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“The battery will run out, so no, we’re stuck like this.”
“Battery run out? You think we’re going to be here for hours?”
I shrugged and tried not to smile as she let out a long groan.
Truth was, stakeouts were the worst. I didn’t blame her for feeling bored and antsy. This was dangerous work, and a lot could go wrong. My face wasn’t widely known throughout the city, but there were guys in the Healy family that would know me by sight. If one of those happened to walk by and notice the two of us, we’d be completely fucked. Not much I could do about that, though.
We spent the afternoon staring at a boring door. The equally boring doorman smoked seemingly endless cigars and paced around for a little while before slumping back down on his stool. That was probably his exercise for the day, considering the state of him. He was practically bursting out of his jeans and jacket, and I had to wonder why the Healys would put a guy like that on guard duty.
Probably just the first line of defense. And besides, not many people in the city were stupid enough to attack a joint like Heaven’s End.
I moved the car a few times as the day dragged on. If we stayed in one spot, it’d become a little too obvious. Tara complained, but not too much, and she went for a walk once or twice to stretch her legs and to get some food from the deli nearby.
“How many times have you done something like this?” she asked as the afternoon wore to a close and the sun dipped down, sending scattered pink rays along the tops of the buildings. She looked gorgeous in the long, soft lighting, and I was tempted to reach out and touch her shining auburn hair.
“More than I’d like to admit,” I said. “In my line of business, there’s a lot of waiting around.”
“When you go murder people,” she said flatly. “Don’t call it your line of business. You murder people.”
“I kill people,” I said, not ashamed of it. “I’m sure you don’t like that.”
“Of course not,” she said. “It’s a horrible thing.”
“True,” I agreed, looking out the windshield. We were closer to the door, close enough that we didn’t need the binoculars. I’d move us again in a little bit to a different spot down the street, but we were fine for now. “I never thought I’d have the stomach for it.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked softly. “I mean, the morality? It’s wrong to kill people.”
“I don’t think about my immortal soul all that often,” I admitted. “I figure, at this point, why bother? I’m already too far down that path, darling.”
“I just mean, doesn’t it bother you at night? How many men have you killed?”
I closed my eyes for a second and could see all their faces, even the most recent guy, his body thrashing as I drowned him in the toilet. I’d never forget them, each one of them different and impactful, and I carried them with me wherever I went, even her father, that rotten bastard. Even he remained in my mind, because he was a person, even if he was a broken and terrible person. I took justice out on him, and I’d pay for that one day, but I wouldn’t take it out on myself.
“You don’t want the number,” I said. “But I think about them.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because they’re bad people,” I said softly and leaned forward, peering over the steering wheel. “You think the kind of guys I go after have clean hands? I kill the killers, Tara. They send me over drug pushers, abusers, murderers, thieves, and worse, guys like your father. I carry those deaths with me but I don’t let them weigh me down.”
“I couldn’t do it,” she said, staring straight ahead. “All that blood. I don’t know how you stand it.”
“I don’t think about it,” I said. “And when I do, I don’t mind. The world’s a better place without them in it.”
She smiled slightly. “Would it be a better place if you weren’t here? Or what about the Valentino family? Don’t act like you kill out of some moral superiority.”
“I kill for my family,” I said, frowning. “I do what I have to do.”
“Nobody has to be a killer,” she said.
“Without men like me, the world would be a darker place.”
She didn’t reply to that, and I didn’t expect her to. What I did was hard to understand, especially for a girl like her. Even though she had a fucked-up father, she was raised sheltered and didn’t know about the darkest sides of humanity. Those blighted, broken people were all around, preying on the weak and vulnerable, and the Don sent me after them. Maybe he did it for his own selfish reasons, to keep the Valentino family in power, but it didn’t matter to me one way or the other.
