Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,33

be swept under the rug, so she needed to know what story to tell the cops and the media.”

“And your parents.”

August felt an urge to grab his knife, just so he had something comforting to hold onto. “Yes, them too.” What would Ricardo ask about next? The anniversary? Where ‘the chateau’ might be? Maybe he’d even ask about August’s feet—he’d glanced at them more than once while he tapped away over there. Probably because August was wearing his thickest, most supportive socks this morning. It was his one concession to his injury—he always, always wore socks unless he was in the shower or doing his nightly check to make sure all the pins were holding.

To August’s surprise and relief, Ricardo just nodded and looked back down at his computer. August’s heartrate slowed down and his hands unclenched, and he realized that his stress response must have been obvious to Ricardo. The other man wasn’t pushing, but August was annoyed with his own body. He didn’t quail around anyone, he didn’t let anyone else know when he was nervous or afraid. That was when people began to think they had a hold on you. That they could hurt you.

I already know he could hurt me, thanks, subconscious. August went up to get another cup of coffee and a hold on himself. Get it together, for fuck’s sake. Don’t make it any easier for him to learn your weak points. The vast majority of hitmen worked alone, for good reason. The job was dangerous, and trust was thin on the ground. August had very little reason to trust Ricardo Torralba.

Except for the way you two worked together to get out of Baldwin’s place…and the way he came to warn you…and the way he brought you to his personal safehouse…

August shook his head and sipped his coffee, then sauntered back out to the little living room, shooting pains in his feet be damned. “Any luck with your liaison?”

“Still waiting.”

“Verbose as ever. You must be absolutely delightful at dinner parties.”

Ricardo shrugged and looked back down at his computer.

Fine, ignore me, see if I care. August didn’t care at all. He absolutely didn’t. It wasn’t like he had this weird, pressing need for the other man’s attention.

No, not at all.

Whatever, he could wrap his head around this bizarre, newly-developed kink after he reached out to his liaison. He grabbed his phone and pulled up the Adventure app, a server that specialized in hosting online D&D tournaments, and input his username and password.

Welcome back, Fruitninjaforreal!

August worked his way through the welcome and got to the chat room where his Rate Your Hit liaison, who went by the handle Merlin, offered up details for jobs. They didn’t access each other through Rate Your Hit—the more ways it and the people who ran it could maintain their deniability, the better. Rate Your Hit, as a website, was workable in part because it looked so ridiculous, people assumed it had to be satire. It wasn’t on the dark web, there were no special requirements to access it—it was a fun, flashy website with ratings and job descriptions that were too bizarre to be real.

DiamondsForFriends: Five stars all around! No permanent damage to the furniture, no messy spills on the floor, and I didn’t even have to deal with the mistress’s dirty thong—because it was stuffed down his throat!

HelluvaDane: I didn’t actually think they had a guy strong enough to wield the axe I had in mind to split that son of a bitch’s head open, but they found somebody. Five star murder, minus one because the head rolled into the lake. It’s been eaten by a moose by now for all I know. Unsanitary.

Str8-2-L: She actually castrated him first. She did. I’m so happy. I’m so happy. I’m so happy. Five stars.

Liaisons were the ones who dealt with the website, and did research on the job offers people could leave in the “Contact Us!” box to make sure they were genuine. Merlin was the face of that research, that knowledge—at least for August. August didn’t know how many liaisons there actually were—given that there were over three hundred ranked hitmen on the site, probably quite a lot. He knew that he and Ricardo didn’t have the same one, though. Otherwise, why send them both out on the Baldwin job?

Merlin’s chat icon indicated he was online, like he was basically every time August logged on. It was more than just good business practice, too—Merlin actually ran campaigns on the site,