Page 8 of The Darkest Half

The sun has already risen over the East Coast, the sky casting a pink-orange glow on the walls of the burger joint. The place opens at eight because they also serve breakfast, and that’s in only one hour, not enough time for me to kill him, clean up the mess, and drag him out. I could leave his body here for the employees to find—they’d probably get a sick satisfaction from finding their misogynist manager dead, but bodies lead to quicker investigations. Missing persons give me at least forty-eight hours. However, I’d get more in his case because it’d be a long time before anybody thought it worth reporting him missing.

I slam his head against the floor, harder this time; his eyes flutter, and then he shakes it off.

“Go ahead,” he taunts me. “I like it.”

Yeah, a deranged maniac, all right.

“Where’s her body then?” I ask. “Because I know you killed her.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

He smiles; one of his incisors is decayed, and I can smell it, that single tooth putting off such a putrid stench.

Just as the guy’s eyes veer off to the right and I smell the perfume, I realize I’m in a bad spot, without enough time to move out of the way. Something strikes the back of my head, and streaks move past my vision; the ceiling spins as I roll off the guy and hit the floor—but no way does my gun fall from my hand.

Rolling onto my back, I blink through the blur and raise my gun to the woman standing over me—his girlfriend. She kicks it from my hand. Clank! Woosh! Fuck. Good thing I have another one on my hip. I feel the sole of her boot pressing against my wrist—the toe of the guy’s boot strikes me in the face, and blood pools in my mouth.

“You were more easily fooled than I thought you’d be,” the girlfriend says with laughter in her voice.

I smile up at her, not with the smile of a deranged maniac but with confidence.

“Now see,” I begin, “that’s where you’re mistaken.” In an instant, I wrap my legs around her waist, pulling her to the ground. A shot rings out, and the boyfriend hits the floor in the same instant, his hands covering the wound in his stomach. “I knew you two were a cheap, skanky version of Bonnie and Clyde and that you’d be here waiting for me.” I fall onto her chest, legs straddling her shoulders, pinning them to the floor; my gun shoved underneath her chin. “And I knew this was the only way to get you two together.”

“That bitch shot me!” the guy shrieks. Blood oozes from the cracks in his fingers covering the wound. He coughs and spits. “Baby, she shot me!”

“Shuddup, Levi!” She keeps her eyes on me. “What are you gonna do? Take us to jail?” The very thought made her laugh.

Hell, it made me laugh—I shoved the gun harder into her skin.

“Come on now,” I say, “you gotta give me more credit than that. First, you’re gonna tell me where the girl is—then I’m going to kill you.”

“Kill her, Dee! That bitch shot me!”

“I said shuddup, Levi! Just shut your mouth for once in your life!”

“Man problems?” I ask.

“Ain’t never been without them,” she says. “You?”

I cock an eyebrow. “Yeah, I guess we have something in common, after all.”

“Well then,” she says as if that should settle the matter, “since we’ve got some camaraderie, why don’t you let me go, seeing as it’s his fault I turned out the way I did? You do what you want with him, and we go our separate ways?”

“Dee! What the fuck?!” Levi coughs again; blood spatters his shirt.

I pretend to think on it for a moment, chew on the inside of my cheek for dramatic effect.

Then I say—lie, “Sorry, but I can handle my man problems,” and then I knock her out with the butt of my gun.

“Dee! Dee…wake up… Dee?” His eyes flutter.

“Great,” I say, jumping off Dee. “Don’t you die on me in here.”

“Dee…” And then he dies.

I sigh and look around the restaurant at the early morning sunlight pouring in through the tall glass windows. I glance at the clock. Twenty minutes until eight. I look up at the fake video surveillance mounted on the wall—I’d checked it the night before—and sigh again.

“We just got a hit,” Rayna, my new assistant, says from behind.

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