Wild Justice (Nadia Stafford 3)

Jack turned to me. "I know him. Runs a pack of lowlifes and losers. Third-rate pros. Like this dumb fuck. Ask Evelyn. She'll know more."

Jack wasn't explaining this for me--this was for Dougie. It took him a minute to piece together that Jack knew his middleman, and he knew Evelyn. Pretty much everyone in the business knows Evelyn's name. She makes sure of that. All that added up to one conclusion--Dougie was dealing with a fellow hitman. And not some "third-rate pro." He looked at Jack as he tried to figure out who he was. Jack might be a legend in the business, but he wasn't nearly as interested in getting his name out as Evelyn.

"Let's back up," Jack said. "I asked what the job was. I already know, but I want to hear you say it. And if you don't?" Jack didn't raise the gun or threaten. He just shrugged.

"It was a hit," Dougie said. "The job was to hunt down this Nadia Stafford chick, and if she was the woman in the other picture, then I was supposed to kill her."

"Why?"

"It's complicated."

"We have time. And it'll make me happy."

Dougie wanted to make Jack happy. His life depended on it. He told his story--or as much of it as he knew.

Aldrich thought he'd recognized me in Newport. Yet he'd been uncertain so he'd snapped a shot with his cell phone, then called "this guy." That was all Dougie knew--Aldrich called "this guy." Aldrich was freaked out because he thought the woman in the pictures was from his past. Someone who could ruin his present. "This guy" then contacted Roland to hire a hitman to kill Nadia Stafford, if she was the same woman.

"Kill me and then what?" I asked. "Make me disappear?"

"The client offered extra if I could make it seem like a suicide. Otherwise you had to disappear." He looked around the woods. "Which would have been easy out here. I could have done the suicide part, too, if I'd known you had a gun."

"Real fucking tragedy," Jack muttered.

The guy didn't have the sense to look abashed. He just shifted again, struggling against the pain.

"Look, we're on the same team," Dougie said. "Clearly Roland had no idea the target was your girl. But now it's all been straightened out and the job is over. I'll drop it. As a professional courtesy."

"Big of you."

Jack hunkered down again, meeting Dougie's gaze. Sweat streamed down the man's face now as he audibly swallowed.

"What else you got?" Jack asked.

Dougie told him everything else. It wasn't much, but his life was on the line. He gave his name as Mark Lewiston, from Cleveland, along with some other personal information that may or may not have been true. When he was done, Jack turned to me.

"Nadia? Take the dog. Start heading back."

Scout had been sitting beside me, growing impatient, and was happy now to be moving again. As we walked away, I glanced back. Jack noticed me looking. He tensed, a muscle in his cheek twitching. He didn't want me watching him kill a man. It didn't matter if that was his job, or if we both knew it had to be done.

I turned away. The shot fired. I kept walking.

CHAPTER 19

A minute later, I heard Jack behind me. He didn't catch up, even when I slowed. Finally, I glanced over my shoulder. He was maybe twenty feet away. He picked up his pace and was beside me in a few seconds.

"I'll clean it up," he said.

"I'll help--"

"Don't need to. My mess."

"I'm going to help you, Jack."

He gave me a sidelong glance. Seeing if I was okay with what just happened. I could say I was, but then it would seem as if his actions were indeed in question. They weren't. When you kill people for a living, you accept the risk that this is how it will turn out.

"I'll load tools into the truck while you go in for breakfast," I said. "We should join the guests, too. It'll look strange if we take off again too soon."

"Yeah."