Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,5
five million dollars in cash, half up front…yeah.” He nodded grimly as he apparently read August’s expression. “You were hired by the same person.”
“That’s actually kind of amazing,” August said, genuinely impressed. “Prying the truth out of people by telling them the truth, that’s some real special agent style there.” He waited, but of course the man gave nothing away. “I will figure out your secret past at some point,” August informed him. Most of the hitmen he knew were more than happy to tell you how they’d gotten into it, but Torralba never spoke about himself. It was infuriating in a way that only a naturally talkative person understood. “And it was five-point-five million, actually.”
Torralba frowned. “I doubt that.”
August grinned. “Doubt all you want, it’s true. I guess when it comes to hedging your hits, I’m the one eccentric rich assholes count on to get the job done.”
“One of their own kind.”
“Exactly.” August’s rather unique background was one of the only ways he was relatively out and open in his life. For a lot of potential employers, finding an assassin who’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth was a benefit. He knew how to act at parties, knew how to talk about the stock market—and fuck you, Torralba, just because he could talk like them didn’t mean he had to dress like them—and he could appreciate a truly fine vintage when it was trotted out by its proud and excessive owner. He sighed. “I wish I had managed to get a suit in with me,” he said, staring mournfully up the staircase that Torralba had just come down. “Tonight would have been a whole lot easier.”
“You didn’t know about the party?”
Was that a hint of suspicion in the other man’s voice? “Would I be wearing this if I had?” August plucked at the skintight, waterproof Lycra. “I certainly wouldn’t have hauled that goddamn screwdriver in with me if I’d known about the party.”
The suspicion gave way to curiosity. “Screwdriver?”
“Mmhmm.” Eh, he could keep it to himself, but why bother? “The stream on this property is one of the few in the area where endangered pugnose shiner minnows are found. Baldwin is required by law to maintain the waterway so that the fish can swim up and down the stream freely. There are grates over the inlets, but they weren’t hard to take off.”
Torralba tilted his head a little. “And the swans? How did you handle them?”
“Oh, they’re gentle giants,” August assured him. “They wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m a bird whisperer?”
“Fine, don’t tell me.” Torralba began to turn away, and—no.
“Bread,” August finally said, because what fun was it to tease someone who didn’t actually get irritated by it? “I spread some bread around, they went after it like celebrities at a salad bar, and I basically swam right up to the edge of the closest pond. The handover from night to morning shift is always a little slow—” that was true almost everywhere you infiltrated, it seemed like “—and there was a period of time where no one was watching the window into the cellar. And then—” He struck a pose. “Ta-daa!”
Torralba didn’t look impressed. “Fucking ninjas,” he muttered.
“Do you think so?” August looked down at himself. “I think I need a ninjatō to really sell the image, personally, but—”
“You need to leave.”
“Ah, no.” August shook his head. “You need to leave. I have a signed contract to kill one Lance Baldwin, former MIT dropout and current high-tech-slash-cryptocurrency billionaire, and I intend to make good on it.”
“In that getup? How?” Torralba’s accent was starting to glimmer through, thickening the consonants and adding a near lisp to the sibilants. August was pretty sure he’d narrowed down the man’s dialect, but he wasn’t giving that information away yet. “You’ll stand out and get your idiot ass shot, not that that would be any great loss.”
“Not if I wait until he’s asleep, use the servants’ corridors to sneak upstairs, and kill him in bed,” August replied. Duh. “While the servants’ corridors have cameras, they aren’t monitored very closely. There are spare uniforms in the mudroom off the kitchen, so as soon as the kitchen was left alone for the evening, voila.” He folded his arms across his chest and tapped his chin with one forefinger. “But now that plan’s clearly fucked.”
“Clearly,” Torralba agreed. “So it’s time for you to cut your losses. Swim away, Morrison. I’ll handle this.”
“How?” August scoffed. “It’s not like you knew about the party either. You