Killers of a Certain Age(38)

“What kind of rumors?”

“That you were taking contracts on the side.” I raised a brow. The cardinal rule of the Museum was that freelancing was strictly forbidden. It’s one of the things that separated us from hired guns. We killed to order only, targets that had been scrupulously vetted and chosen because their deaths would benefit humanity as a whole. Murders with a mission statement, we joked. But we were convinced it kept us on the right side of the karmic ledger.

“Moonlighting isn’t allowed, and even if it were, that’s not me. You know that.”

He shrugged and I turned over the second card. In the center was an orange disc marked with symbols. Winged creatures hovered in the corners, and atop the disc sat a sphinx.

“The Wheel of Fortune,” I told him.

“I don’t see Vanna,” he joked. “But it sounds good.”

“It means a change in circumstances. Could go either way,” I said. “What else did you hear?”

He paused, then started talking, fast—like he wanted to get it out before he changed his mind. “Nothing. Just that the four of you had gone rogue and were killing for profit.”

“And you thought it was true?”

He held up both hands like he was trying to ward me off. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

I studied him a moment, making a careful note of the reddened tips of his ears, the quick slide of his gaze away from mine. “Bullshit. You believed it.”

I didn’t keep the anger out of my voice; I didn’t even try.

I flipped over the last card. It was an image of a man lying on his stomach, his face averted. He was wearing a red cape, and part of it—or a puddle of blood—drifted across the card. Ten swords were stuck into his back.

“What the shit is that?” he demanded.

“Ten of Swords,” I told him. “It’s as bad as it looks. Betrayal. Backstabbing. Utter ruin.”

He pulled off his baseball cap and ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Jesus, Billie. Did you put it there on purpose?”

“Me? The cards don’t lie,” I said simply.

“Maybe they don’t,” he said. His voice didn’t change; he was a pro. But there was something about the shift in how he held himself, some almost imperceptible difference in his arms. I couldn’t see his hands, but I knew. He hadn’t come to talk. He’d come to kill.

“So where are the others?” he asked, his tone casual. And then I understood. Of course. If the Museum’s official line was that we had gone rogue, there would be bonuses for taking us out. And Sweeney wouldn’t want to stop at one. Four kills would pay for a lot of baseball tickets and Hungry-Man dinners.

Somehow, above the usual crowd noise, I caught the sound of Mary Alice’s cello. The melody had changed and she’d crashed into the opening of “Hazy Shade of Winter.” She was playing it sharp and up-tempo—the Bangles, not Simon and Garfunkel. She’d spotted somebody who wasn’t supposed to be there. Either Sweeney had brought backup or he had competition. Either way, we weren’t safe.

Sweeney didn’t seem to know he’d been made. He just kept looking at me with the same wide-open, innocent gaze that helped him clean up at the poker table. I gathered the cards and tapped them twice before putting them in a stack on the left-hand side of the table. That was the signal to Helen to take him out.

I resisted the urge to look up to where Helen would be eyeing Sweeney along the barrel. I only hoped she wouldn’t go for a head shot. It would be messy as hell and not exactly subtle. A neck shot would be just as effective and a little more discreet.

But the bullet didn’t come and I realized Helen must be having trouble getting the shot off. I had to buy time.

I grabbed Sweeney’s left hand in mine and turned it over. “Let me read your palm. Then I’ll take you to where the others are. They’ll be happy to see you.”

He smiled and something behind his eyes eased. He was ready to play along if there was a chance he’d get all four of us. I traced lines, making up bullshit about his life and heart, waiting, waiting for Helen to pull the trigger. By the time I got to the Mount of Venus—which sounds dirty but just means the part below your thumb—I was getting antsy. I flicked a glance up to where Helen sat on the balcony, hands gripping the railing. She wasn’t in shooting position; she hadn’t even gotten her gun out. She was frozen, a rabbit in the headlights, and I knew then I’d have to take matters into my own hands.

I stopped bullshitting and looked him dead in the eye. “Give it to me straight. There are bounties on us, aren’t there? Bonuses for every one of us that get killed.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry about this, Billie. I really am. But yeah.”

“How much?”

He told me. I was still holding Sweeney’s left hand in mine as I spoke. It kept him from noticing that I was reaching into my skirt pocket with my right. My finger touched the trigger and I squeezed.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



The thing about gunshots is they don’t sound like they do in the movies. It’s a pop, like a firecracker, higher-pitched and faster than you’d expect. A few people in the square looked around, curious, but after a long minute when nothing happened, they went back to their Hurricanes and their pralines. The gun was in my hand and I’d fired through the table, taking a blind shot and hoping for the best, but I’d been lucky. The small-caliber bullet had entered the front of his chest and stayed there, leaving a single hole under his collarbone and a spreading patch of wet darkness across his navy jacket.