Chapter 7 – Easy Murder

Atlanta was always one of my favorite towns.  It was decently warm, didn’t have the constant wind of Chicago, and the people were as entertaining as they could possibly be.  Everyone always seemed just thrilled to death to be where they were, even if where they were was begging on a street corner or drunk in an alley.  Even the drunks on the street entertained me.

“You see that guy?”

“What guy?” I asked the fifty-something black dude who was drinking a foul smelling liquid out of a paper bag.  He’d been doing so since I sat down by the steps of the Marquis One Tower near one of the funky statues that may or may not be lions.

“The one over there!”  He reached his arm out to its full extent, added a pointing finger, and shook it around in the air like a flopping fish on the rocks.

I laughed.

“There are twenty guys over there!”

“C’mon!” he insisted, and I had to get up to follow him.

As we rounded the corner, we faced the valet parking area of the Marriott Marquis.  It was a beautiful area with a giant fountain underneath part of the hotel.  The echo of the water as it moved over the cement structure was more deafening than the noise from the cars waiting to be valeted.

“That guy right there!” the drunk said as he waved his arms around a bit more.  He reminded me of one of the characters from Sponge Bob, but I couldn’t remember which one.  “It’s that guy!  That one guy – from the movies!”

My ears perked up a bit.  I was supposed to meet Jim in an hour at the Hyatt, not the Marriott, which was right across the street.  I wondered if something was wrong, though I knew the two hotels were attached by a skywalk.  Scanning the motor area, I didn’t see any sign of either of them, so I looked back at my inebriated friend.

“It’s Mel Gibson!” the drunk suddenly yelled out, and my shoulders dropped in relaxation.

I looked over where he was pointing, and though the guy did vaguely resemble Gibson, it definitely wasn’t him.  The drunken dude continued to squeal about Braveheart, but the show had lost its appeal.  I gave up on the entertainment and hiked up the numerous back steps of the Hyatt, then followed the escalator to the lobby and bar area.  There was a football game on, so I figured it was as good a place as any to be found when Jim showed up.

The bartender at the Hyatt was a good one, and I do like a good bartender even though I didn’t drink often.  He was a dark-skinned, bald guy who didn’t weigh more than about a hundred and twelve pounds.  He had a Caribbean accent of some sort, but I couldn’t quite discern from where.  He poured me two fingers of some decent scotch and let me just sit there and watch the game at one of the tall, round tables.  I paid just enough attention to figure out who was playing, who was probably going to win, and to take note of at least one egregious foul I could bitch about later with Jim if he cared to talk football.

It was a team Jonathan favored, and I wondered if he was watching the same game back in Chicago.  I hadn’t seen him outside of work for a while, and I considered sending him a quick text suggesting we hang when I got back into town, but of course I couldn’t.  My regular phone was turned off so I couldn’t be tracked back to the area.

Jim showed up just a few minutes late with one of the other security guys I had seen before, though only through my scope.  He said his name was Damon, and he shook my hand like someone once told him a firm handshake would impress people.  He made a lot of eye contact as well, also something he’d been taught and followed to a tee – not because he saw the value of it, but because someone he believed told him it was the right thing to do.

He probably thought he intimidated people, but I just found it comical.  It wasn’t like I was going to be told to go home at this point – Ashton was too paranoid to be down a security guy while waiting for all the background checks to be done.  A thorough dig might have come up with the death certificate for Marshall Miller in a piss-ant town in Louisiana, but probably not.  The rest of his record was clean.

Within an hour of his overly enthusiastic handshake, Damon was fitting me with a little earpiece and introducing me to Phillip Tanner, Ashton’s public relations guy.  He was the last stop before the man himself, and he spent a good forty-five seconds just looking me up and down.

“Umm…hmmm,” he hummed under his breath.  “I’m sure Mister Ashton will like this one.”

I glanced at Jim, who just looked away from me.  Their behavior confirmed my suspicions about Brad Ashton’s preferences.  I was also introduced to Alex something-or-another, whose main job seemed to be to stand right outside the door to the hotel room and glare at people.

“Marshall Miller,” Phillip announced as he opened up the door to the hotel suite and allowed me and the other security guys through.

Ashton was on the far side of the room with a phone up to his ear, looking bored as he leaned back in the office chair by the desk, staring at his fingernails.  His eyes moved over to the group entering the room, and he appraised me similarly to the way Phillip had outside.  The look he gave me was decidedly less subtle than the one from his PR guy.  There might have been some actual drool, which made me wonder if there wasn’t some other plan that might be just as effective.  The way he was looking at me made my stomach tighten up.

