Page 37 of Killer Kiss

I nodded absentmindedly, barely hearing her words.

I was too busy staring at the photo of Augie.

And the realization that I was going to have to kill him.

11

OPHELIA

With my focus split between poking around for information about Fawn, and finding out everything I could about Augie, my days became long and were often split into two. In the mornings, I tracked down all of Fawn’s old friends and quizzed them. When did you last see Fawn? Have you had any contact with Eddie? Where were the places they liked to go when they were dating? Did she ever tell you anything that might help me find her?

Vincent or Scythe came with me when they weren’t working at his club or taking care of his pregnant partner, but even their air of menace hadn’t helped. The answers were all incredibly frustrating and led nowhere. When Fawn had left, she hadn’t just left our family. She’d left her entire life behind and started a new one. The lack of information left me hollow, and I’d quickly realized I’d been too harsh on Augie. My dig about him not doing a good enough job in searching for Fawn because he didn’t have the money or resources was proving to be bullshit. I had resources and more information about my sister’s past than he did, and I still couldn’t make any progress.

My afternoons and nights were spent doing surveillance on Augie, all with a growing ball of dread building in my stomach.

For days, ever since I’d gotten that job bag with his name on it, I’d sat in my car a little ways down his street and watched his house. I’d stress eaten bags of potato chips and soft drinks, waiting for something to happen, but things had been pretty quiet. He worked at the club until the early hours of the morning, then came home and slept until midafternoon, I guessed. At the very least, he never left his house during that time. One afternoon he’d gone out and put up new missing posters of Fawn, and I’d sadly trailed along behind him, while he replaced the old tattered ones with the new.

This man cared about my sister. They were obviously friends. He’d told me himself he loved her. I’d raided my sister’s old home and seen the photos of him and Fawn and Eve with some of the other people I recognized from my visit to the club.

And I was going to have to kill him.

For the first time ever, what I’d been tasked to do didn’t sit right. Normally, I couldn’t care less about what people had done to find themselves the target of a hit. I did my job, and I did it well, without asking questions.

But I couldn’t do that to someone my sister cared about. Not when he’d been the sole driving force behind trying to find her for all this time.

I leaned forward, peering through my binoculars at Augie’s house. If I was being generous, I would call it run-down. If I was being truthful, it was verging on derelict, though there were other houses on the street that were worse. At least Augie’s place didn’t have broken windows or grass so overgrown you didn’t have a chance of reaching the porch without having to wade through it. The paint on the small house was peeling and flaking off. The roof was faded with years spent baking in warm Saint View summers. The driveway and a path that led to the front door were both cracked from use or tree roots growing beneath and destroying the concrete.

It was a sad little street from my point of view. But I’d hung around enough days to realize there was happiness here too. There were a couple of small girls who played together on one of their front lawns every day after school, doing handstands and cartwheels on the patchy grass. There were two older ladies who sat on a porch and played cards, only moving inside on particularly chilly afternoons. Augie had brought them groceries one afternoon, on his way home from doing his own shopping, and my stone-cold heart had thawed that little bit more.

I couldn’t work out why someone would want him dead. Did that person know he brought these women food every week? Did they know how they stared up at him with adoration in their eyes and thanked him for his kindness?

Maybe they did and they didn’t care.

I was trying so hard not to.

It really wasn’t working.

It wasn’t something that was allowed, and I knew even before I hit the call button that it would go nowhere, but I rang my mom. The ringtone trilled in my ear, and I drummed my nails impatiently on the steering wheel, waiting for her to pick up.

“Is it done? Are you ready for your next job?”

I cleared my throat. “Hello to you too, Mother. How’s your day?”

“Is. It. Done, Ophelia?”

I sighed. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. She sounded stressed and impatient, and her mood wasn’t likely to get any better when she heard my answer. “No. It’s not. I have questions.”

“Ophelia! It’s been three days! What on earth is taking so long? I’m going to have to give someone else this other job if you don’t hurry up! It’s embarrassing how long you take to do one simple task. This is exactly why no one is giving us any work. You’re getting a reputation, and it’s not a good one!”

Irritation prickled up my spine. “I have a process. You know that. It takes some time, and this one is taking a bit longer than I expected.”

Because I didn’t want to do it and was finding any reason not to.

“Do I need to send Riddick down there to help you?”

I ground my molars at the insulting insinuation I couldn’t handle my own jobs. “I warned you, Mom. Do not do that to me again. It will not end well. I’m not working with him.”

It would have been weird to anyone not involved in this world, but working with him was worse than the idea of marrying him. Marriage was merely a formality. A contract between two parties to strengthen business relations. My mother and father led such separate lives they were almost strangers.

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