Kill Me Softly

Chapter 2 Killian

I pretend to browse through the shitty range of trinkets, bits and bobs as I stake out the target. I've done recon on him all week long and Dennis Fergins is a grimy piece of shit whose Pawn Shop barely ever gets a customer. I still take my time and look through the whole store- all ten shelves in the center of the room and what little he has on the walls. Dennis is currently half drunk and sitting behind the counter, eyes half shut and head propped on his hand. He doesn't move as I wonder closer to him, giving the illusion that I'm looking in the lit case below him.

Dennis doesn't get the chance to blink before I pull my gun from my waistband and snag him between the eyes. I put my silencer on just before entering the building and I'm glad I did. Nothing beats the element of surprise.

Unscrewing the silencer as I look the man over for a long minute I don't try to help my smirk. He thought he could just gamble every houses money in the tristate area and get away with it.

Dumb fuck.

I make sure to tuck my weapon into the waistband of my jeans and that my hoodie covers it completely before I put the silencer in my hoodie pocket. Dennis had a lot of debt in the city and we had been called to handle the tab. I turn the sign on his door to closed and leave. As I make my way away from the Pawn Shop I send a text to Lennox.

Done.

I whistle a tune as I walk down the street and watch the people going past me. The night life here reminds me of New York. It doesn't matter that it's almost three in the morning, there are still people out getting their dry cleaning or going out to dinner. I stop by a guy that is selling hot dogs in a cart and get a deluxe before sitting at the bench next to him while I eat.  The fact that I just killed a man doing nothing to upset my appetite. I have never be a squeamish person. Which helped as I got into my current line of work.

I was in line to go pro for hockey right out of high school. I was only eighteen when I blew out my shoulder in a practice scrimmage and ended my career before I even got started. Once healed at nineteen I stayed on the team for a couple of years. But after the injury I was just a goon, a machine who beat on the opposing team. Literally.

But as the age of twenty two came around, my body couldn't take anymore and I left the sport entirely. Well professionally anyway. I made good money even without making pro so I had something to fall back on but what really saved me were my brothers.

Lennox, Jhett and Bodhi. They are my anchors for more than one reason. Since we were all kids they have been there for me, through everything.

And they are probably the ones blowing my phone up.

Sighing as I stand, I start walking back to the spot I parked my car. I don't know how long I walk, auto pilot taking over as I people watch and keep an eye out for anything suspicious. It's on Crockett that I stop for some reason. Looking around quickly I don't sense anything that raises alarm. But something I can't place is tugging at me, urging me to wait and to see. For what I am unsure.

Until I see it.

Or rather.

I see her.

A woman bent over giving a kid playing his small drum set some cash, a long curtain of brown hair hiding her face before she stands up right. The wind kicks up and I see a side angle of a beautiful smile before she turns and takes a step away from the kid, toward me with her attention still on him. And then life is in slow motion-like in a rom-com movie- as I get an eye full of the stranger when she turns forward. But before I can think logically time is speeding back up and I have no time to stop the collision. A soft and warm body slams into mine, bouncing off as I manage to grab her at the last second and stop her from falling down on the dirty sidewalk.