Dirty Angels 02 Dirty Deeds
irty Deeds
A Novel
by Karina Halle
Contents
By Karina Halle
The Artists Trilogy
On Every Street (e-novella)
Sins & Needles
Shooting Scars
Bold Tricks
Dirty Angels Trilogy
Dirty Angels
Dirty Deeds
About the Book
Beautiful Mexican air hostess Alana Bernal is accustomed to men falling at her feet. And with her messed-up family, she’s used to tragedy following her around. But she’s never experienced love – real, rip-your-heart-out, all-consuming love. That’s until she meets Derek Conway – a hard-bodied American ex-soldier with steely eyes and a commanding presence.
A chance encounter in Puerto Vallarta, and a weekend of hot sex and mindless passion, leads to something more – something deadly. Because Derek isn’t the type of man to fall in love, or stick around. And he’s not in Mexico for a holiday.
He’s a heartless killer-for-hire who does ugly jobs for the highest bidder. And for Alana and Derek, the highest bidder has the power to bring their world crashing down around them. The highest bidder can destroy everything.
CHAPTER ONE
T
he call came at 6:30 a.m. from a voice I recognized but couldn’t place. The fact that it sounded familiar was surprising, though. The turnover rate for these guys was exceedingly high. They were shuffled around to different
sicarios
like a game of musical chairs. Sometimes I wondered if the ones giving me the orders – the
narcos
just underneath the bosses – ever lasted more than a few weeks. Did they go on to have long careers doing the dirty work of the
patrons
? Or were they so good at getting the job done that they were employed for a long time, even promoted, just like any assistant manager at McDonald’s?
It didn’t really matter. I took these calls, I carried out the orders, and I got paid. I was at the bottom of their food chain, but as long as I wasn’t tied to just one cartel then I didn’t have to worry about long-term security. You didn’t want long-term security when working for the
narcos
. You wanted to stay as distant – as freelance – as possible. You wanted a way out, in case you ever had a change of heart.
That was unlikely for me. But I was still a bit of a commitment-phobe. Freedom meant everything, and in this game, freedom meant safety.
The girl next to me in bed moaned at the early intrusion, pulling the pillow over her head. She looked ridiculous considering she was completely naked on top of the sheets. Was it Sarah? Kara? I couldn’t recall. She was so drunk last night that I was amazed she even made it to my hotel room. Then again, that’s why I was in Cancun. I could pretend to be like everyone else, just another dumb tourist on the beach.
I took the phone into the bathroom and closed the door.
“Yes,” I answered, keeping my voice low.
“I have a job for you,” the man on the other line said. His English was pretty much perfect but relaxed, almost jovial. Sometimes they gave me orders in Spanish, sometimes in English. I felt like this man was trying to extend a courtesy.
“I assume I’ve worked for you before,” I said.
“For me?” the man asked. “No. For my boss? Yes. Many times. But this has nothing to do with him. Let’s just say this is coming from a whole new place.”
None of that concerned me. “Tell me about payment.”
He chuckled. “Don’t you want to hear about the job?”
“It doesn’t matter. The price does.”
“One hundred thousand dollars, U.S., all cash. Fifty now, fifty upon completion.”
That made me pause. My heart kicked up. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It’s an important job,” the man said simply.
“And what is the job?”
“It’s a woman,” he said. “In Puerto Vallarta. She should be very easy to find for someone like you.”
“I need a name and I need her photo,” I told him. Though the price was quite higher than normal, the man was ignoring the basics. It made me wonder if he had ever done this before. It made me wonder a lot of things.
“I have the first, not the second. As I said, she should be easy to find. You might even be able to Facebook her.”
I waited for him to go on.
He cleared his throat. “Her name is Alana Bernal. Twenty-six. Flight attendant for Aeroméxico. I want a bullet in her head and I want it front page news.”
It was a common name, which is probably why it sounded familiar. I wondered what she had done, if anything. Usually when I was sent to kill women, it was because they were involved with a
narco
and had overstayed their welcome. They knew too much. They had loose lips in more ways than one.
I was never really given time to think about it. You weren’t with these types of things. There were a few minor alarm bells going off in my head – the high price for someone minor, the greenness in the man’s voice – but the price won out in the end. That amount of money could get me away from this business for a long time. I saw a lengthy hiatus on my horizon, one that didn’t include fucking drunk chicks on spring break just because I was horny, a hiatus that didn’t include bouncing my way from hotel room to hotel room across Mexico, waiting for the next call.
I told the man I agreed to his terms, and we worked out the payment plan. I wouldn’t get the other half until she made the news. Considering how rare shootings were in Puerto Vallarta, I had no doubt it would happen. And I would be long gone.
I hung up the phone feeling almost elated. The promise of a new life buried that worm of uneasiness. One more job and then I’d be freer than ever.
