“Weakness -
something of which one is excessively fond or desirous.”
Charming
You aren’t dead. You just don’t remember how to live.
I pretended not to hear her words. But I did. I lay there long after she’d gone to bed, half awake and half asleep. I couldn’t seem to pass the threshold of being truly unconscious so in my half in, half out state I thought about her words.
She was wrong.
I remembered what it was like to live. To feel. To worry.
Living was too hard. Death was easy by comparison. With death, the only considerations were the when and the how. In some ways what I did was doing people a favor. I was taking them out of a world that most likely was making them miserable and sending them off somewhere that had to be better than this.
I still wasn’t sure what exactly possessed me to go over there last night. The confrontation with G.R. had left me rattled. Then I saw the text on her phone… The next thing I knew I was standing on her doorstep, hoping she would let me in.
Chewing off my own arm would have been easier than my attempt at talking. For some reason I thought I would be able to spill everything, to lay out everything that happened like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t a big deal. Only I couldn’t. What I did manage to say probably made no sense to her at all. But that was good because I shouldn’t have gone there. I wasn’t the kind of guy who could “talk” anyway. I lived the last ninety or so years without anyone and I would live the next ninety or so the same way.
For some reason that thought made my shoulders sag with exhaustion.
Of course after seeing G.R. yesterday, maybe I wouldn’t live another ninety years at all. Maybe these last few months were all I was going to get.
Ah, hell, maybe it was time anyway. It wasn’t like I got into this for some long-lasting career. Shit, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I had only done it— I cut the thought off. I wasn’t going to think about that. Those thoughts were too close to life. Too close to feeling. Besides, it didn’t matter why I got into this; it only mattered that I did.
And fuck my previous thoughts. I wasn’t going to let G.R. tell me when my time as an Escort was over. He wasn’t going to get the best of me.
I stared up at the ceiling from the center of my California king bed and remembered a few more of Frankie’s words.
Whatever he did to you… it sounds a lot like what you do to other people.
She was right. He was doing exactly what I did to other people. Using my weaknesses against me. So he figured out my
one
weakness. Now that I knew what he was doing, it took away his advantage. But what about me? What were my advantages?
If a guy like me had a weakness, then that meant anyone could have one. Including the Grim Reaper. Crap, he’d been alive so long his closet was probably full of skeletons.
The thought had me sitting up straight.
That was it. All I had to do was find G.R.’s weakness and use it against him. And where did an Escort start when he was looking for dirt on his boss? A small smile curved my lips.
Why, of course, in his closet.
* * *
“Nice place you got here,” said a voice from behind.
I spun around, catching the plate in my hand just before it crashed onto the floor. Storm was there, filling up my house with his black cloudlike self. “Seriously, man, don’t you knock?”
“You called. I came.”
“I called you hours ago.”
“Well, spying on the boss isn’t something that can be done in five minutes.”
“What did you find out?” I said as I finished putting away the last of my dinner dishes.
“I really thought you would have a maid.”
“You of all people know that I can’t have some bonbon eating, phone gossiping woman snooping through my house and my life at all hours of the day and night.”
“I didn’t really mean a live-in maid… although, if that’s your type.” The black shape that was Storm shrugged his shoulders.
“Maids are not my type,” I ground out. What was with this conversation? We were supposed to be talking business.
“No. What’s your type, then?”
Frankie,
the voice in the back of my head whispered. I told it to shut up. “Whoever’s my assigned Target.”
“C’mon, you can’t honestly expect me to believe a guy like you survives with no nookie.”
“What the hell is nookie?”
“If I didn’t know better I would have thought you lived in a cave. A celibate cave.”
Okay, so nookie was what he called sex. With language like that, I was sure he never got any. “I have sex.”
“With women other than Targets?”
“I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you,” I said, pulling a bottle of water out of the stainless-steel fridge.
“That’s code for yes.” He sighed. “You’re wasting that body.”
I grinned. “I guess not having a body makes getting some pretty hard.”
“Yeah, well, I make up for it when he lets me have a body for a while.”
Speaking of G.R. “What did you find?”
“Nothing. It was business as usual at his place, Escorts coming and going, security guards patrolling. The most exciting part was when the chef cooked his steak wrong and he ordered pizza.”
“How was that exciting?”
“I haven’t had pizza in a while, either,” he mumbled.
“Was he still home when you left?”
“Yeah, but he was getting ready to go out. He was going to some dinner with the rich people. I don’t know how he manages to never accidentally touch someone.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” I replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe if he does accidentally kill someone, he just covers it up. I mean, it’s the perfect crime scene—if you could even call it that. The cops certainly wouldn’t with no fingerprints, no blood, and no sign of a struggle. They would likely call it a heart attack and drag the poor dead sap off to the morgue.”
“Yeah, well, I guess that wouldn’t be too hard of a stretch considering I don’t have a body and you kill people professionally.”
“Touché.”
“Anyway, he was going to be gone most of the night.”
“Good, let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To his house. I’m assuming you can get us in?” The way he just let himself in here minutes ago must mean he was good at picking locks. I was too, but I wasn’t practically invisible.
“What the hell do you want to go to his house for?”
“To search it. You know a man like him has got to have some skeletons mixed in with all those bodies in his closet.”
“Man, you don’t really think that someone like the Reaper is just going to leave his business out for anyone to find, do you?”
“Nope, but I don’t mind digging around until I find it.” I pinned him with a hard stare. “And you’re going to help me.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“For starters, you don’t want him to know about your little visibility problem.” I reminded him. “But also because you need a body and he has a hoarding problem.”
“Okay, I’ll help. I don’t have anything better to do anyway.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
* * *
You would think the home of the Grim Reaper would be a dark and creepy place. That it would be shrouded in shadows with winding trees draping the property and ominous-sounding nightlife to warn you away if you dare get to close.
Nope.
The Grim Reaper I knew and hated had his house lit up like the fourth of July on a hot summer night. It’s like he stuck lights in every possible crevice and corner of his home. You would think
he
was scared of the dark. Of course he wasn’t because whatever else went bump in the night had never met a man that could kill with a single touch.
“There’s more security here now than earlier. And what is up with all these lights? This ain’t New York City,” Storm said from beside me.
“It’s because he’s not home. He’s expecting me to pull something after last night.”
“What the hell happened last night?”
“We had a little confrontation.”
“Geez, man, we need to go. You should have known better than to come here.”
I stood against the side of a four-car garage on the neighbor’s property across the street. This house wasn’t filled with light so the yard was dark, creating a lot of concealment. “No, that’s exactly the reason we should stay.”
“What?”
“He knows I’m pissed and won’t go down without a fight. He expects me to try and pull something. So I do it now, while he thinks everything is on lockdown and I can’t get in. I won’t get caught and he’ll never know I was here. Hell, if I’m lucky, he won’t even notice anything’s missing until I’m long gone.” I paused and then added. “Besides, it has to be tonight. He’s sending me out of town tomorrow on another job.”
“Damn, a double?” Storm said, I looked in the direction of his voice, but I couldn’t make him out in the night. He completely blended in.
“Yeah, so let’s do this.”
“What exactly do you think you’re going to find?” The skepticism in his voice made the challenge of what we were about to do even more appealing.
“A weakness,” I murmured.
He made a non-committal sound.
“Here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to go first, unlock the front door from the inside. On your way through the foyer, flick the porch light off and count to three, then flick it back on. Then get to G.R.’s office. I’ll meet you there.”