Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,25

thin, bleeding cut behind. “Oh, goddammit,” August snapped, looking at his phone. “Only four of those assholes are still in the house. This one apparently decided to try running from the cops in one of my cars.”

Ricardo looked unimpressed. “You didn’t think to check?”

“I don’t know how he got into the garage so fast. I should have gotten an alarm on my phone, unless something went wrong after the first few explosions.”

“Excuses. Now he knows where we are.” Ricardo unholstered his gun. “Move out of the way.”

“Fuck off,” August snapped, and pulled his go-bag around to the front of his body so he could reach into one of the side pockets. He grabbed a micro frag grenade, checked his phone one last time—because goddamn you, Ricardo Torralba—pulled the pin and threw it through the hole in the direction of the intruder. Two seconds later there was a small, focused explosion and another scream. August lifted himself up through the drain, shot the man still screaming beside the remains of his vintage 1961 Ferrari California Spyder, then moved to the side so Ricardo could climb out.

Ricardo looked at the smoking wreckage of the car. “Hope that wasn’t expensive,” he said mildly, ignoring the body completely.

“It only cost a little more than every contract that you took last year combined.” August motioned toward the back door with his gun. “But that’s what insurance is for.”

Insurance wouldn’t cover the fact that the rare and lovely car had been a gift from his parents, though, sourced over months and chosen for him because the color blue matched his eyes…August sighed. He should have told them not to bother buying him nice things years ago. He always wrecked them.

He actually startled when Ricardo touched his shoulder, and he had his gun up and trained on Ricardo’s face before the other man could even blink. To his credit, Ricardo didn’t look at all surprised. “The cops are coming,” was all he said.

He was right—the sirens were getting closer. August lowered his gun and plastered on a smile. “I guess we’d better get going, then.” He unlocked the back door and moved briskly through the trees to the southern edge of his land. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got in store when it comes to safehouses. Are we going to be sharing it with a bunch of pigeons? Maybe some more of those handy rats of yours?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” Ricardo replied.

Out of almost any other mouth, that would have sounded like a come-on. As it was, it probably meant Ricardo was going to blindfold him before he even let August into his precious safehouse.

Let’s hope this shitty day gets a little better from here.

Chapter 7

Sweat ran down the back of Ricardo’s neck. His shirt was damp, which pissed him off. It wasn’t from exertion—though they’d had to beat feet to get the hell out of August’s house of horrors, Ricardo was in damn good physical condition. It would take a lot more than a sprint around the block to make him sweat.

What could get him sweating, though, was mentally revisiting his combat days. Most people would be surprised that his job as an assassin didn’t hit the psychological trip wires laid by his time as a Green Beret sniper. The whole looking down scopes and taking out marks thing didn’t really bother him. It had been enemy fighters back then, and it was varying degrees of bad people now, and he could generally live with it.

Fighting his way out of close quarters within a structure whose layout he didn’t know? The thump of an explosion in his ears and beneath his feet? That heart-stopping sensation of being cornered, which had hit him multiple times before August had sprung some hidden escape route? Fuck all of that.

Five miles and counting down the freeway, his heart was still racing, his stomach was still queasy, and he was still sweating. It wasn’t enough to set off a flashback—he’d been lucky and hadn’t had many of those—but it was a miserable, jittery feeling made even more miserable by his damp shirt sticking to his clammy skin.

In the passenger seat, August seemed perfectly chill, because fuck him. A few times, Ricardo had even thought August found the whole thing fun. He’d paused to lament the death of his obliterated Ferrari, but otherwise, it was like he’d enjoyed it all. Like a damn kid getting to live out a James Bond film or some shit. No wonder