Made to Be Broken (Nadia Stafford 2)

"He's on the trail, you mean. Of another - "

"Maybe just hunting."

Hunting...

I took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Um, so where -?"

"On the 401. Heading east. Just passing - " A pause, as if looking for signs. " - Oshawa."

"So should I -?"

"Get ready. Tell Emma you're leaving. Wait for my call."

The next ninety minutes seemed like nine hundred. Finally Jack called again. He was outside a restaurant in Kingston. His target was inside.

"Might be nothing," Jack said. "Different job. Meeting a client. Still... Thought you'd want to head out. Catch up."

"I do."

Two hours later, after quickly assembling a disguise, I was there. For the last thirty minutes, the target had been parked outside a community center, reading a news paper.

I'd left my truck in a grocery store lot a block away, and joined Jack in my work car parked beside a church. From there, we watched the target as he waited in his compact car, tucked between a minivan and an SUV.

Even with the binoculars I'd lent Jack, I couldn't see the man. He had a newspaper stretched across the steering wheel, either reading as he waited or just wanting to look as if he was.

"Work name, Rainman," Jack said. "Real name, Ron Fenniger."

"You know him?"

"Not personally. Evelyn checked him out years back. Possible protege. Seemed promising. Didn't last."

"Where was he putting his money?"

"Up his nose."

An old story, and a common trajectory for professional killers. They start as garden-variety criminals, then discover they have a knack for killing - good reflexes, steady nerves, and the ability to blend. They realize how much money there is to be made in contract hits... but it's like a lounge singer suddenly pulling in twenty grand a gig with no idea how to spend it. They find places - women, booze, dope, gambling, all the usual vices.

That's when it falls apart. The reflexes, the nerves, the ordinariness that made them a good hitman disappear. So they have two choices - retire fast, or find themselves on the other end of a gun, facing an associate hired by someone who deems them a liability.

As Jack explained, Fenniger had begun his crash-and-burn, then leveled out, learning to keep his drugs and work separate. But someone like that would never be top-tier again. He'd made a couple of small mistakes, enough to keep a middleman from recommending him to a big client. He could only pull in top-tier money if he didn't mind taking risky jobs with subpar clients who'd turn him in at the first sign of trouble.

According to Evelyn, though, Fenniger had withdrawn his name from the pool with one middleman, who figured he'd retired. But it seemed he'd just found a way to bypass the middleman, going into business for himself, with clients who wouldn't care how good a hitman he was, because as far as they knew, they were hiring a baby broker.

"Do you think he's meeting with one of those clients now?" I asked.

Jack shrugged. "All I know? Moving too fast. Three girls in four months?"

"The pace doesn't seem to be causing him any trouble. As far as Quinn can tell, none of the missing girls are still being investigated."

"Lotta money. But lotta work."

"You think he's getting greedy and overextending himself. Could be. It probably seems like fast, easy money in an untapped market. I doubt he could keep it going for long, though. Is that what you mean? I should back off and let him hang himself?"

"Nah. This rate? Could kill half dozen girls by then. You don't want that."

I didn't miss the pronoun. I wouldn't want that. As for Jack, well, I'm sure Jack wasn't keen on the thought of a hitman targeting young mothers, but left to himself, I'm not sure he'd do anything about it.

"Are you saying you'd rather not be involved? Because you don't have to - "