How the Hitman Stole Christmas

“You want me to show you?” Adrian asks, the inflection in his tone conveying that he’d relish the opportunity.

“No,” Ed sobs, tears sneaking past the bloated, bruised skin around his eyes. “Please, Adrian. Please…”

“I mean, you will die. But not right away,” he goes on as he sits back, adopting a more conversational tone. “For a few hours you’ll just lie there in such excruciating pain you’ll wish for death to come. But the only way you’ll get that sweet relief is if we give it to you. And, I hate to sound like a broken record, Ed, but the only way we’ll give it to you—even then—is if you give us a name.”

Ed groans miserably, his head lolling to the side.

Adrian shakes his head. “Think of how pointless it’ll be. You make us disembowel you, then you lie there for hours in so much pain you might actually lose your mind, and then right before it gets to that point, when you can’t deal with the agony physically or mentally for even a moment longer, you’ll break. You’ll be even more desperate than you are right now. You’ll wish you would have tapped a lot sooner, but it’ll be too late. And after all this lying, all this resisting, telling us you don’t know shit when we know you do, in that moment when you’re in all that pain, you’re gonna give up. You’ll give us the name just so we’ll do you the mercy of putting you out of your misery, and Ed… that’s not how I want to spend the rest of my day.” Adrian looks back at me. “What about you, Jasper? Is that how you want to spend the day?”

I shake my head. “Nope. I mean, I can, if that’s what Ed wants. But if he drags this shit out much longer, I don’t even know if I’ll be willing to do the mercy kill at the end of all of it, to be honest. I don’t admire his fight, it just pisses me off.”

Adrian looks back at Ed. “You ever see Jasper pissed off before? He’s pretty level-headed most of the time, but that man’s got a temper on him.”

“Really?” Ed asks, glaring miserably at Adrian. “Did you see what he did to my fucking face?”

Spittle flies from Ed’s mouth as he screams that last bit, but his bluster is good news. This isn’t my first time dealing with Ed, and I know deep down he’s a coward. The fact that he’s raising his voice at Adrian right now tells me he’s close to giving up. This is his last show of spirit.

“Oh, that wasn’t my temper, Ed.” I flex my bloody fist while he watches, smiling coldly like there’s nothing I’d like more than to sink in the rest of his ugly face. “I wasn’t mad before. That was just business.” I drop the smile, looking at him with nothing but detached coldness in my gaze. “You haven’t seen me mad yet.”

Ed gives us each one last pitiful attempt at a glare, but he knows he’s beat. He knows we’ll either get the name, or we’ll kill him—we don’t bluff when it comes to something like that.

Because he knows that, the motherfucker finally spits out a name.

His defeat is my victory. On one hand, I’m glad he cracked now so Adrian can get home in time for dinner, but on the other…

I was kinda hoping it would take longer. I don’t particularly like Ed, and spending all night with him would have kept my mind and body busy. It’s a lot of physical work, killing a man and then disposing of his body, so at the end of the night when I got back to my place, I could have collapsed in bed and fallen right to sleep.

Instead, I’ll get home early. I’ll have plenty of time to think about shit I don’t want to think about. When I crawl into bed, I won’t be as worn out as I need to be, so I’ll lie there thinking about Autumn, picking up her scent on my pillow even all these nights later.

It is what it is, I guess.

Once we cut Ed loose, Adrian and I go to the on-site utility sinks to wash up. While we’re standing there, he looks over at me and asks, “You still thinking about that girl?”

I look over at him as I scrub the blood spatter off my forearm. “What?”

“You’re sad. You’ve been sad ever since you came back after Christmas. I’m guessing it didn’t go so well?”

His perception annoys me, so I shift my gaze back to the sink and scrub at my fingernails to get the blood out from underneath. “What makes you think that?”

Adrian doesn’t bother answering such a stupid question.

“All right, fine. It didn’t work out. Everything ended amicably, I just…” I hate admitting it. I normally wouldn’t, not to anyone, but I trust Adrian with my life, so I guess I can trust him with this. “I miss her, that’s all.”