Page 8 of Taken By the Bounty Hunter

“Sure.”

“Are you hearing me, Hope?”

“Yep. A thousand a month. And I gotta move to the closet. Definitely an assassin. Peachy.”

And that means I can keep looking for Georgie. See? We always figure it out between the two of us.

“You might have to move Sonja out of the carport.”

Now he’s trying to provoke me, but I’m not biting. But my blood pressure has started to rise.

“Bro, are you good? I thought you’d be pissed about moving your shit.”

I give a barely-there dip of my chin as I focus on the monitor, where I’m scrolling through the latest failures-to-appear on the county prosecutor’s website. “All good.” I keep a second tab open, of course, which shows a live feed of the main gate of the cult compound. I just sit and watch it sometimes.

It’s not like I have a lot to move. I can handle a mattress on the floor in a glorified closet for a few months. Other than that, I have one duffel bag full of clothes, a laptop, a tattered copy of Christine by Stephen King, and a classic car wall calendar. The rest of my shit is in the shared bathroom and the kitchen, including my favorite oversized mug from Yellowstone National Park that holds half a pot of coffee. Other than that, I keep a go-bag of essentials in Sonja’s trunk, and that’s it.

I hope the new renter doesn’t mind sharing a small bathroom and a severely outdated kitchen with two dudes with dubious housekeeping habits. As for moving Sonja, Joaquin wouldn’t dare.

My best friend clicks his tongue. “You need to forget about that girl and worry about yourself. That cult is a hornet’s nest and I don’t want you bringing that heat on this office,” my best friend says.

“She’s not a girl,” I mutter when I should just keep ignoring him.

“If she’s ten years younger than you, and you’re 30, then yes. She’s a girl.”

And now, he has my full attention. I push back from my desk, stand up, and stalk toward my office partner.

The looming only lasts for a second before Joaquin stands up, his Ikea chair falling backward in his usual bull-in-a-china-shop manner.

“Her name is Georgie, and she’s in trouble,” I say, squaring up to my best friend.

“So? You don’t know her.”

“I don’t know how to explain to you that you should give a shit about other people,” I say.

“This isn’t about that, and you know it. You’re obsessed, and it’s going to bite you in the ass.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and bite my ass and get it over with?”

“Why don’t you stop and think before you draw some unwanted attention onto me? I can’t afford to have some cult weirdos sniffing around the premises. It’s bad for business,” Joaquin says.

“And what exactly is your business?” I ask.

He points a finger in the air. “We agreed not to talk about what I do for a living.”

“And why is that, exactly? Are you a hitman?”

He shoots me an icy stare. “Yeah. I’m a hitman. So stay low-key. You and me, we don’t mount white horses and ride tothe rescue. And we certainly do not stick our nose into local politics.”

“Joaquin, there’s no way you could be a hitman.”

“Low. Profile.”

He can keep his head buried in the sand all he wants. But that’s not for me.

Still, I gotta get him off my back.

“Fine,” I grit out. “I promise this Georgie person isn’t going to cause any problems here at the house.”

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