Or: The Assassin, the Client, His Wife, and Her Lover 

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            “You can call me Dee,” she said, smile glinting like a knife.

The client took her hand with a tender deference.

            “John,” he admitted. There were many Johns in her line of work.

Dee gestured at the empty sofa, and he sat. A waiter approached and took their drinks order. Scotch, neat, for him; a second gin martini for her, despite the olive still being half submerged in her current glass.

            “You’re not how I imagined you,” he said.

She did not reciprocate this compliment, if that was what he intended it to be, because he was exactly what she had expected: approaching fifty, bone structure still holding strong underneath the settling features and widening neck, charcoal suit six months and five kilos overdue for a tailor.

            “Aren’t I?”

            “Well,” he waved at her red dress of sumptuous silk, the blonde curls her hair had been set in. “I feel underdressed.”

Dee accepted her drink from the waiter. Two olives. How sweet of the bartender to remember. Once they were alone enough again, she nudged the conversation back towards the not-quite-million-dollar question. Instinct told her this was the kind of client who wanted it – badly – but would need some convincing before he followed through.

            “So, you haven’t engaged the services of a professional before. Have you, John?”

He answered, but with his eyes on his drink.

            “No. This is all quite new to me. It’s my wife, you see…”

Dee nodded but did not pry. It was a story old than her profession, and she could have filled in the pauses and hesitations herself. John started this company, sold it, started that company. The current one had been founded with Liam Tuohey, his best friend since business school. He found himself rolling in dough and attracting the attention of women younger and lither with every new zero in his bank account, and found one he wanted to settle down with. Abigail was twelve years his junior, and they fell madly in love. The first year of marital bliss was a whirlwind of vacations and steak dinners, but the last two years had grown stale. They fought for no reason, and he suspected she started the arguments merely to produce some thrill in the absence of any other sort.

            “Then I hired a private investigator, and he just confirmed what I’d been fearing for months.”

            “Caught in the act?” Dee said, wincing and reaching out to touch his arm.

            “Nothing concrete. My lawyer called it circumstantial. Whatever. I’m sure it’s her personal trainer, Daniel,” he spat the name, lips pulled back from his teeth. “But to hell with my lawyer. I don’t want to divorce her.”

Which led him here.

Dee didn’t always get to hear the story behind the men and women who came to her, but she adored it when she did. The rage and the heartbreak, the betrayal and the suspicions. She considered herself a student of the human condition. Here came the tastiest part of these all-too-rare discussions, when they came right out and said it.

            “Then why are you here?” she asked, biting her lip.

John Burgess stared at the nearly empty glass. It swirled like amber in the crystal.

He downed the last mouthful and gritted his teeth, the burn sending him with finality to his next plunge.

            “Because I want you to kill my wife.”

Dee smiled, showing all thirty-two perfect teeth. She gestured an elegant flick of the wrist to the bar and got a nod in return. Things were much more interesting now they’d broken the seal.

            “I thought you’d never ask, John.”

He clapped his hands onto his knees, blew out a harsh lungful of air. A great relief washed over him. He was finally unburdened of that secret, but still a tear swam in one eye.

            “Agh! I can’t believe I said it. It’s true though. I want her dead. I NEED her dead. I can pay you.”

She knew he could, but the dance must take each step through to its coda.

            “When you reached out online, I was unambiguous about my modus operandi. Did you read it carefully?”

            “I did,” but his broken eye contact confirmed her need to go over the details again.

            “Now, John, I am a long-range expert. I won’t bore you with my credentials. That would make us a little too familiar with each other, wouldn’t you say? I guarantee elimination on first contact, and I charge a hundred thousand dollars per bullet fired.”

John’s eyes widened. As she suspected, he skimmed her brief.

            “One hundred thousand? Per bullet?”

            “I am precise. This isn’t a war zone. It’s one and done.”

            “But what if you miss?”

Dee leaned back and rearranged herself on the lounge, draping one leg over the other to let the slit of the silk dress fall like a final curtain. She sipped her martini, fingernail propping the olives away from her lips, then gave him her brightest smile yet.

