Two Hitmen: A Double Bad Boy Mafia Romance (Lawless Book 1) (6 page)

D
ECLAN
ARRIVED
BACK
. With him, he brought Hollis, who looked very sorry for himself.
 

“You see, Hollis,” he was saying as he led him back into the lounge. “We’ve a rule for this particular situation.”

Liam stood, growling. “You’d be fucking surprised at how often it comes up.”

“One way or another.” Declan took the other chair.

Hollis slouched, pouting like a sullen teenager. He breathed slowly.
 

Declan’s voice was thin. “A client thinks to himself, ‘These men are outside the law. What recourse have they got if I just edge the deal back my way a little bit?’ I suppose it could be an easy mistake for someone to make.”

“So, er…” sounding theatrically bored, Hollis said, “What’s this rule?”

Liam turned his face to Hollis’s, “Oh, you mean the rule for when the client tries to stiff us, Hollis?”

“We go to the target.” Declan told him. That got Hollis’s attention. He sat right up. “We tell him the situation, ask if he’d like us to do the client.”

“For the same price.”

Hollis sat back “Oh. Well, that’s a relief.”

Declan asked him, “Why do you say that, Hollis?”

“Gareth couldn’t afford you. If he could pay your bill then he would have paid mine.”

Quietly, Declan said, “You could be mistaken about that, Hollis.”

“Why the fuck didn’t he pay me then?”

“I did ask him that. I asked him particularly.” Declan looked in Hollis’s eye, “He said it was because you’re a cunt, Hollis. It came as a bit of a shock to him that you’d taken out a contract on him, seeing as how you’d cheated him anyway. As he would have it.”

Hollis was quiet. Declan said, “What he told me was, ‘I knew he was a cunt, but I never really thought that he was that much of a cunt.’ Those were his words, Hollis.”

“Well, he’s going to regret that.”

Declan’s eyebrow raised. “You really think so?”

Liam said, “On balance, Hollis, I think that I could be inclined to agree with Gareth.”

Confidently, Hollis asked Declan, “Well, he didn’t offer you the price of a hit, right?”

“Ah, no,” Declan made a soft smile, “But there’s something we probably ought to confess to you there, Hollis.”

Liam said, “Yes, the old, ‘We’ll do the client for the same price that he paid for us to do you,’ thing? It’s a con, really.”

“Yeah, it’s just a jape.”

Hollis leaned forwards, “You wouldn’t really do it?”

Liam and Declan both laughed. I almost laughed with them. My lips pressed between my teeth and I kept my face still, but I saw what was coming and I couldn’t believe that Hollis didn’t.

I watched him, like I was truly seeing him for the first time as Liam said, “Oh, we’d have no trouble about doing it.”

“There’s no doubt about it.” Declan nodded.

“No, the little dishonesty is about the price.”

Hollis frowned, “Why?”

Declan leaned forward and dropped his voice to a soft, confidential tone, told him with a twinkle, “Because we’ll do it anyway, whether the target pays us or not.”

Liam stood and looked down at Hollis. “Yeah. The main reason we ask the target for money is that then, when the client disappears, the target usually acts all furtive and then he quite often makes people suspicious.”

“Runs away or something.” Said Declan.

Liam paced around the room. “Gets the idea that the cops will pin it on him.”

“And so,” Declan held Hollis’s eye, “Unwittingly he’ll often as not pin it on himself.”

“And, keep in mind,” Liam moved to stand behind Hollis’s chair. “Since we already know that the client is the kind of an idiot that will try and stiff a contract killer, invariably he’s also just the type of a fool to have gone blabbing to all his drinking buddies that he’s taken out a contract on old so-and-so.” Hollis’s face reddened, “And that puts old so-and-so, Gareth in this case, right in the frame.”

Declan laughed gently, “You’d be surprised how well it often works.”

“We’re always very keen to see that crimes get solved.”

“Ours in particular. We like it when they’re tied up all neat. Put away, filed and forgotten.”

“Do you think that we’re bad people for that, Hollis?”

“Oh, No.” Hollis said quickly, “No, not at all.”

“Do you not?” Declan leaned towards him, “Well, we fucking are, Hollis.”

Liam held the back of Hollis’s chair. “Yup. That’s the thing about us that I think you’ve completely failed to take account of all along, Hollis. We really are bad motherfuckers.”

“And he doesn’t mean that in a nice way, Hollis.”

Hollis’s face was flushed. “Okay, look, I’ll pay you double.”

“Oh, you will? That’s nice. Isn’t that nice, Declan?”

“Would you have the money on you, Hollis?”

“It’s no problem at all, I just have to go and get it.”

“Ah.” Said Declan.

“Shame.” Said Liam.

“I can get it from the bank this afternoon.”

“Yes.” Liam shook his head.

“No.” Declan stood. “No. You see, Hollis, there are some people, if they feel like they’re in a bit of a tight spot, they’ll be thinking of ways to slip off.”

“Really.” Hollis tried to laugh. “Come with me to the bank. I’ll get you the money right now.”

Liam leaned on the back of the chair so that it tipped back. The front feet came about a half inch off the floor. “If only.”

“See, that would be fine,” Declan told him, “Except that we know that you’re a lying, cheating scumbag.”

“A cunt, as your man says.”

“But look at it this way, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

Hollis’s voice was strained, “What do you mean?”

“Right enough,” Declan said, “We’d love to take your money.”

“But,” Liam said sadly, “It wouldn’t change the outcome.”

