Page 1 of April's Fool
No Good Contract
Damon
Parker was so firedfor this shit. I was getting another handler.
I stood outside the well maintained but rundown apartment building that my next mark lived in. He’d bought the place a few years ago, done some work to it in order to bring it up to date. So far, everything looked done to code, no upset contractors.
The guy was a little younger than me. No known family in the area aside from a cousin. No social media presence. Very few friends. A witch with little to no magic, to the point where he could barely perform the most basic of spells.
That would make my task of getting into his apartment so much easier, at least. Witches usually had wards in place that were a pain in the butt, not to mention costly, to get around.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Since only one person had this number, I answered. “Parker, I’m in a bad mood. Make it better or you’re fired,” I muttered, careful to keep my words from being overheard.
“Promises, promises. You’d be lost without me,” Parker sing-songed.
“I’d be twenty percent richer without you. Saner, too. How much research did you do on this guy?”
“The usual deep dive. Bank records, employment, family, criminal record too. All squeaky clean. A little too clean. Something about this job is pinging my bullshit radar.”
Right, so Parker had the same feeling. Good.
As a hitman for hire, it was difficult to know who to trust. I’d worked with Parker for years. We’d trained together, my mentor picking the hacker out for me so that we could bond and learn to trust the other. Occasionally, when I needed backup, Parker came into the field with me. I trusted him daily with my life. Basically, since Magnus had died, he was my only family.
“Parks, this feels off to me too. The guy is nice. Sweet even. There’s no way that he should have gotten on our books.”
“Maybe The Luna put him there.”
I scoffed. While I loved Parker like the brother I never asked for, I found some of his belief in a mythical goddess to be a bit much. Shifters like him all sang from the same hymn sheet. The Luna this, The Luna that. Everything was her pulling strings.
To me, there was no proof, so therefore,no belief.
“Ah, you might scoff, Dameonus, but my hawk thinks something is about to happen, and when is he wrong?”
Fucking Sparrowhawk was a know-it-all dick of an alter. As a beta shifter, Parker was strong, but didn’t have that bullshit alphahole thing going on. He refused to be a part of the aviary when we moved to Northarbor a couple of months ago, and they kept begging Parker to join them. Parker’s Sparrowhawk was determined to keep away from them, so that’s what we did. Then we found out some of their thoughts on mixed pairings and he would not stop being smug about it.
“Fine, I’m going in. I’ll do some digging. I think I might have to speak to this guy, though.”
“Really?” Parker sounded incredibly skeptical suddenly.
“What?” I asked innocently.
“That’s the excuse you are going with. You need to speak to him?”
“I do!” I insisted.
“Dameonus—“
“Fucking stop with that name!”
Parker coughed to hide a laugh. “Damon, I’ve seen the pictures of this Cody guy. He’s cute. Just your type. So tell me again why you need to speak to your target?”
“I just want to ask him why someone would want to kill him!” I protested. “This contract is all messed up.We don’t take these jobs. Only people that deserve it. If there’s a reason, I’ll make it quick.”
“You don’t think there’s a reason, do you?”
“Do you?” I fired back.
“No. Which is why I’m telling you, The Luna put us on this path.”