            “Oh, I never miss.”

***

It took three days and a tithe of ten thousand dollars to her fixer before Dee uncovered where Abigail Burgess would be meeting her mystery lover.

Tapping into the target’s phone had also confirmed there was a lover: Dee’s lingering doubts about the extramarital affair were exorcised with one lewd mirror selfie captioned with the promise of some enthusiastic sex acts for someone who was not John Burgess, at a time and place to be finalised for that coming weekend. The confirmation of certainty Abigail was sleeping with someone else was not a part of the brief and was professionally irrelevant to Dee. It didn’t change the job, but she was disappointed all the same: she had made a bet with herself.

Friday evening arrived and the fixer earned his fee by providing the room number of the Roebuck Hotel that Abigail’s lover had provided for them. It was only generated upon check-in, so Dee had to move fast.

The Roebuck Hotel’s southern suites, which overlooked both the pool deck and the botanical gardens, were entirely visible from the Reilly building, a multipurpose structure which Dee was to scale like a mountain’s peak. She had many of the trappings of alpinism with her: a bulletproof luggage on wheels, a windproof vest, even an oxygen bottle.

            “At least it wasn’t another champagne brunch assassination,” she told herself on the third staircase. That mess had been unforgettable, and the resulting investigation persistent.

The suitcase banged against the one-hundred-and-fiftieth step, then rolled to a stop as Dee let herself into the Reilly building’s eighth storey.

The office space was currently unlet, a hundred and seventy square metres of glass dividing walls and dark grey carpet waiting for a business to come along and wake it from its slumber. A conference room still boasted the previous tenant’s presentation desk, a flimsy thing of painted chipboard. Dee opened the blinds with a hushed procession of slats, pausing a second to take in the view of her favourite city. It was good to be home.

The Reilly building was nearly seventy metres higher in elevation than the Roebuck Hotel and two blocks away, an advantage of the city being built inside a hilled valley. It was a matter of moments to count the storeys and the windows to find the right room through her high-powered optics.

With the kill zone established, she unloaded her suitcase.

The B&T SPR300 took form within moments. Upper onto lower, bipod extended and stable, pins assembled and scope in good order, magazine into the guts. Her baby came together in her hands with every click and clack, as eager to get to work as Dee herself. If you want to kill someone with a bang, she thought, shop American. But for integral suppressors and subsonic ammunition, you can’t beat Swiss engineering.

She ignored her own reflection, nothing more than a pallid abstraction, and plunged down the rabbit hole of the sighting scope. The death machine at her cheek smelled of Hoppe’s No. 9 oil, pine, and cold steel. The oxygen bottle sat pretty beside her.

Windows blurred past through the circle, a hundred curtains and a dozen other guests, until she found room 1810. Once Dee made positive identification, she unlocked her phone.

Time to make contact.

***

Abigail Burgess missed her babies, one human and three canine, but she needed tonight.

She was too young to have done anything for long enough to be in “a rut” – no matter how her friends insisted it was what was afflicting her – but there she was, at the Roebuck with her lover.

The Fleur De Lis Suite was exquisite. A bathroom with freestanding bathtub had a view of the parklands, and the bedroom windows showed the cityscape laid out before them and stretching off toward the river. Only the Reilly building obscured Abigail’s view of her favourite bridge.

Her phone chimed. A fourth message from John.

She told him she’d be out of town, which was almost true. Once they had a continental breakfast tomorrow morning, she would be driving to the winery to meet up with the girls and celebrate Katrina defending her doctorate thesis – at 27! You go, girl – but tonight was all for her.

Her lover popped the cork on a bottle of champagne, first letting the suds overflow down the neck of the bottle and into the ice bucket, then pouring a good measure for them both. He was high on guilt and a line of executive powder, but he was right about one thing: nobody loved Abigail the way he did. He told her all the things she needed to hear, he made her feel like a modern-day Aphrodite, and she adored it.

If she had cared even one whit about him, he would have been the happiest man on earth.

***

Four messages with no reply made him feel like an idiot.

