the wrong direction to get to the L.

He lied to me.

*****

Most people probably thought my line of work was always dangerous and exciting.  It could be, I supposed, but most of it was fucking dull.  There was a lot more research than target practice or killing – that was for sure.

I Googled.  I clicked.  I hovered the cursor over balloon links to other sites.  I read celebrity gossip websites and websites that debunked various celebrity gossip websites.  Ashton was represented in every one of them, of course.  Women couldn’t get enough of him, gay dudes couldn’t get enough of him, and straight ones put up with it because their women came home horny and ready to blow them.

I couldn’t seem to find any pictures of Ashton in compromising situations with any of the women, though.  No scandalous love affairs with senators’ daughters or the co-star from his last movie.  No groupies getting groped at parties or secret rendezvous in shady hotels with cute little American Idol starlets.

If anything, he seemed more likely to hang out with the starlet’s brother.

Interesting.

He wasn’t openly out of the closet, but he hadn’t denied anything, either.  I was perfectly straight, but if he wasn’t…well, it was something I could possibly use to my advantage.  Whatever got the job done, got me back on my regular pay and off of Rinaldo’s shit list worked for me.

The whole watching every word I said thing was getting old.  I didn’t mind being overly polite to the boss – I was used to calling people above me sir, so it came pretty naturally anyway.  Still, I felt like he was always waiting for me to screw up again, and I hated feeling like I was being evaluated all the time, especially when he compared me to a second-rate little shit.

There was the added little tickle in the back of my head that told me I was going to have to kill Terry Kramer.

He was in my thoughts a lot as I lay on my stomach at the local shooting range with my rifle up against my shoulder.  With a twelve round magazine instead of a ten, I made multiple holes in the center of the target’s forehead.

“Nice shootin’.”

“You ain’t supposed ta smoke in here,” I told Jonathan.  I cringed as I realized his accent was being extra contagious today.

He laughed out loud and made a grand gesture as he looked around for some stupid motherfucker to argue with him about it.  I rolled my eyes and squeezed the trigger again.  I was pretty sure Terry’s face would look pretty nice with a little round hole between the eyes.

At least thoughts of killing him were keeping my mind occupied.  It seemed every time I wasn’t thinking about killing someone, thoughts of a brunette riding my cock in a hot, stuffy cabin in the middle of the desert kept coming back into my mind.

Terry Kramer’s little appearance at my apartment building at three in the morning hadn’t been a coincidence.  He had spent his whole life in Chicago and wouldn’t have gone the wrong direction from a bar to the train, no matter how much he had to drink.  Aside from that, he had been perfectly sober enough to lie to my face about why he was there.  If he just happened to be at my apartment as two thugs decided to take advantage of a drunken idiot, there were only a couple of ways that was possible.  I never considered coincidences to be possibilities.

One, he had been following me.

Two, he hung out around my apartment a lot but kept out of my sights.

Three, he arranged for the thugs to be there.

For a dozen reasons, I was going to go with all of the above.

Various thoughts, considerations, and scenarios occurred to me as I continued researching Brad Ashton’s movements via the internet.  Most of the thoughts started with Terry being a little too power hungry for his own good and ended with a bullet in his brain.

First things first, though – Terry wasn’t on my kill list.  It wasn’t that he had to be on an official list approved by the boss, but if I went off on a tangent before hitting my target, Rinaldo wouldn’t be overly pleased about it.  I needed to take care of Ashton, which meant I needed to figure out everything I could about his Atlanta trip.

I took a few more shots, packed up my rifle, and sat down in the lobby area with Jonathan and Nick.  No surprise at all, Nick had found the one and only woman at the shooting range and was telling her some bullshit story about being a makeup artist who specialized in painting women’s boobs.

She was totally buying it, too.

“You wanna hit the bars tonight?” Jonathan asked.  “Looks like I’m gonna lose lover boy over there early.”

“Nah, I still got work to do.”

“You got a big job,” he agreed.  “Terry keeps asking me about it.”

“That little fucker needs to stay the hell away from me,” I muttered.

“He does push yer buttons, don’t he?”

“Doesn’t,” I corrected.

“Wha?”

“Nothing,” I replied.  “I’m outta here.  Gotta let the dog out.”

“Sweetwater later?”