I wondered if Bridgett felt the same way when guys looked at her.

We all just stood there for a while, and I felt myself automatically enter the at attention mindset – mostly blank in the head but still listening closely.  It was a pose I actually found very relaxing, though training camps used it to drive recruits crazy.  I always felt it was a good opportunity to let go and reset, and it usually left me feeling recharged.  I could stand still like that for hours, though the others around me began to fidget after only two or three minutes.

Once Brad Ashton finally hung up the phone, he stood and walked slowly over to the group.  He barely looked at anyone else but looked me up and down more than once.

“This must be the new guy,” he said with a smile.

“Marshall Miller,” I said as I extended my palm for him to shake.

He took my hand with his manicured fingers and held it a little longer than he needed to for just a handshake.

“A pleasure,” he said quietly.  “Welcome to the team.”

His attention went to his PR guy after that, and we discussed the boring details of the main event of the evening.  Ashton would be escorted through the lobby downstairs via the service elevator, over to the ballroom where he’d participate in an interview and a panel discussion with a couple other actors and the director of his next flick.  The details didn’t interest me.  Now that everyone else’s attention was occupied, I could examine the inside of the hotel room.

It was a good-sized suite with a separate room leading to a king-sized bed and a nice view of the street below.  In the main room there were two balconies and a wet bar.  There was another door on the other side of the suite, which was closed with the bolt secured.

With the room’s layout captured in my head, I was now able to watch the dynamics of the group.

Phillip mooned over Ashton, barely taking his eyes off the man like he was some sort of golden god.  Jim nodded a lot, but his expression told me his mind was somewhere else.  He glanced at me a couple of times, and it occurred to me that he might have taken a risk bringing me on without any additional credentials.

When the proper time came, we escorted Ashton down the elevator to his interview, then to a table way in the back of the hotel’s restaurant for his dinner with some producer from Universal Studios.  I was stationed between the lobby and the entrance to the restaurant to watch for anything that looked suspicious.

The next day was pretty much the same, only it was an autograph and photo opportunity thing, and I watched the ticket-takers make sure everyone had the right kind of tickets.

The whole standing-at-attention, mind-numbing activity came in handy again.

Damon and Jim were much closer to Brad Ashton physically than I ever was, and Ashton hadn’t said a word to me since that first meeting.  Apparently, I wasn’t giving off the right kind of vibe.  Normally that would be perfectly fine with me, but I needed Ashton to make a move, and he was only going to be in this city for a total of three days.  I racked my mind for various ways of giving him the impression I might be interested and could only come up with things I might do to attract a woman, which didn’t seem quite right.

What attracted me?

Tits and ass, that’s what.

No help there.

I had about come to the conclusion that I was going to have to get a little more drastic.  Every time Ashton went out anywhere, there were at least three of us with him, and usually four.  When Brad Ashton retired to his room at night, it was never completely alone.  Alex was always outside the door, and Phillip was often inside.  I hadn’t caught any additional company outside of the core group, and I didn’t think there had been anyone else sneaking inside, but I wasn’t positive.

I had to be sure, so I watched carefully.

Alex was as diligent as they came, and he took no breaks during his shift.  No one went in or out of the door to Ashton’s private room without Alex knowing about it.  Ashton’s room was connected to a common room as well, which was where we would all meet before heading to the elevator for an event of some kind.  Though the room didn’t have its own guard, there were almost always other people in it – usually other actors or people in the business, at least.  It was where Jim slept on a roll-away bed when he wasn’t on duty.  Still, there was potential with a third adjoining room which wasn’t being used by the group

There had to be another way to either get in or out.  The two balconies in the common room were just a bit far off the ground to consider climbing up to them.  There was no easy way to get up there from the street, and scaling up five stories using other balcony rails would have been beyond stupid.

I had to get Ashton to come out, but he never left the damn room without a plethora of escorts.

Jim and I walked a few paces behind Ashton as we moved from one area of the hotel to another, stopping every few feet for pictures and autographs.  Alex was in front of him and Phillip just to one side.  Every time a young woman approached him, Ashton smiled, flirted, and then usually looked a little nauseated once she was out of view again.

And he was supposed to be such a great actor.

