Saint/Sinner (2 page)

He had stared at her as he said it. That shouldn’t have happened. People were supposed to look past her, especially when she was holding a sobbing teenager in her arms and a taller and stronger
man
was standing next to her. Between the two of them, Walter was the potential troublemaker, not her. That was how it was
supposed
to work.

So why was “Jack” staring at her as he made his promise, as if he knew she was the threat and not Walter?

“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” Jack continued. “Stay cool and do as you’re told, and this will all be over by morning. We’ll be out of your hair, and you folks can go back to your vacation. Sound good?”

She didn’t say anything, because she was too busy crunching the numbers in her head. She remembered glancing at her watch when they finally reached the house after a five-hour drive from the city.

“Stay cool and do as you’re told, and this will all be over by morning.”

Morning was nine hours away, which meant she had that long to get them out of here alive, because regardless of what “Jack” had promised them, they weren’t going to be able to just go back to their vacation after this. Because Jack had done the one thing she was hoping he wouldn’t do: He had shown them his face, which meant he didn’t expect them to leave the house alive now that they could identify him.

His real name
wasn’t Jack, the big man wasn’t Jones, and the third one wasn’t really Jerry, either. But real names weren’t important tonight, and it wouldn’t be when they went their separate ways, (hopefully) never to see each other again. And considering the payday he had coming, Jack wouldn’t need to work with strangers ever again, if he didn’t want to.

“Fucking dog,” Jerry was saying, cradling his right hand in front of him. “It was hiding in the backseat. Came out of nowhere and bit my ass.”

“Your ass or your arm?” Jack asked.

Jerry snorted. “Funny guy.”

Jack grinned. He wasn’t really a funny guy, but it helped to keep a sense of humor when you were on a job. Things were usually tense enough on a regular gig, but for this one the client had to double Jack’s anxiety by forcing him to work with these two jokers.

“What’d it look like?” Jack asked.

“Huh?”

“The dog.”

“Oh.” Jerry shrugged. “It was white. With brown fur.”

“What kind of breed was it?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Do I look like a dog person to you?”

“Not particularly.”

“It was big.”

“How big?”

“Big enough to almost take my whole arm off. Luckily, it let go when I grabbed for the Glock.”

“Why didn’t you shoot it?”

“Which part of ‘it almost took my whole arm off’ didn’t you understand?”

Jack didn’t bother answering that one.

Jokers and clowns. Dear God, why couldn’t you have given me professionals? Was that too much to ask?

Of course, Jack hadn’t built up enough cred with the big guy upstairs to be asking for favors, but it never hurt to ask. Most of the time, anyway.

Jerry was bleeding from the dog bite, but the damage wasn’t too obvious against his all-black wardrobe. There were plenty of lights to see with in the front yard around them; the lamps were solar-powered and equipped with motion sensors. It was a pretty sweet setup, but considering what Walter did for a living, probably chump change to the guy.

“Better take care of that,” Jack said, nodding at Jerry’s arm.

“Yeah,” Jerry said. He opened one of the pouches around his waist and took out a first aid kit.

Jack glanced over his shoulder as Jones came out of the house. He knew who the hulking figure belonged to even before Jones appeared in a ring of bright LED lights, walking toward him. Jones was the muscle; not that Jack thought they’d need one for tonight. Then again, you could never go wrong with having a meathead like Jones around on standby, just in case.

“We good?” Jack asked.

The big man nodded. “Got them settled.”

“What about the girl? Did she try anything?”

“Not a chance. She didn’t stop crying until I left.”

“The other one.”

“You said ‘girl.’”

“I meant the woman.”

Jones shrugged. “She didn’t try anything, either. You worried?”

“We need to keep an eye on her.”

“More than the guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You saw her back there?”

Jones shook his head. “So?”

“How many times have you seen a civilian in that kind of situation? How many of them just stand there, calm as shit?”

“Yeah, good point. She was pretty calm, wasn’t she?”

“She was really calm, yeah,” Jack nodded.

“You think they gave us incomplete files on the targets?”

“Anything’s possible.” He looked back toward the house. “Or maybe they didn’t know everything there was to know about her. She’s just supposed to be the girlfriend, right?”

“Maybe I should go back there and hog-tie all three of them, just to be safe.”

Jack thought about it. Was he just being paranoid? It was possible. He was dealing with a suit and his girlfriend. A
secretary
, for God’s sake.

Chances were, he really was just overthinking it, seeing trouble when there wasn’t any.

It’s an easy job. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.

Jack shook his head. “No. We need to limit unnecessary interactions with them, especially the girlfriend and daughter. That way, we’ll cut down on any potentially stupid mistakes.”

“I don’t make stupid mistakes.”

“First time for everything.”

“Not with me.”

Jack grunted. “Forget about them. For now, I need you to help Jerry look for the dog.”

“I already did; couldn’t find it.”

“There’s two of you this time.”

Jones smirked, but didn’t argue. Instead, he looked past Jack and at Jerry. “You gonna bleed to death, or what?”

Jerry had treated and wrapped his arm with gauze, and was putting the roll away. “I’ll be fine.”

“Too bad. If you’d gone down, Jack and me would have been forced to split your share.”

“Keep dreaming, sport.” He held his bandaged arm up and gave it a once-over in the light. “That dog better not have rabies.”

“Don’t worry; if you start foaming at the mouth, I’ll put you out of your misery.”

“Awfully nice of you.”