“Yeah, okay,” I said.  “I’ll meet ya there.”

“Want a ride?”

“Nah, I’ll take the L.”

“You’re the only fucker I know who has a choice and still takes the fuckin’ trains.”

I gave him a wave and a shrug as I headed off.  Nick was already feeling up the chick’s tits, saying something about how he thought he could paint her whole chest as a butterfly or something.  I wondered what he did when the chicks he conned called him out.

Maybe they never did.

Maybe he really could paint a titty-fly.

With my rifle in a bag up on my shoulder, I moved through the turnstile and jumped on the next Red Line train.  I had a ways to go before my stop, and I found myself a seat near the back of a car, facing forwards.  I hated it when there were only backwards-facing seats available.  Sideways was all right, but riding backwards made me want to puke.

I really did hate that feeling.

Two nuns in traditional garb got on the train at the next stop, and I watched them carefully.  I had been raised by nuns, and though most of them were pretty decent, the ones in power were just as corrupt as the powerful in any organization.  It was a lesson I had learned firsthand at a very early age.

“You are turning into a charming young man, Master Arden.”

“Thank you, Mother Superior,” I reply with a smile.  I feel no love for this particular woman, but I have a plan I intend to see carried out.  “You know I have so many questions for you…”

It had taken months, but I had eventually worn her down.  Found her collection of sex toys and ultimately convinced her to let me out of that hellhole as an emancipated teen.  It was either that or I tell everyone about the Harley-themed vibrator in her top dresser drawer.

The thing was totally frightening.

These nuns didn’t even sit down but got off the L at the very next stop and went on their way.  Having them off the train made it easier to think of something else.  I watched them walk off, which was when my eyes spotted something round and shiny down by the door.

A quarter.

Though I rarely admitted such things to myself, I had been doing a decent job of keeping a certain abandoned-in-the-desert brunette out of my thoughts.  As long as I kept myself busy, I was fine, but every time I saw a fucking quarter, it was like it all came rushing back to me.

“Not going to do it,” I told myself as the urge to pick up the coin washed over me.

A couple of college kids glanced at me and quickly looked away again.

Fucking awesome.  Now I was talking to myself right in front of other people.  I stood up and got off the train at the next stop, walked twelve blocks, and then hopped on a bus instead.  By the time I got back to my place, Odin was looking like he might actually piss on the carpet.

“Sorry,” I muttered.  “I can’t even blame work this time – I was just fucking around.”

He sneezed once and then stood by the door as I grabbed his leash.  I took him out, then spent a few minutes rubbing his head before I left to meet Jonathan at the bar.

Sweetwater Bar and Grill wasn’t my kind of place at all – big sports bar with a hundred TVs all around and guys with baseball caps serving your drinks.  It was packed both with tourists and locals pretty much ninety percent of the time, which meant the bartenders never really had a chance to talk with anyone.  They were quick with the drinks, but the place was just too crowded.

Jonathan loved it, but he was seriously into football.

It was the most convenient drinking place to my apartment, though, so I was there often enough.  I recognized the bartenders immediately – a girl I liked and a guy I hated.  I couldn’t remember the dude’s name.  I knew since the day the place opened he was far too busy to do anything other than smile politely and make sure whatever you asked for was poured efficiently.

Okay, so that was basically his job, but I liked a little more effort.

The chick was dark-skinned and had a huge mound of braids all over the place.  I couldn’t remember her name – only that it started with a “T.”  She was a lot friendlier than the guy, and her smiles more genuine, but it was still the same “I’m too busy” vibe I got from the rest of them.

It was also a total meat-market.

Jonathan got up to smoke on the porch, and I held onto our ill-gotten table.

“Hi there!”

I only glanced at the girl as she sidled up to the booth where I sat.  There was a huge line at the door, and I had seen her come in as I was entering.  Of course, Jonathan had used some app he wrote on his phone to hack into the waiting list, and his name was up front as soon as a table became available, so we didn’t stand at the door for very long.

She peeked over the back of the booth, probably making eye contact with the blonde who came in with her before focusing back on me.  Her red-lipped smile only annoyed me as she moved closer, leaned over, and made the tops of her boobs stick out of her shirt a little more.

“Watching the game?”