Mia, their daughter, was asleep. John stood at the back door and watched their twin shepherds sniff around for the perfect patch of lawn on which to relieve themselves. Back and forth, judging whole stretches inadequate for the business of being pissed on, tails wagging. His beer was sweating a circle on the glass coffee table, and it wasn’t his first of the evening.

Abby was out of town on a girl’s weekend. Four messages were already too many. The latest was asking her to inform him when she’d arrived safely, a gesture he realised – with a discomfort which sat in his gut like remorse or a bad curry – was out of character for him.

He’d seen the travel plans and the winery’s booking confirmation, but still his instinct told him he was being screwed. The parting smile from her had been flat, the messages lifeless and supported by punctuation they had lacked before. He had no logical reason to worry, but still his instincts raved and rattled.

When John’s phone rang in his hand, he nearly screamed. It was not a text but a call, and from a contact identified purely by the letter D. Both dogs looked over at him. Hunter was hunched in the act of doing his business, but his expression said, You going to answer that, John, buddy? It’s just the ringing is killing the Zen of my evening tinkle. This was the second-most nervous John had ever felt. First place was tied between the day he proposed to Abigail and his first company’s IPO.

            “Hello?”

            “Do you have end-to-end encryption active?” she asked.

            “Yes. We’re good.”

            “Okay. John, there’s news. I have positive contact.”

He stepped inside, closing the glass sliding door for silence and taking hold of the back of the couch for balance.

            “Where?”

            “Check the credit card activity, confirm it for me.”

John released his grip on the leather and nearly tripped on the way around the couch. He had left the laptop on the cushion next to him in case of emergency while he half-heartedly watched a movie. His heart was fluttering, a pitter-patter he felt himself sailing atop as the clouds gathered below.

            “Okay. Okay. Grabbing it now.”

One-handed, he fumbled the clamshell hinge open. The bank site was still open from when he had last checked it twenty minutes ago, so he refreshed the page and logged back in.

            “Nothing. She could have filled up the car already, but the mileage is great in the Subaru and she won’t need to fill up until–“

            “I don’t miss, and that includes mistaken identity. Check the OTHER credit card.”

            “What are you talking about?” John felt himself grinning, already high on relief. It was all a mistake; Abby wasn’t cheating on him. “She doesn’t have the business card. I have my copy in my wallet.”

            “I’m sure you do,” she replied, voice a silk scarf wrapping around his neck. “Please check the executive expense account anyway. National, right? You can request an updated statement twenty-four-seven. All automated. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I want you to be a hundred percent sure before I pull the trigger, but I have to warn you: I charge a 33% cancellation fee.”

John swallowed bile. Dee again knew far too much about him and his life for his comfort.

He put the phone down while he logged into the business account, not wanting to hear the silence on her end. It took less than a minute to hit his email.

Last transaction was a security deposit at the Roebuck Hotel.

He leaned sideways enough to free the leather billfold from his back pocket. The black card was there, between the insurance and his driver’s license. He could hear his heart beating in his ears.

            “It can’t be. I didn’t book that.”

Only one other person on earth had access to that account, and it sure as hell wasn’t Daniel the personal trainer.

***

Dee saw Abigail Burgess and Liam Tuohey clear as crystal, then they warped and shifted as she winced at the crashing sounds from the other end of the phone call. Heartbreak was discernible beneath the rage. A smash which could have been a shoe going through a glass coffee table was drowned out by a string of inarticulate swearing. John returned to the phone.

            “You see them? You actually see them both? Show me!”

His tone was becoming far too demanding for Dee’s tastes, so hers came out cool.

            “No, I am not doing that. The angle of the photo will show my vantage point, and the picture message will embed my position. I know both of their faces from my legwork, and I can confirm she is in the room with him. You’ll have to take my word for it. Do you want to proceed?”

            “Shit,” he said from the phone’s speaker on her thigh. She could not put it on the desk, as even the vibration could affect her accuracy.

John’s quick breaths crumbled into sobs, but Dee did not move. A long-range shooter needs patience above all else. His misery was moving, and she could weep for him but she’d applied some expensive eyedrops and wouldn’t want them to go to waste.

