Page 2 of Fiona and the Fixer

Still, I’d seen what real love had been like between my parents before my mom was killed by a drunk driver. I saw every second of the aftermath with my dad, how he’d literally turned into a vigilante to get justice when the police couldn’t. I wasn’t risking my heart like that. People left. Peopledied,I thought, staring down at a dead fucking body.

Grabbing the ski bag I brought, I tossed it on the wood floor and unzipped it. Yeah, just the right size. Even in October when there wasn’t any snow, no one in Denver thought twice about seeing me push a ski bag on a luggage cart through the hotel’s parking garage. I’d considered a golf bag, but I was too tired to saw the guy in half. Besides, that got messy.

“If you’re desperate enough to ask me to watch Pancake, why not ask your future in-laws?”

Jack and Hannah weren’t engaged yet, but they would be sometime soon.

I could hear his dislike through the phone when he said, “Because if I do, when we get back Pancake will be stuffed and perched over the fireplace.”

Putting my cell on speaker, I set it on the cart as I started working the tarp-wrapped body into the ski bag, laughing as I did so. Hannah’s dad was a taxidermist and the Highcliff home was a vegan’s worst nightmare. There was a cow head hanging on the wall in the dining room and a very creepy squirrel in the powder room to name two of the dozens of roadkill he’d stuffed and had around the house. I’d only been there once and that was plenty.

“True. Brittany?” She was Hannah’s best friend.

“Dental convention in Albuquerque.”

I was standing over a dead body, so I didn’t have too much room to even think it, but the idea of cleaning people’s teeth for a living sounded awful. Obviously, there was a profession for everyone.

“Nothinghappens in Coal Springs,” I said as I squatted down and zipped up the bag. “Two weeks there would be boring as hell.”

Jack retired from his hitman lifestyle and moved from Denver to Coal Springs two months ago. While our roles weren’t the same, we’d worked together often. Hung out. Did shit. Then he settled down in the mountains with Hannah. While I was busy as hell, I was bored of the same old body retrieval routine. And a little lonely.

The only other people in my car today were dead in the trunk.

It wasn’t as fun without him.

My phone beeped indicating another call. I pivoted and grabbed it from the cart.

Max Pinter.

“Sorry, get the neighbor kid,” I told Jack. “I’m too busy with all the trash to get up there to feed him.”

“You need a break.”

I sighed. I probably did. I definitely did.

“You don’t want to get sloppy,” he added. He made a valid point. Getting sloppy meant getting caught. I was too good for that, but I had to wonder if I was too tired. Spread too thin.

“Aloha and all that,” I told Jack, before I swiped over to the other call. “Max, what can I do for you today?”

“You can fix the fuck up you made with my son,” he snapped.

I stood, cracked my neck left, then right, before looking up at the suite’s vaulted ceiling. I was used to angry and pissed off clients. They were all… bad guys who liked to use their money, power, or lack of morals and a conscience to their advantage. Today, though, I was tired and cranky and still had to dispose of two bodies.

“What’s wrong with Jason? The charges were dropped and any hint of being involved in a prostitution ring were scrubbed.” Just as he’d hired me to fix.

“He’s in rehab!” The way he shouted it made it seem like I’d handed off his son to a circus troupe to be shot out of a cannon.

I scratched my head. “That’s right.”

“He has a job. Working for me. Rehab isn’t an option.”

I was well aware of the job Jason had for his drug running father. At twenty-two, the kid was using as much product as he was supposed to be peddling to the other frat and football jocks at his university. Last weekend, he got a little too coked up and got caught up in all kinds of stupid shit, like a raid at a shady-as-fuck place pimping out drugged-up women. The drugged-up part was thanks to the dad’s never-ending supply. He should’ve done fifteen years, minimum, but through my connections, I’d fixed the evidence to clear him.

Except, a few days in jail had been enough to makeJason pretty much shit his pants. He’d wanted out from under his dad’s very dirty thumb, and I’d given the kid a chance. I fixed it so he had to go to rehab to clean his shit up.

Again, don’t do drugs.

“It was better than doing hard time,” I reminded, walking around the suite looking for anything else that belonged to Mr. Dead Body. Fortunately, he’d been tidy before he shot up and his heart exploded. Once I rolled the cart out of the room, it’d be just like any other departure. Empty and ready for housekeeping. “He can’t work for you if he’s behind bars.”

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