forty-four

[tehstripe]

 

On the roof, a woman wearing a nondescript black poloneck with her hair tucked back into a long loose braid fits together a rifle. Snap-click and then she reaches for the scope, checking it by eye before fitting it on and adjusting the elevation, checking the screws, adding a stock and putting it to the crook of her shoulder in an easy, practised swing of the arm. Placing earplugs in her ears, hidden by the dip of the roof gutter, she sets up the rest on the front, laying belly-down on crispy leaves blown into the gap and layered up over gutter crud.

She settles in to wait, checking digital time before putting her eye to the scope. She can see a triangular slice of the window, warm-hued wallpaper and part of a bookcase, and a painting that is either a print or a reproduction - that klimt was reported on the news as destroyed.

She flicks off the safety catch.

 

It’s several hours of empty waiting, blinking into the scope with a dry eye. She squeezes it painfully shut and squints at the wallpaper she’s memorized. A flicker of movement, and her fingertip lightly taps to the trigger, not yet pulling it back.

Wrong target.

She fits her eye back to the scope, watching the scene with renewed interest. A blonde, her hair tucked under a neat headband, laughs and reaches to retrieve a book, passing across the scope’s view. Another person ambles across the field. Confident and dressed for leisure, his overstyled hair belies his age and grand status.

She squeezes the trigger.

The kick jolts her shoulder at the right angle to not dislocate the joint. Glass smashes inwards to land on the carpet and her fingers slide the bolt to release the burning-hot casing from the innards of the gun. There’s a scream from inside the room, a few seconds belated from the shot, an autonomic terror response that is too loud for the throat to contain it and cracking the vocal chords with the measure.

Jade puts on her gloves to dull the heat from the gun’s activated barrel and methodically starts to break it apart, smoothly fitting it into the case, picking up the discarded shell and wrapping it in heatproof fabric before dropping it with the rest. She crouches on the roof for a moment, unrolling a rope ladder and dropping it over the edge of the parapet.

She shimmies down, giving the end a jerk as she jumps the last three feet. She lands easily on her boots with a quiet oof, rolls the ladder over itself and stows it in her backpack. She meanders toward a woman’s bathroom and takes a stall.

Inside the cubicle she opens her case again, takes off her jumper and adjusts her breast forms. Wiggling out of her pants, she pulls out a bright skirt and a selection of colored plastic rings, putting on both and putting her feet back into her boots. A bright hoodie goes over her head, white earbuds and a change of spectacles.

She gives it about twenty minutes before she turns on her phone. Paris is beautiful in the early evening, and it’s almost a shame to jump on the metro and travel a few stops before she turns on her phone to report back.

GG: mischief managed!

GT: awesome.

GT: come home?

GG: waiting for a text from my gf :(

GT: yeah, okay.

GT: quiet journey?

GG: just one other passenger

GT: ok.

She slips out again to cross the bridge and waits over the water. Her phone buzzes twice with one missed call and four texts, only just transmitting as she moves near a phone tower.

TT: Where are you?

TT: Your phone isn’t on, is it.

TT: There’s been a death in the family.

TT: I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but I needed to. I’m sorry.

TT: I’ll be out of town for a few weeks. Text me, but don’t call me. Family still on edge.

TT: I think I’d like a call, actually.

Jade looks at them and chews on her lower lip, before locking the screen and putting it back into her pocket and adjusting her backpack. She sets off for home, to John and to rest.

When she gets into the house, it’s quiet and dark.

“John?” she calls, unsure.

She keeps moving, alert with her heart in her throat and breath shallow. When a hand lands on her arm, she yelps.

“Hey,” her brother says warmly, tugging on her sleeve to turn her around. He’s as sunny as ever, a cut over his eyebrow and a hammer in one hand.

“There was a break-in, but it’s all fine.”

Jade sighs in relief. He pulls her into a hug, rolling onto his toes for that extra inch of height to kiss her forehead.

“I gotta go,” he says, “Meeting a new client. I’ll be at the waterside cafe - you know the one. It’s close, but private. You can always call me.”

She nods, squeezing him tight before letting him go.

“What’s the name?” she calls after him.

“Montoya!” he replies, already half out of the door.