I came out of the bathroom to see the chick sitting up in bed and looking extremely nauseous. Once she saw me though, her eyes managed to light up.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re fucking hot.”
I tried to smile, hoping she didn’t find me enticing enough to stay. “Thank you.”
“Did we have sex last night?”
I stood beside the bed and folded my arms across my chest. Her mouth opened a bit at my muscles. I still had the same physique I had back in the military, and it still got the same reactions from women. They never knew the real me – knew Derek Conway – but at least, with the way I looked, they thought they did. Just another built, tough American boy, a modern G.I. Joe.
They had no idea what I did.
They had no idea who I was.
“No,” I told her, “we didn’t have sex. You stripped and then you passed out.”
She looked surprised. “We still didn’t …”
I gave her a dry look. “Sex is only fun when you’re awake, babe.” I stretched my arms above my head and she stared openly at my stomach, from the waistband on my boxers to my chest. Okay, now it was time for her to go.
I told her I had stuff to do in the morning and needed her to move along. I could tell she wanted to at least take a shower, but I wasn’t about to budge.
I had a plane to catch.
Alana Bernal was extremely easy to find.
At least for me. She had a Facebook page under Alana B. Her privacy settings were high, but I was still able to see her profile picture, dressed in her Aeroméxico uniform. She had a sweet yet beautiful face. Her eyes were light hazel, almost amber, both stunning and familiar at the same time. They glowed against her golden skin, as did her pearly white teeth. She looked like a lot of fun, and I could imagine all the unwanted attention she got from unruly passengers in the air. She looked like she could handle them with a lot of sass.
Once again I found myself wondering what she had done.
And once again I realized I couldn’t care.
That wasn’t my business.
Killing her was my business.
I drove to the airport, and for the next two days I began to stalk the employee parking lot, using a different rental car each time. Most of the flight crew I saw looked a bit like her but lacked the certain vitality she had. So I waited in mounting frustration, just wanting this job to be over with.
On day three, just as I was driving past for the forty-second time that morning, I spotted her getting out of a silver Honda, wrestling with her overnight bag. I quickly pulled the car around again and parked at the side of the road, plumes of dust rising up around me. There was nothing but a chain-link fence between us as she began the long walk toward the waiting airport shuttle. Her modest high heels echoed across the lot and she tugged at the hem of her skirt with every other step. Not only was she beautiful, but there was something adorably awkward about her.
What had she done?
No, I couldn’t care.
I looked down at the bag in the passenger seat and took out the silencer, quickly screwing it on the gun that I was holding between my legs.
She only had a few seconds of life left before I put the bullet in her heart.
I got out of the car, moving like a ghost, gun down at my side. In three strides I would make it over to the fence where I would take quick aim and shoot. She would go down and I would be gone.
I was one stride away when it happened.
A golden sedan pulled out of a parking space in a hurry and slammed right into Alana, knocking her to the ground. She screamed as she went down, tires screeching to a halt, and people started shouting from the shuttle.
The sedan reversed then sped around Alana’s crumpled body, not stopping to check on the woman they had just hit.
I’ve been in a lot of situations before that smack you square in the face – abrupt and brutal scenes that change the course of the day, the course of a life. They come out of nowhere, but you adapt, you roll with them. You refuse to be shocked. I should have been able to collect myself better than I did.
But seeing that car speeding away toward the parking gates and crashing through them as it fled the scene, well I seemed to lose all logic. Before I knew what I was doing, I was getting back into my car and driving after the hit-and-run sedan.
As I passed the broken gates to the parking lot I could see people – employees – emerging from the shuttle, one of them pointing at me. I had been spotted. Maybe as a witness, maybe as someone that was a part of the crime.
Only it wasn’t the crime they thought it was, but the one I didn’t get to commit.
I was fucking everything up for myself and I knew it. But seeing that car gun her down then keep going, as if the driver thought they could get away with it, brought back every debilitating moment from Afghanistan. I watched a lot of people get killed before I became the killer.
I would like to tell myself that I was going after them because they fucked up my potentially perfect assassination. That would make more sense than the truth – that I felt like a helpless soldier again, watching the world around him crumble from senseless acts. I was angry, angrier than I had been in a long time.
I’d snapped. I guess I had it coming.
I drove the beat up car I’d rented from a cheap agency right on his ass, following him in heated pursuit. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t even breathing, I was just reacting to some long-forgotten, deep-seated need for vengeance.
The sedan screamed down the road, tires burning on hot asphalt, heading for the highway. I was going to stop him before that. I didn’t know what I was going to do after that, but I had an idea.
I pressed the gas pedal down as far as it would go and willed it to catch up, muttering expletives as it shuddered beneath me. The rental car was a pile of shit to look at, but it turned out the engine worked well enough to let me catch up with the sedan that was sputtering erratically, a tire having blown out as it fought for control on the rough road.