Hit And Sprint

ten

I toss a duffel bag in the back seat of my car, watching as it lands in Robert's lap.

I was the last to get back, due to the fact that I had been looping around various alleys to ensure that both of the men accompanying me would make it to the car.

I wasn't sure why I watched their backs, but I did. Maybe it was a random urge to clock Wyatt Adams in the jaw if he happened to follow anyone, or an actual degree of responsibility for the duo. Hopefully not the latter.

I don't speak as I start up the vehicle and pull out of the parking lot, simply because I have nothing to say. The job was over, what could I have offered, "Good teamwork, guys?"

Roy doesn't take well to the silence, smiling with his mouth open as he stares at me. "That was one hell of a shot, Ice," he muses.

I squint. "And how would you know that, Roy?" Pulling onto the freeway, I go the exact speed limit, regardless of almost every other driver instantly passing me. If we got pulled over now, and an officer looked in the duffel bag, our whole operation was fucked.

Better slow than incarcerated.

Roy leans down in his seat, then resumes his position with a set of binoculars in his right hand. "You're the one who packed 'em," he quips, waving them proudly.

I raise my eyebrows and nod, then change the subject. "He'd better be dead," I say, in obvious reference to Smiley.

"Oh, I'm sure he is," Roy boastfully returns. "That had to sever somethin' near his heart."

I could tell just by hearing his voice that he was on what I liked to call a blood high.

Once you kill enough of people, you realize a lot of things. One of those things was that certain deaths could feel like pure heroin when you were the one causing them.

I always got a bloodrush when it was someone I knew personally. Most of the time those were knife fights behind buildings, so maybe it was the adrenaline from beating someone senseless that made it so addicting.

Those weren't too common, but they usually happened when I royally screwed someone over and they tried to have it out with me. Hitmen were known for double crossing in the name of a job, and I was no different.

The only person I had ever been completely loyal to was Roy.

We had formally met in a bar among all places, when I was twenty two, and he was twenty. As I had come to learn, Roy knew the owners, so he drank at his own leisure, regardless of his age.

I was sitting alone and nursing an old fashioned, as I normally did after a particularly exhausting hit. No one ever really bothered me while I was there, due to my growing reputation and general expressions. A scowl steered people off quite well.

Roy had been different, though, because he had separate motivations. He plopped down beside me unprompted, a glass of straight whiskey in his hand that was sloshing left to right. "I think I know you," he had said. He must have been tipsy at that point, judging by his audacity, but his voice didn't show it.

"I don't think so," I enunciated, still avoiding eye contact. I was much less brash back then, leaning more toward the vaguely threatening side.

He didn't back off, regardless of my apparent disinterest. "No, c'mon, I think I do. Where do I know you from?" He forced eye contact, taking a sip of his drink and staring with wide eyes.

Mob involvement was written all over him. From the bar he chose to the way he dressed, it was clear. Normal twenty year olds didn't exactly drink whiskey in a tasteful blazer on their own whim.