and what are their names?”
“Tex and Marlene, of course.”
“Of course. Mila, what are your parents’ names?” Henry asks.
“Marlene and Fuckhead, but Jackson and Leland told me that’s not his real name.”
Henry stares into my soul.
And when Henry stares into my soul I just fork over everything he wants to hear. “Fine! After a long chain of events she’s been staying with us for the past day because her parents were too busy with their drugs. And I might have accidentally threatened to take her until they snapped out of it. And then they didn’t take her back. We’re trying to track down a family member for her to go to.”
“Or you know, let child services deal with it.”
The door swings open and Leland returns with Tucker in tow before I can let Henry pry apart my story anymore. Tucker looks a bit wary but takes Leland’s seat when it’s offered to him. According to Leland, the last time Tucker met Henry, he was helping Leland pack him up in a trunk.
Leland takes a seat on Henry’s lap and turns to the rest of us like this is normal grown man behavior.
“Let me get you a chair,” Henry says as he tries to push him off. Leland pushes back harder and even hooks an arm around his neck, never planning on letting go. Henry should have realized it was futile from the beginning.
“I like your lap,” Leland says, as if that’s a good excuse for why he has to sit there. “Okay, we have a situation here. Someone wants Jackson dead and we don’t know who or why.”
“But we know they’re willing to offer quite a bit, so they’re pretty serious,” Henry says, still working on getting Leland pried off him—he currently only has two of Leland’s fingers pried up. “They want it done fast and don’t care how it happens.”
“Who hates you so much?” Tucker asks me.
I shrug because I honestly have no idea.
“I thought maybe it was a vicious lover who is unsatisfied with seeing Jackson in the greatest relationship known to mankind, but it doesn’t fit,” Leland says, like that could possibly be an issue.
Everyone scrutinizes me as if they think I’m keeping this big secret but I shrug. “I just… I’ve done this job for years. I could have pissed off so many people.”
“Here’s the plan,” Leland says. “Henry, there are no listening devices on in here, right?”
“No, you’re good.”
“Tucker’s going to enlist the Sandman who is going to ‘kill’ Jackson. Then, the Sandman collects his reward from the people or the person they send,” Leland says.
“That’s oddly brilliant,” Cassel says. “We could put a body cam on you and make it as realistic as you need.”
“Oddly brilliant?” Leland asks with a raised eyebrow.
“He can insist on handing over the body or doing something to get them to show themselves,” Henry says.
“Oddly?” Leland repeats. He’s really hung up on that for some reason.
Cassel nods. “We’ll need to make it look real.”
“Cassel… can you live stream it in a way they find it and others see that I’m ‘dead’?” I ask. “It’d get the others off our backs and definitely get their attention.”
“We don’t want it to go public, though,” Henry says.
“It wouldn’t,” Cassel assures him. “I’ll make sure it’s restricted and it only gets into the hands of the people who’d know what it is. These people don’t want to be noticed and the one way to get noticed is to start putting up videos of hits on social media, which they’re not going to do. Even if it does, what’s it matter? In two weeks, when this is all over with and Jackson is still alive, everyone will see it’s a hoax. They can write it off as some special effects nonsense.”
“Let’s do it,” Leland says. “I have the guns. Cassel, do you think you can rig something up for the blood?”
“Yeah, it’ll be simple. Leave it to me. Where are we doing this?” he asks.
“I don’t want people to see the layout of our home, so let’s do it at the agency. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to be there either,” Leland says. “The roof leaves a good access point, so I’ll come in from upstairs. We’ll put Jackson on police watch to keep the others out and wary.”
“What if they won’t meet with you?” Cassel asks. “It’s clear they’re keeping quiet.”
“What if you don’t ‘kill’ Jackson?” Henry says. “You tell them that he’s in your care and if they want him dead, they’ll