“Not a fan,” I answered.  I picked up the pint glass of whatever microbrew had been on tap and took a sip.

“What do you like?”  She tried to give me what I assumed was her version of bedroom eyes, but I just couldn’t be bothered.  I wasn’t looking to get laid tonight.  If I was, and it was going to be her, I’d end up having to buy her drinks all night and spend nearly as much as I did with Bridgett.

“Go wait for your own table,” I muttered just as Jonathan was getting back.  The girl glared at me before stomping off.

“Hey, dude – she might have had a friend!”

“So?” I countered.

“Even Nick would have helped me out there, bro!”

“Nick would have gone home with her and her friend.”

“Point taken.”  Jonathan sighed, leaned back in the booth, and tapped his fingers on the table top rhythmically to the beat of whatever song was playing.  “Didn’t your mama teach you to be nice to girls?

“I don’t even know who my mama is,” I said as I tipped back my beer.

Jonathan laughed for a moment, and then looked at my face and the laugh died.

“Dude – are you serious?”

“No clue,” I replied.  “Never met her.  Don’t even have a name.”

“Man, I’m sorry,” he said.  “I had no idea, brother.”

“It’s okay.”

The server came back and set his chocolate milk down on the table, and I snickered a bit.

Jonathan loved chocolate milk; he couldn’t get enough of the stuff.  He’d move over to booze soon enough, but he always started the night with a big glass of chocolate milk, usually ordered off a restaurant’s kids’ menu.

“So who raised ya?” Jon asked.  “Your dad?”

“Nope.  Never met him either.”

“So who then?” he pressed a bit.  “I mean, if ya don’t mind my asking – I ain’t tryin’ to pry or whatever.”

I sipped, considered, and then downed my beer.

“I was raised in a convent.”

“With a bunch of nuns?” Jonathan laughed loudly.  “Are you serious?”

“Why do you ask me that?”  I looked over at him as I drained the rest of the beer.  “When do I bullshit you?”

“I get ya,” Jon said with a nod.  “I just didn’t know.”

He pulled another cigarette out and lit it right there in the bar.  I raised an eyebrow.

“If they bitch, you’ll be able to order another beer.”

I shook my head slowly and stared at the top of the table.  I inhaled deeply, and wondered if taking up smoking again might help me sleep.

“So what was that like?” Jon asked.

I considered for a moment again and figured what the hell?  My shrink was only interested in the war shit and had yet to get around to the “tell me about your childhood” shit.  He was far more interested in how I was tortured as a prisoner.

I was still pretty sure the fucker was writing a book.

“Pretty fucked-up,” I answered honestly.  “I was the only guy there except for the one priest who came by every Sunday for Mass.”

“Seriously?”

I rolled my eyes at the word.

“Sorry, bro, it’s just habit.  So how’d you end up there?”

“No one would ever really tell me,” I answered.  “When I got older, I figured it was one of the nuns, and they just didn’t want me to know which one.  I tried to figure out who it might be, which is when I started watching everyone around me really carefully.  I thought if I could read their body language, I’d be able to figure out which one was my mom.”

“Did you figger it out?”

“Never did,” I said.  “Learned a lot of other shit.”

I laughed.

“There was a girl there named Marie.”  I recalled the heart-shaped face of the redhead.  “She was a couple years older than me, and she’d been sneaking out of the convent at night to meet up with some guy.  I found out, and she offered to fuck me to keep quiet.”

“Did you take her up on it?”

“That’s how I lost my virginity!” I exclaimed with a grin.

“Ha! Ha!” Jon laughed.  “That’s custom!”

I finished up my beer, and Jon clacked his fingernails against his chocolate milk glass.

“I might be able to find out,” Jonathan said quietly.  “I mean, they gotta have a birth certificate on file somewhere, right?”

“I have documents signed by the Mother Superior as my legal guardian according to the State of Ohio,” I told him.

“What’s the date on it?”

I glanced up at him and narrowed my eyes.

“My birth date,” I said.  “May fourteen.”

“Are you sure?”

The server interrupted us at that point, and we ordered a round of the same microbrew.  I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes and thought about it.  The idea that the date I had always assumed was my birthday might not be what I thought it was pissed me off.

I had to know.

“Okay,” I said, “see what you can dig up.”

