Nine
“You did what?”
“Don’t talk like I’ve
gone insane. I had to dump the body.”
“Ah . . . insane?
Don’t be silly. Body dumping sounds very sane to me.”
“You’ve got that
tone again. What, you think I’m gonna
be dim enough to drive around with a dead body in my
trunk?”
“But surely—the other
one—”
“Yeah, well, I gotta
step it up, okay? Nobody noticed the other one. At this point, I
don’t care who goes up in flames, you
got me? It can be any one of you . . . doesn’t matter who. It’ll
still solve all my problems.”
“All of them, eh?”
She would believe that when she saw it.
“We agreed this needs to go away.”
“We sure did. And
this is how it’s gonna happen. Quit acting like I enjoy this shit;
you know I don’t. So are you gonna help, or are you gonna create
more problems for us?”
There was a long
silence on the other end of the phone, followed by what might have
been a sigh . . . of frustration or sorrow or fury, he didn’t know.
She wasn’t close enough for him to see it.
He supposed he had
some sympathy for her. A little. On the other hand, she was hardly
lily-white on this whole thing. He firmly believed there was no
such thing as a victim.
He also believed no
one was innocent. Not past the age of five, anyway.
Another sigh,
followed by, “All right. Yes.”
Then she helped him,
as he knew she would. Poor dumb bitch . . . didn’t she know the
first thing the bad guys always did was get rid of the
assassin?
Not his
problem.
Whistling, he headed
back to his rental car, twirling the key ring around on his index
finger and wondering how soon he’d have to kill the next
one.
She was wrong. He
didn’t enjoy this.
He didn’t.