Cellar Door

I grab a trash bag and stuff all her files inside. I go through the loft with a fine-tooth comb, gathering every bit of Makenna’s investigation.

There’s a reason I didn’t kill her the night I tracked Hudson to the ravine.

I didn’t know why she aroused such a response from me back then, or like she did last night. I still don’t want to analyze it too closely. It wasn’t sympathy. It wasn’t even remorse. Those emotions are long lost.

She’s useful.

A dark-eyed sprite of a woman comes charging into my world, a frenzied little storm all in herself, and I can try to rationalize why I left her alive…like there’s still some humanity buried within me…

Or I can use her.

Hudson’s partner is leverage.

An overcast sky darkens the desolate stretch of highway ahead. Rain beats my Chevy Impala in rapid-fire pellets, obscuring the road, as the windshield fogs and the worn-out wipers struggle to keep up.

I flip the radio to a local station and listen to a classic 80s tune as I wait to hear a news update. Some hint that all my preparation for Keller wasn’t completely botched.

The dead man in the trunk should be proof enough this is almost over. If he was the last one, I would go down easy. Hold my hands in the air and let the officials cuff me and take me in.

Hell, I wouldn’t have the headache of Makenna in my cellar. Back in that alley, I would have looked her right in her beautiful eyes and put my forehead to the barrel of her gun. Pull the fucking trigger.

I swerve to miss a fallen limb on the road, and pain lances my ribs. I cough and palm my side. Damn, her steel-toe boots were hell on my ribs. She was willing to fight, that’s for damn sure.

We have that in common.

“How does your neck feel, Keller?” I shout toward the trunk. “Hope you have a motherfucking splitting headache in hell.”

That quick and painless death was too good for the bastard. But Makenna’s interruption required improvising. I wasn’t letting him get away again. Better a dead hitman than an informed hitman. One that saw my face.

The storm tapers off as I round the bend, heading deeper into the forest. The hills ahead stretch across the forest preserve, seaming the gray-blue sky like dark mountains. I’m almost there.

My thoughts keep returning to the woman in my cellar. She deprived me of the gratification of my kill, and now she’s depriving me of this, too. One mistake could jeopardize three years of planning. Painstaking hours of research and dredging through the most vile information the dark web contains.

You can’t come back from that.

Maybe that’s why I hesitated back there, not once but twice. All the dark and ugly things I’ve seen, that I’ve done. She was an interruption to that channel. Something striking and beautiful, something that doesn’t belong. She probably thinks she’s all hard and rough edges, but she’s soft, delicate; the most pure thing I’ve laid eyes on in years.

Which is perfect.

I’ve never killed a woman before. It goes against everything I vowed.

I’ll need the practice.

Every kill takes a toll. Mentally. Physically. The scars on the outside are starting to match the disfigured man inside. By the time this is over, I won’t even be human anymore.

This realization is a strange comfort. It means less feeling. If what I suspect proves true, if it leads me to the final destination…the final player…then what I have to do will eviscerate every shred of humanity I have left. I might as well swear my soul to damnation now.

I tuck the confounding thought away as I pull off the road and drive through a gap in the brush. The break in the forest isn’t large enough to spot unless you’re looking for it. Roots and underbrush scrape the bottom of my car as I head deeper, until I reach the clearing.

The earth is scorched here. Black smudge turned into a tarlike terrain from the ever-present rain. A testament to the filth sacrificed here. The darkest of souls offered to the gods of fire and torment.

I pop the trunk and lug Keller out, dropping his deadweight body to the ground. I drag him toward the makeshift cover of branches and forest floor I designed atop a brown tarp. The cover conceals the burn barrel beneath.

The cremation of a body is symbolic, respectful even, in some cultures. Sending loved ones back to the ash whence they came, or some shit like that. For me, it’s a counter forensic measure.

No body. No crime.

And I’m an artist when it comes to this method.