Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,30
either of them.
Ricardo took a deep breath. “We had the same mentor. Guy who recruited me shortly after I was discharged from the Army. After I finished my training, Victor still had a ways to go, but then our mentor was murdered.” He sighed. “Victor’s still convinced I offed our mentor to keep him from learning everything I did. Never mind that I have no idea who actually did it or why, and I can prove I was in Barcelona visiting my parents when everything went down.”
“Ooh, so he does have a grudge against you.” August pursed his lips. “But that doesn’t explain why he’d drag me into the mix. Like, I know he wants to bump my ranking on Rate Your Hit, but there are more efficient ways to do that.”
“Exactly. I don’t think we should dismiss Victor outright, and it’s possible he’s our guy, but we need to keep an open mind until we have a better sense of the situation.”
August nodded. “Maybe what we need to do is compare notes on jobs we’ve had recently.” He sipped his coffee. “See if there’s something there. A connection or… I don’t know. Something.”
Ricardo chewed his lip. He worked on strict confidentiality, but this was an extenuating circumstance. The only thing he and August had in common was their profession, so if there was any connection between them—any person who wanted both of them dead—it would have something to do with their work.
He dug a couple of pads of paper out of a drawer, along with some pens, and they sat across from each other at the dining room table.
August frowned at the pen and pad. “Shouldn’t we put this up on a wall and, like, Beautiful Mind everything together with strings and thumbtacks?”
Ricardo just shook his head and started jotting down people he’d hit recently. It wasn’t a long list—hitmen didn’t usually do a ton of jobs every year unless they were really eager to wind up in prison—but it had been a productive few months. “All right.” He pushed the paper toward August. “Anyone look familiar?”
August pushed his own paper toward Ricardo, and they each looked over the other’s list.
August tapped the list in front of him. “What’s with the star next to this one?”
Ricardo didn’t even have to look. “That was a job I didn’t take.”
August glanced at the name, then sat a bit straighter. “Why not?”
The temptation was still strong to keep the details confidential—old habits and all that—but Ricardo pushed through. “Because I don’t assassinate innocent people, never mind a—”
“A federal judge and her husband?”
Ricardo’s spine straightened. “What?”
“Judge Terry Rawlins and her husband.” August put the pad back down on the table. “Someone approached me for that one too. I also refused it for the same reasons.”
Cold water trickled through Ricardo’s veins. “Think this might be our connection?”
“It’s a thread worth tugging.” August exhaled as he ran his fingers through his hair, and Ricardo didn’t let himself linger on how artfully mussed it was now. “Especially since she and her husband were both killed by some tweaker outside the grocery store a week after I was supposed to complete the hit.”
“Yeah,” Ricardo said hollowly. “I remember that. Didn’t even bother to rob them or anything.”
“Fuuuck.” August wiped his hand over his face. “And that was like two days before Bruno Cavalcante was scheduled to be in her courtroom to be brought up on fraud and racketeering charges. Among other things.”
“Like human trafficking,” Ricardo grumbled. “Shit. So this means we probably do have the goddamned mob on our asses.” He exhaled. “Should’ve known refusing that job would come back and bite me.”
August grunted in agreement and reached for his coffee. That was a thing in this business—once you knew about a job, you didn’t have much choice about whether to take it. As soon as you were aware of the job, you could go to the cops. You were a liability until you completed the hit and it became your secret to keep as well as theirs. That was also why Ricardo had been so stunned to run into August at Baldwin’s place, and how he’d immediately known something was wrong—no one ever contracted two hitmen for the same job. Otherwise, whoever didn’t complete it would be able to go to the police and finger everyone involved while getting off scot free.
The only reason he’d been safe—he thought—to reject this job was that it came through a third party. Oftentimes when people wanted to be absolutely