Empire of Lies - Whitney G. Page 0,23

lives in various ways—posed as a cab driver, pretended to be a security guard or a doorman, the new man at Central Park who has an obsession with feeding the pigeons, but I never said more than a few words at a time.

I was forgettable and memorable all at once.

There was no way that Meredith wouldn’t recognize me when it came time for me to handle her, and I’d lost track of what I was supposed to do to her in a few weeks. Well, I wanted to believe that was the case. I couldn’t focus on that right now, though. Not with another job in front of me.

I looked at my watch and set the timer before taking one last look around a soon-to-be dead businessman’s condo.

Five minutes. Forty-eight seconds…

This was always my favorite part of the job, the storytelling part. It was the closest I’d ever get to writing a damn book. Every scene had to be perfect, and it had to reveal exactly what I needed it to, in my preferred order.

I’d always specialized in self-inflicted wounds and accidents; I never did direct kills, unless it was absolutely necessary. I’d freeze the brake lines on a target’s car overnight, so by the time they warmed up on the highway, they’d snap and force the car into a fatal tailspin; the crash investigators always pointed the finger at the manufacturing company. I’d add trace amounts of mercury to an obsessed coffee drinker’s cup, several months at a time. By the time they passed away and the autopsy was complete, their favorite mug being “on recall” was revealed as the silent killer.

I adjusted the picture frames on the wall, opened a few files that the responding officers would need to find, and made sure that the USB drive with his horrific crimes was in the middle of the coffee table. As I was adjusting the pillows on the couch, the door opened, and my target—the fifty-eight-year old CEO of a major toy company walked through the door.

“What the—” He dropped his briefcase onto the floor. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the last person who’s going to see you alive, Mr. Donovan.” I looked at my watch. Three minutes.

“Okay, so you’re a comedian.” He rolled his eyes and pulled out his cell phone. “We’ll see how much you laugh when the cops get here and charge you with breaking and entering.”

“I already called the cops,” I said. “They’ll be here in exactly two minutes and forty-nine seconds.”

“Okay, Clown-Man. Can you please just get the hell out of my apartment and—” He stopped once he saw all of the pictures I’d scattered all over his floor, his printed version of high crimes. Some of them starred his own family members.

“Distributing child-porn is probably one of the most disgusting crimes there is, Mr. Donovan,” I said, noticing how his face was losing color by the second. “But what you do is far more heinous than that, isn’t it?”

He swallowed, looked away from me. “How much money do you need to make this go away?”

“This isn’t about your money,” I said, pulling a gun out of my pocket and setting it on the coffee table. “This is about someone wanting to even the score. Unfortunately for you, they’ve selected me to be in charge of the game.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’ve got two options,” I said. “Option number one: You can sit on that couch, think about all the horrible things you’ve done, and then pick up the gun and help balance the universe in the right direction.”

“What’s option two?”

“Same as option one, except I’ll pick up the gun and balance things for you.” I shrugged. “I’m always willing to help out a good cause.”

“No…” He shook his head. “I can’t…I have a wife and a family.”

“Your daughter is in some of the photos,” I said. “So is your niece. You won’t have a family once this gets out, either way you look at it. You have millions of images…”

“No, no, no.” He shook his head and began to cry. “I’ve done good things with my life, and I don’t deserve to die. I can beat this habit, you know? I’ve donated to charity, given to the church, I’ve given thousands to the less fortunate.”

I tuned him out and looked at my watch. It never ceased to amaze me how fucked up people tried to talk themselves out of the inevitable. As if their few good deeds made up for their millions of shitty