D
ECLAN
AND
L
IAM
stood on either side of Hollis and got him to his feet. They practically had to lift him. Declan said to me, “Anything you want to say to him?”

I looked hard in Declan’s face, not understanding.

“I mean, is there anything you want to tell him or ask him now? You’ll not see him again.”

“Really?” I had kind of known it all along but still it took a moment for me to take it in. It was there from the start, but so long as I didn’t look at it directly I could pretend that it was something else, or it wasn’t really there. Or that I didn’t know.

I stepped forward, “Then yes, there is,” and I slapped his face hard with my open hand. “That’s for the lousy, selfish, brutality that you call sex,” and I slapped him again, “That’s for the beatings,” and once more, “And that’s for all the times you sneaked off to fuck that little slut Kylie when you thought that I didn’t know.”

“Wha-what do you mean, she won’t see me again?”

Liam’s voice was low, “How many ways are there to read it, blubberman?”

“Okay, okay. It’s a shakedown. Alright, I’ve got money. But you knew that, right? What do you want?”

Declan sounded weary, “We just want to do the job that we came here for.”

“Oh, right. I get it. I ask you how much the first half was short, you tell me, I double it and then double it again. Would that be about right?”

“No.” Liam said slowly, “You ask us whatever the hell you want. We don’t tell you, then we take you away and do our job.”

Hollis was trembling. It reminded me of how he’d made me feel, cowering in the corner of a dark room, time and again. It didn’t give me much pleasure to see him that way, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me any

He said, “It’s alright. I mean it. You tell me how much you want. Say what you want in total and I’ll double it.”

Declan asked me, “Are you going to mind us taking your husband away, ma’am?”

“Now?”

“About now, yes.”

“Could you wait about fifteen minutes?”

“Sure we could. Why?”

“I have a hair appointment. I’ll be in the salon down on Main Street with half the women of the town.”

A cruel grin stretched across Declan’s face. I almost came. “So,” he said, “you’ll be all alibied up?”

“That’s right.” I was impressed by how calm my voice was, by the calmness I felt, thinking of sitting in the salon, acting like nothing in the world was wrong. That was something I’d done plenty of times, but for completely different reasons.

Liam asked, softly, “And then will we have to worry about what you’re going to say?”

“Depends.” I said. “On whether you’ll both be here when I get back from having myself pampered and beautified.”

Declan sounded like a cat that just spotted a bowl of cream. “You look pretty pampered as it is.”

“Are you going to be here?”

“Sure.”

“Then you’ve no need to worry about what I’m going to say.”

Declan said, “We’ll wait ten minutes while you get to your appointment, then we’ll go for a little drive.”

“The three of you?”

“That’s right, Mrs Cullen.”

“And you’re coming back?”

“Yes, Mrs Cullen.”

“All of you?”

Liam and Declan were silent. There it was.

L
IAM
SAID
,
HE
’
D
drive, “Declan,” he told me, “You get in the back with our boy there.”

Hollis sat in the back. On the way there, Hollis told me, kind of confidentially, “I know that this is about the money, alright. I get it. I’m sorry.” And he said, “Look, I saw you looking at Courtenay.” And he held up his hands, “If she’s what you’re into, a woman like that, hey I won’t judge you.” And he leaned a little closer. “Why don’t you let me go. I’ll give you a nice bag of cash and, if you want, take her with you.”

He saw the way I looked at him, but I think he misunderstood it. “Doesn’t matter, man. Take her. You can do what you like with her, you know?” and he winked.

The barn was on a ridge, no-one around as far as the eye could see.

As we stepped into out of the sun I told Liam, “I’m feeling a bit personal about this one.” He gave me a nod.

He said quietly, “After, we’re going to have to go back and see about that lovely little bundle of fun.”

“You mean the wife?”

He nodded. “We’ll have to do something.” Then
Liam laughed as he asked the man, “Will you be brave to the last, Hollis?” It wasn’t a very nice laugh.

I told him, “I don’t think he will, Liam.”

“He’s hardly been brave from the first, has he, Declan?”

“Nope. Nothing you’d really even call ‘bravado,’ I wouldn’t say. A bit of bluster maybe.”

Hollis’s face drained white.

The last one, the one with the petrol and the pills had been Liam’s, and now Hollis was mine. I’ve never been one for all those theatrics, all the setting up and meticulous planning. All I want is to get the job done, get gone. Get outside a drink and inside a wriggling beauty.

He saw me coming with the baseball bat. He moved, but I swung it wide and low to connect in a wet crunch with his knee. You can duck your head out of the swing of a bat, swerve your body even. Moving a knee out of range is harder, and Hollis didn’t make it.
 

Supposed to have been a football star. Quarterback, offensive team captain and all. From a distance, he could maybe look like he was wearing the padding, but as soon as you saw him move the illusion would blow away like a puff of mist. And the pain of a smashed knee is a powerful distraction.

He lurched forward and my hand went fast and hard into the doughy flesh of his neck. His eyes popped wide open as I hit his windpipe, and his mouth froze as I squeezed it. It was tough to get purchase through all the flab but after a moment’s strain I heard the gristly crack as well as I felt it with my hand.

Waving his arms at me the dumb lunk was still trying to fend me off. He was dead but he was just too stupid to know it. The only questions now were, how long would he shake and convulse, and could I keep him quiet?

I had a grip on the bent remains of his windpipe and I pinched my thumb hard against my balled fist, snapping the pipe further and jamming it shut at the same time. His thighs shuddered and the gurgle started up in his throat.