“What is Part Two?”
“Part Two is I need to see you complete a job.”
“Is that part of your typical interview process?”
“Depends. You talk a good game, but I need proof you can back it up. Call it a working interview.”
“And will I be compensated for this working interview?”
“Not by me. Next time you score a contract on your own, let me know. Use the same chat room to text me a time and place. Give me enough notice to get there early and make sure I can slip away undetected. I get pinched for anything you do, then your career is over before it even gets started. I’ll make damn sure of that.”
“Understood.”
“If the job makes it difficult for me to observe in person, I’ll need proof you pulled the trigger. Nothing that can be faked.”
She nodded. “So what now?”
“I’ll wait to hear from you,” I said, and this time I did stand up. Before leaving, I decided to give her one last test.
“War mir eine Freude,” I said, offering my hand. “Bis wir uns wiedersehen.”
She gripped my fingers, gently, and pulled herself up. “Danke,” she said. “Ich freue mich auf die Zusammenarbeit mit Ihnen.”
At least she really did speak German. Joey’s intel wasn’t a total bust, anyway.
I watched her walk out the door. I put my hand on Colin’s chest as he came up beside me.
“She totally made you,” I said, my eyes still on Erica as she passed by the front window.
“She did not,” Colin said, insulted.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said, turning to him. “It’s just because you’re terrible at your job.”
“Me?” he scoffed. “You said she was a guy. How do you fuck that up?”
“We all have our off days,” I said. Except this didn’t feel like an off day. No, this felt like one of those days where I stumbled onto something special.
CHAPTER TEN
“Like, a woman woman? Tits and all?”
“No, Joey,” I replied. “She was one of those women you see all the time with no breasts. They’re everywhere.”
“Don’t be a dick. Maybe she was one of them gender neutral types. You really need to be more progressive in your thinking, Rick. Like me.”
“Yeah, you’re the poster boy for the LGBTQ community.”
“Damn straight,” Joey said. “No pun intended.” Then he fired off three quick shots. Each one found its mark. Head. Heart. Gut.
Joey was a lot of things, but a bad shot wasn’t one of them. Well, except when he was trying to cap a guy in the back of the head as he got into his car. Then, Mr. Steady Hand turned into Shakes the Clown and blew off the mark’s ear instead. Shooting skulls is different than shooting targets, you see. Even for a former Army Ranger with seven confirmed kills in Afghanistan under his belt. It’s harder when the life you’re taking is up close and personal instead of just a dot in a sniper’s scope.
Lucky for Joey, I was watching the whole thing go down from a rooftop across the street. He was a candidate on my radar at the time. I’d heard he was trying to make a move from drugs and guns to wet work. Though the attempted hit was a total Turkish clusterfuck, I was impressed with how he scored such a lucrative contract without any representation. Takes someone very well-connected to land a five-figure hit in a turf war. I bailed him out of jail and paid off the cops to drop the attempted murder charge in exchange for Joey doing a little networking on my behalf.
His client was so appreciative that I’d gotten the heat off of them for the botched hit, they agreed to use me to recruit for their next job. And Joey was more than happy to let me tap into his network for whatever I needed. The personal training and marksmanship lessons he provided were just added bonuses. His real value was the wealth of insider information his vast number of contacts provided, which was normally impeccable.
“And your sources definitely told you she was a man?” I asked again.
“Rick, come on, you know me,” he said. “I hear something, I tell you. I don’t embellish, I don’t interpret, and I damn sure don’t confuse ‘she’ with ‘he.’ Girl’s good at building a cover. That has to count for something, right?”
I turned back to my paper target hanging thirty yards away and emptied the rest of my clip. I hit the black torso outline with each shot, just not exactly where I intended. “Close enough,” I muttered, popping the empty magazine out and slapping in a new one.
“You’re still flinching,” Joey said. He’d pressed the red button on the side of his stall and moved his target back another ten meters. “We’ve worked on that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a while.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Don’t start with me, Joey.”
“Look, you want my help, you gotta put in the work. I ain’t gonna waste my time—”
I drowned out the rest of his sentence by squeezing off fifteen rounds in rapid succession. They all missed wildly. I didn’t care.
“Real mature,” he said.
“It’s been a long couple of days.” I took the empty magazine out and started filling it with new shells. Three stalls over, Colin fired off steady, three-round bursts from some type of semiautomatic rifle he’d brought with him. The sound was almost hypnotic. I didn’t even realize Joey had come up behind me until he spoke.
“Is it okay for us to be talking with him around?” He said it quietly, but I still jumped about a foot in the air.
