Page 29

The man beneath my hand makes another wet, choking sound as I draw the blade across his throat.

I’ve already told him not to fight me—twice—but he does anyway.

His body bucks hard enough to knock the back legs of the chair against the concrete, one heel hammering uselessly against the floor while both bound hands twist behind him. I keep my right hand clamped against his forehead and pull his head farther back against my chest, exposing the throat until there is nowhere for the knife to catch except flesh.

Warm blood floods over my glove, and I grimace when I feel it slip beneath the cuff of my sleeve.

“Fuck.”

I wear long sleeves on jobs for exactly this reason.

Black nitrile beneath a heavier leather glove over the prosthetic, cuff tucked securely beneath my shirt, watch over the top to hold everything in place, and somehow blood still finds a fucking route through it all.

The man convulses less and less until he finally stills.

I hold him another few seconds because assuming someone is dead before they actually are is the sort of lazy mistake that creates work for other people, and by other people, I mean me.

I release him only once I’m confident that he’s gone, then step away to examine my sleeve.

“Fantastic,” I mutter bitterly.

Behind me, Kenny makes the mistake of laughing. As I turn to glare at him, his expression drops, and his laugh dies immediately.

He stands near the warehouse door with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, looking far too comfortable for a man whose fuck-up is why I am standing in an abandoned machine shop at 11:30 on a Thursday night instead of at home.

“You find something funny?” I ask.

“No.”

“You sounded amused.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then explain your laugh.”

Kenny clears his throat. “Nerves.”

I stare until he looks away, then retrieve a towel from the folding table beside me and wipe the knife clean, inspecting both sides before sliding it back into its sheath.

The corpse in the chair had a name twenty minutes ago—Trevor Massey, thirty-four, on his second wife, with two children he saw every other weekend, and stupid enough to skim money from a laundering operation while already owing close to eighty thousand dollars to men who do not consider repayment optional.

Kenny was supposed to retrieve the money, but like the brainless idiot he is, he messaged the wrong number, unintentionally warning Trevor and giving him enough of a head start to evade us for six days. I ended up tracking him to a beat-up motel just outside Columbus, booked under the name Thomas Matthews.

In my opinion, Kenny should be either dead or dying for not only fucking my week up, but for sending a text about a job—wrong number or not—because he obviously included enough info that Trevor knew he had to get the fuck out.

He should be thankful I wasn’t the one put in charge of determining his punishment.

“If you had done your job correctly,” I tell him, peeling the bloodied glove from my left hand, “I would be asleep.”

Kenny nods quickly. “I know.”

“I like sleeping.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t get enough of it.”

“Right.”