“No worries, bro,” he replied.  “I’ll see what I can find on the interwebs.”

When we parted ways, I slowly walked between the buildings to get back to my apartment.  I passed the drunks and the tourists without a glance, my head focused on two different memories.

One was the time I flat out asked Mother Superior if she knew who my parents were, and the look on her face told me she did, even as she lied about it.  I reminded her about that particular commandment, which earned me a full day of prayer to reflect on my sins.

The other memory was Lia.

Again.

Her body, her voice, her eyes when she glanced back at me before boarding a bus to Phoenix – it was stuck in my head on repeat as I reached my apartment and took Odin out for a late-night walk.  She was stuck in my head when I lay down to sleep as well, but the dreams I had were of a different sort.

The girl is young, maybe seven or eight years old, and she’s wearing a long robe, but isn’t yet old enough to be required to wear the hijab, the traditional women’s scarf, around her head.  She watches me from a dark corner as I struggle with the ropes around my wrists.

It’s taken hours to shake the bag from my head, and my eyes are still adjusting to the light.

“Salam,” I croak from my dry throat.

The girl’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t come closer or reply.  I’m not sure what I would do if she did say something back – I only know about a dozen Arabic words, and I’m not about to embark on a long conversation.  I focus on her eyes, but she keeps looking away.  I nod towards a large barrel.

“Ma?”

Her eyes dart off to the side to the barrel of what might be water, but she doesn’t move.  We go back and forth for several minutes, and she finally goes a little closer to the barrel as she watches me.  She reaches for a little cup, dunks it inside, and comes back with her fingers dripping water.

“That’s it,” I whisper.  “Ma…min Fadlak.”

She gives me an odd look, and I realize I’ve addressed her as a man, but I can’t remember how to say “please” to a female, and I think she has the idea anyway.  My pronunciation is presumably atrocious either way.

She takes three steps towards me before a man comes around the corner, immediately begins to scream at her, and she drops the cup into the dry sand.  The precious water is soaked up by the sand immediately.

I woke in a cold sweat feeling thirsty.  After stumbling into the kitchen for water, I was completely unable to get back to sleep at all.  The girl’s eyes as the man surprised her, picked her up, and carried her out of my sight made my heart pound in my chest.

My memories of her were clear, though I never saw the girl in the compound again.  I had no idea what happened to her or what kind of trouble she might have been in for trying to help me.  I’d caused so many others, at that point, to die on my watch.  I never found out if I had attributed to her undoing as well.

The idea haunted my thoughts regularly.  What if she was punished for doing what I asked her to do?  What would her punishment have been?

Further memories – ropes, chains, fists, knees – flooded my head until I felt sick.

I tossed and turned, dozed just long enough to taste dry sand in my mouth, and got back up again.  I took a piss and came out to find Odin standing there, looking up at me and wagging his tail.  I took a step closer to him and reached out my hand to scratch his head.

Odin took the affection, then turned and headed back into the main room of the apartment.  I followed, assuming he was going to want to go out, but he didn’t.  He stopped, looked at me, then went over to his dog bed near the window.  He lay down and placed his head on his paws.

“You think I ought to just sleep with you?” I asked him.

His tail answered me by thumping against the carpet.  I went back into the bedroom, grabbed my pillow, and then came back to the living room again.  With the pillow held to my chest, I looked down at Odin.

“This is ridiculous,” I said.

Odin’s tail thumped.

“It’s not going to work.”

More thumping.

Sighing heavily, I lowered myself to the floor and put my pillow down next to Odin’s bed.  I lay down on my stomach with my arms on top of the pillow and looked over at him.

His eyes shone brightly in the nighttime city lights reflected from the window, and he panted, which always made him look like he was smiling.  He reached out with his tongue and licked my arm before putting his head back down on his paws.

“That’s gross,” I told him as I closed my eyes.

Sleep came eventually.  It wasn’t great, and I still had nightmares, but when I woke, Odin was there, watching me and thumping his tail.

*****

I spent the next six weeks in my apartment researching.  I took Odin out for walks, but December brought winter and the weather at the edge of the lake sucked, so neither of us wanted to be out there too long.  The rest of the time he would just lay across my feet until they went numb, and I would have to throw his rubber bone to get him to move.