            “This arsehole is fucking my wife? She’s fucking my business partner? You’re goddamn right I want to proceed! Yes!”

There we go, she thought. Money in the bank.

            “Understood. I’ll keep you on the phone so you can hear the shot. That will be the only proof of kill I will provide.”

            “Fine! Yes, do it. That bitch lied to me, she LIED about this trip, and she lied in our marriage vows. Wants to lie through her teeth? I want you to shoot her right in her mouth!”

Dee blinked.

            “I can’t guarantee that would be fatal, John.”

            “I don’t give a shit,” he hissed, sounding through the phone’s speaker like he was at the end of a dark corridor. “I’m paying you!”

Down the street, high up and safe in their suite, Abigail was reclined on the bamboo-silk sheets while Liam removed her heels with his teeth. At this angle, the shot would disintegrate Abigail’s jaw and punch through the bathroom door behind her.

            “Dealer’s choice. It’s going to give your business partner one hell of a scare.”

            “Oh, HIM! I want you to kill him too, the fucking snake!”

Dee opened her other eye, seeing through the scope aimed at the lovers’ tryst on one side and the glittering city in the other.

            “The gentleman too? That will–“

            “I know. Another hundred grand. Fine!”

            “You’re good for it, John, I trust that, but I don’t do refunds. Are you sure about this?”

            “Yes! To hell with them both! I’ve got the money, and God knows I’ll save more than two hundred large in the divorce. Shoot her in her lying mouth, and – and – and shoot his cock off!”

Dee placed the oxygen bottle’s breather over her mouth and nose, took three huffs, and returned to the optical scope. It would take no more than ten seconds for the head-high to clear, and she’d need to hold her breath to get the perfect shot.

            “Understood.”

She re-opened her other eye and noted the limp flag outside the hotel. Steam from a restaurant’s kitchen vent tended eastward as it rose. Calm wind.

John’s breath came ragged through the phone’s speaker.

She adjusted for gravity, dragging the scope’s distance marker across their naked bodies. Abigail’s hair was already tousled, and Liam was doing a poor job of smoothing it as she kissed down his abdomen.

Rendered tinny and high, the phone on Dee’s thigh played the sounds of John rummaging through the desk drawers in his office, the gasp of relief at finding his secret packet of cigarettes, even the click of the lighter. If John thought the nicotine would blow out the raging fire in his chest, he was wrong.

            After the third puff, he whispered, “Are you there?”

He got no reply. As far as Dee was concerned, she had no thigh and there was no phone. Her perception had narrowed to a spot 7.62 millimetres wide, hundreds of metres away, and her focus poured into it like a gravity well.

            “Is it done?” John asked, knowing full well it was not. “Hello?”

The silence was killing him as sure and lethal as a bullet. He swallowed with a click, already hearing the hesitation in his own voice, when the air exploded with a high-calibre gunshot.

***

To John, it sounded like the world on the other end of the phone had been cracked in half.

The cigarette between his fingers smouldered, but he dared not move. A second after the shot, the call had ended. Had she been interrupted? Caught?

When the phone rang in his hand for the second time that night, scant minutes later, he again expected to see Abigail’s angelic smile in the contact photo but was met with the finality of the letter D, that end of the end and beginning of death.

His thumb left a rainbow outline of sweat droplets on the screen when he pressed ACCEPT and placed the speaker to his ear.

            “It’s done.”

John leaned against the wall by the window, resting his head on the cool glass. The ash built up on the end of his cigarette fell to the office carpet.

It was done, by his order if not his hand. Two people had been murdered, and he was out two hundred grand. Oh god, he thought, what have I done?

            “What – what happened?”

            “Exactly what you asked for,” Dee said, and it sounded like she was walking briskly down the street. “You can transfer my money now, the remaining ninety.”

            “Ninety?” John asked, though numb lips.

            “I told you: I never miss. Both requests fulfilled, and with the one bullet. Her mouth, his cock.”

John sank to his knees.

He took up the phone in time to catch the rest of what Dee had to say.

            “You should be thanking me, John. I just saved you a hundred thousand dollars.”

  END.