Page 8 of Risky Passion

Most of the idiots who worked for me couldn’t handle this part. They rushed in, eager to get to the blood and the glory. That was when they made mistakes . . .sloppy, stupid mistakes.

And mistakes got them killed. Or worse, caught.

Murder wasn't hard. Any thug with a knife could end a life. The kill was just mechanics, a precise angle, a calculated dose, a swift motion. But getting away with murder was where the true professionals separated themselves from the amateurs.

That was where I excelled.

Like running an illegal shipment, it took timing, precision, and knowing when to move and when to wait. Every detail had to align perfectly. One misstep or loose thread, and everything unraveled.

In the rearview, I tucked a stray gray strand back into my dull brown wig. The synthetic hair felt tacky against my fingers, and I made a note to toss it out when this was done.

My pink lipstick had faded, and I pulled out the tube to reapply. The color was garish, and tacky. Not exactly what an aging woman like me should wear. But it was the only shade I owned. Alice’s favorite. My chest tightened as her face crept into my mind.

Alice. I could still feel her tiny wrists and delicate fingers in my hands and see her wide, bloodshot eyes staring up at me, full of love and fear in equal measure. She was always so frail, so delicate. So scared. Forty-five goddamned years of loving her, protecting her, keeping her safe from this cruel, filthy world. And in the end . . .

No! Focus.

Regret was a poison I couldn't afford to taste. Let the guilt in, and even drawing breath became a battle. In my line of work, weakness was just another word for dead.

I slipped the lipstick back into my purse, right beside my little insurance policy: a tiny white pill that promised to give me a quick exit in case my plan went sideways. I hoped it wouldn't, since I wasn't done yet. I still had names to cross off my list. The bastards who had taken my boys and Alice from me had to pay in full.

I gave the rearview mirror one final check before sliding out of the car and smoothing the crisp white nurses’ uniform over my knees. As I scanned the parking lot, confirming I was alone, I strolled to the elevator, checking my watch. Midday. My timing was perfect. It always amazed me how blind people were to danger when the sun was still high overhead.

I’d learned that trick over forty years ago, at Angelsong Orphanage. Target someone at midnight, and they are already suspicious, but in broad daylight they would return my smile, maybe even hold open a door. When they were relaxed, it was so much easier to slide the blade home.

Doctor Lurami wouldn't dare be late. Not after our little chat yesterday. Blackmail was like a well-trained dog, reliable enough, until it wasn't.

Plenty of fools had tried to slip their leash from me over the years. The smart ones learned their lesson. The others . . . well, they didn’t get a chance to make the same mistake twice.

At the elevator, I faked pressing the button for the security camera, just in case they’d finally fixed it after our Deputy Prime Minister, Mason Kingsman, redecorated the walls with bullet holes.

Mason Kingsman.I'd known him when he was just Mark Kincaid, back when he did his own dirty work: breaking fingers in the classroom hallways, burying evidence with his brothers under the moonlight. Then, he’d bought himself a shiny new name and an even shinier political career.

The elevator display ticked down from the fifth floor, known as the VIP ward by those media vultures, where our bumbling Prime Minister and his trigger-happy deputy had nursed their wounds, protected by beefed-up security goons.

Hollywood superstar Neon Bloom had also recovered from hisattack on the fifth floor, before his face joined the field of missing person’s posters on the waiting room walls of police stations.

Now another prize asshole occupied those antiseptic halls: Grant Hughes, master money launderer turned double amputee, which was his own damn fault. He should've known better than to try escaping in that chopper of his. He was just lucky those bastards at Alpha Tactical Ops hadn’t put a bullet in his brain like they did to my sons. Though maybe he would have preferred a swift death, rather than what I had planned for him.

I read the elevator display. Why has it still stopped at the third floor?

For decades, Hughes had made Scorpion Industries' blood money vanish into thin air. Now he, too, was about to disappear . . . if Doctor Lurami delivered my special package.

Making people vanish was my specialty, something I’d been mastering since I’d killed the first man who’d raped me . . . the school principal Mr. Fucking Whitmore. His body had never been found. It would have made headline news if it had. I chuckled. I was fourteen years old when I killed him in broad daylight.

The devil was in the details: timing, cleanup, and the necessary evil of accomplices. But these days, my back screamed with every dead body I moved, and everything was getting fucking harder. Sixty was not the new forty, no matter what those pathetic lifestyle magazines claimed in my doctor's waiting room.

My phone buzzed with a message, shattering the silence.

"Damn it." I pulled my phone from my purse.

The number on my screen belonged to a select list of people who only called with triumph or disaster. This was several hours too early for good news.

Scowling, I swiped to read the text:

BF marked us. Plane came in for closer recon. Bags dumped overboard.

Clamping my jaw, I punched a message.WTF! Get those fucking bags!

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