Sleep was still something of an issue.

On a good night I would maybe get three or four hours, but it wasn’t usually consecutive.  The dreams weren’t any worse – in fact, they were almost exactly the same every time – but they still woke me up and kept me from going back to sleep.  Not sleeping consistently was taking its toll on my ability to think clearly, research thoroughly, and generally pissed me off.

It was the not knowing why the dreams had suddenly returned which was going to drive me crazy.

Mark’s idea that my trek to the Arizona desert reminded me of Iraq wasn’t a bad idea; I just didn’t buy into it.  I didn’t have nightmares while I was there – I didn’t remember a single dream until after I had returned.  Maybe there was a connection, but I didn’t think it was the climate.

Lia.

As soon as the name entered my head, I refused to think about her.  I would not dwell on the woman who wandered into my sights and made me feel something for the first time in ages.  There wasn’t any point; no good would ever come of it, and I simply refused to consider her.

How well was that working?

I stood up from the desk that housed my computer, stomped to the kitchen, and started pulling out frozen fruit.  I added half a banana, some pineapple juice, and some flax seed to the blender before turning it on and cringing as the noise invaded my ears.  I poured the smoothie into a glass, added a straw, and downed it while my fingers tapped against the counter.  Odin walked up, sat down at my feet, and eyed me impatiently.

“What?” I snapped at him and then immediately felt bad about it when he looked so happy about me giving him a little attention, even if it was gruff.  I’d been ignoring him a lot lately as I dived into the internet.

Odin stood, wagged his tail at me, and then walked around in a circle a couple of times before knocking into my hand with his head.  I rubbed the velvety spot on top of his nose, and his tail wagged harder.

“Fine,” I muttered.  I grabbed his leash from the hook near the door and headed outside.

Lake Shore East Park was right behind my apartment building.  It had a decent-sized dog run, lots of grass and trees, which Odin enjoyed, and was usually less crowded than Navy Pier.  There was always a pile of kids at the playground, but we stayed away from that area.  Odin had never really been around kids, and though he was quite well-behaved under normal circumstances, you just never knew what a kid might do.  If Odin got agitated and snapped at someone…well, that would draw way too much attention to me.

Besides, I liked Odin.  If he bit someone, and they told me I had to put him down…well, that wouldn’t go over well.  I imagined there would be a lot of dead bodies around, but none of them his.  At least, not until someone managed to take me out.

They would, too.  Nice little park like this, surrounded by high-rises – there were plenty of places for snipers to hide out and strike without ever being seen.  It was part of the reason I chose to live in the area.  That and the dog-run.

We traversed all of Odin’s favorite trails, circled the whole park, and paused to rest while I checked out the specials at III Forks.  I hadn’t been out to a restaurant for a while and wondered if Bridgett would like to go out for dinner sometime.  I could call the pimp up early on and tell him to dress her up for me in something a little classier than thigh-high stockings and see through tops.  Hell, I could get her a dress myself and then she could keep it.

I nodded to myself and decided to do it.  That would be better anyway, since pimps were assholes and he’d probably just take the cost of a dress out of her cut of my money.

I wondered how Lia would look all dressed up for a night on the town but shook the thoughts away again.  Thinking about it definitely didn’t help, and I had a reason to consider Bridgett instead.

My mind wandered to her body and dwelled on the curves of her tits and her ass.  My hands remembered the feeling of her, and I decided she was probably about a size eight.  I recalled just exactly how much I needed to bend over to kiss her and figured she was five-six.

That ought to be enough information to get a dress picked out for her.

“Come on,” I said to Odin, and we started back home.  I cringed a bit as the door of the parking garage exit across the street from the dog run opened, blaring out a warning signal that echoed through the otherwise peaceful park.  It was a fairly recent addition to the area, and the noise always pissed me off, public safety be damned.

We crossed the street and headed over the grass towards my building.  As we did, thoughts of obnoxious noises, dinners out, and hookers left my head as my target took over my mind.  The more I considered it, the more I knew this job was exactly as described – fucking difficult.

I needed to do more recon.

As soon as we were back inside and Odin’s leash was put away, I walked back to the computer, pulled up Ashton’s official schedule, and called Jonathan.

“I need a plane ticket to New York.”