We made our way slowly back to his room, where he moved straight to the wet bar in the common area and started rummaging around.  Phillip tried to entice him with a large bottle of wine, but Ashton wasn’t interested.  Instead, he found one of those small bottles of vodka in the mini bar fridge.  Phillip handed him a glass, which Ashton took roughly from the PR guy before pouring the vodka and tonic water carelessly into it.  Some of the liquid spilled on the counter, but no one bothered to wipe it up.

“Looks like you are good for the night,” Alex said to Jim.

Jim nodded, exchanged some notes with Damon, and then we all started to head out of the room.  I glanced back at Brad once more and found his eyes on me.

“Why don’t you hang around for a little while, Marshall?”

Jim’s eyes met mine, and the little shine in them gave me a pretty good idea that Jim was well aware of Brad Ashton’s preferences.  I wondered if he’d ever been asked to hang around as well.

Brad held up his cocktail.

“I hate drinking alone,” he said.  He flashed me a toothy, actor-practiced smile.  It was probably known to drop panties or something, but I wore boxers.

This was really, really hard to fake.

“Of course, sir,” I replied.

Jim and the others were waved out of the room, and I couldn’t believe how lucky I had gotten to be left alone with him.  Of course, the main problem now was the number of people here in his organization who knew my face if not my name.  I just needed to work on getting him away from his room now so I wasn’t a completely obvious suspect.

“Please, have a seat.”

I hesitated, and he pointed to the chair next to him.

“Please, I insist.”

“I’m…ah…I’m still on the clock, Mister Ashton,” I said.

“Hmm,” he hummed.  “You should call me Brad.”

“Brad,” I replied softly.

He stood and walked towards me, still sipping from his glass of vodka tonic.  He came up very close, though not quite touching me.  I went back to at attention, which seemed to make his grin wider.

“Am I making you nervous?” he asked as he took another step closer.

“Ah…um…a little,” I admitted.  At least I didn’t have to fake that one.

Brad wasn’t one to be dissuaded that easily, though.  He tilted his head to one side as he looked me up and down again.  His hand moved out as if he was going to touch me, but his fingers didn’t quite make it.  Instead, his hand hovered in the air right in front of me.

“You are a…a very well-built young man, Marshall,” Brad said softly.

I smiled slightly and looked down, feigning embarrassment.  I tried to will myself to blush, but I wasn’t sure if I was pulling it off or not.  This whole plan was actually ending up a lot harder than I thought it would be.

“You aren’t used to men saying that to you, are you?”

“Um…no, sir.”  Again, at least I didn’t have to make it up.

“Sir,” he repeated, letting the sound draw out a bit.  “You keep calling me that.”

“Sorry, sir…um…sorry.”  I took an exaggerated breath and glanced back up at him.  “I used to be in the military.  Hard habit to break.”

“Yes, Phillip mentioned that,” he murmured as he took one more sip out of his glass before setting it down on the table.

Once his hands were free, he came right back up to me again.

“You are very attractive, too,” he told me.  “I bet you have heard that from someone before.”

I swallowed and refused to make eye contact.  When I felt his hand on my arm, I followed the motion with my eyes as his fingers traced my flesh down to the end of my sleeve where they met with the back of my bare hand.

“You are at least curious, right?” he said.  “I’m not completely off base here, am I?  I mean, if I am, say something.”

I let my tongue dart over my lips.

“I…I’m not sure.”

“Have you been with a man before?”

He was a straightforward little fucker at least.  I had to give him credit for that.

“Not…um…not really,” I said quietly.  “I mean, there was one guy who…well, nothing really happened, you know?”

“I do know.”

Glancing away, I shuffled my feet a bit.

“Thought about it since then?” he pressed.

I swallowed again as I nodded once.  I had actually thought about sex with a man – thought about it, sure.  Actually, really, truly considered it?  That was a completely different question.

Brad Ashton wasn’t really interested in any kind of reality, though, so my answer was exactly what he thought he wanted.  His mouth curved into a smile as he focused on my lips.  One of his hands moved up to my shoulder and then over my jaw while the other one latched onto a belt loop to pull me closer to him.

My heart began to beat faster, and I forced my face to only show my feigned nervousness over this whole situation and not my actual nervousness.  What Brad Ashton wanted was blindingly obvious, but I’d never given anything up for a guy and didn’t particularly care to now.  I hadn’t actually planned to let it get as far as that.

Ultimately, I had a job to do though, and this was going to be the best way to get it done.

