Cason
I swear this woman has some kind of split personality. One minute she’s rambling on about whatever pops into her head, and the next she’s as silent as a statue and looking at me like I’m the one invading her privacy.
“Lily, where did you go?” I ask, not even really interested in knowing the answer but wanting to assert some control over her.
Finally, she says, “Out.”
And that’s it.
Somehow, the girl who couldn’t stop talking now has nothing to say. All the better. Maybe I’ll get some peace and quiet now. Suddenly, the week ahead doesn’t look so grim.
“Well, good. I didn’t mention it earlier, but there’s no staff, so you’re going to have to do the cooking while we’re here. I’m going out now, so have dinner ready for six.”
I know she wants to say something in response to my command. I see it in her eyes as she glares across the room at me. I wait, but still she says nothing.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Turning to leave, I glance back at her and see that look in her eyes that tells me whatever she’s doing with this silent treatment is practically killing her. With a chuckle, I head toward the hallway, but just before I open the bedroom door, she starts talking again.
“Am I allowed to socialize with the other inmates in this prison? I met that Nate guy before, and except for him being as mean as you are, at least every word out of his mouth wasn’t a threat.”
Her mention of the security guard who came up to relay a message from my father a couple hours ago sets my teeth on edge. I’ve never liked him because he’s a kiss ass and fucking brown noser. He’d stab me or anyone else in the back to get ahead in even the smallest way, and in an organization like Victor’s, that shit gets you noticed and for all the wrong reasons.
Looking back at her, I shrug. “Feel free. He’s exactly the kind of guy who’d love to hear your constant chatter.”
Before she can say anything, I walk out of the room. Let her go talk that dick’s ear off. All the better. At least that will keep her out of my hair since I have work to do. And after I take care of Creighton, the rest of the week will be my own to do as I want.
His house looks vacant from where I’m sitting on top of a ridge overlooking the valley. A thorough assessment of the place’s security tells me he doesn’t value his life much. The property has more than a few acres, but he has no set up to keep anyone out.
Then again, maybe all the men he had working for him fled when they heard Victor had decided to move on him. It’s not like he kept it a secret from anyone. In fact, he seemed to want Creighton to find out.
“Better to keep him on edge and never know exactly when the end is coming,” he said with a chuckle when Jaxon asked him about not keeping his intentions quiet.
That was last week. As I stand up from my perch where I can see every inch of the property and the house, I wonder how fucked up that made Creighton. The guy is probably half out of his mind by now. My father has never been known to be a patient or subtle man, but this time, he’s surprised everyone.
Even me.
The memory of him looking half out of his mind himself earlier that day flashes through my brain as I begin to make my way toward the house below. Whatever’s going on with Duke isn’t going to end well. I want to think we’ll come out on top, but shit’s been getting uglier in the past few months between Duke’s crew and ours.
But that’s not what I need to focus on right now. I’ve got a job to do, and I want to get it done before nightfall.
With every step down the grassy hill, I get closer to ridding the world of this fuck. Just another asshole who couldn’t understand you don’t fuck with the people who helped you and you don’t turn on your friends. This guy had been as close as close can be with Victor once upon a time. I actually heard he worked for him back in the day.
Then all of that changed when Creighton got himself in too deep with the one vice he never could shake. When his luck dried up and there was nothing left in his bank accounts, his family deserted him and he turned to his old friend for help. He’d known my family for long enough to understand that help always comes with a price.
Maybe it’s that he’s gotten soft in his old age. Or maybe he thinks Victor has and would cut him some slack. The problem is my father has gotten harder as the years have gone by, and when it came time to pay back what he owed, Creighton ran and hid.
As if he thought we’d never find him out here in no man’s land.
He got away with it for a while, I suspect because somewhere in his black heart my father still remembered the old days with his good buddy. That ended, though, so now I get to send his old friend off to the next life.
A single light in a lower room of the two-story old farmhouse house flickers on just as I move toward the back door. For a second, I wonder if he knows I’m here. No, he couldn’t. Whatever Creighton used to be or may still be at this moment, he’s never been particularly clever or sly. That I do know.
I take a step onto the rotting wooden porch and hear it groan at the weight of my foot. I freeze and wait to hear any movement inside the house, but there’s only silence.