“Chasing what’s-his-name?”

“Yep.”

“Hold on.”

A few moments later, Jonathan provided me with an online account number and all the credentials I needed to get a plane ticket.  Ten minutes after that, the dog sitter was arranged.  Within a half hour, I was throwing shit into a bag and calling a cab.

New York wasn’t my favorite place, but Manhattan did give me a lot of options as far as rooftops went.  People didn’t really pay any attention to who you were, either, which made it a good place to be when you were looking to kill people.

The food was pretty good, too.

From the top floor of a hotel and through binoculars, I crouched down on a balcony and watched the crowd around Brad Ashton and his security crew.  There were others there, of course – media people for the most part, but a few fans and other celebrities as well.  Some chick who was bouncing up and down like she was on a fucking pogo stick was obviously annoying Ashton.  His jaw tightened when he turned to her, and his shoulders would go stiff when she spoke or reached out to touch his arm.  He was still smiling and putting up with her, so I could only guess she won some kind of contest.

Those things should be fixed.

I put the binoculars down for a moment and grabbed a sandwich off the room service tray.  I chewed while contemplating which of the four guys around Ashton needed to die.  Jim was out of the question, so that left one of the other three.  They were all in my field of vision, which meant blocking Ashton.  I had originally hoped I would get lucky, but found out soon enough Rinaldo knew what he was talking about – picking off Brad Ashton from a distance wasn’t going to work.  They were all over him all of the time.

Besides, if I killed one of the guards right in front of Ashton, he’d be just a bit on the suspicious side.  He’d increase security to the point where I wouldn’t be able to get close enough, and that just wasn’t acceptable.  I needed to go with a lot more subtlety.

As I used my binoculars to scan around me, I could see various security people placed on at least two rooftops and likely on top of the building where I perched as well.  They alternated looking around at the ground floor and checking out the skyline.  Ashton knew he was a target, no doubt about it – even this far from Chicago.  With him on the alert, I was going to have to do a lot more waiting.  I didn’t really mind the waiting too much.  If it all worked out, it would be well worth it, and I was used to being patient.

I followed his tour for two days in New York and then another day in Boston.  From there he went to Orlando, which was a nice change of pace from the winter weather up north, and he finally boarded a plane back to LA.  That’s when I returned to Chicago to study my notes.

There were some definite trends I could use to my advantage.

Once Brad Ashton was in the safety of his hotel, the security guys were free to do what they liked, more or less.  Mostly that involved the bar and football, though talk of the upcoming basketball season was also prevalent.  There was one guy who always stayed behind, but he seemed to be more of a PR guy or agent, not a security guy.  He was probably just a manager with a thing for the little earpieces.

I knew which one I was going to kill.

Henry Jefferson.  He joined the group about six months ago, which made him the least senior, the least tight with the group, and the least likely anyone would go looking for when he disappeared.  He also lived alone, didn’t seem to have a lot of close friends, and would probably go a few days before anyone missed him.

In a week they would be in Cleveland, which was just about the right distance.  The timing was also perfect – right before the holidays, a time when everyone would be busy with other concerns, which could buy me a little more time before his death was discovered.  Three days after New Year’s they would head for Atlanta, which was where I planned to end Ashton.

Up close and personal.

Probably more personal than I cared to be, but I had to do what I had to do.

I hung out on a bench in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland.  The bench was off to the side – near the gift shop – and an unlikely place for Jim or anyone else to notice me.  I hadn’t gotten an actual room since I didn’t plan on staying long.  I only needed to do a quick job and then get back on the road as early as possible.  I wanted to be home before midnight.

I hadn’t picked up Bridgett recently, and I was in the mood to fuck.

Patiently waiting, I watched various people go by.  Families on vacation, college-aged couples with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame T-shirts, and uncountable businessmen and women wandered through the lobby on their way to the elevator, the lounge, or to inquire at the front desk about their valet parking voucher.

None of them seemed to notice me in my business-casual Dockers and navy button down.  I blended in, sat back, sipped at a bottle of Evian, and waited.

There he was.

Like he had most days, Henry Jefferson came back to the hotel around lunchtime to sleep.  His was the overnight detail, and his shift officially ended at nine o’clock in the morning.  He would go find a place for breakfast before going back to the hotel to sleep.