His lips touched mine, and his hand moved to the back of my neck to pull me a little closer to him.  I responded reluctantly, both because it wasn’t something I was interested in, but also in hopes of showing Marshall’s hesitance.

“Not so sure,” he whispered against my lips.

“Everyone…everyone keeps telling me I shouldn’t,” I said.  “In the military…”

I let my voice trail off, figuring the rest of that sentence pretty much spoke for itself.  Brad gave me an understanding smile and ran his index finger over the edge of my jaw, down my neck, and to my chest.  He rested his palm there, presumably feeling the beat of my heart under his skin.

His lips brushed against mine again, softy and unhurriedly.  My response was a little more encouraging, but only just.  His hand gripped my shoulder a little more before running up the back of my neck and into my hair.

“Are you nervous, Marshall?”  Brad pulled back and looked into my eyes.

I swallowed hard and nodded slightly.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he told me.  “You are in my employ, after all, but this has nothing to do with that.  I’m afraid I chased off your predecessor when he believed it was all part of his job.  It’s not, I promise you.  This is only if you are interested.”

I let my tongue draw over my lips as I looked at his.  My gaze flickered back and forth from his mouth to his eyes as the remainder of my plan began to form in my mind.

“I…I don’t know,” I stammered.

“Maybe just hang out for a little while?” he suggested.  “Get to know each other?”

The finger in my belt loop pulled again, and the pressure I felt on my leg was pretty damn obvious.  I mean, the guy was just huge.

No pressure.  Right.

“I don’t know,” I replied again quietly.  I took a hesitant step backwards, and he released me.  “I…I just hadn’t thought about it.  I mean, you’re Brad Ashton for Christ’s sake.  I’ve seen every one of your movies.”

“All of them?”  He raised an eyebrow, and I thought I managed to actually blush that time.

“Yeah,” I replied quietly.  “Even the…ah…the early stuff.”

“You mean the porn?” he laughed.

“Yeah, that.”

“Meaningless,” he informed me with a wave of his hand.  “If there is nothing else fame has taught me, it’s taught me to go after what you want, when you want it.  I want you – tonight.  Who knows what will happen to us tomorrow?”

Who knows what might happen to you tonight?

I let my tongue lick at my lips, glanced from the floor up to Brad’s eyes, and then over to the door.  I wondered what Alex could hear from there and if Phillip would be returning any time soon.

“Stay here, Marshall,” Brad said.  His head tilted to one side, and he gave me one of those half smiles that seemed to make his female fans start dropping articles of clothing around his feet.  “I mean…if you aren’t busy or anything.  I was going to order dinner in.”

I glanced at the door as it opened and Phillip entered, answering my earlier question.  His eyes widened just enough to show his annoyance and possibly a little jealousy.  He didn’t look at me or at Ashton as he moved around the room, and I figured this was probably a pretty common occurrence.

Staying right now wasn’t a good idea.  I couldn’t kill Ashton in his own room – not with Phillip and Alex hanging about.  Besides, the plan was forming, and I wasn’t ready for this particular job just yet.

Need to get some condoms.

No, I wasn’t going to let it get that far…was I?  I just needed to do a little recon around the area and pick up some other supplies.

“I, ah…” I stammered a bit.  “We were gonna go watch some football.  Um…Jim and I.  He’s probably already wondering where I am.  Do you…um…you want to join us?”

“Me in a public bar?” Brad snorted.  “No, that’s all right.”

He took in a long breath and blew it slowly out his nose.

“Go on,” he said, “but think about it, okay?”

I nodded and headed out the door and down the hallway.  Playing hard to get would make him a lot more likely to agree to go somewhere else with me later, and I needed him to be willing to leave.  If he wasn’t, well, I could always drag him out, but he looked like a screamer, and that would definitely cause some commotion.

Jim was hanging out around the corner as I left the suite, and he pushed the down button for the elevator as I appeared.

“You’re dodging the bullet there,” Jim snickered as we headed down the elevator.

I just shrugged at him.

After a couple light beers, I claimed to be tired and headed back up the elevator.  Reaching into my back pocket, I quickly stepped into the skywalk heading to the other hotels in the area as I called Jonathan with the pre-paid phone.

“Hyatt Regency in Atlanta,” I said when he answered.  “I need room 555 in the International tower.  Can you check it?”

“Sure thing, bro.”  I could hear clacking of the keyboard as Jonathan’s magic fingers poked around until he announced he was inside the hotel’s firewall or whatever.  “It’s open.  What name you need it in?”

