Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,42
barefoot across the fucking Sahara before I dragged my sister any deeper into this than she already is, and I would drag your bloody corpse along behind me if you tried to do it on your own. Do you understand me? Do you?”
Ricardo smiled. Because of course that son of a bitch was smiling. “Yeah, I understand,” he said, and now he sounded like he was on the verge of laughing. “Thanks.”
It took August a second to catch on, but when he did he groaned. “You are the worst person in the world,” he snapped. “Jesus Christ, seriously. I can’t believe you.”
“And I can’t believe that worked.”
“I can’t either!” Ricardo had decided to poke at August until he found a viable button, and in this case he knew just the button to push. Oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it. “Get anything useful out of it?”
“Other than realizing that you’ve got designs on my fantastic body?”
“Your fantastically dead body, get a grip,” August muttered.
“Yes, I got a few things out of it.” He glanced sideways and said, a little more gently than August thought was warranted, “I don’t like collateral damage on either side of the equation. If I was going to go after you, I wouldn’t do it through her.”
“That’s easy to say.” But the thing was, August wanted to believe him. He really did. He was already inclined to, because Ricardo had a reputation for being very specific with his kills. Any moron could leave a bomb in a backpack somewhere and remote detonate it to kill a target—but that was messy and attracted a lot of the wrong kind of attention. No hitman wanted to be labeled a terrorist. Governmental pursuit got a lot more serious then.
Ricardo shrugged. “Believe whatever you want.” He looked casual, like he didn’t care one way or the other whether August thought the worst of him, but his hands were gripping the steering wheel just a little too hard. Through his teeth, he added, “I don’t do collateral damage.”
August studied him for a long moment. “Why do I feel like there’s a story there?”
“Is there a story behind why you always wear socks and your feet seem to hurt a lot?”
August bristled. “I asked you first.
Ricardo glanced at him. Then, focusing his glare through the windshield, he said, “I was a Green Beret in the Army. A sniper.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yeah, well, unlike hitmen, snipers don’t work alone. We have spotters. And mine…”
The silence hung for a long, long time. It was impossible to say where Ricardo’s mind was, though August hoped at least some of it was still on the road. Shit. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked.
Abruptly, Ricardo said, “Sandman was… Well, let’s just say it was a good thing he wasn’t the sniper.”
“Why’s that?” August asked, quietly and cautiously.
“He was a sociopath. He didn’t differentiate between enemy combatants and local nationals.” He swallowed like his throat was painfully tight. “Snipers and spotters are supposed to be tight. Really tight. You have to trust each other. One can’t do his job without the other. But Sandman and I… We were good at first. But when he kept encouraging me to take shots that would kill innocent people as well as the target…”
August could barely breathe. The candor was unusual—Ricardo was a closed book if there ever was one—but it was the hint of humanity that was jarring. “Did you… Did you take those shots?”
Ricardo shook his head, and his hands loosened minutely on the steering wheel. “I never liked the idea of innocent people getting killed, but Sandman galvanized that for me.” He glanced at August and added a growled, “So I don’t do collateral damage.”
And it’s not negotiable, he didn’t have to say.
August sat back in his seat, satisfied. For one, he wasn’t working with a complete sociopath, but also, he felt like they were even after Ricardo had put a card out on the table. Moments before, Ricardo had keyed August up until he gave out information he shouldn’t have in the form of threats. It was a dumb move on August’s part, and a lot of other people in the business would have rubbed his face in it, especially the ones who lived lives as insubstantial as smoke, like Ricardo. But Ricardo wasn’t taking his shot, and he’d seemed pretty earnest when he made his little speech about collateral damage. Did he actually care what August thought of him?
And wasn’t that a pleasant thought. August smiled