I stood and followed him into the elevator.

As he tapped his finger against the round button with the number seven on it, he blew out a long breath and grumbled.  Taking a step back, he gave way for me to hit my own number, but I just smiled slightly and nodded at the already indicated floor.

There was something definitely off about his behavior.

Every time I had observed him before, he had the typical calm and quiet demeanor of a career security guy.  He kept his hands behind his back except when he needed to put one of them up to his ear piece to look super cool.  His suits were tailored, his shoes shined, and though it wasn’t in his history, he probably would have made a decent Marine.

Jefferson was either really tired or agitated.  He rubbed at the corner of his eye once, sighed twice between the first and seventh floors, and stared at the elevator door as if he was expecting it to try to clamp down on his arm.  He tapped his toe a lot, and his hands kept gripping into fists.

Something had pissed him off.  Not part of my plan but rather handy.  If I had the good fortune enough for him to have had some kind of incident either at work or with a coworker, my plan was going to be even smoother than originally intended.  There was nothing better than a convenient patsy.

The elevator chime went off, the doors opened, and despite the glare, Jefferson’s arm wasn’t captured by the machine.  I still smiled a bit at the mental imagery and followed him quietly out of the car.  He glanced over his shoulder once but didn’t pay any attention to me afterwards, so I stayed fairly close.

Some security guard.

Maybe he wouldn’t have made a decent marine after all.

I glanced up and down the hall and was pleased to see there was nothing but a single maid’s cart at the far end of the hallway.  There wasn’t even a maid standing near it.  Jefferson’s room was right off the elevator, far from the room where the cart was standing.  He slid his key card in the slot and stepped through the door.

I was right behind him and followed him swiftly through the doorway.  I stood just inside, listened for the click as the door closed behind me, and followed up with a bullet in the back of his head before he even had a chance to realize I was in the room with him.

The whole thing took about six seconds.

I loved silencers.

Grabbing the body quickly, I moved it around the corner of the bed to conceal it a little better before the blood started seeping into the carpet.  I failed to be quick enough to avoid a mess, but it would be minimal.  Kneeling down next to the body, my gloved hands went through his pockets and came up with his wallet.  I pulled out a credit card and used the on-line app provided by the hotel to extend his stay an extra week.

That could buy me a little extra time or not, I didn’t really care.  I hoped by the time he was discovered, I would be completely done with this whole assignment, but if he was found earlier, I didn’t think it would change much.

I stepped over by the door and looked into the room to see if I had hidden him well enough.  Of course, anyone who peeked inside was going to see a decent amount of blood and brains on the floor, but it was slightly better than a body.

I put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door as I left.

Interstate 80 wasn’t too crowded, and I made it back home in record time.  A half hour later, Bridgett was in the car with me and headed back to my apartment.  Ten minutes after we arrived, she was giving me head, and I was finally starting to relax a little.

That night I got some real sleep.  It was a good thing, too, because the call came a lot sooner than I expected.

“Hey there, Marshall!”

“Who’s this?” I asked, knowing full well who had called this particular cell phone number.  There was only one person who had it.

“Jim Conner,” he said.  “We met at the Embassy and talked football.”

“Raiders fan, right?”

“Yeah!  That’s me!”

We both laughed a bit.

“So did you ever find another job?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I answered with a convincing sigh.  “I had an interview a couple days ago, but it wasn’t very promising.”

“Are you still interested in some security work?”

“It would be my preference,” I said.  “This last one I applied for was more usher than guard.”

“Well, I couldn’t really talk too much about it before,” Jim said, “but I might have an opportunity for you.”

“Really?”  I smiled as I leaned back in my chair.

“Yeah,” he said.  “I work for Brad Ashton – you know, the actor?”

“Yeah, I know him.  Well, I know who he is, anyway.”

“As it turns out, we need a replacement security guy for an event coming up, and when he asked if we knew anyone, I remembered talking to you about needing a job.  It’s not quite in time for the holidays, but you could start the first week of January.  You interested?”

Too fucking easy.

All right, it wasn’t – there was a lot of work to make it happen, but it always felt good when it all came together perfectly.

Before I hung up the phone, I had a job lined up in Atlanta for just after the first.

There was just no way it could have gone more smoothly.