51. Mina

FIFTY-ONE

mina

Sunday, February 6th.

My coffee cup slips from my hand and crashes to the cafeteria floor in a high-pitched shatter of ceramic. I sense, rather than see, every eye on us. And the reason I don’t see it is because a strip of black silk cloth has been tied over my eyes.

“Brian?”

“Shhhh.” He guides me out of the cafeteria, through the main level entry hall and down the stairs. I know this walk so well, even down to the number of steps. The door to our dungeon room creaks open, and I’m ushered inside.

“Are we about to do something kinky?” I ask.

“Better.”

A moment later my eyes are readjusting to the different light levels in the dungeon room as I stare at the murder wall. And it is full. Brian has outdone himself this time. He’s cut out paper hearts in pink and red. And there is glitter involved. I’m deeply concerned about that part. I really worry about him when he brings glitter and glue into things. It’s unnatural.

In red block letters across the top it says: “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”

“What exactly am I looking at?” I ask. I mean, I know basically what I’m looking at, but it’s a lot. Lots of thumb tacks, red strings connecting things, photographs, maps, print outs from what looks like somebody’s email account. It’s a lot of data points to take in, and even if I could easily read them all from this distance, I’m not sure it would all make sense. Drawings of knives along with hearts—the romantic kind, not the human organ—are next to a picture of a very attractive middle-aged man in a suit with the name Cole Nolan above his picture. There’s a similar drawing next to the photograph of a gorgeous red-headed woman in her twenties. The name above her picture: Clarissa St. James.

“Our next job. Obviously,” Brian says.

“Obviously,” I echo, still trying to put together the whole story. “I mean… want to give me the Cliff’s notes?”

I finally turn around to find Brian’s face lit up with excitement as he stares at his macabre art project.

“This is good,” he says, his gaze finally landing on mine. “You’re gonna love this.”

And I get the strange feeling that this is meant to be… romantic? Brian romantic, not normal romantic.

“I got us two jobs in one.” He takes my hands in his and guides me to sit on the edge of the bed as he lays out this story for me.

“Okay…” he says… “So… I stumbled upon something pretty amazing a couple of days ago, and I needed to do some long distance recon online, which required the help of a hacker I know. I’ve got basic skills, but nothing like this guy. He got me directly into dude’s email and the things I found... To make a long story short, before all this hacking and research, I came upon two contracts. Half a million for the woman, one for the man. As it turns out they are the leaders of rival criminal gangs in the Arizona desert. The original leader of one of the gangs died, and his daughter took over.”

My eyebrows raise at this. I’m not exactly sure what kind of gang we’re talking about. Motorcycle gang? Something else? But I do know large criminal enterprises rarely pass leadership to a woman. Criminals are so patriarchal.

“That’s progressive of them,” I say.

“The father was grooming her for the job for a while,” Brian says. “Anyway, members of the group are blaming the rival gang for her father’s death. They want to go to war, but she refuses. They think she’s weak. Three guesses on why she won’t entertain their demands.”

I swear he looks like the Joker right now, his smile is so big.

I glance back up at the wall… “Well, from your arts and crafts project, I’m assuming, they’re lovers?”

“Bingo. Cole’s estate is going to be cleared down to a skeleton crew for Valentine’s Day, only the very few trusted staff who know about his relationship with Clarissa will be there. The rest of his associates think he’s going out of town on some business. His daughter will be sleeping over at a friend’s house. All so he can have a private romantic evening with his forbidden love. We can take them out, collect two contracts in one hit, and then leave both sides to do their own corporate restructuring.”

“Aww, no, Brian. They’re like us. We can’t kill… us.”

“They are not like us. We don’t have an age gap. And you don’t have red hair.”

Really? That’s the part he’s comparing? I stare at the pictures on the board… they are very much like us. I don’t know how Brian doesn’t see it.

He takes my hands in his again. “Come on, Killer, it’ll be romantic.”

I knew this was his version of romance.

“I don’t know…” I say… I mean… Cole and Clarissa are sort of romantic. I don’t want to take out two lovers leading rival gangs. It’s so Romeo and Juliet.

“Listen,” Brian says, “You hate the cold. This is in Arizona. I specifically found us a kill to get you out of the cold. It wasn’t like I was looking for a forbidden love story, the theme just presented itself in the course of recon.”

I sigh and look at the board again. He really went to a lot of work. “Fuck,” I say. “When you put it that way, it is sort of romantic. And I do hate the cold.” But I’m still not totally on board, and Brian knows it.

“I really need to kill somebody.”

I sigh. “Okay, sign me up for this Valentine’s Massacre.”

“Excellent. You won’t regret it.”