Page 6 of Hannah and the Hitman

He didn’t answer and for a second I was a little worried he took my little joke seriously. Although, there were moments in the past few months that I wanted to kill Kevin, my ex, because of what he did.

“Okay. No self-absorbed losers,” he practically growled. “What would you go for then?”

I blushed, because his voice went quieter, but it also went deeper. More intimate, if that was possible on a crowded plane. Was it my imagination or had he leaned an inch closer?

I swallowed hard as the plane went over another bump of air. The playful banter seemed to have morphed into something else. “Um… what?”

He tipped his head toward the closed book with the sexy hockey player on the cover. “A guy like that in bed?”

I swallowed and his eyes dropped to watch my throat work. We were practically whispering; our heads were that close together.

“You want me to tell you what I want in a guy I have sex with?”

“Fuck,” he murmured very softly, the word raising goosebumps on my skin. I looked around, but there was nothing to see but him. The side of the plane, the seat in front of me and… him. “What we were reading in that book was definitely fucking.”

“I can’t tell you that,” I practically hissed, tucking myhair back. The only experiences I had with sex were the one time with Craig Chlebek freshman year in college and Kevin. Based on what I read in romance books and what Brittany kept saying, neither guy was remotely proficient in bed. They pretty much sucked in the sack since they hadn’t been able to satisfy me, which meant I’d only had good sex with my vibrator and vicariously through what I read in romance books.

“Why not?” he prodded, cocking his head. “We have thirty minutes, and we’ll never see each other again.”

True. I bit my lip. My heart pounded for some reason. Because this was totally insane. But what happened on a plane from Vegas, stayed on a plane from Vegas, right? I’d never see him again. “Fine, but you go first.”

He studied me for a moment, his eyes raking over my face. I didn’t know what he was searching for, but I felt seen. Like there wasn’t anyone else on this plane but the two of us. “Think you can handle my answers?”

Could I? I wasn’t so sure, because a guy like him–smolderingly gorgeous and seemingly nice–probably had potent tastes and needs. I wanted to know anyway, or because of that. Definitely.

So, I nodded and let him tell me exactly what he wanted in a woman he fucked.

3

JACK

“He out of the shitter yet?” Dax asked, casually leaning against the low wall that surrounded the roof and kept him from plummeting thirty-six stories. He was using his knife to clean his fingernails.

I stood beside him, tucked beside an HVAC unit, rifle in hand. We were on the roof of a downtown Denver high-rise. I glanced at my wristwatch. “He should be done any minute.”

It was the perfect night for a hit like this. No wind. Calm skies. All I had to do was wait for the fucker’s very consistent bowels to be emptied and come out onto the balcony of his penthouse for his usual before-bed dip in his hot tub. A man with a routine like his made for an easy target.

That was why Dax came along for the ride. A fun Saturday night with a murder thrown in for fun. We’d been business partners for years, if one could call what we did abusiness. We weren’t software engineers or tennis instructors. I did the hits; he did the fixing.

If I were a girl, I’d call him my BFF. He was my business partner. A fixer, not a hitman. The difference? I took the jobs that killed people who were a problem and Dax fixed other people’s problems. An example:My son was arrested with two male prostitutes and is in jail in Omaha. Make it go away.Which Dax did. Sometimes people died, but not usually. My jobs had a 100% dead body count.

Dax was extroverted and liked people. I didn’t, which helped with the whole killing thing. Besides Dax, I was a loner. Ever since my deadbeat dad skipped out on me and my mom and she had to buckle down and work three jobs to make ends meet before dying at forty-three, I didn’t trust others all that much.

We’d been in the same fourth grade class at Pinnacle Hills Elementary. When Vinnie Mancuso, a vindictive little shit with a wicked overbite, stole Mabel Delmar’s lunch, we decided to make him pay by giving him a swirlie in the boys’ bathroom by the cafeteria.

We ended up in the principal’s office and since I had no dad and my mother had been working, Dax’s dad, Big Mike, came in to claim us both. He was a tough as nails guy who ran a rough and sweaty fighter gym with a side gig. While he didn’t have a title like hitman or fixer, he did a little of both. He took care of the bad guys around town, the ones who deserved to be dealt with and the police couldn’t touch for whatever reason.

Dax and I bonded during our three-day suspension, our punishment to clean the place top to bottom. When it smelled more like pine cleaner than dirty jockstraps, hepatted us on our backs and told us he was proud of us taking care of the trash. That some people deserved to be taken out, even if that meant using their head for a toilet bowl brush. From then on, he showed us everything we knew, and we learned that everything was black and white. Good guys and bad guys.

No one fucked with either of us at school after that day. Mabel offered to share her lunch with me for a few years, then offered her virginity when we were sixteen.

Dax and I upgraded our technique with boxing, MMA and other, more deadly lessons. As for Big Mike, he retired to Florida a few years back and let us handle things.

I glanced at my watch. It was ten-thirty at night, the same time my target took a shit, like clockwork. Yeah, I researched it. All in a day’s work as a hitman.

“Got those new bullets finally,” Dax said casually, switching hands with his knife to clean the rest of his fingernails. His hair was lighter. So was his body. So was his fucking mood in comparison to mine. Women pretty much tossed their panties when he smiled, which was often.

“Figured we can test them out.”

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