Page 66 of His Favorite Color is Blood
It was a warm evening in Detroit, and Grim should have been happier to do the deed, but with Misha ignoring him completely, he switched on loud music in the car he borrowed from the Nails-owned garage, for once wanting to just get on with it. Maybe seeing Grim work again would make Misha rethink his behavior? Maybe he would smile again without that mocking edge to his mouth?
He parked the car a few houses down from the one owned by their target and stretched his muscles as soon as he rushed out of the vehicle. For the first time, he resented that he needed to help Misha with the wheelchair, but he did so anyway, trying not to look at the boy too much. Misha wore a sleek black outfit and gloves, but none of those would help him remain unrecognizable. Grim had even suggested to Misha that he shouldn’t go, and they could just film together, but Misha was stubborn like a goat and insisted he’d go with Grim. So there Grim was. An assassin with a sidekick in a wheelchair.
This wasn’t a completely destitute neighborhood, and no matter how ill kept the houses were around here, the people could still provide a description of a suspicious newcomer to the area, so Grim pulled a thin black scarf around the lower part of his face and wore a baseball cap that he stole from the clubhouse. His ears picked up noises of muffled music and voices, all accompanied by the steady sound of the wheels next to him. He really didn’t feel like doing this with Misha tonight. All he wanted was a quick kill. A fast relief. But he wouldn’t have gotten that even without Misha following him like some kind of mute examiner who took notes of Grim’s performance. They needed to film the damn thing, and even though Grim was sure the video wouldn’t see the light of day in the end, it still made him uncomfortable.
“Maybe you go in through the window, and I’ll get inside from the back?” Misha asked.
Great, now Grim, the Coffin Nails Reaper, was getting advice from a complete newbie.
“Maybe you’re the one who should approach from the front? You look completely harmless,” he said as they approached the small, rundown house with rotting wooden panels for decoration.
“Isn’t the black a giveaway?” Misha asked, sounding a lot more innocent than he had for a while now, considering his crappy attitude.
Grim frowned at him. “You’re in a wheelchair. No one suspects a disabled guy of anything.”
Misha gave a long, disgruntled sigh. “I can still do things. I’m not useless,” he said as if that was what they were discussing now.
“No one said that.” Grim took a deep breath and looked at the house with whitish, pulsing light reflecting in the window. The pedophile was watching TV.
“Okay.” Misha wheeled away, straight for the driveway and a paved path leading to the front door.
Grim looked after him for several seconds before rushing into the man’s garden through a broken gate. The backyard was left unkept with weeds the size of young trees licking Grim’s legs as he rushed to the back of the house. And as he got there, it became clear he wouldn’t even have to try his luck with a window, and with a door as basic as the one he saw there, he doubted getting inside would be an issue at all.
He pulled out his tools when the sharp sound of a ring made him look inside the dark room. The sink he noticed in the moonlight confirmed his suspicions that he’d be getting into their target’s kitchen. With Misha surely already talking to the pedophile, Grim needed to act fast, and he opened the door, sliding inside while holding his breath.
He was in his element as he creeped through the dark corridor like yet another shadow, but when he reached the living room, from where he could see the front door, he stalled. He could hear Misha from outside and see the man Misha was talking to, still inside the house.
Tomas Ornish was in a wheelchair. Just sitting there. And when Grim looked around the house, he instantly noticed the little hints of the place being accessible to a wheelchair user. The furniture was low, and so were the pictures hanging on the wall in the corridor. When he looked at the old wheelchair, which was probably creaking with the man’s every move, Grim’s limbs became paralyzed, and his brain emptied, drained of any will to go through with the plan. He started retreating along his own footsteps even before consciously making that decision, his brain a cool sponge of ice crystals that made it unusable. His breathing only slowed down once he was safely back in the ugly garden that was possibly in such a bad shape because Tomas couldn’t freely move around.
This was some kind of joke.
He rushed around the house, his head spinning when he saw Misha again, smiling at Tomas as if the two of them already shared some kind of connection. When he came up to them, Misha stalled mid-sentence, while Tomas, a pudgy man in his forties, adjusted his glasses.
“Can I help you?” he asked Grim.
Grim forced himself to smile and put his hand on Misha’s shoulder. “There you are. I got completely lost back there,” he said, trying not to look at Tomas. Was he really the man they came for?
“I—yeah, I was asking for some directions.” Misha smiled back, and even though his face looked honest, Grim knew nothing about that sweet expression was sincere.
“That’s fine. I already found it,” said Grim, hoping Misha hadn’t given Tomas any details. “Let’s go.”
Misha nodded and shook the man’s hand. “Thank you anyway. Have a good evening.”
Grim pulled him away from the house more roughly than he originally intended, his blood buzzing aggressively as he broke into a run toward the car, with Misha at the front.
Misha gripped the armrests with a gasp. “What are you doing? What happened?”
“This can’t be him. The fucker must have moved,” said Grim breathlessly as he stopped next to their car. This night was such a failure.
“Tomas Ornish. That was him.” Misha whispered, already scrambling into the seat.
“How do you know if you were asking for directions?” asked Grim, jumpier by the second. It was as if his brain refused to work as it normally did. He would not question the identity of a target at any other time, even if it wasn’t confirmed by a photo.
“I asked him if the house was someone else’s, pretending I was looking for that other person, and he said that I was wrong, he was Tomas Ornish, and he lived there.” Misha stared at Grim with his eyes wide open.
Grim clenched his hands on the roof of the car, sucking in long, scattered breaths. “Come on ... he couldn’t have done it.”
“What? Why not? Didn’t someone in the club give you this intel?” asked Misha, transferring into the seat.