“Marshall Miller.”

“Got it.”  More clacking.  “Give me a few and I’ll call ya back.”

After shoving the phone back in my pocket, I headed down the stairs of the Marriott and out onto the street.  It was getting late, and it shouldn’t be too hard to come up with what I needed, even if my connections weren’t very strong in this area.  Even if they were, I wouldn’t use them.  It would just place Evan Arden in this area, and I wasn’t going to chance that.

I found a juvenile delinquent near the Hard Rock Café and scored exactly what I needed.

“You don’t look like the type that would need these,” the teen said as he handed me a few pills and I handed him some cash.

“Depends on what you want,” I answered quietly.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.  I walked away from the kid and headed up the long stairway to the Hyatt entrance again as I answered.

“All set?”

“You should be good.”

“You rock,” I said.  “Thanks a bunch.”

I hung up and walked over to the hotel’s front desk.

“Hey,” I told the lady at the counter.  “I lost my key – can you get me a new one?”

I handed her my ID with Marshall Miller’s name on it, and she handed me a new key for room 555.  I took the steps – it wasn’t too far – and quickly opened the room.  I checked around, and was pleased to find Jonathan had been right – there wasn’t anyone already staying in the room.  I didn’t have any luggage to leave around, but hopefully Ashton wasn’t going to notice that.  I did mess up the bed and put a couple of the hotel glasses and the ice bucket on the desk to give the place a bit of a lived-in look.

I slipped out again, then walked down the hall to the elevators, turned, and headed back in the other direction.  When I got to the end of the hall, Alex was there.  He raised his eyebrows a bit when I asked if Mr. Ashton was still awake.

“I just need to…um…speak to him a minute,” I explained.

Alex gave me what I supposed was a look of both disdain and annoyance before knocking lightly.  Brad opened up and smiled as he turned to one side and let me in.  As soon as the door closed, he was giving me a coy look and smile which were as sarcastic as looks could be.

I stared intently at him for about seven seconds, took a deep breath, and then rushed forward, grabbed him by the back of the head, and crashed my lips to his.  His fingers gripped my biceps as he tilted his head backwards, giving me control as he opened his mouth to me.

With closed eyes, I might have been able to pretend he was Bridgett or some other chick, but the stubble on his upper lip made that impossible.  Still, I had work to do, and not all work was the pleasant kind.  I performed as I had to and kissed him with as much passion as I could find within myself.

I felt his hands move up my back, grip my shoulders, and then one of them moved back down to my ass.  He pulled me against himself, and I could feel without a doubt that it wasn’t a rabbit in his pocket.  I pushed back a bit, breaking our kiss and breathing hard.

“Not here,” I whispered.  “I can’t do this here.  The other guard – the one outside – he saw me.  The way he looked at me – I can’t let him think something is going on.  I have a military pension and shit…I don’t want to lose that.”

“I understand,” Brad said softly.  “Discretion – right?”

“Yeah,” I answered.  “It’s important.  I can’t let anyone know…my family…”

“I know,” he whispered softly.  “Don’t you worry, sweetheart, I understand.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“We should meet somewhere else.”

“Another hotel?”

“Exactly.”

“But…your fans…”

“I know how to be sneaky,” he said with a smile.  He lifted himself up on his toes and brought his lips to mine briefly.

“What about Alex?”

Brad rolled his eyes.

“He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“About you, yes,” I agreed.  “What about me?  Seriously, I can’t just…you know…come out.  My family…”

I let my voice trail off, and Ashton pursed his lips as he looked into my eyes.

“I have the room next door,” I said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“My room,” I said as I nodded towards the door at the other end of the suite, “it’s that one right there.  We can’t…I don’t want to stay there, but you could get out that way.”

A slow smile spread over his face.

“You are a sneaky thing,” he commented.

I tried to make myself blush as I looked away.  I wasn’t sure if I pulled it off or not, but it was enough for him to grab my head and kiss me again.

“You are hot and adorable,” he informed me.  “Give me about an hour to convince Alex and Phillip you aren’t coming back and that I’m going to bed.  We’ll have the whole night.”

I nodded and smiled.

Too damn easy.

Shortly after eleven that night, Brad and I opened the adjoining suite doors, clomped down the back stairs of the International Tower, and out the side door.  He wore a baseball cap pulled down over his face and some dark glasses, which looked ridiculous in the dark.  You would likely notice that he was hiding something, but what he was hiding would have been anyone’s guess.

