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Michael Hobson was the problem.
The obstacle. The stumbling block, the hurdle, the hitch, the hindrance. The bastard was in the way.
Was “bastard” just my opinion? Because he was in my way?
Maybe. Everybody else said Michael Hobson was a good man. He gave a lot of money to charities—especially kid’s charities. Make-A-Wish, Children’s Defense Fund, March of Dimes, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital—they all had Michael on speed dial. It didn’t stop there; he gave his time, too. He worked with the courts as an advocate for children in trouble with the law. He always said kids were important, that helping them was just something he had to do.
But Michael’s epic goodness didn’t stop there, with helping kids. He was way too Good for that. Just to round things out, he did a lot of pro bono work for the Innocence Project, too. So anybody who looked at his record would totally have to say he did everything a truly good man could do, and a lot more. A freaking saint. And all that free work meant lost billing hours, too. At the rate Michael charged, that was a lot of money lost.
Not that money is important, right? I mean, not when you’re doing something you love, helping kids. And anyway, Michael could afford it. Because as one of the top corporate attorneys in New York City, he made at least eight digits every year. And there was more—a lot more. In one of his early cases he’d defended the head of a big hedge fund. The guy was a true scumbag, and he got caught fair and square. But Michael Hobson went in against big odds and a federal prosecutor who wanted to run for governor, and somehow Michael won the case. Scumbag or not, the CEO was grateful enough to let Michael in on some very lucrative deals. Over the years that had grown, like only a shady hedge fund can grow, to a
total that might make a Saudi prince blink.
So in spite of the pro bono charity work, Michael still had plenty of money, and he wasn’t bashful about spending it. There’s an old saying that Beverly Hills showed what God would do if he had money. Michael could have shown God a few tricks. He built an enormous modern house on the shore in Connecticut, on thirty acres of wooded land that sloped down to the water and looked straight across at Long Island. Lots of glass and steel and angles, and twenty-four thousand square feet of space inside. A rose-lined walkway led down to the water, where just to one side, so it wouldn’t interfere with the view, a beautiful fifty-foot Marquis sport yacht bobbed at the dock.
There was a barn and paddock for the horses, a large attached garage with room for eight cars, and a huge infinity pool, complete with a hot tub and a cabana that was bigger and better furnished than most middle-class houses.
Inside, the main house was totally smart-wired to a computer so you could make it do anything just by calling out the password and a command. It would even bake you a quiche and then wash your dishes, as long as you stuck them in the dishwasher. So Michael didn’t really need a domestic staff hanging around and getting all up in his privacy. Michael liked privacy. You might say he needed it.
And the house had a high-tech, temperature-controlled wine cellar, a gigantic kitchen that any gourmet chef would envy, and a full gym. There was also a room you could call a “home theater” only because it was in a home. Aside from that, it was more luxurious and better equipped than any movie mogul’s screening room. It held both the most modern electronic equipment and a row of old-fashioned projectors, since there was a large library of classic 16- and 35-millimeter movies in an adjacent temperature-controlled vault.
Like I said. Totally awesome house. Furnished by an incredibly rich person who didn’t mind spending it. And Michael had shown true good taste by installing a wife in the house who was a genuine trophy, the real deal. She wasn’t a bimbo with implants who’d been a stripper until she got chosen runner-up in the 2015 Miss Mango pageant. Instead, Michael had married the daughter of one of America’s great old-money families. Michael’s wife was a woman of good breeding, exquisite taste—and an enormous trust fund of her own.
So when you looked him over, Michael Hobson was a guy who had it all. You couldn’t even hate him for it because he gave so much back, to kids and so on. He really looked like some kind of modern urban legend, and he really seemed to be what everybody said he was—a truly good man. The kind of guy who made having money look Good. A living saint.
I killed him anyway.
Some guys like to kill. I’m not one of them. I mean, if it has to happen, if you have to go or the job flops, okay, I’m sorry, better luck next life. But I don’t really like it. And I know it should bother me. It doesn’t. Right before, it’s like I stop being me. The Darkness comes over me, like mental armor. I go into it, and it’s not me doing stuff. It’s like I’m watching a movie in a small dark theater. Not that it’s ever fun. I usually try to find some other way first.
I didn’t try too hard this time. Not with Michael Hobson. There wasn’t any other way. More important than that, the miserable shit deserved to die. And I didn’t mind making that happen.
He made it pretty easy. Not just because he had it coming. But it was the middle of the night, and he had just flown in from Abu Dhabi—some kind of conference. And when he came home, he didn’t go upstairs to see his wife. No “Hi, honey, I’m home,” not for Michael Hobson. He went right to his soundproofed office, like he always did. And then he sat down and went to work.
He had to be tired. So tired he sat with his back to the door and counted on the security system. I would have to say that’s almost always a mistake. It sure was for Michael. He turned on the system and thought that was the end of it.
For him, it was.
He was sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen. He was concentrating hard, and he was dead tired, and he wouldn’t have heard me if I’d come in with a brass band. Like I said, a little too easy, and that always makes me nervous. So I stopped for a few seconds, right in the doorway, and I looked around.
The security system was a good one. I mean, it wasn’t so good I couldn’t hack it. I did. It was high-tech but pretty standard equipment—surprising how much useless crap they sell to people who could afford something better. Anyway, there were no surprises, and I was sure I’d disabled all the sensors, cameras, the whole system. But I took time to look around the office anyway, just to be sure.
Michael had done one hell of a job on his man cave. It was a beautiful room, decorated in a very definite taste—classical masculine leather and dark wood—and absolutely no care about what it cost. Two walls were set with floor-to-ceiling mahogany bookshelves full of law books and other reference volumes. One wall was all glass and looked down a sloping wooded lawn to Long Island Sound. On the wall opposite the window, there was a painting I knew right away. It was one of Edouard-Henri Avril’s erotic pictures. Some of them can bring a pretty good price. This one showed an older man with a much younger one. It looked like the original. But I didn’t see any sign of overlooked security measures or anything else that might give me trouble. I eased the door shut behind me and took a breath. And then—
The Darkness came. I stepped into it.
I watched my feet move quietly across the room. I got closer . . . And Michael Hobson just kept staring at his computer screen like his life depended on it. It didn’t. But it sure helped me end it.
He had no idea I was there. He yawned and stretched once, and I froze. But then he went right back to his computer screen. I saw myself slip across the floor to a spot behind him, and he still didn’t notice a thing. But he sure as hell noticed it when my gloved hand clamped over his mouth. He noticed even more when I jammed the razor-sharp blade into his neck. In fact, he noticed that for a full fifteen seconds, as the blade went in and out several more times.
That wasn’t really necessary. My first stab had been perfect. It slid in just right and severed his spinal cord. The stabs after that were just for show. Michael tried to struggle, wriggle away from the pain and the gloved hand. He tried—but for some reason his limbs didn’t listen to him. Maybe the cut spinal cord.
So he just sat there, trying to move, trying to moan, not making any progress with either one. He just sat until his sight went dim and his body started to relax. And then Michael Hobson stopped struggling and just let go, sliding down the long dark slope into nothing at all.
I was sure he was dead. That first stab had been placed perfectly. But I waited anyway. Not for any creepy ghoulish reason. I’ve watched the terrible and beautiful trip down the Dark Hall into death before. I don’t get off on it. But I watched and waited a full minute anyway, just to be sure. And after a minute, I was. Michael Hobson was dead.
And just like that, the Darkness blew away. I blinked. I looked at the dead body, but it didn’t matter. It was just an empty suit, and I had real work to do.
