Chapter 1
Standing over the body, Kat forced a short breath out of her nose. When she breathed in again, the smell of chemicals and bodily fluids flooded her nostrils. Blood was everywhere in the pool house, splattered on the wooden planks of the ceiling, peppered over the kayaks mounted on the walls, and staining the rubber tiles on the floor.
What a complete fuck-up.
This kill was not supposed to go so wrong. She’d watched the mark for weeks, as she usually did. She took note of his habits, his schedule, the kind of food he ate on business lunches and whether they made him sluggish or energetic. He went places she should have known well but didn’t, despite having chosen Portland as her base more than thirty years ago.
Three weeks ago, Kat had waited at the Palm Court Bar in downtown’s Benson Hotel lobby, sipping a tall shot of Beluga Noble vodka as she watched him flirt with, then escort, the most attractive woman in the bar into the elevator. She wondered, for a moment, if his wife knew he was cheating. Kat didn’t care one way or another. All men either dipped or thought about dipping their wick into some random stranger. And in her experience, women were not much different. They were just slightly more discerning about who they spread their legs for.
The next day, she followed her mark to the gym, waiting in her car until he came back out so she could assess how he moved before and after exertion. She watched him eyeball a group of four schoolgirls pass him on the sidewalk. Her stomach turned when he licked his lips, ogling these children from behind. This would be a satisfying kill.
This job had come via the dark web, as most did. It was a brief request, with only a name, an address, and simple instructions: Make it look like suicide. And not inside the house, please. Kat was sure it came from a woman. Men were always more callous with their murderous requests and did not care about the mess.
She had all the pieces in place for this kill, except for one nagging detail: She hadn’t been able to clearly identify the wife. She pushed her concern aside; this was a simple job, and the mark was a despicable human being. Only once over her month-long surveillance had she seen the wife outside the house. From three houses down and across the street, Kat watched her emerge from the passenger side of her husband’s custom pearl-painted white 2023 BMW X3. The woman’s face was obscured by a hoodie and dark sunglasses, but the way her shoulders slumped and torso curled over itself as she shuffled to the house were sure signs of an abused woman.
I’m doing you a favor, friend.
She wasn’t concerned about the wife. Abused women were never an issue in the after. It did not matter to Kat precisely how the woman’s life would play out; it would inevitably be much improved by the removal of her vile husband.
What was her concern now was the mess in the pool house. There was nothing left of the top half of the mark’s head. The angles of his jaw slackened, as they do after a natural death, but also after the cheek muscles holding them in place have been blown away.
What the fuck happened?
Kat played it all over in her mind again. She’d crouched behind the row of full-grown Japanese maples edging the ravine at the end of the property. Her legs were warm in her hiking pants, her boots barely muddy despite the March rains. She had a clear view across the hundred-foot lawn to the rear of the two-story house. The entire backside was made up of windows to take advantage of the vast landscape. The wife moved slowly through the kitchen, keeping the island between her and her husband, head down to avoid any confrontation. Kat winced and ignored her own rage when he grabbed her hair and backhanded her, spitting on her as she fell unconscious to the floor.
Her mark emerged from the back of the house, striding with purpose past the covered pool. When he slid open the glass doors of the pool house and walked inside, she made her move. She kicked through the debris of mushy leaves and pushed past the trees. Without waiting, she took aim. As she put pressure on the trigger, her scope went out of focus. Her shot went low, and instead of puncturing the flesh on the side of his head and lodging into his brain, it took off the top of his left ear. He screamed, and she reacted, sprinting up the lawn.
Now inside the pool house, she pushed him against the back wall, jammed the gun inside his mouth, and pulled the trigger again. His body jerked and blood and flesh sprayed everywhere, but at least the missing part of the ear—evidence of her failure—was obliterated. She let gravity pull him down to a natural position.
Satisfied the kill looked like a suicide, Kat wrapped his still-flexible fingers loosely around the grip of the gun. She scanned the pool house, finding the stray bullet lodged in a kickboard, the Styrofoam melted from the heat. Tucking the board under her arm, Kat casually walked back to the tree line, disappearing into the ravine. She pushed through the ferns and weeds until she found the creek she’d noticed earlier.
“Damn it,” she hissed, noticing the blood splatter on her brand-new boots and down the front of her pants. Blood and brains flecked her fleece jacket, but she was going to burn that ugly thing, along with the kickboard. She peeled off her latex gloves and crouched down, her knees cracking and popping, then brought her hands to her face, washing the remains of the mark from her skin.
Touching the downy fuzz along the edges of her cheeks, Kat felt wet flecks—maybe blood, maybe something else—stuck there. She rubbed roughly, cursing the postmenopausal facial hair she suddenly woke up with one morning. She looked at the back of her hands as she plunged them into the creek, wishing the lines she saw were caused by the ripples of the water but knowing full well they weren’t. If she could turn the clock back twenty years to her forties, she would have moisturized more.
She pulled the auburn wig off as she climbed up the other side of the ravine, shaking it to disperse the pink bits clinging to the hair. Her car was still the only one at the trailhead. She unzipped the fleece and threw it into a black garbage bag in the back, along with the wig and kickboard. She sat on the lip of the open hatch, her legs stretched out in front of her.
What happened back there?
On the eight-mile drive from Southwest Hills to her bungalow in southeast Portland, she again replayed everything in her mind. Her hands were steady, and the mark had been barely moving. It was an easy target, but her shot went wild. The scope had gone fuzzy at the last second. Must be something wrong with the gun, she told herself sternly.
Kat stripped down in the shower, using her foot to push her clothes to the corner. She let the hot water wash over her head and face, the steam opening her pores. She picked up the luxurious new exfoliating scrub she’d treated herself to a few days ago, turning the pot to read the instructions. The words were so tiny. She moved closer to the shower’s glass door where the light spilled in. She extended her arm, but the words barely came into focus. And then it hit her.
There was nothing wrong with the gun.
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