Page 58 of Business vs. Pleasure

He could almost hear whatever snarky retort August would have, which reminded him, he hadn’t looked at the texts on his screen. He opened his phone again.

August

NightRaven is here. I just saw him leaving right behind you.

Ricardo, where the fuck are you?

I’ve got a car, but I don’t know where to go. Where are you?

Ricardo?

Ricardo swallowed. He glanced at the mark on his arm. Then at the mark standing next to him and waiting for some kind of solution.

Well, one of those could be resolved faster than the other.

He didn’t make a big show of it. No catch phrases like the movies always had. No moment of the mark begging for his life or trying to fight back.

Ricardo took the pistol from his waistband and got the job done. Two to the chest. One to the head. Darrow probably didn’t even have time to register what was happening.

One photo sent to Heidi, and the job was done. Good. One less greedy fucker getting rich supplying weapons to warlords and cartels who terrorized people who were just trying to live their lives.

Then he followed it with a photo of the scorpion and Are these dangerous?

One last text went to August:

I’m San Miguelito. Sending my location, but I’m going to move on foot. I think I lost NightRaven for now. Mark is dead. Where are you?

And while he waited for a response, he holstered his gun and slipped out the back of the garage to find someplace safe.

CHAPTER 16

Fuck. This. Shit!

Fuck Ricardo for driving so fucking fast and fuck the NightPigeon for lying in wait like a cockroach in a cupboard until it was too late for August to stop him, driving in out of nowhere in a battered gray Honda Civic.

And fuck August especially for letting surprise freeze him in place for too long, losing sight of both Ricardo and Bird Boy.

But most of all? Fuck every single one of the insane people on the road right now.

August hated to admit that he wasn’t good at everything. For the most part that wasn’t a concern because he was good at all the things he bothered to apply himself to. He didn’t live for the latest technical manuals on modern sniper rifles the way Ricardo did, and he hadn’t worked as hard as he could have at his Spanish or Catalan because all his in-laws spoke such good English and French, but he was competent. Competent, goddamn it! There was almost no situation he could get into where he wasn’t competent.

Trust this goddamn job to be one of them. Specifically, the driving.

Look, he’d grown up with chauffeurs, okay? Driving was something other people did for him. When he had learned to drive, it was in some of the most expensive, responsive, intuitive vehicles in the world. Not in a borrowed—read: stolen, but he’d give it back—two-door sedan with a floor he could definitely see through in places with a manual transmission that was giving him fucking fits.

The gears weren’t supposed to make that noise, right?

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—” He had to turn, he had to turn, where was the place for him to get out of here, no—damn it, he was caught in another roundabout. These weren’t as big as the ones in London, but the drivers were ten times more aggressive here.

Speak of the devil—“What the fuck was that?” August shouted out of the window as a van that had clearly seen better days cut him off right as he tried to pull into the outer lane. The driver didn’t respond; they probably didn’t even see him through the pouring rain that spattered across the windshield and barely yielded to the ancient wipers on this thing.

Bullshit. Bullshit.

“Naturally,” he muttered as he convinced himself to try again. “Naturally, the one time we’re working in a country where I don’t speak the language and can’t drive, you go on a wild goose chase. Because of course you do. Can’t find a nice, secluded parking garage and kill Darrow there; no, you have to be an absolute shit and drive off into the middle of nowhere, probably into the Canal or a rainforest or the side of a fucking mountain, and take NightPigeon with you. He was supposed to be my problem.”

That part burned the most. They’d agreed to divide and conquer, and it only made sense to let August handle their fellow assassin since he’d seen him up close and personal multiple times now. He’d arrived early enough to find a decent perch in the airport to track Darrow from, knowing that NightPigeon would soon be on his trail. And then August would be on his trail, and soon enough it would be bye-bye, birdie.

It didn’t happen that way. Ricardo moved too fast, NightPigeon moved even faster, and August…it was a bitter fucking pill to swallow, but he wasn’t up for this part of the task.