The cafe is quiet in the early evening, and his client is waiting at a table outside. Her outfit and her coffee are a very deep black.

“Miss Montoya?” John says, reaching across the table to shake her hand.

She has a firm grip, and he takes a seat to get down to business.

“Coffee?” she asks, gesturing toward the jug. She’s neatly put-together, makeup perfect and subtle through practise, and a hairband strikes the contrast between her hair and her clothes, black on blonde like a wasp made human. It unsettles him slightly but he carries on regardless.

“Sure,” he says warmly, and she pours him a cup.

He reaches for a sugar packet, happily adding three, before reaching for the cream.

“That is rather a lot of sugar,” she comments. He gives her a grin.

“I have a sweet tooth.”

She nods, bringing the oil-slick coffee in her cup up to her lips.

“I hope it brings out the taste,” she says.

John nods, already tipping the cup.

The liquid is bitter, a punch of sweetness part-way through. He thinks he can taste something else and he gives her a wary glance, but she’s got the cup propped up between her fingers as she looks out to the water.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she murmurs.

He turns his head, to look where she’s looking, and sees the sun starting to set over the water, pink blush and gold and green-blue in the shade. His eyelids droop with heaviness, and he tries to say something. Words don’t come out.

“My name isn’t Montoya,” Rose says as she gets up to leave, tucking notes underneath her saucer to pay for the bill, “But you can fill in the rest.”

John doesn’t say anything, serene as he watches the sunset.

It’s after dark when Jade calls his phone. John can be particularly laissez-faire when it comes to communicating, but he’s not even sent an emoticon back to one of her texts. She rings him, finally, and it goes to voicemail.

She leaves him an exasperated message that she hopes doesn’t sound too needy, leaving her phone on the kitchen table while she does chores to fill in time. She comes in from the garden to the sound of it ringing, and snatches it up to listen.

“John?” she says, sharp and quick.

The silence for precious seconds on the other end is telling.

“This is the Paris Department of Missing Persons,” the voice on the other end says, “We need to ask you some questions if you can, and, ah,” there’s another little pause, “Verify some identification.”

Jade bites down on her lip hard.

“When is the earliest I can come in?” she asks.

“Tomorrow morning,” the officer on the other end says, “Office hours are nine until six.”

“Thank you,” Jade says quietly, “Until then.”

The first place she goes is the weapon cabinet. Her grandfather, who was bad at being cunning, was incredibly good at other things, and one of them was firearms. The flintlocks are old enough to be antiques, but they’re clean and well-maintained, with all the trappings. Too complicated for revenge, though. Jade sets them aside and reaches into the back of the cupboard.  

If somebody is about to do something incredibly illegal, it may as well be double extra illegal.

She picks up the sawn-off shotgun. At this point it’s practically an heirloom too, but with regards to pretty things to pass on to worthy relatives, it isn’t one. She cracks open the barrel at the hinge to check for blockages and decides to clean it out. If she has extra time, she’ll bore it out to remove the interior patterns, but by the condition of it, the gun hadn’t been used since ‘05.

It takes a while to clean, and gives her time to be busy with her hands and let her thoughts drift. Jade forms a plan while she works on it, to serve revenge nicely hot in the morning.

Rose’s country home is out east, and she knows that, though she doesn’t know where. But there’s been a seeker on their rival’s first leg bodyguard car for months, as there was on John’s work vehicle.  

Up in the grey hours, Jade puts on her kit and takes a push bike along the eastern road, riding it into a ditch half-filled with water and letting it lay there, before she crosses over the road and waits at the turn for the car to pull into the rest stop.

It arrives late, and for a moment Jade thinks it won’t stop - but it does. The back door opens, a blonde-haired man appearing with his hair half-wet and stuck up at the back like he dressed quickly before leaving the house. He’s getting out for the tradeover, but the car isn’t here yet - Jade isn’t going to bicker about the opportunity.

She watches him tread around, hands in pockets before he talks to the driver and starts to leave the safety of the car to explore. Once he gets close enough to her hiding place to reach for, she catches him by the collar, slips a knife into his gut, and covers his mouth with her hand as he cries out. His lips press wetly against her palm.

