Little Secrets(39)

“My methods shouldn’t concern you.” The glint in his eye is back. “Some situations I handle personally, and some I … outsource. All you need to know is that it will be taken care of. But my fee is two fifty. And it’s nonnegotiable.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand?” She didn’t know what she was expecting. Sal said he was expensive, but the number is even higher than she imagined.

“You get what you pay for.”

“But I—” She has so many questions, and no idea where to start. She hates that she sounds like a naive idiot first-timer, which is exactly what she is, and she’s regretting being so insistent on meeting Julian alone. She wishes Sal were here. “Can I … can I pay you half up front?”

“No.” His laugh is short, more like a bark. “You pay the entire amount up front. Cash or wire transfer.”

“It’s just … I don’t know how I can possibly explain a payment of a quarter of a million dollars.” She knows she has it, but it’s not like it’s sitting in her checking account. And it’s not like she can spend it without justifying it. “Won’t that raise suspicion?”

“If you do a wire transfer, the account number I’ll give you is for a charity. A legitimate, long-standing charity. You’ve donated to charities before, haven’t you?” He doesn’t wait for a response; he already knows she has. “I’ll even give you a tax receipt. As far as the IRS or anyone else is concerned, it will look like you made a very generous donation to a women’s shelter.”

“Seriously?”

He sips his coffee. He doesn’t bother to answer. It’s clear he doesn’t like to repeat himself.

“But how do I know you’ll actually—”

“Complete the job? You don’t. That’s where trust comes in.” Julian leans forward. “Trust is a big thing in my field. And it goes both ways, Marin. I have to trust you, too. And I do, because I trust your good friend Sal.”

It takes her a minute to process this, and he waits patiently as her mind races through a hundred different scenarios. Finally, she whispers, “If I go through with this, how soon will I know when you’re planning to do it?”

“You won’t know anything about it. You’ll find out when it’s done. It could take a few weeks.”

“Weeks?”

He puts his coffee cup down. “The more time that passes between this conversation and the actual event, the better. The reason so many people get caught is because the job is completed too soon after payment, and the client is too involved in the plan. The more distance between you and everything else, the better.”

She says nothing. It all sounds so routine for him, and yet so inconceivable to her. They’re actually talking about this. She’s really doing this.

“What you’re paying me for isn’t just to kill someone, Marin.” Julian’s tone is conversational. He seems unconcerned that anyone around might overhear him. “If your only concern was the actual killing, you could do it yourself, assuming you were angry enough. Or pay any punk off the streets to do it for you, for a whole hell of a lot less money. The killing is the easiest part.”

She blinks. In her whole life, she’s never heard anyone say that.

“What you’re paying me for is to make sure it doesn’t lead back to you.” Julian sips his coffee. “It’s to do it so it looks like a car crash, or a random mugging gone wrong, maybe a freak illness, or a fire, or a drowning. Something unexpected, but plausible. For this to be believable, you need to be as shocked as everybody else, nowhere near the location, and completely unprepared for the news. Even better if you didn’t know he was cheating.” He pauses. “Does he know you know?”

“No.” Marin’s voice is shaking. Her entire body is shaking. The things he listed off, like they’re benign options, like they’re not a bunch of different ways to make someone … dead … she doesn’t know how to react to that.

“How did you find out he was having an affair?”

“Private investigator,” she says, and his eyes narrow.

“Which one?”

She shakes her head. “Again, I feel that’s irrelevant.”

For some reason, Marin doesn’t want to say Vanessa Castro’s name. Castro discovered the affair by accident, while investigating the disappearance of her son, which Marin also refuses to talk about. None of this is Julian’s business.

“If you keep things from me, it makes my job harder,” he says.

“And if you’re as good as you say you are, it shouldn’t matter,” she says. It comes out a challenge.

His jaw clenches, and then relaxes again. “Who else knows? Your therapist?”

“How do you know I have a therapist?” Is he testing her? Or did Sal give him that level of background?

“Women like you always do.”

“I don’t have a therapist anymore.” Marin has no intention of revealing Dr. Chen’s name, either. Julian intimidates her, but he’s also making her feel protective of the people in her life. “And if you’re going to question me about every single person in my life I might have told about the affair—which I learned about today, by the way—we’re going to be here awhile.”