We quickly booked a room at the Westin just down the street under Marshall’s name again and hurried up the elevator.  He was all over me as soon as the door to the room closed, and I had to just go with it for a few minutes to keep him off his guard.

His hand dropped down my chest, over my abs, and cupped my crotch.  I closed my eyes and thought of all the porn I could remember to get myself to react a little.

“You’re still nervous,” Brad commented.

“Yeah, I bit, I guess.”  Either that or my dick really only worked for chicks.

“Don’t be,” he said quietly.  “We can go as slow as you want to.”

“Okay,” I replied.  I cleared my throat.  “Maybe some wine or something?”

“Good idea.”

There was a small bottle in the tiny hotel room bar, which I opened and poured into two glasses.  Checking over my shoulder, I quickly added Rohyphenol tablets to one of the glasses, stirred the drug until it dissolved into the liquid, and then handed it to Brad.

It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect.  Not that I needed any of that to rape him, as had become the drug’s more common usage, but it did make him nicely stupid and easy to manipulate.  Actually, he took to the stuff like I imagined a schoolgirl would.

In other words, he just dropped to the bed and started to giggle.

“I think maybe that wine hit you a little too hard,” I informed him.

“Hard,” he slurred.  “I want to see you hard.”

More giggling.

“Let’s get a little fresh air first.”

He agreed.  He would have agreed to anything at that point, up to and including taking a leap off the balcony.  If I had thought about it beforehand, and if his death should have looked like an accident, I might have gone that route.  He was a message, though – like most of my work: Don’t fuck with Rinaldo Moretti.  It didn’t matter who you were or how many people there were around you – you were going to get killed.

Ashton half fell against me, and I felt his mouth on my neck.

“So fuckin’ sexy...”

“Yeah, I’m a dream,” I replied.  I sat him down on the bed as my phone began to buzz.

I glanced at the number, but other than being a Chicago area code, I wasn’t sure who it was.  Under most circumstances, I didn’t answer when I didn’t know the number – it was more often someone wanting me to buy something than anything else – but this time I did.

“So where you hanging out tonight?”

“Terry Kramer?”  My eyes narrowed as I looked at the phone again.  I had a number in there for Terry, but this one wasn’t it.  “What do you want?”

“Just wonderin’ what you were up ta,” he said.  “I heard you might have left town.”

“Who told you that?”

“No one in particula’,” he said.

I could just about see his ridiculous, nonsensical grin in my head.

“Well, your information sucks,” I told him.

“So, you wanna go have a drink somewhere?”

“Busy,” I replied.

“Oh yeah?  Doin’ what?”

“I gotta date,” I said right before I hung up.  I looked down at Ashton, who had flopped over to his side on the bed and closed his eyes.  He muttered something as I hoisted him back onto his feet again, but I couldn’t understand a word of it.

I carried my “drunk” friend out the back of the Westin and down the street to a quiet, deserted alley.  I found exactly what I needed about halfway down the dank passage, and I helped Brad sit down on the curb by the sewer cover.  It was heavy, but I managed to loop my fingers into it and haul it up.

“Whatcha doin’, hottie?” he mumbled.

“I’m going to kill you, sweetheart,” I answered.

With one hand firmly around his waist, I turned his body so his head was right at the top of the storm sewer entrance.

“Whoa,” he said with another giggle.  “That makes me dizzy.”

“It won’t last long,” I promised.

I made sure my grip was firm enough to keep him from falling before I was done with him, reached down my leg to the small gun holstered beside my boot, and put it to his head.

“Rinaldo says don’t worry about paying him back this time,” I told him.

Brad’s eyes widened in recognition, but I fired before he could start to struggle.

With his head in the manhole, the spatter all went down and I stayed mostly clean.  There was a little blood on my boot, but it would come off easily enough.  All I had to do was release my grip for his body to fall into the sewer and out of sight.  I stood, replaced the lid, and walked back down the street.  A cab took me to the bus station.

I leaned back in the seat and let out a long sigh which turned into a big smile.

I felt like the end of an A-Team episode when everything worked out, and the heroes all got to go home and live happily ever after while the bad guys were put in jail.  Except, of course, I was the bad guy.

Whatever.

It still felt awesome to have had everything come together so nicely.  Ashton was dead, Rinaldo would be happy, and I didn’t have to actually take my clothes off to get it done.

There was just no way I could have gone through with that.