A minute later, I’ve made quick work of the basic lock Creighton put his faith in to protect him and this house and walk inside. The twilight casts an orange hue on the old country kitchen, making it look like one of those Americana pictures I remembering seeing on a trip to a museum in elementary school. Every one of those pictures looked like it had been done by the light of sunset with their oranges and yellows.
With each second that passes, the daylight shrinks behind the horizon, so I don’t have time to waste. The last thing I want to do is have to search this old house in the dark to find him.
I head down the hallway, checking each room as I move toward the room with the light I saw from the hill. “Creighton, you knew I’d be coming. It was just a matter of time, now wasn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer, but I can feel his fear. It comes off him in waves and fills this home that’s been abandoned by everyone but him with a tightness that presses down on me.
“All you had to do was do the right thing. You knew that, and still here we are. Don’t make this worse on yourself. Be a man when it counts most,” I say in a loud voice sure to make it to wherever he’s hiding.
And then I hear a creak from the floor not from my own boots hitting the wood and know he’s nearby. That whole be a man when it counts most crap always works to unnerve guys like Creighton. That kind of thing matters to them, for some reason. It means something to him that when I report back to my father that I say he died like a real man and not some sniveling piece of shit coward.
That nonsense wouldn’t work on me. I wouldn’t get all twitchy and give away my position because some guy tried to call me out on being a man. My days of worrying about someone’s opinion of me ended when I became the man I am now.
You can’t kill and give a fuck about what people think. The two are wholly incompatible. One requires no conscience, and the other requires too much of one. Mine left me the first time I put a bullet into someone and I watched them take their final breath in this life.
When my time comes, it won’t be because some asshole tries to guilt me into being something I’ve never been. If Creighton and guys like him were being honest, they’ve never been that either.
I stop right before the last room and look down at the floor to see the light shining under the door. Did he actually make this easy on me and put out a light to show where he is? I thought he was smarter than that.
Or maybe he’s just accepted his fate. That I could admire. Fuck that shit about being some kind of man he’s never been. Just be a stand up human and face what’s coming for you with the strength you pretended to have when life was easy.
I push open the door and see him sitting in a chair next to the light. His grey hair hangs over his forehead, giving him a haggard look. I imagine he’s been sitting in this very spot for what seems like ages waiting for this moment, the tension of knowing it will happen but not knowing when carving those worry lines deeper into the skin around his mouth that’s stuck in a permanent frown now. He’s a far cry from the man I heard about from my father and uncles when they talked about him and how much the women fell at this guy’s feet.
I guess that falls away like everything else over the years. Fortune, friends, and even fucking women.
His gun rests in his lap, the wrong place for it if he’s thinking about making one last stand in this life. I take a step into the room and he fumbles for it, practically dropping it onto the floor.
With unsteady hands, he points it at me and says, “This isn’t right. You know it as well as I do. Victor and I were friends.”
“And now you’re not, Creighton.”
“I’m not going without a fight,” he says as his hands shake almost uncontrollably.
At this rate, even if I couldn’t overpower him, he’d never be able to take a shot at me. At least not one that could have a snowball’s chance in hell of hitting me.
“Decided not to take the manly route? So be it.”
Before he can answer, I lunge at him and take him to the ground. The gun takes a few hops across the wood floor and comes to a stop too far away for him to have a chance to grab it.
Creighton looks up at me and then over in the direction of the gun as I see reality settle into his expression. Unless he’s got another gun and steadier hands, his time is up.
“What are you going to do?” he asks, his eyes filled with utter terror.
It’s a stupid question, really, but one someone like me gets more often than you’d think. Maybe they all want to know what weapon will take their life from them. Or maybe they mean how fast will they go.
I don’t know, but every time those words hit my ears, I can’t help but hope I don’t ask something so fucking stupid when my time comes.
“This is the end, Creighton. You know what I’m going to do.”
He puts his hands up in front of his face and shakes his head. “Not the face. Just don’t do the face!” he begs in a panicked voice.
Vain fuck. It would serve him right if I did mess up his face.
I stand over him and sigh in disgust. “Fine. I won’t do your face. Now shut up.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, he nods and stiffens his entire body. “Okay. Do it then.”
So this is what being a coward looks like. I’ve killed a lot of men, and never once has one behaved like a frightened little animal before. Most fight me. Some seem resigned to their fate once they see me. No one has ever sniveled like this guy, though. Makes me wonder how my father could have ever called him a friend.
