Page 33 of Business vs. Pleasure

“Don’t you dare.”

“Ugh. Fine.” August huffed. “You take the fun out of everything.”

“We’re married. What did you expect?”

August laughed with some actual feeling, and then he commenced looking through the CCTV footage. And, if he valued his life, not downloading games onto the computer again.

While August did that, Ricardo called Heidi.

“Ricardo, thank God,” she said when she answered. “What the hell happened?”

He groaned. “Ugh. I have no idea.”

“This isn’t like you at all! You’re always so professional and⁠—”

“Whoa, whoa. I am a professional, and so is August.” Most of the time, he didn’t say out loud. “Someone got to the mark first.”

“Wait, what? So that wasn’t you?”

“No! And August told Rachel it wasn’t. We weren’t going to use something that would put the suspicion on her. We didn’t even know about the allergy anyway.”

Heidi exhaled. “So… what? Someone else took out a hit on this guy? On the same day? Which, okay, with a dickbag like him, I could actually see that happening.”

“Me too. But after how our last job went down—something’s going on. And I can’t figure out what.” He paused as some threads tried to connect in his mind. Then one of them did. “And… I wonder if it’s related to the weirdness with RateYourHit.”

He sensed August watching him. When he turned, his husband was indeed peering over the laptop, eyebrows up.

On the other end, Heidi said, “Go on.”

Ricardo shifted his weight and ran with his thought. “There’s someone climbing the ratings fast while our ratings are coming down. And now we’ve had two jobs in a row go wrong.”

“Which has already hit your ratings,” Heidi said dryly.

“Of course it has. Is it…” He held August’s gaze. “There’s no way someone is fucking with our jobs to make their ratings climb, is there?”

“Actually…” August sat up and gestured at the screen. “Put Heidi on speaker.”

Ricardo did, coming over to see what August was pointing at. The video had been paused, and there was a somewhat grainy black-and-white still of a white man in a waistcoat and glasses coming through a door. He had a tray in his hand with what looked like some kind of hors d’oeuvres, and he was focused on something outside the frame.

“What am I looking at?” Ricardo asked.

“The waiter who looked familiar at the party today.” August tapped the screen. “And I realized I do recognize him. From the last job.”

“What are you talking about?” Heidi asked, and Ricardo had the same question.

“He was at the restaurant where I was eating with Jaxon Bremmer. He was working the tableside, and doing a piss poor job of it.” August sat back against the headboard again as he motioned toward the screen. “And he was working as a waiter at Redham’s party.”

“How the fuck was he at a restaurant in Chicago and a party in Tucson?” Heidi asked.

“Probably for the same reason we were at a restaurant in Chicago and a party in Tucson,” August said. “To complete a job.”

“But that’s insane,” she insisted. “Who the hell is booking multiple assassins for the same job? That’s just asking for someone to go to the cops and say, ‘hey, they’re hiring assassins over here.’”

“I don’t know,” August said. “But it’s the best explanation I can come up with.”

“Me too.” Ricardo frowned. “I think we need to find this guy and talk to him. Figure out who he is and who he’s working for.”

“Maybe I should do some digging first,” Heidi suggested. “Do some searching on the back end and see if I can figure out who his liaison is, or if he even has one.”