Hooking a foot into his ankle, she lets him go down, his hand pressed to his side as he slips down the muddy bank, wheezing loudly and painfully as though he’s lost all his air. She waits over him, kicking his arm pressing over the wound. The muck around him dulls the vigor of his movement, his fingers scrabbling uselessly at his tie and buttons.

“Why?” he burbles thickly.

“He was the only family I had left,” Jade replies, giving his side a kick.

He lets out a guttural noise, wet and pained as he twists around in the water. His chest rises and falls, still conscious but labouring hard to keep himself alive. She bends to pick him over, smoothing down the lapel to flick open his jacket and retrieve a hidden knife resting next to his wallet. She eyes the gun tucked under his arm, but leaves it there.

Jade reaches the car, shooting the driver through the rolled-down window and shaking her head with stern distaste as she opens the door to let them fall slackly out of the seat. She gets in to their vacated position, regarding the GPS system on the dashboard and turning it back on.

The menu has several locations pre-programmed in, and she wrinkles her brow as she looks through it. The hotel by the lake is the only selection to be found east. Clipping her seatbelt on, she shifts the clutch and starts to drive.

The drive is surprisingly relaxing, mundane if not for the copper tang of the blood drying on the passenger seat, a splash on the inner window that spreads in a dark arc. The fields buzz with insects, a fresh breeze and the scent of cut grass as the GPS monotone tells her to take a left.

The radio mumbles in french about a cache of guns found in the cellar of a private school before changing topic to the president’s latest affair.

Jade rolls onto the gravel of the hotel while the day is still bright, the sun overhead bearing down on her dark jacket and scorching the top of her head with the intensity. At the front desk she asks for a room and pays with her brother’s credit card.

Up on the top floor she gets ready to meet her girlfriend, checking up in the mirror and frowning at the rust-stain splotch on the hem of her sweater. Though she’s not given herself time to reflect, she feels hollowed out now, as though her perception is tilted out of kilter with the rest of reality. An imbalance, frustratingly hard to put her finger on. She takes off her glasses and cleans them, before rinsing the blood out of her clothes in the tiny hotel sink.

The clothes dry on the radiator and the knife stands on the dressing-table under the window.

The day sinks into afternoon, and Jade sinks into impatience.

Taking her gun and her half-dry jacket, she fits it into the holster under her arm and gets her keycard out to go in search of something to eat.

The hotel halls are richer than others she’s visited, but all of them tend to look the same when she closes the door on her room and listens for the click of the close, noting the number - quarante-quatre - and writing it down on the back of her hand.

The stairs are at one end, elevators on the other, and she looks up from capping her pen to note another guest in the hallway. Fair-haired, all-black dress with a wide, short dip of the neckline. It takes a moment for Jade to recognize the woman checking her make-up in the reflective doors of the lift.

Noticing out of the corner of her eye, Rose startles, turns and slams a fist into the call-elevator button, already lit and complying with her request. Jade reaches into her jacket and Rose likewise for her purse on her hip, and the mundane ding of the doors sounds. Rose slips in fast as Jade advances to try and get a better shot, gun heavy in the hand at her side.

The doors close again, and Jade lets out a loud, frustrated curse, tucking her gun back away and running for the stairs. Red paisley carpet dulls the sound of her boots, the plastic banister rattling as she all but flies to the ground floor.

At the foyer, Rose is disappearing out of the  front door and Jade runs after her, slipping her gun out of her holster. They meet on the gravel, weapons raised. Rose backs up slowly, not taking her eyes off Jade.

“Come on now. Let me go,” Rose says, her voice level.   

“Take the shot,” Jade says, advancing a step.

“I’m leaving right now. This is ridiculous.”

Jade cuts her off.

“Take the shot motherfucker!”

“Don’t do this,” Rose says.

“Its getting done, Rose,” Jade says, “Just aim and fire, you know how to do that right?”

Jade steps forward, and Rose sidesteps, the car Jade came up in at her back.

“I don’t think a mercy kill is quite your style,” she says, stalling for time.

She takes another step back, bumping into the car door. Her nerves have her pull the trigger back a moment before Jade fires her own shot. Her face falls as red blossoms across Rose’s chest, her vision fading into grey static.

“Yeah. Okay."