None of that matters, though, so I pull out my gun and aim it at his head for a moment, amused by the idea that he won’t have the lovely looking face he so desperately wants for his mourners. Considering the fact that he’s got nobody left in life, I question whether anyone will even show up for this fuck’s funeral.
After a second or two, I slowly move my aim to his chest. He relaxes his body and peers out from behind his hands just before I pull the trigger, like he thinks I’ve changed my mind about doing what I’ve been sent here to do.
No. That’s not how this works, Creighton.
One shot and then another into his heart and he’s gone instantly. Slumped onto the floor, his hands no longer hiding his face, he exists now only in someone’s memory. His expression in death is even uglier than the years marked on his face, but it seems only right for someone so concerned about how he’d look that he’d beg a hitman not to fuck up his face.
I consider going back on my word and shooting him right between the eyes, but I decide not to. Let whatever mourners who bother to attend his funeral get that face as the last thing they ever see of him.
Stepping over Creighton’s dead body, I put my gun away and walk out the same way I came in. Some guys like to leave a mess to make it look like someone broke in and killed the guy. Why bother? Most cops aren’t going to spend a whole lot of time on an old dead guy nobody gave a damn about by the end of his life. I don’t need to construct some fucking story for why he got shot.
People who know him know why, and people who don’t know him won’t care. That’s how it is for everyone. Why the fuck would Creighton be any different?
By the time I get back to the house, I’m hungry and hope to God Lily has made food and isn’t in the mood to talk now. Before I may have wanted to for a minute or so, but now I just want silence. I don’t know if it’s just the way I am after a kill, but I never want to sit around having a good time after one.
I like to think that’s maybe my way of respecting the dead, even though I’m the one who made them that way. Maybe not. Maybe I just have nothing to say after putting a few into a guy. All I know is I’m not like other guys who love to brag about that kind of shit after they do a job.
There’s nothing to brag about. I did what I was supposed to do. He’s dead. And now I get a few days off. Period. End of discussion.
As I open the front door, I hear her laughing and for some reason, rage bubbles up inside me. I don’t know why, but I don’t want to think about it either.
With every step I take toward the kitchen, my anger builds until I’m ready to pull out my gun and kill someone because she’s fucking laughing. When I step into the room and see her sitting at the island with that dick Nate, it takes every ounce of willpower inside me not to shoot the whole fucking place up.
“Having a good time?”
He looks over at me and nods, as if I was talking to him. What an asshole. Lily at least has the good sense to quickly jump off the bar stool and hurry over to the stove where something is cooking. In my rage, I can’t seem to smell anything, which is disappointing since it’s not a good sign of what my dinner will be like.
“Hey! You’re early. Lily said you wouldn’t be back until six,” he says casually, like we’re all friends hanging out for dinner.
I don’t bother answering him. I wasn’t talking to him anyway.
Lily turns around and gives me a tepid smile as she continually stirs something in a pot. “It’s almost ready.” She stops herself as she begins to say something else about dinner and points at me. “What’s all over your jacket?”
Confused, I look down and see splashes of Creighton’s blood on the front of my blue windbreaker. Before I can answer her question, Nate lets out a laugh.
“That’s blood. Our boy here had a job to do this afternoon.”
I shoot him a look as the urge to pull out my gun and put a couple into him surges inside me. Do I need this jackass’s commentary on my job?
Lily turns to face him and shakes her head. “What do you mean?”
Now it’s my turn to answer since I have no intention of letting him talk for me. “He means I had a job to do this afternoon. Kill someone. I did it, so now I want to eat and enjoy some quiet.”
She recoils at my answer, backing up into the stove and knocking the pot over so all the red liquid spills everywhere. Lily jumps as it hits her arm and runs out of the kitchen crying.
“Dude, I don’t think you needed to say it like that,” Nate says as he gets up to begin cleaning up what looks like spaghetti sauce spilled on the stovetop, the countertop, and the floor.
“Why are you here? Don’t you have some security shit to handle somewhere else?”
I don’t wait for him to answer me before I turn to walk upstairs to my room. As I walk past Lily’s, I hear her crying, but I can’t help her. She’s upset because I’m exactly who I’ve always been.
Her being around isn’t going to change that. She can wish it would, but it won’t.