“You feeling a little tightness in the throat area? What about your arm? Is it itching more than usual? I hear delirium and hallucinations are some of the symptoms of rabies. You feeling any of that right now, Jerry?”

Jerry smirked, but didn’t say anything.

“Enough chatter,” Jack said. “You’re wasting time while that dog is getting farther away.”

“You need to relax; it’s just a dog,” Jones said.

“Right, it’s just a dog,” Jack said. “So you shouldn’t have any problems finding it and putting it down, right?”

*

Jerry and Jones
disappeared into woods until only the beams of their Maglites could be seen occasionally slicing across the blackness. The woods back here were thick with trees, with only a single dirt road leading from the nearest country highway—a long stretch of nothing, really—about two miles back. After that, it was a lot of green in the daylight and darkness at night only occasionally broken by splashes of moonlight that managed to pierce the canopies.

When he couldn’t hear the two mercenaries anymore, Jack headed back to the house. He pulled out the burner cell phone and punched in the digits from memory.

A voice answered on the second ring. “Are we still on schedule?”

“Right on time,” Jack said.

“Remember, it has to get done by morning.”

“You sure it’s going to take that long?”

“It shouldn’t, and it’s your job to make sure it doesn’t.”

“By any means necessary?”

“Up to a point.”

“What if I have to go beyond that?”

“Stick to the plan,” the client said. Then, “Any problems so far?”

What didn’t you tell me about the woman?
he thought about asking, but didn’t. He was selling not just expertise here, but also confidence.

He said instead, “No. Everything’s moving according to schedule.”

“No hiccups?”

Just a dog on the loose in the woods,
he thought, but said, “No.”

“Good,” the client said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Can I ask you a question?”

“It’s your dime.”

“Why the J’s?”

He smiled. Everyone always asked that. “No reason, I just like the sound of J’s,” he said, opening the door and stepping into the foyer, his boots leaving thick dirt on the tiled floor. “The next time you get a call from this number, it’ll be me telling you everything’s done.”

“I like the confidence,” the man said, before hanging up.

Jack pocketed the phone and walked across the living room to the back door, peeking out at the patio deck outside the security glass, then at the walls of trees beyond. Unlike the front yard, the back only had a couple of lights, one above the door he was looking out now, and another along the back wall between the windows.

He didn’t expect to see anyone out there, though for a moment Jack thought he might have caught a glimpse of something white moving around in the darkness among the trees. It was fleeting. There one second, then gone the next.

“It was white. With brown fur,”
Jerry had said.

Jack scanned the woods, moving slowly from side to side, but there was nothing out there no matter how long he stared. After a while, he shook his head and headed into the bedroom hallway, where he stopped at the first door. It was padlocked, and he could hear voices on the other side. Jack listened for a moment, catching a few words here and there, including something about a “résumé.”

He continued up the hallway, entering the second bedroom. The room was sparsely decorated and was clearly being used as an office. There was a single desk at the back with an all-in-one computer on top, a bookshelf, and a metal drawer. Jack sat down on the comfortable black chair and ignored the desktop, instead powering up the bulky laptop they had brought with them.

He was watching the Microsoft Windows logo animating to life when there was a
click
in his right ear. He reached down and pressed the Push-to-Talk switch connected to the radio. “You found Lassie yet?”

“It’s gone,” Jerry said through the earbud.

“What do you mean, it’s gone?”

“I mean, we can’t find it. There was a trail, but we lost it.”

“It’s a dog,” Jack said, unable to hide his growing agitation. “Are you telling me a
dog
outsmarted you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jerry said, sounding clearly offended. “It’s dark out here. Even with the flashlights, I can barely make out Jones’s ugly face.”

“How far are you from the neighbor?”

“Halfway?”

“Can you try to be a little more confident?”

“About halfway,” Jerry said. “Jones thinks it might have doubled back to the house.”

“Maybe,” Jones cut in.

“You sounded pretty sure before,” Jerry said.

“Well, I’m not anymore,” Jones said. “But it’s a fucking dog. Who the hell knows what it’ll do.”

Jack sighed. This was what he got for agreeing to work with strangers, guys he didn’t know from Adam until a week ago. He should never have agreed to the terms, but the money was so good and the lure of early retirement so tempting…

“One time,”
he remembered telling himself.
“Just this one time. How bad could it be?”

The money better be worth it,
he thought, before saying, “Forget about the dog and get back here. This thing’s going to be over by morning anyway.”

“What if it stumbles into one of the neighbors?” Jerry asked.

“We’ll cross that bridge when and if we get to it.”

“Roger that. Returning to the house now.”

Jack leaned back in the chair, putting as much pressure on the furniture as he dared, though at the moment he didn’t care if it broke apart or tipped him over.

Was he overthinking it again? Maybe Jones was right; it was just a dog, after all. How much trouble could a dog cause?

He straightened back up and faced the laptop. It had finished booting and a blinking command prompt on a black screen stared at him.

Time to get to work.

Jack got up and walked next door.

“What do they
want?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she said, and looked past the girl, at Walter sitting on the other side of Lucy.

He was staring at the door intently, as if he could divine the answers to their predicament if he looked hard enough. She wanted to tell him there was no way out in that direction. Even if they could break the door down there were three men with guns on the other side. The only other route of escape was the back window, but it was secured with burglar bars.

“Walter,” she said. When he didn’t react, or even appear to have heard her, she said louder, “Walter.”

He finally glanced over, that look of confusion still easy to read on his face.

“Who are they?” she asked.

It took a few seconds for her question to get through to him, before he finally answered, “What?”