There are ten minutes until three in the morning hits.
I expect us to wait, but Howard drives up to the gate and flashes his badge. The security guard doesn’t even question Howard and opens the gate, but then Howard does something unexpected. He takes out a small gun and out the window and shoots.
I jump when the soft air puffs, and a dart is sticking out of his chest. The guard looks down, confused; then his eyes roll back as he slumps against the wall. Howard opens up the door, steals the security footage, and climbs back in the car.
“He will be fine in a few hours, don’t look at me like that,” Howard puts the car in drive, and we slowly drive down the paved road.
“People are going to be looking forward to a suspicious car after the new guard comes in—”
“There isn’t a new guard. It’s been too long since you’ve done your research. They had lay-offs. That guy is on the clock until seven in the morning. We have plenty of time to get in and out without being noticed.” He comes to a slow stop, the brakes squeaking as we pull up to the oversized house I grew up in. It’s uglier than I remember it, and that might be because of who lives inside.
“Ready?” Howard takes another gun from the inside of his ankle and cocks it.
“Uh, you don’t have to come; this is my gig.”
“I got your six. Other than that, revenge is all yours, buddy.”
“You’re a glorified babysitter,” I mumble, opening the car door and clicking it shut softly.
“I’m an unmarked car and a cop. You’re lucky I’m on your side.”
“I would have been fine without you.”
“Oh, okay, sure. Which door are you going to go in?”
“The front,” I say obviously.
He rolls his eyes. “Of course, you’d say that. So you’re going to ring the doorbell? And then what?”
“Pew, pew,” I say, pointing the gun in the air.
“God, you’d never make it as a cop. Let’s go before I have to arrest you for stupidity.” Howard shoves my shoulder, and I fumble toward the curb, barely catching myself until my feet are on the grass. The plantation house is old but in good condition. As we creep around the house, there are a few guards outside, but not wealthy political guards, the slimy kind. They are all muscle, dressed in black, and speaking Russian, or maybe German.
Yeah, dad’s in pretty shady shit. Usually, bodyguards for politicians are in nice suits.
I aim to kill.
The bullet leaves the gun quietly, and both of their heads tilt back before they fall on their face. I run up to the side of the house and open the side of the door, making my way into the loveless home. I expect silence, but I hear my mother’s voice coming from the den, followed by a loud ringing gunshot.
And everything falls quiet, like freshly fallen snow on a winter day. It’s so silent and beautiful, but there are horrors somewhere hiding in the white.
Another shot has me and Howard sharing a look before we are running to my father’s room. When we open the door, my dad is lying on the floor with a gunshot in his chest and blood pooling on the floor, while my mother is lying on top of him, half her head blown off.
“Holy shit, murder-suicide.”
“But why??
?? I ask.
“For this,” Howard enters a room where there are pinpoints on a map around the globe. Pictures of new girls and pictures of FBI agents on their tail, closing in.
They knew they weren’t going to get away.
“Damn it,” I roar, cock the gun and point it at my dad’s head, and fire.
The assholes found an easy way out. They always did.
“Your name should be cleared, considering they have an entire file on you and what happened seven years ago.” Howard holds it up.