Page 29 of Clean Hack
I let out a short laugh. If only she knew how subdued my life really was she wouldn’t have had such excitement in her voice.
“Honestly…”
“Yes, always,” she said and there was a weighted plea in her words.
I wanted to tell her that I’d always be truthful with her but something held me back. Not because I knew I’d lie to her at some point. No, I knew I’d be able to hold myself to that promise no fucking problem. It was more a feeling that I might say too much, go too deep, and scare her away.
“My life is pretty quiet. The whole attempting to make something out of a branch is as about as exciting as it gets. And that’s a fairly new development, so imagine how it was before I tried to find a new talent.”
She laughed. It echoed with a deep static. But I loved it. If I wasn’t driving I might have had the urge to close my eyes and envision what it really sounded like.
She stayed on nearly my entire drive. She talked more. Opened up a little. And hell yeah, I listened. I took it all in and stored it away for later.
I got the feeling that she was significantly younger than I was but I couldn’t put a finger on why I though that or how young she might have been. Life had obviously tossed her a hard curveball and that was how she’d tumbled into this side of the world. The one that I lived and breathed. The side where people like us didn’t exactly follow the normal, real-world laws.
Though I loved to hear her talk about her favorite color—teal, by the way. Or the best way to make mashed potatoes—apparently you whip them with a bit of cream cheese and a dollop of sour cream. The thing that really stuck with me was the things she didn’t say. Like how her life had turned to such a lonely path. How we had that in common. How she had slowly started to slip into something she didn’t like. Which, I suspected had to do with people. I could tell she wasn’t necessarily like me, she wasn’t a fan of people. It was more like she’d hid herself away for so long that she was almost afraid of the outside world. Like maybe she didn’t know how to be—for lack of a better word—normal anymore.
I hated to hear the heartbreak in her voice. It was faint, but it was there.
All I could do was try to put a little bit of light in her day whenever she gave me the chance. And I vowed that I always would, no matter how shitty I was feeling.
Then it happened. The disguise was back in full force though it didn’t hide the stress and panic from her voice.
“Hello,” I answered, like always.
She rattled off an address. One that I didn’t recognize.
“It’s a cabin. There are seven bodies. I need them gone and like they were never there.”
I paused, half bent over, free hand stretched out ready to grab my bag.
This wasn’t a normal call. And the panic in her voice was real. I could hear it, thick and straining, even through the false, robotic voice.
I opened my mouth to say something but she continued talking before I could speak.
“I will pay you. And believe me when I say that these men deserved what they got.” There was a hint of knowing in her voice, like she understood exactly how I worked. Like she didn’t see me as the monster like outsiders would if they knew. It shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did.
“Are you alright?” I blurted out and I honestly could feel the panic starting to wear off onto me.
“I’m fine. I just need this done. Fast, please.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it.” I tried to sound calm and reassuring.
It was going to take me a moment to figure out where this location was. Most of my jobs, they were usually in the same places, or close by. I didn’t know this town or where the cabin might even be in that town. I’d passed by it on my way to one of the Steel Paragon’s chapters and so it sort of seemed familiar, but nowhere around the level of comfort I was used to.
But before I could even think about hunting down my maps she spoke again. Giving me directions that I knew would get me to the exact spot she needed me to be at. I just had to find the bar on the main road, then follow everything she told me to a T.
She didn’t stick around after that. And I didn’t think she would. She sounded almost as if she were in some sort of crisis mode. So I didn’t even try to keep her.
The fact that she had said there were seven bodies made me cringe. I hated big jobs. Add in the fact that I’d be in a town I was unfamiliar with, well fuck, I had to do this job perfectly that was for sure. Not so much as a single, tiny slip up. And I had to get in and out of that town without anyone knowing I’d been there.
A seven body clean up came at a hell of a price. I’d done jobs that big only a handful of times in my life and that was it. Most of them early on when I was still making a name for myself. But this job…this one I knew I’d be doing for free. I couldn’t charge her, not after all that she’d done for me. And maybe there was the fact that it felt really fucking wrong. I wouldn’t have called us friends because the definition was just not right. But we were something. Something more than what I possibly even understood. So, yeah, there was no way in hell that I was going to let her even attempt to pay me. And that was something I’d have to let her know later.
Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the crazy shit.
I honestly didn’t know what to say when later on I got a call from Diesel. A shiver literally ran down my spine as he asked about the cabin that I had no idea was connected to the club. Things were starting to come together but I wasn’t exactly sure how. My mind was spinning and I told him that the job was on me. That the club didn’t need to worry about it. And though he didn’t ask anything about how I knew and why it had already been handled, I could tell there was a suspicious tension in the air.
“This have something to do with your psychic?” he grunted.
